Anxiety

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  The executions would resume. What that meant for Alabama death row prisoners and EJI staff was seventeen executions in thirty months. It happened at the same time that we were representing children sentenced to life without parole all over the country. I’d flown to South Dakota, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, Arkansas, Virginia, Wisconsin, and California to argue cases on behalf of condemned children over the preceding months. The courts, procedures, and players were all different, and the travel was exhausting. We were still very actively litigating on behalf of condemned children in Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana—Southern states where we had litigated previously. And, of course, our Alabama docket had never been more jammed or demanding. In a two-week period, I had been in California visiting Antonio Nuñez at a remote prison in the middle of the state before arguing his case in an appellate court there, while also actively trying to win relief for Trina Garnett in Pennsylvania and Ian Manuel in Florida. I had visited Ian and Joe Sullivan in a Florida prison, and both of them were struggling. Prison officials weren’t allowing Joe to have regular access to his wheelchair, and he had fallen repeatedly and injured himself. Ian was still in isolation. Trina’s medical condition was worsening. I was having an increasingly difficult time managing it all. At the same time, Walter’s authorized length of stay at the Montgomery facility was up, so we frantically made arrangements for him to move back home, where his sister would do the best she could to take care of him. It was a worrisome situation for him and his family, for all of us. By the time Jimmy Dill was scheduled for execution in Alabama, the entire EJI staff was exhausted. The execution date couldn’t have come at a more difficult time. We had no prior involvement in Mr. Dill’s case, which meant getting up to speed in the thirty days before his scheduled execution. It was an unusual crime. Mr. Dill was accused of shooting someone during the course of a drug deal after an argument erupted. The shooting victim did not die; Mr. Dill was arrested and charged with aggravated assault. He was in jail for nine months awaiting trial while the victim was released from the hospital and was recovering fine. But after several months of caring for him at home, the victim’s wife apparently abandoned him and he became gravely ill. When he died, state prosecutors changed the charges against Mr. Dill from assault to capital murder. Jimmy Dill suffered from an intellectual disability and had been sexually and physically abused throughout his childhood. He struggled with drug addiction until his arrest. He was appointed counsel who did very little to prepare the case for trial. Almost no investigation was done into the poor medical care the victim had received, care that constituted the actual cause of death.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Yet one must also recognize that morality is based on ideas and that all ideas are dangerous-dangerous because ideas can only lead to action and where the action leads no man can say. And dangerous in this respect: that confronted with the impossibility of remaining taithtul to one's beliets, and the equal impossibility of becoming free of them, one can be driven to the most inhuman excesses. The ideas on which American beliets arc based arc not, though Americans often seem to think so, ideas which originated in America. They came out of Europe. And the establishment of democracy on the American continent was scarcely as radical a break with the past as was the necessity, which Americans faced, of broad ening this concept to include black men. This was, literally, a hard necessity. It was impossible, for one thing, tor Americans to abandon their beliets, not only because these beliefs alone seemed able to justifY the sacrifices they had endured and the blood that they had spilled, but also because these beliefs atl()rdcd them their only bulwark against a moral chaos as absolute as the physical chaos of the continent it was their destiny to conquer. But in the situation in which Americans t(mnd themselves, these beliefs threatened an idea which, whether or not one likes to think so, is the very warp and woof of the heritage of the West, the idea of white supremacy. Americans have made themselves notorious by the shrillness and the bru tality with which they have insisted on this idea, but they did not invent it; and it has escaped the world's no tice that those very excesses of which Americans have been STRAN GER IN THE VI LLAGE 127 guilty imply a certain, unprecedented uneasiness O\'er the idea's life and power, if not, indeed, the idea's ,·alidity. The idea of white supre macy rests simply on the fact that white men are the creators of ci\'ilization (the present ci,·ilization, which is the only one that matters; all pre,·ious ci,·ilizations are simply "contributions" to our own) and are therefore ci,· ilization's guardians and defenders. Thus it was impossible for Americans to accept the black man as one of themseh·es, for to do so was to jeopardize their status as white men. But not so to accept him was to deny his human reality, his human weight and complexit y, and the strain of denying the m·er whelmingly undeniable forced Americans into rationalizations so fantastic that they approached the pathological.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Haley is a tall man in his early forties, who, shortly after I left Tallahassee, was dismissed from his position in the Music Department because he backed the stu dent protest movement. He looked grave as I spoke, said he appreciated my bluntness and agreed that I might find hos tility on the part of many of the people I was likely to meet. The events of the last few months had created great divisions in the Negro world. The F.A. M.U. president, for example, would not be glad to see me, for he and his supporters were hoping that the entire problem would somehow go away. These men are in an impossible position because their entire usefulness to the State of Florida depends on their ability to influence and control their students. But the students do not trust them, and this means the death of their influence and their usefulness alike. These men are as unable as is the State of Florida to find anything that will divert the students from their present course. 626 OTH ER ESS AYS Until now the Negro college president's usefulness to the students, to the Negro community and to the state was de termined by the number of alternatives to equality that he could produce out of the Southern hat. The docility of the students was the tacit price agreed upon fi>r more funds, new buildings, more land. And these were tangible alternatives, fi>r these things were hideously needed. As for curricular expan sion, it usually came about in order to contain the discontent of Negro students. For example, at one time the state made no provision for the study of law at its Negro university. Stu dents then applied, with every intention of testing the legality of the state's position, for instruction in white colleges. To prevent such testing, law was added to the Negro university curriculum . And what has happened is that precisely those dormitories, chemistry labs, and cla ssrooms for which Negro presidents formerly bargained are now being built by the South in a doomed attempt to blunt the force of the Supreme Court decision against segregation. Therefore, the Negro col lege president has literally nothing more whatever to offer his students- except his support; if he gives this, of course, he promptly ceases to be a Negro college president. This is the death rattle of the Negro school system in the South. It is easy to judge those Negroes who, in order to keep their jobs, are willing to do everything in their power to subvert the student movement. But it is more interesting to consider what the present crisis reveals about the system under which they have worked so long. for the segregated school system in the South has always been used by the Southern states as a means of controlling Negroes.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  At this point, people seemed uninterested in the truth surrounding the crime. During the most recent hearing in Baldwin County, the State’s local supporters walked out of the courtroom rather than hear the evidence that supported Walter’s innocence. It was risky, but we hoped that national press coverage of our side of the story would change the narrative. A Washington Post journalist, Walt Harrington, had come to Alabama to do a piece on our work a year earlier and had heard me describe the McMillian case. He passed that information to a journalist friend of his, Pete Earley, who contacted me and became immediately interested. After reading the transcripts and files we provided him, he jumped into the case, spent time with several of the players, and quickly came to share our astonishment that Walter had been convicted on such unreliable evidence. I’d given a speech at Yale Law School earlier in the year that was attended by a producer from the popular CBS investigative program 60 Minutes, and he also called me. We’d gotten calls from various news magazine programs over the previous few years that expressed interest in covering our work, but I was wary. My general attitude was that press coverage rarely helped our clients. Beyond the general anti-media sentiments in the South, the death penalty was particularly polarizing. It’s such a politically charged topic that even sympathetic pieces about people on death row usually triggered a local backlash that created more problems for the client and the case. Even though the clients sometimes wanted press attention, I was extremely resistant to media interviews about pending cases. I knew of too many cases where a favorable profile in the media had provoked an expedited execution date or retaliatory mistreatment that made things much worse. We filed our appeal in the Court of Criminal Appeals that summer. With no small amount of lingering uncertainty, I decided to move forward with the 60 Minutes piece. Veteran reporter Ed Bradley and his producer David Gelber came down from New York City to Monroeville on a 100-degree day in July and interviewed many of the people whose testimony we’d presented at our hearing. They spoke with Walter, Ralph Myers, Karen Kelly, Darnell Houston, Clay Kast, Jimmy Williams, Walter’s family, and Woodrow Ikner. They confronted Bill Hooks at his job and conducted an extensive interview with Tommy Chapman. Word got around quickly that news celebrity Ed Bradley was in town, upsetting local officials. The Monroe Journal wrote: Too many of these [out-of-town] writers express open scorn for the people and institutions they encounter here, making no more than a superficial effort to gather facts.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  The Glossa Interlinearis is ascribed to Anselm Laudunensis early in the xiith century, and was intended to accompany the common editions of the Bible written in a small hand in the vacant spaces between the lines. A few passages are quoted from Bede. Of these some are from his Homilies on the Gospels, some from his Commentary on Luke. There is among Bede’s works a Commentary on S. Matthew, and in one or two instances this is referred to by Nicolai, but on looking at the quotations in older editions of the Catena, it is merely ‘Bed. in Hom.’ To many quotations of Remigius and Rabanus, which agreed in sense with this Commentary on Matthew, the mark ‘e Beda’ has been added, because he was the earliest author in which the translator found them; but an inspection of this Commentary will make it very doubtful whether it is Bede’s. First, he does not mention it in the catalogue which he gives of his own works at the end of the Hist. Eccl. (p. 222. ed. Smith.) Secondly, those on Mark and Luke (which he does mention there) are introduced by Epistles to Acca, Bishop of Hexham. Thirdly, The style of these is different, being full and copious, that on Matthew short, and ‘per saltus.’ Fourthly, Comparing Rabanus’ numerous quotations from Bede, they seem to be all taken from the comments on the parallel passages of Mark and Luke. But a great deal of what is given as original in Rabanus coincides with the Commentary on S. Matth. in question. Is it an abridgment of Rabanus, or did they only both draw upon their recollections of the Fathers? The Commentary on S. Paul’s Epistles printed among Bede’s Works, and which is a compilation chiefly from S. Augustine, seems to have been proved by Mabillon to be the work of Florus the Deacon, (Mab. Vet. Analecta, i. 12.) The following extracts from Bede’s Preface to S. Luke illustrate the manner of compiling such Commentaries then in fashion. Bede excused himself from the task because it had been so fully performed by Ambrose. Acca answers that there were many things in Ambrose so eloquent and high, that they could only be understood by Doctors, and something weaker was wanted for the unlearned; that S. Gregory had not been afraid to rifle all the Fathers for his homilies on the Gospels, and in short it might be said of every thing with the comic poet, ‘Nihil sit dictum quod non sit dictum prius.’ Bede then describes the method he had pursued; “Having gathered around me the works of the Fathers, truly the most worthy to be employed in such a task, I set myself diligently to look out what S. Ambrose, what Augustine, what Gregory most keen-eyed, (as his name signifies,) the Apostle of our nation, what the Translator of the Sacred Story Jerome, and what the other Fathers have thought upon the words of Luke. This I forthwith committed to paper either in the very words of the author, or where abridgment was needed in my own. To save the labour of inserting a reference to the author in each case in my text, I have marked the first letters of his name in the margin, being anxious that none should take me for a plagiarist, endeavouring to pass off as my own the words of greater men.” Vol. v. p. 215. ed. Col.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  I was having an increasingly difficult time managing it all. At the same time, Walter’s authorized length of stay at the Montgomery facility was up, so we frantically made arrangements for him to move back home, where his sister would do the best she could to take care of him. It was a worrisome situation for him and his family, for all of us. By the time Jimmy Dill was scheduled for execution in Alabama, the entire EJI staff was exhausted. The execution date couldn’t have come at a more difficult time. We had no prior involvement in Mr. Dill’s case, which meant getting up to speed in the thirty days before his scheduled execution. It was an unusual crime. Mr. Dill was accused of shooting someone during the course of a drug deal after an argument erupted. The shooting victim did not die; Mr. Dill was arrested and charged with aggravated assault. He was in jail for nine months awaiting trial while the victim was released from the hospital and was recovering fine. But after several months of caring for him at home, the victim’s wife apparently abandoned him and he became gravely ill. When he died, state prosecutors changed the charges against Mr. Dill from assault to capital murder. Jimmy Dill suffered from an intellectual disability and had been sexually and physically abused throughout his childhood. He struggled with drug addiction until his arrest. He was appointed counsel who did very little to prepare the case for trial. Almost no investigation was done into the poor medical care the victim had received, care that constituted the actual cause of death. The state made a plea offer of twenty years, but it was never adequately communicated to Mr. Dill, so he went to trial, was convicted, and was sentenced to death. The appellate courts affirmed his conviction and sentence. He couldn’t find volunteer counsel for his postconviction appeals, so most of his legal claims were procedurally barred because he had missed the filing deadlines. When we first looked at Mr. Dill’s case a few weeks before his scheduled execution, no court had reviewed critical issues about the reliability of his conviction and sentence. Capital murder requires an intent to kill, and there was a persuasive argument that there was no intent to kill in this case and that poor health care had caused the victim’s death. Most gunshot victims don’t die after nine months, and it was surprising that the state was seeking the death penalty in this case. And the U.S. Supreme Court had previously banned the execution of people with mental retardation, so Mr. Dill should have been shielded from the death penalty because of his intellectual disability, but no one had investigated or presented evidence in support of the claim. Along with his other challenges, Mr.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  "I called the airport and made another reservation and went on to Chi cago." He appeared there, then, as an accused man, and gave us no details of his visit, which did not, in any case, matter. For if he had not been able to face Ch icago, if he had not won that battle with himself , he would have been defeated long before his entrance into that courtroom in Montgomery. When I saw him the next day in his office, he was very different, kind and attentive, but far away. A meeting of the Southern Christian Leadership Conf erence was to begin that 6)2 OTH ER ES SAYS day, and think his mind must have been on that. The be leaguered ministers of the Deep South were coming to Atlanta that day in order to discuss the specific situations which con fronted them in their particular towns or cities, and King was their leader. All of them had come under immensely greater local pressure because of the student sit-in movement. Inevi tably, they were held responsible tor it, even though they might very well not have known until reading it in the papers that the students had carried out another demonstration. I do not mean to suggest that there is any question of their support of the students-they may or may not be responsible for them but they certainly consider themselves responsible to them. But all this, I think, weighed on King rather heavily. He talked about his visit to India and its etfect on him. He was hideously struck by the poverty, which he talked about in great detail. He was also much impressed by Nehru, who had, he said, extraordinary qualities of "perception and dedication and courage-far more than the average American politician." We talked about the South. "Perhaps + or 5 per cent of the people are to be found on either end of the racial scale" eithcr actively tor or actively against desegregation; "the rest arc passive adherents. The sin of the South is the sin of con t(mnity." And he teels, as I do, that much of the responsibility ti:>r the situation in which we have found ourselves since 1954 is due to the tailure of President Eisenhower to make any coherent, any guiding statement concerning the nation's greatest moral and social problem. But we did not discuss the impending conference which, in any case, he could scarcely have discussed with me. And we did not discuss any of the problems which tace him now and make his future so problematical. For he could not have dis cussed these with me, either.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  My dusky tribe had the same troubles, without the tremendous pause. Nevertheless, London was still tar from being as hysterical and dangerous as New York. Eventually, of course, black En glishmen, Indians, students, conscientious objectors, and CIA infiltrators-no doubt-tracked me down, as we had known was inevitable. Dick Gregory came to town and we shared a 408 NO NAME IN THE STREET platform before part of London's black community. A British columnist told his readers before or during this time that he wished I would either "drop dead or shut up"; and on King's Road, near our house, British hippies paraded one day, car rying banners, one ofwhich read, "Keep Britain Black." I felt myself in London on borrowed time, for sometime before, the Home Otlice, as I learned when I landed at Heathrow Airport, had declared me persona non grata in Britain. They had let me land, finally, but it took awhile. (They had thrown Stokely out about a week before.) I thought of the late Lorraine Hansberry's statement (to me) concerning the solidarity of the Western powers, and the impossibility, for such as we, of hoping for political asylum anywhere in the West. I thought of Robert Williams, who had not intended and almost surely never desired, to go East. And I thought of Malcolm. Alex Haley wrote The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Months before the foregoing, in New York, he and Elia Kazan and I had agreed to do it as a play-and I still wish we had. We were vaguely aware that Hollywood was nibbling for a book, but, as Hollywood is always nibbling, it occurred to no one, certainly not to me, to take these nibbles seriously. It simply was not a subject which Hollywood could manage, and I didn't see any point in talking to them about it. But the book was sold to an independent producer, named Marvin Worth, who would produce it for Columbia Pictures. By this time, I was already in London; and I was also on the spot. For, while I didn't believe Hollywood could do it, I didn't quite see, since they declared themselves sincerely and seriously willing to attempt it, how I could duck the challenge. What it came to, in fact, was an enormous question: to what extent was I prepared again to gamble on the good faith of my country men? In that time, now so incredibly far behind us, when the Black Muslims meant to the American people exactly what the Black Panthers mean today, and when they were described in exactly the same terms by that High Priest, J. Edgar Hoover, and when many of us believed or made ourselves believe that the American state still contained within itself the power of self-confrontation, the power to change itself in the direction TO BE BAPTIZED 4- 09 of honor and knowledge and freedom, or, as Malcolm put it, "to atone," I first met Malcolm X.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  I was trying to see the interior of this marriage as Gary had experienced it. “No, they didn’t have that many actual fights. Or at least we never saw many. They were pretty restrained in what they did or said in front of us kids.” “How did their being restrained affect you kids?” I asked. “There was this feeling of tension that you could cut with a knife,” Gary replied. “As things got worse between them, there were fewer words and more and more tension. My brother and sister and I spent as much time out of the house as we could.” I was again struck by the similarity between Gary’s household and households like Karen’s where parents decide to divorce. “Things got pretty bad when I was in junior high school,” he said. “This is when I wondered if Dad would leave. Mom had always been possessive of Dad—keeping track of where he was and how he spent his time. But then she started getting real jealous. It seemed like she went out of her way to interpret what he did in the worst possible light. And then she’d blame him.” When I asked for an example, Gary told a detailed story about a birthday party he attended with his family. As they were driving home, Gary’s mother accused his father of flirting with other women. She said he only cared about pleasing himself and about being everybody’s best friend. When they pulled into their driveway, she jumped out of the car and ran into her bedroom. Gary’s father told the children to get to bed and took off in the car. He didn’t come back until late the next morning. The parents didn’t speak to each other for days. “Was that the only time this happened?” I asked. “No, the same sort of thing happened again, although this was the only time Mom really lost it in front of us. But after that incident I started to notice more and there were plenty of times when Dad would get home late or he’d talk about a customer, particularly a female customer, and I’d see Mom start to get tense. Later, I’d hear them in their room arguing and there were some mornings when Dad wasn’t there and Mom would be in her room with a headache. Once I asked her why she was crying and she told me it was because she had a headache and hadn’t had her morning tea. That’s when I started to bring her tea in bed on the weekends. I couldn’t understand why she was so mad and suspicious of Dad, but I couldn’t stand to see her so unhappy.” Children cannot stand to see their parents cry.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  I knew that the court would probably conclude that this evidence should have been presented at trial or in prior proceedings, but I hoped that the judge could be persuaded. Herbert was in court with me, and we both immediately recognized the lack of interest on the judge’s face. This heightened Herbert’s anxiety. He began a whispered dialogue with me, imploring me to get the testifying expert to say things about his intent that were really outside the expert’s knowledge. He became contentious and started making comments that were audible to the judge. Meanwhile, the judge kept stressing that the evidence wasn’t newly discovered and should have been presented at trial, so it couldn’t create a basis for a stay of execution. I asked for a brief recess to try and calm Herbert down. “He’s not saying what I need him to say!” His breathing was panicked. He held his head and told me he had a severe headache. “I didn’t intend to kill anybody and he has to explain that!” he cried. I tried to comfort him. “Mr. Richardson, we’ve covered this. The expert isn’t allowed to speak to your mental state. He’s testified that the bomb was designed to be detonated, but he can’t really explain your motivations—the Court won’t permit that, and he really can’t speak to that.” “They’re not even paying attention to what he’s saying,” he said sadly, rubbing his temples. “I know, but remember, this is just the first step. We didn’t expect much from this judge, but this will help us on appeal. I know this is frustrating for you.” He looked at me worriedly before sighing in resignation. He sat glumly through the rest of the hearing, holding his head, which I found even more disheartening than when he was argumentative and distraught. Because I hadn’t hired any lawyers yet, I didn’t have co-counsel to sit with me and help manage documents or help with the defendant during the hearing. At the end of the proceeding, Herbert was shackled and sent back to death row, vexed, disappointed, and unhappy. I wasn’t feeling much better as I packed up my things and headed out of the courtroom. It would have been nice to debrief with someone, to evaluate whether what was presented might provide a basis for a stay. I had no expectation that the local judge would grant a stay, but I was hopeful that maybe a reviewing court would recognize that this wasn’t an intentional killing and that a stay should be granted. So much was going on that I couldn’t objectively evaluate if we had presented enough evidence to change the picture of the case. I mostly felt bad that I’d left Herbert in such a distraught state.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  In the cases where I had actually been counsel for the condemned while I was in Georgia, we’d always won stays of execution. I grew anxious thinking about witnessing the spectacle of a man being electrocuted, burned to death in front of me. I’d been so focused on obtaining the stay and then on what to say to Herbert when I got to the prison that I hadn’t actually thought about witnessing the execution. I no longer wanted to be there for that, but I didn’t want to abandon Herbert. To leave him in a room alone with people who wanted him dead made me realize that I couldn’t back out. All of a sudden the room felt incredibly hot, like there was no air anywhere. The visitation officer came up to me after I had escorted the family out and whispered in my ear, “Thank you.” I was vexed by her thinking of me as an accomplice and didn’t know what to say. When there were less than thirty minutes before the execution, they took me back to the cell next to the execution chamber deep inside the prison where they were holding Herbert until it was time to put him in the electric chair. They had shaved the hair off his body to facilitate a “clean” execution. The state had done nothing to modify the electric chair since the disastrous Evans execution. I thought about the botched execution of Horace Dunkins a month earlier and became even more distraught. I had tried to read up on what should happen at an execution; I had some misguided thought that I could intervene if they did something incorrectly. Herbert was much more emotional when he saw me than he’d been in the visitation room. He looked shaken, and it was clear that he was upset. It must have been humiliating to be shaved in preparation for an execution. He looked worried, and when I walked into the chamber he grabbed my hands and asked if we could pray, and we did. When we were done, his face took on a distant look and then he turned to me. “Hey, man, thank you. I know this ain’t easy for you either, but I’m grateful to you for standing with me.” I smiled and gave him a hug. His face sagged with an unbearable sadness. “It’s been a very strange day, Bryan, really strange. Most people who feel fine don’t get to think all day about this being their last day alive with certainty that they will be killed. It’s different than being in Vietnam…much stranger.” He nodded at all the officers who were milling about nervously. “It’s been strange for them, too. “All day long people have been asking me, ‘What can I do to help you?’

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  PART FIVEMy Best Case: LisaTWENTYIs Not Fighting Enough?For many years when I spoke about divorce and children at conferences around the world, I would begin my talk with excerpts from interviews with Lisa. She was an articulate child who immediately charmed people as she spoke about her parents with great love and compassion. As an adolescent, Lisa was doing remarkably well and I often referred to her as “my best case.” Audiences liked to hear about her because it allayed their fears about the effects of divorce on children. If Lisa could make it, so could others. But when Lisa moved into adulthood, I began to see changes in her that hinted everything was not okay. Like other children I have described, Lisa took on a role in her family and played it well from the day her parents divorced. She was the model child who never rocked the boat. And although she was aware of the passions, jealousy, and hate that lay beneath the surface of her post-divorce family, she and everyone else pretended all was tranquil. In her core, Lisa was eager to protect her parents from feeling unhappy or guilty about the breakup. But her virtuous resolve no longer helped her when she came face-to-face with adult relationships. Lisa’s story shows us that whatever we do to protect our children after divorce, residues appear in the realm of adult love and sexual intimacy. Through the years, many people have asked me, “What if we don’t fight after the divorce? What if we get along and put our child’s best interest before our own? Surely we can protect our children from the harm that divorce can do. Can’t we?” Let’s look at the evidence. It’s true that fighting between parents, whether it takes place in the courtroom or bedroom, is harmful to children. As we’ve seen throughout this book, it offers a frightening model of adult behavior and it seriously erodes the quality of any parent-child relationship. Parents who engage in a conjugal jihad often lose sight of a child’s needs. They easily confuse their own rage and anguished agenda with what they think the child wants. As a result, the child feels unloved and unsafe. But there are millions of parents who, from day one of the divorce, are determined not to make their children suffer. They have the maturity and self-control to say, “We no longer can stay married but we can still put our children first. We will find ways to assure them that we both love them and we’ll do everything we can to protect them.” Amen. Postdivorce families that carry out this credo can and do protect their children from many of the adversities we have already discussed.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Many do so after intense conflict within themselves. It’s a terrifying decision because there’s no way back as you step across the Rubicon onto an unknown continent. But as much as divorced couples may want to wipe the slate clean as parents, they cannot. Children are a permanent legacy of the marriage. If anything, a parent’s responsibility for them is greater than before. The children have a right to know why their parents decided to divorce and what changes the divorce will set in motion. This is what they will take with them as they grow up, working and reworking every nuance of every message you send. At each developmental stage children of divorce reassess their understanding of the divorce. They rehash it when they’re grown and have children of their own and face their own crises. Conversations done fully and well will protect your child, just as Gary’s father protected his son. If these discussions are done poorly or don’t happen at all, the child is left to figure everything out on his own. Being left in the dark with a problem that is too big to understand increases a child’s anxiety profoundly. In my many years of working with divorced families, I’m sorry to say that few parents have such conversations with their children. Most youngsters are told essentially nothing about the parents’ struggle and reasons to decide on divorce—no explanations of the inner struggle, no mention of the reluctance, sorrow, and inability to tolerate any more. It’s as if the divorce came out of the blue. No one says a word. This means that the child, especially the preschool child, often learns about the divorce in the most traumatic way possible when she wakes up one morning to find that her father and his belongings have vanished into thin air. It doesn’t have to be this way, but it takes thoughtfulness and time for divorcing parents to help their children. Let’s assume for the moment that you are the one getting divorced. What should you do? First, gather the children together and tell them that you have decided to separate and what that means and when it will happen. Talk simply, slowly, and keep in mind that they will remember forever what you are saying. They’ll also remember what you don’t say. Choose a quiet time when you and the children have plenty of time, that is, not when homework is pending or when you are flying off in the morning on a business trip.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  With few ordinary comforts in his life, the attention of women was something Walter did not easily resist. There was something about his rough exterior—his bushy long hair and uneven beard—combined with his generous and charming nature that attracted the attention of some women. Walter grew up understanding how forbidden it was for a black man to be intimate with a white woman, but by the 1980s he had allowed himself to imagine that such matters might be changing. Perhaps if he hadn’t been successful enough to live off his own business he would have more consistently kept in mind those racial lines that could never be crossed. As it was, Walter didn’t initially think much of the flirtations of Karen Kelly, a young white woman he’d met at the Waffle House where he ate breakfast. She was attractive, but he didn’t take her too seriously. When her flirtations became more explicit, Walter hesitated, and then persuaded himself that no one would ever know. After a few weeks, it became clear that his relationship with Karen was trouble. At twenty-five, Karen was eighteen years younger than Walter, and she was married. As word got around that the two were “friends,” she seemed to take a titillating pride in her intimacy with Walter. When her husband found out, things quickly turned ugly. Karen and her husband, Joe, had long been unhappy and were already planning to divorce, but her scandalous involvement with a black man outraged Karen’s husband and his entire family. He initiated legal proceedings to gain custody of their children and became intent on publicly disgracing his wife by exposing her infidelity and revealing her relationship with a black man. For his part, Walter had always stayed clear of the courts and far away from the law. Years earlier, he had been drawn into a bar fight that resulted in a misdemeanor conviction and a night in jail. It was the first and only time he had ever been in trouble. From that point on, he had no exposure to the criminal justice system. When Walter received a subpoena from Karen Kelly’s husband to testify at a hearing where the Kellys would be fighting over their children’s custody, he knew it was going to cause him serious problems. Unable to consult with his wife, Minnie, who had a better head for these kinds of crises, he nervously went to the courthouse. The lawyer for Kelly’s husband called Walter to the stand.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  Consider I pray you with your selfe, with what frivolous trifles so marvellous a thing is wrought: for by Hercules I swear I give her nothing else save a little Dill and Lawrell leaves, in Well water, the which she drinketh and washeth her selfe withall. Which when she had spoken she went into the chamber and took a box out of the coffer, which I first kissed and embraced, and prayed that I might [have] good successe in my purpose. And then I put off all my garments, and greedily thrust my hand into the box, and took out a good deale of oyntment and rubbed my selfe withall. THE SEVENTEENTH CHAPTER How Apuleius thinking to be turned into a Bird, was turned into an Asse, and how he was led away by Theves. After that I had well rubbed every part and member of my body, I hovered with myne armes, and moved my selfe, looking still when I should bee changed into a Bird as Pamphiles was, and behold neither feathers nor appearance of feathers did burgen out, but verily my haire did turne in ruggednesse, and my tender skin waxed tough and hard, my fingers and toes losing the number of five, changed into hoofes, and out of myne arse grew a great taile, now my face became monstrous, my nosthrils wide, my lips hanging downe, and myne eares rugged with haire: neither could I see any comfort of my transformation, for my members encreased likewise, and so without all helpe (viewing every part of my poore body) I perceived that I was no bird, but a plaine Asse.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Michael had stayed long past the two years he had committed to us, but he was now scheduled to move to San Diego to start a job as a federal public defender. He agonized about leaving our office, although he was less conflicted about leaving Alabama. I assigned one of our new attorneys, Bernard Harcourt, to replace Michael on Walter’s case. Bernard was a lot like Michael in that he was smart, determined, and extremely hardworking. He had first worked with me when he was a law student at Harvard Law School. He became so engaged in the work that he asked the federal judge he was clerking for after law school if he could cut short his two-year clerkship to join us in Alabama. The judge agreed, and Bernard arrived shortly before Michael left. Raised in New York City by French parents, he had attended the Lycée Français de New York in Manhattan, a high school that was unapologetic about its European perspective on education. After graduating from Princeton, Bernard worked in banking before pursuing his law degree. He had been preparing for a traditional legal career until he came down to work with us one summer and became fascinated by the issues that death penalty cases presented. He and his girlfriend, Mia, moved to Montgomery and were intrigued by life in Alabama. Bernard’s quick immersion in the McMillian case intensified his cultural adventure more than he could have ever imagined. The community’s presence at the hearing got people talking about what we had presented in court, and that encouraged more people to come forward with helpful information. All sorts of people were contacting us with wide-ranging claims of corruption and misconduct. Only a few things here and there were useful to us in our efforts to free Walter, but all of it was interesting. Bernard and I continued to track leads and interview people who had insights to share about life in Monroe County. The threats we received made me worry about the hostility that Walter would face if he was ever released. I wondered how safely he could live in the community if everyone was persuaded that he was a dangerous murderer. We began discussing the idea of reaching out to a few people who might help us publicly dramatize the injustice of Mr. McMillian’s wrongful conviction as a way of setting the stage for his possible release. If the public could only know what we knew, it might ease his re-entry into freedom. We wanted people to understand this simple fact: Walter did not commit that murder. His freedom wouldn’t be based on some tricky legal loophole or the exploitation of a technicality. It would be based on simple justice—he was an innocent man.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  THEOPHYLACT. The Lord carries us onward by degrees to a more perfect teaching. For He taught us above to beware of covetousness, and He added the parable of the rich man, intimating thereby that the fool is he who desires more than is enough. Then as His discourse goes on, He forbids us to be anxious even about necessary things, plucking out the very root of covetousness; whence he says, Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought. As if He said, Since he is a fool, who awards to himself a longer measure of life, and is thereby rendered more covetous; be not ye careful for your soul, what ye shall eat, not that the intellectual soul eats, but because there seems no other way for the soul to dwell united to the body except by being nourished. Or because it is a part of the animate body to receive nourishment, he fitly ascribes nourishment to the soul. For the soul is called also a nutritive power, as it is so understood. Be not then anxious for the nourishing part of the soul, what ye shall eat. But a dead body may also be clothed, therefore he adds, Nor for your body, what ye shall put on. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. 21. in Matt.) Now the words, Take no thought, are not the same as do no work, but, “Have not your minds fixed on earthly things.” For it so happens, that the man who is working takes no thought. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. Now the soul is more excellent than food, and the body than clothing. Therefore He adds, The life is more than meat, &c. As if He said, “God who has implanted that which is greater, how will He not give that which is less?” Let not our attention then be stayed upon trifling things, nor our understanding serve to seek for food and raiment, but rather think on whatever saves the soul, and raises it to the kingdom of heaven. AMBROSE. Now nothing is more likely to produce conviction in believers that God can give us all things, than the fact, that the ethereal spirit perpetuates the vital union of the soul and body in close fellowship, without our exertion, and the healthgiving use of food does not fail until the last day of death has arrived. Since then the soul is clothed with the body as with a garment, and the body is kept alive by the vigour of the soul, it is absurd to suppose that a supply of food will be wanting to us, who are in possession of the everlasting substance of life. 12:24–2624. Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them: how much more are ye better than the fowls? 25. And which of you with taking thought can add to his stature one cubit?

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  In their returne homeward they murmured within themselves, saying, How say you sister to so apparent a lye of Psyches? First she sayd that her husband was a young man of flourishing yeares, and had a flaxen beard, and now she sayth that he is halfe grey with age. What is he that in so short a space can become so old? You shall finde it no otherwise my sister, but that either this cursed queane hath invented a great lie, or else that she never saw the shape of her husband. And if it be so that she never saw him, then verily she is married to some god, and hath a young god in her belly. But if it be a divine babe, and fortune to come to the eares of my mother (as God forbid it should) then may I go and hang my selfe: wherfore let us go to our parents, and with forged lies let us colour the matter. After they were thus inflamed, and had visited their Parents, they returned againe to the mountaine, and by the aid of the winde Zephyrus were carried down into the valley, and after they had streined their eye lids, to enforce themselves to weepe, they called unto Psyches in this sort, Thou (ignorant of so great evill) thinkest thy selfe sure and happy, and sittest at home nothing regarding thy peril, whereas wee goe about thy affaires and are carefull lest any harme should happen unto you: for we are credibly informed, neither can we but utter it unto you, that there is a great serpent full of deadly poyson, with a ravenous gaping throat, that lieth with thee every night. Remember the Oracle of Apollo, who pronounced that thou shouldest be married to a dire and fierce Serpent, and many of the Inhabitants hereby, and such as hunt about in the countrey, affirme that they saw him yesternight returning from pasture and swimming over the River, whereby they doe undoubtedly say, that hee will not pamper thee long with delicate meats, but when the time of delivery shall approach he will devoure both thee and thy child: wherefore advise thy selfe whether thou wilt agree unto us that are carefull of thy safety, and so avoid the perill of death, bee contented to live with thy sisters, or whether thou remaine with the Serpent and in the end be swallowed into the gulfe of his body. And if it be so that thy solitary life, thy conversation with voices, this servile and dangerous pleasure, and the love of the Serpent doe more delight thee, say not but that we have played the parts of naturall sisters in warning thee.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  While I pondered with my selfe all these things, a great care [came] to my remembrance, touching the death, which the theeves provised for me and the maiden, and still as I looked downe to my belly, I thought of my poore gentlewoman that should be closed within me. And the theefe which a little before had brought the false newes against me, drew out of the skirt of his coate, a thousand crowns, which he had rifled from such as hee met, and brought it into the common treasury. Then hee carefully enquired how the residue of his companions did. To whom it was declared that the most valiant was murdred and slaine in divers manners, whereupon he perswaded them to remit all their affaires a certaine season, and to seeke for other fellowes to be in their places, that by the exercise of new lads, the terror of their martiall band might be reduced to the old number, assuring them that such as were unwilling, might be compelled by menaces and threatnings, and such as were willing might be incouraged forward with reward. Further he said, that there were some, which (seeing the profite which they had) would forsake their base and servile estate, and rather bee contented to live like tyrants amongst them. Moreover he declared, that for his part he had spoken with a certaine tall man, a valiant companion, but of young age, stout in body, and couragious in fight, whom he had fully perswaded to exercise his idle hands, dull with slothfullnesse, to his greater profit, and (while he might) to receive the blisse of better Fortune, and not to hold out his sturdy arme to begge for a penny, but rather to take as much gold and silver as hee would. Then everyone consented, that hee that seemed so worthy to be their companion, should be one of their company, and that they would search for others to make up the residue of the number, whereupon he went out, and by and by (returning againe) brought in a tall young man (as he promised) to whom none of the residue might bee compared, for hee was higher then they by the head, and of more bignesse in body, his beard began to burgen, but hee was poorely apparelled, insomuch that you might see all his belly naked. As soone as he was entred in he said, God speed yee souldiers of Mars and my faithfull companions, I pray you make me one of your band, and I will ensure you, that you shall have a man of singular courage and lively audacity: for I had rather receive stripes upon my backe, then money or gold in my hands.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  But it doesn't seem that this boy has as yet developed into a friend. And it is clear that G. will not allow himself to expect this. I asked Mrs. R. what had prompted her to have her son reassigned to a previously all-white high school. She sighed, paused; then, sharply, "Well, it's not because I'm so anxious to have him around white people." Then she laughed. "I really don't know how I'd feel if I was to carry a white baby around who was calling me Grandma." G. laughed, too, for the first time. "vVhitc people say," the mother went on, "that that's all a Negro wants. I don't think they believe that them sckes." Then we switched fr om the mysterious question of what white folks believe to the relatively solid ground of what she, herself� knows and fears. "You sec that boy? Well, he's always been a straight-A stu dent. He didn't hardly have to work at it. You sec the way he's so quiet now on the sota, with his books? Well, when he was going to--High School, he didn't have no homework or if he did, he could get it done in five minutes. Then, there he was, out in the streets, getting into mischief, and all he did all day in school was just keep clowning to make the other boys laugh. He wasn't learning nothing and didn't nobody care if he never learned nothing and I could just see what was going to happen to him if he kept on like that." The boy was very quiet. "What were you learning in --High?" I asked him. "�othing!" he exploded, with a very un-boyish laugh. asked him to tell me about it. "\Veil, the teacher comes in," he said, "and she gives you something to read and she goes out. She leaves some other student in charge ... " ("You can just imagine how much reading gets done," Mrs. R. interposed.) "At the end ofthe A FLY IN BUTTERMILK 191 period," G. continued, "she comes back and tells you some thing to read tor the next day." So, having nothing else to do, G. began amusing his class mates and his mother began to be afraid. G. is just about at the age when boys begin dropping out of school. Perhaps they get a girl into trouble; she also drops out; the boy gets work for a time or gets into tr ouble for a long time. I was told that torty-fi,·e girls had left school tor the maternity ward the year betore. A week or ten days betore I arri,·ed in the city eighteen boys from G.'s tormer high school had been sentenced to the chain gang. "My boy's a good boy," said Mrs. R., "and I wanted to see him ha,·e a chance." "Don't the teachers care about the students?" I asked. This brought torth more laughter.