OK ... so my home isn't my castle????

Let me get this straight ... I am NOT allowed to defend myself against an intruder in Wisconsin?

Hmmm ... this bears some looking into.

So let's say that I'm enjoying an evening at home, stretched out on the couch, and I hear a commotion outside my door. Before I can get to the door, it bangs open and a very large, very drunk fellow subject barges in and demands to know what I'm doing in his house. Even from across the room, I can smell the beer on his breath ... but it doesn't stop me from noticing the fact that his hands are balled into fists the size of small hams ... and he's pissed as hell, and coming straight at me.

OK, got that scene firmly fixed in your mind? Let's try another scenario.

Kathy and I are asleep upstairs. Being a light sleeper, I can't help but hear the tinkle of breaking glass downstairs. Throwing on a robe, I creep to the top of the stairs. All I can see in the dark at the bottom of the stairs is a burly arm carrying a baseball bat. (After a lifetime of working in darkrooms, I have excellent night vision.) No one in my family OWNS a baseball bat, much less uses one as a "master key" to open the patio door.

(Q) What do these two scenarios have in common? (A) Wisconsin lawmakers say I don't have any real options to defend Kathy, Zak and myself.

According to Wisconsin legislators, my only recourse is to use pepper spray on my assailant and dial 9-1-1... and hopefully keep away from swinging fists, baseball bats or worse. (According to a retired police friend of mine, in such situations the police are little better than armed historians. "When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.")

You see, in Wisconsin, a person's home ISN'T his/her castle, because we have no Castle Doctrine in our state laws here. We are obliged to retreat before home intruders.

Castle Doctrine exists in 31 states, and is defined thus: A homeowner CAN use deadly force to defend himself or his property, under the following conditions:

*An intruder must be making (or have made) an attempt to unlawfully and/or forcibly enter an occupied residence, business or vehicle.The intruder must be acting illegally—e.g. the Castle Doctrine does not give the right to attack officers of the law acting in the course of their legal duties

*The occupant(s) of the home must reasonably believe that the intruder intends to inflict serious bodily harm or death upon an occupant of the home

*The occupant(s) of the home must reasonably believe that the intruder intends to commit some other felony, such as arson or burglary

*The occupant(s) of the home must not have provoked or instigated an intrusion, or provoked or instigated an intruder to threaten or use deadly force

*The occupant(s) of the home may be required to attempt to exit the house or otherwise retreat (this is called the "Duty to retreat" and most self-defense statutes referred to as examples of "Castle Doctrine" expressly state that the homeowner has no such duty).

We almost had a reasonable law here, once.

The Wisconsin Assembly passed a Castle Doctrine bill in 2007, but the heavily-liberal State Senate allowed the law to die. The bill would have created immunity for an act of self-defense for any person who uses deadly force while in his/her residence and is not engaged in illegal activity.

Liberal politicians scoffed at the proposal, calling it the "Shoot the Milkman Law." (Although, I should point out that, even here in the Dairy State of Wisconsin, we haven't had milkmen in decades ... but I digress.) Media loudmouths decried a return to the shootouts of the Wild West if such a law were to pass.

But in Florida, where I was licensed to carry a weapon, no such state of armed anarchy ever materialized, despite the fact that Florida takes Castle Doctrine one step further to the "Stand your Ground Law." As my cop friend explained it, if someone was breaking into my condo (I lived on the ground floor,) all the rights in the case were with me -- the law-abiding citizen -- not the intruder.

A friend of mine on the West Coast is probably going to get pissed when she reads this. She'll likely say something like, "So, if Zak is coming home late some night, and had to break in because he forgot his keys, you'd load up a handgun and shoot?" She makes an excellent point.

The answer, by the way, to Mary's question, is "No." (Besides, if Zak ever breaks into this house because he left his keys and lost his mind, thus preventing him from using his cell phone to gain entrance, he's got bigger worries.)

As an armed citizen and resident of Wisconsin, I may have -- hopefully soon -- some rights to self defense in such a case. However, I truly feel I also have the responsibility to myself and my family to ensure that deadly force is necessary and that no other way exists to protect myself and my property.

But I want the right to make that call! I want the backing of the law!

But I don't expect such a law to make it any easier on me.

This sort of reminds me of the time I was teaching my daughter Johanna to drive. A teenage girl, she was a little giddy at the prospect of freedom, as symbolized by the car keys I'd placed in her hands. I quickly quashed that with a dose of reality.

"This isn't just a car," I told her, "it's a killing machine if you use it wrong!" She quickly doused the giggles and got her head back into the driver's seat.

That "killing machine" label, obviously, applies even more to the .40 cal Springfield Armory XD pistol I now intend to keep handy. I feel that having the pistol nearby, and not needing it, is FAR better than needing it some dark night, but not having it.

But frankly, Mary's "friendly fire" scenario is going all-but-guarantee that I probably won't sleep any more soundly because of it.

Passion for photography? Oh, yeah ... I remember that!

Thanks to my daughter, Christine, I was introduced to a young (younger than me, anyway,) firebrand of a photographer today.

Erinn Finlan, red-headed, mid-30s, enters the room about 15 minutes ahead of herself, so barely contained and energetic she is. She's tall enough to be an imposing figure ... I would say she HAS to be tall in order to compactly package up the passion and energy for photography she brings with her.

Until she walked in, I had almost forgotten about that passion part.

You see, I have always loved being a photographer. I love everything about it.

I love the gear. I love the math. I love the mechanics and electronics. I love the imaging. I love looking at photographs. I love shooting photographs. I love looking down at my side and seeing my well-worn Domke bag full of Nikons and lenses. I love talking photography. I love teaching photography. Formerly, I even loved the darkroom work, even though I came out into the light at the end of the day with eyestrain and smelling of Sodium Hypo-sulfate or Formaldehyde.

So like many of my generation, who were always taught "Do what you love and the money will follow," I began shooting for a living.

I discovered I was quite good at it ... not only the image formation part, but -- and sometimes especially -- the customer care part of it. I could make a client do what I wanted them to do (so as to get a good shot,) and yet never made them feel as though I was pushing too hard. As my not-so-sainted father used to say, "Diplomacy (and sales) is the art of being able to tell someone to go to hell, and phrasing it in such a way, that they're happy to pack for the trip."

I'm frankly pretty good at that too.

One of my daughters says I turn into a one-man Mariachi band when shooting a wedding. "It's the Dad show," Johanna says. The joke around my studio always was, "There are only two people allowed to shine at one of Bill's weddings: the Bride and Bill ...the Groom is just stage-dressing."

Kathy rationalizes this process as a sense of being "... lost at sea '..." on the part of the bridal party, most of whom have never undergone the whole marriage-day thing before. Thus, when I stand up in front of everyone after the service, and say "Attention, Class! Let us now briefly review 'Bill's Rules of Group Photography,' shall we? Oh, Bill would be me!" I carry it off with enough comedic timing that everyone is glad that someone seems to know what to do next.

I liken it to being a babysitter with a camera, or perhaps an entertainer for kids' parties. But it works. My clients are always happy afterwards.

Did I mention I was good at it?

I love the sense of completion I get having met a client's expectations at the end of a shoot. Oh, yeah ... taking money for something that feels like playtime is pretty cool, too. (Although, as playtime goes, I still come home exhausted and soaked with sweat at the end of a 9-hour wedding shoot.)

But, eventually, taking money for doing something you love does seem to take some of the luster from it.

And I've been shooting for a living for so long I almost forgot about the passion part.

You see, when you shoot for a living, you are meeting Other people's needs. You are executing their vision. It's your artistry, for sure. It's your technique. It's your eye.

But they're mostly other people's images. Possibly even other people's passions, too.

But talking with another photographer today, one who is young enough to still be passionate about the 'biz,' and yet old enough to have already lived through a few photographic nightmares of her own, was not only refreshing, it was ... stimulating.

As Kathy and Christine developed the familiar "Dan-Quayle-deer-in-the-headlights" look that non-shooters get sometimes, Erinn and I got quickly dived into f/Stops and focal lengths, go-to lenses, strobe and guide numbers, and location scouting.

Beyond that, looking at her work, I feel "reignited." Self-taught as a photographer, she has a killer eye for composition ... and the courage to break the rules that many of us classically trained shooters had beaten into us at an early age.

Regardless of what comes next, I am determined to go out more with Nikons, perhaps a little less with firearms, and find out what I have left to say photographically of my own.

Thanks, Christine. Thanks, Erinn. I needed that.

Ten Years After--Who really remembers anymore? (Ans: We do!)

We in the military often are accused of being slow to adjust to change and the passage of time. We are told to "get over it and move on."

Get over it? I don't think so.

After the Imperial Japanese attacks on the US Navy Base at Pearl Harbor, HI, the entire country was aflame, just as the sad hulks continued smoldering away at their moorings on Battleship Row. Everyone in this nation was shocked and angry ... and wanted to hit back. Records show that the nation stayed involved, stayed angry, throughout most of World War II. Everyone was directly or indirectly involved with the war effort.

There were meatless and wheatless days at home, so US troops in the field wouldn't go hungry. Gas was rationed. Nylon was rationed. Scrap metal drives insured there was enough metal in the foundries to make armaments and munitions. Women's groups would meet weekly to roll bandages for the troops. Recruiters' offices were mobbed. Families proudly hung out flags with service stars, quietly boasting how many family members were in uniform. Some families shared their grief by hanging out gold service stars, mutely stating for all to see that some in their family had paid the ultimate price for freedom. US and Allied battles merited front page coverage in every newspaper.

We as a people, arose and answered the Call to Arms.

Now? Ehh.

Except for that tiny percentage of Americans actually in military families, almost no one is connected to the war effort. Most high school graduates are far more worried about getting into school than they are getting into their country's service.

Daily I talk to people who tell me that military service is fine for those who can't get into a good school, but their kids are going to college to get a good job. Military recruiters tell me they still treated like pariahs in Milwaukee Public Schools, even though statistics show that only 1 out of 4 high school graduates are actually cut out to finish college.

The US populace is far more interested in the fact that the Green Bay Packers beat the New Orleans Saints in the NFL opener recently, than in the fact that the job of making this country safe against terrorism is not yet finished!

I seriously doubt whether anyone in this country has actually forgotten the events of 9/11. Even if they did, the plethora of TV and Internet images depicting flaming crashes and falling towers will remind them what happened on that otherwise beautiful fall day ten years ago.

But as I reminded a Marine friend of mine on Facebook today, the nation has lost sight of its sense of anger ... righteous indignation ... of having been stabbed in the heart for virtually no other reason than the fact that we don't follow a 13th Century nightmare version of Islam.

But we in the military are your corporate memory on this issue. We remember not only the events, we remember also feeling the wrongness of what happened, and how we individually and collectively vowed to help right those wrongs.

We, each of us, vowed to carry the fight to the enemy that had reached across oceans to kill us. We, each of us, vowed not to quit and leave the job half-done.

I recall one of the Guantanamo detainees -- a Saudi Arabian cardiac surgeon who studied at Oxford and who speaks better English than I do. He likened all Americans to "insects," saying that if he could push some button somewhere that would instantly annihilate our babies, he would already have done so and lost not a moment's sleep over it.

Like insects, he said, we needed to be exterminated and forgotten about by history.

We in the military are still cold inside at the thought of those who wish to kill as many of us as they can. We are still "cold angry."

This post, then, is a plea to the rest of you.

Never forget. Never forget!

Jury Duty -- a Necessary Pain in the Ass

"In a democracy, making law is like making sausage. You may or may not love the final product, but the process for making both of them will probably make you sick." old Lawyer's aphorism

I've been required for the second time in 16 years to perform jury duty.

The fact that I'm sitting here in the jury assembly room, blogging and updating FaceBook, says much about the key survival tools for a prospective juror ... the ability to endure REALLY uncomfortable chairs, surly civil servants and hours of boredom while waiting to be selected for a trial.

I came REAL close to weaseling out. I mean, there's not much going for this gig: You only get paid about $18 per day. (Even in a tanking economy, I make a good deal more than that at work, even working part time.) But wait, it gets worse. In addition to almost no money, there's also no free lunch, no free coffee, and -- Hell -- not even free parking!!!

I came THIS close to weaseling out and asking for a medical excuse. I really did.

I wish I could claim it was my better nature and high civic virtues that made me go through with it ... but it wasn't anything like that. I was just too lazy to have to jump through all those hoops to get excused. (Maybe they design the system that way for that very reason, I'm thinking)

So anyway, here I am, digesting my $8.56 lunch from the courthouse cafeteria, listening to some of my fellow jurors snore away during their post-prandial naps, trying not to watch the second Sandra Bullock movie of the day on the jury room television .... but I'm kind of glad I'm here.

Having served once before on this gig, I can tell you that the courthouse is ALWAYS the Great Leveler.

It is within these magnificent stonepile courthouses, scattered at county seats all across America, that we all come before the scrutiny of our fellow citizens. (I know, I know ... you're about to mention O. J. Simpson and Casey Anthony. Fuck them.)

Most of only enter these halls when there's some sort of trouble or life-changing event (marriage, divorce, birth, death, buying a home, etc.) Or when we or someone in our family is in trouble.

That's when your ability to look me and my fellow jurors in the eye and speak the truth will be the determining factor in your status.

... if you can wake my fellow jurors up, that is.

OK ... next? (No, seriously ... now what?)

"The Mills of God grind slowly ... but they grind exceedingly small" Rudyard Kipling

OK ... time to take a deep, collective breath and consider what has been accomplished here.

Most pundits are in agreement that this is certainly NOT an end to terrorism worldwide. (Hell, there is enough state-sponsored terrorism to more than fill any putative gap left by the mass murderer Osama bin Laden.)

Interviews with families who lost loved ones in the attacks on 9/11 show that this certainly won't bring back lost loves, nor even provide all that much closure.

Initial polling shows that, with the economy still in the tank and gas prices well over $4 per gallon, Pres. Obama's popularity may temporarily soar ... but it's gonna' be a long haul for him until the elections of November, 2012. (Nothing is shorter than the collective memory of the American electorate, it seems.)

OK ... so what, then? What's been achieved?

Balance...sort of. (A little, at least)

Given the sheer size of the damage done to us on our own soil on 9/11, we had to do this. We simply had to hunt him down and kill him to bring the scales of the universe back into balance. To simply shrug it off and go on about our lives would have called into question our basic values and outlook on the worth of an American citizen's life. We simply couldn't let this man remain alive with impugnity.

We followed established precedent. Remember Timothy McVeigh? The Oklahoma City bomber? Executing him in federal prison certainly didn't ease the loss of loved ones there ... but the US Government showed the world that if you declare open war on the US or its citizens, you will be hunted and hounded to (literally in bin Laden's case) the ends of the Earth.

The only thing you get by killing Americans is dead.

For his pains, the only thing Osama bin Laden got was being cut off, surrounded, and -- in the end -- very messily dead and dumped in an unmarked grave in the lonely ocean.

Terrorism will go on. Killings will go on. But the point is made.

You want to see Allah? Go out of your way to fuck with us and we'll facilitate the meeting ... no matter how long it takes.

TOP TEN signs that Spring has come to Wisconsin

After another long winter in Wisconsin, smart Cheeseheads know to look for the Top Ten signs that Spring has come again to Wisconsin:

10. The long rows of snow fence lining the highways disappear and are replaced by long lines of orange traffic construction barrels .

9. It's 80 degrees out today. Tomorrow, it's going down to 34 again. No big deal.

8. You've brought out your T-shirts and shorts, but don't feel like putting away your heavy coat just yet.

7. By the same token, your patio furniture now shares the front yard with your snow shovels.

6. The glacier-sized piles of dirty snow are gradually receding and reveal dead, brown grass beneath ... not to mention hundreds of frozen dog turds.

5. Migratory birds have returned to the trees outside your house. So have the mosquitoes.

4. You are nearly blinded by the light reflected off of the fish-belly-white legs and arms of your now shorts-wearing neighbors.

3. It's only April, but you're already pestering your building's property manager for news of the pool reopening.

2. Even though I work in a windowless building, I'm actually starting to CARE what the weather is like outside.

And the Number ONE sign that Spring has come again to Wisconsin is (drumroll!):

1. I went and took my Trek Series 7200 mountain bike out of Winter storage. (Can't wait to ride!)

Republicans vs Democrats: Enough already ... run the government!

"In a mature society, 'Civil Servant' is semantically equal to 'Civil Master.'" Author Robert Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

Heinlein, one of my favorite curmudgeon authors, commented often that democracy ain't perfect and it surely ain't pretty ... but it's better than anything anyone else has come up with so far. But, jeez, it can be irritating to watch our politicians and civil servants behaving like spoiled children, can't it?

Show of hands now: Who really thinks that, if the government shuts down in a few days, anyone of us is really going to notice right away? Didn't think so. (Frankly, I'd kind of welcome the peace and quiet for a short while.)

I for one am sick and tired of hearing the spoiled children we elect to state and national office pointing fingers at each other, and threatening to hold their breath unless the other side relents.

These politicos of both stripes always seem to forget, once they're elected, that MOST of their constituents live quite happily in the political middle. Despite that, once these people make it to Congress or the Statehouse, they spend most of their time positioning themselves against each other and moving as a group towards the political extremes... INSTEAD of actually representing us and doing the peoples' work.

I mean, wouldn't it be nice if, instead of attaching ideological manifestos (disguised as amendments) to a simple budget bill, these politicians actually grew a "set" and fixed social security? Balanced the budget? Came up with genuine national healthcare?

To any of my handful of younger readers note this: I'm going to start collecting Social Security this Summer and in all likelihood I'll get it and my Navy pension until the end of my days. You guys? Maybe not so much.

It is the decided best interests of anyone NOT a Baby Boomer, anyone who may NOT have Social Security to fall back on, to get busy and hold your elected official's collective feet to the fire. They won't quit having these political temper tantrums in office unless WE make them!

And as for the Wisconsin public workers' unions, I say, respectfully, "Having been one of you, I value your work and honor your work ethic. But all other unions have already had to give back tone in this rotten economy in order to save their jobs. Now it's your turn. Get over it and get back to work."