Reflections of a Boston Lawyer

Even in 2015, I have friends who don't understand why I'm on Facebook or Twitter.  Of course, like me, they were born more than half a century ago, so I can cut them some slack.  And they don't have jobs that might benefit from any kind of Internet presence.  But for anyone out there who still doesn't get it, it's not hard to come up with examples of how social media can add joy to one's life, and maybe even enhance one's business or career. Tonight, for example.  I'm sitting at my computer listening to an old Boz Scaggs album over iTunes.  I have the LP somewhere in my basement, but nothing to play it on, so I haven't heard it in years.  And the Boz Scaggs concert I went to in 1980 was too loud to hear his singing.  But I digress. With Boz (or rather, Apple) providing the soundtrack, I go onto Facebook and see the following: a picture of my cousin's grandson or granddaughter at his or her wedding (I'm not clear on which belongs to him, t

Sometimes I enjoy a film so much that I go back and read the book from whence it came.  One such film is " Being There ," based on the novel of the same name by Jerzey Kosinski and featuring outstanding performances by Peter Sellers and Shirley MacLaine.  It is the story of Chance the gardener (a/k/a Chauncey Gardiner), a dim-witted household servant living on his wealthy benefactor's estate near Washington, D.C.  After his benefactor's death, Chance is discovered in his quarters and mistaken for a well-heeled, intelligent man himself.  What little Chance understands about the outside world he learned from television, and now having to leave the only home he ever knew, he ventures into the unknown world, where his simple remarks are comically misinterpreted as wise metaphors about life.  Through a series of chance encounters and false impressions, he rises from obscurity to television celebrity and ultimately to consideration as a potential candidate for Presidency o