The Better Chancery Practice Blog

Judges’ Meeting.

Next post April 22, 2013.

Judges’ Meeting.

Next post April 22, 2013.

Judges’ Meeting.

Next post April 22, 2013.

[This little meditation appeared several years ago in, of all places, The Mississippi Lawyer magazine]

The Invitation

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon…
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.

© Mountaindreaming, from the book The Invitation published by Harper, San Francisco, 1999. All rights reserved

You should have received your Winter edition of The Mississippi Lawyer earlier this week, or maybe you will receive it today or tomorrow.

My initial reaction when I gazed at the photographs of the 14 prominent, accomplished women on the cover was “When will we be able to say, simply, ‘here are 14 notable colleagues in the law,’ and not have to draw gender distinctions?”

And then I opened the cover to see the Mississippi Valley Title advertisement that is the opening page inside. I’ll not spoil the delicious irony of that ad for you, but I think when you see it you will agree with me that it communicates quite eloquently why we are still at a stage where we need to focus on the contributions and abilities of women.

As for the magazine, the articles give an insight into the obstacles and hurdles that some of them had to overcome, but mostly, as I read, I was impressed with the fact that their stories are the stories of all Mississippi lawyers. They are stories of hard work, dedication, ideals, and service.

In my experience, in this corner of the state, women lawyers have been successful and have done a good job. The Twelfth District’s own Polly Covington of Quitman is one of the women highlighted in one of the articles. Congratulations, Polly. As the dean of Clarke County lawyers, and a battle-scarred veteran, I know you provide wise counsel and mentorship to other women in the profession in our area.

The other women who are featured are some of the best lawyers, judges, legal educators, and leaders in the state. I have been fortunate enough to know and work with a number of them. 

So, yes, it is still appropriate and desirable to praise the achievements of women in the law. Still, I wish we would get to the point where we’re all just lawyers.

Back again for your consternation and obsession: Wicked Mississippi Trivia.

The original Wicked Mississippi Trivia can be found here.

Answers to this quiz in a week or so.

1.  McKinley Morganfield and Chester Burnett are two world-renowned Mississippians. What were they famous for, and by what names did we know them?

2.  What was the name of US President James K. Polk’s plantation in what is now Grenada County?

3.  What and where was the second oldest military academy (after West Point) in the US, and the first educational institution in the Mississippi Territory?

4.  What now-nationwide organization was first established in 1909 in Crystal Springs?

5.  The first franchised Holiday Inn was located in which Mississippi city?

6.  Where does the “Southern cross the ‘Dog?” and what does that phrase mean?

7.  Casey Jones, a resident of Jackson, Tennessee, met his famous death in Vaughn, Mississippi. In what Mississippi town did he reside from 1893-1896?

8.  The adjoining towns of Pittsburgh and Tullahoma were consolidated on July 4, 1836, to form which Mississippi city?

9.  Jesse James robbed a bank in which Mississippi city?

10.  A traditional belief of the Choctaw people is that they first appeared on earth when they emerged from a cave near the “Mother Mound” in Mississippi. What is the mound called, and where is it?

11.  Avalon, a defunct village in Carroll County, is the home town of which famous Mississipian?

12.  When he raided CSA President Jefferson Davis’s Brierfield plantation near Vicksburg, Ulysses Grant stole – or “confiscated” – one of Davis’s horses that the Union commander used through the rest of the Civil War. What did the General name his stolen horse?

13.  Name the community founded in the Mississippi Delta in 1887 by descendants of Davis Bend, a utopian slave community established by Joseph Davis, older brother of Jefferson Davis.

14.  What was the original name of the site that became Jackson before it was known as LeFleur’s Bluff?

15.  Which Laurel native became an internationally acclaimed soprano with the New York Metropolitan Opera?

16.  Which of Mississippi’s yacht clubs has the distinction of being only the second to be established in the U.S.?

17.  Who is “The Sage of Tippo?”

18.  Ronald Reagan launched his 1980 campaign for President as the Republican party nominee at what Mississippi event?

19.  On May 26, 1736, a combined force of 1,200 French and Choctaws, under command of Bienville, was defeated by Chickasaw defenders in the Battle of Akia, in what present-day Mississippi county?

20.  The fictional Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy, chief medical officer of the Starship Enterprise in the original Star Trek series, had a Mississippi connection. What was it?

21.  Just before the Civil War, 92.5% of this Mississippi county’s total population were slaves–the highest concentration of slaves in the United States.

22.  What is the oldest newspaper published in Mississippi?

23.  At 86.5%, this Mississippi county has the highest percentage of African American population of any county in the United States. Which is it?

24.  What was the historic, now defunct, road that entered Mississippi from Alabama in what is now Lowndes County, crossed Noxubee, Kemper, Newton, Jasper, Jones, Marion, and Pearl River Counties before crossing into Louisiana at the Pearl River twenty miles west of Poplarville, Mississippi?

25.  Name the four official sites of the state capital through its history.

Bonus Question: What was the unusual object that fell from the sky in an 1887 hailstorm in Bovina?

As I have urged here many times, I encourage you to attend Professor Deborah Bell’s Family Law CLE each and every year. I push this particular seminar because it is by far the best, most complete and most insightful summary and analysis of the preceding year’s case devlopments in Mississippi domestic relations law. You will find yourself referring back to the materials from time to time, and I guarantee you will come away with more than a few nuggets that you will find useful in cases you try.

This year’s dates and locations:

• April 25, Jackson, Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame
• May 3, Oxford, Oxford Conference Center
• May 10, Biloxi, Imperial Palace

You can register online by clicking here.

While you’re at it, you should invest in Prof. Bell’s BELL ON MISSISSIPPI FAMILY LAW, 2d ED., which is the definitive reference work for Mississippi family law practtioners. If you are going up in court against colleagues who use this book and you don’t, you will be at a distinct disadvantage.

Disclaimer: I have no interest, financial or otherwise in the seminar or the book. My only interest is in a better-informed and more skilled bar.

Those of you who receive updates to this blog by email got one from me last week with some Mississippi trivia questions. That was a mistake. It was meant to be published at the end of this week and I apparently hit the wrong button, prematurely publishing it. So it appeared on the web site only briefly before I took it down, but the email went out regardless.

Here’s the way WordPress works: I compose posts at my convenience, on days when trials have been settled, or between conferences with attorneys, or at other slack times, and save them as drafts, or save them with a setting to be published at a later time. For example, I am writing this on Friday, and it is set to be published Monday of next week.

Two lawyers have asked me whether I am up at 6:00, a.m., typing feverishly away in an effort to make a post to my blog. No, that’s not the case. The posts are written in advance and appear when I schedule them to do so.  Otherwise there is no possible way I could take care of my trial and other business schedule and this, too.

That’s the way it works here at Chancery12.

State Holiday.

Courthouse closed.

The Webster County Courthouse in the Village of Walthall, pop. 170, burned during the night of January 17, 2013. You can see some photos taken in res gestae at the Mississippi Preservation web site.

The courthouse, located in the geographic center of the county, is four miles north of the nearest town, Eupora. The village has a handful of homes, an Exxon station/convenience store, an appliance repair shop with 50-60 washers and dryers out front, a beauty salon, and a sizeable Baptist church. I stopped en route and took these pictures of the ruins.

This is the front of the courthouse, with the main entrance, facing east …

Sunlight where the courtroom was …

South entrance …

Rear, facing west …

The old jail, immediately behind the courthouse, was not damaged …

North entrance …

Reserved parking …

I read somewhere that the building was constructed in 1915. It was two years short of a century old when it burned.

It’s sobering to ponder what all is lost when a courthouse burns. There are the records, the furnishings, the courtrooms, the equipment, the workplaces. But there also is all of the lore and local history. Buildings can be replaced, but not their souls.