For an attorney, law school is a necessary evil.  In some places, like Wisconsin, graduating from law school is all that is necessary to be admitted to the bar; there is no bar exam.  Wisconsin, by the way, has only two law schools, and both are difficult to be admitted/… Read full post »

It was forty-two years ago tomorrow that I was scheduled to have a badly-infected molar pulled on a bright Spring Monday afternoon.  My dentist had tried everything from a root canal to a new filling, and nothing had worked.  So I was about to pay for my dental neglect in… Read full post »

Southern Illinois is a state of mind.  Or so a recent tourism commercial tells us.  But Southern Illinois is also a geographical location in some dispute.  Depending on where you live, it’s someplace else.  To people in Chicago and the collar counties, it’s anything s/… Read full post »

 Introduction to Elizabethan Theatre History

The English theatre during the reigns of Elizabeth I, James I, and Charles I (1558-1642) developed into one of the finest flowerings of the player's art that the world has yet seen. William Shakespeare, of course, stands head and/… Read full post »

SAY IT OFTEN ENOUGH AND EVEN THE APPELLATE COURT WILL BELIEVE IT

My wife Carol, a retired English professor, and I often joke to our more cosmopolitan friends that we live in the middle of a cornfield, and to a certain extent we are correct.  East Central Illinois is/… Read full post »

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CHAPTER II. PLAYING THE HAND

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Preliminary Considerations

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What is the Goal?

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hen the bidding… Read full post »

From INTRODUCTION my new book:

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

—Hamlet, I, v, 166-67.

I.

Peter S. Beagle burst upon the literary scene in 1960 with the

publication of his first novel, A Fine and… Read full post »

Chapter Two of For Three Weeks I Owned the University of Illinois 

One of my most important—though entirely unspoken—jobs as an associate attorney in a plaintiff’s personal injury law firm was CYA.  Only the A I was to cover was not my own but that of the partner who assi/… Read full post »

I'm not sure why, but almost every time I hear that a former undergraduate student of mine has become a success, one way or another, I am surprised, and sometimes shocked.  I expect it of my former graduate students; they had made a commitment to a discipline, and took on… Read full post »

The young man who walked into my office and sat down across the desk from me was a nerd, as you might imagine from the twin facts that he was an engineer and a college professor.  He wore short-sleeved white shirts with clip-on ties, and believe it or not he… Read full post »

For years now I've been trying to get my head around Electoral College politics.  As everybody knows, the voters don't choose the President; this group of political insiders known as the Electoral College does.  There are 538 Electors; each State has as many as there are Congresspersons an… Read full post »

Since I retired I have been auditing undergraduate and even graduate math courses at the local university.  I tend not to take the examinations, but I participate in classes and do the homework assignments (which the professors tend to call "problem sets").  I'm doing so in part because I… Read full post »

1973-74 was the first year Carol and I both taught full-time at the college level.  As beginning Assistant Professors we didn't earn much, but we had just spent 3 years as grad assistants, teaching fellows, and fellowship holders, so our income about doubled.  Thirty-six years later, more… Read full post »

On Friday, February 10, an acquaintance of mine died in Florida.  Chris Eberspacher was only 62 years old, and he was hit by a car while out jogging.  He was one of the best lawyers I knew when I was in active practice, and in fact he had been a… Read full post »

Since I grew up in Arizona, I had lots of Mormon friemds.  As an adult in Illinois. I still have a few.  I also know a few fundamentalist Christians who are former clients, although I can't say I have any who are friends.  While the latter think the former are… Read full post »

Many of my friends and acquaintanes blog, some regularly and some haphazardly.  Most are/were English professors, and most write pretty well, although the one does not necessarily follow from the other.  I write pretty regularly, and since retirment have finished three books and revised a… Read full post »