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September 09, 2023
Tell a story
Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass. -- Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)
Portrait of Anton Chekhov by Isaac Levitan (1886)
Posted by JD Hull at 11:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 07, 2023
Borges's El Aleph: A story like no other
O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space.
- Hamlet Act 2, Scene 2.
El Aleph is a story by Argentina's hands-down dean of letters Jorges Luis Borges first published in 1945 and revised from time to time through 1974. It is still the most amazing short story I've ever read. I and two other--and far more gifted--Indian Hill (Ohio) High School classmates read El Aleph in Spanish in 1970 with Mr. Fogle in our "Spanish V" class. In the story The Aleph is a point in space that subsumes all other points in space and shows you all that is occurring in the Universe at once. Is that far-in or what?
"Este palacio es fábrica de los dioses, pensé primeramente. Exploré los inhabitados recintos y corregí: Los dioses que lo edificaron han muerto. Noté sus peculiaridades y dije: Los dioses que lo edificaron estaban locos. Lo djie, bien lo sé, con una incomprensible reprobación que era casi un remordimiento, con más horror intelectual que miedo sensible."
Posted by JD Hull at 11:05 PM | Comments (0)
September 06, 2023
H.G. Wells on Editors
No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft.
--H.G. Wells (1866-1946)
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
September 05, 2023
Albert Bierstadt, 1861, “Indian Summer on the Hudson River”
Posted by JD Hull at 11:28 PM | Comments (0)
September 04, 2023
Labor Day Encore: Love, Labour and Legal London.
Here is the complete text of a circa-1595 comedy by Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost. You can read it aloud--or, even better, act it out. First performed before Queen Elizabeth at her Court in 1597 (as "Loues Labors Loſt"), it was likely written for performance before culturally-literate law students and barristers-in-training. The notion was that such well-rounded humans would appreciate its sophistication and wit at the Inns of Court in still over-percolating Legal London. And, most certainly, it was performed at Gray's Inn, where Elizabeth was the "patron". Interestingly, the play begins with a vow by several men to forswear pleasures of the flesh and the company of fast women during a three-year period of study and reflection. And to "train our intellects to vain delight".
Posted by JD Hull at 11:18 PM | Comments (0)
Rule 8: Think Like a Client. Help Control Costs.
Rule 8 is Think Like the Client--Help Control Costs. The 2006 Explanatory Note for Rule 8--we reluctantly decided that an Advisory Committee Notes regime was a bit grandiose--begins this way:
Ask an associate lawyer or paralegal what a "profit" is. You will get two kinds of answers. Both answers are "correct" but neither of them helps anyone in your firm think like the client. The answers will be something like this. (1) "A profit is money remaining after deducting costs from receipts." This is the correct young transactional/tax lawyer answer. Or (2) "it's money left over at the end of the hunt." This is the correct fire-breathing young litigator answer.
The right answer?
A profit is a reward for being efficient. And until a lawyer, paralegal or staffer gets that, she or he will never know how a client--or a law firm partner--thinks.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:29 PM | Comments (0)
September 03, 2023
Great Slackoisie Moments in American Drama: David Mamet.
Blake [Alec Baldwin]: Nice guy? Good father?
--Glengarry Glen Ross, David Mamet
Posted by JD Hull at 01:13 PM | Comments (0)