Gavel Gamut
By Jim Redwine
(Week of 10 August 2015)
FRIENDSHIP
In the winter of 1991 I attended a seminar for judges in San Diego, California. When I got on the plane at 6:30 a.m. in Evansville, Indiana it was 17 degrees and grey. It was 75 and sunny in southern California at noon. There may be a rare cynic out there who harbors the ungenerous thought those two statistics were my prime motivation; how unkind. It was knowledge I sought even if I had to endure such a variation in the weather.
There were judges there from every state north of the Mason-Dixon Line and even one from Maryland. Maryland was one of the states involved in the border dispute that was resolved by the establishment of the Line in 1767. Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon surveyed the line that gave us that great song, Dixie. Why not Masie you might ask? My analysis is, nothing rhymes with it but Casey and baseball had not yet been invented.
Now why a judge from the south would need to vacation, excuse me, study, in warmer climes still puzzles me but that is what Judge Al Northrop did. Maybe he was thirsting for knowledge as I was.
Regardless of the reasons, he and I ended up meeting and during those six days of classes and one day in Tijuana becoming friends. Since 1991 Al, and his wife Karen, and Peg and I have spent a total of four days together yet we are fast friends. Had it not been for Al’s convincing me to take up snow skiing at age fifty I would have only the warmest of thoughts about him.
After Al and Karen came to visit for two days this week I began to think about the nature of friendship. What makes and keeps a friend? More generically, what is a friend, and more selfishly, what is a friend’s value?
Kahlil Gibran (1883 – 1931), an American poet of Lebanese descent, said, “Let there be no purpose in friendships save the deepening of the spiritâ€.
Whether it is the life-long friends who are my family, my college friend of fifty years, neighbors and soul mates who support every one of my adventures and help at JPeg Ranch and other locations, colleagues at work, coffee shop philosophers, musically inclined judges and writers or the one who most deepens my spirit, Peg, Gibran has defined what I only enjoy.
