IMMIGRATION

Last week was a tough one for me as a lawyer, but moreso for my client.

Immigration and the Department of Homeland Security is incredibly bureaucratic with more rules to follow than an Orthodox religion.  Tons of them are written down, but even more are not.  Or there’s a “local exception” that they only tell you about when you’ve either showed up to do something or have just committed a major faux pax.

So to get around this, the lawyer talks to everyone he can about the situation to get tips, take their best guess and go forward.  As anyone who’s ever dealt with a bureaucracy realizes, you can be technically right and still lose just because the person on the other side of the desk has decided that you will lose.

So last week we had an appointment to go for a citizenship interview.  These are normally pretty routine.  You need to be able to speak and understand English, to read and write simple sentences in English, and to pass a history / civics test that is somewhat complicated but not impossible.

There’s a “Medical Waiver” exception if you have a legitimate reason that you can’t do the exam or the English proficiency stuff.  You fill out the appropriate form, get a doctor with actual knowledge of the patient to attach their opinion and records, and submit it. 

Sounds easy, right?  Other lawyers and the instructions were all clear – be as detailed as possible, attach supporting documents, etc.  So that’s what I did, only to be met with an officer who denied the application because (paraphrasing) “the supporting stuff is too complicated.  I just need one sentence that says your client can’t learn English or history.”

Oh, and he considered the Spanglish that he observed us using to communicate – lots of gestures and facial expressions included – to be sufficiently proficient in English.

The problem with this, of course, is that we were counting on approval of this routine request.  As a result, the client didn’t prepare for any of the tests.  A “Pop Quiz” is never fun.  When it’s thrown into an already stressful situation with such tremendous importance to the individual, it can be overwhelming.

He actually did pretty well, passing the reading and writing, and about half of the interview (which essentially amounts to going through the Citizenship Application and confirming the answers in English), but 3 out of 10 on the civics and history questions won’t do it. 

So it was a very long and somber ride from Charlotte to Hickory.  And then a lot of days in  bed with the blankets over his head for my client. 

And in two months we get to go back and try again.  Assuming I can convince him to get out of bed and study in the meantime.

Eagle Project

One never realizes how much working at a desk has softened him until called upon to do actual hard, physical labor.  This message was brought home last weekend as Mr. Caleb needed assistance completing his Eagle Scout Project.

It sounds simple and benefits one of his favorite groups – the Newton-Conover football team.  Specifically, the project called for him to clean out the big ornamental flower bed in front of the football field, trim the bushes that had been ignored for the last 2 decades and become overgrown, and stain the concrete red (one of the school colors).

While we’re at it, let’s cure cancer and bring about peace in the Middle East, too.

We are very “hands-off” with regard to these projects.  The whole point of an Eagle Project – the culmination of one’s scouting career – is for the young man to learn to coordinate and supervise a project, line up the labor and materials needed, and pull it off before turning 18.

As with many projects, though, the paper projections are much easier than the actual implementation.  We were willing to help, though, especially as the deadline is looming.

So one (fortunately) cloudy Saturday morning we showed up promptly at 8 to begin work, tools in hand.

All tools except my bolt cutters, which would have been handy in cutting the lock off the gate because the Coach forgot to leave a key or otherwise make the space available.  The wait was only about 15 minutes, though.

With every project, there are unanticipated issues.  In this case, it was that the shrubs – Chinese holly – were so tough that the electric hedge trimmers we bought just kind of curled up and whimpered.  Fortunately, one of the dads out of the troop (there were lots of scouts helping by this time) went home and got (a) a chain saw and (b) a gas powered hedge trimmer.

Once again, we see that the right tools make a job possible.  There was a bit of artistic difference in just how much should be trimmed from the hedge – some of us advocating for a simple trim, whereas the guy with the chainsaw thinking more along the lines of “slasher flick”.  Of course, trimming a hedge is a lot like a haircut.   Once you’ve started trimming, you can’t change your mind.  Just like a haircut, though, a short cut will eventually grow out.

We hope.

Apparently Coach wasn’t all that thrilled with the outcome, to which I say “Tough bananas.   You should have had the gate unlocked on time.”

Karma has a way of working out.

So for the next few hours the clouds stayed in place but held off the rain and a group of dedicated volunteers chopped, hacked, dug and dragged the debris off to the ditch at the back of the school property for deposit to allow it to organically return to the earth.

And then, at the end of the day when we’d all gone home, we felt the impact of this type of foreign labor on our 50+ year old bodies. 

Fortunately, Ibuprophen comes in 500 count bottles and we had a new one.

But an Eagle project is almost done.  It’ll be something of which the school can be proud and will last for years, until it’s time for some other Eagle Scout to jump in and refurbish.

Absence

It’s amazing sometimes how you go along and life just takes over, so when you look up you realize that you forgot – or just didn’t make time – and something got left behind.

So it is with this Blog.  A year ago today I did my last entry – and, incidentally, thanks to those of you who asked – I did not succumb to shellfish allergies.  For those of you who didn’t ask – well, I’ll remember that!

The last few weeks before I stopped writing were kind of chaotic (more than normal) and the Muse chose to visit others.  When I write and “hit the groove” (undoubtedly an ancient reference to when music came on plastic or Bakelite disks and an actual needle touched it to transfer the sound to the speaker) it flows.  I sit down, begin to type and all sense of time is lost.  When I look up it’s either been minutes or hours and I have some content – usually enough that I need to cut it down.  I feel relaxed and satisfied with what I’ve accomplished.

When the Muse doesn’t come, though, these sessions are pure torture.  Words are elusive and avoid falling into place.  Grammar and punctuation rules that I routinely follow sit just out of reach, available, but it takes an effort to get them like a television remote that has been magically transported across the room sometime after you have tucked your blanket around your feet.  Spelling becomes phonetic and occasionally devolves to chaotic.

Part of the reason for the delay is that I just wasn’t in a happy place in my mind for a while.  The topics which were inspiring weren’t light and entertaining, they were tending toward the dark and disappointing.  Someone commented that “CornerAt8th” seemed to have become the “CurmudgeonAt8th”, and that’s not what I wanted.

The other problem with that is that it’s exhausting to always be in a rage.  You can’t concentrate, and when you finish instead of being invigorated you’re drained.  My way of coping with this is avoidance.  It’s not a perfect way to deal with things, but it’s worked a lot of times.  There truly are many things that, like an annoying little brother, will go away if you ignore them.

Overall, I’d rather turn an average event sideways and laugh at it.  There’s enough dreary news in the world and I think we need to laugh at ourselves – and others, because heaven knows that there are people that sorely need to be called out and laughed at in public – to try to keep some sense of sanity.

The other thing is that a person can only stare at a computer screen for so long before you go “snow blind”.  Prior to the break, my real job has entailed lots of document drafting.   Not the kind where you can build on earlier projects, change the names and move on, but the kind where you have to slog through each and every sentence in every paragraph to make sure that you’re consistent throughout and that you’ve covered all the points you need to address.

During the 4^th of July week in 2012, I generated about 48 pages of that kind of content on three different projects, so by the time I quit each day the thought of looking at the computer again kind of made me queezy.

It’s been a year, though, and it’s time to suck it up and start again.

Besides, I have all these opinions saved up to share.