Sometimes you just have to laugh at life. As I was reading this month’s submission from our president, I was bemused at the continuing consternation regarding an issue that ought to be fairly straightforward. To be sure, the parking situation has caused me a substantial amount of frustration over the years—frustration which I have in various ways tried to stem with humor.
Since the opening of the Judicial Center in 1991, I have been referring to the parking facility as "The Bermuda Triangle"—you go in but you’re never seen again. I have marveled at the dogmatic belief that infects some visitors to the parking garage that there absolutely will appear a spot next to the elevator at 8:58 am if they are only willing to stop traffic for a mile behind them in order to wait for it. I have railed at the plots by whoever is apparently in charge of the facility to frustrate the attempts by regular users to bypass the bottlenecks by the installation of ever more barriers, cones, chains and chicken wire. At one point, I suggested to the folks in charge of Judge’s Nite that a recurring theme for a skit in one of the shows would be the erection of cones and chains directly in the path of anyone who was onstage culminating in at least one occasion where the whole cast was required to circumnavigate the entire ballroom just to get out of the scene. I have even had nightmares where I am Ebeneezer Scrooge late for court and I am bedeviled by "Roger Marley" festooned with yellow chains and orange cones telling me that if I would only leave my Roosevelt Road office two hours before my nine o’clock court appearance and park in a marsh east of the blacktop which remains closed until the line backs up to Manchester and County Farm, I would be happier and punctual ("Praise God").
But I think I have a solution. I suggest that from now on, anyone who wishes to park in the parking garage adjacent to the court house be first required to enter into the "temporary" construction parking lot installed in connection with the erection of the JOF (completed during my first term as editor in 2004) and take a bingo number from a machine which will randomly direct vehicles to a conveyor not unlike that at O’Hare ("Please look down, the walkway is ending") whereupon the vehicle will be taken to the lot anywhere from immediately to two hours later. It has to work at least as well.
We are again running a writing competition with prizes available (apart from the accolades and warm feeling you’ll get from writing). Please consider submitting an entry and encourage others to as well.
This month we have articles regarding accord and satisfaction, maintenance in gross, trademark protection and protection for singer/songwriters. I wish to thank this month’s lead articles editor Tom Else.