Scales Of Success Podcast

#46 - The Art of Surviving Loss with Jeffrey D. Boldt

• Marcus Arredondo

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In today’s heartfelt episode of Scales Of Success, host Marcus Arredondo talks with Jeffrey Boldt to talk about resilience, creativity, and the lessons grief can teach us. Through stories of love and loss, Jeffrey reveals how humor, memory, and art can help us carry forward strength and purpose.

Jeffrey D. Boldt is an author and former environmental law judge. His work spans short fiction, poetry, and essays in outlets like HuffPost and Tikkun. He is the author of Blue Lake and Big Lake Troubles, acclaimed eco-thrillers blending law, climate, and human resilience.

Connect with Jeffrey D. Boldt:
🌐 Website: https://www.jeffreydboldt.net./
📧 Email: jeffreydb7@gmail.com

Episode highlights:
(1:35) A global response to grief
(5:52) Resilience and emotional memory
(10:01) Rebecca’s humor and lasting love
(15:34) Redefining identity through loss
(22:00) From judge to novelist
(33:02) Comedy, tragedy, and healing
(46:06) Writing process and daily discipline
(58:58) Climate, law, and what’s at stake
(1:06:35) Outro

Connect with Marcus


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Note: The transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors.

Jeffrey D. Boldt

(0:00) Late in life, he came up with the last one, which is wisdom, that maybe you do get some wisdom as you accumulate these experiences and you find out at least what works for you in dealing with them. (0:15) I do think humor has always been an amazing resource for human beings.

Marcus Arredondo

(0:21) Today's guest is Jeffrey Bolt, a former environmental law judge whose second act is as a novelist exploring the quiet intersections of ethics, grief, and the Midwest landscape. (0:29) We discuss his latest work, which was born from personal loss, written over 11 years as he processed the death of his wife. (0:36) We also explore the discipline of writing, the role of emotional memory in metabolizing grief, and why quiet, meaningful work can be the most lasting.(0:44) His story reminds us the power of integrity, persistence, and how painful heartbreak can also sharpen our purpose. (0:50) Let's start the show. (0:52) Hi, Jeffrey.(0:52) Welcome.

Jeffrey D. Boldt

(0:53) Hi, Marcus. (0:54) Thanks for having me.

Marcus Arredondo

(0:55) It's a pleasure to meet you. (0:57) I was turned on to you by a Huffington Post article you put up about a month ago, I guess, to the day, entitled, My Wife of 26 Years Died Six Months Later. (1:10) I Received a Call That Left Me Stunned.(1:11) So I apologize for kicking this conversation off on that note, but I'm wondering if we can just start from that perspective. (1:21) I want to talk about your book, your transition from law, but I think this really gives context to the pivot that you made, and I want to explore how that came about. (1:32) So I'll stop talking, but I'm wondering if you might share with us.

Jeffrey D. Boldt

(1:34) Yeah, one thing about the Huffington Post piece is the one that you saw a month ago was actually part of their Best of series, and it had been previously published a year earlier. (1:48) And then at that time, it got so much attention. (1:53) It was actually trending number one on BuzzFeed for a couple of days.(2:00) And Huffington Post is a wonderful outlet in that they don't have a paywall, and they have connections around the world. (2:09) So it was amazing. (2:10) I heard from people from literally, I think, 80-something countries, especially with the boost that BuzzFeed gave it.(2:21) And then Yahoo News, Smart News, et cetera. (2:25) It was really something. (2:27) And then to have it republished again a year later, again, I went through the process of hearing from people all over the world, tell me their stories of grief and loss and resilience.(2:43) You know, one of your themes is quite a remarkable process.

Marcus Arredondo

(2:47) Well, you published this in... (2:49) So if that's the case, you published it in 2024, which was 11 years after your wife's passing.

Jeffrey D. Boldt

(2:56) That's right. (2:58) And to be honest, it took almost that long to write it. (3:01) Well, that's what I wanted to ask.(3:04) To be able to write it that way, you know. (3:08) And I have been working for many years on a memoir about her, but it's tough sledding, you know, emotionally. (3:15) But yeah, it's the process of working through grief to the point where you feel that you are, can be of assistance to others.(3:26) And, you know, that's what Roel, after the thing was published, people reached out from, like I said, all over the world. (3:35) One man had lost his whole family in the genocide in Zimbabwe. (3:40) And he was kind enough to invite my girls and me to come and visit him if we're ever in his part of the world.(3:47) But, you know, very different situations from losing my wife to cancer, from the people that I hurt all the way to... (3:57) And you read the piece. (3:58) So, you know, part of the story was just how kind and thoughtful my wife was in trying to help me get through that process of loss.(4:08) And I heard from one gentleman who he said, I'm the one dying and I want to be more like your wife, but I just don't have it in me. (4:19) And that one broke my heart. (4:20) I had to sit on that one before I replied.(4:23) I replied to all the emails. (4:25) I literally, between the two times that went out, I did hundreds of emails. (4:31) But that one, I sat on overnight and then it occurred to me, you know, just be yourself.(4:38) I'm sure your wife loves you for who you are. (4:40) And be yourself and feel comfortable in that. (4:46) And, you know, best of luck to you.(4:48) I guess something along those lines. (4:50) But it was, it's remarkable. (4:53) And it does show just what a need there is for, you know, this idea of resilience in particular around grief, you know.(5:04) And your reaching out to me too made me start thinking about, you know, in the context of grief in particular, I would say one thing about resilience is it's not a straight line. (5:18) You know, you just want the, you know, there'll be days when you go down. (5:21) I described it like weather in that piece.(5:23) You know, the storm can come up. (5:25) And that was my original title for the piece was A Name and a Face. (5:29) And I said, every cloud had a name and a face for me when the storms did come up.(5:34) But, you know, as long as you're on a trajectory of bringing yourself back, you know, so you can have some down days. (5:42) And even the grief counselors will tell you to take a day to just be sad, you know, as a way of dealing with it. (5:51) Another thing that a friend of mine has this idea of sort of emotional muscle memory.(6:00) So when you're really down to be able to draw on remembering what it is to be happy, remembering what it is to be, you know, I know you focus on success, what it is to be successful if you're having a hard time in your job. (6:14) I think some of these things apply very broadly. (6:18) But to me, that's what I think the arts and literature in my case, but all of the arts can contribute to keeping those emotional muscle memories sharp and something that you have access.(6:38) So you can be in a great mood. (6:40) You can see a play about loss and be touched by that and remember tragedy the same way you can remember being happy. (6:49) You know, and you can remember that, you know, really tragedy is at the heart of human experience because, and I'm sure it's true of other mammals as well, but we have an awareness of death.(7:04) And we know that ultimately none of us makes it out of here alive, number one. (7:09) And number two, that especially when you get to be my age, you lose people that you love along the way. (7:16) And so I think that part of this, what the arts can bring to it is just the recognition that tragedy is part of life, but also comic, you know, the comic impulse is part of life.(7:31) The, you know, the beauty of painting is part of life. (7:35) And, you know, I get that same pleasure from nature and it's the same story, you know, death is part of nature and, you know, various iterations of eat and being eaten. (7:48) A lot of times, you know, it's a famous saying, but anyway, those are some of the thoughts that I had.(7:55) The other thing was, you probably see the Buddha in the background here. (7:59) During the time that my wife was very ill, I joined a sangha here in Madison. (8:06) And just that concept of breath, that, you know, each person has their own breath, you know, and the breath is at the heart of life.(8:16) That was very helpful. (8:17) And it turned out that the group of people that I got to know there, I'm not a practicing Buddhist at this point in my life, but I admired the tradition very much. (8:27) And my brother was a practicing Buddhist, but a lot of those people had people to care for.(8:34) They had sort of difficult circumstances, but coming together to meditate and explore their own experience. (8:42) Even if it was just that hour a week, when we do our slow walking meditation or whatever, it was very helpful, you know, to remember. (8:53) It's like the airlines tell you to put on your own mask first, I guess.(8:57) You need that little bit of time to yourself when you're in the caregiving role, in particular.

Marcus Arredondo

(9:05) That was an amazing answer to a question I'm not sure I even asked, because you offered a buffet of things that I was very interested in exploring. (9:13) So I appreciate you sort of laying all that out there. (9:15) But before we move on, I do want to just prep or for the benefit of the audience, give them some context on the article, which, you know, I don't know if anybody ever referenced this to you, but it reminded me of a modern love piece, which had been written several years prior, which was You May Want to Marry My Husband, which was written by a woman who ultimately ended up dying.(9:39) But it was effectively an ad for her husband to be available and encouraging him to seek life after. (9:46) And I only mentioned that because there are parallels to some degree. (9:50) And I don't want to take words out of your mouth.(9:52) So I'm wondering if you wouldn't just mind providing a quick synopsis of what that piece was about so that we can continue to explore some of the things you laid out.

Jeffrey D. Boldt

(10:00) Sure. (10:01) In that essay, I start where we're at hospice and Rebecca is gravely ill and in pain. (10:11) That's why she was in the hospice hospital.(10:15) And I just kind of follow through sort of how we were, you know, she was constantly on me to keep thinking ahead. (10:28) And she accepted death in a way that was incredibly profound and brave, you know, heroic. (10:38) And her thoughts were mostly with our children and me, in part, and my role as their father.(10:47) So she was always urging me to, you know, keep hope alive for my own life, even in the face of what we were going through. (10:58) And so one of the humorous things that I tried to have, because again, that's what I found as we went through the process. (11:06) Rebecca had colon cancer, and we knew she had at most probably three years given the current state of the medicine.(11:17) And she was joking to me about, well, you know, if you meet somebody at hospice, go for it. (11:26) And so I jokingly said, when I was in my early, mid-fifties then, that this woman in her nineties was my new special friend. (11:36) And I got a great laugh out of her.(11:39) But we tried to keep a sense of humor as we were going through that process all the way through, which was very helpful. (11:47) And also so that you can still enjoy life when you're in really difficult circumstances. (11:55) The one line that we used a lot that I have given to others is, when we would take in new information about the status of her cancer, it would be, well, that's bad news, but it's not the worst.(12:12) And it's not the worst until you're very, really at the end and there's a major organ that's taking you down, you know, but you still can have joy and beauty and love and companionship and all the good things as you're going through that process. (12:30) But you also got a phone call from her friend six months after. (12:33) Oh yeah, I forgot.(12:34) That was their hook to make it, you know, to change it from a name and a face which is probably more literary, but their hook was that so six months after Rebecca passed, she had set it up so that a friend of hers called me and encouraged me to go out. (12:58) And then even to meet other women and, you know, a woman at that point, it's not other women, but it was pretty remarkable. (13:08) And yeah, I experienced other things like that, that she had done, where she had left notes in China that she cared for.(13:20) And, you know, it's a generational thing. (13:23) The younger generation doesn't care as much about China. (13:27) So it was some time before my girls found the notes that she had written for them.(13:34) But she was very much aware that her time was short and she continued loving even after her death, I guess.

Marcus Arredondo

(13:45) Well, I appreciate you sharing that. (13:46) This was a moving piece, but that particular part brought tears to my eyes because it really showcased what type of person she was and where her heart and head were at even in the closing days, which says a lot, I think, about her, but also her opinion and belief in you.

Jeffrey D. Boldt

(14:03) Yeah. (14:04) You know, I didn't highlight it even in her role bit, you know, but after she took disability retirement kind of later on in her treatment and she still went back and got trained by the Red Cross to help others. (14:25) Yeah, that still does it to me, you know, that she took a training and she did attend at several fires from a management.(14:37) She was a PhD economist and had a lot of management skills as well from her time, both with the, she worked for the state of Wisconsin and she worked for the United Nations previously.

Marcus Arredondo

(14:49) So I don't want to focus entirely on this event, but I see a lot of things that you brought up, was very interested in exploring with you. (14:59) One was identity, the idea of identity, how you view identity and how that may have shifted following the circumstance with the underscoring facts of you having been in law, having been a judge for many years and vacating that pursuit entirely to go into writing full-time and going back to school. (15:22) So I offer that as a number of things that you could choose from, but I am very interested in your perspective on identity and also the relationship that grief has in forming that identity.

Jeffrey D. Boldt

(15:34) Yeah, well, it was, you asked for inflection points and certainly that was one. (15:39) What had happened was I had a number of very high profile cases in the state that got postponed because of Rebecca's illness. (15:50) One of them was even scheduled originally for the day that she died.(15:54) So I had this backlog of just really challenging cases and that partly informed the cases that I drew on for Blue Lake, my first novel. (16:11) And I wanted to, I've always, I had been publishing short stories and poetry and essays. (16:19) Really, I tried to do one every year for many years.(16:24) So our original life plan had been, Rebecca was from Houston, Texas and we were planning to, when she got to 55, we were going to get a condo in Austin, Texas and then maybe get a condo here in Madison. (16:40) We love both cities, but obviously she made it to 53 and not 55. (16:45) So I had to redraw my entire life plan.(16:49) And by the time I got through that backlog of exhausting, difficult, high profile pressure from the governor's office of a sort cases, I was ready to retire. (17:05) And kind of on a whim, I applied to the MFA program. (17:11) I applied to only one program and I got in, it was in Minneapolis, which is about a four and a half hour drive from here.(17:19) But halfway there is my mother's house. (17:22) And so I was able to sort of justify that. (17:25) So I found myself in grad school.(17:30) The first summer, it was a low residency program, but it was very challenging. (17:38) The first summer you had to live in the dorms. (17:42) And how old are your daughters at this point?(17:45) My daughters, they were in their twenties. (17:49) Okay, so they had moved out of the house. (17:51) Yeah, they were well on their own.(17:54) And one of them is a lawyer and one of them is doing civil rights work for a college. (18:00) So they're both very accomplished women. (18:05) And that's part of the story too, of resilience of losing their mother and still keeping her values alive.(18:12) But yeah, the first year, the summer in the dorms was particularly challenging because they were doing construction on campus and they had this huge light that was shining into my dorm room. (18:27) And so I was grieving and it was hard to sleep with that light. (18:34) And there was definitely a moment where I'm like, what the heck am I doing here?(18:39) But it was also very therapeutic and also it was an example of having my own breath and having my own wife. (18:50) And that was one thing I did just brief counseling through the hospice, actually. (18:57) And they said, do things that you weren't able to do in your life together.(19:05) And they also advised me, don't look for someone like Rebecca, because first of all, they're rare. (19:13) But secondly, you'll always be disappointed with the ERSTAT version. (19:20) So anyway, long story short is I went and I wanted to draw on my sort of low to the ground nuts and bolts experience in environmental law to get at the larger subjects.(19:41) Like in Blue Lake, it's in part about sort of attacks on the rule of law and challenges from government obstruction to environmental protection. (19:57) And in Big Lake Travels, my second novel, the sequel, it's about the climate crisis very directly from a case involving coal shipping on Lake Superior, which a lot of people don't know. (20:11) A lot of the coal comes from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and that area.(20:19) And then it comes by train through to Lake Superior and then out through the St. Lawrence Seaway to a lot of it goes to Amsterdam and then it's shipped all over the world. (20:32) So that was ready made to have this kind of low to the ground perspective. (20:39) And in both of my books, what I've done is I have alternating chapters from different characters' perspective.(20:48) And that's in part a literary device to keep readers interested for one thing. (20:56) And every character has their own nuances. (21:00) And I wanted people to get to know my characters well, almost like in a literary novel, but still have that sort of propulsive plot of a legal thriller or that kind of a story.(21:15) So it has worked well in terms of trying to show empathy for different perspectives in the environmental context, but also broader empathy for each other that there's so much division in our country now that we have to try to figure out some kind of process of understanding each other.

Marcus Arredondo

(21:44) Well, I want to touch on that as well. (21:45) But as it relates, I have a lot of questions about the writing process for you, primarily because you've got a legal mind. (21:51) So you have a writing perspective, clearly.(21:54) Were you writing prior to your application? (21:58) Were you publishing prior to this?

Jeffrey D. Boldt

(22:00) Yes. (22:00) Like I said, I published in the University of California magazine when I was an undergrad. (22:08) I thought, wow, that was easy.(22:09) I probably would have a hard time getting in there now. (22:13) So I had enough success, primarily as a poet. (22:17) I was kind of a poet.(22:20) I moved to New York right out of college. (22:22) And I had some readings around the city. (22:25) And I had just enough success always to keep me interested in writing and keep me in there.(22:33) I kind of thought of myself like a musician who's been in some local bands in a garage or something. (22:40) But he's always wanted to take it to the next level. (22:44) And that's what getting my MFA was for me, the discipline and knowing the techniques.(22:50) I listened to your podcast with your friend, the concert pianist, and it was really well done. (22:56) But I think knowing those techniques lets you get to that emotional depth and that really understanding, in his case, the mastery of the music, but also in writing or any of the art. (23:16) If you know the techniques, you can kind of play with them.

Marcus Arredondo

(23:23) You're sort of hitting the nail on the head as it relates to what I'm most fascinated by. (23:30) Follow me here for a second. (23:32) I grew up as a male who processed everything negative under the umbrella of anger.(23:43) So frustration, disappointment. (23:45) It wasn't until I got older until I started to understand the nuances within them and then the distinct emotional responses that are included within each of those layered responses. (23:58) Your allusion to Chris, I found really compelling because as you become more fluent, that is, your actual technique becomes more effective, your vocabulary is increased, your understanding of the vocabulary and how nuances within that vocabulary work when combined actually creates different layers.(24:23) With that, also your ability to communicate those emotions. (24:28) You talk about emotional memory and the benefits of the art as it relates to emotional memory, but I think the thing I find most fascinating is the counterpoint to that or the other side of the coin, which is with that emotional memory is the role it has in helping you to metabolize emotion or to digest situational events. (24:52) I'm wondering if you might be able to speak to the role that writing has had in processing the grief among other aspects of your life.(25:00) Clearly, you're integrating your legal profession into your fiction, (25:04) your passion for the outdoors in Wisconsin, your passion for nature in itself, but all of this, (25:12) all of your interests and your nuanced understanding of each of these unique (25:18) aspects, you're sort of taking the spokes, tying them to the hub in a way that creates a (25:24) wheel that flows through the processing of some type of circumstance, which is obviously textured (25:32) by a number of different components.(25:35) So I'll stop, but I'm just curious if you have anything to say about that.

Jeffrey D. Boldt

(25:39) I think you, as far as putting the nail on the head, that is what it's about. (25:45) Maybe I can approach it this way. (25:48) I am working on my new project is a novel that I just recently discovered.(25:56) I knew it was there, but I didn't know if I had a copy of it or not because my late wife and I lived in Rome for a couple of years, and I was primarily watching my daughter, but I was writing then. (26:09) I was writing novel and poetry. (26:14) And anyway, it's called Fear of History, and it's set mostly in Rome, but what's interesting about it is what I'm pursuing now is not the differences between characters, but a character who, like myself, finds this manuscript from 35 years ago and then comments on it at age 65.(26:43) And what's interesting is some of the techniques I used then, I mean, I was right, it was basically a thriller and has this wonderful Italian lawyer in it, a guy who reads Montali, who's a poet that I love, Nobel Prize winning poet from Italy. (27:00) And it's broadly speaking, it's a thriller about a transgressive woman who is making a film about fascism and meeting some resistance within Italy. (27:17) And now, I never thought when I was writing that, that this rise of quasi-authoritarianism here would be happening in America 35 years later, where I'd be having markedly different reactions to it.(27:39) But also in terms of the style and the techniques, like for one thing, (27:43) I used this technique of having like, and I did it in my other novels, but I'm doing it more (27:51) intentionally, I guess, this time, because I had done it in the original manuscript, (27:58) it's sort of ironic distance by describing that sometimes really grim or thrilling or, you know, (28:10) fearful experiences kind of ironically, and creating this ironic distance. (28:16) And it's really helpful.(28:19) It's really a way of processing things. (28:28) A friend of mine's great uncle wrote this just (28:32) beautiful book, and it's considered one of the great books of Palestinian literature, (28:39) it's The Long Life of Said, I forgot the exact title, but he was addressing this very difficult (28:49) subject of going back to Israel, and he lived his life in Israel, as a Palestinian, and was (29:04) a very interesting guy, but he had that same ironic distance, so that was kind of a comedy, (29:14) a la Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, dealing with, you know, all that brutality that he saw. (29:22) But there's this very moving scene where he goes back to his house, and there's this Israeli (29:31) family's living in his house, you know, and my friend's family had the same experience and, (29:39) you know, have never received compensation, you know, there's obviously a lot of reason for that, (29:43) but just that ironic distance to process something as fundamental as seeing other people living in (29:50) your house, or in Vonnegut's case, the bombings of Dresden, you know, and so I think technique (29:59) is inherently in the arts, I think it is a way to get a handle on complex emotion, (30:12) and I think there's a reason we want to be scared, we want to be thrilled, we want to be (30:19) entertained, you know, and you know, the art of it is to do as many of those things as possible, (30:26) and also make people think, you know, in my books, I'm trying to have people think about (30:33) their contribution to the climate in the case of Big Lake Troubles, or, you know, the rule of law, (30:40) or, you know, environmental degradation in the case of Blue Lake, and like, okay, which one of (30:46) these characters am I like, you know, and also in the sequel, Big Lake Troubles, there's a lot (30:52) about who are the good guys, you know, you can be, you can think yourself a good guy, and (30:59) not really be one, if you go out too far, you know, and, and so, you know, there's this kind (31:07) of inherent ethical and moral complexity and ambiguity, that's also part of being a human (31:13) being.

Marcus Arredondo

(31:14) So you brought up a lot of interesting components, but that ironic distance that you're I couldn't help but think of, you know, when you're learning to draw shapes, you're really focused on maybe colors, but the reality is the darkness, it's the shadows that create the shape, similar to music, it's the silences that allow the notes actually stand out. (31:39) And what I have, as I've grown and had death more frequently in my life, as I've continued to grow older, is I'm very thrown off by how comedic those circumstances end up becoming, not the event itself. (31:53) But it's almost like the exhaustion of the emotionality of that event boils you down to the core of something distinct.(32:03) I don't know if it's organic, that, you know, nature compels you toward that place. (32:08) But I remember several times in after my grandfather died, after one of my best friends died, just how much laughter there was in the room, not without pain, right? (32:20) I mean, I think there's a consequence.(32:22) I even think of, you know, maybe the Dave Chappelle's of the world who are really saying something very painful, but it's the ability to make somebody laugh while you're digesting that pain is what gives you context. (32:36) It's what allows you maybe the back door entry into something that wouldn't really be available to you if you were confronting it head on. (32:46) I don't know if you found that.(32:48) And I'm just wondering, like, yes, in your fiction, you're writing, do you journal? (32:53) Was journaling a component of your healing, of your process of finding your way forward? (32:58) Or has it been channeling exclusively into your work?

Jeffrey D. Boldt

(33:02) Not so much journaling. (33:04) You know, you do a lot of conversations, as you know, and I'm sorry for your losses, Marcus, of your father and your grandfather. (33:11) But yeah, I'm not a journaler, but I have always been a writer.(33:18) So rather, I have stories, you know, I just put together a book of short stories that, you know, I'm shopping around to university presses right now, but I've always been writing. (33:33) So there are written experiences that I can grab hold of, you know, written records, I guess, of experiences. (33:44) You know, my poetry is a lot of times pretty immediate, you know, like lyric poetry usually is, which is why I think it's kind of a young person's game.(33:57) You know, I was thinking of Rome and Keats and Shelley, you know, those guys were in their 20s, and they wrote these amazing pieces. (34:05) But it's kind of about a receptivity, you know, Blake said, genius is childhood regained at will. (34:14) Blake or Baudelaire, I can't remember, but one of them, you know, and just that ability to be open to experience.(34:22) And I do think, you know, maybe getting to that place of seeing the big picture, life is not just a tragedy, it's a comedy, you know, it's a tragic comedy, always. (34:37) And, you know, I think our culture is a little, you know, and this is what, as I'm writing this book that's set in Rome, and it's about resistance people and how the French and Italians got together in Grenoble in the Alps, and very interesting time in Italy.

Marcus Arredondo

(34:59) Something that you had mentioned earlier was, and it was in response to somebody who had emailed you, which was Be Yourself. (35:07) And I'm curious if you find more of yourself being revealed through the writing process in a way that, you know, and you mentioned the distinction between reading something that you had written many years prior and then coming back to revisit it, you were looking at it through the lens of techniques. (35:25) But I'm also wondering, you know, I recently saw the Bob Dylan movie with Timothy Chalamet, and, you know, there was a question of how did you write that at such a young age?(35:36) And really, the question that he says is being asked is, how come I couldn't come up with that? (35:42) And there's something interesting I have found in nowhere in that category, but I have read certain things that I've written before and found, oh my gosh, that has a lot more profoundness than I realized when I wrote it. (35:57) But maybe the lens through which I wrote it was far simpler.(36:01) And I think the simplicity, which is what I think these extenuating circumstances compel us toward, which is you sort of eliminate, you know, death is just as natural as life. (36:14) It is something that happens. (36:15) And there's, I hesitate to use the word cruelness.(36:19) It's not cruel. (36:21) I don't know if you've seen this recent movie, they got a bunch of accolades called Flow. (36:25) It's an animated movie that is brilliant, but it's really about the indifference of nature, of predator and prey.(36:34) You know, you see these animals that you personify and all this. (36:39) The reason I'm bringing this up is, you know, following death, there's a reality of life must go on and you still have bills to pay, you still have cases to deal with, and one must find a way to move forward in that. (36:53) And in some ways, I think that's probably the world, nature, God, whatever it is compelling you to move forward.(37:01) It's the lack of, I don't know, it is somewhat cruel. (37:06) It is cruel, but I guess if you look at it through that lens, you can be absorbed by it. (37:11) So all this to say through that process of writing, have you found more of yourself coming forward that compels you to digest the world in new and different ways?(37:22) Because if you get stuck, it can sort of become a, it seems like it can become a downward spiral.

Jeffrey D. Boldt

(37:29) Yeah, I think there is a vitality to writing that you have when you're younger. (37:35) I think really that part of it is, and all experiences are newer to you. (37:40) And I think, you know, in theory, you know, Eric Erickson talks about the stages of life and he and his, you know, he's a psychologist or psychoanalyst and forget which, but late in life, he came up with the last one, which is wisdom.(37:59) You know, that maybe you do get some wisdom as you accumulate these experiences and you find out, you know, at least what works for you in dealing with them. (38:09) I do think humor has always been an amazing resource for human beings.

Marcus Arredondo

(38:15) Yeah.

Jeffrey D. Boldt

(38:16) And, you know, they think even some of the cave drawings, some of them are meant to be humorous, you know, and cheer people up. (38:24) So, yeah, that's as far as what I'm finding as I'm going through comparing this thing that I wrote, you know, at age 30 versus, you know, 65 would be that personal dynamics change. (38:49) So I'm trying to get at like personal history, but also the social context changes.(38:56) And that's kind of this thing that's also a thread that goes through my work. (39:04) And I think the fiction that I like and read best is that thread of making your way in a particular time, you know. (39:19) So I've been doing all this reading about the resistance in Italy and France again, and how people, yeah, they found humor and a lot of them knew, you know, the odds were against them.(39:34) You're going up against the, you know, the after, ironically for Italy, after the allies, after they had a truce with the allies, the Germans quickly came in and invaded northern Italy and, you know, France, where they still maintained some, you know, strengths. (39:58) And so there's a famous line of Caesar Pavese, which was one of his characters says, is the war over? (40:08) And they say, no, the war has just begun.(40:10) And that's like, that's late in the process. (40:14) But yeah, how do people deal with difficult historic circumstances? (40:22) And that's what I'm finding as far as the going back to the resilience theme, and even the personal loss theme, because what's interesting is my late wife had typed part of this, and I still see some of her handwritten notes in the original manuscript.(40:41) And so it's coming together as far as what are the resources? (40:47) And I do think then and now, I think the arts are just such a resource for the circumstances that are difficult, whether it's in your own life, losing someone, or whether it's you're in an authoritarian country, you know, I always loved sort of dissident literature, you know, of the Soviet era, or, you know, people who are standing up to the dictators in Argentina or Chile. (41:21) But yeah, the arts, one thing I remember when I was in college, way back when I was an undergraduate, I was in a class that was about Hamlet.(41:36) And they were talking about, you know, this character, and this professor from, I don't think it was, I don't know if it was the University of London, but he was living in London during the bombing from the Germans. (41:57) And they asked him, you know, how can you still be working on this Shakespeare, you know, a book about one character. (42:08) And he's like, this is exactly what the world that I'm trying to preserve, the world of culture of, you know, the world of music, the world of painting and literature.(42:23) And I coming back to that even more, I noticed in the, it's there, when I, you know, in the 1990 version, but I'm coming to it more, and I'm realizing, wow, what a resource the arts are, what a resource music is, what a resource painting is, for people, whatever their circumstances. (42:49) And I think a lot of people right now are feeling down about, you know, what things that are happening in the US. (42:59) You know, from my perspective, here, I'm in this very liberal town.(43:04) I think you're in LA too, you are too. (43:06) But, you know, to many of us, this feels like, you know, we're heading towards a sort of Orban-like, especially those of us in law, where you see, you know, this sort of bending of rules, and, you know, the attacks on the rule of law, and, you know, all these shadow docket cases that are like really significant, and they don't even bother to give you a rationale for them. (43:34) Or, you know, the way ICE is just hauling people off, some of them citizens, some of them here perfectly legally, as Americans have always come, as immigrants have always come to America and gotten green cards, but they're carted away.(43:54) And, you know, what are our resources? (43:57) You know, we have each other, and we have the arts, we have our goodwill, and we have that resilience. (44:08) Coming back to that, you know, that people, and it is, I think, the case that resilience has served some, you know, it's a part of some cultures that have experienced a lot of loss, or a lot of discrimination, or a lot of oppression, generally, is the humor's usually there, and the love of each other, you know, and the love of, you know, the possibilities of life, even in the face of all of that.

Marcus Arredondo

(44:42) Well, you mentioned, you know, this show is about success, and it's unfortunate because I think the better titles had already been taken. (44:49) One is David Duchovny's got a great podcast called Fail Better, and I think that's actually really what I'm trying to explore. (44:54) It's not necessarily associated with failure as much as it is any type of setback, and, you know, to go back to the unfortunate circumstance of your wife, you know, there is still an opportunity to live life with joy and purpose, not without absence and pain.(45:11) Those two things have to coexist, but they're not necessarily mutually exclusive, and I think it's difficult to see that when you're in the muck of having to go through a circumstance like that. (45:23) So, I don't know really what got me thinking about that, but you were talking about, I guess, the resilience of these cultures and, you know, the role that humor plays in, I think, healing and cohesion, you know, to maintain that momentum. (45:38) But I do want to talk a little bit about your legal background, and I'm getting the sense that you've got some more things to say about what's going on in our country now with that legal background, so I want to give you a runway to explore that further.(45:50) But one last closing, two things I wanted to just finally close on as it relates to writing. (45:56) Personally, I'm interested in what's your day like writing? (45:58) I mean, what's your process like?(46:00) Do you—are there set times? (46:01) You wait for your news? (46:02) Are you—what's your discipline like?

Jeffrey D. Boldt

(46:05) You know, I love to write in Santa Barbara. (46:09) Like, I go there— There's no better place on earth. (46:12) Yeah, and it's—but I would have a process there where I would write in the morning, you know, draft, and I'd print out, and then I would go sit on the beach, and I would sketch out what I'd do the next day.(46:31) But it doesn't matter where you are. (46:33) I follow that when I'm writing a book-length piece. (46:38) I find it takes the stress away, and it's very helpful to sketch out at night.(46:44) You know, and even this is one of the techniques in the MFA program was, when you're tired and when you're kind of emotionally exhausted—it goes back to your point about the humor you found in the face of, like, you know, grim circumstances—your unconscious is a little more open, you know? (47:06) And so, you know, and if you don't feel the pressure, you know, so I like to sketch out what I'm going to do the next day. (47:14) And then if you're rolling, a lot of times I'll just write where the scene is, the dialogue, you know, and get them, like, sort of have essentially like an outline.(47:25) I call it a sketch. (47:27) But President Obama, in his books, he writes that way, too. (47:31) He writes it out in longhand, and then the next day types it up.(47:35) And by doing that, it's almost like a second draft. (47:38) Sure. (47:39) You know, once you're rolling—now, you're not always rolling either with the sketches.(47:44) Sometimes it's just like, you know, a few notes, but that's served me very well as, like, you know, I've got my MFA in 2019, and I'm really, I'm kind of working on my fourth book in that I put together a group of short stories. (48:04) So, yeah, I have a pretty set schedule. (48:09) But, you know, it's my schedule.(48:12) If I don't work that morning, and I don't work that morning, if it's a beautiful day, I do something.

Marcus Arredondo

(48:19) Do you have an outline for your books, typically? (48:21) Are you letting your characters tell you where they're going to go?

Jeffrey D. Boldt

(48:24) Uh, I have some notion, but usually I do let the characters find their way. (48:31) I had, in my, in Big Lake Troubles, I had one character who wouldn't go along with what I had envisioned. (48:40) And it was like, no, I'm just not going to do it.(48:42) And she wouldn't. (48:44) And it made the book better, you know, because I listened to her and not, like, my prefab idea of what would happen. (48:54) But, yeah, I think the characters start speaking to you.(48:57) And that was what made it, and I see why people write so many sequels. (49:02) And, you know, step three, you know, the character. (49:05) Right.(49:05) No, you hear their voice in your head, you know. (49:08) So, I think you read Blue Lake, there's a minor character, Courtney Sharp, who gets a full voice in the next sequel in Big Lake Troubles. (49:19) And, you know, she's kind of sarcastic.(49:23) And, you know, so I kind of found her voice with just this one line that was, she's now the head of this big law firm. (49:31) And it's like, you realize that it wasn't all freshly baked gingerbread and big bonuses, you know, being the, you know, quite, quite sarcastic. (49:44) But, yeah, I think the characters do ultimately.(49:48) And my character, Earl, he was kind of all in. (49:53) He would just, you know, he would, he was a presence. (49:56) I, you know, I couldn't, I couldn't force him to do anything either.

Marcus Arredondo

(50:00) As it relates to, I read somewhere, which may be wrong, that Hemingway would often stop mid, sort of mid-sentence when he was flowing, so that he could pick up from there the next day, rather than just continue to bang it out because you had it, you know, on a roll. (50:15) Just curious, do you, do you have set times or do you let it, you just let the, the nature of what you're writing take, take its course?

Jeffrey D. Boldt

(50:23) It depends on if you're on a deadline or not. (50:26) Yeah. (50:27) And if you're on a deadline, yeah, you got to get that thing done.(50:30) And that's what I was used to. (50:32) My decisions, I had to get out typically in 30 days after the, after the final briefing. (50:38) So, yeah, that was a stretch sometimes.(50:42) And then there's always, like writing, you, you ask the difference between, you know, when we're making notes for this, the difference between writing fiction about the law and writing, writing decisions. (50:57) I mean, fiction has that dramatic narrative and, and, and has the sort of dynamic of the dramatic situation and the interplay of the characters. (51:10) And in writing legal decisions, it's mainly just want to get the law right and you want to get the facts right.(51:19) Right. (51:19) But when I had one that was a matter of public interest, you know, like when I knew it was going to be on TV or in the newspapers or something, I would always try to put a little soundbite in there for the press that sort of summarized it in an easily digestible way that people would understand. (51:38) And, you know, and it's kind of the same thing, you know, you have to write something that holds up to scrutiny from the appellate courts or to your readers and critics, you know, and so there is, there are some similarities to and getting the, you know, try to do it in an artful way.(51:58) Some of the Supreme Court justices are great writers.

Marcus Arredondo

(52:01) I've actually read a few of those. (52:03) And as, especially as I've gotten older and found them to be, it's, it's sort of joyful to read because of their writing. (52:10) And I'm wondering, (52:11) so to transition a little bit more to your legal background, do you, I read, I think it was Oliver (52:16) Berkman who recently said that the one thing that separates writers who continue to go on to greater (52:21) success is causality, meaning, you know, having, not just having your characters and defining your (52:28) characters, but actually having your characters impose some consequence, some causal effect (52:34) relationship that ends up creating a little bit of a domino effect, causing action through the (52:40) narrative.(52:41) And I'm wondering if your legal background, paying witness to seeing the causal effect relationships between defendants and plaintiffs, if you have a better, if you think that's helped you in creating these, you know, creating characters is one thing, but the actual narrative, the plot that actually ensues is a result of those characters bumping up against each other.

Jeffrey D. Boldt

(53:04) Yeah. (53:04) And that's the fun part, you know, like that they do interact and they do, they do stand in each other's way or stand by each other's side. (53:14) And yeah, I think that was very much the case of Big Lake Troubles, the climate book.(53:23) That was a character who didn't want to go along with the plan that the other lawyers were doing, and ultimately she wouldn't. (53:31) So there were consequences there. (53:34) There's consequences.(53:36) In that one I talk about, there's a Swedish guy who is so out there in terms of climate crisis that he wrote a book called How to Blow Up a Pipeline. (53:49) And I happened to hear him while I was driving out in the Hamptons, actually, I was going to a writer's conference, and I was like yelling at my radio, don't blow up a pipeline, you know, like we got to stay on high ground here. (54:05) And I have very little time for those protesters who throw dyes on great paintings, you know, it's like, but it is interesting.(54:15) Everyone reacts so differently to the news, to what's happening in the world. (54:21) And that's what fiction offers a pathway into trying to understand these very different reactions that people have. (54:30) And I think as far as where the sources of it for me from the law is, I had to listen to people for 25 years, you know, and a lot of the water cases in Wisconsin, the waters are held in the public trust for the public.(54:47) So anyone could get up and speak. (54:50) And so sometimes you'd have like a whole evening or days even that we're listening to people and, you know, sometimes they're off base and, you know, they're angry, you know, at the wrong people. (55:06) But a lot of times they have very relevant local information that the experts don't have.(55:15) You know, I remember a case where this gentleman, I think his name was Fleetwood, but he was a local fishing expert, you know, he probably had a high school degree, but he knew this one particular lake that we were talking about better than anyone. (55:34) And, you know, I relied on him as a lay expert in part to like where areas that we wanted to avoid spawning activity or something like that. (55:45) But yeah, listening and trying to get empathy.(55:52) And, you know, as a neutral, you're trained to do that. (55:56) I mean, now I can be more of an advocate. (55:59) Obviously, I cared about these environmental issues, or I wouldn't have done the job at the state pay rate for 25 years because I had plenty of offers to leave.(56:10) But being trained to listen, being trained to be neutral, being trained to be fair, you know, I used to do, I used to do presentations to like nationally ALGA groups, even. (56:23) And, you know, what I say as a neutral, you have two clients or whatever, two obligations, one's to the record, make a record that the appellate courts can review. (56:37) And the other is to be fair, you know.(56:42) And so I felt that that was good for me as a person to try to always be fair, always hear the other people out, you know, on all sides of an issue. (56:59) But I think that's part of what seeped in, in terms of what informed my two Jason Erickson novels, you know, Blue Lake and Big Lake Troubles. (57:12) It's that process of listening to people and trying to recognize them as people, you know, and like real estate developers are not bad people.(57:27) You know, some people might see them as, you know, they're just trying to maximize, you know, the use of something. (57:34) And so, I mean, whatever, like, I never had, I always liked environmental law. (57:41) And that goes back to the big chill that woman said she went into environmental law because her characters just raped the earth and not the human beings, you know, but, you know, that people, you know, these are the interests, these are balancing interests.(57:58) A lot of times the environmental law would require you to balance concerns. (58:05) And that balancing is kind of what's missing from our public discourse too, really, you know, where people see each other as so evil, you know, and they don't know.

Marcus Arredondo

(58:17) We don't listen very well. (58:18) Yeah, that's for sure. (58:19) We are quick to make judgments with little context, which is leading to my next question.(58:25) I always feel part of the impetus to having this podcast too was to get on the ground experiences from those who've lived it. (58:34) And I'd be remiss if I didn't ask your opinion on being in the front row seat of environmental law. (58:42) What do you think the general public misunderstands and what do you think is at the greatest stake for our future relative to what you've been able to witness?

Jeffrey D. Boldt

(58:57) Well, you know, I intentionally finished Big Leg Troubles before the election so that I wouldn't, I mean, I got it out before the election because I didn't want it to affect, you know, how things were going to go or the take that I had. (59:15) And, you know, at that time, I was quite hopeful in terms of, particularly in terms of climate. (59:21) That one was directly on climate crisis.(59:24) And really, you know, just before the most recent administration, we made tremendous progress. (59:31) And I don't think people really know how much progress we made. (59:36) And unfortunately, I have a friend who has become his sole practice is helping, you know, tribes around the country, businesses to get these credits, you know, where you have a market.(59:56) You know, sometimes in Wisconsin for a while, the rumor was that because of the carbon credits that people could get, that manure was more valuable than milk. (1:00:10) Because if you digested those and took all that carbon out of the atmosphere, you know, you had a financial reward that you could sell. (1:00:19) And also, you know, you were, in fact, taking all that carbon out of the, you know, so I think that was a nice combination of, you know, sort of giving people incentive to make changes that are necessary, you know.(1:00:36) And so yeah, it's profoundly discouraging on the climate right now. (1:00:44) But again, I think we have to stay hopeful and do what we can. (1:00:48) And, you know, maybe more falls on us as individuals now, or as municipalities, or as states, or as organization.(1:01:01) You know, in Spain, they do a lot of power is individual communities that have come together to create co-ops for power. (1:01:10) And that was a big effort in the upper Midwest back in the days when it was quite progressive, that farmers would come together to create electric cooperatives. (1:01:24) And, you know, we still have the ability to impact things.(1:01:31) But it's a discouraging time. (1:01:34) And I think we'll get through it. (1:01:38) And hopefully, we'll get through it with a renewed resolve, you know.(1:01:43) And if we can make as much progress as we did under Sleepy Joe, you know, we will, you know, if we can we can make that kind of progress for eight years, we can do a lot, you know. (1:01:57) And, and, you know, you know, I have a, my girlfriend has an EV in the garage, you know, with a plug in, and I have a hybrid, you know, etc, that, you know, you can plug in and you see the future. (1:02:12) It's there in California.(1:02:14) And I spent a fair amount of time there. (1:02:18) And, you know, usually your Uber driver usually has an old Tesla or something and a sticker maybe that says they don't like Elon. (1:02:27) But anyway, it's, you know, the future is there.(1:02:33) And it's not going to be stopped. (1:02:36) You know, like, you know, it's so absurd to see. (1:02:41) I don't understand why we're giving subsidies to oil companies.(1:02:46) At this late in the, you know, 21st century, they're making a ton of money. (1:02:52) And they always find a way and, you know, they have tremendous power politically. (1:02:59) Well, you know, that's why, I mean, that's the bottom line, why, but in terms of a rational program, that's the last thing we should do.(1:03:07) And instead, now they're, you know, they're subsidizing the coal industry, the oil industry, and probably buggy whips, you know, something from the 19th century, you know, it's just, you know, and meanwhile, you know, I, for the two years plus that I was running Big Lake Troubles, because it was about coal, I would get an email every week from Google about coal and climate change. (1:03:37) And a number of countries have moved away from coal entirely, including Great Britain, the UK, which is, you know, coal really was so instrumental in their success and their wealth. (1:03:53) And Ireland has moved away from coal completely.(1:03:57) And, you know, that's the future. (1:04:01) And there are other possibilities, and they're cheaper. (1:04:05) That's what's so, you know, so discouraging too, that, you know, all these market types, solutions or approaches or remedies, they've worked.(1:04:20) And unfortunately, now the market is being determined by essentially one person, whether it's the tariffs, or whether it's solar being, you know, attacked, or, you know, it's, like I say, it's a discouraging time, but it's not going to last. (1:04:42) We will have a future, and we'll do it together, you know?

Marcus Arredondo

(1:04:47) Well, that's, I think those are good words to start ending on. (1:04:50) I, you know, you mentioned Chris's episode, The Piano Player, earlier. (1:04:56) And one thing I mentioned to him was how uniquely each audience member experiences his own performance in that music.(1:05:04) It's a broad, you know, to use a painting analogy, everyone looks at the same painting, but may see different pictures. (1:05:12) And your piece, I think, hopefully resonated with you in that way, and the way different people have responded to it and continue to. (1:05:20) And I just want to thank you for being open and express condolences for your loss, but also to share with you that I found meaning and value in how you've managed to pivot and adapt and incorporate, you know, that pain into something that is deeply productive in communicating to larger audiences.(1:05:45) So I just wanted to make sure I voiced my appreciation for you coming on and for your honesty and willingness to be open.

Jeffrey D. Boldt

(1:05:53) Thanks. (1:05:54) I found a real value in your podcast too, man. (1:05:57) I think you got a natural talent.(1:06:00) It seems that you definitely have some interest in the arts as well, and writing, and also, you know, those pragmatic experiences, I think, are good to bring to, you know, working in a different job, you know, which I did many years. (1:06:19) Those are good to bring to your interactions with people. (1:06:25) And so, yeah, I think you've got a wonderful show here.

Marcus Arredondo

(1:06:28) Thank you, man. (1:06:28) Very much appreciated. (1:06:30) Any closing thoughts or things you think we might have missed?(1:06:33) No. (1:06:34) Thanks a lot, Marcus. (1:06:35) All right.(1:06:36) Thank you, Jeff. (1:06:36) Appreciate it. (1:06:41) Thanks for listening.(1:06:42) For a detailed list of episodes and show notes, visit scaleswithsuccesspodcast.com. (1:06:46) If you found this conversation engaging, consider signing up for our newsletter, where we go even deeper on a weekly basis, sharing exclusive insights and actionable strategies that can help you in your own journey. (1:06:55) We'd also appreciate if you subscribed, rated, or shared today's episode.(1:06:59) It helps us to attract more illuminating guests, adding to the list of enlightening conversations we've had with New York Times bestsellers, producers, founders, CEOs, congressmen, and other independent thinkers who are challenging the status quo. (1:07:11) You can also follow us for updates, extra content, and more insights from our guests. (1:07:16) We hope to have you back again next week for another episode of Scales of Success.(1:07:20) Scales of Success is an Edgewest Capital Production.