August 17th, 2018

Dear Aretha… (A Letter from a Vietnam Veteran)

While biography forms the backbone of any obituary, it is the stories about a life that serve to illuminate it and give meaning.

The letter to Aretha Franklin below was originally written and mailed a few years ago by Earle L. Jackson Sr. — a medic for the 173rd Airborne. I publish it today (in slightly modified form by its author), with the thought that, perhaps, the story will help to illuminate the biography of her life that has been written and celebrated elsewhere

For context, the Vietnam combat below is the Battle of Dak To (Hill 875), some of the bloodiest fighting of that long ago, godforsaken but not forgotten, conflict.

The letter below is from a soldier surrounded by death, to an artist that helped keep his spirit alive.

Today is one of those days I post something that has nothing whatsoever to do with law. I publish simply because its one of these things that should not remain hidden.

——————–

Dear Ms. Franklin,

Please accept my apology for this letter being some 50 plus years over due. In 1967, I was a 22 year-old combat medic with the 173d Airborne Brigade, the most decorated army brigade in Vietnam. We were dug-in in a river valley next to the Dak Po river in Kontum Province, Republic of South Vietnam. The valley was named Dakto which was about 50 miles by dirt road from the closest mountain village, in the rain-soaked jungles of the Central Highlands.

At any time during the day or night, from the surrounding hills and mountains, the North Vietnamese Army would rain down mortars and rockets killing and wounding scores of paratroopers and destroying critical supplies. Dakto was an extremely dangerous place in 1967, over a four month period we had hundreds of troopers killed and another thousand or so men wounded.

We could never let our guard down in Dakto because the Cambodian border was just a few miles away where some 20,000 highly trained, battle-tested North Vietnamese soldiers were camped, poised to attack our position in the valley at any given moment. If we did come under a full attack and had to defend this valley, we would do so with a little better than 1,200 men. I don’t mind admitting, and I’m not embarrassed to say that for this 22 year-old kid from Plainville, Connecticut it was a very stressful time and place to say the least.

Every day as dusk settled into night over the valley, you could hear the hum of generators being started that provided the only electricity for 50 miles around. The intermittent firing of our artillery into the surrounding hills and valleys kept the enemy off balance during the night and less likely to attack us.

It’s Saturday night in death valley, the enemy is taking a break from shelling us and the boredom is almost thick enough to cut with a knife, when through the crisp Dakto night air, as the moon rose above the dark peaks of the mountains, there came the sweet sound of a familiar voice belting out the soulful words “R-E-S-P-E-C-T find out what it means to me.”

Man, I say to myself, I’m missing home too much, could that be my girl way out here in this dusty hell-hole? I want to get closer to what I’m hearing so I follow the sound and it leads me to a rain poncho being used as a door to cover an under-ground bunker.

In the bunker there are a dozen grubby, tired and home-sick paratroopers and they were partying in this hole in the ground like there will be no tomorrow. On one side of the bunker, several paratroopers are harmonizing the background lyrics, and rocking to the beat of the music on the other side of the bunker are several other soldiers making up their own choreographed steps as they move to the rhythm of the music.

It’s a scene now etched into my heart and mind that will never be erased. This will be the start of a night in my life that I will never forget and its not over yet.

About 2:00 am in the morning I needed some fresh air so I stepped outside of that bunker. It wasn’t long before my ears caught another familiar sound coming from the next bunker about 30 yards down the line of bunkers. “You make me feel like a natural woman”, man, oh man, there is another party going on in the next under-ground bunker too. In this bunker there are another dozen or so paratroopers partying in the candle light, dancing by themselves while singing along at the top of their lungs with our “Queen of Soul”, Ms. Aretha Franklin.

There may be a war going on outside of the bunker, but inside the safety of this bunker there is a party going on and performing for us tonight is Ms. Aretha Franklin, no charge. In 1967 we spent many nights in some of the world’s most dangerous places on earth and you Ms. Franklin were always right there with us, helping us get through another tough night or giving us comfort on a bad day. Even today when I hear your music I smile, a warm feeling comes over me, and I get carried back to those spirit lifting parties in that infamous river valley of death in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, in 1967.

Ms. Franklin you may never know the depth of the love we old veterans have for you and your music, or the impact that they had on us combat troops dug-in in the remote mountains and jungles of South Vietnam. When we were down and needed a double dose of love, you gave it to us in your music; through your music we were able to get through the hard times and terrifying moments that lay ahead of us.

Well Ms. Franklin, I’m 74 years old now and I don’t think that I will ever get the chance to hug you and thank you personally for all that you did for me and the tens of thousands of other soldiers some 50 plus years ago, but please consider this, when you settle down to sleep and close your eyes please let your last thoughts for the night be about the tens of thousands of veterans who love you beyond words of expression and cherish those brief, precious moments when you single-handedly stopped the war and took us all home . God Bless you for that, and rest easy Ms Franklin, long live the Queen of Soul….

Sincerely and with much love , Airborne All the Way

Earle L. Jackson Sr.

Florida

(This publication is with the permission of its veteran-author, who maintains a copyright over the letter, so please do not re-publish without permission from his friend and lawyer, Ken Laska).

December 21st, 2015

Stanley Tessel (1929 – 2015)

A 60-year-old trial bag that I use, which I inherited from the firm of Turkewitz & Tessel

Way back in the day, students sat in classrooms in alphabetical order. So if your name was Turkewitz, you’d sit next to a kid named Tessel.

And so it was at Brooklyn Law where my father sat next to Stanley Tessel, who scared the crap out of dad with his incredibly organized notes, made with different colored pens. My father, by contrast, has handwriting like mine, which my 5th grade teacher charitably called chickenscratch.

Stanley Tessel died on December 7th at the age of 86, having retired after 62 years of practicing law. He wasn’t just one of the preeminent medical malpractice attorneys in the state when it came to obstetrical cases and brain damaged babies, but was a pioneer as the field developed through the 1960s and 70s.

You see that photo of a trial bag to the right? It says “T & T” on it, which stood for Turkewitz & Tessel, the firm my Bronx-born father and his Brooklyn-born buddy formed a couple years after they graduated in 1952. That bag is about 60-years-old, and sits in the corner of my office, ready for my next trial. It’s held a lot of stories, including those from the days that the two friends did defense work for Professional Insurance Company of New York, defending doctors and hospitals in medical malpractice cases.

Tessel, according to my father, was an outstanding trial lawyer back in those days.

After Turkewitz & Tessel split up after 15 years — when Professional Insurance went belly-up — my father went on to lead the medical malpractice department at Fuchsberg & Fuchsberg while Tessel went over to Charlie Kramer’s law firm, which subsequently became Kramer, Dilloff, Tessel, Duffy & Moore.

If that name sounds familiar, it’s because the firm is one of top medical malpractice firms in the nation, now known as Kramer, Dillof, Livingston & Moore. Tessel, even long after he’d retired in 1989 and moved to Florida, would still fly up to New York to take the depositions of doctors in obstetrical cases. When the top firm in the nation has a lawyer flying in from Florida to take a deposition, you know the lawyer is good.

Chuck Silverstein, who worked with Stanley for years at Kramer Dillof, and with whom I shared office space for several years, wrote to me:

One of the things I remember most about Stanley was that he liked to talk about your father a lot. He told me the law school story (related above), always with a big smile on his face.

At one point Stanley bought himself a Rolls Royce but realized it was a dumb thing to do and got rid of it. (ET – But before getting rid of it, he came by our house to give my folks a ride. My mother quipped, “It rides as nice as our Cutless!”)

Stanley used to love going to Harry’s in the basement of the Woolworth building. He and I would sit at the bar and he would order two drinks and two shrimp cocktails and the war stories would flow.

The joke at the retirement party was that Harry’s would go out of business without him around.

At the party, a prominent obstetrician toasting Stanley said that “He knows so much about obstetrics, I’d like him present in the delivery room when my own wife gives birth.”

When I first started working at Kramer Dillof Stanley told me that I’d need a copy of Williams on Obstetrics. I think he gave me his own copy since he basically knew everything in it already.

Stanley was a very generous man. I think the term ‘magnanimous’ really sums him up — both professionally and personally.”

One day, many years back, Silverstein asked me to try one of the cases that Kramer, Dillof had worked up. This happens from time to time when there’s a manpower shortage and the judges are screaming at you to go pick a jury.

I cracked open the file and found handwriting that looked like it came from a typewriter — with analysis to match. In different colored inks. While I had never actually seen Tessel’s handwriting before, as I’d never worked with him, I recognized his work immediately based on my father’s stories. And so I went on to take a verdict in this case my father’s old partner had worked up at a different firm.

Stanley Tessel

A long obituary appeared in the New York Times this past Friday, written by his survivors. It recounted Tessel’s service in the Air Force during the Korean War, serving in Pusan as part of the Judge Advocate General.

While the obituary mentioned that he was entombed with full military honors by the Air Force Honor Guard, it failed to mention the time he almost got court-martialed. For working too hard.

It seems that the officers on the base would quit work at four and head over to the Officer’s Club for drinks. And Tessel’s office in the JAG was just across the way. And with Tessel-the-perfectionist working late, the light was always on.

(This late-night work came as no surprise to my father as he recounted the almost-court-martialed story to me, since in law school my father would quit a long day of studying at 7 due to exhaustion, while Tessel continued deep into the night even though he knew the material cold.)

So the other officers discussed this “problem” of Tessel working so hard and so late with Tessel’s superior, telling the boss it wasn’t right to make Tessel work that way. The commanding officer, in turn, told Tessel that maybe it would be a good idea to quit work at four like everyone else.

The court-martial risk came because Tessel thought this had just been a suggestion.

Not bad for a war story.

October 10th, 2014

RIP: Prof. David Siegel

Professor David Siegel, from his Albany Law School biography page

Calling Professor David Siegel a giant of the New York legal world would not only be a bit trite, but would still be an understatement. His treatise on New York Practice, the bible of New York civil procedure, is a required text for anyone that works in this state’s courts on the civil side and is routinely cited by judges at all levels, both state and federal.

He died yesterday.

In an obituary at the New York Law Journal, former Chief Justice Judith Kaye is quoted thusly from a 2008 Albany Law School event honoring him:

“Who among us doesn’t know that he is the—absolutely the—preeminent authority on matters of civil practice in the entire universe?” Kaye said at the time. “There’s no one with a bit of good sense who would dare ever to cross you on matters of civil practice, David Siegel.”

Like many other local lawyers, I attended Siegel’s continuing legal education classes regarding our civil procedure many times. And here’s the thing: The guy wasn’t just smart and practical, he was funny.

That humor was reflected not only in his on-stage manner, but incorporated into his New York Practice book. I mean really, who the hell ever laughed out loud at something in a book about legal procedure? But Siegel could pull that off.

On a few occasions in this blog over the years I’ve mentioned that it sucks to be a test case, usually on the subject of our new and untested ethics rules regarding online conduct and solicitation. That mantra of “it sucks to be a test case” comes from Siegel, who used to preach that advice when lawyers would pose factual situations that might (or might not) comply with our procedure.

Ever the practical person, he knew that it wasn’t always whether some procedural issue would work or not, but that lawyers should avoid placing themselves into the position to have to make that decision. You might (or might not) win your test case, but it will cost you time, money and sleepless nights to get there.
——————–

From appellate lawyer Jay Breakstone:

I suppose it’s to be expected. A lawyer dies and we all gather around and describe him in the most glowing terms, whether he was a saint or a nasty bastard. Sometimes, it’s like being at Hitler’s funeral. “All in all, what can we say? He was a hell of a dancer.” At the time of death, there is always something nice to say about anyone.

But the recent loss of David Siegel is something else. It is the true loss of someone we needed, not just admired. Prof. Siegel was that one tool on the belt of every working lawyer that we couldn’t live without.

He was the Vise-Grip plier that could wrap itself around a particularly nasty question and break it loose from our own ignorance. And, just like that Vise-Grip plier, he was always there. Except for now.

To those of us who write about the law, David Siegel had a very unique talent. The Professor could make the law understandable. What a gift! After all, this is not John Grisham writing about steaming plot lines and attractive anti-heroes. This is New York practice, about as entrancing as a heartburn. Yet, David Siegel made it sing.

How did he do that? To this day, I do not know. In the master’s hands, New York practice was just about the most interesting thing in the world. It involved real people and real lawyers and real problems and, best of all, real answers. Like some ancient prophet, Prof. Siegel revealed all that came down from on high to those of us who lived below.

I first came across Prof. Siegel at a bar review course in 1976. They said that his course on New York practice was essential. I think I paid extra to take the course and they were right. He lectured in a style that can only be called “conspiratorial.” This was a lawyer talking to other lawyers (almost.)

It was him and us against the world. At last, this was the real thing. No theories, no big shot federal jurisdictional issues; this was blue collar lawyering at its best. We listened enraptured, for we quickly understood that if by some slight chance we actually passed the bar exam, this was what we needed to know on the day after our admission. I can still hear David Siegel today:

“One day, as young lawyer, your boss will send you to court. How exciting! You will carry the nice new briefcase your parents bought you and head off to the courthouse at 60 Centre Street. You will walk up the steps with the sun shining, ready to do battle for justice. You will enter the beautiful lobby and, just as quickly, you will descend into the bowels of hell. You have been sent to the Special Term, Part I courtroom.

As you open the swinging doors, you will be assaulted by a scene out of Dante’s Inferno. Hundreds of lawyers will be there, shouting out the name of hundreds of other lawyers. You will sit down in the back of the courtroom and wait for the judge to take the bench and call your case. But there will be no judge to hear your application for an adjournment. Only the clerk will take the bench and he will begin to rattle off case after case in the order they are on the calendar taped to the wall outside the door – – the calendar you did not notice when you came in. So, you will listen for your case to be called.

Quickly, the case names go by, and then, you think you hear yours! You walk to the front of the courtroom, only to realize that in the time it took you to make that trip, fifty other cases went by. There is no one to talk to; you are alone in a crowd, secure in the knowledge that once you get back to the office, you will be fired and have to pack up your desk in one of those cardboard boxes and go home, telling your mother you’re not a lawyer anymore.”

It was then that David Siegel, as he did until the day he died, rode in like a knight on horseback and saved our lives:

“This is what you have to know: There are only three things you may yell out in Special I. Nothing else will register in the mind of the clerk. He or she is only programmed to respond to these three magical phrases. Write them down now. Memorize them. Never forget them. Here they are: Ready for; Ready against; Application.”

Prof. Siegel, I have never forgotten those words . . . or any of yours.

January 28th, 2014

Pete Seeger, 1919 — 2014

The first time I saw Pete Seeger sing was in a driving rain storm. It was in Albany, 1981, and I was part of a university crowd marching downtown to protest the Springboks — the national rugby team of apartheid South Africa.

The skies opened up on us during the march. But there was Pete, banjo in hand, with supporters holding umbrellas over his head, singing. Through the eyes of a 21-year-old college student, he looked old even back then. This was the scene, as recorded by the New York Times:

ALBANY, Sept. 22— After a day of Federal court decisions, a bombing of the sponsor’s headquarters, arrests of radicals and mobilization of the city’s police force, the touring South African Springboks rugby team played a rain-drenched match tonight on a floodlighted field in Albany’s outskirts.

While the players scrummed and kicked in the mud, the shouts of 1,000 demonstrators confined to a knoll 100 yards away reached the field, which was surrounded by the police. Pete Seeger led the protesters in the African song ”Wimowey” and a local minister said, ”This will go down as one of the blackest Tuesdays in American history.”

I’m not going to sit here and say I agreed with every position that he stood for over the course of his 94 years. I can’t say that about anyone. But when a man stands up to the House Un-American Activities Committee because they are afraid of his music, it’s hard not to appreciate his strength of conviction in the First Amendment. He reportedly had this to say in 1955:

I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs. I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this.”

You can actually see the testimony on Seeger’s own website.

But that doesn’t mean he was unwilling to tell this most un-American of committees a little bit about himself. He offered instead to sing the songs that the committee mentioned. They refused. He was blacklisted. He was indicted. He was convicted.

And the conviction was overturned, though not on First Amendment grounds, which were not even discussed. Today, that is the way most would have looked at the refusals to testify.

This is a fuller part of the inquisition before the committee:

MR. TAVENNER: The same occasion, yes, sir. I have before me a photostatic copy of a page from the June 1, 1949, issue of the Daily Worker, and in a column entitled “Town Talk” there is found this statement: The first performance of a new song, “If I Had a Hammer,” on the theme of the Foley Square trial of the Communist leaders, will he given at a testimonial dinner for the 12 on Friday night at St. Nicholas Arena. . . .Among those on hand for the singing will be . . . Pete Seeger, and Lee Hays-and others whose names are mentioned. Did you take part in that performance?

MR. SEEGER: I shall he glad to answer about the song, sir, and I am not interested in carrying on the line of questioning about where I have sung any songs.

MR. TAVENNER: I ask a direction.

CHAIRMAN WALTER: You may not he interested, but we are, however. I direct you to answer. You can answer that question.

MR. SEEGER: I feel these questions are improper, sir, and I feel they are immoral to ask any American this kind of question.

MR. TAVENNER: Have you finished your answer?

MR. SEEGER: Yes, sir.

MR. TAVENNER: I desire to offer the document in evidence and ask that it be marked “Seeger exhibit No.4,” for identification only, and to be made a part of the Committee files.

MR. SEEGER: I am sorry you are not interested in the song. It is a good song.

…

MR. TAVENNER: Did you hear Mr. George Hall’s testimony yesterday in which he stated that, as an actor, the special contribution that he was expected to make to the Communist Party was to use his talents by entertaining at Communist Party functions? Did you hear that testimony?

MR. SEEGER: I didn’t hear it, no.

MR. TAVENNER: It is a fact that he so testified. I want to know whether or not you were engaged in a similar type of service to the Communist Party in entertaining at these features.

(Witness consulted with counsel.)

MR. SEEGER: I have sung for Americans of every political persuasion, and I am proud that I never refuse to sing to an audience, no matter what religion or color of their skin, or situation in life. I have sung in hobo jungles, and I have sung for the Rockefellers, and I am proud that I have never refused to sing for anybody. That is the only answer I can give along that line.

I’m not going to write a full blown obituary for a 94-year-old man with a full life in the public eye. You can read any number of them circulating on the web in news reports. But this is a law blog, so I choose the legal angle. And from my standpoint, that means using words and symbols in order to argue a point.

Above any one particular political position he held was the pursuit of non-violence and that people should talk to each other. The inscription on his banjo read:

This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.

Back in 1979, the late Harry Chapin — one of many, many singer-songwriters he influenced — wrote a tribute to Seeger called Old Folkie, that you can find on YouTube, that starts like this:

He’s the man with the banjo and the 12-string guitar.
And he’s singing us the songs that tell us who we are.
When you look in his eyes you know that somebody’s in there.
Yeah, he knows where we’re going and where we been
And how the fog is gettin’ thicker where the future should begin.
When you look at his life you know that he’s really been there.

Americans of all stripes have much to be grateful for in the Seeger lessons. Because free speech affects all of us, regardless of political bent. It’s worth repeating, from his 1954 testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee:

I have sung for Americans of every political persuasion, and I am proud that I never refuse to sing to an audience, no matter what religion or color of their skin, or situation in life. I have sung in hobo jungles, and I have sung for the Rockefellers, and I am proud that I have never refused to sing for anybody.

November 4th, 2013

Blawg Review 325.7 (RIP: Ed.)

The late, anonymous Editor of Blawg Review, kinda, sorta photographed by me in 2009.

If you didn’t know Ed., please bear with me. He made me a better blogger, and a better lawyer. He died of esophageal cancer last week, as announced by his son on Twitter.

Newcomers might not remember Blawg Review, the weekly round-up of law blog posts that he started in 2005 that rotated around and around from blog to blog. The Blawg Review website that he managed and edited held down the anchor with all of the links. The roster of those who hosted Blawg Review looks like a Who’s Who of the legal blogosphere. I was honored that he asked me to host three out of the 324 prior editions before it came to an end last year.

As I noted back in 2009 — a lifetime ago in pixellated years:

Without Ed., there would be no Blawg Review. And if someone else were doing the organizing, you just know it wouldn’t be nearly as good.

Ed. wished to remain anonymous, even as he traveled the country and met with scads of bloggers. To my knowledge, not a single one of us knew his real name. As Scott Greenfield noted, he was always just Ed., the editor of Blawg Review. I had the pleasure of meeting him several times as he passed through New York.

Ed. didn’t want to be known by name. He didn’t want it to be about him. It was about the Blawg Review project. He was the living, breathing embodiment of how to conduct yourself online under cover of anonymity — the exact same way you would if you were face to face.

According to his son:

There was nothing my father enjoyed more than debating the philosophies, merits, and impacts of laws around the world – sharing opinions and celebrating the discourse you helped create here at Blawg Review.

So why did he make me a better blogger and lawyer? It all goes back to The Mummers Veil that he wrote on January 1, 2007. This wasn’t just any old round-up of posts that constituted a Blawg Review that he wrote, but rather, a delightful flight of fancy as he imagined himself traveling the world visiting law bloggers. This was the literary device he used:

Ed. as he appeared to the world in his Twitter profile.

In this Blawg Review #89, your dutiful editor appears as the lone mummer, visiting the sites of legal webloggers far and near in the blogosphere between Boxing Day and New Year’s Day 2007.

Now literary devices and lawyering don’t usually go hand in hand — lawyers are boring and write dryly and stuff their pages with case citations and numbers that correspond to book volumes. Some lawyers seem hell bent on putting judges and law clerks to sleep.

But look what was possible in the blawgosphere! There was Ed., not just enjoying the writing that he found at the end, but enjoying the journey to find it. The possibilities of communication were without limit — even for us boring lawyers — and by organizing this weekly round-up of legal writing that he orchestrated, I could explore not just what others were saying, but how they were saying it.

And with that I engaged in my own flights of fancy when he asked me to host Blawg Review, wrestling with how to enjoy the journey through the blawgosphere while at the same time presenting its stories. It inspired me to run the 2007 NYC Marathon with law bloggers in tow, fantasizing that they were running the streets of New York with me while discussing what was going on in their sector of the legal woods. It was marathon length and it was great fun, and the journey was inspired by Ed.’s mummer traveling about.

The same was true when I went trick or treating in 2008 with the Bogeyman in tow. This time we tricked and treated at the homes of law bloggers, each telling us their particular stories. Again, it was Ed. and his turn as a mummer whispering to me at the keyboard while I typed.

The third and final flight of fancy that I engaged in had Arlo Guthrie and numerous law bloggers visit me for turkey and a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat. Ed. was with me all the way.

I received a few accolades for those pieces, but in truth, it was Ed.’s traveling mummer that was the inspiration.

So how did he make me a better blogger and lawyer? By reminding me that it’s all about telling stories and journeys from place to place. Every article we write or client we have has a story in the background. It is not the facts and figures that capture the imagination and compel people to listen — though they are critical to proving a point — it’s the stories.

You can tell them from the start, tell them from the end, or tell it from the middle, just figure out a way to tell it. That is true whether you are blogging or lawyering. As Mark Twain once wrote:

“Narrative is a difficult art; narrative should flow as flows the brook down through the hills and the leafy woodlands, its course changed by every bowlder it comes across and by every grass-clad gravelly spur that projects into its path; its surface broken, but its course not stayed by rocks and gravel on the bottom in the shoal places; a brook that never goes straight for a minute, but goes, and goes briskly, sometimes ungrammatically, and sometimes fetching a horseshoe three-quarters of a mile around, and at the end of the circuit flowing within a yard of the path it traversed an hour before; but always going, and always following at least one law, always loyal to that law, the law of narrative, which has no law. Nothing to do but make the trip; the how of it is not important, so that the trip is made.”

Photo via Robert Ambrogi

How many others did Ed. influence? Hard to say, but as you read the obituaries online from last week and today — starting with an intro at the Blawg Review site by Colin Samuels — you can see that the answer is many.

But not just any many, for those that he influenced may have, in turn influenced others. Because they are bloggers and they have readers. And it works like a giant chain — just as the bees influence the flowers, and the flowers influence the lovers and the lovers have babies and pretty soon we’re all talking in high squeaky voices and saying, coochie, coochie, coo. Because of the bees.

I think Ed. would have liked that; it was like a little story.

My condolences to his family. I don’t know how much they knew or appreciated how he influenced others, but from where I sit at my keyboard here in New York, it was plenty. He left a legacy despite being anonymous. That’s one hell of an achievement.

Some of you are regular readers and started today at this blog, and you may wonder about the title, Blawg Review 325.7. That .7 exists because this is part of a big web ring, and you are currently in the middle.

Some of you arrived here from Popehat (Blawg Review 325.6), a blog based in San Diego. In honor of Ed., please fly back to the west coast and visit with George Wallace in Pasadena, CA, (Blawg Review 325.8) for his thoughts on Ed.s’ passing.

And then, dear reader, please complete the circle visiting other bloggers, as Ed. did with his mummer.

And we can all wonder if our own obituaries will be half as fine.