In law school, my professors used casebooks filled with cases dating from the 19th and early 20th century. If you closed your eyes and opened your imagination, it was possible to picture the subjects of these cases: blacksmiths, cobblers, horse-drawn carriage coachmen, Pullman porters, and whalers. Not a growth career in the bunch, at least from my mid-1990’s perspective. Of course, some of the career paths of 30 years ago seem as outdated and antiquated as a steam pipe fitte

The title of this article is a phrase I hear at least once a month. No further explanation is usually necessary. When the client calls come in, the Powers of Attorney in question are ones that we have prepared and ones that we did not. Banks scrutinize all of the POA forms that are submitted for their review. They are ensuring that an invalidly prepared or executed form is not attached to an account which could lead to fraudulent transfers by parties who do not have proper fi

Negotiations are not going well. The other side’s list of demands is stretching the bounds of good sense. Threats and recriminations are flying across the table. If this meeting goes south, a diplomatic disaster will ensue. No, this is not another international conflict. Your daughter-in-law has asked you to babysit in Long Island next Saturday afternoon. You have done the traffic math in your head. Weekend driving on I-95, the Throggs Neck Bridge, Cross-Island Expressway, an

“The Shawshank Redemption” had all the elements of a grim movie – prison, degradation, and unjustness. Baked within its telling, however, is a drifting reed of hope, which is both absorbed and dismissed by its characters. One scene alters our understanding of the story – and it’s not Andy Dufresne’s escape. It is Red, played by Morgan Freeman, hitching a ride to Buxton, Maine. This elderly man, so nearly full of despair, ventures into the fields of this rural town with only a

I was holding tiny pink glittery sneakers in my hands along with a purple sippy cup. In front of me was a bounce house – the noise from its air pump hitting my eardrums like Mike Tyson working the speedbag. This was not my first bounce house… Not even my 10 th . My daughter was climbing the angled ladder so she could slide back down and continue jumping. Seeing her laugh and revel in her favorite inflatable housing was a salve for my soul. Those early childhood days seemed to

Generation X was conditioned to believe that its cultural footprint would only leave the faintest impression. It took a few visits to the mall with my teenage daughter to dispel that belief. A Nirvana T-shirt hung next to an Oasis T-shirt, which hung next to a Sublime T-shirt. Oversized, baggy sweatshirts dominated the clothing racks. These were not artifacts from some 50-year-old’s closet. This IS the style. There is something to be said about the iconography and styles of y

Achievement-minded parents of the 21st century wish their children read more. A mere glimpse of their teenager engrossed in a paperback would probably leave a permanent grin on Mom and Dad. The fact that one smartphone has access to all of the world’s media and can feed every imaginative impulse is a force that can overshadow the simple act of picking up a book. Things used to be different. In those ancient, pre-internet, pre-scrolling days, we had to physically source our ow

We all get lulled to sleep sometimes. The perceived permanence of everyday life leads you to anticipate… more of the same. Rumblings of thunder in the background may be audible but, in our minds, the reality of an impending lightning strike still seems farfetched. Then your world explodes. I was 25, fresh out of law school, when my mother became seriously ill. My parents’ marriage, already strained to the breaking point, disintegrated into nothingness on a Friday night in Sep

The “Golden Bachelor” is back on TV this fall. While many fans of the program yell at the screen when a favorite bachelorette fails to receive a rose, I yell at the screen for different reasons. I realize marriage is the stated goal for the show’s participants, but wedded bliss is not always in the cards. Sometimes a relationship stays in the companionship zone. It could be live-in or live-apart – we’ve seen it all. This means we’ve seen countless boyfriends and girlfriends i

My dad passed away before dawn on a January day in 2012. Hearing a phone ring at 4:30 a.m. activates a response so primal, so ancient, you could almost picture an ancestor feeling the same thing as they anticipate a saber tooth tiger attack on their cave. His doctor called me at that early hour and allowed me the time and space to react to the news. I will always appreciate her kindness. The time for mourning and reflection had to be postponed for a little while, as a 45-minu