Author: frankisemptiness

May 28th, 2018

“Old man look at my life,
I’m a lot like you were.”

Neil Young from his song, Old Man

The nursing home is actually pretty nice. It’s clean. My dad’s room is small, but it’s comfortable. The staff is friendly and efficient. The food is good. My dad gets care 24/7.

He is still miserable.

Karin and I went to visit him on Saturday. We don’t see him very often. It is almost a three hour drive from where we live to the nursing home in Iola.  When we go to see my father, it is an all-day affair. Even though we are retired, we still don’t usually have entire days that are completely free. So, it is rare for us to make that journey.

We spent two hours with my dad. Mostly, we spoke with my brother, who was also sitting in the room. My father sat between us, but he seldom joined in the discussion. This was very different from how things were years ago, back when my dad would dominate the conversation. He always had strong opinions, and he would never bend. Arguments would sometimes erupt, and they would not end until my dad had completely worn down his opponent. After a while, I learned to avoid hot topics. I tiptoed through a verbal minefield, making sure that we kept to safe subjects. Even so, sometimes I stepped on a booby trap and ignited a explosion of shouting from my father. Then I would shout back. It was always a bit awkward, and a little nerve wracking.

It’s not like that any more. Karin and I talked for a long time about immigration politics with my brother. My dad scarcely said anything. He only mentioned about how his grandfather was recruited by a mining company in northern Michigan to emigrate from Austria-Hungary. We talked about unions and workers rights. My dad had always been a big union supporter, but he didn’t speak up. My father seemed uninterested or distracted. He wasn’t quite there with us. Occasionally, he would bring up a story from the past, but the story didn’t necessarily match the topic at hand. He said what he wanted to say, relevant or not.

For most of his life, my father has been wound pretty tight. It doesn’t bother me to see him calm down a bit, but he’s beyond calm. He’s apathetic. His often mind wanders through the corridors of his memories, and he doesn’t seem very interested in what is going on around him. His world in mostly in the past. He occasionally confuses names and events from the old days. He knows what he means, but the words sometimes come out wrong. I can usually figure out what he is trying to express, because I know all of the old stories by heart.

When I was young, I just wanted to have a frank conversation with my father. I wanted to be able to be straight with him, and I hoped that he would be straight with me. That never happened. We either spent all our time talking about things that didn’t matter to either of us, or we engaged in a knock down, drag out fight. I only learned about what he was really like by reading between the lines when he went on a rant. Sometimes he would let total honesty slip through the during the argument.

Now it is too late to have that frank conversation. The passion inside him has died down, but so has his mental acuity. He’s calmer now, but that is because part of him is no longer present to me. I guess that I want to speak with the man I knew twenty years ago. Well, he’s gone. We can’t have that heart to heart. Not in this world.

I’ll talk with the man who is still here. I’ll love the man who is still here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

May 26th, 2018

There is a lot of traffic on Scott Street. There shouldn’t be, but there is. Scott Street is lined with old bungalows, tall shade trees, and kids who don’t watch for cars. The city tore up Greenfield Avenue, which is one block to the south of Scott Street. Greenfield is the main thoroughfare through the Latino neighborhood, so many cars bypass the construction by going down Scott Street. This is especially true around 5:00 PM on a Friday. For at least an hour, a long line of cars waits to cross at the four-way stop on the corner of 17th and Scott.

A big, old house sits on that corner. That is where I go at 5:00 PM on most Fridays. It is a house full of kids, just like the house where I grew up. There are eleven children in the family, and the house is quite crowded when they are all inside. Even after nearly a year, I still can’t always remember all of their names. The two oldest boys, Hussein and Bashar, are not often at home. They go to high school, and I am pretty sure they both have part time jobs. Nada and Amar are sometimes have me help with their homework. They are of middle school age. I usually spend time with the younger children, in particular Yasmin, Nizar, Ibrahim, and Nisrin. We read stories together. The pre-school kids, Muhamed, Yusuf, and Hanin, don’t interact much with me. They all live together in that old house with their parents. They are all Syrian refugees.

It was a very warm afternoon, and some of the children were playing outside, either in the tiny yard, or on the sidewalk. Some of the kids were sitting on the front stoop. A couple of them waved and yelled to me asked I crossed the street to meet them. I walked up to the house and climbed the steps up to the porch.

Um Hussein, their mother, was standing in the open doorway to the house.

I said, “Assalam walaykum (peace be with you).”

She replied, “Wa’alaykum assalam (and peace to you also).”

Um Hussein didn’t smile. She seldom smiles. Her face and clothes are severe. She always wears a dark colored robe and a black hijab. I am convinced that she has had a hard life life thus far, and it shows.

Nisrin ran up to me smiling, her dark curls looking wild around her freckled face.

“You read today?”

“Yeah. What should I read?”

Nizar quickly came up to me with a book we had started the week before. It was “The Fugitive Factor”, a story about two kids on the run from the government.

Nizar gave me the book and said, “Read this.”

Nisrin slumped visibly. She said, “Nohttp://www.yahoo.com/t that book! That one is so boring.”

Nizar was indignant. “It is not boring!”

Yasmin stopped by. She asked, “Can we read it together?”

I answered, “Sure, I don’t care.”

Nizar said, “No! Let him read!”

I sat down on the old sofa that covered part of the porch. Nizar sat on my right, and Yasmin on my left. Nisrin stood in front of me to listen. I started reading the book by myself, and sometimes the others chimed in. We read in spurts, because there were many distractions on the street. It’s a typical urban neighborhood, so the sound of squealing tires and the wail of police sirens are not unusual. There was also the rhythmic bass thump of a car blasting rap music. Sometimes we were drowned out by the Mexican music of La Gran D, a local radio station blaring from the open windows of somebody’s vehicle.

Nizar would get up from the sofa, and shout at the driver of the the car,

“Hola! ¿Cómo estás?”

Sometimes the driver would look up at the porch and smile  at the boy. It’s pretty cool that a Syrian kid is learning both English and Spanish.

The father of the family showed up in his car. I had never seen him before. He was always working when I came to tutor the kids. He had brought some food for the evening meal, but he was also on his way to his job. He stayed in his car. His kids yelled and waved to him. I got up off of the sofa, and I waved too. He waved back. Obviously, he knew that I was there to teach his children. Otherwise, he would have done something other than wave.

We kept reading. Yasmin is good. She is almost able to read that book on her own. Nisrin and Nizar can sound out most of the words, but they aren’t ready yet to read at this level on their own. They will get there. They will get there soon.

Um Hussein informed me that I would not be receiving the customary glass of hot, sweet tea that I have grown accustomed to drinking.

She told me sadly in her very broken English, “We…my whole family…we are fasting now. No more tea.”

I nodded and said, “Ramadan.”

Um Hussein nodded back to me.

That’s cool. I never expected them to give me anything for just showing up. If they fast, then I will fast with them, at least for the time that I am there.

Nizar told me that he had had enough from the book. I stood up and asked Um Hussein if I should stay and read something else. She spoke to Nizar in Arabic, too quickly for me to understand anything.

Nizar looked up at me and said, “It is your choice. Up to you.”

I was tired. I told them all that I would come again next Friday.

I left their front porch.

 

 

 

May 23rd, 2018

“I keep traveling around the bend
There was no beginning, there is no end
It wasn’t born and never dies
There are no edges, there is no sides
Oh yea, you just don’t win
It’s so far out – the way out is in”

George Harrison, from the song “Any Road”

I think that every Zen practitioner, at some point, gets restless on the cushion and wonders why he or she is sitting silently in a room with several other people. There is suddenly the desire to do something, anything besides sitting on the cushion. There is an intense feeling that it is all just a waste of time.

Maybe it is. Or maybe it’s not.

I keep thinking back to my recent adventures with a small band of Native Americans. I spent, in total, about four weeks with these people, wandering all around the country. I went to eight different reservations. I did two sweat lodges. I smoked peace pipes. I danced to their drumming. I drove a POS car through a raging blizzard. I slept in a tepee. I dug up blood root to send home to my wife. I got extensively smudged with smoking sage by a medicine man. During the course of the entire journey, I never knew what would happen from one day to the next.

I blame Zen for this experience.

Seriously.

Zen involves meditating with other members of the sangha. It involves some ritual performed within the confines of a temple or Zen center. It also involves a person’s life outside of the sangha. What happens in the temple must have an effect on life outside of the temple. Otherwise, it really is a waste of time.

For me, one of the effects has been to make me less goal-oriented. It makes me more open to whatever comes my way. I still plan and organize, but I also let things just happen. I made an open-ended commitment to the Indians, knowing (or not knowing) what would happen. To the best of my ability, I let go of my expectations and desires, and I just took a ride on their roller coaster. I tried to be in the moment. I tried to just be there. It was often crazy and uncomfortable and scary, and I’m glad that I did it.

As Harrison sings in the refrain to his song:

“And if you don’t know where you’re going
Any road will take you there.”

That’s a fact. I didn’t know where I was going, and any road was good enough.

It is also a fact that I still don’t know where I am going. Zen practice has made me aware of that. Oddly enough, I am okay with it, most of the time. So, I follow the road that is in front of me, and I walk along it to see where it leads me.

That can be fun.

 

May 20th, 2018

“Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known, we always feel forward to what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error, and is personal.”

Jacob Bronowski, from his book, The Ascent of Man

I am actually planning to write about Zen, but I think that the preceding quote from Jacob Bronowski is appropriate, even though he was talking about science, the great passion of his life. Bronowski was a mathematician, and a modern Renaissance man. He loved ideas, but he hated dogma. He particularly loved the pursuit of knowledge.

If I look from Bronowski’s perspective, I can see similarities between science and Zen. There aren’t many similarities because Zen isn’t similar to anything, really. However, they share a few points in common. Both Zen and science are about questions. In both practices, there is a desire to find answers, but the focus is on the questions. During meditation, some people silently ask themselves, “What am I?”, and then respond, “Don’t know.” Scientists ask themselves questions, and if they are honest, they usually shrug their shoulders and say, “Don’t know”. Even if a scientist finds an answer, that answer is simply a door to more questions. Likewise, if a Zen student catches a glimpse of reality, it is only a small step toward a deeper understanding.

A Zen practitioner may have a rare moment of illumination, where his or her view of the world shifts radically. Scientists can have that too. Scientists cling to ideas and opinions just like everyone else. Then somebody comes along and rocks their world. Copernicus tells people that the sun is the center of the solar system, and the effect is the same as when a Zen master screams “Katz!” Einstein explains that all things are relative, and there is a massive paradigm shift. Quantum physics comes along and suddenly light is both a particle and a wave (sometimes, maybe). A scientist with integrity has to be able to let go of ideas, just like a Zen practitioner must. Both types of people have to experience “don’t know”.

Bronowski notes that science is personal. So is Zen. A scientist has to “feel forward” in the unknown. So does a Zen practitioner. This pursuit of knowledge cannot be done vicariously. Each person has to do it on their own. This type of journey can be risky and requires a certain amount of courage. A person who thinks, talks, and acts differently from others is quite often vulnerable. A Zen practitioner and a scientist both are like trapeze artists who perform without a safety net. The safety net is made up of the things we think we know.

Not many people are scientists. Not many people practice Zen. Most people prefer the safety net. They want the security, real or otherwise, of absolutes. They don’t want that tension, that uneasiness that accompanies us when we stand “on the edge of error”. To be honest, I don’t want that either. But I can’t control my curiosity. As someone pointed out, I am a “seeker”. I keep asking.

Most of Bronowski’s family died in the Holocaust. Once again, he spoke about science:

“It is said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That is false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And this was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.”

I think I will stick with “don’t know”.

 

May 18, 2018

“I want berries.”

“What?”

“I want berries. You know, like the fruit. Strawberries, blueberries, whatever.”

“Oh…”

Sometimes while visiting the girl we love, I get thrown for a loop. The conversation suddenly veers in a new and unexpected direction. We had been talking about her release date, and then she decided to let us know that she wanted berries once she got out of jail.

She continued, “The variety of fruit we get in here is limited: oranges, apples, bananas.”

“No berries?”

She shook her head, “No berries.”

I thought for a moment and said, “Tell you what. Make a list of the kinds of food you would like, and we will make sure we have them available.”

She smiled. “Cool. Oh, I would also like hot wings, but I probably won’t be able to get them right when I get released at 3:00 AM.”

“Uh, no, probably not.” Then I suggested half-jokingly, “We could celebrate your release by going to George Webb’s for breakfast.”

(Note: George Webb’s is a local diner chain that is open 24/7. The chain is famous for incredibly greasy food served by a surly wait staff. The only thing healthy in a George Webb diner is the pickle that sits on top of the hamburger patty in one of their sliders. The clientele at Webb’s at 3:00 AM on a Sunday morning is eclectic, to say the least. Eating a pre-dawn breakfast there is akin to being part of a Twilight Zone episode.)

The girl thought about the offer, then she replied, “How about Denny’s? They are open all night.”

“Yeah, we could do that.”

She smiled again and said, “We would probably be the only sober people in the entire restaurant.”

Oh, so true. The bars all close at 2:00, and drunks with the munchies descend on Denny’s like locusts. It would be entertaining, if nothing else.

The young woman seemed quite pleased. After all these months of incarceration, a restaurant menu would probably be sensory overload. What would she pick? Everything? I am imagining a long and careful selection process.

I know for sure I will be ordering coffee.

 

 

 

 

May 16th, 2018

I like to walk Shocky just as the sun is coming up. As I walked with her out of our front door, I could see my breath in the cold air. Yeah, I know it’s half way through the month of May already. However, we live in a climate where winter leaves grudgingly, and it is always a good idea to have a sweater handy. Spring is here, but it comes reluctantly. The surest sign that the seasons have changed is the sound of lawnmowers in the distance. Also, motorcycles and tulips suddenly arrive on the scene.

I enjoy this particular time of the year because it is dynamic. The leaves on the trees are still budding. The crab apples and the dogwoods are just getting their blossoms. All things are becoming alive. Nothing is complete. Each morning of each day the landscape looks slightly different. Nature is giving birth. It is almost like Eden.

Sadly, not everything is vibrant. There are still bare trees in the woods. They will stay that way. The emerald ash borer came through this country during the last couple years, and all the ashes are dead, hundreds of them. Their skeletal remains are visible on the horizon. Already, other species of trees are taking their places. Maples, cottonwoods, and walnuts are slowly filling in the spaces that are now bare. In a five or ten years, it will be impossible to tell where all the ash trees were. For now, they stand leafless and naked and dead.

As Shocky and I walked back east toward our house, I saw the sunlight flash through the branches of a red maple. The wind blew the tiny leaves on the tree branches, and the light made the tree seem to be aflame. I stopped to look at it for a moment, and savor its beauty.

I love spring.

 

May 17th, 2018

The Capitol Times of Madison, Wisconsin, posted this letter from me today. It’s a rant, but it comes from the heart.

Dear Editor: The administration of President Trump has been relentlessly antagonistic to immigrants. All immigrants. Trump and his xenophobic supporters have steadily made it more difficult for refugees and others to enter the United States. They have worked tirelessly to deport undocumented persons, regardless of the damage done to their families and their communities. Now, Trump and his nativist followers are trying to get rid of people who are here legally with temporary protected status. So, what is the next step? Will the Department of Homeland Security start deporting green card holders? Does all this end when the Trump regime decides to exile undesirable U.S. citizens?

Francis Pauc

 

May 15th, 2018

Yesterday I sent Hans a text: “I hate talking to liberals.”

Just seconds later, Hans replied, “Why?”

That’s a good question. It’s kind of funny too, because in most circumstances Hans thinks of me as an old school, hippie-style liberal. My redneck son considers me to be a classic peacenik. So, he wants to know: why would I hate talking with other liberals?

I didn’t answer Hans’ text, so he called me later in the evening, brimming with curiosity. We had a long conversation. In order to explain myself, I had to tell Hans about a discussion I had earlier in the day. I will have to describe it to you too. It went like this:

The traffic on I-43 was heavy between Port Washington and Milwaukee, and I had an older woman in the  passenger seat of my car who insisted on talking politics as I changed lanes on the freeway. I don’t multi-task, so I found it stressful trying to avoid an accident while responding to her various remarks.  At one point I attempted to simply ignore her comments, but the woman was uncomfortable with silence, and kept sucking me back into an interminable argument. It’s not that I actually disagreed with her so much, it’s just that she wouldn’t quit.

In a way it’s my fault. I started telling her about a person who is important to me, and that this individual is currently in jail. I mentioned that this young woman is looking at three years of probation, and possibly two years in prison if she can’t stay straight.

My passenger asked, “Will she get psychological help while on probation?”

I answered, “I don’t know. Possibly.”

“Well, they really should offer her some services.”

“You’re right, they should, but often they don’t.”

“Our criminal justice system doesn’t help these people.”

“No, not really.”

“There was a wonderful special on PBS about the German prison system. Did you watch it?”

“No, we don’t watch TV”, I replied, as I attempted to watch the car next to me.

“It was really an excellent show. The Germans have a system that doesn’t harm the dignity of the the people in prison. Any developed country should have a system like in Germany. But, then maybe our country really isn’t so developed”, and then she laughed at her own joke.

I responded irritably, “But we don’t live there. We live here.”

I became frustrated at this point. For one thing, I almost hit the guy in my blind spot as I tried to change lanes. Second, my loquacious passenger was discussing the justice system from a safe distance. I saw it up close and personal. I was going to the jail that evening to visit the person I loved. I am dealing each day with the experiences of a specific individual who is firmly enmeshed in a fucked up government organization. I don’t care about what other countries do with their prisoners. I only care about one particular prisoner in one particular system.

I knew very little about my passenger. I still don’t. I do know that she lived and worked in Bolivia. I got the impression that she cares about other people, although in a different way than I do. Our disagreements were mostly a matter of style.

There was time for my passenger and I to talk about other topics, with generally the same result. She had opinions on nearly every subject. (So do I). It seemed that she thought any social ill could be solved by a committee of well-meaning zealots. Anything can fixed with a new law or a new program.

Somehow we found ourselves discussing white privilege. That was a mistake. I told her about our youngest son, Stefan, who was working as a welder in a shop with no ventilation in the Riverwest neighborhood. Most of his coworkers were black or Latino. I told the woman that sometimes they would needle Stefan about his white privilege. Stefan would respond to them by saying,

“If white privilege is so good, then why I am working in this shitty shop with the rest of you guys?”

(By the way, Stefan has a long time Latina girlfriend, and he speaks Spanish. Just sayin’).

My copilot wasn’t buying Stefan’s comment. She told me in great detail about economic inequality and racism. Everything was based on environment: schools, transportation, available jobs. Fix the system, and you fix the environment, and it’s all good.

Anyway, I told Hans about my long conversation with my friend on the left. He then told me about when he was laid off in the Texas oil fields, and he became both homeless and jobless for a while, that he was not able to get benefits that he believed were available to other people in his situation. Hans didn’t seem perturbed that other folks got help from the government, but it bothered him that he didn’t qualify for the same assistance. Tom him, it was a question of fairness.

I asked Hans, “You are aware that there is such a thing as racism?”

He sighed, and said, “Well, yeah… “.

“Okay, I was just checking.”

It’s strange. The conversation I had with my copilot was not unique. I have similar arguments with conservatives, like Hans,  but for the opposite reasons. I know people who are absolutely convinced that everything is determined by human freedom and responsibility. While my passenger was determined to show me that people are products of their society, and often victims of that society, my right wing friends will tell me that each person has the ability and duty to decide their own fate. They use the old “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” argument. I knew an Evangelical woman who talked to me once about someone who was in trouble, and she told me earnestly,

“She just needs to learn how to make good choices.”

Sometimes there are no good choices. Sometimes there is only a spectrum of bad choices.

Both sides are right. Both sides are wrong.

Some people get dealt a lousy hand. They start life with health problems, or family problems, or race problems, or whatever. Other people seem to have it made right from the beginning. The playing field is never level. We can and should strive for equality, but we will never completely attain it.

Some people make good decisions and they prosper. Some people screw it all up and suffer the consequences. Some people do everything right, and life still kicks their asses. And others break every moral code and succeed beyond their wildest dreams. At times there seems to be no rhyme or reason for how our lives turn out.

I don’t deal well with groups. I don’t understand groups. I can’t identify with groups. I can identify and care about individuals. I can care about a specific person who is hurting. I can care about Hans and his struggles. I can care about Stefan. I can care about a young woman in jail. I can care about any person when I recognize that he or she suffers.

That’s all I can do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

May 13th, 2018

“How do you sleep? How do you sleep at night?” – John Lennon

Karin came to bed a little after 11:00 PM. She brought the dogs along with her. Shocky finds her place on the floor, and Sara whines until she can climb up on to the comforter. Sara is thirteen years old, and she struggles now to jump on the bed. I’m not sure how we will manage once she is too old to get up at all.

I go to bed early. Karin is a night owl. I am usually in bed for a couple hours before Karin decides to to call it a night. Once Karin got settled, she kissed my forehead and said,

“You had another nightmare. This one wasn’t too loud, so I didn’t try to wake you up.”

I mumbled, “Yeah.” It is not unusual for me to have nightmares early in my sleep cycle. Sometimes, I just struggle though them. Sometimes, I scream and thrash about, to the extent that Karin fears for my safety. She’s grown used to these episodes.

There was a thunderstorm in progress when Karin came to bed. We have a skylight in the bedroom, and I can stare straight up through it as I lie on my back. The rain splattered on the glass, and I could see the flashes of lightning in the night sky. Immediately following the flashes came the deep rumble of thunder. As accompaniment, the two sump pumps in the basement took turns pushing water through a PVC pipe to the outside of the house. All in all, the conditions weren’t conducive to going back to sleep.

As I was lying there, I heard my cell phone vibrate. So, who is texting me at 11:30 at night? “Hmmmmm, I better check.” I got up and found my phone.

The text was from Hans.

He wrote, “I just watched 12 whatever it’s called. It’s about the guys in Iraq and it started bringing up memories and I am starting to be stressed.”

Great.

I wrote back to him, “Try to relax”. That was kind of a useless thing to say, but I had nothing else.

Hans replied, “I am trying. We should have just killed all them fuckers.”

I texted back to him, “Hug your puppy.”

I could have told him to hug his fiancee, but she might be asleep already, and perhaps not interested in being hugged. Odds are good that Hans went outside, and smoked a couple Pall Malls and/or slammed some Lime-a-ritas. Hugging his dog seemed to be the best answer available. Hans loves dogs. They love him.

I got back in bed, and stared into the darkness. Sleep eluded me.

Hans didn’t text back. Hopefully, he’ll call today to talk with Karin. It is Mothers Day after all.

I hope that, eventually, he slept well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

May 10th, 2018

“The details don’t matter. All you know, for sure, is that your brain starts humming with brutal vibes as you approach the front door. Something wild and evil is about to happen; and it’s going to involve you.” – Hunter S. Thompson from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Karin and I walked through the front door of the court room. We had been there twice before. The room itself was rather innocuous. There was some wood paneling on the walls. A few watercolor paintings of landscapes passed for artwork. Behind the judge’s chair were two flags: that of the U.S., and the Wisconsin state flag. We sat down on one of the wooden benches in the back of the room. The court room was nearly empty. The only other people there were the prosecutor, who was looking intently at his laptop, and some mysterious guy whose job apparently was to make sure that things kept moving along.

Yes indeed, I could feel the brutal vibes. In about ten minutes the judge would pass sentence on the girl we love. Our loved one’s attorney walked into the room. She chatted briefly with the assistant DA. Then we heard the sound of rattling chains, which meant that our young woman was being led into the court room. She came into the room, fashionably dressed in a bright orange clothing. Our girl and her lawyer walked into a back room to talk over some last minute details.

Those two returned to the court room, and then both attorneys indicated to the quiet and unobtrusive man in charge that they were ready to start the show. The man wandered into the back room and mumbled something to someone. Then the bailiff came out of the back room, said, “All rise!”, and then the judge walked in and took his place.

There is a certain amount of drama involved in a sentencing. In some ways, it is anti-climactic because most of the decisions have already been made. The woman we love has already pleaded guilty. The prosecutor has already made his case. The defense attorney has already made her bid. Everybody is done except for the judge. Now it’s his turn to rock everyone’s world. He did.

There was some initial discussion between the judge and the attorneys about the pre-sentencing investigation, and about other details. Then the judge got down to business. He started by saying how difficult it was for him to decide on an appropriate sentence. The vibes got really brutal at that point. The judge patiently explained that he had to balance the prospects for rehabilitation of the defendant with the safety requirements of the public at large. The fact remained that this young woman was now guilty of four drunk driving charges, and the question was: “Will she do it again, and maybe kill somebody?” The judge made it absolutely clear that the young woman was not in court because she drank too much. She was in court because she drank and then drove a car. The judge acknowledged that there were mental health issues involved in the case, but the crux of the matter was whether or not our girl would commit the same crime again, and thereby endanger other people. The judge had no desire to allow our young woman to kill an innocent person or herself by driving drunk.

Things hung in the balance for a seemingly endless period of time. Finally, the judge announced that he would stay the sentence (two years in prison followed by two years of probation). Instead, the young woman would spend another two months in jail, and then she would have three years of probation. If she keeps clean, then everything is fine after the three years is up. If she screws up, the sentence takes effect, and she goes to prison. Done deal.

The ball is in her court.

It’s not over. Nothing is over. We are just starting a new chapter in this saga. Regardless of what happens, Karin and I are deeply involved in the process. We have some answers, but we also have more questions.

It’s not the endgame.