Editor’s Note

As my own form of entertainment (I don’t think its harassment, is it?), I recently had the occasion to quiz my progeny with the question, ‘How many minutes are there in a year?’ Initially, they tried to do the math out loud: ‘There are 60 min times 24 h =?’. In spite of the hours spent on rote memorization of the multiplication tables, the answer did not come racing instantaneously to their minds (that equation equals 1440 min). As they continued their mental calculations, I said, ‘You’re thinking about the answer incorrectly.’ This hint only confused them more. So, as they stared at me curiously, I simply said, ‘Rent,’ and they each spontaneously sprang into song as they sang out the answer. The opening verse of the signature song from the Broadway musical Rent is ‘Seasons of Love,’ and establishes that there are 525,600 min in a non-leap Georgian calendar year. My family and I had missed the opportunity of seeing the Broadway production of Rent but eventually made amends for that misstep by getting tickets when its touring company performed in San Francisco years later. It remains one of our favorite cultural experiences.

What is poignant about the lyric is that it highlights one of the play’s plot developments as one of the play’s characters, Angel, has AIDS and dies before the play’s end. Other characters are being treated for being HIV positive, and the author, Jonathan Larson, frames this song around the theme of time and cruelty of its passage as the end of life is met. Of another form of cruel irony, Larson would die from an aortic aneurysm before opening night of his play never knowing the level of success, or the accolades and celebration that Rent received. However, what Larson asks us to identify are the events, experiences, challenges, opportunities, problems, and decisions that arise for anyone of us over the course of a 12-month span? The context of this recognition is that sometimes a year can be a very long time and at others nowhere near long enough.

The new year (it has now turned into 2014, the Year of the Horse) often brings promise of change, atonement, and self-improvement. In past Decembers, Alex, one of the most popular step aerobics instructors from whom I used to take classes, would layer in additional intricate and novel step patterns into his already complex and challenging choreography, admonishing those of us who were his regular attendees by saying: ‘Learn this choreography so that you’ll have it down when ‘THEY’ show up.’ Among his many attitudes (for which he was widely known and recognized) was the contempt he voiced about those he called the ‘Resolutioners.’ These were those pseudo-exercisers he believed were not truly committed to doing the work necessary to actually improve their physical conditioning; but who had likely purchased gym memberships as their holiday gifts to themselves, or perhaps had had them gifted by well-meaning friends or family, and then began populating his classes in January (and horror upon horror, taking the spots on the gym floor which had been staked all year long by us veterans, the truly committed). Alex believed that they were only in his classes in fulfillment of their grandiose New Year’s resolution promises only to be gone by Groundhog Day after the will to become more physically fit had dissipated. Since at one time he had also been a resolutioner, his screening tool was to insure that his step patterns intimidated those whose willingness to do the hard work necessary to gain physical fitness was less than his own. December was a hard month to go to the gym.

I know very little about cosmology, but Sharon (my spousal unit) and I recently saw an IMAX film at the Reuben Fleet Science Center in San Diego entitled, Cosmic Collisions. The narrative presented in this production discusses the basics of the ‘Big Bang’ theory, the creation of the Earth and the Moon. One of the conclusions that I had not known previously, or had at least paid little attention to, is that after the Bang, which cosmologists conclude occurred when a meteor about the size of Texas, struck a glancing blow to Earth causing various sized particles to be thrown into space and fall into a rapid orbit around Earth. What I found astonishing was that after the Bang, the entire void-collision-scattered debris-particle fusion-cooling-off process that took place in Earth’s orbit and became the Moon is projected to have taken 30 days; one month. Pretty cool.

I do not mean to be overly cryptic here. Perceptions of time is the thread I intended to run through this note. At a different period in my life, on a Sunday morning in May 1969, my parents and aunt dropped me off in front of the Oakland Army Terminal. For all any of us knew, that might have been the last time any of us saw each other. OAT was the processing and embarkation (and for fortunate others, their debarkation, return point) for what was about to begin my deployment to the Republic of South Vietnam. I would soon learn that my next year of governmental service would be spent with the First Air Cavalry Division in III Corps, War Zone C. Just about everyone I knew ‘in the Nam’ had some version of what was called a ‘short-timer’s’ calendar. These were squares or other shapes gridded off inside silhouettes depicting various figures: Snoopy dancing, a helmet perched atop a pair of boots, a favorite was one of any number of female figures of all denominations (given the time and place, there was never a remote suggestion of any sort of social or political enlightenment), where each grid signified a number from 365 down to something like Gone or Zero.

We placed these calendars in various secure locations (I had mine folded into a plastic bag inside my helmet), and took great joy in coloring in each grid box at the end of each day which corresponded to one day closer to completing our year’s tour (Marines completed a 13-month tour). Some would make this a dramatic ritual as they colored in a specific grid, some had colored pens or pencils specifically used on their calendars. I know that there might have been an occasion when I would be away or could not color in from my calendar for a few days, a couple weeks. The pleasure I experience upon returning to it, and the satisfaction I felt in coloring in several boxes (days) in a row instead of just one (a day) was palpable, beyond exhilarating. Upon completing the coloring process, in spite of the length of time that process represented, the colorer/me, immediately expelled a rousing shout of ‘Short!’ The year between May 1969 and 1970 was the longest I have ever spent.

This expression of a year span is juxtaposed to a very different dimensional reality. Recently, one of my closest and oldest friends received devastating results from a medical examination and was informed that the reason for his long-term flu symptoms was an aggressive and inoperable disease that he had contracted and so he would be fortunate to have months let alone another year to live. For Moin and his family, this next year will be far too short.

In the Contemporary Justice Review metric, this issue begins my 5th year as Editor-in-Chief and CJR’s 17th year. Each volume is partitioned into four quarterly increments (i.e., issues). Each issue contains some 7–9 articles and often a media review of some sort. As those who have dealt with me over my tenure, there is a level of stochastic processing that goes into the construction and gathering of each issue and of what ends up in print. While I often fantasize about imposing a more transparent and orderly process into creating any one issue’s table of contents, the turmoil that foments around the due date prior to releasing the manuscripts and writing this note to Taylor Francis is disturbingly comforting.

I have not always had the luxury of having in place a year’s worth of scholarship to be included in any one volume. This upcoming year is unusual. Along with our regular and noteworthy submissions, Calls for Papers that were issued over the past two years are generating fruit. Correspondence of interest, returned encouragement, the formulation of ideas reflected in submitted abstracts, more encouragement, the production of manuscript submissions, review/criticism, followed by additional more review/criticism, rejection/encouragement, rewrites, and then decisions to include those essays found to be ‘just right’ into the publication queue seem to be on track to fill this year’s pages of CJR, and then well onto volume 18.

The current special issue campaign has proven to be CJR’s most productive and successful effort. While the process continues, the CFPs produced remarkable interest and response that will assuredly secure the quality that is expected from Contemporary Justice Review readers.

Here’s hoping your time is well spent and the time ahead is engaging, without undue hassle, and of course, just.

Dan Okada
Editor-in-chief