Weekly Bubbles 12|1

It's the second most wonderful time of the year! (The first is summer, obviously.)

Wind Check

The Christmas cold front has officially blown in!

Weekly Gratitude

When I was little, my mom and I used to watch White Christmas every year. It remains one of my favorite movies of all time. I’ve always found Danny Kaye’s character Phil Davis to be unbelievably funny. Phil’s humor matched mine, even as a kid - sassy and snarky, always ready to chirp back, yapping at a million miles a minute. White Christmas came out in 1954, so at this point, to be a fan of the movie as the youngest of the Millennials is quite niche.

In White Christmas, there is a scene where Bob (Bing Crosby), Phil (Danny Kaye), Betty (Rosemary Clooney), and Judy (Vera-Ellen) sing “Gee, I wish I was Back in the Army.” The rendition includes tap dancing, commentary on the throes of civilian life, and a longing for a time gone by with lyrics like, “Three meals a day for which you didn’t pay!” And, “A million handsome guys, with longing in their eyes!” It’s one of a dozen musical numbers in the movie and probably doesn’t rank in the top three most famous.

One of my college friends got married last June on the South Coast of Massachusetts. My college girlfriends and I piled into my car to drive into town for our friend’s pre-wedding bridal lunch. On the way back, someone started humming and then singing, “Gee, I wish I was back in the army!” Soon we all joined in. Every one of us belting out the words with no prior discussion of the movie, the scene, or Christmas. Come to think of it, I don’t think any of us had ever discussed the movie in the prior decade of friendship.

If you choose your people right, you’ll get moments like this all the time - where everyone somehow reads each other’s minds, where all our wildly different backgrounds converge at once over one thing. My friends and I in the car grew up all over the United States. We hail from the greater Seattle, Boston, New York City, and Los Angeles areas. And, somehow all our families thought both sending us to USC and watching White Christmas every December of our childhoods were good ideas.

Since we officially entered the Christmas season this week, I found myself smiling back on both my childhood and that moment in the car in Padanaram, MA with my friends. Five girls from across the country who found their soulmates in South Central Los Angeles, preparing to hold onto each other tightly through another family milestone, singing a song from their individual childhoods together. Pure magic.

Shmope, Esq.’s Weekly Law Lecture

To build on last week’s discussion, today we cover the Supreme Court of the United States (AKA SCOTUS) - specifically, what cases SCOTUS can hear.

Background Info: There is an entire area of law called "Civil Procedure” that dictates how a case may come into a specific court and under what terms - we will cover pieces of civ pro in later weeks when I eventually learn how to deal with the ever present trauma of my civ pro professor starting my first class of law school ever not by introducing himself or the course, but by stating, “Mr. Harrington, please give us the facts of International Shoe.” I still thank God everyday I was not Mr. Harrington in that moment, and sometimes I even wonder what Mr. Harrington is doing these days. And quite frankly, I hope he’s cashing a big paycheck. He deserves it for surviving that experience alone, for which I also sometimes wonder if he, like I, now takes anti-anxiety medication for.

I digress. My point is it’s important to understand that there is certain criteria cases must meet to be heard by certain courts. If a court can hear a case, it has “jurisdiction,” of which there are multiple kinds.

Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution describes what types of cases SCOTUS has jurisdiction over. SCOTUS has two main types of jurisdiction: original and appellate. The Supreme court has original jurisdiction (meaning they can be the first court to hear the case) over disputes between states and cases involving foreign diplomats. The Court rarely uses original jurisdiction.

Most cases arrive at SCOTUS through appellate jurisdiction. Under appellate jurisdiction, SCOTUS can review cases decided by lower courts. This includes cases appealed to the Supreme Court from federal appellate courts, and in rare instances, certain district court decisions. The Court can also review state supreme court decisions that involve questions of federal law or the US Constitution. Most of these cases reach SCOTUS through something called a Writ of Certiorari, like an appeal, which SCOTUS can grant at its discretion.

Additionally, I’d like to note how a case ends up in federal court to begin with. Federal courts require cases to establish subject matter jurisdiction. This is done through establishing federal question or diversity jurisdiction. Parties must show that the case either involves a question of federal law (NOT state law) OR both parties to a suit are from different states (or a foreign country) and the amount disputed must exceed $75,000. In other words, someone from Wisconsin suing someone else from Wisconsin over a state law cannot file their case in federal court and would likely, never see the inside of SCOTUS (unless one of the parties makes a constitutional argument).

To conclude, SCOTUS doesn’t just hear any case. Although Congress can regulate The Court’s appellate jurisdiction through legislation, SCOTUS generally operates on its own whims. Thus, not only does it matter who the president appoints to the bench because of how they might rule in a case, but also because that person has a vote on whether SCOTUS will even hear a case in the first place.

Pop, Fizz, Clink - Culture Review

I read From Here to the Great Unknown by Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough in one sitting this week. It’s an epic piece of Americana - from Elvis to Graceland, the South to Los Angeles, to divorce, death, and a what it means to be a devoted parent. I feel I learned so much I didn’t know about both Elvis and Lisa Marie. Priscilla got her due in the Sofia Coppola movie earlier this year and it was time Lisa Marie got hers.

Some thoughts I had while reading:

(1) Elvis was a devoted father - something I found unexpected. You can truly feel the love the two shared for each other in the book.

(2) The family still lived at Graceland - even with tours coming through. Riley writes if they were visiting Graceland and didn’t wake up early enough, they would be stuck upstairs all day until tours were over. Wild!

(3) Riley’s words on her connection with Memphis truly blew me away. As someone who seemingly grew up flip flopping between Los Angeles and Florida, she writes, “Whenever I go to the South and hear the Memphis accent, I feel a longing, a nostalgia for something I never lived. I’ve never lived in Memphis. But something inside of me has.”

Riley put into words a feeling I’ve had my entire life, but have never been able to articulate so concisely. My grandmother was born and raised in Roswell, NM and much of her family still lives in the state. I never lived in the Land of Enchantment, but I grew up visiting every so many years. Every time I’m there I have the exact feeling Riley described, something in me lights up and says, “we’re home.” I am truly happy there, I feel so incredibly connected to the land. The minute I step off the plane in Albuquerque my body tingles. I’m also immediately dying for a sopaipilla (iykyk). Whenever someone mentions NM, I find myself living at the intersection of protective local and imposter syndrome. They don’t know it like I know it. Riley’s words made me feel so seen.

I’ve never lived in New Mexico. But, something inside of me has.

Things I’m Loving

Operation Santa - USPS Operation Santa is a holiday program run by the US Postal Service where you can “adopt” letters written by children and families in need. Participants can choose a letter, purchase the requested items, and send them anonymously to help spread holiday cheer. One of my friends told me she was participating in it and I hopped right on the bandwagon! We love a fun way to pay it forward.

NHL Lululemon Collab - The people have spoken and Fanatics finally listened! The new collab between the NHL and Lulu on team merch is incredible. I, however, am NOT super loving that they left the Washington Capitals off this year’s trial run. All the teams will have collab gear for purchase in the 2025-2026 season.

Milford Sound - A friend is on her honeymoon this week posting from the overnight cruise on New Zealand’s Milford Sound. Seeing her posts brought back a ton of memories from my cruise back in 2023 with a few college friends. Milford Sound is one of the few places I’ve been that left me completely speechless - a rarity for me! Clearly a must do if your planning on visiting NZ’s South Island.

Girls Who Do Things!

I met Cole Brauer in Honolulu when I was 18 and competing in the PJ Wenner Memorial Rainbow Invite Regatta as a member of the USC sailing team. I remember she was just like me, a thin, 5’2” (on a good day) girl, except where I identified heavily as a “light air crew that sometimes gets screwed and has to sail a dinghy in heavy air,” she was a total heavy air badass. To be fair, she had to be to sail on the UH team. We would chat on coach boats and at regatta parties over the years, and would eventually lose regular touch as our lives took vastly different paths. Much like our differences in heavy air, I went to law school (boring, practical) and she raced around the world (adventurous, risky).

A few years ago, my mom sent me an article about a woman who was going to sail around the world by herself. That woman was Cole Brauer. She is now the first American woman to complete a solo, nonstop, and unassisted circumnavigation of the globe as part of the 2023-2024 Global Solo Challenge. At 29, she was the youngest competitor and also the only woman. As the cherry on top, she finished second overall and set a new speed record for her Class40 yacht, First Light, despite autopilot failures and other mishaps that happen on the open ocean.

My absolute favorite part of this story is that she had thrown her hat in the ring to compete on a team in The Ocean Race. They told her she was too short for the Southern Ocean and was passed over - to which I’m almost positive she must have said, “FUCK THAT.” She not only survived the Southern Ocean, but survived it alone - unlocking a higher level of total badassery than the teams in The Ocean Race.

I saw she was passed over for Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year, and I want it stated here for posterity that I think that decision was, is, and will forever be, an absolute travesty.

This week I tip my hat to Cole - I’m deeply honored to have seen the badassery up close during some of my most formative racing years, and I hope you’ll join me in forever cheering her on LOUDLY. Read more about her story here in Sailing World magazine.

Quote(s) of the Week

“You are the sky. Everything else - it’s just the weather.” -Pema Chödrön

“Don’t argue with minor power.” -James Carville