Read it here. There’s an old joke that goes “There’s two things Jews know about: guilt and Chinese food.” As a civil rights lawyer I probably shouldn’t be perpetuating stereotypes, but as a Jewish person I always laugh when I hear this joke because it strikes me as the truth. I won’t tell you about…
Read it here. About a month ago, my beloved Volkswagen Beetle, the car I’ve driven for the last 17 years, made its final trip. My VW Beetle had seen me through four years of college, two cross-country moves (from Boston to Berkeley and then, six years later, from Berkeley back to Maine), six Maine winters,…
Read it here. If you are like me, you hate waiting in lines. You look for the shortest line at the grocery checkout and at the bank (thank god for ATM cards), and by all means, don’t get caught in a traffic jam. One of the best things to me about living in Maine after…
Read it here. Shortly before Thanksgiving, President Obama announced new executive action on immigration. The executive action grants temporary legal status for certain classes of undocumented immigrants – in particular, parents of US citizens or permanent residents who have lived here for at least five years, and older so-called “Dreamers” who arrived as children and…
Read it here. Almost every summer, I attend a conference of civil rights attorneys to discuss the latest developments in the law and to exchange ideas about how we can best represent our clients and stamp out discrimination. Most years, anywhere from 600-700 attorneys attend from all around the country. I don’t remember how the…
Read it here. Yesterday was my first day back from parental leave after the birth of my daughter. It was hard to say goodbye to that little girl as she headed off to daycare, but the goodbye was infinitely easier because I had been able to take slightly more than 3 months of leave to…
Read it here. About 25 years ago it was a dream of mine to work as a lawyer for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream company in Vermont. I have no regrets that I instead wound up in Maine with the truly dream job of representing workers and other folks whose civil rights have been violated….
Read it here. One of my favorite children’s books is called A Turkey for Thanksgiving by Eve Bunting. It tells the story of Mr. and Mrs. Moose who will host their friends from the animal kingdom—goats, sheep, etc.—at a Thanksgiving dinner. But Mrs. Moose is unhappy; she wants a turkey for Thanksgiving. So Mr. Moose…
Read it here. To paraphrase a line from Casablanca, I was shocked, shocked to hear that the mediation earlier this week in the FairPoint strike ended in failure. It wasn’t even surprising that the mediation lasted less than an hour, or less than the time it took to drive from Maine to Boston. What a…
Read it here. The Project on Student Debt reported this week that Maine, unfortunately, was true to our state motto “Dirigo;” Maine college grads are in the top 10 for the largest average student debt. The report has reminded me of how very fortunate I was to graduate from college debt-free in 1978. I was…