EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND

University of California at Berkeley, B.A.
Harvard Law School, J.D.
Stanford Business School (one year in MBA program)

LEGAL BACKGROUND

Credentials:
Graduated Harvard Law School (Doctor of Jurisprudence)
Licensed in California (inactive)
Licensed in Kansas (inactive)
Licensed before the U.S. Supreme Court
Licensed before the U.S. District Court of Appeals (Southern District of California)
Licensed before the California Court of Appeals (Ninth Circuit)

INTERNATIONAL BACKGROUND

"My international travel started relatively early in life. Between my sophomore and junior years at Berkeley, I took off a year to explore some of the world. I shipped out on a Norwegian freighter from New Orleans and went to Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela, then through the Panama Canal and up to El Salvador. The freighter returned with timber from up the Orinoco River in Panama (an interesting river that flows both ways depending on the tide 150 miles away). Then I took a second Norwegian freighter to Europe. I traveled down from Scotland and motorcycled through Europe, then crossed over into North Africa. When my year was up, I took another Norwegian freighter back to the U.S. This was the start of my great interest in foreign exploration."

Have traveled in 51 countries.

(This photo was taken on a humanitarian mission to Haiti.)

1 year in the Philippines.

6 weeks in the middle of the Sahara on a vision quest, south of Tamanrasset, about 150 miles from the Niger border. About three kilometers away from my tent (shown below) was a little water hole where birds drank. I was able to purify the water and drink it.

Drove to Panama down the Pan-American Highway in 1964
Brief visit to Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, and Macao
7 months in El Salvador.
6 months in Calcutta, India.

15 trips for a total time of 6 months in Israel.

HUMANITARIAN WORK

Went with emergency relief team to take goods to Mozambiquan refugees in South Africa (met with Vice-Minister of Foreign Relations, a Member of Parliament, and former mayor of Soweto, David Thebahali—shown below). Photographic safari in Kruger National Park.

Helped take used clothing to U.S.S.R. before communism fell, going through Warsaw, Poland and from Leningrad through Novgorod to Moscow.

Traveling by small plane, motor launch and dug-out canoe, went with emergency relief team up the Coco river to Iralaya on the Miskito Coast of Honduras to provide health clinics for Nicaraguan refugees escaping the Sandinistas on the “Trail of Tears.”

Took used clothing to the slums of Lopez Portillo, on the outskirts of Mexico City (three separate trips).

Drove $100,000 of seeds and medical supplies for the poor in El Salvador—overland by semi through Mexico and Guatemala to El Salvador during the Civil War. The goods were stolen by the Salvadoran Army. I was able to get most of it back by meetings over a period of several months with the Vice Minister of Foreign Relations, Minister of Public Health, and Sub-Director of the National Guard.

During the six months I was in El Salvador, trying to get the seeds and medical supplies back from the army, I met and married my wife in the Mayor’s office in San Salvador.

Working with Hospital Benjamin Bloom in San Salvador and Dr. Antonio Bonilla, we visited severely burned children all over rural El Salvador. We were able to bring a number of children up to the Shriners Hospital for Children in Los Angeles for burn reconstruction.

Spent six months in Calcutta India, attempting to set up a health ministry for those living on the street. Supreme Court Justice David Souter was not only in my class at Harvard Law, but also in my section. I wrote Justice Souter a postcard from Calcutta, "It’s a long way from the steps of the Supreme Court to the streets of Calcutta." I felt David Souter had gone to one exalted extreme, and life had taken me to another.


Lived a short distance from Mother Teresa’s Mother House, and visited her on nine different occasions but never felt I could ask to photograph her. Once, she laughingly threw our baby daughter up in the air, saying, “Maybe, one day, you will be a Missionary of Charity.”


Worked briefly in Kalighat, her first home for the destitute and dying. They asked me to read the Bible to Mother Teresa and her assembled nuns at her evening service before “Good Friday.”

Here I am with my four children.

My closest friend for 19 years, the rock of our family, the love of my life, my wife.

OTHER

Ran for Congress in 1992 as write-in candidate for Ross Perot
President and board member of Stagecoach Outpost, a third world humanitarian organization
President and board member of Hakanami, a 501c3 dedicated to providing funds for other 501c3’s

Consulting: $400 per hour

I will not give you any specific legal advice (that is the domain of a lawyer licensed in your jurisdiction), but rather give you the benefit of my forty years of experience in the legal, business, and international arena.

During our six months in Calcutta, I wrote some poetry.

Broken Lady

POINT AND SHOOT

As intrusive as trying to

record the sounds

of a woman being raped

Is the camera in Calcutta.


FIRST NIGHT IN CALCUTTA

Kipling's "City of Dreadful Night"

takes you by surprise and

overwhelms you.

Our first night in Calcutta found my wife

and baby and I coming back from

Mother Teresa's on

Lower Circular Road,

to our hotel on Sudder Street.

Through the narrow, dark and winding

streets, charcoal fires and

thin silhouettes were filling the

night in this eighth largest city

in the world.

Our rickshaw puller's muted bell

announced our passing and to

please move aside.

As we passed through the smoke of

burning coal and incense,

we stepped back into time and

into another world.

In the lights of passing shops,

we could see tattered clothing on a

frail humanity,

pumping water into an old bucket,

carrying a gunny sack of

dirty papers and rags,

and hammering on a

greasy bicycle frame.

My wife was crying tears and sobbing sobs,

"Take me back home!"

“I want to go back home!”

My heart was thinking,

"Is this a ride through hell?"

"Is this a night in Paradise Lost?"

"Is this what happens when no one cares?"

"And is this the ultimate end of

a lost humanity?"


CROWS CAUCUSING

Beneath my window

On this Calcutta morning,

What are they discussing

with endless vitality?

When will I see the sun today,

And will be it be a red blob

in a brown sky again?

CALCUTTA

Broken old woman

Hobbling on a dirty

crutch.


Transformed—

You will be a lovely lady

who cares for her

children

And takes flowers to

a broken world.

SISTER JEBEMALA

Had spent two years in

Colombia and Bolivia and

had then gone to

New York City's Harlem,

as one of Mother Teresa's

Missionaries of Charity.

At the Mother House

on Lower Circular Road,

I asked her, "What is the

biggest difference between Harlem and

Calcutta?"

"In Calcutta," she said,

"It's safe to go out.

I can come and go—

Anytime.

"In Harlem, it's not even safe

to go out at four in the afternoon."

HOW WAS THAT AGAIN?

I asked Hindus in Calcutta,

"Why it is that America,

a Christian nation,

has streets and parks that

aren't safe to walk in,

where violent crime is rampant,

And in a city like Calcutta,

deeply, wretchedly, freakishly poor,

you can walk almost anywhere,

day or night

with never a thought of being mugged,

raped, knifed, or shot?

Why?"

Their answer may surprise you.

"It is simple," they said,

"It's because we are

spiritually more advanced."

THE MONSOON

The monsoon arrived two days ago,

on my birthday,

at seven in the morning.

We had survived the

infamous Indian summer heat,

and now

Calcutta has become the

Venice of the East.

The streets become canals,

water washing up the

steps of buildings, and

taxis become yellow gondolas,

making waves as they

plough their way along with

water up to their floorboards.

In streets with water hip-high,

only the rickshaws can ply.

The heavens just open up and

it pours and pours and pours

for hours and hours on end.

For those who live on the pavements,

their abodes are now under a foot

or more of water.

The temperature drops

down to the mid-90's

and gives relief from the

heat of summer now passed.

THIRD WORLD FLOWERS

Calcutta—you are an ugly flower.

An old ugly flower in ruins,

And there are a hundred other cities, or

a thousand others like you.

Weeds and neglect have

choked you until now you are

no flower garden.

You are a garbage dump—the

refuse of a world that cares not.

What do we say to you, Calcutta?

What do we say to our beautiful flower,

beautiful on the inside,

ugly as all hell on the outside?

THE THIRD WORLD

Is a mirror

In which all of us

See ourselves

As we really are.

CITY OF TEARS

In Calcutta, you walk through human

stench and bone-grinding

degradation and watch a heroic

struggle against all the odds to

survive in a squalor that leaves the mind

gasping for air.

You walk through a no-man's land of

lepers begging

with no noses and

with stumps for fingers

(the flesh long since eaten away).

You see humanity with no limbs, partial

limbs, and horribly twisted limbs

vying for alms with mothers

clutching new-born babies to their

shriveled breasts.

You see children scavenging garbage bins

for bits of broken glass or metal

for 14 cents a day.

Then, before you can get accustomed to

the depths of someone else's misery,

the survival dance takes a different turn.

Out of the corner of your eye, you see an

enchantingly beautiful nine- or ten-year

old girl picking through a pile of

ashes to find some bits of

charcoal to sell.

Her beauty could appear on the cover of

any number of American fashion

magazines were it not for her filth, and

you ask yourself,

"What future does she have?"

&#xHow long before she begins to sell herself for

some man’s quick joyride

at 30 or 40 cents a shot?”

And deeper questions jettison into your

conscience,

"What is my responsibility here?"

"Am I my brother's keeper?"

"Who is my neighbor?"

GUESSING GAME

I tried to guess the age of both of them—

a man and a woman

Who had come to the little

tuberculosis clinic in

Mominpore, Calcutta.

How old were they? I asked myself

and guessed.

I guessed each to be about

75 years of age—

75 long years of travail and effort—

not easy years

not years of plenty

not even years of very much hope.

On their medical charts

I found my answer.

Forty-nine and fifty-one.

KALIGHAT

Working in Kalighat,

Mother Teresa's first home for the

Destitute and Dying,

"Do small things with great love,"

a sign on the wall says.

Men of skin and bone,

with no strength to move,

Men coughing and spitting tuberculosis

sputum into clay bowls

that we would collect

along with bandages and scabs,

refuse of men and women dying,

and take outside to a nearby dump.

At the dump, children and women would go

through this nightmarish mixture,

scavenging for the cloth bandages,

the clay sputum pots, and

anything else of value.


CROWS AND DOGS

Some sights you don't forget easily—

Women and children scavenging

for food in the same garbage piles

with dogs and crows.

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