At 16:33 23/02/2012, Ed wrote:
Retirement isn't always easy. I had to retire
after about five years ago after some fifty
years of very interesting work. I've sometimes
caught myself waiting for a phone call asking me
to come to a meeting in Whitehorse, Inuvik or
wherever. But dammit, that doesn't happen anymore.
Your retirement is an opposite example to the
Judge's, yet it proves the same point. The loss
of a role in a team -- at whatever level -- is a
loss of status. It's terrifically important. When
I worked in industry as a young man I saw many of
the retired foremen or supervisors returning to
visit their previous colleagues week after week.
Keith
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: <mailto:[email protected]>Keith Hudson
To:
<mailto:[email protected]>RE-DESIGNING
WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION ;
<mailto:[email protected]>Arthur Cordell
Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2012 10:07 AM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] The Love of the Law, Still Fulfilled
At 14:46 23/02/2012, Arthur wrote:
Why retire???
Why retire indeed? -- if you can keep the status
you've gained from your fellows during your
working life. All is revealed in the very last sentence of the article:
Im called Judge wherever I go, he said.
Maybe you cannot put a price on that.
Keith
======================
February 20, 2012 NY Times
The Love of the Law, Still Fulfilled
By
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/william_glaberson/index.html?inline=nyt-per>WILLIAM
GLABERSON
He has the white hair and the black robe.
But this judge, up on the bench in Queens
Supreme Court, is a little different from most
of the other 1,200 in the states courts. Judge
Allen Beldock, 92, is paid nothing. Zip. Nada.
No salary. In this era of budget cuts, no honorarium.
Not even gas money.
Of course, after 44 years on the bench, coming
to work just about every day is second nature,
he said recently, maybe 130 pounds soaking wet,
judicial robe included, leaning back at a desk
he uses at
<http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcas/html/resources/queens_supreme.shtml>the
courthouse on Sutphin Boulevard in Jamaica.
If I were not a judge, I wouldnt be doing
anything, he said. What would I be doing if I
were not a judge? What am I even qualified to
do? Ive been a judge for 44 years. My father
was a butcher. Im not trained to be a butcher.
So, four days a week, Judge Beldock gets into
his eight-year-old Chevrolet Impala, which has
seen better days, and makes his way to the
courthouse. Mondays and Tuesdays he shepherds
damage suits. Thursdays and Fridays he supervises jury selection.
Of course, for most of those 44 years, he did
get a check, first as a full-time judge hearing
criminal cases, and later, after he officially
retired more than 20 years ago, as a judge paid
a daily rate of $300 to handle civil cases.
Then the fiscal crisis hit the courts about a
year ago, the budget was cut and a lot of the
retired judges who had been $300-a-day judicial hearing officers went home.
Not Judge Beldock. Like a hardy few other
retired judges around the state one or two in
Manhattan, at least one in Brooklyn he has
continued with a more or less full schedule for no compensation whatsoever.
Why? Well, there is the love of the law. But
there are other contributing factors.
I dont read books, Judge Beldock said.
Ive done all my traveling, he said.
And the citys glittering cultural life? Im
not a big fan of museums. Ive been to them.
One of his three quite-grown children, Neil
Beldock, 55, said in a separate interview that
it was almost as if his father had no choice:
I think he just loves going to court and being in court every day.
Judge Beldock ruled out returning to practicing
law, as he did for years before Mayor John V.
Lindsay appointed him to the bench in 1968. I
dont want to deal with clients, he said.
But working, he added, does beat one of the
alternatives. Too many of my friends that I
did have over the years, when they stopped
working or retired, they died, he said with a
matter-of-factness befitting a lifelong New Yorker.
Judges, all-powerful when they are sitting up a
step or two on the bench, evidently are just
mortals. Judge Beldock said a dozen of them
used to crowd around a big table every day at
the Flagship Diner on Queens Boulevard. These
days, he said, he is often the only one.
Theyre dead, he said. Youd be amazed. I could give you a list.
In reports and hearings, bar associations have
bemoaned the loss of the judicial hearing
officers, saying that they helped the
overburdened judiciary keep some limits on
ballooning court delays and that their decades
of experience could be useful. But the salad
days for retired judges do seem to be over.
For some of them, the end of their judging may
be a little hard to take, though they do get
healthy pensions and good benefits. For Judge
Beldock, the per diem job also brought growing
acknowledgment as the decades passed and he
became a senior statesman of the courts. The
Daily News recognized him a couple of years ago
as the <http://nydn.us/yA7iqS>oldest state
judge at work in the five boroughs. That was before the cuts.
At first, while court officials were deciding
whether to permit some of the retirees to come
back as volunteers, his new unemployment was
strange. Long a widower, Judge Beldock said he
would be unsure how to begin the day if a tie
and a black robe were not involved. Id just
feel, I gotta get up because I gotta eat to
live, he said. Id buy the paper and I would read.
Some paid judges and some lawyers disparage the
volunteer judges as dabblers. But in his
courtroom the other day, some lawyers waiting
for cases said Judge Beldock seemed to be the real thing.
Hes still as sharp as I would imagine he
was, said Bradley M. Wanner, a young lawyer.
John J. Proios, a lawyer himself for 49 years,
said Judge Beldock is like me, an old goat.
The task at hand, setting schedules for
recently filed suits, was not too demanding.
But the proceedings may have seemed a touch
more official because of the white-haired
gentleman on the bench, peering through bifocals, as judges do.
In an interview, an appeals court judge with
many years experience in the courts, Justice
Randall T. Eng, said Judge Beldock had had that
judicial look since Mr. Eng first appeared
before him as a young prosecutor in the early 1970s.
He always had white hair, Justice Eng said.
He actually hasnt changed much.
Judge Beldock said that even back at the
beginning, he was proud of the position.
Im called Judge wherever I go, he said.
Maybe you cannot put a price on that.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/nyregion/judge-allen-beldock-92-still-on-queens-bench-but-without-pay.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha29&pagewanted=print>http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/nyregion/judge-allen-beldock-92-still-on-queens-bench-but-without-pay.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha29&pagewanted=print
_______________________________________________
Futurework mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com
----------
_______________________________________________
Futurework mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
_______________________________________________
Futurework mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com
_______________________________________________
Futurework mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
