Musings of a
world traveler

I accomplished Stage One of the transition by stepping down from firm management. At an Office dinner at Capital Grill celebrating this event, I was awarded this crystal globe from Dan McMahon, Chairman of the firm and great friend, the pedestal reading: “With Grateful Appreciation for your Countless Contributions, Unwavering Leadership, and Vision as Wilson Elser’s Southwest Region and Dallas Office Managing Partner 1994-2021 Your Commitment to Excellence in Lawyering, Serving Your Clients, and Being a Great Colleague make you a true Ambassador of the Firm’s Core Values.”

I decided to make the transition from law in stages and in November, 2021, the Texas Bar Journal published an article I wrote about my transition that you can find here.

On November 16, 2021 Reuters published my article (with Karen Bashor and Taylor Buono) Focus on Infrastructure on lessons learned from recent tragedies caused by America’s failure to maintain and update our infrastructure. The article can be found here. Our follow-up article on the Texas energy grid failure of last winter was published by Reuters on December 3 and can be found here or at The Texas Energy Grid, a power crisis that didn’t have to happen: Will there be a repeat this winter?/Secondary Sources/National/WestlawToday.

We are nation of laws, not of men. We are a democratic nation because of Athenian Greeks and recently I went to Athens to re-discover our democratic heritage which seems to be in great peril today. I found it to my surprise hidden in plain site in the Museum of the Ancient Greek Agora in Athens engraved in this stele which depicts the personified Demos (people of Athens) being crowned by Democracy (the first red arrow). The second red arrow points to a law against tyranny which records the following: “If anyone rise up against the Demos for tyranny or join in establishing the tyranny or overthrow the Demos of the Athenians or the democracy in Athens whoever kills him who does any of these things shall be blameless.” Basically, any tyrant can be killed and anyone who kills the tyrant was acquitted.

Ostracism was a unique type of voting intended as a means of protecting the city against aspirants to despotic power. The result of the ostracism vote was valid only if there was a quorum of 6000 citizens present. Each voter scratched or painted on a potsherd the name of the man he thought was undesirable as seen here. The “candidate” with the greatest number of votes against him was obliged to leave Athens in exile for ten years. This was yet another protection against tyranny employed by the ancient Athenians.