UP IN SMOKE?

Early this morning, the Bottles Unlimited liquor store in New Albany was destroyed by fire. "Bottles," as it was often called, was located on Elm Street at the intersection with State. The location is just a couple of blocks from my office, and I have stopped in there on a number of occasions over the years. Fortunately, it appears that no one was injured in the fire.

One thing that invariably struck me about Bottles was that the workers in there were always smoking cigarettes. Always. There were typically three or four people working at a time, and it was rare to see any one of them without a dangling cigarette ablaze. Customers also regularly puffed away while standing in line. The result was an omnipresent cloud of thick, stinky smoke.

I noticed all of this because it bothered me. In fact, I had all but sworn the place off because going in there, even for just a few minutes, tended to give me a headache. The pervasive cigarette smoke was nasty and overwhelming. It was always a shame, I thought, because Bottles was in an ideal location for serving downtown New Albany. I know others who were as disgusted by the smoke stench as I was.

And now, Bottles is no more. It will be interesting to see if it reopens. Reportedly, the cause of the fire is still under investigation. Given my experience with the place, I have to wonder if careless smoking could have been responsible for starting the blaze. Of course, this is nothing but mere speculation on my part, but such a finding wouldn't be at all surprising to me. Whatever the case turns out to be, I am thankful that there were no casualties. I also hope that the owners of Bottles were fully insured.

BACK IN THE SADDLE

After a fairly lengthy hiatus fraught with attention to my professional responsibilities, I have decided to resume posting on this site again on a more regular basis. I figure it's time for me to either resume writing or else shut this thing down, and I am choosing the former. In the last month or so I have thought of several potential topics about which I wanted to write, but I experienced frustration when I didn't feel that I had the time necessary to provide sufficient commentary for a blog posting. Now I've decided to forge ahead, publishing what may be relatively brief posts about topics that are fitting with my mood and time limitations at the moment.

Look for additional postings to follow shortly. I intend to address a variety of observations involving my personal experiences, books, sports, society, politics or whatever may seem to be important to me at the moment. As you may have noticed, my interests seem to splay out in many different directions. That's just how I am.

And so, gentle reader, I will now leave you with one of my favorite Shakespearean quotes. It is from Hamlet, and it is one I wish many of my colleagues in the legal profession would keep in mind. It may also become my new mantra as I resume posting:

"Brevity is the soul of wit."

And with that, I close for now.