The Pagan Science Monitor

Objection, judge! Have you been drinking?

But first, the Quotation du jour:
"When an attorney arrives intoxicated at the prison for a legal visit, the policy shall be that he shall be escorted out of the facility. If correctional officers assess the attorney as too impaired to drive, the Madison County Sheriff shall be called."
-- Policy memo taped to the wall in the public lobby of Limestone Correctional Facility, Harvest, Alabama, where the state warehouses HIV-positive prisoners. The carceral certainty in the directive's first word [emphasis added, of course] continued to make the investigators giggle a year after the first time we read it on the wall.
Now, the story: The Chicago Daily Law Bulletin reports that the former chief judge of St. Clair County (Illinois) Circuit Court, and a colleague, face judicial misconduct complaints for a December 2006 car wreck attributed to drunk driving.
According to the Complaint [PDF warning!] by the Illinois Judicial Inquiry Board, Judge Patrick M. Young started drinking before a St. Louis Rams game, kept drinking till about 5, and wound up with eight beers and two bloody marys in his honor's blood.

I love my bike but fear my government

...which is what Denis (duh-KNEE) likes to say. That's the QDJ.
This is the last Friday of the month, and you know what that means.
A month ago, when Chicago police arrested 7 Critical Mass riders, the Sun-Times wrote wistfully about a "partnership" between cyclists and the police -- a partnership that "fizzled."
At least 2 of the 7 arrestees have already been to court and gotten good outcomes.
(The municipal codes they were accused of violating are here and here.)
Tonight's ride will celebrate CM's 10th anniversary in Chicago, and National Lawyer's Guild Legal Observers will ride along.
Provided nothing "fizzles" tonight, check back for an update.

Monday update: Nothing fizzled. YouTube video here.

Tags: Chicago word, Critical Mass, legal+observers, Legal Observers.

Policy to be skeptical of today

Chicago Municipal Code 4-4-335: "It shall be unlawful for any person holding a retail business license to sell paint in spray cans or etching materials to any person...."
If you hate graffiti (ask around: it's a big IF even among property owners) you know this ordinance has accomplished bupkis.
It does, however, impose some difficulty upon a law-abiding legal worker who just wants to paint his new bike.

Tags: Chicago Municipal Code, graffiti, Chicago, Chicago word, Chicago bicycling, Mayor Daley.

Friday afternoon conspiracy theory

...2 days late & 50 cent short.
Theory: That Mayor Daley is secretly hostile to cars in the city, and especially in the Loop.
I was a doubter, but now I'm a believer.
Fact: Many cyclists believe that Chicago is a bike-friendly city.
New fact: The notorious and rather nutty Alderman Ed Burke (14th Ward) floated the idea that Chicago should borrow a page from London and adopt a congestion fee.
Irrelevant fact (except to me): Last week I became the very, very proud owner of the Bargain-of-the-Day at Working Bikes, a non-profit collective that (A) takes bikes out of landfills and fixes them up, and (B) uses the money from bike sales to ship bikes to Ghana and elsewhere.
The bike was such a rust-bucket, it reminded me of my first car. I avoided car ownership as long as I could, but one day the litigation director called me in and said there's no such thing as a criminal defense investigator without a car. (My friends had been lending me their cars, trucks, and, once, a scooter.) 

Quotation du jour: Fri. 6-22-07

"Shut up! Stop laughing! This ain't funny! This is a real gun!"
--Anonymous, un-apprehended bad guy, quoted this afternoon by my friend M., recalling how she got a fit of hysterical giggles while caught up in a convenience-store holdup on the Southwest Side of Chicago about 10 years ago.
Context: This week, M. is returning, for her brother's wedding, to her family's village near Ramallah, West Bank, Palestine. She remembered coming home to Chicago after her last family visit as a teenager: Sadness to leave her extended family, but relief to be back in Chicago, her home town. Especially, M. clung to the thought, "I'll never have to see another gun again."

Quotation du jour: Sat. 6-16-07

The patron had engaged me as kitchen plongeur; that is, my job was to wash up, keep the kitchen clean, prepare vegetables, make tea, coffee, and sandwiches, do the simpler cooking, and run errands.... (Ch. XX)
...And yet the plongeurs, low as they are, also have a kind of pride. It is the pride of the drudge -- the man who is equal to no matter what quantity of work.... (Ch. XIV)

-- Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London, 1933

Because the temperature in my apartment rose with the sun, and sleep became impossible, and I realized I had dreamed I was a dishwasher again. I took the book off the shelf (whoever snagged my copy of Catalonia, bring it back) and found my favorite passages again before the dog woke or I even made coffee.

Quotation du jour, Tue. 6-5-07

"You know, if you really think about it,
whoever invented music was really
kind of a genius."
-- Gene, my father, baritone saxophonist, and master of the unintentional howler.

A different idea to make the El bearable

Previously, there was a proposal that you close your eyes and fantasize that the El is a theme-park ride with pirates, and that moving achingly slowly is part of the fun. (At least I think that was it.)
Here's a -- maybe -- better idea. (Thanks, CTA Tattler!) Some smart people have made it appallingly easy to spam your state legislators and the governor to death with desperate pleas for money for the CTA. There's almost no reason not to do it. (Yes, yes, I know, "these hands don't lobby politicians." Whatever -- the pirates await you, esp. in the tunnel between Division & Grand.)

Tags: Chicago, Chicago word, Chicago El, Chicago Transit Authority, CTA, "CTA Tattler", "Save Chicagoland Transit", pirates, fantasy, fantasies.

Quotation du jour

The QDJ is wordless. Today, it is a sound.
It is the refrain from "Isn't She Lovely" (Stevie Wonder, Songs in the Key of Life, 1976), played (with heart) on a little harmonica, by someone I glimpsed in the bustle of pedestrians on the south side of the Federal Plaza here, about 4:45 this afternoon.
The sound pulled me out of the silent world you go to in loud public places and in intense private moments. It pulled me back into the other sounds of the street, back into contact.
(Aside: Listen to Patti Smith, Twelve, 2007.)
There's a lot of grousing on these pages. It's been a grim week in this world. The sound reminded me: Thank you. The I.D. social worker who tells me, "I'm too tired to laugh." The public defender who will be drunk again tonight. The prisoner advocate who will not be (again, tonight, and for fourteen years, three weeks, and two days, right?). The accountant ("don't call me that!") at the AIDS-service non-profit who is supposed to call in a few minutes (perhaps with a proposal to get drunk). Thank you. It's been a hell of a week, all the way around, for a lot of people. But there was a sound that pulled me back into the sunlight. May you all find something, too.

Tags: politics, Stevie Wonder, Patti Smith, Quotation du Jour, QDJ, social work, social workers, public defenders, indigent defense, non-profits, Iraq, Cindy Sheehan, gratitude.

Quotation du jour

pray for a new age
pray for information
i can hope, see
even if i don't believe