Lovechilde?

Artwork by Jaime Cervantes
I guess I should first dispel the rumor that I was born out of wedlock, not that there is anything wrong with that.  "Lovechilde" was a nickname given to me 30 years ago by one of my dearest friends and spiritual blogfather.  When I started Fair and Unbalanced, I decided to try to remain relatively anonymous and chose my old moniker as a nom de plume.

I grew up in New York (Long Island, technically), and really grew once I moved to the SF/Bay Area in the early 1980s.  I am married and have two young children.

I am a life-long opponent of the capital punishment and, as a lawyer, I represented inmates on California's death row for more than 24 years.  However, in late 2012, I became so frustrated with the dysfunctional, broken process that, to paraphrase Justice Blackmun, I decided to no longer "tinker with the machinery of death.  I joined a civil -- a far more civilized -- practice.

I am eternally hopeful about and therefore continually disappointed in the Democratic Party's ability to effectively convey and meaningfully pursue a progressive agenda.  I guess I fit what Hendrik Hertzberg recently characterized as the disillusioned left.  ("Perpetually disillusioned because it has such an ample supply of illusions;" "scorn for 'the system,' but "an implicit naive faith in the workability of the mechanisms of American governance.")

I love baseball and agree with Jim Bouton who said, "you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time."  I am a chronically, perhaps clinically, obsessed New York Mets fan.  More disillusionment, I suppose, which I explain at length, here:  Zen and the Misery of Being a Met Fan.

My music tastes range from Jazz (especially the straight-ahead hard bop variety of the mid-to-late 1950s and early 1960s) to Indie/Alternative Rock, and much in between. Here's my list of my favorite 50 jazz artists/albums.  Here are pieces on Ray Charles and Anita O'Day.  I've also written about Wilco Yo La Tengo and Bruce Springsteen

Lists of my favorite/most influential books/movies/music can be found on the link below this "Lovechilde?" link or right here.