Trial by opportunity

Have you ever been on jury duty? My only time happened a few years ago, and it was a very educational process. But not in the way I expected.

If I were my daughter, by the time period of jury duty ended I would have exchanged phone numbers with at least three new friends and made definite plans to get together with one or more of them in the next few days. But, being me, I simply said good-bye, see you later, nice to have met you, and left the courthouse.

Getting called to jury duty in Champaign county means putting your life in limbo for two weeks. Your letter tells you to report to the courthouse in downtown Urbana on a Monday. When you get there and join your fellow jurors that first morning, you are instructed to call in every night to a recorded message. The message tells you which individuals (identified by number) are supposed to report the next day. How many they need will depend on how many trials are expected to happen, and that can change at a moment’s notice, so you call in every night to learn whether you’ll be able to go to work or class or keep a doctor’s appointment the next day.

It makes for a sort of improv life, but you don’t live it alone. You are joined by a couple hundred fellow citizens, a random mix of men and women, old and young, Black and White and whatever, working and retired, with young children at home and grown children gone from home and grandchildren nearby or far away, most of you new to the jury experience, some of you repeating for a second or third time.

The one thing you all have in common is a willingness to serve. Anyone not willing or not able took advantage of the opportunity to report a couple of weeks earlier and explain their situation, certainly in many cases exaggerating or outright lying about them, in order to be excused from jury duty. But the people you sit with in the jury assembly room every day, waiting to learn whether you will be called to possible jury selection or sent away before noon, are all people who showed up, other commitments and responsibilities notwithstanding.

Knowing that maybe I’d be at work and maybe I wouldn’t meant that all preparations for possible absence from my job at the university had to be provisional. “Just in case I’m not here when this student returns her qualifying exam answers ...” “Just in case I’m gone when that applicant’s materials arrive ...” “Just in case anyone has a life-or-death question that only I, out of all the people in the universe, can answer ...” Fortunately, my supervisor and the rest of the staff were happy to help in any way necessary, and of course, we didn’t really expect that I actually would be gone. We were simply getting ready.

And wisely, as it turned out.

I’d been called to jury duty three other times in my life -- in three other counties, so I couldn’t realistically believe I was being singled out for harassment. However, because I’d never been selected to sit on a jury, or even, for that matter, been required to report beyond the first day, I thought the most interesting part of jury duty would be getting to serve at an actual trial. And since I ended up on three juries during that two-week service period in Champaign County, I had ample opportunity to test my theory.

In my first trial, on day two of my jury period, a man was accused of attempting to burgle three parked cars. After the jury selection was complete, all thirteen of us (including one alternate) were led by a Sheriff’s deputy into a small but pleasant room and assigned seats around a long table to wait until time for the trial to begin. Many of us immediately opened books or magazines, some began quiet conversations with neighbors. After reading my current mystery novel for about 30 minutes, I needed some other diversion, and asked a man who had a Chicago Tribune if he’d mind letting me do the crossword puzzle. He didn’t, so I did. It wasn’t a very hard one, but it had its challenges, and other people at the table became interested in watching me labor to figure out those words that didn’t come easily. Someone commented that I was doing pretty well and someone else lamented cheerfully that she never could figure out these things. The man who’d loaned me the puzzle offered suggestions, and finishing the puzzle became a group effort. That led to our solving the word jumble, and then to general chit-chat around the table.

We’d been cautioned against engaging in any discussion of the upcoming trial, so conversation was more the getting-to-know-you, filling-time variety, during which I discovered that the distinguished looking lady in her late 60’s was the mother-in-law of the man who had mid-wived my first grandson. He was the only male mid-wife in town, so a couple of other people recognized his name as well, and we all enjoyed hearing her complimentary anecdotes about him.

Our alternate, a sweet-voiced pleasant woman, entertained us with the story of her one previous jury experience, in which she had also been an alternate and had sat through the entire trial but been dismissed before the jury retired for deliberations. She never did learn the outcome.

Having watched juries operate on untold number of movies and TV shows, I was interested in trying out an idea borrowed from my almost four decades of membership in the Baha’i Faith. One of the principles of Bahá’í consultation is that first a group has to ascertain the facts, and then agree on them, before they can proceed to decision making, so I thought it would make sense to start jury deliberations by first going around the table and letting each person state his current feelings about the defendant’s guilt or innocence.

When the time came for the jury to begin deliberations, someone at the table suggested that one of the two “crossword puzzle experts” should be foreperson, and when the Tribune owner declined, that left me, surprised and a little nervous with the responsibility. Everyone agreed to try my go-around-the-circle idea, however, and we learned that we had slightly differing feelings about whether the defendant was guilty of the first count, intention to burgle, but were generally in agreement that there was little doubt he was guilty of the second count, unlawfully entering the cars without permission.

It was impressive to me to see how hard the members of the panel worked to stay fair and impartial, and to be thorough in their search for a correct verdict. This certainly wasn’t a capital case, or for that matter a particularly difficult one. The defense had not even called any witnesses, a fact we were supposed to ignore since the State had the burden of proof. There was little or no reason to doubt that the defendant had been in the cars, the eyewitness and police testimony was solid, and we could easily have spent about five minutes, max, to come up with a guilty verdict and be allowed to leave while the afternoon was still young.

Instead, we spent at least 30 minutes and made very sure that everyone’s thoughts were heard, and that we all agreed with the final decision. With that concluded, we eagerly alerted our deputy that we were ready to return to the courtroom, and just as eagerly hurried out of the courthouse after quick good-byes as soon as we were dismissed by the judge.

During six of the remaining eight days my number was included among those posted in the recorded message, and I discovered that when I arrived at the jury assembly room each morning, I was now more interested in joining fellow jurors in conversation (usually around one of the big tables) than in reading. I especially enjoyed laughing with another Helen, a quick-witted, gregarious computer programmer. Not having a very common name, we both were tickled to discover each other, especially since we were about the same age. Helens are much more likely to be from the generation born around 1920 than those of us born two or three decades later.

We didn’t all get called in on the same days, and different ones of us disappeared at various times to serve on juries. Most of us were dismissed by about 11:00 a.m. each day. But enough of us seemed to land in the jury assembly room at the same times that we began to recognize one another, and feel comfortable and familiar together. A lot of our conversation was about the trial experiences we were having, with one another or others. We evaluated the performance of different attorneys, graded the judges, and re-hashed the verdicts, thoroughly enjoying our new found legal expertise.

I can’t remember any other names, but can recall some of the personalities in these chats. There was an Egyptian engineering professor, a dignified, olive-skinned man with thick gray curls who brought fruit to munch and talked about running several miles every morning. He loved to teach and was feeling frustrated by never knowing from day to day if he would be available for his class schedule.

The retired farmer, on the other hand, a large man with big hands and rough skin, was not missing anything during his time on jury duty, and he seemed perfectly relaxed and contented during our group conversations, joking and expounding enthusiastically about subjects ranging from diabetes medications to ingredients needed to illegally manufacture meth.

A young man with short hair and a quiet, subdued manner, with whom I served on the trial of a boy accused of possessing cocaine, surprised all his fellow jurors by being the only one among us who knew anything about how cocaine users routinely carry and hide their illegal substances. His information helped us better understand the State’s case and arrive at a guilty verdict.

One morning Helen and the farmer and the young man and a few others of us decided to pass the time by playing cards with one of the decks provided in the room. We didn’t remember the rules of Hearts so we made them up as we went along, and when one of the group was called away to jury selection, another player immediately took his place in the game.

Another morning I was questioned and then excused from a jury by the defense attorney -- one I recognized from the trial of the cocaine possessor. Apparently he recognized me as well. Returning to the assembly room, I spent an enjoyable few minutes waiting for dismissal while commiserating with a man and woman I hadn’t previously met, but who also had just been excused, in their case by a prosecuting attorney. They’d been jurors for another of her cases and in that instance the defendant was found not guilty. It appeared to us that these attorneys really didn’t have much faith in the average citizen’s ability to be fair and impartial.

If that was an accurate assessment of their thinking, I was sure it was wrong, especially after my third and final jury service. It involved a battery accusation in which a woman had followed a co-worker into the bathroom, knocked her down and started kicking her. The witnesses presented by the prosecution and the almost non-existent argument made by the defense lawyer gave us little information to use in reaching a decision, yet we were, as usual, instructed not to take anything into account except the testimony we had heard.

There were so many holes in the story -- What had the alleged victim said or done prior to the incident? What had happened in previous days that built up to the battering? Was the accused provoked in ways unknown to us? -- that at first I felt uncomfortable with a guilty verdict. But when we went around the table to share our initial feelings it became clear that I was the only one at the table who had any reservations. After our first tally, I decided “guilty” made more sense and that I agreed with the majority. Yet even though it was already almost 3:00 p.m. on the last afternoon of our two-week stint and surely everyone very much wanted to go home, the sooner the better, my fellow jurors refused to let me change my vote until we had thoroughly discussed the testimony and the reasons for our different judgments. After about 45 minutes I was finally able to convince them that I really did agree with their point of view that the perpetrator’s actions made this an undoubted case of conscious and deliberate battery, no matter what the provocation, and was completely comfortable with a guilty verdict.

My fellow Helen was on that jury, and I’d enjoyed spending more time with her, but after reporting back to the courtroom, delivering our verdict and being dismissed, I simply said good-bye and hurried out, anxious to get back to work and catch up on my e-mail. It wasn’t until later that I realized I’d missed an opportunity. She would have been a good new friend to have.

If I were my daughter, by now Helen would be an old friend with whom I had many shared memories. But being me … well, let’s just say I was tried -- and found wanting.

Bookin' it!

So I had really good intentions to write my next blog several days ago, then a few days ago, then yesterday. But you know what they say about the road paved with good intentions.

I have an excellent excuse, though. Had to finish a book first.

Do any of you have this malady? That you get so involved in a novel you start feeling like you live there and you can’t concentrate on anything else until you’ve read the last page. Not like my husband reads the last page, i.e., skipping to the back of the book first to see if it has a happy ending. He does that, really. I maintain that such a dastardly practice is a crime against the author, who has carefully structured the book to lead its reader through the story and reach the end in the proper way, and that the end is meaningless without the beginning and the entire middle. He ignores me.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I usually get to a certain point in a novel where I just can’t stop reading. Anything else that can possibly be put on hold is set aside so I can find out what’s going to happen to these characters who have become my buddies, my family, my world.

The danger is that I can get so revved up about knowing how the book ends that I start racing through the final pages, practically skimming the text. That’s when I have to take several deep breaths, call my Plot Addicts Anonymous sponsor, and force myself to read slowly and ENJOY the story. The language. The process of reading.

Back to my good blogger intentions. I had been reading a big book, “The Hour I First Believed” by Wally Lamb, and the end was in sight, so I was compelled to devote all of last evening to it, finally trying to force my eyes to stay open so I could read one more page, then one more, until I fell asleep on the couch with the book open on my mid-section and the cat stretched out half on me and half on the book. Then today I took a morning break AND an afternoon break in order to keep reading, even changed my noon ice skating schedule in order to read during lunch, then stayed at my desk after work to finish the last few pages.

Free at last!

So really, I want to know, does anyone else get that involved in fiction? Because I don’t have this tendency just with books. Movies, too. Only there it’s manifested by an absolute hatred of anyone who dares to talk to me while I’m watching. You never ever want to invite me to hang out in your living room with several friends to catch a video. And asking me questions during the movie? Such as “Why did he do that?” or “What did that mean?” Or the absolute worst, “Do you think he’ll really do that?” Nyet. Nada. Never. Not if you value your life.

When I was in high school and “West Side Story” was released, back in the days when actually going to a theatre was the only way for ordinary folk to see a movie, I went to that one with girl from my synagogue, someone I didn’t know very well. Big mistake. Because afterwards, as we were coming out of the theatre, this practically perfect stranger had the audacity to start talking. And to expect me to answer.

I was truly ready to kill.

Because that movie had, well, moved me so much, and so completely, that I was still in it for several minutes after we left. Which is not an uncommon experience – often everything even seems to sound different right after I leave a movie theatre – but it was more true for that film than any other I had experienced. Still is.

OK, there’s always an exception to any rule, and there must have been a few “no talk” exceptions in my movie watching career. Let me think. Oh, right, here’s an example: about 25 years ago, when my husband and I watched this was so-bad-it’s-good science fiction flick on our old black and white TV. The story was about some sort of overgrown plant that was gobbling up cities, and the fun part was that it was feasting on a bunch of towns in central Illinois, towns we knew or had lived in. This monster plant didn’t want to play in Peoria, it just wanted to digest it!

And then there was … or … Drat! Come to think of it, that might be the only exception.

Anyway, having to finish that book by Wally Lamb is my excuse for not writing another blog until tonight. And after I turn off the computer, I have a new Jonathan Kellerman book waiting for me.

See you next year!

Blocked!

You’ve heard of Writer’s Block? That sneaky, relentless, frustrating disease that paralyzes a writer’s brain every time he or she attempts to sit down at a keyboard and actually write something?

I seem to have caught it.

And unfortunately, it’s not a disease that would respond to any ordinary treatment, such as a pill or surgery. Although after enough time staring at a blank page, radical brain surgery seems like a very good idea. Only not to cut something out. To put something – anything – in!

The only medicine that I know for it is very unpleasant and definitely not fun, at least not at first. It doesn’t come in a bottle or have a co-pay, and it can’t ever be passively administered by a nurse or a mother or any other caregiver. Our poor blocked writer has to self-administer the nasty stuff.

Because the only cure I’ve ever found for Writer’s Block is to write. Just write. Something. Anything. Get the fingers moving. Make the keyboard tap-tap-tap. Keep going until thoughts begin to take shape and turn into coherent sentences on the screen.

Like – I hope – right about now. Because I’ve been trying to figure out what to write for a week, and have come up with at least a dozen ideas, and haven’t been able to get started writing even one. Well, no, actually I did start writing one. It went something like this:

“This week I read a book about … and it made me think about … and …”

Other than the title and the subject of the book, that was pretty much it. Scintillating stuff, huh?

So I decided today that the problem is too many ideas. Just can’t make a decision. After all, I was born with an indecisiveness curse. Really, I was. Born exactly at midnight, that is, at least according to my mother. She said the doctor and nurses argued over whether midnight ended an old day or started a new day, and of course the doctor won, picked the new day, and recorded my time of birth as 12:01 a.m. And that’s why I have a very hard time making decisions and choosing between alternatives.

It’s a good excuse, anyway.

So sure enough, true to form, no sooner had I decided that having too many blog ideas was my problem with getting down to the actual business of writing about one of them, than I changed my mind and decided something entirely different.

Namely, that I was blocked by fear. Of all of you. Or, to be more precise, of failing all of you.

Because I have received some wonderful and highly gratifying feedback on my first three blogs, and that’s really kind of scary. A kind of omigod-they-like-it-what-if-I-can’t-keep-it-up scary. A fear-of-success brand of scary. A maybe-it-would-be-safer-to-quit-while-I’m-ahead sort of scary. A why-in-heaven’s-name-did-I-start-a-blog-and-what-made-me-think-anybody-would-ever-want-to-read-it scary.

But then, I know quite a bit about all those kinds of scary. I used to go to ARTS meeting in Chicago. That’s Artists Recovering Through the Twelve Steps. Most twelve-step groups exist to help participants stop something – drinking or overspending or co-dependence, whatever – but this one existed to help people start something. Their art, whatever it might be. In our group there were not only musicians and painters and writers and dancers and actors, there were also weavers and doll makers and wood workers – anybody who needed help getting started with actually doing whatever it was they liked and needed to do.

Some of us had confidence problems because of old but still painful parental attitudes towards our art. Some of us found it hard to believe that being an artist – especially a professional of any sort – was a legitimate and worthwhile goal in a society that bestows its highest honors on whoever makes the most money. Many of us found it hard to believe that we had anything to say, in whatever form we said it, important enough for anyone else to hear or see. A few had been very successful in their particular fields and were stymied by the real or perceived pressures of that very success.

Most of us probably had a little of all that and more, to varying degrees.

Hence, today, now, this week, here I am. Writer’s Block.

But hey, look at this, I’ve written – wait, let me count – 726 words that appear to be at least marginally coherent and possibly a tiny bit interesting. So maybe I should just stop here and have confidence that next week I’ll be able to pick one of those other topics and write about it.

Which, really, will be the only option. After all, blocked or not, I can’t use this one again!

New topic, new thoughts, old questions

Someone died yesterday.

A lot of someones died yesterday, but this one was someone I knew. Not someone I knew well – hardly at all, actually – but she was the daughter of my friend, a beloved of others close to me, a member of my religious community. She was very young, not yet 30.

And she chose to die.

A death that touches ones own life is always hard to handle emotionally. A friend’s or acquaintance’s suicide is hardest of all. As one friend said, you are left wondering if you could or should have done something that might have helped. Made one more phone call, offered one more prayer, written an encouraging email, listened better, insisted more, found a more effective way to counsel. Or in my case, just taken a minute to meet her and talk to her the few times over the last several years that we were in the same room.

She had a history of deep, debilitating, clinical depression, along with a painful chronic illness, and had attempted suicide before, so her family and close friends know that there is probably nothing they could have done to change her chosen destiny, and no way she could ever have what most of us consider a normal life – marriage, children, career. And for many of them, and for me, there is a strong belief – a certainty – that she is not gone at all, has simply abandoned her physical body and chosen to go on to the next part of her life now rather than later. A part of life that does not include the continual pain her body caused.

So regrets and sadness and disbelief and anger and relief and love and hope are all mixed up together in our minds and hearts as we awake to face another day in this first part of our lives, the part we live in our own bodies.

She was someone I hardly knew. But I know her mother, and was honored to be given the opportunity to listen to her in a late night phone conversation.

I know her step-father, the only one in the family who saw the body – because the police insisted that someone had to do it – and now carries that image in a special place of pain all his own.

I know her one-time baby sitter, who watched her grow up and thought of her as “my baby,” and was fortunate to be able to visit that friend in the hospital to tell her what had happened in person and sit with her while she talked out her feelings and prayed.

I know her grandmother, a woman I greatly admire for her fortitude in dealing with tests and for her loving spirit and diligent work ethic.

I know her grandfather, a man confined to a wheelchair due to his own debilitating disease which started when he was much younger, who always offers jokes and smiles to the rest of us able-bodied types who take ease of movement and independence for granted.

I know her best friend, who is pregnant with a first child, and know the friend's mother and father, whose grief for the death must be mingled with concern for their own daughter’s health during this emotional time.

I know my daughter, who called me crying to tell me the news, and later sat in my kitchen and talked with me about the thin veils, as our religious writings call them, that come between those of us who still inhabit bodies and those who don’t. And about the times when some of us see or hear or feel, however quickly, through those veils and become aware of our loved ones on the other side, and of their happiness in that world.

And I know that many of us, upon hearing of this death, and the manner of this death, will be concerned about the condition of her soul. We are Bahá'ís, and Bahá'u'lláh called death a “messenger of joy.” But what of suicide? Is that a different case?

Bahá'ís don’t have ministers, we have elected governing bodies. I’m one of the secretaries of Urbana’s Spiritual Assembly, and so in another late night phone call with the other secretary, we consulted on what we could and should be doing. And we found a statement made by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Bahá'u'lláh’s son and designated Interpreter, about another’s suicide. “…rest assured.” He said. “[The deceased] will be immersed in the ocean of pardon and forgiveness and will become the recipient of bounty and favor.”

Someone died yesterday.

I went to bed thinking about her death, and woke up thinking about it. And now I know what blogs are for.

- 30 -