A Day in Court -- Nonfiction

Jefferson County Courthouse

The courthouse is rather impressive, doncha think. You can see why the locals call it the Taj Mahal.

As you may recall from a post back in March Luck of the Draw, I was summoned to serve as a juror in our local County Court. As it turned out, I called the court as ordered and my number was well within the range stated by the recorded message. Lucky me.

The summons required that we be there by 8 a.m. explaining that the courthouse opens at 7:30.

They warned that parking would be limited due to ongoing repair work and recommended that we take public transportation -- a welcome excuse to ride the light rail. Checking the light rail's schedule online. I planned leave home at 6:45 to be at the station by 7 then catch the train at 7:15 and arrive at the courthouse by 7:24. So about 40 minutes. The courthouse is maybe 20 minutes from my house, if I drove. But this was to be an adventure. I wanted nothing so mundane as driving my car when I could take the light rail.

Having been retired for a number of years I'd gotten used to not wearing business attire and makeup which means I'd forgotten how long it takes to "get ready" to go. I thought I'd gotten up in plenty of time.

After worrying about what to wear, I'd settled on black pants and a teal, long-sleeved shirt. Dark enough to be serious, but not severe. And my Washington, D.C. shoes.

I bought those shoes almost six years ago to wear on a vacation trip to D.C. I wanted them to wear when I visited some of the churches. They're black sandals made by New Balance so they're intended for walking and D.C. is definitely a walking town. In addition to NOT being sneakers, they're almost closed-toed, so they meet my standard for "respectful." Long story short -- I forgot to take them on that vacation.

Well, I ran out of time to get ready, so my husband kindly put my breakfast in a plastic container. I put my mascara and lipstick in my purse and off I went. The sun was just coming up while I waited for the train. It was a beautiful morning, clear and cold.

At the courthouse, there were hundreds of people in line waiting to get into the jury gathering room. Hundreds! All with their summons in one hand and various bags and books and the necessaries we arm ourselves with for planned days of waiting. The people were all ages, all ethnicities, and many different levels of physical fitness including a man with a walker and on oxygen.


I needn't have worried about what I was wearing. Or makeup. There were people dressed to the nines -- men in suits, women in dresses and heels and professionally coiffed. There were men and women in jeans and t-shirts or sweatshirts. Footwear ran the gamut from shiny dress shoes to sneakers to well-worn work boots.




No flip flops, but even being March in Colorado with patches of snow left from the last storm, there could have been. Coloradans are a hardy lot. (This was the view looking toward the foothills from the courthouse that day.)

                                                                              

The people around me knew as little about what we were doing as I did. We didn't know what kinds of trials were held in this court. Or how many were on the docket for this jury pool. Or what kind of food would be available in the cafeteria. (I was just relieved to hear there was a cafeteria in the courthouse.) But we all agreed we probably had little chance of being chosen for a jury.

As we filed into the gathering room, we turned in the portion of the summons which we had completed with our names, addresses, if we had family in law-enforcement, if we had ever served on a jury, and if we ourselves had ever been involved in a court case.

There, they explained how it all works. They use three-person juries for civil cases, six-person juries for more complex civil cases and some criminal cases, and twelve-person juries for more serious criminal cases.

We would be called by name and follow a bailiff  to our assigned courtroom. If we were then NOT chosen for the jury, we would be told whether to return to the gathering room or we would be released and could go home. Whether or not we were chosen for a jury, this would meet our responsibility for jury service for this calendar year.

My name was called next to last of the first 20. Then in the courtroom I was in the first group of twelve to be installed in the jury box. Six of us would be impaneled. If they decided not to keep six from this initial twelve, they'd call up more from our original 20.

They explained that this would be a criminal case which gave me pause. The prosecution and the defense, each then described to us various scenarios involving whether or not we thought we could tell if someone was drunk or under the influence of drugs by their behavior or speech

My husband had said "they don't want smart people on the jury." I pooh-poohed that. But maybe he right. The first to be excused was a high school science teacher. Then a woman who said she had an in-law who drank too much and she could tell when he was drunk. Then a nineteen-year-old who said he'd been arrested for Driving Under the Influence and he didn't think he'd been treated fairly by the court.

Then there was a member of the ski patrol. Being from Oklahoma, the ski patrol seemed quite exotic. They provide medical and rescue services to injured skiers. He had some kind of medical certification. He explained that it was necessary to determine if alcohol or other drugs were involved before providing emergency medical care to an injured skier. He was excused.

It became clear pretty early on that whatever the case was, it involved alcohol or other drugs. I was one of the chosen to serve -- three women and three men. At 71, I was the oldest and the only retiree.

The youngest was a 21-year-old woman who worked at a department store and had the most amazing fingernails. Quite long and each had sparkly bits and ornaments. Beautiful, but how in the world could she put lotion in all those nooks and crannies in her ears. Colorado is so dry, ears get crusty without moisturizer.

The rest were a mix of business people.

Our case was Driving Under the Influence. The defendant had refused the proffered blood test and relinquished his driver's license for a year. They had not offered him a breathalyzer test. The prosecution's only witness was the arresting officer. The officer's descriptions of what had happened and where seemed unlikely, given that it was rush hour and we jurors were very familiar with that stretch of I-70. There's no way the officer could have seen the traffic pattern he described from where he was getting on the highway. The defendant's explanation of what happened and his witness's testimony were much more reasonable. I don't know why the prosecution had pursued the case.









Not guilty. Case closed. Back to the light rail. That's Green Mountain behind the light rail station and my house is just on the other side of the mountain.

November 22, 1963 -- a birthday remembered

It was Friday, November 22, 1963. My 16th birthday. 

After school, Daddy was going to take me from Edmond into Oklahoma City to pick up my best friend Vicky. I was three months into my first year in high school, the first time in six years that Vicky and I had not lived across the creek from each other and been in the same classes at the same schools.

We had been best friends since my family moved to Oklahoma City from my parents' very small hometown about thirty miles away. Of course that was a long time ago so thirty miles took an hour by car -- no Interstate Highways. It was a long way in other ways, too. No cell phones. In fact, telephone calls between towns were long distance and expensive. No internet for nearly instantaneous communication. Snail mail, which we called mail, usually took three days from that small town to The City.

I came to Valley Brook Elementary School as a member in good standing of the Baby Boomer Generation which meant there were too many of us kids and not enough teachers. So five of us Fifth Graders were chosen to move up to the Sixth Grade classroom -- three boys and two girls. Being the new kid, I didn't know anyone yet. Neither class knew me from Adam Allfox. It didn't help that the regular Fifth Graders wouldn't have anything to do with us because we were too smart or something. The Sixth Graders wouldn't have anything to do with us for what to them was a much more obvious reason, we were "too immature." So we five were pretty much on our own socially. Vicky and I were the two girls. Plus, Vicky was really nice and she could do the splits and cartwheels! Instant best friends.

By the time we moved up to Junior High School, the Oklahoma City schools were adhering to President Kennedy's program to turn out more scientists. The Cold War had taken on Space Race attributes following the Soviet Union's successful launch of Sputnik. Consequently, we were all tested and those who tested well in math and science were put on accelerated educational tracks.

When we moved to Edmond, their schools were not putting students in advanced classes. I again needed to make new friends. But because I'd already had the normal math and science classes for Tenth Graders, I was put into classes with upperclassmen. Add to that, I had pierced ears and all my hems were well above the knee. Neither fashion had yet arrived at Edmond High School.

After lunch that Friday, November 22nd, when I came into my English Class, a particularly aggressive classmate who regularly made fun of me told me, "Someone shot Kennedy."

I thought he was just being mean, but the principal came on the intercom and announced that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas and was in the hospital. Then in Physical Education Class an announcement came over the intercom that a priest had been called in. I knew it was for Last Rites. They thought he was dying.

Vicky's father, a Master Sergeant in the Air Force, was based at Tinker Air Force Base, a few miles from where we'd lived in Oklahoma City. He'd flown missions during the Berlin Air Lift over Soviet controlled ground. We knew that what he was doing was very dangerous. We also knew what number Tinker was on the Soviet's missile target list.

We'd held our breath during the face-off between President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev over missiles in Cuba. Plans were made about how to get back with our families if "something" happened while we were at school and they were at work or home.

Magazines at the grocery store check-out had recipes for Jello salads and blue prints for backyard bomb shelters. Official bomb shelters were marked by yellow and black signs on doorways into school basements and government office building basements. They were stocked with big olive drab cans of water and nonperishable food.

The Cold War and its attendant threat of becoming hot was a daily reality. But no shots had yet been fired on American soil.

In 1963 TV shows were not commonly interrupted by news stories and the term "Breaking News" was not used. On the afternoon of November 22, 1963, Walter Cronkite interrupted the soap opera As the World Turns with the news of President Kennedy's assassination.
Click here to watch https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=walter+cronkite+jfk

That Friday no one knew who killed President Kennedy. Then when they did identify the killer, we still didn't know why. As if that were not horrendous enough, the murderer was killed two days later, live on TV. Had the killer and his killer been the opening salvo of World War III?

Pearl Harbor ended my parents' generation's Age of Innocence. My generation's tenuous hold on innocence was destroyed by two murders in Dallas.

Vicky spent the weekend with us. We had cake and went to the movies. I don't remember what kind of cake or what the movie was. Our world had changed. Cake and movies were not important.

N. Scott Momaday, The Bear -- A Review of Beauty

N. Scott Momaday: Words from a Bear

Sometimes something absolutely beautiful comes on TV when you most need to see it. Last night PBS's American Masters series was N. Scott Momaday: Words From a Bear. You can stream it online at https://www.pbs.org/video/n-scott-momaday-word-from-a-bear-odljy7/. If you do, please watch it on the largest screen you have available. The views of Scott's world are the American West and his imagination. 

Momaday is Kiowa. He was born in Oklahoma's red earth country and raised in the red rock canyons of Arizona and the Jemez Pueblo in mesa country of New Mexico.  Momaday grew up immersed in his father’s Kiowa traditions and those of the Navajo, Apache, and Pueblo. His was a world of vast spaces and timelessness.

PBS describes Scott as a "Pulitzer Prize-winning author and poet, best known for House Made of Dawn and a formative voice of the Native American Renaissance in art and literature." (You can read my review of the book at https://bit.ly/37kI3UM.)

House Made of Dawn was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction fifty years ago and I had the great good fortune of meeting him almost that long ago.

I was a single mom working full time and taking night classes at Central State University in Edmond, Oklahoma. I took two and, some semesters, three classes to meet a degree requirement. But always one night a week I spent a bit of time outside my daily pressure cooker life -- in Dr. Norman Russell's poetry class. He very kindly arranged for me to continue taking his class after I took it that first semester, changing its title and number to side-step academia's practical order.

In his class we talked poetry. We read poetry. We shared the poetry we had written during the week. We discussed and argued, though always civilly, what made poetry speak to us. Rhymed, free verse, traditional, experimental. How to say what we meant to say. Which words were strong enough to touch our reader, strong enough to touch the universe. The universe both inside and outside of ourselves.

Dr. Russell was an eminent scientist in the world of botany. His day job was teaching science classes to college students. Don't get me wrong. He enjoyed teaching. He loved botany. And he loved our night class of would-be poets. We were not all working toward a degree. We were a mix of generations and professions and life experiences and goals.

He was a Native American, a Cherokee. And, most-importantly to me, Dr. Russell was a poet. A kind and generous poet. Red Shuttleworth (a much awarded Western Poet in his own right) said of Dr. Russell in a 2011 tribute, "Norman H. Russell bushwhacked a trail for many Native American poets.  He was the first Indian to publish poetry widely."

Sometimes Dr. Russell had a poet friend come and read to us. One of those poet friends was N. Scott Momaday. I doubt Momaday remembers me at all, but I remember him. I remember him as a big guy with a wonderful reading voice. I don't think I realized that he was famous. That wasn't important anyway. I just liked that he talked poetry to us as one of us.

Now I'm really glad he was famous, because that got us this beautiful film, N. Scott Momaday: Words From a Bear. This film gives us Momaday's world in his own voice. 

Again, here's the link https://www.pbs.org/video/n-scott-momaday-word-from-a-bear-odljy7/ 

Enjoy.

On Courage -- An Essay

Lady Liberty is a symbol of many things to many people. For me she is the symbol of the best promises of the people of the United States as codified in our Constitution. Promises we have not yet completely achieved, but promises nonetheless. Promises of welcome. Of safety. Of power. Of freedom. Each of these, to me, requires great courage.

Welcome -- It takes courage to open our door to people we don't yet know. It takes courage to trust that the door will be open to those who leave the lands and families and neighbors they do know.

Safety -- It takes courage to build a government that will protect the lives and liberties of ALL the people here now and who will be here in the years to come.

Power -- This may take the most courage of all. The courage to use our power to care for ourselves, our families, our neighbors. The courage to exercise our power against those who would limit it to any of us. Those of us who have not historically had power must have the courage to stand up and demand the power we should have. And we must all always have the courage to accept the responsibility that goes with power.

Freedom -- Maybe this doesn't require courage so much as it requires honesty. We have to be honest with ourselves about the consequences of what we think, say, and do. Are we willing to allow our own treasured freedoms to the other people in our country, in our world? Are we honest about our goals, our methods to reach those goals, and whether or not those goals will be for good purpose? Greed and ambition cannot be allowed to corrupt that good purpose.

The promises of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness for all, as stated in our Declaration of Independence and codified in our Constitution, have not yet been realized. But we must continue to work toward keeping and protecting those promises.

This is a dangerous time in the United States. We have people at the top of our government who do not believe in these promises. They measure our republic's value by how much money and power they can take for themselves. True courage cannot exist when motivated by greed and ambition.

The current witnesses in the Impeachment Hearings are courageous. They know what they risk by testifying. And I'm not talking about just their positions as long-time government employees or the inevitable avalanche of hate mail and email. Their lives are literally at risk. There are plenty of damaged people out there who will see themselves as heroes serving "their leader" by killing these witnesses.

Trump's inflammatory speech and behavior not only endanger the witnesses against him, but the people who defend him. There are damaged people out there on the other side of the political spectrum who will see themselves as heroes by killing Trump and/or his defenders.

Many of the people who would be caught in that crossfire are government employees protecting Trump and his allies, not because they necessarily agree with them but because it is their job. Or it could be someone who shares opinions in the coffee shop or has bumper stickers or cuts someone off in traffic.

In times like this when there is so much dissension, there are those who will irrationally lash out against anyone for any reason or no reason at all.

The constitutionally mandated impeachment process must go forward. Thoughts and prayers alone will not protect our nation or our people. We must all have the courage to support our Congressional members whether we agree with them or not.

So, if we hear or see something threatening, we must have the courage to say something. Even if we are many miles away from Washington, D.C., and many degrees of separation away from any political side. And even if the people being threatened have no direct say in what's happening in D.C.

The Importance of Books in My Life in Real Time

Marie Yovanovitch being sworn November 15, 2019

I finished reading Educated by Tara Westover very early Wednesday, November 13 after having stayed up way too late the night before reading it. Reading threw me behind in my preparations for a party I was having Wednesday afternoon. What kind of person reads instead of doing what they're supposed to be doing? To quote from the play Camelot, C'est moi!

Educated (which, by-the-bye, is an excellent book) was one of the books I read taking a break from rereading the eleventh book in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. I'd also reread Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5 for the Introduction to Literature class that my daughter is teaching.

The party was over and I was tired. The problem being, I needed to find another book to read. I took How Language Began to bed with me that night. It is a good book, too. Nonfiction. An academic study of the evolution of human language. I read it off and on Thursday, then took it to bed with me again last night.

But today, it would not do. I have the Impeachment Hearings running on TV. An academic study of linguistics just does not give me the escape I need to make it through this testimony.

I've lived through some pretty frightening times -- President Kennedy's murder, the horrible things that happened during the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, Nixon's Impeachment Hearings, the Oklahoma City Bombing, 9-11, the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War, Trump's campaign rhetoric (which continues to this day), and his presidency. These are but the highlights of low times as I see them. Too much of these on TV in real time. Again it is scary, because of the possibility of someone or several someones to decide to take matters in their own hands. And it would all be live on TV.

Books can take me away from all this.

The Wheel of Time series is my blankie. It is fourteen volumes of escapism. WOT takes me to a world described with a fullness and consistency that I do not find in our real world. It's many characters are heroic, though flawed or they're mighty and villainous. Good guys and bad guys. And we know from the getgo which is which.

Anyway, the obvious goto would be to read the next WOT book -- Book Twelve, The Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. I couldn't find my copy of it. It's bound to be somewhere in this house. The bookshelves in the basement, the stacks of books in my office, in the bedroom, in the living room. Somewhere. But ....

So I bought Book Twelve and downloaded it to my tablet.

In Brandon Sanderson's Foreword to the book, he writes "In November 2007, I received a phone call that would change my life forever. Harriet McDougal ... called and asked me if I would complete the last book of The Wheel of Time." He goes on to recall his experience on September 16, 2007.

I remember my own experience of September 16, 2007.

I was driving home with my not-quite 18-year-old daughter. We were running at 65 miles per hour north on I-35 from Oklahoma City. The radio was tuned to National Public Radio's evening news program All Things Considered. The route, the speed, the radio program were all perfectly normal and unremarkable. 

Suddenly my daughter started screaming and beating the dashboard. Understandably alarmed, I pulled to the side of the road to find out what happened. She was crying and repeating "He died." Not tears of sorrow, but more of fury.

"Who?"

"Robert Jordan! He died! He hasn't finished! He hasn't finished!"

Yep, Robert Jordan died September 16, 2007, after publication of the first eleven books of his Wheel of Time books. But the epic story was not finished. Characters were left in terrible straits. The nations of the world were divided and at war with each other. The ultimate bad guy was about to break free from his prison. And the final battle would require that all peoples fight together or the Wheel of Time could be irrevocably broken. It would be the ultimate end of times.

I didn't recall ever having heard of Robert Jordan or his epic fantasy.

My son, being ever the pragmatist, had not started reading J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series until the final installment was safely published. Jordan's dying seemed reason enough for me not to ever start WOT.

Jordan was diagnosed with a terminal heart disease in December 2005. He had made preparations in case he died -- extensive notes "... so if the worst actually happens, someone could finish A Memory of Light and have it end the way I want it to end."

With Brandon Sanderson on board to finish the twelfth book, I decided to give the series a try. That final book turned out to be three books and I must say Sanderson did a superb job. So, yes, I am working my way through the fourteen book series for the fourth time.

And I am surviving the chaos of our real times for the umpteenth time. So far.