PREFACE: If you are a sworn peace officer, I support you - and since this has become such a "trite" and meaningless "monkeyphrase - let this be specifically interpreted to mean that a number of my colleagues & myself feel & have felt compelled, without thinking, to come directly to your assistance when your safety was jeopardized.

Having said this for the purpose of context, and contemplating the nomination of Maria Sotomayor amidst an already shitty week, I was surprisingly stopped and questioned, à pied, because I "appeared to be weaving" on University Avenue at approximately 10:00 pm. Oddly enough, what flashed through my mind like a short film of David Lynch was a, surprisingly cogent recollection of my father; and that would, albeit, have been during better "better times."

I basically have no explanation for the limited, "factual" (i.e. corroborated) information I have of my father. And this is despite the fact that he was literally present - actively pushing air - though divorced from my mother. Likewise, it's probably better that what I have "memorialized" about him - if only to be able to suggest a "relationship" as I now understand it - originates from my young age when things could, indeed, be corroborated. At the same time, the truth is that every virtue I am able to memorialize about him, he seemed to have committing himself to minimizing; and I have no reason to believe this sourced from humility. And please, if any of this strikes as overkill, I would refer you to any child, of most any age, head in hands, who cannot consistently and/or reasonably predict what might emanate from the lips of a sick parent. Both God & John Bowlby are on the same team when it comes to the juxtaposition of detachment & childhood resiliency. But it seems God alone appreciates the devastation which seems to escape other family member "obvservants."

The issue at hand is this: at a too young and and during extraordinary circumstances, my father became a most noble Четници a defender of God, Motherland, the King, and the people. But captured.This, at least, I am able to verify from independent photos & writings. Secondly, I am also to corroborate that he spent the final years of WWII in the Dachau Nazi Concentration Camp in company with the Blessed Saint Nicholai (Velimirovic) of Ochrid & Zicha, and the Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Gavrilo, all of whom suffered tremendously. As a child at bedtime, I didn't want "bedtime stories," but for him to repeatedly describe the glorious and joyous day when US troops, mainly African-American, "liberated" them from Dauchau. He came to this country with the greatest respect for our Constitution, for liberty, for religious freedom, and each and every any right afforded by our Constitution. At the same time, he was equally intolerant and outraged at those who "demonstrated" anything he believed as disrespect and ingratitude as, conceptually, incomprehensible, unimaginable. "If you could have seen..." Two examples were demonstrative: When John Kennedy was assassinated, he was absolutely devastated, and I vividly recall on that Friday night in our church, as a child, in the dark, candles and incense, clinging to his leg, attempting to understand his sobbing and sorrow. And secondly, during our times of American civil "unrest," he bought a flag, a pole, and a shotgun. He set the pole in concrete, raised his flag with pride, and placed the shotgun inside the front door, stating simply, "Let anyone touch my flag." It never crossed my mind that he would actually harm someone, but it was merely an expression of the veracity of his belief. That he later had close friends who were judges and volunteered for youth probation were insignificant, by comparison. My respect was formalized and "memorialized." And so, I fully believe that I am constitutionally required to identify myself to a peace officer when requested, and to show respect and to cooperate in the exercise of their duty. When I finally, politely asked if I might now leave, he tossed some cheap "Why? Is there something you don't want me to know?" questions at me. What I wanted to say was "Sir, you broke my father's heart."