Students are so helpful

A few weeks ago, I wrote here that a concerned, well-meaning student come up after class to tell me that calling something a “slam dunker” violated every athletic principle known to man, woman, or child. Gratefully, I made a note that henceforth it shall be simply a “slam dunk.”

A reader then informed me that he had problems with my blog because I alluded there to being dense about slam dunks due to my limited knowledge of the baseball field. He told me that it is not the habit for athletes to achieve slam dunks in baseball.

Today, the same concerned “slam dunk” student told me that I might expand my sports education even further: rather than mentioning the “hometown” advantage of filing a court petition where you reside, I might try incorporating such terms as “homecourt” or “homefield,” even though he assured me that the athletes in the class would be comfortable if I decided to stay with “hometowning.”

Oh, I think I can spot a set-up here: I’ll bravely throw out “homecourt” next time, and mention playing tennis, even though I should be back in basketball land. And what’s “homefield?” Is that baseball or have we now switched to football? Or maybe it’s hockey? So many mistakes to be made with using this terminology… so many…

Good will and cheer

This is one of those days where I had reason to cross the mile-long State Street that links our campus with the State Capitol (and the court buildings). I was going to attend a law firm baby shower for a former student, an event that brought forth great feelings of nostalgia as no fewer than three of the firm’s six attorneys are former students of mine, and I’ve worked on family law cases in the past with all but one of the partners.
Half way up State Street it struck me that my baby gift would benefit greatly from a little rubber duckie stuck to the outside and so I went into a soap store (the Soap Opera, pictured here) to purchase one. This is the way Madison works: one favor leads to another and before you know it you’re all over-favoring each other until there are no more favors to bestow. I paid $1.50 for my duckie; the sales clerk loved the duckie-on-top-of-box idea and offered to add ribbon for effect (the store has always been keen on elaborate ribbonning of gifts); of course that meant that I had time to browse and pick up a number of astronomically expensive soaps –gift ideas for imminent occasions requiring little things of this nature; it was determined then that I was also deserving of many free samples, including one that I thought would actually best be purchased, in large quantities.

A cynic may comment that I was a sitting duckie myself: a target for salesclerk largess that would inevitably lead me to deplete my bank account in that store. But that cynic would be wrong. True, I left with a beautifully ribbonned-duckie-adorned box plus many other items, with the final bill reaching outrageously high levels if you think of it as a duckie bill, but on the other hand, the bill was not so high if you think of all the stored-up presents, the good will, the exchange of kind words of praise and admiration and promises of life-long friendship.

Division of assets

Pausing in my review of notes for today’s Family Law class, I take a quick look at CNN.com (to make sure the world hasn’t yet destroyed itself; as Friedman of the NYT wrote yesterday, one has such low expectations of news stories these days), where I find an article about another couple’s relationship woes (story here).

Demba and Chaka (Demba’s the female) seem not in the mood for procreation. After five years of inhabiting the same space, they seem hardly to have glanced at each other and Philadelphia zookeepers now believe that they may have never even had a sexual encounter (this in spite of the fact that Chaka is one fertile guy, having fathered many babies in his previous surroundings).

She gets to keep the house (she’ll stay in their ‘home’), but he gets to move in (at another zoo) with a couple of promising females. Her biological clock has ticked away, while he can just keep going and going. Have we really evolved from ape-dom all that much?

[CNN photo is of Chaka--beloved by females, though not by Demba. I'm with Demba on this one]

Star gazing

A friend-reader reminded me that I should be looking at the sky at dusk because it will be many decades before I will be able to see again the line up of five planets without the aid of a telescope. I have only until the end of the month to do this.

Wanting to spread the wealth, let me post the map of planets so that you, too, can tell your children and grandchildren that you were fortunate enough to have read a webblog in 2004 that showed you what to look for: