Dispute Settlement Counsel

Gloucester Fisherman Memorial

Every once in a while, my blog post is more a slice of life, driven by observations, travels or the events of a certain day.  It’s a break from the usual topic of dispute resolution, although I often find a nexus while writing it.

This post is about Gloucester, MA, America’s oldest seaport.  While beach towns, seaports, or fishing towns like Gloucester or Portland, ME, Portsmouth, NH or Montauk, NY are appealing, that is not why I write this.

I write this because I Love Gloucester, because my goal is to live there, and hopefully be able to practice our brand of dispute resolution there.  This place has been my getaway since I first came as a teenager and spent the day on Good Harbor Beach (GHB) with my friends.  I recognized early on that this place, along with neighboring Rockport and the rest of often overlooked Cape Ann, is a special place.  It is unique, alive, vibrant and like me, walks to a different drum of its own.  Among its several great beaches, two of them – GHB and Wingaersheek – are arguably are among the five most beautiful beaches anywhere in the U.S.

Good Harbor Beach, Gloucester Massachusetts

Over the years since high school, my life and circumstances have constantly been re-arranged.  My family has scattered all around the country.  But the one constant, the one place where I’ve always found peace, my haven in the storms of life, has always been Gloucester and Good Harbor.  So my goal is to live there because it speaks to my soul. I need to be able to easily go down to GHB and sit, read, think, share a conversation with a close friend, enjoy the companionship of my wife, or take a walk along this shore any day or night of the week.  Or feel at home just hanging out on Main Street.

There are other reasons for the attraction, some of which can only be felt.  Built around a harbor and surrounded by the ocean, Gloucester just breathes differently; more freely.  When you’re in this convergence of land, water, sky and hearty people, you can feel the presence of the sea, the boats, the heritage and legacy of sailors and fishermen in your bones, in your step, in your mind’s eye and in your soul.  Cross over the Annisquam River and if your intuition and your soul are well tuned, you can feel this seaport’s rhythm and pulse right away.

You can also sense this different place in the way the locals interact, talk with you and carry themselves.  They exude that wonderful unspoken expression of their fiercely independent spirit, coupled with the innate sense of knowing that people and lives are interconnected and interdependent. They understand that what each person does, like the movement of a river or a wave, has a ripple effect that touches us all, and they live accordingly. You often sense this about people in other places like this – in small coastal towns and cities in Ireland like Clonakilty, Cohb, Galway and Cork, or in American cities like Charleston, South Carolina, Portland, Maine or Montauk, New York.  Gloucester brings to mind the resonant insight of the wonderful Field of Dreams character, Doc “Moonlight” Graham, commenting on why he had forgone the big time life for his small town of Chisholm, Minnesota:   “Once a place touches you like this, the wind never blows cold again.”

Elliott's - The Blackburn

And then, of course, and essential if you love eating out like me, there are the restaurants – especially the breakfast places.  As much as I love going out to dinner with family and friends, breakfast is my favorite meal out, and Gloucester is an absolute Mecca and undisputed king of the breakfast restaurants!  One place is as good as the next, and each has its different unique feel to it.  I haven’t even been to all of them yet, but those I’ve been to (in order of when I went to them) – Charlie’s, Zeke’s, Lee’s, Sugar Magnolias, Morning Glory and Sunday jazz brunch at Eliott’s at Blackburn Tavern– are all incredibly “grand” as the Irish would say, on many levels.  Here, you go out and eat breakfast, and start each day feeling good and energized!  Then, you can go for a soulful walk on GHB.  Or if you ate too much and need a longer walk, cross the border into Rockport as you walk Long Beach.

Long Beach, Rockport Massachusetts

So I’m wondering out loud (still looking for that segue into the topic of dispute resolution) if I should go with my gut, be led by my intuition as my Ireland colleagues urge me to do, and take my professional as well as my personal quest to Gloucester.  My sense is that this place and these people will embrace the ways we approach dispute resolution, in ways that avoid litigation, are more efficient and creative in nature.  My intuition tells me that here is a perfect matching of the work I do and the people I’ll be serving – those who live and work in Gloucester and Cape Ann — because it is aligned with who they are, what they think and how they live.

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