The Trial Lawyers College seminar in Big Sur was ASTOUNDING! All my weeks of white-knuckle worry and pre-meditated piss off that Tony Serra would be a no-how, dissolved at the sight of his big smiling face. He came through big time, in spite of the rain, in spite of the night and dangerous roads, in spite of the distance, in spite of his concerns about driving at night in his old klunker car with no tail light, in spite of being in the thrust of a triple-murder trial in Oakland — he showed up!!! There IS a God! Prayers ARE answered. He was beautiful. He gave of himself generously and whole-heartedly — for FIVE HOURS!!!! Then he was going to drive back again, all that long way back from the Sur to San Francisco but by that time it was midnight, raining hard and out of the question to do so. So he stayed over and left by dawn’s early light. Every one loved him. He was the rave of the 4-day seminar. People said it was the best seminar EVER in 15 years, and all because of Tony. I was so proud of him!
I sold a lot of books and prints of my courtroom art. Good things were said about the book, like, “It changed my life! You humanized this giant of the courtroom and I got the feeling ‘I too can be someone like that. I CAN DO THIS! This book gave me hope!” Another was, “I devoured this book! Couldn’t stop reading it. I liked the way you wove in the trials and the legalese with your own vignettes. It’s beautifully done.” Another was, “The language was so readable. It’s not dry and boring like most books about lawyers and the law. This one has LIFE to it! It has a heart!.” It was just tearful to hear it from so many sources, all of them LAWYERS!
All-in-all, the moral of this story is, you’ve got to go through that wall of fear to break through to the other side, and that’s where all the good stuff is just waiting to be embraced. AHHHHHHHH! It was just GRAND!
I returned to record temps of minus 15 degrees in Santa Fe! I was not dressed for that. I just wore everything I had all at once, like Russian immigrants do. It was steamy hot sufferance at the plane change in LAX but barely enough warmth for arrival at the airport in ABQ, waiting outside for the shuttle to the parking lot. And then, Home again, Home again, all smiles and inner glow and a fist full of money from my blessed book. It’s been a long hard haul, but moments like this make it all worthwhile.
