As most of you know, we are, from time to time bad persons. I am one. I have forsaken my readers for months. I have failed to respond to your comments. I have been shamefully negligent where I should be attentive and alert, yes, and caring. So what is my excuse?
I am trying to complete a couple of books, both of which have a time requirement. I am too ambitious. I take on too much. I am having too good a time fulfilling what one erroneously calls ones “destiny.”
Be all that as it may, I have missed you. I will not be able to reply to the backlog now. But know I did not ignore your sharing out of an evil heart. Not really evil. Just bad.
Thanks for understanding. I will try to do better.
Gerry
Gerry Spence's Blog 
our last hero an your apoligizing,,,,,,,,,,, ooooooooo000000 man !!!!!!!!!!
Priorities! I look forward to the books. I retired from the bench in Washington state and followed spouse to sun in Yuma. Volunteer at local legal aid and may apply for real work. Some mediation/arbitration work in Washington. Enjoy that very much. Good luck w/ your books. I can’t advise you to slow down, it isn’t all it is cracked up to be.
Sent from my iPad
Thank you for posting; glad to know your absence is not due to health issues or the like. I drove through Jackson with my son two weeks ago while vacationing at the National Parks – saw your office and took photos of it for kicks. Glad to hear things are well.
We love you Gerry!
You are the best.
Hello Gerry,
Of course, you have the right to start over again the colloquium with your fans, prospective ones and others that love your topics when you get ready, even if monthly or quarterly, even semi-annual, or annual appearance.
By cherishing each hour as you do well, there it is no way you take the forum frequently anymore as you did at the past. You are on your purpose that will continue enlightening us and humanity at large for years to come.
Anyway, thank you for let us know. We appreciate it! God bless you and yours.
I am a bad man also with my respective circumstance.
Guillermo Rivera-Chávez
San Antonio, Texas
Glad to see you back.
Every night we dine under one of your wonderful and beautiful Jackson photographs. What an amazing piece of art! Thank you.
No worries, the wait is worth it! Good luck on your two projects. I can’t wait to read them!
Well, Gerry, I am very happy that you are writing more books; and, that you are back. The “bad” man’s post put a smile on my face. Thank you.
People who get frustrated wondering if you are ok and where you are……..should NEVER take a nip or 2 and then start leaving you messages in frustration.
“Don’t drink (ANYTHING!) because it makes you do/say stupid things.”
Judge Judy Sheindlin
(That brilliant statement alone proves her value of 54 million per year…..)
🙂
you are entitled !! good to hear again
I am breathless that I received this e-mail. Still have a letter from you about my inquiry – starting a camp or something (I forget) – have a good life, enjoy your beautiful Jackson Hole and don’t worry about being bad – you’re terrific!
You are smarter than being a bad man, Puleeeeze – consider Gus of Lonesome Dove – we loved him and we love you. No more Mr. Bad Guy. As Amy Winehouse sang “No No No ….
this IS what it is all about my DEAR Gerry.I
Bring on the roasted Potatoes.
Gerry has a wonderful cook, I hope that you share this with her. All my love, Dana
I’m glad you’re OK!
If the world were filled with nothing but ‘bad’ people such as yourself, no-one would need Lawyers and you would have had an entirely different destiny!
Giving your readers TWO BOOKS to read doesn’t sound like neglect to me!
If the world were filled with nothing but ‘bad’ people such as yourself, no-one would need Lawyers and you would have had an entirely different destiny!
Giving your readers TWO BOOKS to read doesn’t sound like neglect to me!
Gerry, I’m just happy as I can be to read that you are busy writing books.. I have been concerned about you and now I feel much better.
‘Let him … cast the first stone ‘
Ta for the update, Prof Gerry
“Try” means to fail.
Hey, Gerry, what’s with the self castigation? Why do that to yourself when you could leave that to your critics while you focus on your many fine qualities? That kind of talk must be driving your dear wife mad!
Gerry,
I have missed you old friend, you tantelated words are up lifting, your wisdom unsurpassed, your wisdom is like a life preserver in a troubled enviroment. Please continue to write.
Gerry,
I have missed you old friend, you titillated words are up lifting, your wisdom unsurpassed, you are a life preserver in a troubled environment. Please continue to write
Gerry – not bad, just busy. I hope you will let us know about your books. With Justice For None was the book that changed the course of my life twelve years ago. Your books will contribute to the betterment of humanity with greater gain than replying to our comments.
I’ve also struggled with time management for the last two years when I began revising my 800 single-spaced, unabridged, tome into a true thriller of reasonable, and economically feasible, length. I know how hard it is to leave calls for help unanswered. Gerry, you may be interested in the results of the work you started. http://www.toxicjustice.com and http://www.childrensepa.org
Nancy Swan
Mobile, AL
It’s better to be bad than good if you have good lawyers (OJ Simspon case early 1990’s).
Shame, Shame, Shame !! – as you know so very well, “No man is an island and time waits for no man.” Human beings do not thrive when isolated from others. Please return soon!
Your strength and gift to the world is not being afraid to show that you are human. I love and miss you.
Wonderful to receive this blog and learn that I will once again order both your upcoming books and check my mailbox constantly! Have been browsing again thru your “Argument” book. Seems like I always learn something new. The same thing happens when I read Michio Kaku’s books. Gerry, you’ll probably never know how very much your contribution to mankind has meant. Thank you a million times! Sincerely, Annette Spear
I believe everyone is basically good. Sometimes we knowingly do wrong. But even then, we are just doing the best we know how. It is damn near impossible to break the fetters of our childhood and our perspective.
Please, continue having a good time. Life is too short for it to be “Un-fun.”
See you in January.
And, not really bad, evil, depraved or malignant.
Just a busy man who gives so much.
You are loved by so many of us.
Looking forward to reading your new books but in the future maybe you’d be kind enough to post this as your “Theme Song” so we’ll know you’ll be disappearing again for a year or so. She won’t mind at all we bet; probably get a real kick out of it!
Hello Gerry;
Thanks for the update. What are your books about? You inspire me! Any tips for the process–things like focus, discipline, flow. . . .?
Lisa
I am writing about how Power in this country kills our citizens, most often the poor, with impunity. It will be called, KILLERS ON THE LOOSE, the crimes and coverups of the American Justice system.” Out sometime next year hopefully. Also working on a photo book with images of how Wyoming is, indeed, a slave state, and that the people do not know.
So I am a trouble maker by birth. Hope you all are peacemakers.
Love,
gerry
Gerry;
I have goosebumps from your 2 sentence description and can’t wait to read it–Killers On The Loose! Thanks!
Lisa
Great. That’s good to hear. Write on, Gerry.
Mr. Spence – do not apologize. Personally, I assumed you were working diligently in training lawyers, handling cases and writing a book or two. I am looking forward to your books. Take your time, but do once in a while, let us know all is well.
Toni
Destiny – she be a very jealous mistress. . . .
You were missed. Glad to hear there will be two new books coming!!!!
Since it is your opinion, I shall not disagree. However, it is my wish you continue your wayward ways. God Bless.
You said it all, Dante. Gerry is a real activist, not to be mistaken for “armchair activists.”
Good to hear from you Gerry,
Be as bad as you want, you deserve it!
Yah~I agree with the Irishman!
Gerry: A huge fistful wad of money will even your temperment. Great books you write. You are my mentor and inspiration
In the case of Gerry Spence vs. Gerry Spence (ie. I am a Bad Man) the Jury finds the defendant NOT GUILTY of being a BAD man.
(And don’t bother trying him again for anything else since the verdict will always be the same since we are quite biased, and happily so. 😉
Case dismissed.
Mr. Spence,
…..after all nice guys finish last. Your books will contribute to the betterment of humanity with greater gain than replying to comments .Keep’em straight!
From South Carolina
Thomas Lanham
As we stare into the darkness, contemplating the integrity of the stairs to our basement and our ability to absorb discoveries, we realize that others have walked into their basement and returned with the wonder of understanding.
Gerry knows that the basement is best traveled when someone is at the top of the stairs, a strong arm extended in aid. He spent much of his life in the basement. There are doors in the basement but their number is unknown, and the basements connect.
One cannot mail from the basement.
When Gerry wrote a while back that he could teach a normal 12 yr old to try a case……BELIEVE HIM!
(To Gerry….certain things I’ve posted on your site recently are literally going off-the-charts on MSN’s website, thanks to your teachings. Also, get emails now frequently after being her TOP, FRONT PAGE BLOGGER (Thanks to you..)…….”Judge Judy MISSES you on her website!”
Stop arguing and LISTEN to him guys and gals!
🙂
No worries Mr. Spence….just stay well in the interim.
Gerry.Someone is having much evil fun meddling with my poems
assisted by Google/Yahoo! I will be closing myemail Google and be in touch
via other source. Strange what satisfaction sites like poetryshowcase have
and adding their game play!
No! you are not a bad man sir.
Jaffray
If you’re a bad man, then you must be doing something right.
Please get those books done, and be sure to smell the flowers along the way, breathing the fragrances of the rain. You can’t know the inspiration you’ve lent many. I say lent because as you carry on with your ideals in action, so others feel that moral debt. I’ve come to appreciate the John Hancock presence of your advocacy, and your distillery of truth that converts so much bullshit into simple truth. Thanks for your signature on American law and culture. Most welcome and inspiring.
Gerry, although I’m not a trial lawyer (at least not in this incarnation), I have a good legal mind, and I try to teach my home-schooled children about the law – which will be more beneficial for them than a lot of the crap they were pressed to learn traditional school. For this reason, I am eternally grateful for your guidance and, more importantly, for your honesty.
With your help, I was able to do most of the work for my divorce myself, so my good and upstanding lawyer knocked thousands off my bill. I also have successfully fought city hall on a planning matter, which is no mean feat in my part of the world (beautiful rural Wales, UK). The Planning Inspectorate even made the local council give my money back!
Thank you from me, from my kids, and from my lovely sheep & Quarter Horse farm which now has some useful buildings to help make it viable.
Rock on, Lawyer Dude.
You are making a big difference to the little people.
With affection, Kym Taylor-Rhys
Lonesome Dove Quarter Horse Breeders, Wales
Please check out our site – and enjoy the beautiful horses.
Gerry, do you remember the video that was posted on your blog showing Wyoming’s beautiful Adobe Town Wild Horses? . After they were captured by the Bureau of Land Management this is what happened to them. These historic Wild Horses belong to the American People, as do the Public Lands where they so rightfully belong. These Wild Horses are Federally protected and yet they were captured and removed from their legal Herd Management Area. THIS is WRONG and this is BAD.
FROM AMERICAN WILD HORSE PRESERVATION CAMPAIGN:
Confirmed: America’s Wild Horses, Sold by Government, Ending Up at Slaughter
October 1, 2012
BLM Sources Reveal Illegal Sales as Agency Announces New Push to Round Up Thousands More Mustangs
.National Coalition Calls for Emergency Action to Stop Sales, Roundup & Removal of Wild Horses
For Immediate Release….Denver, Colorado (October 2, 2012)…Today the government launches another campaign to roundup and remove thousands more wild horses from the range this fall and winter, even as evidence mounts that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), under Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, is illegally selling wild horses for slaughter. In response to a damning investigative news report exposing the BLM’s sale of captured mustangs to a known kill buyer with longtime ties to Secretary Salazar, the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign (AWHPC), a national coalition, today called for an immediate halt to all sales and removals of wild horses from the range.
These wild horses, captured in Wyoming’s Adobe Town Herd Management Area in 2010, were sold by the BLM to known kill buyer Tom Davis, who purchases horses and ships them for slaughter in Mexico. Photo by Carol Walker.
The news report, published Friday by ProPublica and based in part on information provided by BLM whistleblowers, revealed that the BLM had sold 1,700 captured mustangs to a livestock hauler, Tom Davis of La Jara, Colorado. The BLM approved the sales to Davis — a known kill buyer who purchases horses and ships them for slaughter in Mexico — under the guise that Davis would sell the horses “for use in movies” in Mexico. According to the article, Davis purchased horses for as little as $10 each and “would take males or females, so long as they were big.” It is well known that kill buyers sell horses by the pound to slaughter plants.
The article notes that BLM began shipping “truckload after truckload” of horses to Davis after his neighbor and business associate, Ken Salazar, became Interior Secretary in 2009. Salazar is a fifth-generation rancher. And, as is well known, the livestock industry is the driving force behind the removal of mustangs from public lands in the West and a vocal proponent of slaughtering wild horses.
Captured wild horses being loaded onto trailers. BLM sold “truckload after truckload” of wild horses to Tom Davis, a known kill buyer who said, “Hell, some of the finest meat you will ever eat is a fat yearling colt. What is wrong with taking all those BLM horses they got all fat and shiny and setting up a kill plant?”
The ProPublica piece establishes that the BLM used Davis as an outlet for the huge stockpile of wild horses that it had rounded up and warehoused in holding facilities. Due to the agency’s focus on roundups and removals of wild horses from the range, instead of fertility control, there are now more wild horses in government holding facilities (50,000) than remain free on public lands in the West (<32,000). Appropriations language, passed annually by Congress, prohibits the BLM from selling captured wild horses for slaughter.
AWHPC, whose coalition includes more than 50 horse advocacy, conservation, public interest and historic preservation organizations has stated: “This unconscionable and illegal treatment of these American icons deserves immediate investigation and action.”
Most of these beautiful Adobe Town wild mustangs were likely slaughtered in Mexico. Photo by Carol Walker.
“In light of this devastating article, we call for an immediate halt to the roundup, removal and sale of mustangs by the government while an independent and credible investigation of this situation is undertaken,” AWHPC’s Roy said. “In removing thousands more wild horses from the West over the next four months, the BLM is setting the stage for the mass slaughter of captured wild horses. The American people will not tolerate this reprehensible and illegal treatment of America’s cherished mustangs.”
Today the BLM began a mustang roundup in northeastern Nevada’s Antelope and Antelope Valley Herd Management Areas. The agency will use helicopters to stampede and capture 200 wild horses and remove them from the range. AWHPC will have an observer onsite and will make daily video available of the roundup activities.
Instead of rounding up wild horses by the thousands, the BLM should be managing them on the range, AWHPC and its coalition partners say. The federal government could save millions of dollars of taxpayer money every year by using responsible and humane solutions, including fertility control, that preserve America’s wild horses for future generations.
Free on the Range: Adobe Town wild horses days before they were captured in a BLM helicopter stampede. Photo by Carol Walker
“[Davis] is just a symptom of the train wreck that is the Wild Horse and Burro program,” said Ginger Kathrens, director of the horse advocacy group The Cloud Foundation, an AWHPC coalition partner based in Colorado Springs, told ProPulbilca. She also stated: “They [the BLM] just warehouse more and more horses and create their own crisis. Then, after they run the program into the ground, they have to find ways out of it. It is a whole unnatural ridiculous system run amok. And who pays the ultimate price? Wild horses.”
The American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign (AWHPC) is a coalition of more than 45 horse advocacy, public interest, and conservation organizations dedicated to preserving the American wild horse in viable, free-roaming herds for generations to come, as part of our national heritage.
I tried to post the video of the ADOBE TOWN HORSES, but I don’t see that it posted.
The Robber Barons are back. They are after America’s Public Lands, resources and WATER:
The BLM’s Big “Fire Sale” of Our Public Lands
Story by Debbie Coffey reprinted with permission from the PPJ Gazette
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is selling YOUR land right out from under you. Concurrently, the BLM is blitzing the media with PR spin to justify removing all of our publicly owned wild horses off of our public lands. If you want to see what has really been happening to our wild horses at recent roundups, go to Grass Roots Horse or SFTHH.
Do you know how many acres of your public lands are being sold off in each state? This is a policy being pushed by your President, your Congress, Ken Salazar (Secretary of the Dept. of the Interior) and Bob Abbey (BLM Director). Your state and local governments have their hands out to receive part of the profits. Your “public agencies” (like the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Land Management) are actually corporations and their priority is to make money.
Each BLM office is required to have quarterly “lease sales” of your public lands. The BLM is making their money off of you and the remains of your United States of America.
To keep this simple, we’ll just look at one state’s lease/sales of our public lands to oil and gas companies.
Wyoming, as it turns out, is going gung ho on oil and gas “leasing.” The BLM calls giving the use of our public lands to extractive industries for as little as $2 an acre a “lease sale.” These are 10 year leases and they can be renewed. Oil and gas companies can ask for certain parcels of public property to be leased.
However, unless you’ve ever heard of an oil pipeline being ripped out after it was installed, I’d call this a “permanent” use of our public lands. An oil or gas (or mining) company will extract all of the oil/gas/ore. They often contaminate water, land and air. They use a LOT of our water from aquifers in their extracting process.
The oil and gas companies pay a 12.5% royalty to the Dept. of Interior’s Minerals Management Service on the amount or value of oil or gas removed or sold from each lease. BUT THE OIL AND GAS COMPANIES DON’T PAY ANYTHING FOR ALL OF THE WATER FROM OUR AQUIFERS, WHICH IS IRREPLACEABLE AND INVALUABLE.
Let’s look at what happened in Wyoming in 2010.
Starting with the most recent 2010 quarterly BLM Competitive Oil and Gas Lease Sale Results:
November 2, 2010, Wyoming BLM leased/sold about 108,049 acres of your public lands.
August 3, 2010, Wyoming BLM leased/sold about 77, 712 acres of your public lands.
May 11, 2010, Wyoming BLM leased/sold about 70,446 acres of your public lands.
February 2, 2010, Wyoming BLM leased/sold about 52,993 acres of your public lands.
This is about 309,200 acres. So, it’s well over of a quarter of a million acres sold only to oil and gas industries, in only one state, in only one year.
Mr. Spence, since I was a student at bowling green state university, I have admired your style, & dedication to your profession! All I ask is if you are ever in cincinnati Ohio, please dIne at carlo and Johnny so I may have the chance to meet you and thank you for beIng a positive role model!! Thank you for your attention, and best wishes to you and your family!
Sincerely,
Thomas
Louie, in regard to your comment and video posted on Oct. 4 regarding the horses in Wyoming……please rest assured a LOT of us OUTSIDE Wyoming are very well aware of the situation of our beautiful wildlife…..both in America and throughout the WORLD.
“We lost our balance of wildlife at 5 BILLION people, we are now at 7 BILLION people and counting, and WE ourselves are extinct at about 9 BILLION.”
Marilyn Vos Savant, world’s HIGHEST IQ since 1958, recently.
A lot of us have given up trying to save children through SMILE TRAIN, (save 100 and next day the SAME parents are back with MORE…….)
Lots of us are leaving our estates for other species now, rest assured.
Mother Universe knows what to do.
Dear Mother Universe
Please Hurry. We don’t have much time or many Wild Horses and Burros left. Their Legal Herd Management Areas are also home to many other Wildlife critters, who also must be protected.