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June 27, 2012
A Few Words About Nora Ephron (1941-2012).
We should have put her in our Pantheon long ago. In 1972, in her essay "A Few Words About Breasts", she changed things for me and others who aspired to be writers and journalists. Why? It was the fun and moxie of her. And of course that killer last sentence of the now-famous Esquire piece no one will ever forget. Essayist. Funny Girl. Author. Screenwriter. Director. Mother. Role model for women and writers. She was, everyone learned in a flash, and then over and over again, much more than talented Carl Bernstein's talented writer ex-wife. Too young, at 71, but what a life. LA Times obit here but none of the hundreds of pieces in last 24 hours really do it for me. Ephron was, in a sense, the classic comic. She was at heart a soldier, a survivor and brilliant essayist who could take her own pain, face it, learn from it, use it--and make us all feel more alive. And make both herself and us laugh about it a bit.
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Nora/Meryl and Carl/Jack
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Thank you, Frisby & Company, Solicitors, Stafford, England, for having me speak today.
Because all three--Harvard prof Alan Dershowitz, my friend trial lawyer Dave Boies and one of our U.S. Supreme Court justices I've met and don't really like that much--needed to cancel at the last moment, my longtime Cambridgeshire-based friend Ruth Barber, a talented commercial lawyer and Director (i.e., partner) with Frisby & Co., Solicitors, asked me to speak by Skype this morning at one of Frisby's regular UK-styled in-house continuing legal education programs.
Frisby is a 30-lawyer firm based in Stafford, England, in Staffordshire, in the West Midlands. It focuses on contentious commercial work, particularly in the area of serious fraud and environmental health and safety. Frisby also has a newer--but exploding and very successful--white-collar crime practice.
Ms. Barber employed a talk-show format--and asked most of the questions. Told the group (in a local hotel conference room) what I could in 45 minutes about American law markets, new law firm models and lawyer training; the federal vs. state court system in the U.S., the importance (in my view) of keeping cross-border commercial disputes out of our state courts, the problems with popular election of state judges here and our small but more talented efficient federal bench; and finally whether Anglo-Irish American lawyers were even more long-winded and full of themselves than Brit solicitors and barristers (answer: oh yes). Seriously, a wonderful and impressive program I'd gladly do again.
Thanks for having me, Ruth, and Frisby lawyers. Appreciated. And I learned much.
(JDH with D. Jackson)
West Midlands of England, where Frisby is based, are beautiful. Above: Grounds of a local rehab (folks at time told me it was like a "camp") I was guest in in early 1980s.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)