The Hobbit (book)

In a way, John Ronald Reul (J.R.R.) Tolkien began writing The Hobbit, or There and Back Again in 1914, when he began writing stories which eventually became The Silmarillon (published by his son in 1977, following Tolkien's death in 1973).  Tolkien, who had a keen interest in mythology, originally wanted to develop a mythology to help explain the origins of English history and culture.  In these stories, Tolkien created an entire mythological world, which included Middle Earth (the world humans inhabited).

Specifically, Tolkien began writing The Hobbit in the early 1930s when he suddenly felt inspired to write on a blank piece of paper, "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."  However, the fictional hobbit had an entire mythological universe to live within because of the stories Tolkien had already been writing for years.  Tolkien completed writing it in 1932, but only distributed it to friends, so it took until 1937 for a friend to get a copy to a publisher, who published it to great critical and public acclaim.

In addition, as I wrote about in a previous post, Tolkien met C. S. Lewis in 1926, and they embarked on a mission to revive fairy tales as a serious literary device.  The Hobbit represented the first effort along these lines essentially as a children's fairy tale.

Tolkien, an excellent scholar of English philology (the study of language), especially of Germanic and Nordic origins, borrowed from much Germanic and Nordic mythology in constructing his mythology reflected in The Silmarillon and The Hobbit.   So, for example, the hero, Bilbo Baggins, eventually confronts a dragon, Beowulf scholarly, much as the hero Beowulf does in the old epic English poem.  (Tolkien was a well-known Beowulf scholar.)  However, while the Beowulf hero portrays a large, muscular, and powerful superhero, subject to moral flaws, who seeks glory in conquest, Bilbo Baggins portrays a small weak figure, though courageous, who prefers his comfortable home to adventure, prefers harmony to riches, and who takes up adventure to help others, rather than for self promotion, though he grows as a character by undertaking adventure.  Thus while Tolkien borrows from Germanic and Nordic myths, he infuses them with a different morality and ethical basis informed by his Catholic upbringing, which reanimates them.  (In fact, Tolkien gave a groundbreaking lecture on Beowulf around 1936 which changed the whole view on this.)

I highly recommend reading The Hobbit, which you will enjoy.

You may want to read my post about the film trilogy by Peter Jackson, based upon this book, "The Hobbit (the films)."

The Lewis-Tolkien Friendship

The Twilight Zone

I enjoy on Netflix you can watch old TV shows, sometimes every episode.  I really enjoy watching The Twilight Show (just called Twilight Show in seasons 4 & 5).  It ran on TV for five seasons, between 1959 to 1964.  Most people saw it later in reruns (syndication).

For some reason, I didn't enjoy it that much growing up - I tended to simply see it as a creepy show, so I didn't watch it much.  However, I enjoy it much more now, especially since I now understand how good the writing behind it stood up.  I also found out it's usually classified as a science-fiction show.

In 2013, the Writer's Guild of America ranked it as the 3rd best written TV show of all time.  TV Guide ranked it as the 5th greatest show of all time.

Rod Serling

Rod Serling created the series, served as executive producer, and carried most of the writing. He wrote, or co-wrote, 92 of the show's 156 episodes (more than half). This WWII veteran used the GI bill and disability payments to fund college where he focused on theater, then broadcasting, and finally majoring in Literature. He later wrote for radio and television shows, but felt frustrated the sponsors could censor his work.  He started The Twilight Zone since the sponsors had less say over a science fiction show.

The show earned rave reviews among critics, some who rated it as the best television show running.  However, the show mostly struggled to find a viewing audience, just barely staying alive during it's first 3 seasons.  The network finally cancelled it after the 3rd season.  They replaced it with Fair Exchange, an hour long program.  However, they cancelled that show after half a season, and asked Twilight Zone to return, but as an hour long program in Season 4.  Serling hated this format since he considered Twilight Zone the perfect half hour show.

In Season 5, Twilight Zone finally returned to a half hour format.  However, it had a new producer who made some bad decisions.  It lost some writers, so Serling had to write more, which wore him out.  The network decided to cancel and Serling sold out his interest (he thus lost out on syndication sales).

Unfortunately, Serling died in 1975, at age 50, of a heart attack while undergoing open heart surgery to address an recent earlier heart attack he suffered.

Though he had a large legacy, he will likely best be known for the intense work he put into creating and writing The Twilight Zone.

How We Got to Now

I recently finished reading a book I highly recommend, How We Got To Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World (2014), by Steven Johnson.  In it, he talks about modern innovations, almost miraculous, we tend to take for granted, which play a significant role in the modern world we live in.  He focuses on six such innovations, which I will try to summarize:

• Glass - clear glass did not appear until the 14th Century (it was always colored and opaque before that).  Soon after came the printing press, which called for spectacles so many with eyesight problems could read.  People playing around with spectacles led to the development of both the telescope and the microscope, which led to major breakthroughs in science.  Later, some who placed specially treated paper behind a lens developed photography, and later film.  Television developed as some coated the glass with phosphor and shot electrons at it.  Others later used glass to develop fiberglass - widely used as a material to make lightweight objects. Later, others found glass fibers
  
  could transmit light frequencies at multiple frequencies and with negligible loss of signal.  Today, fiber optic communications help to bind our world in a sort of global village.  When glass makers found coating the back of glass with a mixture of tin and mercury created mirrors, it changed all our lives.  We could suddenly see ourselves clearly.  Painters used it to understand how to paint a 3 dimensional world on a 2 dimensional canvass by looking at what they wanted to paint in a mirror.  Modern large telescopes extensively use mirrors to focus a large image into something we can see, so we can look back in time since light from a distance takes so long to reach us.
• Cold - until the 19th Century, most produce and meats didn't keep long in the summer heat. Frederic Tudor went into bankruptcy before figuring out how to transport and preserve New England ice in
  
  warmer climates.  Once he did, he made a fortune, and meat and produce could be transported much further, vastly improving diets.  Sometime later, Dr. John Corrie found that cooling compressed air with cooled water pulled heat from its surrounding which cooled the air - and he could make artificial ice.  But soon others used this innovation to first cool offices and factories, and then homes (as well as the home refrigerator).  Soon, many moved to the Sun belt cooled by air conditioning, which radically changed the political map.  Dr. Birdseye, studying the natural effect flash freezing fishes caught by the Inuit Eskimos, soon transformed the entire frozen food market employing flash freezing.  The summer blockbusters became possible with the advent of air-conditioned movie theaters.
• Sound - a stenographer thought up the first system of recording sound.  However, it did not occur to him to create a playback system.  Alexander Bell devised a system of capturing sound, transmitting it electronically, with instantaneous playback at the other end - the telephone - which largely caught on
  
  as it became more affordable.  It took Thomas Edison, building on the work of others, to devise a system to capture sound, and make it capable of playback at any time later.  Later, Marconi developed a wireless system for sending Morse code, which developed into radio.  Radio helped to expose jazz, largely a form of music developed by black musicians for largely black audiences, into a form of music widely accepted in the culture of the 20s, since the audience usually couldn't see the color of the musician on the other end.  Amplification of signals, developed at Bell Labs, not only helped radio, it made large scale events, such as the March on Washington, possible with the amplification of the speaker.  A later development of the digitization of sound allows us to preserve a perfect reproduction of the original sound, which often deteriorates over time in other mediums.
• Clean - for most of human history, taking a drink of water involved a roll of the dice, especially in crowded cities.  Though some European cities had sewers, they often flowed into the source of drinking water, creating the vast waves of diseases they experienced.  Chicago experienced this.  They hired an engineer, Ellis Chesbrough, who faced a problem.  Chicago had a flat landscape, so building a sewer system under it would flow nowhere.  He found an innovative solution - he raised the city, about 10 feet on average, building by building, and at times block by block, using an army of jackscrews and men twisting them to raise them, and then immediately insert sewer lines under them, connected to main lines running down the center of the street (which he filled).  It was the first comprehensive sewer system in any American city.  Other cities soon followed.  However, though this
  
  development helped, by itself, it did not lead to the clean water we rely on.  John Leal, building on insights from bacteria developments under the microscope, found that using the right level of chlorine in water destroyed enough deadly bacteria in water to make drinking water safe.  Many American cities soon adopted this development, which dramatically dropped the disease rate, especially among children.  As a result, many American cities developed public swimming pools with clean waters.  Chlorine soon led to the development of Clorox, which revolutionized cleanliness in consumer homes.  Oddly, our entire computerized world depends on cleanliness - since microchips cannot be produced without the extreme sterility found in the clean rooms where manufactures produce them.
• Time - For most of human history, exact time did not matter.  However, once sailors undertook long voyages on open seas, it became critical.  To determine longitude (east vs. west), you needed to know your exact time (which you could tell from the sun) and compare it to the time from the port you left from (which required a precise clock).  Both Spain and England offered vast sums to anyone who developed a clock which could keep an accurate time of the home port clock, since most clocks of
  
  that time lost significant amounts of time.  Galileo developed a concept keeping time based on the pendulums, based on his observations of swinging alter lamps.  However, it took many others to perfect this concept into a working clock worked out a way to keep an accurate measure of the home port clock.  An accurate clock soon became central to the industrial revolution.  The development of trains soon showed the inferiority of local time, and William F. Allen led the effort to adopt the 4 standardized time zones in American, which led to international time zones around the world.  In our world, time has been redefined by atomic clocks, which provides the basis for how many of us find our way through GPS.
• Light - Many of us think Thomas Edison invented the light bulb.  We don't tend to know that someone else invented it at least 40 years before he did, and many slowly improved upon it.  Edison did not invent the light bulb, but his team worked hard to improve it to the point where it became practical. He
  
  bought the existing patents, and then hired a talented diversified team who used their interdisciplinary efforts to work out in an extended disciplinary method the problems the existing light bulb presented.  He also choose to award the best in his team with stock in his company to incentive them.  His innovations led to the modern research teams which incentives with stock options, which generated many of our technological innovations.  Over time, light developed into flash photography, neon lights, laser, bar-code scanners, and, recently, the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livormore Labs in California which seeks to use many multiple laser beams focused through multiple mirrors to duplicate the atomic process in the sun to fuse hydrogen atoms together.

Johnson likes to speak of the Hummingbird effect - about how innovations in one area lead to innovations in other areas or fields - often unforeseen by the innovator of the original invention.  He also likes to talk about how innovations do not seem to occur as a result on of the efforts of one individual, but instead seems to build upon small contributions by many individuals until finally one, or more individuals, experiences a breakthrough, which then tends to generate all kinds of other unforeseen positive developments.

PBS made this book into a television series, which I watched, borrowing a copy from my local library.  I also highly recommend watching this television show if you can.  While I didn't necessarily agree with all the views he expressed - still I thought he conveyed enough interesting views which I agreed with, that I highly recommend reading the book and watching the series.  He has a way of uniting various disciplines which few others do when studying the same subjects.  I got a lot out of both watching the video (which I did first) and then reading the book.

Things That Matter

I finished reading "Thing That Matter" (2013), a New York Times bestseller (4 weeks at #1) by Charles Krauthammer, a longstanding standing columnist for the Washington Post - syndicated nationally (to 400 newspapers worldwide).  This psychiatrist gave up his medical profession (though he remains licensed) long ago to pursue, at the urgings of others, a career of writing, especially of essays and columns, largely on political matter, but covering other matters.

More impressive, while in his first year at Harvard Medical School, he suffered a diving board accident which left him paralyzed for life (he remains wheel-chair bound to this day).  Instead of giving up, he pressed on and not only graduated, but eventually became chief resident in psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, among achieving other notable success in psychiatry before turning his attention to writing.

"Things That Matter" reflects a collection of 30 years of columns and essays by Dr. Krauthammer, selected by him - with some slight self-editing (he says renamed many of the titles, since he usually had no say on the titles of his columns when published - usually selected by the editor of the publication where they were published).

Anyway, I highly recommend reading this book.  His insights over 30 or so years are magnificent.

When I Say I Am A Christian

In many sites on the internet, you will find a poem entitled, "When I Say I Am A Christian," usually attributed to the multi-talented author and poet,

Maya Angelou at
Bill Clinton Inauguration

Maya Angelou (who recently passed away on May 28, 2014).  It goes as follows:

When I say ... "I am a Christian"

I'm not shouting "I'm clean livin'."

I'm whispering "I was lost,

Now I'm found and forgiven."

When I say ... "I am a Christian"

I don't speak of this with pride.

I'm confessing that I stumble

and need Christ to be my guide.

When I say ... "I am a Christian"

I'm not trying to be strong.

I'm professing that I'm weak

And need His strength to carry on.

When I say ... "I am a Christian"

I'm not bragging of success.

I'm admitting I have failed

And need God to clean my mess.

When I say ... "I am a Christian"

I'm not claiming to be perfect,

My flaws are far too visible

But, God believes I am worth it.

When I say ... "I am a Christian"

I still feel the sting of pain.

I have my share of heartaches

So I call upon His name.

When I say ... "I am a Christian"

I'm not holier than thou,

I'm just a simple sinner

Who received God's good grace, somehow

However, it appears that Maya Angelo never wrote this poem - instead, she actually disowned it through her agents.  Before her death, the agents who booked her lectures, Lordly & Dame, Inc., posted the following statement on their website,

Please be aware that Dr. Maya Angelou has absolutely no affiliation with the "poems" entitled Clothes or I Am A Christian that are circulating the Internet.

The Epoch Times, an international newspaper which has won awards for human rights reports, confirmed this in a story entitled, "'I Am A Christian' Poem Not Written by Maya Angelou."  (May 28, 2014)
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/700549-i-am-a-christian-poem-not-written-by-maya-angelou/

Carol S. Wimmer

Instead, it seems the poem was originally written by Carol Wimmer in 1988, and first published in "Hi-Call Gospel Magazine" (an Assembly of God publication) in 1992.  The original version, very similar to the later modified version, reads as follows:

When I say, "I am a Christian"

I'm not shouting, "I am saved!"

I'm whispering, "I get lost!

That's why I chose this way"

When I say, "I am a Christian"

I don't speak with human pride

I'm confessing that I stumble—

needing God to be my guide

When I say, "I am a Christian"

I'm not trying to be strong

I'm professing that I'm weak

and pray for strength to carry on

When I say, "I am a Christian"

I'm not bragging of success

I'm admitting that I've failed

and cannot ever pay the debt

When I say, "I am a Christian"

I don't think I know it all

I submit to my confusion

asking humbly to be taught

When I say, "I am a Christian"

I'm not claiming to be perfect

My flaws are all too visible

but God believes I'm worth it

When I say, "I am a Christian"

I still feel the sting of pain

I have my share of heartache,

which is why I seek His name

When I say, "I am a Christian"

I do not wish to judge

I have no authority...I only know I'm loved

Apparently, it seems that an anonymous person took the original version, and modified it somewhat.  Then, apparently, for some unknown reason, it seems that person decided to attribute it to Maya Angelou, and then published it on the internet.  (It's not the first time a writing has been attributed to someone famous - the Prayer of St. Francis being the best example - something I may write about in the future.)

In any event, both versions reflect a humble version of following Christ, and are exemplary.    I simply hope to help to set the record straight on this.  The writings speaks on their own.

Obergefell v Hodges

United States Supreme Court

In Obergefell v Hodges (June 26, 2015), five unelected and unaccountable lawyers on the U.S. Supreme Court decided (in a deeply divided 5-4 decision) that both the due process clause of the 14th Amendment, as well as its equal protection clause, required all states of the United States, to redefine marriage to include marriage between the same sex, despite that the people of over 30 states voted, through open ballot, or through their legislatures, to clarify that their constitutions retained the traditional definition of marriage as between one man and one woman.

In an ironic twist, the people, through an open and democratic process, had reached the conclusion (granting state recognition of same sex marriage), on a state by state basis in at least 11 states as popular opinion for this position significantly shifted.  The Supreme Court short-circuited this process, and thereby took this decision out of the hands of the people - the democratic process.  Instead, in an imperious manner, they decided they knew better than the people, and, lacking patience for the democratic process, declared the Constitution imposed a new right hitherto unknown by anyone, much less supported by prior Court decisions (basic requirements for finding rights deserving protection under the short, brief, and broad language of the 14th Amendment).

Constitutional Balance of Powers
 both b/w the States and Federal Govt.s
as well as between the three branches of government

Under our Constitutional system of government, the legislature makes laws, the executive executes laws, and the judiciary interprets laws, a system which balances governmental powers.   For this reason, the federal judiciary is not subject to elections - justices appointed there enjoy a life-long term - since, at least theoretically, they mostly do not engage in policy making, at least not in the same manner as the Legislative branch does.  The Court violated this basic and fundamental constitutional structure when they basically, and mostly, engaged in a form of legislative policy making best left, under our Constitutional system, to the legislature - and especially under our federalism form of government, which leaves most legislative powers to the states, except those powers the states enumerated and entrusted to the federal government in the Constitution.

So, apart from whether you agree or disagree with same sex marriage recognized by this decision - hopefully you find it disturbing when the Supreme Court disregards the constitutional separation of powers by redefining marriage in the manner of a sort of super-legislature.  If not, consider whether you would be happy with a Supreme Court which imposes its raw will over the will of the people, apart from both any clear language in the Constitution, as well as apart from any longstanding right, to disavow laws passed by your state legislature (or by popular ballot) which you strongly support.

As one dissenting justice noted, this decision poses a danger to democracy.  It goes far beyond an interpretation of law, something our constitutional form of government allows, into the realm where the Supreme Court can simply make whatever laws suits their sense of what is right at the particular moment - which devolves our nation from a nation of laws to a nation of five lawyers with the absolute power to make whatever laws they deem appropriate, regardless of what the people express their will through legitimate forms.  Such a form of government more resembles the philosopher kings of Plato's Republic than a democracy which many of our citizen-soldiers valiantly fought for, and willingly sacrificed their lives to defend.

Born At The Right Time - Lyrics

In a previous post, I wrote some conclusions about the Paul Simon song, Born At The Right Time, without examining the lyrics in detail, which I will do in this post.

The song begins with this first verse:
Down among the reeds and rushes
A baby boy was found
His eyes as clear as centuries
His silky hair was brown
This first verse reminds us of the story of Moses, who was found among the reeds and rushes of the Nile by Pharaoh's daughter, after his mother set him adrift on the Nile to avoid the slaughter of the newborn Hebrew boy.  Exodus 1:22-2:10.

The song goes on with the chorus:
Never been lonely
Never been lied to
Never had to scuffle in fear
Nothing denied to
Born at the instant
The church bells chime
And the whole world whispering
Born at the right time
Clearly, we are no longer speaking specifically about Moses, who had been lonely, probably was lied to, did scuffle in fear.  So who is the song about?

The next verse goes:
Me and my buddies, we are travelling people
We like to go down to Restaurant Row
Spend those Eurodollars
All the way from Washington to Tokyo
Well, I see them in the airport lounges
Upon their mother’s breast
They follow me with open eyes
Their uninvited guest
Though this verse begins with Paul Simon and his buddies spending Eurodollars around the world, the purpose of bringing this up seems to be that Paul notices babies at these airports feeding from their mother's breasts, or rather he notices them watching him, "they follow me with open eyes, their uninvited guest."  Many of us have had a similar experience with babes, and it seems like this particularly struck Paul Simon.

For the most part, babies and very small children have a special innocence whereby the lyrics of the chords seem to make sense, "Never been lonely; Never been lied to; Never had to scuffle in fear; Nothing denied to."  Obviously this is not always true, but with poetic license, it seems true when we catch the eyes of babes and very small children.

The third verse goes:
There’s too many people on the bus from the airport
Too many holes in the crust of the earth
The planet groans
Every time it registers another birth
But down among the reeds and rushes
A baby girl was found
Her eyes as clear as centuries
Her silky hair was brown

This verse begins by focusing on overpopulation.  But it shifts the focus to a baby girl found among the reeds and rushes, which definitely tells us this song is not specifically about Moses, though it retains an allusion to the story about the baby Moses.  The problem of overpopulation is overcome by considering a baby girl.  The return to the words of the chorus focuses us on the innocence of babes and very young children, which represents an ideal for us, even though we know better being older, that the world can be a rough place.  We can either give in to a jaded view of the world, or we can attempt to live up to the ideal of innocence of little children.

The song also speaks to being "born at the right time."  However, I examined this phrase in my previous post, which I invite you to read.

Born At The Right Time

In 1990, Paul Simon wrote a song, Born At The Right Time, featured in his album, The Rhythm Of The Saints, which received a Grammy for Album of the Year, and peaked at #4 in the U.S. and #1 in the U.K.  (The song played twice in the album, once with his full band - and a second time as an acoustic demo.)  He then decided to name his following 1991 tour, the Born At The Right Time Tour.  Later, in 1997, Import released a best of Paul Simon album entitled, Born At The Right Time, with the title song featured as the last song on the album.  In 2003, PBS produced an American Masters series on Paul Simon entitled, Born At The Right Time.

I recently listened to the album, and this song struck me, so I felt I needed to learn and perform it before others.  I found the lyrics fascinating, and it took me a while for me to figure out my own understanding of it.  (You can look at the lyrics at a later post where I examine it.) I largely understood the song as speaking to the innocence of babes and young children, which we should strive to  emulate, since Jesus said, "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:3 - NIV.)

However, his line at the end of the chorus particularly struck me - born at the right time, especially since Scripture informs us But when the right time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, subject to the law. (Galatians 4:4 - NLT.)  In other word, Jesus Christ was born at the right time, as well as the right place.  For many reasons, Christ was born not too early, or too late, but just at the right time, as well as the right place.  (Paul Simon might not understand his song this way, but I do.  It is interesting that the title of the album is The Rhythm Of The Saints.)

Scripture also implies that we were born at the right time.  When St. Paul asserted, before the Greeks in Athens at the Agreopagus, that God marked out the boundaries and times of nations (Acts 17:26), his statement implies that God determines the times and places of our births.  In other words, we were born at the right place and time.  Though we had nothing to say, or do, about the time or place of our birth, and though we might be unaware of it, our birth fit into God's plan.

Since God chose the time and place of our birth, our lives have meaning and purpose. Our birth was not a meaningless accident.  It did not come about by random chance.  As we discover God's plan and purpose for our lives, we can work with that plan and purpose in order to please God, better our lives, and better the lives of those around us.  So Scripture informs us, And we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purposes.  (Romans 8:28 - NIV.)

Jury Duty - Part 1

Much to my surprise, I served on a jury for 5 weeks.  I was surprised because I am an attorney, and attorneys hardly ever serve on a jury, at least in the past, though apparently the times are a changing (a Bob Dylan line).  [It's interesting that though lawyers serve the courts in many capacities, our legal system usually seeks non-lawyers to weigh the evidence at trial.]

The most difficult part of serving on a jury is that you cannot discuss the case with anyone until all the evidence is submitted, and then you cannot discuss it with anyone outside the jury deliberation room until the jury has reached a verdict.  In the meantime, you are hearing all this stuff, and cannot even discuss it with other jurors, at least until all the evidence has been submitted.  And even then you cannot discuss it with anyone outside the jury deliberation room, even with other jurors, since the idea is to only discuss it in the presence of all the other jurors.

Anyway, we finally reached a verdict, so I am now free to discuss the case, which many asked me about during my service, but which I had to say I could not discuss until the jury reached a final verdict.

Basically, this case involved a driver hitting a 15 year old teen crossing a marked crosswalk at between 35 and 40 miles an hour.  The driver claimed he did not see the pedestrian because it was dark, he was driving in a line of about 4 cars or so, and the teen was wearing dark clothing.  He claimed he only saw a blur at the last second.  There was no skid mark on the roadway.  The driver hit the pedestrian on the far driver side of the vehicle where his left headlight was at.  The teen's body crumpled, his head hit the windshield, and then he was apparently thrown 70 feet where his head again slammed into the pavement.

The boy received a concussion, and had no memory of the accident.  His girlfriend, who was then 14 years old, testified she looked before they entered the crosswalk, saw the headlights in the distance, and thought the driver had sufficient time to brake or slow down, and so they proceeded into the crosswalk.

Plaintiff brought in experts who testified that the accident occurred 23 minutes after sunset, during twilight, and that there was still sufficient light from the sky to see the pedestrians.  In addition, the headlights from the car would have provided enough light for the driver to have seen the pedestrians, especially since they walked almost all the way across the front of his vehicle.  The accident reconstruction expert attributed the accident to driver inattentiveness.  He also said it would have been impossible for Leo to have reached the extreme driver side of the vehicle if he had jumped out in the middle of a line of cars.

One witness said it was pitch black, but the jury did not believe her.  It was unclear whether the street light above the crosswalk was on or not.  However, the jury found that the driver had been negligent, since we believed there was sufficient light for the driver to see the pedestrians.  One or two jurors disagreed, but in a civil trial, 9 jurors are needed to reach a verdict, and at least 9 agreed on this.

A tougher decision was whether the teen himself was also negligent.  Though the Vehicle Code says drivers must yield to pedestrians in a crosswalk, it also says that requirement does not relieve pedestrians from their duty to exercise due care for their safety.  The jury took a whole day to deliberate on this question alone.

The police determined that the accident was due to Leo (the 15 year old teen) not meeting this requirement, not exercising due care for his safety, though they did not write him a ticket.  When they interviewed the 14 year old girl (Alexandra) at the hospital (she received a broken nose, a blow to her head from when it hit the pavement, and minor cuts and bruises), she said they had not looked before they entered the crosswalk.  When asked at trial why her later testimony differed, she explained she was in shock and pain in the hospital that night, and she couldn't recall the events that clearly.  It was only later when she visited the site that her full memory of what happened came back to her.  The jury believed this.

In the end, the jury found that Leo was not negligent.  On this point, I along with 2 other jurors disagreed and voted that he was also negligent.  However, the 9 votes carried the day on this point.  Because of this, we never got to the question of how much percentage of negligence to assign to the driver and how much to the pedestrian (comparative negligence).

Then we turned to the question of whether the driver's employer was liable for the driver's negligence.

 The driver, Almir, worked as a chef-instructor for the Culinary Institute of America (CIA).  Almir had finished work for the day at their St. Helena campus, and was driving to his home in Sebastopol.  Usually, an employer is not liable for their employee's negligence when they are commuting to and from work.  However, the law provides an exception to this rule when the employer uses the employee's vehicle for business uses.  The jury instruction on this had a lot of language about whether the employer required the employee to use his or her vehicle for business, or whether it derived a benefit from the use of the vehicle came to rely on it's use, and whether there was an agreement about this.  The language had a very broad scope to it, so that both the requirement, or the agreement, could be express or implied.  There was a lot of evidence that Almir frequently travelled for the CIA, often using his vehicle, that the CIA benefitted from his travels, reimbursed him for his milage expenses, and at times paid him for his travel time.  The jury did not want to find the CIA liable, but after carefully studying the language of the jury instructions, and reviewing the evidence, the jury came to the tough decision that the employer was liable.  Again, 1 or 2 jurors disagreed, but there were at least 9 jurors to reach this verdict, in which I agreed.

This was a 2 phase trial.  Phase 1 only dealt with liability issues.  All issues about damages was reserved for phase 2 of the trial.  In this part, I only discussed the issues we faced in phase 1.  In my next part, I will discuss the damages issues we faced in phase 2.

Scripture and Tradition

Sermon on the Mount - Carl Henrich Bloch - 1877

Though many often argue about the proper role of both Scripture and tradition, the historical Church teaches that Scripture and tradition work hand in hand together, and cannot be separated.  The Church usually describes this as the coinherence of Scripture and tradition - they exist in essential relationship with each other, as innate components of the other.  Yet, at the same time, the Church has always insisted that tradition must submit to the final authority of Holy Scripture.

This view might surprise many Christians who either reject or belittle tradition out of a mistaken notion that sola scriptura (Scripture alone) means Scripture stripped from any churchly context of tradition.  It also may surprise many Catholic Christians who view tradition as a parallel, or even an independent source of authoritative teaching, or even as revelation.

The writer of Hebrews clarifies God speaks to us (reveals Himself) in the Old Testament, and now through

The Evangelist Matthew
Inspired by an Angel
Rembrandt (1661)

his Son, Jesus Christ, in the New Testament period.  (Hebrews 1:1-2.)  What Jesus taught and did, the apostles initially passed down orally as tradition, which they urged believers to hold to. (1 Corinthians 11:2.)  Eventually, they wrote down those traditions which became the New Testament, which together with the Old Testament, became the written word of God, all under the work and supervision of the Holy Spirit.  (2 Peter 1:20-21.)  Jesus affirms God's word is truth.  (John 17:17.)

The apostolic tradition in the New Testament constantly urges us to obey what Jesus commanded, out of our love for Him, especially to love one another.  (1 John 2:3-6; 3:11 & 23.)  The Church thus considers the New Testament authoritative, as well as the Old Testament as interpreted by the New Testament.  Scripture serves as the standard by which the Church adheres to in following the head of the Church, Jesus Christ.  (2 Timothy 3:16-17; Colossians 1:18.)

Christ Pantocrator - Mosaic in Hagia Sophi
(roughly around 1261)
Pantocrator means Almighty
IC represents the first and last letter of Jesus in Greek
XC represents the first and last letter of Christ in Greek

Tradition, when understood correctly, is the proper reflection of Holy Scripture under the illumination of the Holy Spirit, as well as the faithful transmission of the gospel message it contains from generation to generation under the power of the Holy Spirit.  The early Church, through the work of the Church Fathers, diligently worked through many issues it faced, and gave us a great body of teachings, summarized in certain creeds, especially the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed.  They helped to make explicit what was implicit in Scripture.  We would do well to heed and mine this great body of teaching for its treasures, as well as from all traditions of the Church grounded in Scripture and which helps us understand it better, as the Reformers did.

However, tradition can go wrong when it simply conveys what men, apart from Scripture, seek to impose on the Church.  In such cases, men, on their own, can render an inaccurate interpretation of Scripture, to further their purpose.  Jesus condemned traditions which contradicted the Scripture calling them "human traditions" or "the traditions of men."  (Mark 7:8)  This does not mean all tradition should be rejected, but that we should be careful to ground tradition in Scripture to help clarify Scripture, as Vatican II teaches (in Dei Verbum).

If we only study and follow our own tradition, the traditions of our own church, we will miss out on the vast richness the Holy Spirit provides believers in the various traditions of the various churches that are part of the one true Church with Christ as its head.  By studying and appreciating both Scripture and tradition, we will see and understand a richer view of the revelation of God - of what God is saying to us here and now.  Our understanding of what Scripture says should be informed by the wider fellowship of the community of faith, both in the past and in the present.  That is why the Church, the house of the living God, "is the pillar and bulwark of the truth."  (1 Timothy 3:15.)