Hangin’ with Judge Hoffman: Post #3

Posted on December 21, 2020 | 2 comments

 

This post is the third in a series of posts recalling what it was like to work as a law clerk for Judge Julius J. Hoffman.

 •      His treatment of lawyers

                Hoffman tended to treat most lawyers disrespectfully.  During court sessions, he would berate lawyers for their failings, no matter how minor, and he would generally speak to them in a condescending tone.  Seated in the courtroom, where I sometimes had to listen to lawyers’ arguments or witnesses’ testimony, I often found myself cringing when Hoffman demeaned a lawyer who appeared before him.

                There were a few exceptions.  He was generally impressed with lawyers from the biggest, most prominent firms in the city, and he tended to treat them better than less well-connected lawyers. 

                 He also treated government lawyers with some deference, and he was almost courtly to the few women lawyers who appeared before him.  If a lawyer was both a woman and a representative of the U.S. government, Hoffman would treat her like a queen.  A woman friend of mine who worked for a federal agency could never understand why lawyers complained about Hoffman.  She thoroughly enjoyed her appearances in his courtroom.

•     Hell, no, I won’t…publish

                Hoffman almost never published his opinions.  He justified his refusal to publish by saying he didn’t want lawyers to throw his own words back at him in a later case.  Early in his judicial career he had apparently published some opinions, and lawyers did just that.  At that point, he swore off publication. 

                The only decision of mine that Hoffman chose to publish involved an arcane tax issue involving Rosehill Cemetery.  Later, when Hoffman went along with a controversial ruling I wrote in a case involving the inmates of Cook County Jail, he read the ruling from the bench but refused to publish it, despite numerous requests from lawyers that he do so. 

            I guess he thought he had done enough just reading the damned thing from the bench.  He was not about to put it in black and white.  The ACLU ended up buying a copy of the transcript from the court stenographer and making copies of it, so the opinion eventually was widely circulated, but in less-than-official form.  (I’ll have more to say more about this case in Post #4.)

•      His view of habeas corpus petitions

                In the late ’60s, both state and federal prisoners tried (as they still do) to get out of prison by filing habeas corpus petitions.  Some prisoners were fairly skillful jailhouse lawyers who submitted petitions citing legal authority for their claims.  Others sent crudely drafted handwritten pleas with very little to go on.

                Hoffman gave clear instructions to his law clerks that we were never to grant a habeas corpus petition, no matter what sort of claim the prisoner alleged.  He directed us to find something, anything, on which to base a dismissal of the petition.

                I quickly learned a few shortcuts and repeatedly cited the same language, followed by the same precedents, over and over again.  But in a few cases I couldn’t see any way to get around a prisoner’s claim.  The prisoner had made a genuine constitutional argument, and I believed it was necessary to hold a hearing where he could make his case.  But whenever I tried to explain this to the judge, he blew me off.

                “I will never allow a prisoner to be brought to my courtroom for a hearing,” he declared.  “If the Seventh Circuit wants to order me to hold a hearing, I will hold it, but I will never order one myself.  Find some reason to deny the petition!”  So even in those few cases, I had to comply with the judge’s position and come up with some pretext to deny the petitions–hoping, of course, that the prisoners were not too discouraged to file an appeal with the court of appeals.

In the case of one prisoner, I was happy to go along with the judge’s dictates. Jack K. was a perennial petitioner who must have filed one or two handwritten petitions every month. He filed so many that we never took any of them seriously. Prisoners like him eventually led the federal court system to clamp down on all prisoners and impose rules that would prevent abuse of the system by people like Jack.

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Posted in 1960s, Chicago, law, lawyers, respect, U.S. federal courts, women

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Hangin’ with Judge Hoffman: Post #2

Posted on December 1, 2020 | 2 comments

This is the second in a series of posts recalling what it was like to serve as a law clerk for U.S. District Judge Julius J. Hoffman.

We currently live in a time in which we’re increasingly aware of the enormously important role that judges play in our lives and how critical it is to have judges who are fair and unbiased.  For this reason, I think it’s useful to talk about how judges perform their jobs.

Thanks to the recent film focused on the trial of the “Chicago 7,” Judge Hoffman has garnered new attention in the public eye.  I’ve attempted, in this series of posts, to tell exactly what it was like to work for him for two highly significant years.

What were Hoffman’s quirks?  How did he conduct business, on and off the bench?  As Hoffman’s law clerk from the summer of 1967 through the summer of 1969, I observed him on and off the bench, in his role as a “hanging judge” as well as his role as a charming personality who enjoyed engaging in clever repartee.  “Warts and all,” here is what Julius J. Hoffman was really like.

Hoffman’s Proclivities

•      His calendar

                Judge Hoffman was obsessed with his “calendar.”  The court administrators published statistics on every judge in the district (the Northern District of Illinois), and Hoffman was fanatic about being first in the judges’ rankings every month.

                Why was he so obsessed with this single evaluation of his judgeship?  My guess is that he saw these statistics as an objective measure of his worth as a judge.  Although the statistics did nothing more than state how many cases a judge had dismissed or tried or otherwise removed from his calendar, Hoffman wanted to be at the top of the list.  Then the whole world would know that he was a judge who disposed of cases efficiently, had the smallest number of cases left on his calendar at the end of every month, and therefore was–had to be–a great and admirable judge.

                To achieve this ranking, Hoffman sometimes trampled on the rights of the criminal defendants who appeared before him and often rushed to judgment in his civil cases, forcing undesired settlements and otherwise compromising the pursuit of justice in his courtroom.  The appellate court that reviewed his conduct often took him to task for it.  Yet he continued his relentless pursuit of first place.  In my view, his obsession with being first in this ranking was in large part responsible for much of his erratic behavior.

•      His bias in favor of the government

                Hoffman’s bias in criminal cases reflected a general bias in favor of the government and an even more fundamental conservative streak.  He was, after all, appointed to the federal bench by a Republican, President Eisenhower, and his background and relative affluence (in part due to his wealthy wife) probably accounted for some of his conservatism.  But because he was so willing to favor the government in criminal cases, he frequently wound up in big trouble. One criminal case, the “Chicago 7” trial, ultimately led to his downfall.

•      His delegation of decision-making to his law clerks

                Hoffman’s desire to have the “best” calendar in town worked to the benefit of those of his law clerks who relished assuming a large measure of responsibility for Hoffman’s rulings.  (I happily fit into this category.)  While he spent almost his entire day on the bench, presiding over trials and disposing of motions, his two clerks were working in chambers on the rulings that he would later adopt as his own. 

                 Of course, he made some rulings spontaneously from the bench without his clerks’ assistance.  But virtually all of the pre-trial and post-trial motions filed in Hoffman’s cases were decided by his clerks.  So while he sat on the bench, dispensing his own brand of justice, his two law clerks were working hard back in chambers, researching the law that applied to these motions and other matters (like jury instructions) filed by the lawyers in his cases, and writing the rulings that Hoffman later read from the bench.

                In the two years I worked for Hoffman, we law clerks probably decided at least 95 percent of the motions filed in his cases.  And he rarely overruled our decisions.  Once in a great while, he would walk into our part of chambers, hand back a written decision, and ask us to rewrite it.  But he never took the opportunity to do his own research or do any rewriting, even when he was displeased with the decision we had left on his desk.

                The tremendous degree of responsibility we had, as a result, was astounding.  At first, I was amazed at how much power I had been given.  Later, I realized that I was, to some extent, dispensing justice where Hoffman himself never would have.

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Hangin’ with Judge Hoffman

Posted on November 13, 2020 | 3 comments

This month I’m beginning something new.

I’m beginning a series of posts that will focus on my personal recollections of working as a law clerk for a federal judge–a judge who became notorious shortly after I left my clerkship.

Judge Julius J. Hoffman was a U.S. district court judge in Chicago who became notorious when he presided over the “Chicago 7” trial that began in the fall of 1969.

As Hoffman’s law clerk from 1967 to 1969, I observed him closely throughout my two-year tenure with him. This two-year period included, in its final months, the road that led to the “Chicago 7” trial.

This trial is now the subject of a new film written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, “The Trial of the Chicago 7.” Because the film has inspired new interest in Judge Hoffman, this seemed to be an appropriate time to publish my recollections.

As Judge Hoffman’s law clerk during the two years before the trial began, I could foresee much of what would happen in his courtroom.  I later sat in on the trial, as a spectator, on two very cringe-worthy occasions.

This is the first post in a series that will examine what it was like to clerk for a judge like Hoffman. I’ll begin at the beginning: my first encounter with Judge Hoffman and how I came to work for him.

I’ll go on to describe a wide range of issues that arose during my tenure. These will include my observations during the frenetic time just before and during the “Chicago 7” trial. I’ll conclude with my final communications with the judge, just before I left Chicago in 1970.

Post #1

          In the fall of 1969, Judge Julius J. Hoffman moved from relative obscurity into the spotlight of national attention.  Although he had earned a reputation within the Chicago legal community as an irascible judge with a strong conservative bent, he was otherwise a little-known figure.  The public knew him only as one of Chicago’s U.S. district judges, and as such, he was generally respected.  Even lawyers who had appeared before him were compelled to admit that, despite his personal shortcomings, he could sometimes be an excellent judge.

          All that changed in the fall of 1969.  Assigned to be the presiding judge in what became known as the “Chicago 7” trial, Hoffman was suddenly the focus of journalists and lawyers from every corner of the United States, even the world.  Suddenly his courtroom demeanor was under a microscope, probed for rationality and fairness.  And just as suddenly, he became a national villain, even a national joke.

My first encounter with the judge

          In his custom-made elevator shoes and his black robe (double-stitched for longer wear), Judge Julius J. Hoffman would stride imperiously into his courtroom.  He would seat himself behind his imposing judicial bench, his tiny figure almost lost in the high-ceilinged courtroom he occupied on the 23rd floor of the federal courthouse in Chicago’s Loop.

“The motion will be dee-nied!”

                I can still hear the judge spouting those five words, the five words he must have said a thousand times during the two years I worked for him.  He always seemed to be denying motions rather than granting them.  But that was just one feature of this eccentric and soon-to-be-notorious judge.

          Julius Hoffman was a diminutive, bald-headed man with a prickly ego that was easily punctured.  But when I met with him over the Christmas holidays in 1966, he struck me as a charming and altogether reasonable person to clerk for.  I was in my last year of law school, and Hoffman was one of only three U.S. district judges in Chicago who had agreed, in that benighted era, to interview me, a woman, for the job of law clerk.

          For a number of reasons, Hoffman became my first choice of the three, and when he offered me the job, I decided to take it.  Although I had done almost no research into what kind of judge Hoffman was, I was thrilled with the simple prospect of being any federal judge’s law clerk.

          My failure to research Hoffman’s reputation later came back to haunt me.  I soon discovered that I was working for an irascible, difficult man who had unusual proclivities and a bizarre personality that often played itself out on the bench.  So although I loved my job as a federal judge’s law clerk, and I learned a great deal from my experience working in the federal courts, I was sometimes sorry I had so quickly settled on Hoffman as the federal judge to clerk for.

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Posted in 1960s, American culture, American history, Chicago, films, gender roles and stereotypes, Illinois, law, law school, lawyers, movies, sexist attitudes, U.S. federal courts, women

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RBG in ’72

Posted on October 13, 2020 | 6 comments

Countless words have been, and will continue to be, written about the incomparable U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who served on the high court for 27 years.

I will leave discussions of her tenure on the Court to others.

What I will do here is recount the one and only time I encountered her in person, at a law school conference, at a pivotal point in her career.  If you’re interested in learning about that encounter, please read on.

In September of 1972, I was a full-time faculty member at the University of Michigan (UM) Law School.  Notably, I was the only full-time faculty member who was a woman.

The law school had a desirable setting on the UM campus, whose multitude of elm trees were unfortunately denuded of leaves, thanks to Dutch elm disease. The law school buildings made up the stunning Law Quadrangle, featuring beautiful old buildings constructed in the English Gothic style.

My role on the faculty was to help first-year law students learn the basics of legal education:  how to analyze court rulings (the kind they would read in the books assigned to them in courses like Torts and Contracts); how to do their own research into case law; and how to write a readable legal document, like an appellate brief aimed at persuading an appellate court to decide in their favor.

I was one of four young lawyers hired to fill this role.  The three men and I each taught one-fourth of the first-year class.  As I recall, we got to choose our offices in the law school library, and I immediately chose a plum.  It was an enormous wood-paneled room with charming hand-blown stained glass windows.  One entered it via a stairway leading upstairs from the library’s impressive reading room.  I treasured my office and happily welcomed meeting with students there.  And I wonder, in light of renovations at the law school, whether that glorious office still exists.

At some point early that fall, I learned that a conference on “women and the law” would be held at the New York University School of Law in October.  This was a bold new area of law that most law schools didn’t consider worth their attention.  NYU was clearly an exception. 

The idea of the conference immediately grabbed my attention because I had a longstanding interest in its stated focus.  One reason why I had myself attended law school a few years before was that, beginning very early in my life, I was and remain concerned with achieving equity and justice, including equal rights for women.

This focus had led me to attend law school during the mid-’60s.  My first job was that of law clerk to a U.S. district judge in Chicago.  After finishing my clerkship, I became a practicing lawyer as a Reggie assigned to my first choice, the Appellate and Test Case Division of the Chicago Legal Aid Bureau.  [I discussed the Reggie program in a blog post, “The Summer of ’69,” published on August 7, 2015.]

And so, three years earlier, in October of 1969, I had begun working on a lawsuit that had a significant bearing on women’s rights because it would challenge the constitutionality of Illinois’s restrictive abortion law. This law had an enormous impact on the lives of women, especially poor and non-white women.

I worked with Sybille Fritzsche, a lawyer with the ACLU in Chicago, who became my close friend.  Sybille and I spent months preparing our case.  We filed our lawsuit in February 1970, argued it before a three-judge federal court in September, and won a 2-to-1 ruling in our favor in January 1971.  (The ruling in that case, Doe v. Scott, and the events leading up to it, are the focus of a book I’m currently writing.  In the meantime, you can read about our case in historian Leslie Reagan’s prize-winning book, When Abortion Was a Crime.)

Now, in the fall of 1972, I learned about the conference at NYU.  Because I was extremely interested in attending it, I decided to ask the UM law school’s dean, Theodore St. Antoine, whether the school might send me to New York to attend it.  I thought I had a pretty persuasive argument:  I was the only full-time woman on the law school faculty.  Didn’t the dean think it would be a good idea to send me to represent UM at the conference? 

How could he say “no”?  Ted thought about for a moment, then gave his approval.  So off I went, my expenses paid by the kind patrons of UM. 

My hotel, the Fifth Avenue Hotel, located near NYU’s law school, had sounded appealing on paper, but it turned out to be something of a dump.  It suited me just fine, however, because I barely spent any time there.  I was too busy attending the conference sessions and, when I could, taking a short break to reconnect with a couple of law-school classmates and briefly sample life in New York City, a city light-years removed from less-than-exhilarating Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The conference, held on October 20-21, turned out to be a symposium sponsored by AALS (the American Association of Law Schools), “The AALS Symposium on the Law School Curriculum and the Legal Rights of Women.”  It featured a number of prominent speakers, mostly law professors and practicing lawyers who had turned their attention to “the legal rights of women” in areas like tax law, property law, and criminal law.  I attended most of these sessions, and each of them was excellent.

But the only session I was really excited about was a talk by someone named Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  I was quite certain that I would relish hearing her talk, “Toward Elimination of Sex-Based Discrimination: Constitutional Aspects,” because the topic was right down my alley.

Looking back, I don’t think I knew anything about RBG at the time.  But when she was introduced (by NYU dean Robert McKay) and began to speak, I was riveted by every word she uttered.  She spelled out everything she had already done and planned to do to achieve gender-equity.

So although I was not already familiar with her, I knew immediately that she clearly was and would continue to be a brilliant leader in the field of women’s rights.  I filed her name away in my memory so I could follow whatever she would do in the coming years.  And I did just that, enthusiastically following the many astounding accomplishments she achieved after 1972.

Your image of RBG may be that of the frail, petite woman who took center stage in our culture in her 80s.  But the RBG I saw in 1972 was very different.  She was an amazingly attractive young woman of 39.  You can see photos of her at that time in The New York Times of September 18 (in Linda Greenhouse’s long review of her life and career) and in a recent issue of TIME magazine (Oct. 5-12, 2020). Although much has been made of her short stature (one I share), she was so very energetic and focused that one quickly forgot how small she was.

It turned out that she had attended Harvard Law School about a decade before I did.  Like her, I’ve been called a “trailblazer” and a “pioneer,” and I also confronted gender-bias at every turn throughout my life.  My path was only a bit less rocky than hers:  My class at HLS included the whopping number of 25 women in a class of 520, while hers had only 9.

I’ve since learned that October 1972 marked a pivotal time in RBG’s career.  She had just switched her teaching position from Rutgers Law School to Columbia Law School (a considerable upgrade).  And she had just assumed another new position:  Director of the Women’s Rights Project at the ACLU, a project she had helped to found a short time before. 

So I’m left wondering…did she know about the case Sybille (an ACLU attorney in Chicago) and I brought in February 1970, a case that put a woman’s right to reproductive choice front and center?

RBG was an ardent supporter of reproductive rights during her tenure on the Supreme Court.  She discussed her views on abortion and gender equality in a 2009 New York Times interview, where she said “[t]he basic thing is that the government has no business making that choice for a woman.”

But I know that she had also stated that she wasn’t entirely happy with the way in which Roe v. Wade gave every woman in the U.S. that choice by bringing cases like Doe v. Scott in the federal courts.  She stated that she would have preferred that the argument had been made, over time, in each state’s legislature, with the right to choose being gradually adopted in that way rather than in one overriding court ruling that included every state.

Notably, on the 40th anniversary of the court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade, she criticized the decision because it terminated “a nascent democratic movement to liberalize abortion laws” that might have built “a more durable consensus” in support of abortion rights.

She had a point.  A democratic movement to liberalize abortion laws would have been the ideal route, and might have been a less contentious route, to achieving abortion rights throughout the country. 

But I think her position was influenced by her own life story. 

It stemmed, at least in part, from the fact that in April 1970, she was living and working in New York, where the state legislature had passed a new law allowing abortion, and New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller had signed it on April 11, 1970.  New York became only the second state in the U.S. (after Hawaii) to permit abortion, and only a few other states had carved out any sort of exception to what was otherwise a nationwide ban on abortion.

RBG may have optimistically believed that other states would follow New York’s lead.  But history has proved otherwise.

If women had waited for each of the 50 states to accomplish the goal of women’s reproductive choice, I think we’d still have many states refusing to enact laws allowing choice.  In support of my view, I ask readers to consider the situation today, when some states are trying to restrict abortion so frenetically, with or without achieving a complete ban, that they’re now simply waiting for a far-right conservative Court to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Whether or not RBG was aware of what was happening in the courtrooms of Chicago in 1970, I think I could have persuaded her that Sybille and I were doing the right thing.  

By advocating that the federal district court hold that the restrictive Illinois abortion law was unconstitutional, and persuading the court to decide in our favor, we achieved our goal of saving the lives and health of countless women who would have otherwise suffered from their inability to obtain a legal and medically safe abortion.

What greater achievement on behalf of women’s rights could there have been? 

I like to think that, after hearing my argument, RBG would have approved.

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Posted in 1960s, Ann Arbor, Michigan, Chicago, gender equality, gender-equity, Harvard, Hawaii, Illinois, law, law school, lawyers, legal assistance to the poor, New York City, Reggie program, The New York Times, U.S. Supreme Court, women, women"s interests

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It’s time to write those checks

Posted on September 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

Do you remember that old phrase…”Put your money where your mouth is”?

It strikes me as more timely than ever.

The upcoming election is critical.  Its outcome will determine the future of our country in countless ways.

If you’re concerned about which way the results may go, you should consider donating to the candidates and the causes you support.  And you should do it right now.

I’m “old school.”  Although I sometimes make donations online, I still like to pull out my checkbook and write actual checks.  They’re not very big.  I’m heartened by big-money donors like Mike Bloomberg, who just gave $100 million to the Biden campaign in Florida.  By contrast, my checks are much, much smaller.  More like a grain of sand in a miles-long beach of donations.

But every little bit helps.

Here’s some history:  I‘m old enough to recall the presidential campaign of 1972.  My husband (aka Marv) and I ardently supported the candidacy of George McGovern, who valiantly campaigned for president that year, fighting the unrelenting dirty tricks devised by Richard Nixon and his allies. The Watergate burglary was just one crime in that long ugly record of wrongdoing.

Marv and I sent McGovern’s campaign the astounding sum of $100.  Astounding because we were young and living on two minuscule salaries as pathetically-paid faculty members at the University of Michigan. That check for $100 made a huge dent in our budget.  I’ve checked the figures, and the 2020 equivalent is $626.47.  You can imagine how committed we were to WWII hero/Vietnam War opponent George McGovern, and how much we despised Tricky Dick Nixon, for us to come up with a donation like that.

Sadly, the dirty tricks of the Nixon era have been surpassed by the dirty tricks engaged in by the current occupant of the White House. Even Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, did his dirty work behind the scenes, unlike our current attorney general, whose astonishing power-grab is out there for all of us to see.

Back to donations: Instead of boring you with details of other donations I’ve made, both before and after ‘72, I’d rather move on to the situation today.

Because we’re only seven weeks away from this fall’s election, there’s no time to waste. 

All of the candidates in this hard-fought campaign are in need of funds to help them win. 

I strongly urge you to get out your checkbooks or your credit cards, or both, and donate to the candidates you earnestly want to win. And to any organized group whose efforts you’ve decided are also worth your support.

I’ll be honest:  I want to see a new president elected. And I want to see a U.S. Senate that will reflect the views of the majority of voters in this country, not those of a single senator from Kentucky.

I want to keep the U.S. House in the hands of those who are in the majority right now, under the continued leadership of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.  And I want to see judges who are fair and not overly influenced by politics fill all of the openings for new judges in the federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court.

I’m writing checks to support the candidates and causes I want to win.  For probably the first time in my life, I’m also sending money to bolster the efforts of a group of politically energized veterans.  A group, Vote Vets, has stated its strong opposition to our current president.  And in a compelling letter seeking my support, it has told me exactly why.

Of course, you may have chosen to take other steps to support candidates and causes, like knocking on doors and making phone calls. Those efforts can do a lot to help, and I commend you for doing them. But at the same time, please don’t forget the enormous need for funds to pay for TV advertising, among other things. Especially if your candidate refuses to hold rallies that endanger the lives of those who attend them.

You may disagree with me on any or all of these candidates and causes.  If you do, go ahead and support the candidates and causes that you prefer.  We still live in a democratic republic…if, as Benjamin Franklin said, we can keep it.

So…will you put your money where your mouth is? 

If you don’t, and your candidate fails to win, you may everlastingly regret your decision not to lend your much-needed support.

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I Shouda Ran

Posted on August 21, 2020 | 2 comments

I just came across some great news for joggers.  Researchers have found that strenuous exercise like jogging does NOT boost the risk of arthritis in one’s knees.  A recent study enlisted nearly 1,200 middle-aged and older people at high risk for knee arthritis.  Result?  After 10 years, those who did strenuous activities like jogging and cycling were no more likely to be diagnosed with arthritis than those who did none. (See the July/August 2020 issue of Nutrition Action, noting a study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.)

And according to a writer in The Washington Post, most data show that running actually helps keep knee joints lubricated.  (See the report by John Briley on August 6, 2020.)

Hmmm…

So…maybe I shoulda ran?

What?

I’ll explain.

When my daughters were small, my husband and I often relied on PBS kids’ programming to keep us from going bananas whenever we were home with them for more than a few hours.

I’m still indebted to “Sesame Street” and “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” for offering wonderfully positive content that expanded our daughters’ minds.

I can still remember many of Fred Rogers’s episodes and his delightful music.  The recent films (e.g., “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”) that highlight his music and the many layers of his unfailing kindness are moving tributes to everything he did.  (I obliquely noted Rogers’s important role in our family when I briefly mentioned him in my 2011 novel, Jealous Mistress.)

Similarly, I can’t forget countless “Sesame Street” sketches and songs we watched over and over again. In addition to stalwarts like Kermit the Frog and Big Bird, I loved less-prominent Muppet characters like Don Music, who’d take out his creative frustrations by crashing his head on his piano keyboard.

One “Sesame Street” sketch I vividly recall focused on words than rhymed with “an.”

The setting is a rundown alley in a big city.  Tall buildings loom in the distance.  As the sketch begins, two Muppets garbed as gangsters breathlessly arrive at this spot.  The savvier gangster tells his partner Lefty that “We got the ‘Golden AN’.”

The word “AN” is clearly written in bold upper-case letters on a metal object he’s holding.  Explaining their “plan,” he points to a “tan van” and says, “This is the plan. You see that van? You take the Golden An to the tan van.  You give it to Dan, who will give it to Fran.”  He adds:  “Everything I’m telling you about the plan rhymes with AN.”  He takes off, leaving Lefty alone.

Lefty, who’s pretty much of a dolt, repeats the plan out loud a couple of times while a Muppet cop is watching and listening.  The cop approaches, identifies himself as “Stan…the man,” and tells Lefty he’s going to get “10 days in the can for stealing the Golden An.”

Lefty then chides himself:  “I shoulda ran.”

This carefully crafted sketch was clearly intended to teach little kids about words that rhyme with “an,” although much of it seemed aimed at parents and other adults watching along with the kids.  How many little ones knew the meaning of “the can”?  The bad grammar in the sketch (“I shoulda ran”) was forgivable because kids watching “Sesame Street” didn’t really notice it, and the whole thing was so darned funny.

But what has stayed with me over the decades is the final line:  I shoulda ran.

When I was growing up, I always liked running fast, and I rode my fat-tire Schwinn bike all over my neighborhood.  So I wasn’t indolent.  But as I grew older and entered public high school in Chicago, I encountered the blatantly sexist approach to sports.  Aside from synchronized swimming, my school offered no team sports for girls.  So although I would have loved to be on a track team, that simply wasn’t possible.  Girls couldn’t participate in gymnastics, track, basketball, baseball, tennis, or any of the other teams open to boys our age.

We were also actively discouraged from undertaking any sort of strenuous physical activity.  It was somewhat ironic that I applied to be, and became, the sports editor of my high school yearbook because I was completely shut out of the team sports that I covered in that yearbook .  And I foolishly gave up my coveted spot in the drama group to do it—what a mistake!

I had a somewhat different experience during my single semester in school in Los Angeles, where I spent the first half of 8th grade.  Although sexism was equally pervasive there, girls at least had a greater opportunity to benefit from physical activity.  Because of the beautiful weather, we played volleyball outdoors every day, and I actually learned not to be afraid of the ball!  I was prepared, when we returned to Chicago (reluctantly on my part), to enjoy a similar level of activity during my four years of high school.  But that would not happen.   The girls’ P.E. classes were a joke, a pathetic attempt at encouraging us to move our bodies.  And things didn’t begin to change until 1972, when Title IX was enacted into law.

Over the years, I continued to ride a bike wherever I lived and whenever weather permitted. I took up brisk walking and yoga as well.  And I sometimes thought about running.

Jogging– less intensive running–took off in the late 1970s and early 1980s.  Why didn’t I begin to jog?

There was a bunch of reasons.  First, I was afraid of damaging my knees.  I’ve always loved aerobic dancing, the kind popularized by Jacki Sorensen.  I’d jump along with the music in my favorite Jacki tape, and I began to notice that jumping was possibly beginning to wear away the cartilage in my knee joints because occasional pain resulted. So I kept dancing, but I stopped jumping.  I figured that running would place even further stress on my knees.

And then there was Jim Fixx.

I didn’t know a lot about Jim Fixx.  He became a media celebrity when he published his best-selling book, The Complete Book of Running, in 1977, and his claims about the health benefits of jogging suddenly showed up on the news.  But in 1977, I had a brand-new baby and a toddler, along with a challenging part-time job, and I couldn’t focus on starting something new like jogging.  By the time I was getting ready to launch into it, I heard the news that Fixx had died of a heart attack while jogging.  He was 52.

Fixx’s death shook me up.  I didn’t know at the time that he may have had a genetic predisposition to heart trouble and he had lived a stressful and unhealthy life as an overweight heavy smoker before he began running at age 36.   All that I knew was that this exemplar of health through running had died, while jogging, at age 52.

Chicago weather also stood in my way.  Happily ensconced in an area that allowed our family to ride our bikes along Lake Michigan and quiet residential streets, and where I could take long and pleasant walks with my husband, I was reasonably active outdoors during the six months of the year when good weather prevailed.  But during the harsh winters, confined indoors, I had less success.  I played my Jacki tapes, I tried using a stationary bike (it never fit me comfortably), and I sampled a local gym.  But I didn’t pursue strenuous exercise.

Now, learning about the recent evidence I’ve noted–that, if I’d jogged, my knees might have been OK after all–I regret that choice.  My current climate allows me to be outside almost every day, and I take advantage of it by briskly walking about 30 minutes daily, much of it uphill.  So that’s my workout now, and it’s a pretty good one.

But I probably would have loved running all those years.

It’s a bit late to start now, but I can’t help thinking:  I shoulda ran.

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“Thank you for not killing me”

Posted on July 29, 2020 | 1 comment

No, I’m not addressing the currently raging coronavirus or the global pandemic it’s caused.  Although I could be addressing Covid-19.  I guess I’m grateful to the virus for having spared me so far.

I’m addressing a group of people to whom I’ve said this line for years:  Careless, self-obsessed drivers.  Drivers who endanger my life every time I walk on the streets of my city.

I usually utter this line when I manage to avoid being killed by the tons of steel propelled by drivers who are far more concerned with speedily reaching their destinations than with preserving the lives of their fellow human beings.

Pedestrian safety is a huge concern, but I won’t dwell on the harrowing statistics.  These sobering statistics reveal the enormous number of pedestrian deaths and injuries caused by automobiles.  But I’ll save those details for another day.

Today I’m focusing on my valiant attempts to preserve my own life.

Every day, I walk about six or eight long city blocks to and from my home, for a total of at least twelve blocks.  As I walk, I traverse three busy streets that border my neighborhood.  My current route is somewhat new, the result of recent lifestyle changes.  But I’ve always walked a great deal along a number of streets in my mostly quiet neighborhood.

And I’ve always tried to protect myself by making some sort of contact with drivers.  I’ve waved scarves and colorful tote bags to alert drivers to my presence.  And I’ve tried to make eye contact.  Especially when I’ve been crossing at a busy intersection.

Thanks to the pandemic, traffic has been less than usual, especially on quiet residential streets.

But three nearby streets, although less filled with traffic than they previously were, still attract fast and careless drivers.  Every time I approach an intersection along these streets, I hesitate.

I’m a fast walker.  I never saunter,  and I dislike the walkers who do.  I always prefer to walk briskly.

Nevertheless, my survival is at stake.  As I enter the crosswalk, I justifiably worry that a reckless driver won’t hesitate to make a barreling turn that will hit me.

Even though the traffic signals are on my side:  the walk sign is flashing and the traffic-signal light is glowing a bright green.

I’ve taken to carrying even more garish tote bags, boldly swinging them in the hope that their gaudy colors will increase my visibility and thereby save my life.

That’s why I mutter my satiric thank-you line to many drivers–but especially to those who inch forward, aiming to make a fast turn in front of me.  Most of them leave me only one or two inches of space as his or her car whizzes through the crosswalk.

Brother, can you spare another inch?

I know that I’m a stumble away from perishing in that crosswalk because if I stumble, I’ll be the victim of a massive assault on my body by the turning vehicle.

So, each time I cross successfully, I thank my lucky stars that I’ve survived one more time.  Once I reach the safety of the sidewalk, I can finally breathe a massive sigh of relief.

And I’ll say my satiric thank-you line one more time.

Of course, now wearing a mask, as I have for the past few months, I know the driver will never hear me.

But I’ll say it anyway.

Hey, careless driver:  “Thank you for not killing me.”

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Two Words

Posted on July 15, 2020 | 2 comments

Do you remember this scene in the 1967 film “The Graduate”?

New college graduate Benjamin encounters a friend of his father’s at a party.  The friend pulls him aside and says, “I just want to say one word to you. Just one word.  Plastics.”

That advice may have helped college grads in ‘67, but the world we face today is very different.

In light of the raging global pandemic, and the stress it’s placed on all of us, I now have two words for you.  Elastic waists.

Many of us have recently begun wearing clothes with elastic waists.

On June 26, The Wall Street Journal noted:  “The Covid 15 Have Made Our Clothes Too Tight.”  Reporter Suzanne Kapner clearly outlined the problem.  “People spent the spring sheltering at home in sweatpants, perfecting banana-bread recipes and indulging in pandemic-induced stress-eating.”  And while most of us have escaped Covid-19, we haven’t escaped the “Covid 15”—the weight-gain pushing Americans into “roomier wardrobes.”

Hence the widespread adoption of elastic waists.

Many shoppers have jumped on the scale, been horrified, and concluded that they needed to buy new clothes to fit their new shapes.  One woman, unable to zip up her pants, got on her scale.  “Holy moly,” she told Kapner, “I gained 11 pounds in three weeks.”

Kapner cited more evidence:  First, Google-searches for “elastic waist” have spiked. Further, body-measuring apps have reported a jump in people choosing looser fits to accommodate their new profiles.  As the CEO of one such app observed, people are “sizing up” because they’ve gained weight.  Less active and more confined, they’re “eating more, either out of stress or boredom.”

In light of this phenomenon, some retailers are increasing orders of clothes in bigger sizes.  They’re also painfully aware of something else:  the rise in returns because of size-changes.  Returns have probably doubled in the past three months, according to a software company that processes returns for over 200 brands. And when customers order a clothing item (in their former size), and it needs to be exchanged for a larger size, those retailers who offer free shipping and free returns find that all of these additional returns are eating into their profits.

This move into larger sizes and elastic waists doesn’t surprise me.  I long ago adopted wearing pants with elastic waists.  Not all of my pants, to be sure.  But many of them.

It probably started when I was pregnant with my first child.  As my abdominal area began to expand, I searched my closet and came across some skirts and pants with elastic waistbands.  I discovered that I could wear these throughout my pregnancy, adding extra elastic as needed.  I bought some maternity clothes as well, but the pants with those stretchy elastic waistbands allowed me to avoid buying a lot of new items.

Over the years, I’ve continued to wear elastic-waist pants, enjoying the comfort they afford.  (Yes, I also wear pants and jeans with stitched-down waistbands that fit me.)

I can understand why there’s a new emphasis on buying elastic waists in lieu of bigger sizes.  A bigger size might be OK for right now, but you probably hope to return to your former size sometime.  Elastic waists are exactly what they claim to be:  elastic.  That means they can expand, but they can also contract.

Both women and men can benefit from wearing elastic waists, at least until they’ve shed the additional pounds they’ve recently acquired.

Many women have traditionally turned to elastic waists because they don’t have the typical “hourglass” shape women are expected to sport.  They have what’s been called an “apple” shape, with a somewhat larger waist measurement than most women have.  In the past, they might have purchased clothes with a tight waistband and then had a tailor make the waistband bigger.

But right now, tailoring clothes is almost impossible. Who’s leaving the safety of home simply to find a tailor to alter a waistband?  The pandemic has put such tailoring out of reach for most of us.  And if an elastic waist makes it unnecessary, it’s saving you the trouble and expense of seeking out a tailor.

Men with expanding waists have also benefited from elastic waists.  The popularity of sweatpants and other casual wear with elastic waists for men are proof of that.

I recognize the role stress is playing in our lives right now, and it’s pretty obvious that we can attribute some weight-gain to the increased level of stress.  So, to avoid buying more and more elastic waists and/or bigger sizes, we need to reduce stress as much as we can.

The advice we’ve all heard for a long time still holds, and it probably applies now more than ever.  At the risk of sounding preachy, I’m adding a few new tips to the tried-and-true list.  (Feel free to skip it if you think you’ve heard it all before.)

  • Be more physically active. Please remember:  You don’t need to go to a gym or even do vigorous workouts at home.  Simply taking a fairly fast-paced stroll in your neighborhood is good enough.
  • Avoid fixating on TV news, especially the bad stuff.
  • Watch distracting TV programing instead (this includes reliably funny films like “Some Like It Hot” and “What’s Up, Doc?” if you can find them).
  • Play music that makes you happy.
  • Connect with friends and family by phone, email, or text (or by writing actual letters).
  • Give meditation a try, just in case it may help you.
  • Try to follow a diet focused on fresh fruit, veggies, high-fiber carbs, and lean protein.
  • Curl up with a good book. (Forgive me for plugging my three novels,* but each one is a fast read and can take you to a different time and place, a definitely helpful distraction.)

Although I admit that I’m still wearing the elastic waists I already own, I’ve so far been able to avoid the “Covid 15” that might require buying new ones.  What’s helped me?

First, briskly walking in my neighborhood for 30 minutes every day.  Second, resisting the lure of chocolate as much I can.  Instead, I’ve been relying on heaps of fruits, veggies, popcorn, pretzels, and sugarless gum.  (My chief indulgences are peanut butter and fig bars.)  It’s as simple as that.

Maybe you can avoid it, too.  Good luck!

 

*A Quicker Blood, Jealous Mistress, and Red Diana are all available as paperbacks and e-books on Amazon.com.

 

 

 

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Declare Your Independence! Those High Heels Are Killers

Posted on July 4, 2020 | Leave a comment

Happy 4th of July!  In honor of the holiday, I’m reviving a blog post that I published three years ago.

Because I believe so strongly in communicating this message, I may turn this blog post into an annual tradition.

If you’ve read it before, thanks for re-reading it.  I’ve made a few changes to acknowledge some current trends.

I’ve long maintained that high heels are killers.  I never used that term literally, of course.  I merely viewed high-heeled shoes as distinctly uncomfortable and an outrageous concession to the dictates of fashion that can lead to both pain and permanent damage to a woman’s body.

A few years ago, however, high heels proved to be actual killers.  The Associated Press reported that two women, ages 18 and 23, were killed in Riverside, California, as they struggled in high heels to get away from a train.  With their car stuck on the tracks, the women attempted to flee as the train approached.  A police spokesman later said, “It appears they were in high heels and [had] a hard time getting away quickly.”

Like those young women, I was sucked into wearing high heels when I was a teenager.  It was de rigueur for girls at my high school to seek out the trendy shoe stores on State Street in downtown Chicago and purchase whichever high-heeled offerings our wallets could afford.  On my first visit, I was entranced by the three-inch-heeled numbers that pushed my toes into a too-narrow space and revealed them in what I thought was a highly provocative position.  If feet can have cleavage, those shoes gave me cleavage.

Never mind that my feet were encased in a vise-like grip.  Never mind that I walked unsteadily on the stilts beneath my soles.  And never mind that my whole body was pitched forward in an ungainly manner as I propelled myself around the store.  I liked the way my legs looked in those shoes, and I had just enough baby-sitting money to pay for them.  Now I could stride with pride to the next Sweet Sixteen luncheon on my calendar, wearing footwear like all the other girls’.

That luncheon revealed what an unwise purchase I’d made. When the event ended, I found myself stranded in a distant location with no ride home, and I started walking to the nearest bus stop. After a few steps, it was clear that my shoes were killers. I could barely put one foot in front of the other, and the pain became so great that I removed my shoes and walked in stocking feet the rest of the way.

After that painful lesson, I abandoned three-inch high-heeled shoes and resorted to wearing lower ones. Sure, I couldn’t flaunt my shapely legs quite as effectively, but I managed to secure male attention nevertheless.

Instead of conforming to the modern-day equivalent of Chinese foot-binding, I successfully and happily fended off the back pain, foot pain, bunions, and corns that my fashion-victim sisters suffer in spades.

The trend toward higher and higher heels has been disturbing.  I’m baffled by women, especially young women, who buy into the mindset that they must follow the dictates of fashion and the need to look “sexy” by wearing extremely high heels.

When I watch TV, I’ve seen too many women wearing stilettos that forced them into the ungainly walk I briefly sported so long ago. When late-night TV shows still featured guests walking to greet the host, I couldn’t help noticing the women who were otherwise smartly attired and often very smart (in the other sense of the word), yet wore ridiculously high heels that forced them to have that same ungainly walk. Some appeared on the verge of toppling over. And at the most recent Oscar awards telecast, many women tottered to the stage in ultra-high heels, often accompanied by escorts who kindly held onto them to prevent their embarrassing descent into the orchestra pit.

The women who, like me, have adopted lower-heeled shoes strike me as much smarter and much less likely to fall on their attractive (and sometimes surgically-enhanced) faces.

Here’s another example.  When I sat on the stage of Zellerbach Hall at the Berkeley commencement for math students a few years ago, I was astonished that many if not most of the women graduates hobbled across the stage to receive their diplomas in three- and four-inch-high sandals.  I was terrified that these super-smart math students would trip and fall before they could grasp the document their mighty brain-power had earned.  (Fortunately, none of them tripped, but I could nevertheless imagine the foot-pain that accompanied the joy of receiving their degrees.)

Foot-care professionals soundly support my view.   According to the American Podiatric Medical Association, a heel that’s more than 2 or 3 inches makes comfort just about impossible.  Why?  Because a 3-inch heel creates seven times more stress than a 1-inch heel.

The San Francisco Chronicle asked a local podiatrist and foot and ankle surgeon for his opinion.  He explained that after 1.5 inches, the pressure increases on the ball of the foot and can lead to “ball-of-the-foot numbness.”  (Yikes!)  He did not endorse 3-inch heels and pointed out that celebrities wear them for only a short time (for example, on the red carpet), not all day.  To ensure a truly comfortable shoe, he added, don’t go above a 1.5 inch heel.  If you insist on wearing higher heels, limit how much time you spend in them.

Some encouraging changes are clearly afoot.  Catalogs from Nordstrom, one of America’s major shoe-sellers, have already featured lower-heeled styles along with higher-heeled numbers.  Because Nordstrom is a bellwether in the fashion world, its choices can influence shoe-seekers.  Or is Nordstrom reflecting what its shoppers have already told the stores’ buyers?  The almighty power of the purse—how shoppers are choosing to spend their money–-has probably played a big role here.

Now, the pandemic is unquestionably playing an even bigger role.

The Washington Post covered the changing trends in June.  It noted, “Sales of high heels, loafers and other dress shoes have been tumbling for years, and analysts say the pandemic has turbocharged their demise.”  Sales of men’s and women’s dress shoes plunged 70 percent in March and April.

“High heels are way down,” said Beth Goldstein, a footwear analyst. “The question now is whether they’ll ever rebound. Of course, some women out there are dying to put their heels back on. But I think most of them are saying, ‘I’m never going to wear those shoes again.’ ”

Lately, she said, it’s all about comfort.  Shoe manufacturers are busy creating designs with wider and thicker heels, padded insoles and other athletic touches to add stability and comfort.  Sales of stiletto-shaped heels, she added, dropped 11 percent last year.

“Retailers are recognizing that they’re going to have to rethink what they know,” Goldstein said. “There is going to be a long-term shift.”

Beyond the issue of comfort, let’s remember that high heels present a far more urgent problem.  As the deaths in Riverside demonstrate, women who wear high heels can be putting their lives at risk.  When women need to flee a dangerous situation, it’s pretty obvious that high heels can handicap their ability to escape.

How many other needless deaths have resulted from hobbled feet?

As we celebrate the Fourth of July, I urge the women of America to declare their independence from high-heeled shoes.

If you’re currently wearing painful footwear, bravely throw those shoes away, or at the very least, toss them into the back of your closet.  Shod yourself instead in shoes that allow you to walk—and if need be, run—in comfort.

Your wretched appendages, yearning to be free, will be forever grateful.

[Earlier versions of this commentary appeared on Susan Just Writes and the San Francisco Chronicle.]

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Lipstick, Then and Now

Posted on July 1, 2020 | 2 comments

Let’s talk about lipstick.

Lipstick?

I know what you’re thinking.  Lipstick is not the weightiest topic I could be writing about.  But it’s a pretty good reflection of how our lives have changed since March.

A few years ago, I wrote about something I called “The Lip-Kick Effect.”  At the time, we were working our way out of a financial recession, and many Americans still felt stuck in neutral or worse.  I wondered:  How do we cope?  By buying more…lipstick?

The improbable answer was “Yes.”  Researchers had concluded that the more insecure the economy, the more women tended to spend on beauty products, especially lipstick.  They dubbed this phenomenon the “lipstick effect.”

(I preferred to call it the “lip-kick effect.”  When one of my daughters was quite small, she pronounced “lipstick” as “lip-kick,” and her mispronunciation struck me as an even better moniker for the “lipstick effect.”)

Five separate studies confirmed this hypothesis.  They found that during recessions over the previous 20 years, women had reallocated their spending, deciding to spend their money on beauty products instead of other items.

Why did women confronted with economic hardship seek out new beauty products?  The researchers came up with a host of reasons.  Most significant: a desire to attract men, especially men with money.

Another reason?  Wearing lipstick could boost a woman’s morale.

In that blissful time BC (before Covid-19), I cheerfully admitted that I was a (credit-)card-carrying member of the latter group.  Like many women, I got a kick out of wearing lipstick.  I added that “while uncertainty reigns, we women get our kicks where we can.”

Believing that a brand-new lipstick could be a mood-changer, I bought into the notion that lipstick could make women feel better.  And lipstick was a pretty cheap thrill.  For just a few dollars, I could head to my local drugstore and choose from scores of glittering options.

That was then.  This is now.  A very different now.

In 2020, lipstick has become expendable.  If you’re still staying-at-home, sheltering-in-place, or whatever you choose to call it, most makeup has become expendable.

By April, I had pretty much given up wearing lipstick.  When I wrote about wearing scarves as face-coverings, I added:  “One more thing I must remember before I wrap myself in one of my scarves:  Forget about lipstick.  Absolutely no one is going to see my lips, and any lip color would probably rub off on my scarf.”  [https://susanjustwrites.wordpress.com/2020/04/06/join-the-ranks-of-the-scarf-wearers/]

The same goes, of course, for masks.

A former believer in the lip-kick effect, I now gaze at my collection of colorful lipsticks and immediately dismiss the idea of applying one to my lips.  I’m not alone.  When many of us decided to adopt masks and other face-coverings, sales of lip products fell.  As a market research analyst noted, “Nobody wants lipstick smudges inside their masks” (quoted in The Washington Post on June 15th).  Today, as cases of coronavirus spike in many parts of the country, there’s an increasing urgency to wearing masks, even legal requirements to do so.

I wear a mask or scarf whenever I leave home.  Now, viewing my wide array of all sorts of makeup, I primarily focus on sunscreen and other products that protect my skin when I take my daily stroll.

Instead of lipstick, I’ll apply a lip balm like Burt’s Bees moisturizing lip balm.  For the tiniest bit of color, I might add “lip shimmer.”  But neither of these has the look or feel of a true lipstick.  The kind I used to view as a morale-booster.

For a boost in morale, I now rely on sunshine and the endorphins produced by my brisk walking style.

Wearing lipstick right now?  Forgeddaboutit.….

Now let’s think about lipstick in a new light.  When a vaccine is proven to be safe and effective, and a vanishing pandemic no longer dictates the wearing of face-coverings like masks, will women return to adding color to our lips?  Will we enthusiastically rush to retail establishments that offer an array of enticing new lipsticks?

The answer, for now, is unclear.  Many women, adopting the almost universally accepted cultural norm that lipstick will make them more attractive to others, may happily put their dollars down to buy those bright tubes of color again.  Some women may continue to view wearing lipstick as a morale-booster.  But others, after some contemplation, may decide that buying lipstick and other types of makeup isn’t where we should direct our hard-earned cash.

Maybe at least some of our dollars are more usefully directed elsewhere:  To help our neediest fellow citizens; to bolster causes that promote long-sought equity; to support efforts to combat climate change and polluting our planet; to assist medical research that will cure diseases of every stripe.

The future of lipstick?  Who the heck knows?

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