a fool in the forest

Mayday! Mayday!

Certainly has been quiet around here lately, hasn't it?

This weblog has been, I regret to say, on an unplanned and unintentionally lengthy hiatus, the consequence of a tumbrel-load of conflicting, largely professional, pressures that have kept me away from the much more enjoyable task of posting posts since early April.  These conditions seem certain to prevail until at least the middle of May.  Do, please, keep this Fool in your thoughts, your bookmarks and your RSS feeds until that time.

And now, back to work...

~~~
Illustration: August Saint-Gaudens, Adams Memorial (1891; bronze cast 1969), at Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, Cornish, New Hampshire; original in Rock Creek Cemetery, Washington, D.C.  Photo via the National Park Service.

~~~
P.S., In honor of the day, here's Elvis Perkins:

Welcome to 2007

As a New Year's service to myself and my readers, I have managed the trick of making this weblog available directly through the URL www.afoolintheforest.com.  Nostalgists can still reach us through the old cumbersome TypePad address, if they insist. 

[Not quite true, yet.  Stay tuned.]

UPDATE [010207 0950 PST]:  Now, it's true.  The more readily memorable URL (don't forget that it begins with the indefinite article "a") is fully functional.  Oh joy.

[Photo by biewoef (Hilde Vanstraelen, Hasselt, Limburg, Belgium) via stock.xchng.]

Home Away From Home for the Holidays

I am genuinely thrilled to report that I will be guest-blogging from December 19 through December 25 as a [woefully inadequate] substitute for Walter Olson at the indispensable Overlawyered.  I will be trying to do my part to fulfill Overlawyered's worthy mission of "Chronicling the high cost of our legal system."

Please join in, and add Overlawyered to your daily weblog rounds if you have not already done so.

Seeking After Foolthy Lucre

[Advertisement]

Inspired by the mercenary go get 'em entrepreneurial example of the likes of big-time weblogger and Economist correspondent Megan McArdle, I have created my very own little corner shop, or "aStore," at Amazon.com and stocked it with goodies -- books and CDs  mostly -- that I recommend to anyone who might be interested.  Some are items I have written about here, others I will write about, and still others are hearty perennials.  The shop provides a perfect spot in which to curl up in a comfy chair and carry on your holiday shopping, or perhaps pick up a little something for yourself. 

I have named my little electronic pushcart

• These Foolish Things

and it is accessible through that overstuffed link or through the link in the left sidebar, just above the "Recent Posts" section. 

Should you browse around there and make a purchase, or if you click through the link at the bottom of each page to reach the main Amazon site and make a purchase after having passed through TFT, I receive a small stipend from Jeff Bezos & Company.  Purchases of Amazon Gift Certificates count, too.

Your custom is always appreciated and as a customer you are always right.  May I help you out to your car with that?  No, no: it is I who thank you.

Incidental Intelligence:

• One of the recordings I placed on TFT's virtual shelves is the self-titled CD by the Chicago band Hummingbiird.  Imagine my pleasure and surprise when I discovered that the "Editorial Reviews" section on that Amazon page -- the section that usually draws from the work of actual critics and respectable journals -- includes an excerpt from this January 2006 post.

• As for "lucre" always being "filthy"?  It's all Tyndale's fault.

We're So Happy We Can Hardly Count

Just a note to note
that this weblog reached its third anniversary on July 2,
that it received its 100,000th visitor at some point in late May, and
that this is this fool's 710th post.

Noted.

Thank you, and please come again.

P.S., Happy Bastille Day.

Outside Over There

The April Fool's weekend being behind us, the new Blawg Review #51, replete with seriousness of purpose and citations to Rilke, no less, has been posted at Declarations & Exclusions.  As promised, it takes the god Apollo as its inspiration.

Blawg Review #51: The Jingle

Coming Monday, as promised, will be a bifurcated presentation of Blawg Review #51, presented here and at Declarations & Exclusions.  To drive traffic like crazy, I feel the necessity to advertise this Big Event.  And to that end, what could be better than a catchy advertising jingle? 

I have crafted just such a jingle for the occasion.  It is to be sung to the tune of "The Major-General's Song" from Gilbert & Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance, better known in some circles as the melody to which Tom Lehrer crooned his then-complete listing of The Elements.

For those who'd care to sing along, just launch this handy MIDI version of Sir Arthur Sullivan's perky little tune.  All together now, step, point, step, point, . . . and a one, and a two --

    We'll host the very model of a legal weblog carnival,
    The finest compilation since the Battle of the Marne; of all
    The practice fields our cov'rage will be maximal, not minimal,
    From Civil Litigation to Transactional and Crinimal.
    You'll seek it here, you'll seek it there, just like that pesky Pimpernel;
    Will we produce a bang or will we crumple with a whimper?  Well,
    Just wait and see on April 3, we're puttin' on the dog for you:
    The Fifty-First edition of the mighty mighty Blawg Review!

 [Chorus of law clerks and comment spammers:]
        The Fifty-First edition of the mighty mighty Blawg Review!
        The Fifty-First edition of the mighty mighty Blawg Review!
        The Fifty-First collection of those mighty, slightly hoity-toity Blawgs!

    From lavish L.A. office suites to somewhere in Schenectady,
    From scads of legal thinkers on the Internet collected, we
    Will skim the choicest morsels for your pleasure and enlightenment:
    Just wait until you read it, you'll be breathless with excitenment!
    Each legal mind you'll truly find's unique in perspicacity,
    Expressing its opinions with abandon and audacity;
    You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll fall in love all over, every one of you --
    The Fifty-First edition of the mighty mighty Blawg Review!

~~~

Light refreshments will be served.  Arrive early for prime seating.  Offer void where prohibited.

A Conspiracy Carnival So Vast . . . .

Grab the Kids!  The Carnival is Coming to Town!

"What Carnival?" I hear you cry.  Why, none other than the premiere weekly carnival of legally-oriented weblogologists, the Blawg Review. 

I had been planning to host the Review sometime around Midsummer, when it was to be hoped that the demands of my profession might have eased up a bit.  My Midsummer's dream was not to be, however, as the mysterious "Ed.", editor of the Blawg Review, was successful in prevailing upon me to serve as a last minute substitute to host the Review fewer than two weeks from today. 

WHEREFOR I humbly request that you mark your calendars now!  Because, on April 3, 2006, Blawg Review #51 will be published at two -- yes, two! -- locations under the proprietorship of this foolish country lawyer: here, in the forest, and there, at the ostensibly more serious Declarations and Exclusions.  Some clever division between the two sites will be worked out, so that you will be required to read both posts at both weblogs in order to savor the full spectral panoply of wonders that is, or will be, Blawg Review #51.  The extra click-through will be a small price to pay, I assure you.

In the meantime, so that you may contain your excitement and so as to make the time pass more quickly, please sample the current offering of Blawg Review #49 at Jim Calloway's Law Practice Tips Blog, and the forthcoming 50th Edition to be hosted beginning March 27 by the dark goddess of replevin. 

[Query whether the goddess of replevin is acquainted with this Fool's #1 hit-generator, the  Goddess of Folly?  A mystery of eleusinian dimensions, to be sure.]

One Ringy-Dingy . . . , Two Ringy-Dingies . . .

The dearth of post-New Years post posting here has been driven not -- as some have suggested -- by nonchalance, but by two weeks of contrary and conflicting professional and personal demands taking higher priority than les plaisirs weblogiennes.   Of course, it could be worse: it could be raining, as it was in abundance this time last year.   While the rain it raineth every day far to our north, it has been dry, warm, clear and lovely roundabout Pasadena and environs ever since the nationally televised (and locally scandal-ridden) Rose Parade downpour of January 2.

No posting is to be expect over this weekend, either, as my time will be filled attending the premiere run of Long Beach Opera's thinned and winnowed production of Wagner's Ring cycle.  [This Fool is pleased to see that the post linked in the previous sentence remains as of this date the Number 2 result for the Google search "long beach opera ring", ranking just below Long Beach Opera's own site and just above (ho ho!) the Los Angeles Times' lengthy preview article of this past Sunday.]

I will return with reports on that, and whatever else I can fit in, in the coming week.

P.S., for the curious, the Long Beach Opera site has a selection of production photos and costume sketches for the Ring.  The photos presumably derive from last year's Pittsburgh versions of the first two operas; the sketches are for the new productions of Siegfried and Gottergammerung, which will have their premieres on Sunday.  The resemblances between Alberich and the Phantom of the Opera are, I trust, purely coincidental.

Fresh Greenery

I have grown weary at last of the previous design of this weblog and so have opted to apply one of the standard templates provided by the good citizens at TypePad.  Someday, perhaps, I will achieve my ambition of learning something really useful concerning HTML and CSS and LSMFT and such, and will generate a more resoundingly attractive page.  For the time being, I hope that this one will suit your fancy.

The link lists in the left column [formerly in the right column] have also been trifled with, with additions and deletions throughout.  Several of the additions are weblogs that I could have sworn I had already added long ago; I am chagrined at my inadvertent delay in bringing them on to the relevant lists.  Deletions include some sites that I have simply got out of the habit of reading, but most are weblogs that are no longer extant or active.