True Grit – Lawyers Road Review: Recent Episodes
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By Robert Frost
In this bit of a lawyer’s road review I wish to dedicate this poem to our daughter Rachel J. Patterson.
Most of us from around these parts graduate from High School, maybe go to college but nearly always return to the headwaters of our family origin, a town a lot like Everett or Lynnwood. The horizon is definite; a cradle to grave existence appears pre-ordained.
Rachel had other ideas. That horizon has been defeated. Today she works at the White House. It is a road few take, and that has made all the difference.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
At the Washington Nationals Game.
Occasionally one encounters an individuals whose history is so different from one’s own, the telling of his life story renders our own to appear quite fortunate by comparison. Into our lives walks Henry, native son of the Sudan and now South Sudan, that country having gained independence in 2011. There was of course, prior to … More Out of Africa
In the extremes of human existence, few compare with the experience of flight, and in particular, flight of an armed aircraft over long distances over enemy held territory during times of war. WWII has provided us hundreds of these stories; men lost in the Sahara desert due to navigational error, men lost in the Pacific … More Remembrance Day: Flight of the Stirling
The Old Salt was a special man who came along in a time when he was needed most. A time that is now gone forever. When men believed and sacrificed, when hero’s walked the earth in mass. When patriotism was not just a word but, by what men lived and judged the worth of each, … More The Old Salts: George H. W. Bush and John S. McCain
“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.” ― Abraham Lincoln Disturbed by the … More Leadership in America
“Attention every station and all the ships at sea. The Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor by air. This is not a drill.” How many movies have centered around the events of Dec. 7th 1941? They all seem to start out with sailors, usually officers and their wives and girlfriends at a dance. Suddenly there is … More The 1941 Pearl Harbor Day Experience
It is coming on to Veterans Day in the United States, and Remembrance Day in Britain. Poppies are every where to remind us all of the sacrifices of World War One. The experiences of soldiers, sailors and airmen of all conflicts are drawn into sharp focus, even as the general public tends to forget what … More RAF Bomber Command; The Gallant Early Years
The release of the film Dunkirk this summer recalls the summer of 1940, when Western Civilization itself was held in the balance. Caught in a narrowing perimeter by the Nazi Blitzkrieg, protected by their British rear guard, their French comrades and the RAF, over 300,000 mostly British, but also French, Belgian and even a few … More The Speech After Dunkirk: “We Shall Fight on the Beaches”
It’s a random war without front lines. All of us are soldiers. At stake is liberal democracy and our way of life. What is it Mel Gibson said in Braveheart? “They can take our land but they cannot take our freedom”. Today it is the other way around, they cannot take our land, but they … More Manchester. United.
Federico Garcia Lorca was a poet and a play write. He said what he thought at a time when people were willing to kill over ideas. I post today a podcast about his view of what the road means. Some metaphor for my own perhaps, “there is refuge in the road”. A statue of him … More Poet Martyr Federico Garcia Lorca
Out where the handclasp’s a little stronger, Out where the smile dwells a little longer, That’s where the West begins; Out where the sun is a little brighter, Where the snows that fall are a trifle whiter; Where the bonds of home are a wee bit tighter; That’s where the West begins. Out where the … More Out Where the West Begins