CREATIVITY AMONGST LAWYERS

WHAT’S OLD IS NEW AGAIN

REDISCOVERING A CREATIVE OUTLET HELPS ONE ATTORNEY RECONNECT WITH HER INNER ARTIST

BY NANCY L. GRACE | WAKE FAMILY LAW GROUP

IN THE HUSTLE AND BUSTLE of life over the last 30 years, changing careers from teaching to practicing law, raising two children as a single parent, building a law practice and giving back to the legal profession through various professional activities, I forgot that I had an artistic side, and it took COVID-19 to help me rediscover it.

When the pandemic hit in early spring, it took away in one fell swoop many of the activities that regularly brought joy to my life — traveling, Tar Heel sports, getting together with friends and spending time with my children and baby granddaughter. As an extrovert, I found myself struggling with this loss and with the isolation brought about by the pandemic restrictions.

When I complained about this to my sister on a Zoom video conference, she suggested we do a virtual “sip and paint.” We signed up and did our first painting in mid-March. I hadn’t painted anything in more than 30 years, but after that first virtual class I was hooked. I stocked up on canvases and paint supplies, watched a few YouTube videos and started painting up a storm.

I’m certainly not ready to quit my day job, and I doubt I’ll ever see a single canvas of mine hanging in an art gallery, but rediscovering this creative outlet has been a wonderful, positive side-benefit of the pandemic. And who knows, someday one of those paintings might just show up in the silent auction for the WCBA’s Bar Awards! WBF

A CREATIVE COVID ESCAPE

WITH HIS HARLEY-DAVIDSON, ONE JUDGE PROVES IT’S NOT THE DESTINATION, BUT THE JOURNEY THAT MATTERS

BY JUDGE CRAIG CROOM | SPECIAL SUPERIOR COURT JUDGE

MY THERAPIST IS DR. DAVIDSON. Dr. Davidson is a 2015 HARLEY-DAVIDSON ROAD GLIDE SPECIAL. I ride to overcome and outrun the stress of COVID.

I completed the ultimate ride, the IRON BUTT, on May 16. The IRON BUTT SADDLESORE 1000 is 1,000 miles on a motorcycle within 24 hours. I completed my first Iron Butt riding round-trip from Garner to Daytona Beach, Florida and back, for a total of 1,057 miles in 18 hours, 35 minutes.

I really enjoyed this ride until we hit a traffic jam southbound into Florida. Traffic stretched for miles back into Georgia. The rain began as we waited in the traffic jam. The cause of the traffic jam was a COVID checkpoint at the Florida line. We were waved through the checkpoint without questioning.

JUDGE CRAIG CROOM AND HIS HARLEY

I completed my second Iron Butt on August 8. This ride was a North Carolina SaddleSore 1000, which is 1,000 miles within the state of North Carolina. We rode from Knightdale to Murphy and back again. With 250 miles to go on this 1,000-mile trip, we turned on U.S. Highway 64 with the intent to go to Manteo.

We experienced bright sunshine the entire trip. As we exited Interstate 540 onto Highway 64, dark clouds replaced the bright sunshine. We rode through heavy rain from Knightdale to Franklin County. A thunderstorm in Rocky Mount forced us south from completing our trip to Manteo. Storms caught us in Wilson and Dunn. We made it to Lumberton and returned to Knightdale, for a total of 1,018 miles in 20 hours, 31 minutes.

Throughout both trips, I wore my mask. I also packed food and water to minimize entering buildings. Dr. Davidson prescribed the Bun Burner 1500 in 36 hours for my next ride. Be safe! WBF

TO THE RESCUE

FOSTERING KITTENS BRINGS JOY DURING AN UNCERTAIN TIME

BY KATIE KING | WAKE FAMILY LAW GROUP

MY FAVORITE DISTRACTION from the stress of a family law practice and, these days, the stress of COVID life, is foster kittens. Watching videos of cats and kittens on the internet has scientifically been proven to heighten positive emotions and boost energy levels. Cats get more views on YouTube than any other videos, and taking care of them in real life is (usually) even better.

My family started fostering for PURR PARTNERS several years ago after our own cats died, and we (minus my husband!) missed having a cat around. The rescue was specifically looking for kitten fosters since there is always an abundance of kittens during “KITTEN SEASON,” from April to November.

We have hosted many kittens and mama cats, generally a litter at a time that stays in our “kitten room” until they are ready to be adopted. We have had several litters of kittens born at our house (an amazing experience for my kids), and this spring my eldest daughter and I helped deliver and revive a breech kitten on a day I was unexpectedly working from home after a mediation was postponed.

We’ve had our share of sad stories over the years (one from our current litter was thrown out of a car window at just a few weeks old) and have nursed many sick kittens back to health, but watching kittens grow and get ready for their forever families has made fostering very satisfying. It’s a good counterpoint to my days spent serving people in my family law practice.

I’ve been the “kitten dealer” for many of our friends in the legal community, including our very own Whitney von Haam, and I shamelessly plug fostering for anyone who has the heart to temporarily care for these babies. I promise you won’t end up keeping them all. WBF

SOWING THE SEEDS OF CREATIVITY

ONE ATTORNEY FINDS THE SECRET TO HAPPINESS IN GARDENING

BY SARAH J. FARBER | NORTH CAROLINA DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

AS A CHILD, I loved reading “The Secret Garden” by Frances Hodges Burnett. The allure of a secret place, just for the children, with the beauty and secrets nature holds, stuck in my memory long after the other themes of the book faded.

I have spent the last seven growing seasons working on turning the backyard of my 1972 split-level home into something of my own secret garden. Sure, it isn’t behind a stone wall, but there is a pine stockade fence between the neighbors and me.

Most days when I get home from work . . . I mean, when I log off of the VPN, I turn to the backyard and do whatever suits my fancy. Thus far, that has included everything from using a stamp to make a path that looks like stone out of concrete, planting about half of the yard with native flowers to attract birds, bees, butterflies, and other wildlife, and making a wattle fence out of invasive bamboo harvested with permission from neighbors’ yards.

There are no rules in my secret garden. I indulge all of my whims, so far as my budget allows. I plant things that bring me joy, even though they don’t fit with my native pollinator-friendly theme.

I have edged many of the beds with empty wine bottles, a riff on both the bottle trees that are so common here and a way to save money on landscaping. I used old shutters and a screen door rescued from a home that was being torn down to build what I call “Farber’s Folly” – tongue fully in cheek.

I adore pass-along plants that remind me of the people who shared them, and I love passing them along to others. I try things. Sometimes I fail, and plants die or aren’t productive and there is zero downside. Unlike in the practice of law, no client or institution suffers.

My biggest failures every year are redeemed without fail: everything edible goes into the run that houses my chickens, the Supreme Clucks. Those girls will eat almost anything, and through the magic of nitrogen, they churn out beautiful compost that I can put back into my garden.

I have not run into any problem or mistake that I cannot simply undo with a shovel, a wheelbarrow, and some fresh dirt. That’s freedom.

Late afternoons into evening, I set to work on whatever the chore of the day is. Whether I’m harvesting tomatoes or weeding, there is a repetition that lulls me into a meditative state. I’m told people who enjoy running feel something like this as well, although I wouldn’t know from personal experience.

When the sun begins to set, the symphony begins. Grasshoppers and cicadas sing, the toads that live by my fish pond add bass notes, and the wrens that live in the wax myrtles chitter to each other as they prepare for sleep.

I wheel my accumulated weeds and spent plants into the Supreme Clucks’ run and marvel at the concrete proof of a few hours of work. WBF

PAINT, PLATTERS AND PUPPIES

REFRESHING ROOMS AND FUN WITH FOOD SHOW THAT CREATIVE OUTLETS CAN BE FOUND ANYWHERE

BY JUDGE ALLEGRA COLLINS | NORTH CAROLINA COURT OF APPEALS

IN MY SPARE TIME, I enjoy transforming builder’s-beige rooms into something brighter and happier (I recently painted my daughter’s room the Sherwin-Williams color Refresh), creating food boards, and raising puppies. These creative activities provide an enjoyable break from work and the doldrums of COVID distancing! WBF

LOVE, MARRIAGE & THE LAW

A FORMER MAGISTRATE SHARES HIS EXPERIENCES PERFORMING CIVIL WEDDING CEREMONIES THROUGH A SELF-PUBLISHED POETRY COLLECTION

BY JACOB A. DAVIS | STAFFING ATTORNEY, BILL DRAFTING DIVISION, NORTH CAROLINA GENERAL ASSEMBLY

EVER SINCE I LEARNED TO WRITE, I have written poetry. Well, if you call the unrelated, though rhyming, sentences of a third-grader poetry. Since then, I have had seasons of my life where I don’t write a line and others where I can’t put my pen down. Currently, I am living in the latter, and I see no signs of the former ever returning.

On September 29, my years of writing culminated into my first self-published collection of poems, “Love is: A former magistrate’s poetic reflections on love and marriage in a county courthouse.” Each of the poems in this book were inspired by the nearly 6,000 civil wedding ceremonies I performed while serving as a North Carolina magistrate from 2013 to 2019. While presiding in my little-known ninth floor courtroom at the Wake County Justice Center in Raleigh, I switched back and forth between criminal matters and civil wedding ceremonies, experiencing the constant emotional whiplash that such transitions required.

Having graduated from law school in 2014, I feel that I am finally learning how to marry (pun unavoidable!) my professional and personal lives, allowing my writing to serve as a healthy emotional outlet that, in turn, makes me a better attorney and my work to even inform my writing, as is evident in “Love is.”

While I was initially hesitant to publicly share my creative side, wondering how I might be viewed within the often more traditional and buttoned-up legal profession, I am so glad that I overcame those fears. As seems to be common with vulnerability of any kind, the moment you begin sharing, you will be amazed by how many others step out to join you. WBF

LOVE IS IS NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.COM