The Power of Virginia Woolf - Women's History Month

VIRGINIA WOOLF
Photo from the Peabody Museum Exhibit, January 2016

VIRGINIA WOOLF




Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

“When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Bronte who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”

“I told you in the course of this paper that Shakespeare had a sister; but do not look for her in Sir Sidney Lee’s life of the poet. She died young—alas, she never wrote a word. She lies buried where the omnibuses now stop, opposite the Elephant and Castle. Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the cross–roads still lives. She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here to–night, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh. This opportunity, as I think, it is now coming within your power to give her. For my belief is that if we live another century or so—I am talking of the common life which is the real life and not of the little separate lives which we live as individuals—and have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own; if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think; if we escape a little from the common sitting–room and see human beings not always in their relation to each other but in relation to reality; and the sky too, and the trees or whatever it may be in themselves; if we look past Milton’s bogey, for no human being should shut out the view; if we face the fact, for it is a fact, that there is no arm to cling to, but that we go alone and that our relation is to the world of reality and not only to the world of men and women, then the opportunity will come and the dead poet who was Shakespeare’s sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down. Drawing her life from the lives of the unknown who were her forerunners, as her brother did before her, she will be born. As for her coming without that preparation, without that effort on our part, without that determination that when she is born again she shall find it possible to live and write her poetry, that we cannot expect, for that would be impossible. But I maintain that she would come if we worked for her, and that so to work, even in poverty and obscurity, is worth while.”



Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

“When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Bronte who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”

“I told you in the course of this paper that Shakespeare had a sister; but do not look for her in Sir Sidney Lee’s life of the poet. She died young—alas, she never wrote a word. She lies buried where the omnibuses now stop, opposite the Elephant and Castle. Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the cross–roads still lives. She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here to–night, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh. This opportunity, as I think, it is now coming within your power to give her. For my belief is that if we live another century or so—I am talking of the common life which is the real life and not of the little separate lives which we live as individuals—and have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own; if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think; if we escape a little from the common sitting–room and see human beings not always in their relation to each other but in relation to reality; and the sky too, and the trees or whatever it may be in themselves; if we look past Milton’s bogey, for no human being should shut out the view; if we face the fact, for it is a fact, that there is no arm to cling to, but that we go alone and that our relation is to the world of reality and not only to the world of men and women, then the opportunity will come and the dead poet who was Shakespeare’s sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down. Drawing her life from the lives of the unknown who were her forerunners, as her brother did before her, she will be born. As for her coming without that preparation, without that effort on our part, without that determination that when she is born again she shall find it possible to live and write her poetry, that we cannot expect, for that would be impossible. But I maintain that she would come if we worked for her, and that so to work, even in poverty and obscurity, is worth while.”

Walden Pond - Envisioning a New Year -2016

This is my first post in a long time. Sometimes a respite from an activity brings you back to it with heightened awareness. I recall when my children were toddlers and started to learn a new skill, all of their focus would be on it, and they would regress slightly in other areas of their development, until they perfected their learning of the new skill. I suppose to some extent that is what has been happening with me. Over the past few years, even as I have been zealously advocating for my clients worldwide at KLS, from ensuring distributions and recovery for defrauded investors, to litigating against the government or developing cases and companies for many different clients, I have been mastering the area of biotech, creation of a management team, implementing a skill set as a CEO and Chairman of a therapeutics' company, with pre-clinical and clinical development of molecules to help humankind treat a number of rare and chronic diseases.

Today, on this 1st day of 2016, I took a walk around Walden Pond, not so far from my house in Cambridge down a few highways on this crisp, cloudy winter day. I was surprised and also not so surprised to see that others had the same idea to walk in the footsteps of Thoreau on the woodland terrain surrounding this inspiring pool of water to connect with the mystical, real, and sacred philosophy of being. When I got to the parking lot gate to park my car, a bit of a queue had developed because a machine replaced the regular attendant at the gate. The machine indicated I could pay $8 for this visit or $60 for the annual pass. Since I had tried to partake of the natural beauty of the pond several times the last year to no avail, because of long lines to the parking area, I decided to opt for the annual pass... in 7 walks, I will have made the pass worthwhile... and that would be incentive to come back I thought! A New Year's resolution in the making - nothing wrong with a meditative walk once a month!

I changed into my hiking boots putting my running shoes in the car, and kept my hands free to carry the shiny crotchety dark mahogany walking stick I had acquired over the summer at Zion National Park, and a thermos of hot coffee... and I was on my way. I found myself enthusiastic, smiling most of the way to the beginning of the trail - to have the smiles joyfully returned by most passersby, including small children, with a chorus of 'Happy New Year.' There were a good many young couples from other places on the planet, Russians, Japanese, speaking in different tongues. All were friendly.

I crossed the road, stepped down the incline to the start of the trail. And then, there it was, the pond... I took it in - a wide and deep looking pool of dark grey (because of the clouds) surrounded by a fair expanse of sandy beach in the parts closest to me. In Kashmiri, it is a 'nag'- a small body of water that has an eerie depth, evoking a spiritual reverence. I saw people mostly in twos walking down below on the beach - no crowds and lots of distance between the couples. They were coming toward me and walking clockwise. I am always reminded of temple when I walk like this around an object - it is a kind of prakram - a prayer meditation worshipping nature. I stayed higher up on the marked trail covered by slushy snow setting out counter clock-wise. I focused on breath and taking one step at a time - put one foot out after the other and grasped the slush with my hiking boots. It was easy walking, and so I could drink from my coffee thermos, and keep pace with the walking stick. It was cold enough to need the gloves and the hat - I assessed that I was adequately dressed for the weather as I peered out over the water, and sand below me. I was enveloped by the woods and felt no wind. But the tops of my thighs were feeling the cold, and I appreciated this feeling because I wanted to be refreshed and connect with the elements. I was outdoors after all - what was the point if I could not feel the outside.

I glanced to my left and noticed something strange. I was walking around the pond. But I realized, I could not see all of the water. In fact, even if I faced the pond, and looked to my left, a forest covered tract of land had obliterated most of my view of the pond. Over half of the pond was no longer visible to me! I was facing about a quarter of it now - the part that had a red sign indicated there was an abrupt drop in the depth of the water in this nook of the pond. I had always imagined Walden Pond as egg-shaped for some reason. In fact at the start of the trail, that is what I thought I would be walking around, but now I could see the pond had all kinds of twists and turns around its circumference - far from a neat and tidy egg shape. And in that moment it struck me that this was exactly how a vision for a company unfolds. We start as leaders imagining a future based on whatever information we have been provided by founders/scientific and business, based on disclosures and omissions. The imagination then creates a blurry future because the clarity and specifics are missing at this juncture. However, without some vision of a future regardless of the specifics, no one would venture down the trail.

As a leader, I have had to hold the vision and forward path for a biotech company. I began with an idea of what that would be and as I walked along the path of the vision, I would learn things that would involve making shifts and changes in the vision. The focus or meditation involved in growing a company also means that you have to be completely present in the place you are, and in what you are developing. As a result, because of your present developmental focus, you may not be able to see the point at which you started, and in fact things you learn may alter your ability and your team's ability to hold steadfast to the original vision. There is no way to go back to that starting point, except to hold the vision you started from in your memory and craft the vision now taking into consideration the actual journey. It is mapping while you walk the path of development.

Memory, therefore, is a critical aspect of a leader's job. A great aspect of the leader's value comes from holding the company's history - where it came from and using it to map out where it is going. Because eventually the journey has to be able to lead the development back to the place of vision - the start - and assimilate the changes and learning that occurs along the way - to map out the path fulfilled. I passed a young Japanese couple and they were nice enough to take my photo so I could again get a clear picture as to the extent of pond in my view - behind me. It appeared expansive, but there were parts of the pond still out of view. Being present and focused on that vision of the whole, made it clear that the journey involves not being able to see all aspects of the developmental vision at one time, but remembering all of the path trodden, and the vision imagined, at each moment of the journey. Despite the view of the pond behind me, I was so surprised I could not see parts of the water, because Walden Pond is not that big. I repeatedly took time to review where I was in function to how much of the lake (or the whole vision I could see) and at each point around the Pond, I could see a quarter, at the mid point - half the water, and at times where the land would jut out and obscure much of the water, I could see a quarter.

At the three-quarter point in the trail, I thought I might have been able to make out the start, or where I had come from, but no, there were curves and promontories that again obscured my view of the whole. In addition to this, the trail was icy, and the snow hardened and slippery. In my walking meditation, I began to be proud of the way I had thought about the walk before I started it so that I would really enjoy it. I had taken a walking stick for support for the sheer pleasure of it. But in fact it was necessary. A young woman walking on her own had not thought ahead and almost fell on the slippery ice. She applauded me on having thought about bringing support with me. Also, I wanted to make sure to be sustained and had brought my coffee thermos. A young mom with her daughter of 8 or 9, applauded me on having something hot to drink and her daughter followed me on the walk, because she also thought it was a great idea to have brought a hot drink with me. These are great metaphors for fulfilling a company's vision as well. A company's shareholders are its sustenance (or hot drink) and its management team is the support without which the company cannot complete its journey and accomplish its goals.

Thinking I was almost at the end, toward the last bend, I came upon a very slippery patch, and lost my balance. In the journey to fulfill the entire vision, there will be slippery patches and one is lucky if one does not fall. I was lucky and did not fall because my walking stick helped me regain my equilibrium. Again, I thought about the importance of a stellar and loyal management team always there to support you. I was finally able to make it down to the sandy beach and came upon an older mom giving an American history lesson to her high school-age daughter, just as they were discussing USSR and US relations in the cold war. More Happy New Year's were exchanged as I now finally heard the gurgle of small waves of water lapping against the edge of the pond. The sound was like a song... the pond was singing its Happy New Year too.

I moved on to witness a family that had come out to support their young son (an 18 year old, I would say) take off his clothes and run into the water in his bathing suit and swim for about 3 or 4 minutes. His family was ready with a towel when he got out of the water and he wrapped himself immediately. I congratulated him on his feat, and he said it felt like millions of icy pellets hitting him in the water. But it was refreshing and brought in the New Year. The family rejoiced in his courage! He was shivering but proud that he had done what he set out to do.

I had no wish to jump in that pond in the middle of winter. Nevertheless I too had embraced an active and sacred ritual in my winter walking meditation this morning... filled with thought and action, and smiles to strangers from all over the world, all journeying together for a short while in friendship and peace like Thoreau.

After crossing the road back toward the parking lot, a young woman and I both stopped to take a photo of the Pond and a quote by Thoreau on connecting with the mother earth. She was having some trouble taking in the entire poster in her lens, and I helped her shift perspective so the whole poster was in her view. That was also the point of the walk, I thought. "We are a great team," she said. As I walked away, I had dropped my mitts in assisting with the photo shoot. The mother and daughter, who had been discussing American history, came up behind me, alerted me to my loss, picked up the mitts and handed them to me. 'It takes a village,' I said, 'even when we are all grown up.' "But we never really do grow up, do we?" said the mom. I had been contemplating my meditative walk around Walden Pond as a metaphor for a leader's journey to fulfill a corporate vision, and now realized that another little community had developed along the path.

systems - personal, political, legal - a framework for learning in the new year!

I work within the realm of conflict and in the realm of dishonest communication or action, deceit or fraud, and sometimes misunderstanding, to resolve situations that my clients confront so that they can attain their goals - recovery of money; better relationships, peace of mind, justice and fairness etc. The most useful thing that I can do for my clients is to understand them, and to fully understand the situation in which they find themselves. This involves by and large, a great deal of study - a study of the exchange between myself and the client; of the client, and of the people involved and actions taken by the people involved with my client. Here are some fundamentals to retain in the study undertaken: Human beings are complicated... each and every one. How and why? Each of us is a system. A group of us forms another system around an issue or cause, an identity including nationality or ethnicity, or a margin. But as much as we may form systems, systems form us also, through education, through family values or culture, and through the rules created to conform us to particular structures in each country and also internationally. The study undertaken is a study of the various systems involved...to ascertain what similarities, differences, affinities attract the exchanges and actions that have created the situation to the point of conflict or deceit or misunderstanding. Personal systems relate largely to family upbringing and relationships, values, as well as cultural, religious, and educational background. Much of this study will inform a study of the groups to which a person belongs or simply conforms. Law and the rules that structure identity on a state, national or global level can also be linked to personal systems to some extent, but evoke a greater sense of group dynamics, class or power struggles. But how does this help with the development of a case; or with the process that leads us to make a decision relating to adjudication; or to informing and alerting relevant authorities; or to challenging the authorities themselves; or finally if political processes are engaged - to creating the means and mechanisms to shift legal structures on a wider level? I will not move without understanding who I am dealing with, when I speak with a client, without fully understanding what the problem is, and why it is a problem for this particular client. This requires much back and forth, and compassion/empathy for the client - him/herself. It also requires an understanding sometimes of the wider world or system in which the client finds herself as relevant to the problem at hand - for instance the industry or more specifically the corporation in which the client may be a whistleblower; and thereafter the legal or other systems invoked by understanding the conflict at hand and the process(es) required to challenge or target the injustice. I explicate this in such basic terms because it is difficult for clients to understand that the law and lawyering is not simply an exercise of issue spotting and rule application, at least not at KLS. Here the measure of our success is found in the understanding and learning we obtain in the interface/exchange itself of information gathering by speaking with the client, with witnesses, sometimes friends and sometimes others close to the situation, to have a fuller debrief of the conflict and its causes and the impact, for instance - personal, psychological, financial that has been sustained. It occurs to me these paragraphs are worth writing, because too often our clients like the clients of so many other law firms expect that answers will be swift, and the information they provide about themselves and their problem can be sparse. When I do decide to proceed - a great deal of exchange and understanding must take place prior to the development of the file or case, or strategic plan to resolve the problem or conflict. Three years later... our process has become clearer, as it moves to understand the complexes it encounters. I am sure this year will lead to even further understanding of the systems we engage! Happy New Year to all our clients!

Learning from Loss - the changing weather...

It may be ironic to talk about loss as we make way for spring. Spring rites are now playing out around the world. We Hindus just celebrated our festival of colors, Holi, and uncannily the warm weather (global warming or not) thaws out our bones and makes us flex our wares. Like buds sprouting we suffer from an eternal loss of memory of wintry mornings, and become surprisingly present to nature's change. Other loss in life we carry like an old overcoat, torn and tattered, out of the habit formed of attachment. My 22 year old was just watching 'Harold and Maude' for the first time. I remember enjoying watching it in my 20s. I smile at the attitude Maude has to 'attachment' even though she clearly has an issue with it. She seeks to teach others not to be attached to anything, while she clings for dear life to the idea of letting go as she nears 80 years of age... knowing she will soon have to give up the body in which she has lived them.

I work with clients everyday who have encountered difficulty with loss of all kinds, personal, financial, career, business, sexual, life and limb etc. It appears to me that most litigation is a forum to deal with loss that is difficult to overcome without reengaging the adverse party. If I succeed at litigation, it is mostly because I know so much about loss...and how to recover from it. The experience of loss can engender many different reactions: 1. shock - leading to a kind of repetition compulsion (where one needs to replay, or sometimes worse, reexperience the act of losing similar things in order to process the loss); 2. anger - leading to a situation where someone, sometimes anyone, must be blamed and must pay for the loss ... a kind of negative pay it forward (if I have paid, others must too, which is just a different kind of repetition compulsion; a sharing of loss with others even though it is hard to see it that way); 3. desperation - we all have difficulty dealing with people who have stepped over the edge of any kind of equilibrium in response to their loss. They are unpredictable, angry, blaming, sad, but very close to giving up any hope that they can recover, if not the thing lost, at least their own equilibrium; 4. depression - when there is no satisfaction and much has been tried, people will succumb to the pain of loss turning inwards(depending on various internal resources, a person's resilience will be determined here.)

Loss, like all transition, is as much a part of life as the changing weather. Yet I am caught here because I know the feeling. The loss of control. The inability to change the weather. The inability sometimes simply not to get what you want. Last year, my mother underwent a series of operations to save her life and remove a dangerous growth inside her brain. She came through with much ado... needing time for her recovery; however the recovery is not quite as I had hoped and I know that sooner or later (having an inner sense of how long I have) I must get used to the idea that I will have to let go. There is not much, including my own life, I would not give up... I know what she wants and has always wanted for me, the things she would forbid me to give up as much as I would want to, because she worked hard to get me here. She is a trooper and she is doing her best under the excruciatingly difficult circumstances of her life to battle, never complaining as is her way. A doer and leader, not a follower or procrastinator... her strength in the face of fire and nails is painful to experience at times.

There is nothing one can do but admire the spirit and pray and worship all that she is. And so cheeks wet with the surrender required to honor her spirit, body, heart and mind, I attempt to follow in the footsteps of her strength. Those footsteps beckon my calling to my clients all over the world, to ease their discomfort and provide hope of recovery. As melodramatic as the ubiquity of loss may sound, I believe completely that its experience leaves most of us retriggered fundamentally in aspects and ways that have not been studied, possibly critically undermining our ability for productive engagement with systemic solutions. As such, I do find myself providing support of a therapeutic nature through the law that is at times desperately needed. There is no doubt in my mind that even in cases where recovery of the object of loss is not possible (personal loss for instance), recovery of one's equilibrium is still possible and should be sought:) Legal engagement starts to help with this process.

GDK.

A New Year of Transitions -2012

The past year has had its more than fair share of challenges. For my family, health has been a major issue and as we suffer the temporariness of all that is, the battle continues and it is heart-wrenching. Suffering the passage of time and things brings with it certain boons as well. We start to recognize the value of contemplation and meditation. We start to recognize our position in history,within family and within the world. We start to recognize that we are forever in transition, and change is a habit that we need to adopt, before it adapts us (the latter can be a painful process).

So where are we today according to GDK? We are poised to better understand ourselves as we sit on this lonely planet in the cosmos (recently learning that there is hope of another such planet out there with living characteristics similar to ours). We keep pushing ourselves forward to create and deploy technologies to bring more of us closer together politically and economically. We are learning, sometimes the hard way, the real potential for climactic catastrophe, especially as it pounds against human development (Fukushima for instance). We are running out of energy to sustain us all as the human population sees no bounds. We are at a better place to understand how the social, the technological, the scientific, may conflate to create a space for a socio-economic network to connect us all.

What about finance and trade? We have had to confront the hard truth about the gap between reality and talk; paper is paper after all and we cannot be sure about what it purports to represent; and valuation is tricky if it is manipulated. Perhaps it is time to shift gear and make the rules simpler and accessible to the general public; perhaps popular movements like Occupy Wall Street ask for something when they ask for nothing; perhaps the gains toward popular politics in the middle east push political boundaries beyond their own through a global social network. There is a politics of finance and trade as much as there is financial politics, political trade, and a trade in politics/ideology. Developing nations will become developed superpowers, and superpowers will come full circle to understanding the value of interdependence - economic, cultural, and political. Developing nations have provided resources to the developed and now want to retain some for themselves as they seek to become manufacturing powers... but all are worried about being stripped 'dry'... and strategically that is the rub. What resources are left? greenery, water, timber, minerals... they belong to us all and do not need to be fought over; the demarcation line is not the border between countries - it is where my skin touches yours. This is how close we have become but refuse to acknowledge.

Are fraud and corruption things of the past now that whistleblowing is in vogue and wall street reform a ticket to political office? Fraud and corruption are a part of us still and require our vigilant attention. They are no different than lying and stealing... temptations each of us faces every day. The greater the purse at stake, the more chance a person or a group of persons or an institution will be tempted to shirk moral, if not legal, obligation for pecuniary gain. The fact that there is more social technology to warn others or tell on those who defraud others, may not affect the shaming impulse in quite the same way as litigation on behalf of those defrauded. In other words, despite the Dodd-Frank legislative reform incentivizing whistleblowing to the SEC, and the establishment of the SEC whistleblowing office, there have not been many actions, if any taken to date. The conclusion at this point in time is, we at KLS continue to provide a much needed service, and we even attempt to hold governments accountable. The false claims act cases that whistleblowers themselves may take, and gain government assistance to bring, supply another useful tool against fraud.

Some of the answer lies too in reconfiguring the power to frame the debate around issues of valuation so we can all start to participate in order to regain trust in a system of currency. How exactly are value and contribution/resources linked and what currency exhibits that tie? This is one project that I have taken on for 2012 in a multi-faceted approach. Within KLS, it involves outreach to clients to understand better how their various resources can assist in getting maximum recovery for investors while engaging in dialogue to assist the entire web of relationships regain the trust broken by fraudsters and power mongers.

If there is anything, there is hope that we will come closer to finding the answers.. but there is definitely much to do in 2012! I wish you all courage and the love that supports it, and the great deal of energy, and health, needed to elicit your full contribution!

Tipping our hats as he goes

Steve Jobs left quite the impression on me and billions of us on this planet...his brusque management style; his intuitive genius; knowing the right remedy and understanding truly the problem that gave rise to it...perhaps actually creating the problem that preceded the solution he foresaw. Synching the world with his efforts based on his self-synching with a true and whole spirit, he created a magnetic resonance of hope. We can do anything, anything is possible with the self-trust needed to tap into our inner resources and imagination.

Invention, mass marketing of products that have become commonplace... who does that anymore? Products and inventions are the culmination of years of effort of a team of visionaries nowadays... It is surprising that we can owe such creation to one human being. But we have to remember on this earth today exist the Galileo's, Einsteins, Edison's, Curie's etc. all at the same time. Jobs reminds us with his legacy that if opportunity is provided to all, we can overcome many of the burdens that continue to plague us including those attributable socio-economic stratification. Jobs had the vision to see that computers would become a household appliance if not a workplace basic. I have lived through this evolution. Typing on a normal typewriter, I took typing in eighth grade in '75. Once proficient, I thought with my fingertips even back then through Wellesley and my first two law degrees. The modern keyboard really helps speed up thought and its reflection upon the white (or black if that's your preference) of the screen. I revelled in the PC when it came around in graduate school. What did everyone do before 'cut and paste'? Write much better out of necessity or much worse because of editing constraints? Now you can't get through high school without a computer, preferably a Mac, nevermind college.


Jobs also created and saw beauty in simplicity. Leave it to a complicated man to do that. The insides of his beautiful devices, the accessible and transparent programs were reflected in the aesthetic outside of the product. How to appeal to more with sophistication? Elegance for the masses...thin, metallic opaque, or white sheen envelopes over simple iconic clicks learned when accessing the ipod, the mobile music revolutionizer of our era. And this from a man who ate the simplest food, and lived in sparse surroundings based in some non-materialistic ethos (Hindu-Bhuddhist based) focused on the output of his efforts. It wasn't about the money... it's hard to create and do something beautiful if it is about the money after all. Note the cardinal temptation that has seized humanity in the course of this cycle of being. If we are about running after something, then we are hard pressed to create and we lose our beauty; that beauty that only shines through when we are driven to a purpose of whole-scale execution and we become execution itself. Delivering the ultimate product, one to be marveled at as much as it becomes a marvel. I look for that in the legal domain and keep working on it. In this field it is built on trust; client's trust in the delivery of the product and mutual trust in its deliverability and faith that the system will enable the just outcome for those that stand by right not might. So yes, Jobs is inspiring and can be applied!

Then there are those great movies... not just for kids, these technological pioneers transformed the screen into a 3D vision into which we all travelled willingly. Stories that anthropomorphized somehow more realistically the plight and emotional life of animals or toys suspending all disbelief and took us with them into another world. Perhaps these worlds really exist somewhere else in the surreal realm of the cosmic experience Jobs has now entered. Given his eternal drive and ingenuity, I am sure he continues to conquer...

An iconic legacy!

Ten years ago - 9-11

Ten years ago .... That day, I awoke late, off to the 42nd floor of the Conde Nast Building from across the twin towers, in an apartment rented in NewPort, New Jersey. I was sleep deprived all the time in those days. Trying to tackle that second draft of a doctoral dissertation sometime between midnight and 7 or 9 am in the morning when work started again at Skadden, Arps. By the time I got outside my apartment building, evacuations in the buildings around me had already begun... I was late, it was after 9am.

I went straight into the subway station and had the choice of taking either train on most mornings (one went straight into the world trade center, the other to the 33rd street station). This morning I was told that I could not take the one heading into the world trade center. I saw shock on most faces around me, heads shaking, folks trying to figure out what was going on. I had no coffee in me yet (and I ran on it in those days)... but I quickly came to, perked up at the sounds of 'terrorism'. Thinking this was normal New York paranoia, I scoffed and started to ask questions... until screaming started and more bodies streamed into the subway, fearing that the roads outside were not safe. "Another plane", something serious was going on and people needed help. We were not safe. Planes had been flying into buildings. I could not make out if there were misdirected small aircraft (to my mind, these often crashed) that had accidentally fallen or exactly what was going on. As I pieced together the actual threat... I wanted to get on a train and get into work before I could not move anywhere. This was the last train that left that station to 33rd station. Once I got on it, the subways all shut down and nothing could go into, or come out of Manhattan.

When I got up above, complete pandemonium greeted me... people were running in streams through the streets, and lining up at phone booths. I began to cry... and flashed back to a childhood in which bombs went off all around and we huddled into bomb shelters in the backyards at home and at my Aunt's house in Jammu (in the midst of the India/Pakistan war over Kashmir). There was no way to make any sense of this... then or now. When I got to our building on 42nd street, an evacuation was already under way, but I went straight up to my floor anyway. I thought it was the safest place. Having understood better the threat and knowing that the two tallest buildings in the world had been slaughtered taking with them all they contained and all that surrounded them, I thought statistically, it was unlikely we would be hit... my assistant and others around us, were glued to news channels and tried to piece together all that went on. Soon we came to hear two more planes were headed for and crashed short of targets in DC. Brenda, my assistant, also a photographer, took the photos from our perch... while we all filed into a partner's office directly overlooking the tragic undoing/crumbling of the towers as each one slowly fell in a pile of smoke.

All air traffic had now been stopped everywhere. All flights canceled... no chances would be taken now till security could be assured. All planes were a danger. The second set of planes should never have taken off. But like me, authorities were having difficulty facing an invisible enemy. It was attacking without notice (allegedly, as it appears the CIA had some knowledge but like the SEC with Madoff and other cases, did not act on information). Suddenly there were some helicopters and jets flying outside our windows and we frightened that another one was coming for our building. We rushed to the windows to know the truth (prepared for anything on a morning capable of unimaginable atrocity). Fighter jets circled to ensure our safety and helicopters surveyed the city to assess damage and understand the state of the things.

I phoned my children who were at our home just outside Boston(having been sent home from school) with my mother who was minding them. Friends called from all around the world to check in and make sure I was okay. What became more apparent in these conversations was that there was a targeted attack with particular goals, the first two those towers. But others unfolding before our eyes.

That day, I grew more and more afraid for my children, because of the terrible realization that there was a Boston/New York connection here. These planes were the ones I was taking most every week back and forth between these two cities while I worked at Skadden. I remember Brenda and I looked at each other, and she indicated I could easily have been on one of those planes coming in from Boston. What was even scarier Osama Bin Laden's family apparently lived in and around Boston, and rumors of possible poisoning of water around Boston were circulating. My children were scared and I was not with them. Not a good situation. I stayed with a colleague that evening in Manhattan, we did not sleep. We were glued to the TV for news and went out to greet restaurant owners and others in the middle of the night... it seemed no one could sleep and everyone needed community. The stench from the explosions, the tragedy, the brutal attack/act filled the air, and worry, pain and sadness was palpable in all the spaces between.

At some point that night, I made a decision to leave, and not return to work until I was ready. I simply needed to leave. I thought it was not good for me to stay in this place, and that I must be with my children. So at noon when the subway opened up, I got on, and did not look back. I knew that roads heading out of NYC would be clogged. But I made my way back to Newport, NJ, and to the nearest rent a car and drove without stopping till I got home to our place (few people knew actually existed) surrounded by 8 acres of woods. And there, I felt safe and able to breathe again. And my children and I, and my mom talked and cried, and worried and pained together about this catastrophe. Knowing full well from our time in Kashmir, that these things, these terrible, irreconcilable things happen, across all borders, boundaries, breaching all of our understanding of security and trust. Kashmiri Pandits, and all real Kashmiris (Muslim and Hindu) had been violated by and dealing with these same mercenary forces of terrorism coming over and disrupting life and killing the Hindus (I lost 3 family members to this same hatred in Srinagar) and now it had made its way here to the U.S., a place we thought so removed from this violence, taxing imagination. How, when, why did this conspiracy start? Fundamental to human history and action are cycles. What cycle(s) of action and reaction did this shock belong?

I also understood in tearful frustration that no law firm, no lawyer, no law can stop this from happening. And if there was anything that began my quest to try to understand and learn why, how and what our regulating and enforcing systems of rules are about, it was the fact that I originated in the cradle of such violence in Kashmir. And here I was on the precipice of completing my doctorate but no closer to understanding how I could do something about it. The damage was done and being done all around me and I along with the world stood helpless against it.

I realized that in that most vulnerable moment, when all has been lost, we can only recreate and rebuild by regrouping into each other, into family and into community, with love and care, nothing else. One brick at a time, one namaste at a time, one handshake at a time, one hug at a time, the tears must be shed, and shed, so that changes can occur in each one of us, in our families and in our communities to help us deal with the shock of this horror. The ripples of that love and care will not only transcend and honor those lost, and the losses we bear, but also forge the foundations of a new transformative trust capable of rebuilding the systems needed to change the nature of humanity so that such hatred (an unnecessary crutch for our insecurities) is amputated from the wholeness of our being.

Creating Community in the Hospital Waiting Room

My mother was in the hospital for almost four months - till late March. It has been, mildly put, a trying time. For a week, after her third brain surgery, she did not come to or respond. All boundaries were transcended in that time. Emotions, time, body, work, self, other, all were a blurr. All that counted was that she came to. In that time most of all, but other times too, close friendships and giving surfaced so easily between the families waiting in the hospital,for good news. There were four families in particular that were tough cases, three tumors and one stroke. Ours was a tumor. And it was ours, we carried it with our mother, grandmother, wife, sister. The family came together, unsure and awkward at first, but poised in moments of action.

So who was there, a Vietnamese man of 78, a Jewish Swiss fellow of 55, and a Phillipino woman in her early 70's. Both the Vietnamese man and the Phillipino woman wore papery thin skin, gaunt, their faces pushing forward pronounced cheek bones and eyes smiling filled with tenderness and worry all at the same time. The Vietnamese man, gentle and watery with his frailty, exhibited too a profound spirituality and empathic experience. The Jewish Swiss fellow, round and jovial with red hair and a balding head, wore a yamukah (skull cap) in black, and spoke with his heart. His wife had previously been operated for the same condition, brain tumor and he was a veteran. He lit up when he learned I had worked in Geneva at the UN. And then painstakingly, he confirmed for me the positive signs of my mother's responses to the operation when there was no way to know. And even after his wife had been discharged, he came back to check on me and to see how my mother was doing. By then she was responding verbally, Thank God. The Phillipino woman, gripped by the most difficult situation, her husband's ambivalent responses to treatment for his stroke, left her at times defeated, but her nursing background gave her the experience to persevere. She had been through this before, when one of her sons similarly suffered from a stroke due to an aneurism early in his life, and she had to care for him ever since.

Amazed at the resilience of the human spirit as I looked around me, I could not fathom how these people had been through what they had, supporting their loved ones, family members and others, day after day in a life that met with so many challenges. Was there so much love in this world? If there was, how did it elude the others? Those who took the wrong path, a path of treachery, betrayal, abuse, and criminality. It was hard to put both together on the same planet - these people of ultimate maturity, and those others who like children steal from others, or trample on their hearts and souls without care or regard.

Like them, I too would be tested. In those days and weeks when my mother's fate rested in the hands of the intensive care medical team, there were days when only tears would stream down my face, and I could not eat or sleep. But these great souls looked after me at night and during the day. Brought me food and drink, told me to sleep, and more importantly told me to smile, so that things could get better. Staying in the hospital day and night... I grew close to them and let their silence and talk nourish my spirit to a height I did not think possible. I let them lead me to a place of belief, shelter, and light where anything was possible, including the miracle of healing and strength that it was incumbent on me to transmit to my mother. In addition, hundreds of clients and colleagues wrote their prayers of strength too... an amazing testament to the kind of community that can develop not only around crisis, but around the empathic resonance of human bonds and ties that we all understand - that of mother and child.

The Commodification of Disaster

A tsunami in Indonesia, earthquake in the Himalayas, a sheet of rock splitting open the middle of Haiti, the BP oil spill, and yet another quake creating Tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan... the foundation to the risk that in legal doctrine is known as Force Majeure. It is either my imagination or force majeure is starting to hold a more coveted place in our risk management strategies when it comes to legal and asset management. Deal agreements of all kinds will and are being affected and should undergo some overhaul as we confront transactional disputes and cooperation alike moving forward. I am told the earth's axis is shifting, the planet rotates a bit faster, the day is growing, however infinitesimally, shorter. The plates on the earth's surface are growing somewhat closer together, adjusting to the changes set in motion, so to speak. Other plates are growing closer too... note the middle east uprisings. Political and social plates are sliding us to new terrain slipping tensions into new crevices and connection.

We humans are creators, mimicking the earth. Fictions unimaginable, sprout from our psyches onto a page, a structure, an institution, a piece of paper or metal printed upon, known to the world to represent a measure of worth that we all believe in, or at least, we are all suppose to believe in until that fateful moment we are overwhelmed by disaster. That fiction is money - currency - even gold, used to value a segmented series of actions, products, processes, services, commodities, resources. What happens to the value of oil when it is spilled? What happens to the value of micro-chips when the plant in which they are manufactured disappears? What happens to an entire industry, like the nuclear industry, when signs of its holocaust
are visible on the horizon? We have created markets which trace exactly what happens, which symbol -stock or other- representing that commodity rises and which one falls?

Humans need security and hence, covet stability and hate risk. Risk is not
rewarded unless of course you are able to predict it and can show such prediction by shorting the particular commodity or representation of the same. If the timeline of disasters continues, more and greater reward will bestowed on those who can predict. A new industry of seers will erupt as in the days of old. "Mad Money" is only the beginning. Religion - even newer kinds - may hold a stronger grasp on our hearts and minds. And what would become of the value of disaster itself within our current fictions? Think a little about Project Redd to undo decades of deforestation in the Amazon, or the staggered carbon pollution created by industrial revolution and its parade of development, and the new markets created in response. If India and China thought about it long enough, yet another carbon or development market specifically geared to their situation would sprout. We are valuing at least man-made disasters (even as we are making them) over a longer timeline quite highly... highly enough to form new markets of healing, kind of like the charitable markets of aids, cancer, malaria etc... in the pharmaceutical world that are double edged. The edges are helping a larger segment of humankind with the cure, and the nearer form of financial
commodification necessary to bring in the money close to the dichotomy between brand and generics. Disease is after all a form of disaster.

War is another form. Uprisings like those blanketing across the middle east present a case in point. These commodify the sale of consultancy in political arrangements, the support and identification of opposing parties, the formation of parliamentary and other democracies, the establishment of democratic constitutions. Political and violent upheaval, like the kind involved in the drug trade, assist us in commodifying arms and the black market of illegal substances, in some ways assuring the outlawed nature of both. South American and Mexican governments bandy about with American and Chinese supports, formal and informal of their politics, their illegal industries, and their corruption and illicit assets. The people in these countries cry out for stability in their currencies, government programs that might support their multitude of poor citizens. The instability created in these countries is in some cases temporary with a permanent structure that promises more freedom to the peoples being governed if not more prosperity. The prosperity for middle east people may in fact take longer as assets and resources are fought over on a higher political terrain between the strongest powers - the most useful and prized of these assets being oil not democracy. In other cases, the instability is more permanent as it sustains corruption in local governments while the stronger powers reign over the resources, distracting the locals with short term self- interest often at the expense of their own people.

In fact the commodification of disaster on the one hand belies an old tale, an old story in which disaster (in the guise of political upheaval) acts as just another distraction to enable the monopolizing of far away resources; and on the other infiltrates our risk adjustment analysis and increased need for in/reass/urance from sub-prime crisis to Japanese tsunami.

Conceptions of Belonging and Legal Relationships In a Changing World

I don't know where my home is... in my mother's womb, in my self-created house, within my family unit, my academic or professional community, city, town, state or country? It is increasingly up for grabs as I connect to others far away and disconnect from myself and my immediate present through my crack-berry, telephone, computer. Confusion is resulting not only in my own life, but in the lives of my clients and colleagues. Non-US investors into world-wide ponzi schemes are connected to others thousands of miles away and to ostensible U.S. protections, protections that dissipate as soon as fraud and loss are uncovered. One kind of loss has a way of resulting in other losses...strangely enough, aspects of belonging we thought we had can vanish with the wind. But loss engenders human connection too, at least on informal levels. Formality does not appear to befriend loss... requiring the insertion of litigators; requiring changing interpretations of existing legislation in view of changed circumstance.

To me, home is a conception of belonging, a form of acceptance of self as is, recognizing its fragility, strength, and the weaknesses attached to a specific spirit embodied uniquely in one human form. Where do I feel I really belong? Does anyone really care what I believe about my own sense of belonging... care in the sense of validating that belief with some formal power within the larger community so that obligations and rights can issue from my own sense of belonging? Or must I be done to? I am born into a family, into a town or city, into a country and told what I believe and indoctrinated into the program of a specific country, unless of course, I am a military brat or have otherwise been carted all over the world through any number of scenarios mongrelizing my programming. I am allowed to cast a vote if I happen to be a citizen of the country I also happen to live in (a privilege I have not owned for some 17 years now) so I can impact the rules made by legislators at the various levels of my belonging.

Other conceptions of belonging (literature on the "commons") address the widening meanings of community and arguably widening rights or possibility of impacting those rules and rights but not necessarily the shrinking and loss sustained in self. As my sense of belonging changes, I lose parts of my self as much if not more than I gain. Take the role of technology I touch upon above. For that matter, consider how much more I touch cold hard steel and keys on a board these days than fruit, skin, heat attached to another human or animal... does that change what/where I may sense my belonging. I belong in my head much more than in my skin? How do I connect now? In the same way or differently?

I chat/skype/call with others far away and sometimes I conduct whole transactions with people I have never met... investing thousands of dollars with them, even my entire life savings, often counting on other espoused experts (advisers) to counsel me and tell me that my money is insured, protected by government agencies. Perhaps the dollars are the real connective tool, formal in the sense of trust represented by the guaranteed exchange, often even connected to the spiritual or a higher power (note 'in God we Trust' or symbols of monarchs and inspirational figures). Money lost and won, connects us to others across borders. Professionals too can be positioned to create communities and transactions in a positive way. I find myself for instance at the center of community creation through value based and integrating litigation that assists in the processing of grief and loss toward a place of hope and eventual recovery validating the experience of belonging of clients around the world connected by fraud.

There are rules that allow for these fraudulent transactions to take place, agencies placed in positions of oversight, managers emboldened by government backing and support because they have attracted the funds necessary to be considered significant. Technological advances in place allow these connections to take place, but also allow innocents to fall prey to sociopathic predators. The Madoffs and Stanfords of the world are phantoms devoid of spirit and heart, leeching off families, elderly and innocents for the sole purpose of sustaining themselves and their unending appetite for material gain. The widening of a heart based commons (which includes legitimate rights and obligations of law-abiding individuals and entities), based on these same technological advances supports these financial vampires' cross border empires too. Clearly I have a problem seeing such predatory behavior as some attempt at regulatory arbitrage. Any support of such criminal behavior by countries denying protections to innocent cross-border investors condones and creates pariah models for upcoming generations (perhaps we should take note of the increasing number of vampire based TV shows).


Inevitably and from the rooted outset, home represents stability, familiarity, a certain exchange of power and comfort too... and involves one's heart. Formal and informal rules are integral to the exchanges of the home. Home does not need borders... just as one's family can extend to close friends, lovers, close colleagues, and even pets... home can extend to all the places where close and significant ties and contacts have been placed. The trust placed in the extension into such significant ties warrants a mutual recognition and assertion of one's rights in those other lands.

Love and the Law - Celebrating Mothers!

As we near the holidays, wish each other well, think a little more about giving and sacrifice, and the passage that the new year will bring, it seems appropriate to think back to when and where it all began - our mothers. We were all formed in the womb of her care (along the spectrum that that special care can connote for each of us, of course). The significance of those nine months and the birthing process is immeasurable; the later bonds created and dependence established - unfathomably formative of all other relationships; the further un/reliability exponentially impressed into personality, into the sense of in/security each of us projects and lives and experiences in life, work, and play. Mothers then, at least in part, create for us a system of familiarity, care, love, bonding and relating, if not so much more. Systems by definition are premised on a set of rules and so mothering is our first brush with the law. If we are lucky, these laws of our origin are the laws of love and compassion and not hate.

I have been blessed with understanding the law of mothering to include inner fortitude, complete sacrifice, equality, acceptance, such compassion for the other as to accept brutal punishment, incisive brilliance of the kind that beckons the stars to appear all along the profound and strategic cut created by her thought, love and unquestioned devotion, and finally the innumerable mistakes she has made so I could not forget the humanity of which the rest was born. In my turn I have tried to correct some of those mistakes, making others as a consequence. Letting her push me to be no less than my brothers and accept nothing I could not give in return; to think more of the possibilities born of my own imagination and the love fed me than the limited reality born of possibilities created by those who went before me. And with each passing year, to know that I will speak to her almost every day (or not if we do not get along), the ability to yell and scream at each other and to love each other in a glance, to cook with each other, to speak about anything and everything that concerns the world, the men in our worlds, our children - what has changed and what remains the same, to learn still from her how to run my business(es) for she has always harbored the entrepreneurial spirit without the opportunity to express it, except through me. And her earnest and forceful righteousness and sense of fairness; or inherent compassion and pragmatism at which I still marvel for I have seen it in few other people, except maybe my daughter, who so takes after her grandmother.

I have had blessings bestowed on me in the past couple of weeks of being close to the birth of a baby girl of a close friend perilously and prematurely born this week, and simultaneously hearing of the reappearance of a brain tumor in my own mother. You can understand as a writer I have no choice but to write this out. Somehow this young and old life are related through me and I can sense that each has an incredibly strong spirit - old and courageous. Regardless of age, these lives must be strong in the face of life’s physical limitations, and overcome the challenge their bodies present, the imperfect understanding of medical technology, relying on more than just science, but in addition on the energy of care and love their doctors, friends and family provide and focus upon them.

I think too about the fragility with which love comes and goes…the care, the patience, impotence and courage it demands of us in all moments but especially in moments of need, in moments of fear, in moments that most test our equilibrium…and it makes me question its rules. How can so much be expected of us? How can such complexity be formed in one breath taken in and expelled? What is a feeling when it is weak and then when it is strong? Can it be called by the same name? Is language the limitation, or the intellect’s ability to fathom emotion? Is there a rule to capture and govern that feeling to do our bidding so the complex rush is more palatable? Where will the caregiving courage come from to overcome this emotional challenge bred by the interdependence characterized by the closest and strongest bonds of mother and child? We are of course calling up our earliest and most primal self-sacrificial impulses, learned from none other than our mothers.

And whereas we take good care of babies, newborns even premature ones, bestowing on them the law of maternal sacrifice (whether it comes from Mom, Dad, or Doctor), how do we rate on this law of reciprocal sacrifice for our mothers? When it comes to pregnant women, we allegedly fare poorly in the U.S. behind countries like Serbia and Kuwait, for instance. “Marsden Wagner, former director of Women's and Children's Health at the WHO, writes in his 2006 book Born in the U.S.A. that "in the United States, at least half of maternal deaths are not reported anywhere ... and that with adequate medical attention, close to half of these women need not have died." (from the article “No Country for Mothers”; http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=no_country_for_mothers). As for tumors and cancers, brain tumors are the tenth most common cause of cancer death in women in U.S.(http://www.cancer.net/patient/Cancer+Types/Brain+Tumor?sectionTitle=Statistics). That being said…statistics do not relate the exceptional character and spirit that forges forth from a deep survival instinct of which we may be intimately aware in our own families, in our mothers and daughters, nor do they express the spirit of our own loving energy to care and support recovery in those who require our sacrifice.

As we close this year then, perhaps we can all evolve in ourselves a deeper resolve to be governed by the law of sacrifice we have learned from that primal bond so we may celebrate and support all the mothers in our lives!

From abuse... toward a law of compassion

Throughout his and herstory,in disparate ways we have witnessed through others and our own souls the abuse of power, a cycle perpetrated by those who govern, and sometimes simply by those who hold something over someone else - physical prowess, economic force, anger, innocence lost. That simple act of sadism (of which each of us is capable even as tears fall and there is recognition of the act exercised) in which one human being makes the decision, however conscious or unconscious, that it is appropriate to hurt someone else by misappropriating or injuring their wealth/property, their livelihood, their body, their emotions/heart or their mind requires in the perpetrator and victim, a multitude of formative actions and reactions. In cases of abuse of power by factions of a community against another, or even by entire communities against other communities, the multiplicity of such formation, requiring the sadistic leadership to prime and handle the conformist ripple to affect a community of aggression as we have seen in numerous genocides, slaughters, wars and conquests of varying types, is staggering.

All the more when these formative actions and reactions cause systemic ripples within our everyday institutions, sometimes institutions in which we seek most to place our trust, like police forces turned corrupt, or regulatory watchdogs like the SEC watching porn instead of acting in accordance with their mandate, or the media/press publicizing only opinions they support instead of required news unbiased and non-political. But where does all this start? How do we become part of some large conformist wave of abuse? What of our own agency in this? How many of us look around and really see what is going on and if it has gone awry? How many of us think before we act when we know we are acting not out of love, or business, or occupational mandates, but out of anger,or out of a sense of leverage over others out of some economic, occupational, regulatory, or other advantage.

The expressions of such abuse of power- the jailing of innocents/innocence, the ignorance of evil, the lack of accountability of governing institutions to their charges, corporate expansion that engenders illegal conduct victimizing the public at large including the government(s) chosen to represent it - speak volumes to the resonance of micro action at macro levels. There are examples at different locations on this spectrum between micro and macro...Only today I heard from a 70 year old taken for a good portion of her life savings by a financial advisor, who not only swindled her, but made her out to be the perpetrator so that she is in a battle with a large financial institution he told her he represented, and that institution has now bankrupted her... despite the knowledge the illegality was committed by the intermediary while the legal system inured to such tragedy processes what appears to be criminal behaviour. Another person related to me that a fund he knows is providing evidence in the investigation of yet another financial institution, and yet the media leak of this evidentiary cooperation has led it to lose customers who are confused about their lawful participation in catching culprits. We have all watched Madoff, Stanford and others commit their unfathomable frauds on the public. We have watched banks on which we relied shrivel up and die only to be picked up by others for nothing while the public continues to be serviced in the style to which it has become accustomed...and tidal waves of debt wash out the financial underpinnings of entire nations on the other side of the pond.

We also have been shaken not so long ago under the attack from above on the World Trade Center, running in the streets toward Times Square on that fateful day, not so unlike the uproar raised by another war in 1965...retreating into the bunker in the backyard...the bunkers transformed into ominously targeted skyscrapers in Times Square. The primitive anger, strategic economic upheaval, communal uprising, border crossings, human traffic/king, migrations, both organic and designed...the aesthetics of control, neat and efficient. Lest I forget corporate, personal, and national transgressions upon the only home we have, this earth. Where does it all take us? To a sadistic impulse driven by all that is taken from us; or towards the expansive impulse to reform, process, reflect, integrate, and move toward compassion not out of a political or punitive command, but from some place of foresight and reckoning? Do we seek instead to take care of ourselves, and others, perhaps? We judge ourselves after all when we judge another. What do we learn? What is the best law of compassion, perhaps compassionate accountability we can put in place to govern ourselves and our children?

Whistling while you work and getting paid for it!

After a summer hiatus on my writing, I am itching to get back to the keyboard and blow! And just in time too... as you may have gathered from our KLS website, reform abounds. And the potential for successful communication of the messages rung at the bell of governmental ineptitude and incompetence, perhaps even distraction hangs in the air with the passing of the financial reform act. Chief among the sections of interest is one on Whistleblowers. Not only are rewards that will finally be paid underscored (so little has been previously paid out), for those assisting the SEC with its job in impugning those violations that lead to actions against their perpetrating institutions and individuals, the slate is drawn up with some of the process necessary to a successful resolution of such investigations in the interest of state and whistleblower alike. The rest is still to come in the form of rules to be drafted by the SEC. Whistleblowers whose assistance leads to an action against offenders stand to not only be respected and not ignored, but to gain 10-30% of the penalty meted as a reward. What is more, they are to gain special protections where they may experience retaliation if they are insiders within the offending institution.

What does this mean? The message has been transmitted that whistleblower tips and complaints are an efficient mechanism to trigger governmental action. Whistleblowers are deserving of special protections because they are inherently at risk from their employers and others for the courageous actions they shoulder in order to affect changes in individual and systemic offensive and illegal behavior. And it means much more than that too. Two parties that started out on opposite sides have been enmeshed in a dance that is finally provided the music to choreograph change that is real and tangible. Out of a cacaphonous display of disparagement and anger, and earnest structured critique from private and public quarters, now at least on paper, a possibility for transformation has emerged.

This movement toward joining what you cannot beat is the kind of awakening (modest for now until we see it in action and the reality sinks in) we push protagonists into experiencing if we are novelists - even more so when confronted by systematic public milestones of the lessons learned smacking us in both congressional reviews of the IG's reports, and in actions taken, however suspicious against larger institutions. The display is convincing indeed, but do we believe? Has the faith been restored? Only time will tell.

GDK.

The polluting spill... tapping into the unnatural and its financial consequences

Just in case we were not fully steeped in the mire of human catastrophe with the undoing of our financial fictions, an oil company taps wrecklessly into a substrate that has been brewing a concoction burned to create heat, run our vehicles, factories etc and literally blows its top. In the process, the oil company may also have blown itself financially. It is small wonder that an exercise as unnatural, 'artificial', human-made as drilling thousands of feet to reach the muck that is also known as "black gold" causes the very human-made reactive phenomenon of lawsuits to arise. I am speaking of the BP oil spill, and referring now to the lawsuit filed by the New York Pension fund against BP for investment losses.(1.)
Tragedy is not profitable for almost anyone (I'm excluding those sent in to clean up), and a fiasco like this one is bound to rack up damages not only in favor of investors sustaining them, but nature, tourists, fisherfolk, millions of ordinary people who flock to the beauty of the Carribbean throughout the year. All of these are also investors, perhaps the more innocent ones since they did not necessarily seek to make money from the extraction that went awry.

Our planet has evolved over 4.6 billion years (according to various radiometric dating techniques) and its layers of evolution hold great mysteries stored like a library of information about what came before us and how it was assimilated into the mother from which it sprang. The BP oil spill is an interesting interchange of law and science/nature (not trying to conflate science with nature here, just suggesting that our study of nature these days veers to the scientific). On the scientific side, BP like other oil companies has been enabled by technology, also developed through scientific study, to extract part of the evolutionary core of our planet, part of the common patrimony of all humanity, I believe, for its own gain.

What is oil?

"In the leading theory, dead organic material accumulates on the bottom of oceans, riverbeds or swamps, mixing with mud and sand. Over time, more sediment piles on top and the resulting heat and pressure transforms the organic layer into a dark and waxy substance known as kerogen. Left alone, the kerogen molecules eventually crack, breaking up into shorter and lighter molecules composed almost solely of carbon and hydrogen atoms. Depending on how liquid or gaseous this mixture is, it will turn into either petroleum or natural gas. So how long does this process take? Scientists aren't really sure, but they figure it's probably on the order of hundreds of thousands." (www.livescience.com)

Much of what this earth has made, it has the power to unmake even while exploiting us as its instrument. Certainly, this substance and the layers that sit beneath us all, belong to all of us and have done so for thousands of years as the substance was percolating into its current state. What is more, the extraction subtracts a layer from under all of us. And when one of us messes up, it hurts all of us. It is for this reason, this universal impact caused by the reckless use of technology for financial profits that do their own kind of damage, such tragedy must exact steep financial and other penalties. Complete sanitation of the area impacted, specific performance restoring this area and space into its original magnificence, the people whose day to day lives and livelihoods are debilitated also made whole, perhaps even the fish and ocean life can be replanted to replace what has been lost.

For those of us not yet convinced that polar caps are melting and the need for green solutions to our burgeoning energy needs is urgent, we have found another reason to embark upon clean solutions. There is nothing like a dirty oil spill to help us understand that clean renewable resources like the wind and sun (even if initially expensive) are far more cost-effective in the long run. They ensure at least some possibility that our grand children will see an earth remotely resembling the one we have enjoyed. Cleaning up is necessary not only in the financial realm where a new ethic of clean hands must be regulated and sought, a clean earth fueled by clean energy must source our light!






1. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100624/us_nm/us_newyorkstate_bp

The Nature vs. Nurture of Economic Reform

Left to its own devices,the economy like any other projection of human survival is based on the laws of nature (perhaps the jungle), but when reviewed and tempered with thought, reason, and the needs of humanity at large, we begin to nurture an integrated vision of what is required to control those natural instincts or impulses. I have watched with some curiosity and pride the recent hearings before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. Elsewhere I have written and spoken of the cycles of economic exchange between laissez-faire and integration, and I see yet another great example of this integrative process through the adoption by the Obama and other administrations today, of taskforces and commissions created to study the various issues that underlie both the causes of the financial crisis and possible solutions to it.

In fact, there is little doubt in my mind that this an 'electrifying time' (as my mentor Martha Minow, Dean HLS, puts it) of nurturing oversight and involvement of certain democratic ideals. Where Obama insists on certain policies, he is checked left and right (the allusion is to political parties and to the randomness of critique as well). Note the ordeal overcome with regard to health care. Yet on healthcare, we did not see a wholesale passing of one vision, as some of us would have cared to see, but a hodgepodge created out of the democratic ideal, so that what was finally passed was created out of a cultivation of representative policy. I am still and will always be shocked by the outspoken natures, voices, wallets of America. But there is no denying the power that underlies the many faces of this democracy.

On the economy, we see some great minds and spirits take up their positions on this new Inquiry commission (not McCarthyist in the least) that earnestly asks to understand what went wrong and why; where the blame lies not to castigate and crucify but to figure out and build what is necessary, with a view to strengthen the system. There is an admission that we did not know what we were doing or getting into, and those who perhaps were in a position to predict, need to be restrained from crossing the lines of conflicting interest that may arise. In this, I remark upon that little piece of news that certain Republicans have called for an investigation of the timing of the SEC/government's investigation into Goldman Sachs' various conflicts and the large rewards emanating from one of their conflicting bets. This bipartisan effort insists we note that there are watchdogs of watchdogs of the watchdogs. In order to build confidence in a new regime, we must recognize that there is little chance now that we will not get it right.

In a study of the 'shadow banking system' former CEO's Cayne and Schwartz explain that there was no reason for Bear Stearns to go under when looking at their books so some elements in the market (possibly bigger fish than them) must have thrown them under the bus first (ate them up?) in a large shorting scheme. If you watched the testimony, did you not raise an eye and question it? What were the rules? Did Cayne and Schwartz not live by the same rules? Had they not shorted other smaller fish previously? And even when they were fighting for survival, did they not do others in? I am thinking about the investors, the small retail, consumer, investors... without whom no fish can gain any weight in this largest of American ponds. If anyone needs help and protection, it is these folks who are not in the same game as the sharks, barracudas, rays etc. I am speaking of guppies here! The ones who get swallowed whole but who sustain the system with their volume.

I am reminded of the sharks council in Finding Nemo: the sharks who attempt to curb their deeply imbedded natures by not eating the little fish, but lose all control at the first sniff of blood. Is it possible to control these large fish, and the instincts and nature upon which they have been built simply by erecting a new set of rules and regulations? Perhaps a short circuiting of the nature itself is in order? But then do we not want the natural instincts to continue their 'progression' and 'development' of the system and money-making? Do we want to simply curb some of the appetite or provide for a certain largesse given the larger humanity becoming involved in the system? Where multi-nationals are involved, employees and assets supported and sustaining the corporate body world-wide, what transnational reforms will refine and repair the engine to act and perform according to a value system that is both highly efficient, and at the same time, ethically responsible to all its constituencies.

Nature turns out to be mostly selfish in the interest of survival. It is nurture that incorporates the discipline of magnanimous humanity. You may not really learn about sharing until you get to kindergarten, even though you may have brothers and sisters at home. The fact is a family comprised of brothers and sisters can still live according to the laws of the jungle so as to not blunt the instruments of survival lest one or many of them do(es) not make it. The family in that regard is an incubator for honing our natures as we prepare for the outside world. Yet, togetherness bred within family (also the seed for community) comes out of a different impulse for survival, for example where group labor is necessary for common survival, and one that beckons feelings of gratitude, bonding, and love. In our communities through tools like schooling, these feelings are expanded to respect for others, service for the larger good, fairness, and justice, so that sharing of wealth and resources can take place. This ensures that some do not survive while others are left to die. Why? Because when that meteor hits your town, city or country, only your 'new found' brother or sister on the other side of the earth may be left to tell your story, by then - our story, to those who come after us! What story would you like them to tell?

The EU Currency Crisis - Uniting or Dividing?

I use to love that song, "united we stand, divided we fall." I don't know if you remember it. The chorus continues 'and if we ever find our backs against the wall... we'll be together." Well it comes to mind now as I think about the Euro, that economic glue that is supposed to bind together tribes, more recently nation-states,that have traditionally been at war with each other through so much of history. When the economic crisis hit the world, my brother (the financial prophet whose counsel I take very seriously on such matters) indicated, if I didn't hear him wrong, that the Euro would be okay for a little while but pretty soon, the European Union (EU) nations would start bickering. Various countries within the EU would fare poorly and the rest of the countries would no longer want to carry them. In the EU's case, if that is what happens, a united Europe would fall back on the nation-state tradition to rescue it and go back to life as usual. Instead of 'falling' it would probably stand divided.

The EU has been an interesting and advanced experiment in learning what it means to live, relate, and try to grow together in close quarters as countries, cultures, languages collide but decide to provide the room required by respect for sovereign peoples. The Euro, the economic language crafted to facilitate exchange erasing borders between these countries, was a kind of half-way point between erecting a structure that envisaged one nation-state with multiple new municipalities (each previously a nation-state of its own) and the formal bi-lateral trade agreements that have been springing up in the last few decades around the world.

There is no question the EU form is cutting edge politico-international restructuring. And we are all still waiting with baited breath to see if this can work because we know that technology is pushing us closer together and we need to develop forms of co-existence that enable us to recognize our increasing interdependence, co-dependence, and dependence on each other. This much is true, even if we do not fall when divided, it is increasingly difficult for us to stand alone. Yet it would be paradoxical if the Euro, the very symbol of the glue binding these EU countries together in a new form of international unity caused the splitting up of its various constituent parts.

When we decided as a world to create and favor economic fictions that facilitate merchant trade over the barter system, or even over the idea that we would in fact eat what we killed, or farmed (cultivated), we were also thinking about getting closer to the many people we could not see with our own eyes as human populations grew and we invented new ways or found our long lost brothers and sisters in distant lands who introduced us to new ways of making and then earning our daily bread, rice, noodles etc. We also found the people who represented the products that others may have created but did not travel the oceans to sell -- brokers, merchants, traders, intermediaries... the beginning of white collar business. Into all of this, the idea of one form of value to ascribe to all products and goods exchanged could not be avoided and 'gold' was the easiest, most common and highest form of currency for such exchange. Since then the American dollar has been accepted as such common currency, the standard bearing value that every national currency compares itself to.

With the unification of the European nation-states and the development of a common EU currency, some of us have been allowed to dream a little of that time when the world will join in one economic effort, albeit loose-knit, joined by that certain economic thread that allows individuals to encounter each other in a world marketplace as fluid as an internet chatroom or a skype line. What is interesting is that communication technology is a more literal form of getting together. When I talk to my clients over skype from their offices or homes thousands of miles away, either we have a good connection and we are able to communicate, or we cannot and then we try again as long as we both have the intention to do so. Not so for an economic currency, another tool to engage in exchange. The Euro is not just a symbol of the European Union, it is a common form of valuing the various economies of the EU. As such, it can be the tool that divides; that makes some people, even entire nations, feel they have less than their EU neighbors and for those neighbors to feel they are better, greater, and to see clearly that they have more. You don't have to be an EU nation to go through that experience. Our economic fictions have facilitated our exploitation of our distant brothers and sisters for our own gain, and then to use that gain to belittle, exoticize, and 'colonize' those others. It is just a little less palatable to treat our neighbors that way when we have come to adopt them into our own tribe... hence, creating an expectation that we intend to take care of them when the going gets rough.

It is a test of the underlying connection, symbolized by the Euro, as to whether in this time of need for countries like Greece, Italy, and Spain, the EU finds itself as one or many. Perhaps the EU can retain its unity without the common currency ... certainly the U.K. has fared no better; even with its separate pound, it has a lot in common with its poorer EU cousins these days!

Management, Supervision, and Representation

There is a definite link between management, supervision, and representation, in a variety of settings. Recently, I have adopted a number of new roles, and in doing so adapted my prior learning to current surroundings. I notice in having done so, I now maintain and manage a business, supervise other attorneys, staff and their work even as I engage in many other tasks myself including client engagement, discussions, and input. In some ways these roles require the same skill sets, in others, completely different. But there is a link between them and it is important to define this link even as I come to better understand each of my new roles.

Reflecting upon these roles could significantly help me become more efficient, feel better or worse about the job I am doing, and bring to light the actual contribution I am making to those I supervise, and represent, and in turn, their contribution to my practice, business, and my own learning. I am certainly not alone in this position. Most corporate, legal, financial, and other managers are similarly placed. But this kind of self-review is more difficult when you are creating a new system from the ground up, and aside from colleagues in other firms or consultants or family and friends or client feedback, you are alone.

The trick to good supervision and management, I think, is to feel less alone. Listen well. Hear both compliments and criticisms from others for what they are. Keep your eyes and ears on the ground and keep your focus; and correct, correct, correct constantly. Correct yourself, correct your attorneys and staff and supercede if and when you have to, liberally. In the end, you have to trust your instincts to guide you in everything even those matters that may be new to you, because it is you who is ultimately responsible for your files, your clients, yours and your firm's reputation. You are more apt to make the correct tactical decisions (with the right team behind you) because you are taking the risks, big and small, everyday; no one else. A couple of instances in my litigation cases have already taught me that.

Obviously it is important to treat your attorneys and staff well. You rely on them and they need to know that you do so in order to rise to the level of responsibility you expect of them. Trusting them to do their job, will instill in them greater scrutiny of their own work, and greater respect for your critiques, comments, and suggestions. As with my children, a mutual respect and love enters the picture because of the kind of intimacy a small firm creates. I tend to applaud good and great work, and depending on the personality of my attorneys and staff, criticize openly or tacitly so they recognize the kind of expectations raised by the situation. A glass half-full person, I am more apt to see myself as blessed at the end of the day, no matter what a particular moment may have brought on during the day. And my attorneys and staff are reminded of this. Although they are counted on to do their jobs in a formidable manner, an error will not end anyone's life. We are on the path to learning and growing everyday. None of us is perfect; of that they will remind me as will others. However, because of such expectations I am apt to recruit only the very best and the brightest.

As for representation of clients, it is not dissimilar in nature to the above. There are elements of supervisory control that are required but also, a depth or intimacy without which you cannot gain client trust, to know the story as necessary to optimally represent that client. I have previously intimated that my goal with clients is growth -- theirs and mine. We teach each other to align to the quest and to provide the other with the tools necessary to reach our common destination. Clients can also vary. Some want more control over the process of representation, and a good deal of contact, and some less. This variation is often based on personality, but sometimes also on the specific needs of the situation. Litigation clients can, for instance, be very perturbed by the circumstances giving rise to the litigation and call for a good deal of closeness so that I can understand the story and situation quickly. Corporate clients sometimes have a transaction that needs to be completed yesterday in which case, learning the clients objectives is key but a good amount of independence may be required to complete documentation. Others are looking for long-term growth through relationship development and partnership.

Management of the business on the other hand, is more objective and independent of the interpersonal. Unlike supervision and representation, the feedback is clearer. Tracking informational, financial, and marketing data, is detail oriented administrative work. However, common elements surface -- the ability to delegate, supervise, keep focus akin to a supervisory mandate and the element of intimacy that comes from looking at details repeatedly, to see if there is improvement in the way attention is paid to them.

If this blogpost appears dry, it's because it is. There are so many aspects to practicing law and starting a new law firm and they are not all exciting in the way we tend to think of headline cases. Creating a sustainable law practice is a commitment day in day out and requires the kind of passion necessary to attend to the details of management, supervision, and representation. This is only possible with constant focus, the creation of trust and intimacy, and a commitment to learning with eyes wide open.

The Real Value of Olympic Gold Medals

Bilodeau won Olympic Gold and I am celebrating! He is the first Canadian olympic gold winner to do so in Canada... I cannot imagine how he feels but I know that I am there with him both in pride and in joy for his accomplishment. There are two main feelings this elicits for me: 1. national pride and what I suspect is the ultimate in belongingness that he must be feeling accomplishing this feat on home ground; and 2. joy at the groundedness with which he humbly accepts his accomplishment -- attributing his success to his teammates and to his brother who suffers from cerebral palsy and who will never have the opportunity to strive physically for the kinds of challenges Alexandre can.

On the first, national pride: this is a strange one to explain for someone who considers herself fairly international. I have previously spoken of the globalization of our myriad communities into a planetary amalgam and I sense its impact on my very international identity. Yet, there is no denying the welling up of emotion at the utter triumph of any individual working their 'b...' off and getting that which is so fitting and deserved on the one hand, nor the over the top joy that he is a fellow national. Canada does feel like a tribe that has adopted me and one can feel a true debt to countries that decide to accept one after birth in a different country because they do have the choice of rejecting you when you apply for citizenship. But it is not just that. Canadians don't gloat... they don't shout their accomplishments from the rooftops because of some aspect of their cultivated nature (it appears to be a bit more ingrained that culture). Canadians tend to accept accomplishment and triumph in an understated way and let others rejoice with them without making them jealous. They are simply sophisticated and classy in that sense, for which they are of course, loved, globally. There is no country on earth that will not accept and adopt Canadians as their own because of this quality... unless of course the people are completely crazy. In fact Americans even adopt Canada and Canadians, by extending their mantle to that country everyday.

Second, perhaps even more poignant is Alexandre Bilodeau's balanced view of his accomplishment in light of a different perspective. His brother, who suffers from cerebral palsy is not necessarily less fortunate than he, but he will certainly not have the opportunity to ski and feel what his brother feels when he is out there on skis. This is not to say that he cannot feel the focus of working hard or 'zoning'. But there is so much that his brother gains today in addition to his personal feelings performing his sport. He gains the recognition of his peers, the admiration of his country and its citizens along with those of the world. Alexandre is on the top of the world in his sport and right now all eyes are upon him.

However, even as his triumph is buoyed by the energy of the world's focus upon him, he is able to remain balanced by the support provided to him by his brother, who he rightly wants to bring on this journey of triumph with him. Family is after all the other level of belonging and support without which our success would be greatly challenged. Family starts it all and sometimes specific family members -- often siblings, spouses, and certainly supportive parents can make a world of difference between success and failure in our ventures, projects, and goals, as much as we may claim to rely entirely on ourselves.

What this gold medal represents is the gamut of emotion each of us engages in our quest for something good and fantastic to our imaginations but still allowed into our dreamworlds. That treasure chest on the pirate ship, paradise island, the perfect house or car, but even more accurate, writing the perfect story, painting the vision imprinted on the heart, meeting the one meant for you alone and keeping him/her, making that elusive but magnificently huge deal, landing that big case and 'winning it', or for you sports buffs, the perfectly hit 9 or 18 holes in the perfect or 'good enough' circumstances to be perfect, never mind the perfect tennis game or set, just the perfect few ground strokes (boy, I set that bar low!)...etc. We know that each and any of these objects or goals is not attainable without a great deal of struggle, years of hard work and preparation to get there and having a chance at shooting for that dream come true. Each one of us has wanted it at one time or another. Some of us have given up along the way. Some of us have sacrificed too much to get there and realized they shot for the wrong dream. Some of us still keep trying and will never surrender.

If there is anything the Olympics and the yearning they engender for those gold medal moments stand for, it is the hope that each of us can fulfill our own spirit; that each of us can shoot for that quest for all that is good in us and triumph just as it has in Alexandre Bilodeau attaining with it that sense of family, national, and global belonging, acceptance, and recognition! Even when not all of it can be perfect, the Olympics can reassure each of us that we deserve to complete the true potential of our essence and fulfill our dreams!


-- GDK