still doing my civic duty
Even though election day has come and gone, with both good news and bad, horrible, tragic news, I’m still doing my civic duty. In this case, I’ve been doing it since Monday, at the Hennepin County Government Center in downtown Minneapolis. In the basement, directly underneath 6th Street. That’s where the Jury Room is located. You can feel the trucks driving overhead. So far, I’m mostly sitting in the jury pool, reading books, newspapers, magazines, and today I actually brought a phone cable with me so I can connect to the internet. That’s right, a phone cable. I’m on dial-up, folks. Our lovely gov’t center is not wired for broadband in the jury room, and there are no WiFi signals that I can connect to underneath 6th Street. Alas. I did get called up to sit on a jury panel yesterday, which was interesting at first, but after listening the lawyers ask the potential jurors the same questions 20 times, it got a little old. I wasn’t even in the jury box for that. I was brought up as an alternate selection, in case they dismissed too many jurors.
So I’m whiling away my days, waiting and listening, performing my civic duty. Once it’s done, I’ll be able to talk more about it.
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You’re lucky you’re just on petit jury duty. I got called for the grand jury last winter and spent one day a week for four months looking at autopsy photos and indicting teenagers for murder. We also got plenty of sit-around time when people did dumb things like ignored their subpoena or tried to plead the fifth, so I know the rumbly juror acceptance room all too well. My fellow grand jurors and I used to love to go down there and tell stories to horrify the petit jurors on our lunch breaks. Good times; good times.