JudgeLynn.com

Hello everyone,

I’ve gotten a couple of questions from some of you about me that I’d thought I’d answer en masse.

1. Someone asked me to take an honest look at myself to determine whether I favor men in my court. I thought about it and will continue to. Interestingly, more often I get men telling me I am a feminist who always sides with women. In general, I think people tend to understand their own so much better than they understand others it is natural to side with them more because what they say to instinctually  makes sense.

I try very hard to think on both sides of the fence when I am on the bench. With both sides seeing bias on the other I think I’m probably close. lol! That said, I never stop reviewing and adjusting.

2. Someone asked if the things that I see on the bench every help me in my marriage. And the answer is absolutely! But then again I think everything I do and see everywhere helps me. You just keep learning all along. I wrote about my marriage a fair amount in Making Marriage Work, if you’re really interested. Too much to repeat here, but definitely I’ve learned along the way.

3. Last, but not least, someone else asked if my job ever interferes with my marriage and is it hard to balance both. The answer to that one is no. There isn’t much to balance. I tape only a couple months out of the year and then only a few days each month. So we’re chillin’ together most of the time.  I tell you what was hard though. when I was an attorney working 70 hours a week and we had the 4 older boys and I had a new baby. Talk about balancing. I was half a lunatic most days….

So there ya go …

Hope you guys have a great day!

I believe my AskJudgeLynn Page is working.

Just go to the page scroll down to the bottom and start a new topic if you have a question.

Hello all, I have had some reports of technical issues on my

AskJudgeLynn Message Board.

I have someone working on it … Not me, of course, since I actually want to fix it!

Hello everybody. This is a candid shot of me and Boogie, The Dog.

Six* and I went out and got him on a lark one day. Well, it wasn’t really a lark, I had been mulling it over for a while. In fact I had already made a few recognizance missions, on the down low, to Adopt-a-Pet Weekends at PetSmart.

Here’s the thing … we were almost done. BigE and I where on the home stretch to free. The last was getting ready to go. We were going to be empty nesters. I think my husband had visions of impromptu vacations, lengthy travel and, to be honest, just not taking care of anyone who wasn’t us.

I, on the other hand, was looking forward to having the house to ourselves and making far fewer meals.

Dog poop and personality gave me pause as well. I didn’t want to deal with the former and I was afraid I might get a dog that was simply, well, how should I out it, a pain in the ass.

(I think Ruthie and her crazy stories about the mayhem in her home when rescuing certain ones scared me a little bit… just saying. LOL!)

Anyway, Six is a persuasive fellow. His love of life and impulsive decisions got the best of me one day and he said, “Oh you worry too much about what might happen. He seems cool. Let’s just bring him home.” So we did.

I have to say, it was stressful in the beginning. He tore through the house like a Tasmanian Devil for a full 2 hours. He ate one of my favorite shoes and pooped in the living room. I gave my son the side eye too. “See what you’ve done to me?”

To his credit, Six was all over he poop thing. He never minded picking it up and he’d do it really quickly, often trying to get to it before I stumbled across the offending material. I never have shoes on in the house and I tend to be doing other things while walking. As you might imagine these personal tendencies made for a couple of unpleasant moments I’d prefer not to describe.

But as time wore on we figured out that the dog was actually pretty much potty trained. It was the excitement of a new home that had caused him to tear about and poop at will.

Anyway, BigE was not at all amused. “This dog,” he said, “is crazy.” He then made it clear to Six that the dog (now named Boogie) was his responsibility. And if you know Six at all, his name and responsibility rarely make an appearance in the same sentence.

But apparently dogs have some magic in them. Six was all over it and him, feeding and picking up poop without prompting. They slept in the bed together.

Now that he has moved on it’s just me, BigE and the dog. And I think BigE is more happy about his presence than me. I cuddle and love; they play tug of war. BigE picks up poop because he believes that it is something a woman simply should not have to do. (Every once in a while old fashioned comes in very handy.)

Anyway we walk him a lot. Especially me. I’ve lost 3 pounds in the process. When I am stressed, me and my canine psychologist hit the bricks. We amble about, he sniffs and I breathe. We both Smell the Roses in our own way.  He even enjoys trips to the vet, he is an attention hog and doesn’t care what kind it is.

You have gotta love a dog!

ALL THE BEST TO MY FELLOW DOG LOVERS!

JLT

*My husband, BigE and I have, between the two of us Six sons. when I speak about them in my blogs I name no names. I just give numbers.

Hello all. Telisha asked what I thought of Baltimore and I answered her in the comments. But I thought I would speak to it again …

I hope things get better in Baltimore soon.

I hope Freddie Gray’s death doesn’t simply become a reason for violence as opposed to another lesson on legitimate concerns in the black community about its relationship with the police.

I also hope we don’t lose the lessons of Baltimore’s underlying distress in the cacophony of riots.  Baltimore was already a tinder box of despair. Deprivation that deep and pervasive is easily ignited and urging calm where such poverty and discontent persists is asking people to return to a peace and calm they didn’t have. Doesn’t mean in can’t and shouldn’t happen but it will be a harder sell.

We need to do a deep culture check. What are we going to do when hopelessness pervades such a large segment of a community? It garners no attention when the chaos and calamity is self contained. But there are people who live that day to day. We cannot forget that. The rioters are a subset of a larger community that suffers greatly.

There is no one reason for the problems that afflict Baltimore and other cities like it. I think  density of settlement issues during mass northern migrations contributed, as did the de-industtrualization of the economy. These (and other) problems were, I believe, exacerbated by draconian drug laws that have created a state of constant criminality  in a community. Cultural issues have arisen too. So much is wrong it’ s hard to know where to start.

That said, check out Mass Incarceration on Trial by J Simon, On the Run by A. Gottman if you are interested in the unintended consequences of certain well-intended(?) laws.

We also have to look at ourselves, not just history, government and laws. .We need to do a deep culture check not just on obvious racism but on the ‘Them and Us’ mentality. If authority, in any form, sees a ‘Them’ and not an ‘Us,’ the danger conclusion is just a little bit easier to come to, the use of force is just a little bit easier to go to. And that little bit may not be much. It may be hard to quantify or to see, but that little bit can be the difference between the right thing and the thing that we keep seeing. That’s a soft skill, long lesson, hard story to get to the end of kind of process… which we can’t afford to avoid.