The past decade has seen such tremendous growth in the popularity of documentaries. I have a dear friend who sees almost every documentary that makes it into the theatres and most of the ones that only appear on DVD, but I don't get to see as many of them as I would like. However, this summer I did manage to catch three great ones.
8: The Mormon Proposition is about the ways that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints helped to place the anti-gay Proposition 8 on the ballot in California and then supported it financially to ensure its passage. I doubt many people are unfamiliar with Prop. 8 at this point, given how much it's been in the news the past few weeks with the federal ruling that banning gay couples from marrying is a violation of the Constitution, but even if you think you've heard all there is to say about Prop. 8, you'll still find this film enlightening. Of course, it is one-sided, but it's a political documentary, not a film made for middle-school children. If you weren't angry at the church (the Mormon church or any other one, for that matter), watching this film just might remedy that problem. If nothing else, you should at least begin to question why churches with such vast amounts of wealth are not taxed and are allowed to insinuate themselves into political issues.
Stonewall Uprising attempts to piece together the story of the riots that erupted in New York City in 1969 when the police raided a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn. The riots are often credited with starting the gay rights movement, a gross oversimplification of the truth, to be honest. However, the importance of the Stonewall riots is undeniable as a flashpoint for gay identity. Once gay people realized that they didn't have to remain oppressed, that they could indeed fight back against their oppressors, everything seems to have changed. I admired that the film's makers managed to find so many people who were involved in the riots and their aftermath, including one of the police officers who has since changed his mind about gay people and is supportive of gay rights. It's pretty intriguing historical information that's imparted by the various participants, and I think the movie does an excellent job of placing the riots within the historical context of what it meant to be gay during the time period. The Stonewall riots have been the subject of many books and articles and even a few films over the years, but there's obviously still a great deal to learn. If there's a problem with the film overall, it's the re-enactments of the riots that the film makers shot (because there's apparently no actual footage from the 1969 riots), but I suppose those moments are handled in such a way that you know you're not seeing true archival footage, so it's a minor complaint.
Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work traces one tumultuous year in the life of the comedy legend, with occasional flashbacks to earlier points in her career. There are lots of moments of Rivers on stage, of course, both new and old moments, highlighting just how funny and daring she was when she first became prominent and how funny and daring she remains. However, if you're going to see this documentary, you're probably already familiar with Joan Rivers and her brand of comedy. You already know what a trailblazer she was, what an icon she has become particularly to female comics. What you'll instead take away from this movie is more interesting in terms of her psychology. She's a workaholic who seems to fear that if she stops working, she'll die. She hates to see an empty page in her datebook; she wants to stay busy. I suspect that might have something to do with the somewhat pervasive sense of loneliness she exhibits throughout the film. She also talks candidly about her plastic surgery, particularly when she admits that no man has ever called her pretty. I found that moment devastating. To think how much she has altered her appearance all because she just wants to be found attractive--it's staggering to contemplate that. It's a stunning film, one worthy of analysis by film scholars and feminist theorists for years. I've always loved Rivers; I owned her album What Becomes a Semi-Legend Most? and have always wanted to see her perform live. Watching this film was the next best thing to a live performance. It's more like having a private audience with Rivers herself.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Friday, August 13, 2010
Nutty Neighbors: New Depths or New Heights
I haven't written about the next-door neighbors in a while, but that doesn't mean that they haven't found new ways to demonstrate their stupidity. In addition to their continual amazement that other people live in this building and are not interested in hearing their loud music (or, even worse, Godzilla's "singing"), my favorite aspect of their ignorance has to do with their keys. Yes, I know I've told you before about the keys under the doormat that became clearly visible when the mat was even slightly nudged out of its position. However, in an obvious attempt to provide greater security for their keys yet maintain that availability you want your keys to have, they've hit upon a rather novel solution.
I suppose we aren't meant to notice that, in addition to the outline of the key on the box, it is clearly marked "KEY CASE." Of course, this would only be visible to anyone who happens to be in the hallway and, well, who can see. So far, this has included several delivery guys, a couple of whom have actually picked up the case and rattled it to see if keys were truly inside, and the mail carrier and people visiting some of the other neighbors on our floor and the maintenance crew members who come by to fix sinks or replace light bulbs in the hallway and the security guards who came to tell Godzilla and Hermey that they were making too much noise (and who also picked up the case and rattled it and laughed that anyone would be so stupid as to leave a set of keys outside their apartment door).
However, the stupidity doesn't end there. For about a week or so this summer, Godzilla and Hermey had company. Actually, they frequently have company, a very confusing trend considering how difficult it is to find parking around this complex and the very limited number of parking spaces reserved for guests. This particular guest, though, was special. She apparently was unable to bend all the down to the floor to pick up the keys or the KEY CASE, so being the gracious hosts that they are, Godzilla and Hermey tried their best to accommodate her. I hope it's visible enough for you to tell how truly kind they are.
Not to worry, the key case has migrated downward since that guest left. It's back at the bottom of the door frame. But it still isn't as if the neighbors are trying to hide the fact that they leave their keys outside in plain view. Godzilla, in particular, is especially prone to bending down in front of other people--such as the Pizza Hut delivery guy who came to our apartment last week--to pick up her keys. It's a source of some amusement for them, frankly. I can't imagine what they think of someone who's willing not only to place her keys in a magnetic case attached to her door frame in an open hallway but also to retrieve said keys in full view of strangers. That takes either an enormous amount of trust on her part or a great deal of ignorance.
I haven't yet figured out why they leave their keys outside. Is someone just really bad at keeping track of door keys? How hard could it be to put two keys on a small key chain in your pocket or purse? Are they really that generous with their apartment that they want just any acquaintance of theirs to be able to use the place without them being there? Godzilla doesn't seem to take her keys with her to work nor bring them inside when she comes home at the end of the day. I am, as always, completely bewildered by their ridiculous behavior.
I suppose we aren't meant to notice that, in addition to the outline of the key on the box, it is clearly marked "KEY CASE." Of course, this would only be visible to anyone who happens to be in the hallway and, well, who can see. So far, this has included several delivery guys, a couple of whom have actually picked up the case and rattled it to see if keys were truly inside, and the mail carrier and people visiting some of the other neighbors on our floor and the maintenance crew members who come by to fix sinks or replace light bulbs in the hallway and the security guards who came to tell Godzilla and Hermey that they were making too much noise (and who also picked up the case and rattled it and laughed that anyone would be so stupid as to leave a set of keys outside their apartment door).
However, the stupidity doesn't end there. For about a week or so this summer, Godzilla and Hermey had company. Actually, they frequently have company, a very confusing trend considering how difficult it is to find parking around this complex and the very limited number of parking spaces reserved for guests. This particular guest, though, was special. She apparently was unable to bend all the down to the floor to pick up the keys or the KEY CASE, so being the gracious hosts that they are, Godzilla and Hermey tried their best to accommodate her. I hope it's visible enough for you to tell how truly kind they are.
Not to worry, the key case has migrated downward since that guest left. It's back at the bottom of the door frame. But it still isn't as if the neighbors are trying to hide the fact that they leave their keys outside in plain view. Godzilla, in particular, is especially prone to bending down in front of other people--such as the Pizza Hut delivery guy who came to our apartment last week--to pick up her keys. It's a source of some amusement for them, frankly. I can't imagine what they think of someone who's willing not only to place her keys in a magnetic case attached to her door frame in an open hallway but also to retrieve said keys in full view of strangers. That takes either an enormous amount of trust on her part or a great deal of ignorance.
I haven't yet figured out why they leave their keys outside. Is someone just really bad at keeping track of door keys? How hard could it be to put two keys on a small key chain in your pocket or purse? Are they really that generous with their apartment that they want just any acquaintance of theirs to be able to use the place without them being there? Godzilla doesn't seem to take her keys with her to work nor bring them inside when she comes home at the end of the day. I am, as always, completely bewildered by their ridiculous behavior.
A Jury of Their Peers
I narrowly escaped jury duty this week. I had already postponed my service twice this summer before I committed myself to getting it over with. I had received my first notice before the end of the spring semester and had initially rescheduled my service to start the Monday after we turned in grades. However, a hiring committee obligation offered a potential conflict, so I postponed my service again until after the summer school session had ended for me. I figured the three weeks between summer and fall semesters would be sufficient; the odds are against a person being chosen for a jury, and if you are, most trials are five to seven days long.
In Los Angeles County, you have to call in to "register" before the first day of your service, and then each night for the week you have jury duty, you have to call in to see if you need to report to the courthouse the next day. The last time I was sent a summons for jury duty, I was dutiful the entire week and was rewarded by not having to go in at all. I was hopeful that the same scenario would play itself out again, and I would be able to go on with my preparations for fall classes. I was in the midst of finalizing my syllabi at the time.
This time, though, I wasn't so lucky. On Monday night, I learned that I had to report on July 27, the day before my 47th birthday. Los Angeles County is under the "one day, one trial" system, so I figured I would go in and spend the day and perhaps avoid being chosen for a jury pool. That's what had happened the second time I had jury duty. Yes, I've been called numerous times; the most recent was my fourth or fifth--I've lost count at this point. I didn't have the same luck as before, however. At about 11:30 a.m. that day, about twenty-five of us were given instructions to return on August 9, almost two weeks later, to be potential jurors for a trial on the infamous 9th floor. That's the so-called "high profile case" floor, the one where they hold celebrity trials and those that have achieved a great deal of press (serial killer trials, particularly gruesome cases, that sort of thing). I began imagining the horrors of having to serve on a trial that would be in the press and fighting my way to the courtroom through television cameras. I even began trying to remember which celebrities had been arrested recently, just in case it was going to be one of those notorious cases.
We were also told by the court clerks that the estimated amount of time for the trial would be twenty days. The only problem for me would be the start of the fall semester one week after the day we were given to report to the courtroom for jury selection. You can't really trust the court estimates for trials, by the way. The first time I had jury duty, I was stuck on a civil case (medical malpractice, to be specific) that was estimated to take four or five days of testimony. We were in the courthouse for three and a half weeks. Knowing that a twenty-day trial would likely last a great deal longer than estimated, I started to panic because I didn't want to miss an entire month at the beginning of a semester, not with five classes (and one of them an Honors Program class), so I asked about another postponement. However, given that I was already in the pool, the clerks said it was too late to change.
We all had to call in again the weekend before August 9 on the off chance that the trial had been cancelled because of a plea bargain or other reason, but of course, the message informed us to be there bright and early on Monday morning. Thankfully, we weren't expected to be in court until 10:30 a.m., so I did get a chance to sleep in a bit later than usual.
The first day was incredibly unproductive. The clerk for our particular courtroom (the same one used for the O.J. Simpson trial, if you're interested in such trivia) called roll three or four times because some of the jurors weren't present. She said the judge would not call us in until everyone had arrived, so it was almost 11 a.m. before we were allowed to enter the courtroom. After everyone was seated, the judge told us a little bit about the case: three defendants, each with a different attorney representing him, all of them charged with murder and charges of conspiracy to commit murder and a couple of them facing additional charges, and allegations of gang affiliation as well. Based upon just those details, I began to think that twenty days wouldn't be enough to hear all of the testimony and deliberate and return with a verdict. The prospect of starting the fall semester with my students began to seem a bit more distant.
The judge asked if any potential jurors had reasons--other than a financial hardship, which is getting increasingly hard to prove in the court system--which might prevent them from serving on this jury. Those of us who did were asked to write down our reasons and submit them to the judge for consideration. The rest of the potential jurors--about a hundred people or so--were given questionnaires to complete in the hallway. Only a couple of people who had conflicts were released from duty. The rest of us were told to fill out a questionnaire and report back the next day at 8:30 a.m. I'd spent half a day at the courthouse and nothing had happened yet with respect to jury selection. I'd just filled out two slips of paper and read almost a hundred pages in one of the books I'd brought.
On Tuesday, we all returned. Well, almost all of us. Naturally, when the clerk took roll, a few people were missing and, just like on Monday, the judge wouldn't begin until everyone had appeared. It was almost 9 a.m. before the last person showed up, and we were all ushered into the courtroom to begin. The clerk read off the juror ID numbers for twenty people, and they were the first ones subjected to questioning by the attorneys. Each of the defense attorneys got to ask questions, and then the prosecuting attorney got the same amount of time as the three defense attorneys combined. If you want to see the disparity in justice, watch jury selection as it unfolds. The three defense attorneys were inept in their questioning; one of them had to repeat his questions two or three times because they were so unclear. It wasn't as if they were trying to trick jurors--at least, I don't think they were--they just weren't very good at articulating what it was they wanted the jurors to answer.
Based upon the questioning, I began to sense some of the key aspects of the case. Apparently, the crime happened in an area known for gang violence, so the attorneys wanted to know who had had bad experiences with gangs and whether or not that would affect their ability to be fair. The key witnesses for the defense were apparently going to be relatives of the three men (mothers, sisters, etc.), character witnesses, in other words, rather than eyewitnesses. The prosecution's witnesses would, of course, including the police who investigated the crime, but there would apparently also be witnesses who had substance abuse problems and/or criminal records--both of which were the subject of questioning about the effect they might have on the credibility of a witness. And it became evident rather early on that none of the three men were likely to testify on their own behalf, and the attorneys, at least one of them, anyway, wanted to know how people on the jury would feel about that decision, if it would seem odd or questionable.
After dismissing several jurors for "cause" during the first round of questioning--apparently, anyone who didn't speak English well or had a direct connection to the court system was automatically out--the number of people in the jury box had dwindled down to just eleven. The clerk read off enough numbers to refill the jury box and then those potential jurors were questioned. This went on, with one brief break in the middle, until almost noon. At that point, the judge announced that he had another commitment and court would be dismissed for the rest of the day. We still had no jury, and another day in the week before school was to begin was almost completely wasted.
Wednesday's session was another early start, 8:30 a.m., again with one or two people missing when the clerk did roll call. We did manage to start before 9 a.m., though, and the previous day's pattern quickly re-emerged of confusing questions by the defense attorneys and sharp-witted questioning by the prosecution. Frankly, it wasn't hard to see that the prosecution was going to be far more effective and professional than the defense. Nevertheless, all of us whose names had not yet been called sat in the audience hoping that we wouldn't be one of those stuck on the jury listening to twenty days of this nonsense. It took quite a while to get to twelve people that both sides could accept as a jury. It was 3 p.m., to be exact, when the entire audience perked up as the clerk swore the jury in. Almost half of the people who had been there on Monday morning were gone, having been dismissed for "cause" or as a result of the peremptory challenges which the lawyers on both sides used rather indulgently.
I started to think that I was going to escape without being questioned. I would be free to go to the college convocation on Friday and then begin my classes on time on Monday. There were twelve jurors sworn in, and the attorneys still had six potential alternates sitting in the box for the three slots the judge felt was probably appropriate given the length of the trial. However, rather than merely choosing from those six people, he decided to fill the remaining seats with potential alternates from the remaining audience members.
Mine was the first number called.
The questioning began after the other two possible alternates were seated. The first attorney didn't ask me any direct questions, spending much of his time asking about the gang-related murder of the best friend of the poor guy sitting next to me and the murder by an ex-boyfriend of the sister of the third "new" alternate. The second lawyer asked his usual rambling questions, and then he made a particularly sharp comment to me that just because I am a teacher, I was not to act like a teacher in the jury deliberations. I was an equal to everyone else, he wanted me to know. I accepted his statement as graciously as I could under the circumstances and waited for the third defense attorney to start. He asked a very bizarre question about how I would vote in the case if it was sent to the jury for deliberations at that precise moment. I responded that it would be impossible to make a decision without any evidence being presented since that's not how trials operate. He fumbled in asking the question a different way before I caught on to what he was trying to say. He was trying to get to the point that if the prosecution didn't offer sufficient evidence in the case, we would be obligated to return a verdict of "not guilty." I finally agreed with him, but I couldn't imagine a more convoluted way to make that point.
It was for the prosecuting attorney that I was allowed to express myself the most. She asked me about the civil case that I had served on some years ago. She wanted to know what impression I had of the court system based upon that case. (I guess I was too transparent when she asked if we had reached a verdict and I said "eventually.") I told her that I thought the past trial had been rather tedious and time-consuming, that I had spent more time sitting in the corridor reading books than sitting in the courtroom listening to testimony, primarily because of delays by the judge in the case who stopped two or three times a day to handle other casework, including arraignments, and because of the inept scheduling of witnesses by the attorneys. I said that if all I was going to do was read books, I'd rather do that at home. It would be a more productive use of my time.
When she asked if my frustrations in that case would affect my emotions in this case, I answered truthfully that they wouldn't, but that's because I had a new set of frustrations. I noted that we had already spent three days in court and had just gotten a panel of jurors, and now I was added to a list of potential alternates and was spending more time worrying about my classes starting on Monday and what was going to happen with my students if I were stuck (yeah, I think I did say "stuck") on a jury for the first month of school. She thanked me for being honest and continued with her questioning of the other two potential jurors.
When the attorneys went to a sidebar--one of dozens they held over the three days of jury questioning, by the way--they and the judge quickly decided on the three alternates. All of them were men and all of them were in the pool of six alternates they had before they called the last three of us into the jury box, but at least, I wasn't one of them. I don't know if my impatience put them off or not, but I was very grateful to be allowed to walk out of the courtroom free from any further need to appear in that building.
I picked up my Certification of Jury Service upstairs in the general assembly room. Everyone else gets $15 for each day (after the first day) of service, whether you're picked for a jury or not. They also get reimbursed for their mileage to the courthouse (just one way mileage, though). They'll all be getting a check in a week or so. I get nothing. As a public employee and thanks to a decision by the governor a few years ago, I receive no compensation for jury duty and, rumor has it, no reimbursement either.
So what do I have as a result of all of this? I wish I could say that I feel proud that I did my civic duty, but I don't really feel that way at all. I feel like I just wasted a lot of time sitting around the courthouse waiting to hear if I had to tell my dean that he would need to start scrambling to find substitutes who wouldn't screw up my classes at the beginning of the semester. Well, actually, I guess that's not all that happened. I did manage to finish a collection of short stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne (who's far more mystical than I remember) and most of a book on the 2004 presidential election by a political reporter who followed the Democratic candidates that year. But that's it, really. Well, that and this story. I suppose that was worth four days of my free time this summer.
In Los Angeles County, you have to call in to "register" before the first day of your service, and then each night for the week you have jury duty, you have to call in to see if you need to report to the courthouse the next day. The last time I was sent a summons for jury duty, I was dutiful the entire week and was rewarded by not having to go in at all. I was hopeful that the same scenario would play itself out again, and I would be able to go on with my preparations for fall classes. I was in the midst of finalizing my syllabi at the time.
This time, though, I wasn't so lucky. On Monday night, I learned that I had to report on July 27, the day before my 47th birthday. Los Angeles County is under the "one day, one trial" system, so I figured I would go in and spend the day and perhaps avoid being chosen for a jury pool. That's what had happened the second time I had jury duty. Yes, I've been called numerous times; the most recent was my fourth or fifth--I've lost count at this point. I didn't have the same luck as before, however. At about 11:30 a.m. that day, about twenty-five of us were given instructions to return on August 9, almost two weeks later, to be potential jurors for a trial on the infamous 9th floor. That's the so-called "high profile case" floor, the one where they hold celebrity trials and those that have achieved a great deal of press (serial killer trials, particularly gruesome cases, that sort of thing). I began imagining the horrors of having to serve on a trial that would be in the press and fighting my way to the courtroom through television cameras. I even began trying to remember which celebrities had been arrested recently, just in case it was going to be one of those notorious cases.
We were also told by the court clerks that the estimated amount of time for the trial would be twenty days. The only problem for me would be the start of the fall semester one week after the day we were given to report to the courtroom for jury selection. You can't really trust the court estimates for trials, by the way. The first time I had jury duty, I was stuck on a civil case (medical malpractice, to be specific) that was estimated to take four or five days of testimony. We were in the courthouse for three and a half weeks. Knowing that a twenty-day trial would likely last a great deal longer than estimated, I started to panic because I didn't want to miss an entire month at the beginning of a semester, not with five classes (and one of them an Honors Program class), so I asked about another postponement. However, given that I was already in the pool, the clerks said it was too late to change.
We all had to call in again the weekend before August 9 on the off chance that the trial had been cancelled because of a plea bargain or other reason, but of course, the message informed us to be there bright and early on Monday morning. Thankfully, we weren't expected to be in court until 10:30 a.m., so I did get a chance to sleep in a bit later than usual.
The first day was incredibly unproductive. The clerk for our particular courtroom (the same one used for the O.J. Simpson trial, if you're interested in such trivia) called roll three or four times because some of the jurors weren't present. She said the judge would not call us in until everyone had arrived, so it was almost 11 a.m. before we were allowed to enter the courtroom. After everyone was seated, the judge told us a little bit about the case: three defendants, each with a different attorney representing him, all of them charged with murder and charges of conspiracy to commit murder and a couple of them facing additional charges, and allegations of gang affiliation as well. Based upon just those details, I began to think that twenty days wouldn't be enough to hear all of the testimony and deliberate and return with a verdict. The prospect of starting the fall semester with my students began to seem a bit more distant.
The judge asked if any potential jurors had reasons--other than a financial hardship, which is getting increasingly hard to prove in the court system--which might prevent them from serving on this jury. Those of us who did were asked to write down our reasons and submit them to the judge for consideration. The rest of the potential jurors--about a hundred people or so--were given questionnaires to complete in the hallway. Only a couple of people who had conflicts were released from duty. The rest of us were told to fill out a questionnaire and report back the next day at 8:30 a.m. I'd spent half a day at the courthouse and nothing had happened yet with respect to jury selection. I'd just filled out two slips of paper and read almost a hundred pages in one of the books I'd brought.
On Tuesday, we all returned. Well, almost all of us. Naturally, when the clerk took roll, a few people were missing and, just like on Monday, the judge wouldn't begin until everyone had appeared. It was almost 9 a.m. before the last person showed up, and we were all ushered into the courtroom to begin. The clerk read off the juror ID numbers for twenty people, and they were the first ones subjected to questioning by the attorneys. Each of the defense attorneys got to ask questions, and then the prosecuting attorney got the same amount of time as the three defense attorneys combined. If you want to see the disparity in justice, watch jury selection as it unfolds. The three defense attorneys were inept in their questioning; one of them had to repeat his questions two or three times because they were so unclear. It wasn't as if they were trying to trick jurors--at least, I don't think they were--they just weren't very good at articulating what it was they wanted the jurors to answer.
Based upon the questioning, I began to sense some of the key aspects of the case. Apparently, the crime happened in an area known for gang violence, so the attorneys wanted to know who had had bad experiences with gangs and whether or not that would affect their ability to be fair. The key witnesses for the defense were apparently going to be relatives of the three men (mothers, sisters, etc.), character witnesses, in other words, rather than eyewitnesses. The prosecution's witnesses would, of course, including the police who investigated the crime, but there would apparently also be witnesses who had substance abuse problems and/or criminal records--both of which were the subject of questioning about the effect they might have on the credibility of a witness. And it became evident rather early on that none of the three men were likely to testify on their own behalf, and the attorneys, at least one of them, anyway, wanted to know how people on the jury would feel about that decision, if it would seem odd or questionable.
After dismissing several jurors for "cause" during the first round of questioning--apparently, anyone who didn't speak English well or had a direct connection to the court system was automatically out--the number of people in the jury box had dwindled down to just eleven. The clerk read off enough numbers to refill the jury box and then those potential jurors were questioned. This went on, with one brief break in the middle, until almost noon. At that point, the judge announced that he had another commitment and court would be dismissed for the rest of the day. We still had no jury, and another day in the week before school was to begin was almost completely wasted.
Wednesday's session was another early start, 8:30 a.m., again with one or two people missing when the clerk did roll call. We did manage to start before 9 a.m., though, and the previous day's pattern quickly re-emerged of confusing questions by the defense attorneys and sharp-witted questioning by the prosecution. Frankly, it wasn't hard to see that the prosecution was going to be far more effective and professional than the defense. Nevertheless, all of us whose names had not yet been called sat in the audience hoping that we wouldn't be one of those stuck on the jury listening to twenty days of this nonsense. It took quite a while to get to twelve people that both sides could accept as a jury. It was 3 p.m., to be exact, when the entire audience perked up as the clerk swore the jury in. Almost half of the people who had been there on Monday morning were gone, having been dismissed for "cause" or as a result of the peremptory challenges which the lawyers on both sides used rather indulgently.
I started to think that I was going to escape without being questioned. I would be free to go to the college convocation on Friday and then begin my classes on time on Monday. There were twelve jurors sworn in, and the attorneys still had six potential alternates sitting in the box for the three slots the judge felt was probably appropriate given the length of the trial. However, rather than merely choosing from those six people, he decided to fill the remaining seats with potential alternates from the remaining audience members.
Mine was the first number called.
The questioning began after the other two possible alternates were seated. The first attorney didn't ask me any direct questions, spending much of his time asking about the gang-related murder of the best friend of the poor guy sitting next to me and the murder by an ex-boyfriend of the sister of the third "new" alternate. The second lawyer asked his usual rambling questions, and then he made a particularly sharp comment to me that just because I am a teacher, I was not to act like a teacher in the jury deliberations. I was an equal to everyone else, he wanted me to know. I accepted his statement as graciously as I could under the circumstances and waited for the third defense attorney to start. He asked a very bizarre question about how I would vote in the case if it was sent to the jury for deliberations at that precise moment. I responded that it would be impossible to make a decision without any evidence being presented since that's not how trials operate. He fumbled in asking the question a different way before I caught on to what he was trying to say. He was trying to get to the point that if the prosecution didn't offer sufficient evidence in the case, we would be obligated to return a verdict of "not guilty." I finally agreed with him, but I couldn't imagine a more convoluted way to make that point.
It was for the prosecuting attorney that I was allowed to express myself the most. She asked me about the civil case that I had served on some years ago. She wanted to know what impression I had of the court system based upon that case. (I guess I was too transparent when she asked if we had reached a verdict and I said "eventually.") I told her that I thought the past trial had been rather tedious and time-consuming, that I had spent more time sitting in the corridor reading books than sitting in the courtroom listening to testimony, primarily because of delays by the judge in the case who stopped two or three times a day to handle other casework, including arraignments, and because of the inept scheduling of witnesses by the attorneys. I said that if all I was going to do was read books, I'd rather do that at home. It would be a more productive use of my time.
When she asked if my frustrations in that case would affect my emotions in this case, I answered truthfully that they wouldn't, but that's because I had a new set of frustrations. I noted that we had already spent three days in court and had just gotten a panel of jurors, and now I was added to a list of potential alternates and was spending more time worrying about my classes starting on Monday and what was going to happen with my students if I were stuck (yeah, I think I did say "stuck") on a jury for the first month of school. She thanked me for being honest and continued with her questioning of the other two potential jurors.
When the attorneys went to a sidebar--one of dozens they held over the three days of jury questioning, by the way--they and the judge quickly decided on the three alternates. All of them were men and all of them were in the pool of six alternates they had before they called the last three of us into the jury box, but at least, I wasn't one of them. I don't know if my impatience put them off or not, but I was very grateful to be allowed to walk out of the courtroom free from any further need to appear in that building.
I picked up my Certification of Jury Service upstairs in the general assembly room. Everyone else gets $15 for each day (after the first day) of service, whether you're picked for a jury or not. They also get reimbursed for their mileage to the courthouse (just one way mileage, though). They'll all be getting a check in a week or so. I get nothing. As a public employee and thanks to a decision by the governor a few years ago, I receive no compensation for jury duty and, rumor has it, no reimbursement either.
So what do I have as a result of all of this? I wish I could say that I feel proud that I did my civic duty, but I don't really feel that way at all. I feel like I just wasted a lot of time sitting around the courthouse waiting to hear if I had to tell my dean that he would need to start scrambling to find substitutes who wouldn't screw up my classes at the beginning of the semester. Well, actually, I guess that's not all that happened. I did manage to finish a collection of short stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne (who's far more mystical than I remember) and most of a book on the 2004 presidential election by a political reporter who followed the Democratic candidates that year. But that's it, really. Well, that and this story. I suppose that was worth four days of my free time this summer.
Other Teachers Will Understand
I had complained to the Critical Reasoning and Writing class during the next-to-last week of summer school that they weren't doing a particularly good job of introducing the material they were using from outside sources. I was getting parenthetical citations with last names and little else, and I suggested that readers needed to have the ability to judge the credibility of the sources in an essay by knowing something more about the sources than just the author's last name. We even had a little practice during classtime to remind them of this skill that they should have either developed or honed in their College Writing classes.
I took up a set of essays a day or two later. I was hopeful that some of them would have noted my frustration from our in-class discussion. Many of them had done a better job, to be honest. However, while I was reading and grading them over the weekend, I came across this particularly egregious example of how some people just never seem to know when to quit:
"In an essay in The Civil Mind compiled by Margaret Early Whitt and Janet L. Bland called 'A New Campus Crusade' by Keith Naughton, Mary Sue Coleman, the president of the University of Michigan, proposed a new process in choosing prospective students for the university."
How much of that do you really need to know at that particular moment in the essay itself and how much of it could be saved for the Works Cited list where it would look just a tiny bit less...well, clunky and ham-handed? At least, the student was consistent. Every single source was introduced by giving the author's name and the title of the article and where it was located. Probably one-eighth of the essay or so was taken up with these kinds of introductions (and they weren't even saved for only the first reference in the paper either. No, they had to reappear every single time that same source was used.) Thankfully, the student saved the date of publication and the type of source (Print, Web, etc.) for the Works Cited list.
Of course, I marked his grade down on that particular element, and I'm certain he was very disappointed and perhaps even angry. He had actually been one of the few who had done the citations (mostly) correctly for the first essay, but I guess the ones who really don't need the help often think that they aren't doing enough to demonstrate that they "get it."
I took up a set of essays a day or two later. I was hopeful that some of them would have noted my frustration from our in-class discussion. Many of them had done a better job, to be honest. However, while I was reading and grading them over the weekend, I came across this particularly egregious example of how some people just never seem to know when to quit:
"In an essay in The Civil Mind compiled by Margaret Early Whitt and Janet L. Bland called 'A New Campus Crusade' by Keith Naughton, Mary Sue Coleman, the president of the University of Michigan, proposed a new process in choosing prospective students for the university."
How much of that do you really need to know at that particular moment in the essay itself and how much of it could be saved for the Works Cited list where it would look just a tiny bit less...well, clunky and ham-handed? At least, the student was consistent. Every single source was introduced by giving the author's name and the title of the article and where it was located. Probably one-eighth of the essay or so was taken up with these kinds of introductions (and they weren't even saved for only the first reference in the paper either. No, they had to reappear every single time that same source was used.) Thankfully, the student saved the date of publication and the type of source (Print, Web, etc.) for the Works Cited list.
Of course, I marked his grade down on that particular element, and I'm certain he was very disappointed and perhaps even angry. He had actually been one of the few who had done the citations (mostly) correctly for the first essay, but I guess the ones who really don't need the help often think that they aren't doing enough to demonstrate that they "get it."
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