JHS, Esq.

Wel­come to The Ris­ing Blogger!

I’m JHS, Esq. and I jok­ingly tell peo­ple that I haven’t gone very far in life.

That’s because, along with Big­Bob, #1Son, Mat­tieBoo, Buddy, and Sophie (aka Queen Sophia, ruler of the Home­stead), I live in my child­hood home in “Liv­able, Lov­able Lodi,” Cal­i­for­nia, the “Zin­fan­del Cap­i­tal of the World.” (Yes, those really are the city’s mottoes.)

That’s a photo of me at four years of age stand­ing by my mother’s roses in the front yard of the house in which I grew up. Those roses are still here … and so am I.

When I earned my Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence Degree in Account­ing, I had to face one inescapable truth: I just don’t care about finan­cial state­ments, taxes, and all that the sci­ence of account­ing entails. I could not envi­sion myself earn­ing my “daily bread” in that pro­fes­sion. So I decided to act upon an idea that had been rat­tling around the back of my brain for many years: I opted to con­tinue on to law school.

The next four years were quite chal­leng­ing, espe­cially con­sid­er­ing that Mat­tieBoo was a spe­cial “gift from God” (the mean­ing of “Matthew”) dur­ing my third year of study. He was born just before 8:00 a.m. on Sat­ur­day, but I was back in class two nights later because finals were fast approach­ing. I was the only woman in the mater­nity ward with a Con­sti­tu­tional Law book and yes, I did study between contractions.

Unfor­tu­nately, my father did not live to see me grad­u­ate. He died just two months after Mat­tieBoo was born, but he did get to see me argue a hypo­thet­i­cal case before three invited Supreme Court Jus­tices (from Indi­ana, Mon­tana, and New Mex­ico) in my school’s “Final Four” Moot Court Competition.

I grad­u­ated from McGe­orge School of Law in Sacra­mento in 1993. While a stu­dent, I real­ized that I really wanted to focus on civil rights and employ­ment law.

I was a “baby lawyer” when Con­ser­va­tor­ship of Wend­land began in 1995. I could not have fore­seen that I would lit­i­gate the case all the way to the Cal­i­for­nia Supreme Court where I secured a vic­tory for my clients in 2001, set­ting a prece­dent on end-of-life decision-making that is still debated. You can read about the case — the issues, play­ers, and the toll that mon­u­men­tal bat­tle took on all con­cerned — at Robert’s Legacy.

I founded my per­sonal blog, Col­lo­quium in March 2005, writ­ing about “com­plex issues” such as “life, death, and every­thing that hap­pens between.” I also admin­is­ter the pop­u­lar weekly Car­ni­val of Fam­ily Life, and author a weekly col­umn every Mon­day at Write Any­thing.

I acquired The Ris­ing Blog­ger in mid-2008, and look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing and expand­ing the vision of the site’s orig­i­nal founder.

When not work­ing, blog­ging or build­ing web­sites for char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tions, I can be found play­ing key­boards, flute, pic­colo, acoustic gui­tar, and singing in sev­eral bands, includ­ing the Lodi Com­mu­nity Band, Stock­ton Wind Ensem­ble, and Stock­ton Con­cert Band. Play­ing the flute is the ful­fill­ment of a life­long dream.

With a spe­cial ensem­ble formed just for the occa­sion, the Delta Winds, I ful­filled another life­long dream when I played my flute at Carnegie Hall in New York City on March 28, 2007. I would have been sat­is­fied to say that I played Carnegie Hall once. Incred­i­bly, I look for­ward to play­ing that venue again, as the Stock­ton Con­cert Band has been invited to return to head­line a two-hour con­cert in March 2010!

In July 2007, I ful­filled another dream when I met and spent the day study­ing flute with Sir James Gal­way at his Napa Mas­ter Class.