Skip to main content

"They Also Serve Who Only Stand and Wait"


I had been looking forward to the Jury Duty assignment, partly because it is an important, although dreaded, part of how we govern ourselves, and partly because I had an unblemished record of never having been selected to serve on a jury.  I wanted to know what it was like.

As often happens, the first call of jury duty was postponed about a week, but then the second week came around, and I reported.  Hundreds of us took our places in what was called the Jury Assembly Room, where we completed a questionnaire, and waited.  The "Jury Assembly Room" sounded like a place where juries were constructed from parts, and that was about right.  The actual assembly happened in a courtroom upstairs.  The deconstruction preceded the construction.  We were divided into three groups, something like the medical process of triage:  those in pretty good shape, those who were hopeless, and those who should get first attention, because it would make a real difference.  I was assigned to the group for whom nothing could be done, so we waited longest to be examined.

My modest zeal to be a good citizen was immediately tempered by the judge's announcement that this was going to be a serious trial, to last at least a week, and probably more, because the charge was not shoplifting or catcalling.  I immediately got religion, and began to pray earnestly and often that there would be a plethora of honest and unbiased folk in groups one and two.  I was even heartened by discovering that having a peace officer in the family might cause the defense lawyers to reject me.   "Good Ol' Troy!", I thought.  "He had to become a State Patrolman to serve as a medic on their helicopters!"  And was my Grandmother not in danger of being called to eternal glory, about sixty years ago?  And was I not a primary caregiver to Helen Keller, Michael's deaf and blind dog?  Why, just yesterday, I had let Helen Keller out to pee in the yard, again!

We spent a lot of time standing in the hallway outside the courtroom while the judge and the lawyers adjusted the course of justice.  At lunchtime, I walked over to where I knew they served wine, and where they had a real tree in the courtyard:  not the Court courtyard; the Old Town Artisan courtyard.  Lunch cost twice what the County paid us stalwart citizens for performing our civic duty, but it was worth every farthing.  Or shekel.  Or dollar.  Even though it was an undistinguished Cobb salad.  Citizenry has its price.

I was not assigned to jury duty.  I was not even personally interviewed for jury duty.  I was just finally told to go home; that the wheels of justice would grind on without me this time, as they had done every time, and that I was to be thanked for doing my part.

It is my part that discourages me, even though, this time, it would have messed up my tidy life and plans.  All I have to do is show up, as the law requires, and the judge, the lawyers, the scintillating bureaucrats who hand out questionnaires and ball point pens and who tell us where to stand and serve in the hallways take one look at me and assign me to group three, and tell me to sit in the back by the wall, all immediately recognizing that justice will not be served by asking me to vote yea or nay impartially on rum runners and pot smokers.

John Milton said it; that we also serve who only stand and wait.






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

Caliche Busters and Government Work

When I was young and both stronger and smarter than I am now, I put my might and brain to work doing nothing useful, unless it might be thought that hand/foot/eye coordination might come in handy.  Those were skills to be learned and practiced.   I found an iron bar our grandfather had shaped in his blacksmith shop.  He took old car, truck, or wagon axles, and made tools from them for digging post holes.  He sharpened one end to a tip, and the other to a blade.  Washington State, like many places, had a hard layer of soil, probably created by water and limestone, or some such materials, that made digging holes a miserable chore.  The bar chipped through the natural concrete so that a shovel could take it up.   I found Grandpa's iron bar, and since I was young and dumb and strong--or so I thought--decided to punch a hole down to hardpan and ultimate truth.  I knew how to do that.  Raise the bar vertically with both hands, and then slam in straight down.  On the second try, aimi
Post a Comment
Read more

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them.  Even when all they wanted to do w
Post a Comment
Read more