Douglas Whaley

   . In 1978, as I've related in this blog (see "The First Time I Nearly Died," below in "Related Posts"), I'd survived a ruptured appendix that went untreated for two weeks, and finally, by that summer, was on the mend, though I was still dealing with a fistula (a rupture spewing gunk from my insides) in my upper abdomen.   My then-partner, David Merry, and I decided to attend a gay rights function at a bar ("Rudely Elegant") on the west side of Columbus.   In those early gay rights day there were almost no venues where gays could safely gather except the bars.   I was just beginning to gather the courage to become a gay activist myself, and, since I was still not fully recovered from my life-threatening recent experience, David drove us to the bar.   On the way in we had to walk past a group of young straight men with an attitude (David later told me that one of them swatted his head as we went by, which I didn't learn until later t...

  . Professor Kingsfield of "The Paper Chase" Of course law professors are a superior breed, with tons of favorable adjectives applicable to them ("intelligent," "handsome," "wonderful," "charismatic," etc.), but a large number are truly funny people, and this post is about five of my favorites. Arthur Greenbaum.   The first example is my best friend on the Ohio State Moritz College of Law faculty, Arthur Greenbaum.   I've known him since the fall of 1979 and he and his family are part of the chosen family we've created here in Columbus, Ohio.   Among his many admirable talents is his facile sense of humor (too often, alas, laced with puns that should have died aborning).   One favorite story: In 2001, attorney Michael E. Moritz donated the amazing sum of $30 million to the Ohio State Law School if the school would henceforth be named after him.   As you can well imagine, that happened immediately.   Shortly ...

.   Williamsburg, Virginia During the 1973-74 school year, I was a Visiting Professor at the University of North Carolina Law School in Chapel Hill, N.C., moving there for that period with my wife Charleyne and our son, Clayton, who had turned one year old that December.   For spring break in March of 1974, we arranged to meet Jay and Polly Westbrook, my old friends from law school, and their son Joel, who was slightly older than Clayton, for a vacation in Williamsburg, Virginia. The Westbrooks The Whaleys When we were all gathered together down there, we took rooms at a motel, and proceeded to do touristy things in Williamsburg, wheeling the children around in strollers, looking at the recreation of colonial times in his historic city.   (Coincidentally, I graduated from York High School in 1961, not far from Williamsburg, so I'd been here before, and, indeed, had taken my college entrance exam at the College of William and Mary).   Happily, Ja...