Bill Bryson (the lawyer, not the travel writer) was a special guy - we celebrated his life at an "official" NACDL memorial Friday afternoon, shared photos and stories and a couple of songs. Saturday night it was the bawdier event: great food, plenty of drinks, dancing, and lots of people out to celebrate Bill’s life. It’s entirely too poignant to me that some of us can be so tortured that we end our lives, with even our closest friends not knowing how desperate we are. Bill’s death was a complete surprise to everyone. Wandering the halls at the hotel, checking the bar, I half expected to see him. Bill didn’t miss many NACDL meetings. And frankly, dinner wasn’t the same without him. I miss you, Bill.

We’re losing a lot of people: Two judges in the last few months in my little burg with a total of twelve benches. Bill in Anchorage (and wherever Stanford was playing anything), one of the lawyers in a huge conspiracy case died after surgery last week. Bob Richie, former NACDL president and a wonderful lawyer and friend, died last week in Knoxville. Look around and I’m betting if you haven’t lost somebody yourself recently, the person next to you has. It’s a short time we’re here friends, and then we’re gone.

Makes me proud of these kids (Did I mention my son’s band has a new CD?) creating something, a quality product, something that many people will enjoy for years to come. Beats stealing cars and drugs.

You can learn a lot of life lessons from kids, including, even when they’re little, that they like being productive: "Watch me, Mommy. Look what I made!" As adults, we’re still like that. Show me a body who sits and does nothing all day, and I’ll show you a miserable person. Everybody needs something to do. I read about a Nazi camp, where the job of the interns was to move dirt from one place to another, and then back again the next day. People broke, ran away, knowing they would be shot, rather than do this mind-numbing work. Others figure out a way to make it work, anyhow, perhaps singing or telling stories or encouraging others. As a famous philosopher and prison camp intern said, "prisoners without a defined purpose for living, quickly capitulated to the Nazi’s."

And so it is: we have to have a purpose, and we have to keep producing, if we hope to have a chance at happiness in this life.