Cancer/writing Journal #99b

Perhaps I have a resistance to breaking into three figures on my blog entries. I don't think it is that. Just more on the subject of #99a. I was at a poetry reading affair over the weekend. I visited with a lady there who was born in the same year as I, 1949. She has a few months on me but we had parallel young baby boomer experiences. I was not drafted because of a high draft number. Her husband at the time was 6'5", too tall to be in the service. We agreed those times were tumultuous in a way something like today. 

 We talked about careers. I told her a slopped into a job as Administrative Law Judge that suited my aptitudes and personality strengths just by dumb luck. She said that her daughter was a judge. I asked her name and learned that she was the same judge that had had the trouble with the Amish not standing when she entered the courtroom. I did not expostulate about the coincidence of my having just done a blog entry about her daughter. Didn't say anything at all. I did do some adjusting in my thinking though that I think is interesting enough to warrant another entry.

 First of all, I automatically pictured the judge who wanted the Amish to stand as a man. Silly of me. Women must be approaching 50% of the judiciary. And then a woman judge is perhaps more justified in insisting on judicial decorum that a man might be. Pretty soon the lawyers will be asking her to get them a cup of coffee. Nip that sort of thing in the bud. It is no-win. The woman gets all brittle and no fun which is unpleasant but there is may very well be a context, a history of condescension and diminishing behavior that the woman cannot let happen to the judge in the case, totally aside from the purely personal. 

 Now I would have liked the woman to have relaxed decorum if the Amish have religious convictions about according an honor to human institutions that should be reserved for God. But we immediately think so highly of the generous grace of Charles II taking his hat to fulfill the obligation of removing the hat in the presence of royalty. When Queen Charlotte does the same thing, we wonder if she is reverting to the stereotypical female behavior of avoiding conflict, accommodating at a cost to herself.  It is definitely different from Charles II doing the same thing. I will give the woman judge half a pass.