No Retreat, No Surrender

Last week, I saw Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band perform in Nationals Park in Washington D.C., in one of the last shows of their “Land of Hope and Dreams” tour. I’ve been a Bruce Springsteen fan for almost fifty years and have seen him in concert many times. It was an amazing show…. Read more »

If Not Now, When?

Hillel the Elder, born in 110 BCE, wrote: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?” That quote has motivated people for centuries to look inward, view outward, and act. In my lifetime, it has never been… Read more »

Senator Hubert Humphrey Told Me So

It was 1964. With my parents’ support, I volunteered to work on the campaign to elect Lyndon Johnson as President of the United States and Senator Hubert Humphrey as Vice President. One morning, seated with other volunteers at a long table in campaign headquarters in my hometown of South Bend, Indiana, we were busy stuffing… Read more »

“It’s been a wonderful life.”

I first met José (“Joe”) Trujillo in 1995, two months after his accident. He was forty-eight years old, lying in ICU, wrapped in white gauze except for a small opening so he could breathe. He was halfway through a four-month medically induced coma. At the time, I was a trial lawyer, sometimes representing catastrophically injured… Read more »

“The fierce urgency of now”

  A year before he was killed, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke these words at Riverside Church in New York City:    We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being “too late.” … This is no time for apathy… Read more »