Yesterday, I went to a meeting of the Antelope Valley Bar Association to hear a presentation from an attorney who got to visit London for several weeks and see how law is practiced in the U.K. Very interesting indeed, and the kind of vacation I would like to take one day, too. (Apparently, the spouses got a lot of cool things to do, too.) While I was there, I forget my document portfolio under the banquet table. I only realized this in the morning as I was going to court for a routine and brief appearance. So this morning as I was leaving court, I was thinking that I’d just take a minute or two and drive up to the place where the meeting was held and retrieve my portfolio.
As I’m walking out of court and going to my car, I noted that someone had parked a beat-up old pickup truck next to the Ninja, and taped to the tailgate were a bunch of handmade signs. They read “Bush Is Right”, ”Bomb Iran and N. Korea”, “Fight Win & Stay In Iraq” and “Protect Our Borders”. I took a picture with my cell phone, amused because most of my urban-dwelling friends and Loyal Readers probably are used to hand-made bumper stickers with messages pointing in the opposite direction than this. For some reason the picture got lost, so I don’t have it to post here. A little bit of the visual impact is lost, unfortunately – the truck was at least twenty-five years old and partially rusted out (it takes a long time for vehicles to rust up here in the desert), had obviously not been washed in a long time, and the signs were made with magic marker on construction paper and taped to the truck with duct tape. Suggests a very heartfelt and strong belief in the positions he was advocating. By the way, I agree with one-half of his signs, although what he means by them and what I mean would probably look very different at the policy-making and implementation levels.
So I went along to run my errand. At the venue where the bar association meeting had taken place yesterday, the Antelope Valley Lincoln Club had just met. I had some words with the Executive Director and was at my smooth, political best. But after I looked at the literature, I’m not so sure I want to get involved. Some of the local political movers and shakers are running the show here, and one of them is an attorney, so all of the business opportunities that this would generate would go his way. Another attorney I’ve been adverse to in Santa Clarita, and who I found to be distant and unlikeable, is running the show down there. To top it all off, a guy who filed a (quickly-dismissed) bar grievance against me in the past, is on the county-wide board of directors of this group. And there seems to be some pro-tort reform sentiments going on even from some of the folks involved that I could otherwise feel comfortable with politically. So it seems to me that I would not be a good fit for this organization.
