Windows On The World
Hello World,
Well, what is so rare as a day in January, I tell you, I just don't know. We've made it through the first week of 2005, and none the worse for wear, I hope. Around here, the weather had been so moderate for the most part, I'm sure many people were under the impression that I had gotten a new bird bath heater, with the result that we would never have any more cold weather. In fact, anyone watching the ball drop on December 31st could have found out that it was 60 degrees in Times Square at midnight, so that has to tell you something right there. Alas, that was not the case, and there were a few days with freezing temperatures, and even snow and ice, and the bird bath was frozen solid to prove it. But since then, the weather has been having its ups and downs, mostly in the mid-40s, so the erstwhile fountain has been more of a bird bath than skating rink, at least for now.
I'm sure that everyone will be relieved to hear that The Trial That Would Not End, did in fact end, and even before Christmas, which would have seemed unthinkable just the week previous to that. We were more surprised than anyone when the government rested, and the following day, the defense rested, and suddenly, here we were with the case in our hands. I had said right from the beginning that once the jury got the case, we might come up with a very bad verdict, but by golly, we'd come up with it quick. How wrong I was! I didn't realize until that day, that apparently everyone had sat through a completely different trial from anyone else, and no two people felt the same way about anything. This was a disheartening discovery at this late date, I can tell you that. People were so far apart on everything that we had no choice but to request massive amounts of testimony, evidence and other documentation sent in to the Jury Room, to help our fuzzy recollections of the details and clarify the areas of disagreement. The way things were going, I honestly believed that we were going to have to replay the entire 6 weeks of the trial, all over again, in the Jury Room. I don't mind saying that the outlook was bleak, and I was not the only one who gave way to despair, or worse. Our salvation came from an unlikely source. What seemed originally to be a significant drawback, having this lengthy trial at the end of the year close to the holidays, instead turned into the key that magically unlocked the fetters. After days of fruitless deliberations, everyone finally realized that if we wanted to be out of there before Christmas, and everyone did, we'd have to work together a whole lot better, in order to make it happen. That finally did the trick, and we turned in our verdict on the Wednesday before Christmas, and happy to be out of there.
Not so fast! Apparently nowadays, even after you hand in your verdict, they still make you come back after that for some other phase of the process before sentencing, so we weren't off the hook quite yet. When the judge said that we had to come back on Thursday, I would not have been surprised if all twelve of us had just jumped out of the windows instead. But we did come back, and I don't mind saying, in very ill humor, and left after another long, hard day in an even worse frame of mind, which would have seemed impossible, but turned out not to be after all. We were roundly criticized throughout the media for our horrible verdict, and the ink wasn't even dry on it before the defense filed an appeal. Well, I say that everyone who thinks they can do a better job, next time, they can take my place. And I would like to see anyone else make heads or tails out of what they fancifully refer to as "Jury Instructions" and which consist of 71 pages of dense legal gobbledygook, which is read aloud in court in a mind-numbing exercise that is like being locked in a room with a boring lecturer for 5 hours where you can't take notes or leave. Here is only a smattering of it, and as Dave Barry says, "I'm not making this up," and which has also not been edited for comic effect in any way --
===================================
You must determine whether the government has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant you are considering knowingly and willfully became a member of that conspiracy. A defendant may be found to have knowledge if he consciously avoids confirming the objective of the conspiracy. However, I caution you that the principle of conscious avoidance of knowledge has no bearing on the question of whether the conspiracy existed, or even whether the defendant participated in the conspiracy. In particular, a person cannot be found to have participated in a conspiracy based only on a finding that he consciously avoided knowing whether he was participating or not. In order to find that a defendant participated in a conspiracy, you must find that he actually knew he was participating. However, you may find that a defendant had knowledge of the objective or purpose of the conspiracy, either if he had actual knowledge or if he consciously avoided obtaining knowledge of the objective or purpose of the conspiracy.
===================================
Anyway, I admit that my impressions of Jury Duty were irrevocably ruined when they made me sick for Christmas, so after all that, they can just kiss my habeas corpus. In other news, many people might be wondering whatever happened to Lessons & Carols, the annual service of Bible readings and Christmas hymns that we have at church every year. Somehow it managed to get squeezed in among everything else that was happening in December, and came and went without a hitch. I don't think we did any more damage to poor George Handel than we usually do, although this year was unique in that we had practically no rehearsals at all. The music that we do regularly for this service was only moderately shaky, while the new pieces only escaped total disaster by the indulgence of our audience. (That rustling noise you hear is the sound of poor G. Pergolesi spinning in his grave after we rendered his lovely "Glory to God in the Highest" nearly unrecognizable to anyone familiar with it.) But still and all, a good time was had by all, as it always is, and we all lived to tell the tale, which the way things had been going last year, was not to be scoffed at.
I did mention that we had some snow in these parts recently, and it was like old times when I climbed into the Tempo last week and found the entire front seat awash in pearly white flakes. That always used to happen in the Gremlin, which had long since outlasted its weather stripping, and the driver's side door never did close properly, and you could always count on there being a lot of the great outdoors on the inside of the Purple One. I don't expect that from the Tempo, which is not only much newer, but with a reassuringly robust framework, rock solid doors and wads of no-nonsense weather stripping to beat the band. All of this would probably have gone a long way to keeping the snow off the front seat, if only I had remembered to roll up the window when I got out of the car the day before. The devil's in the details, you know. And in my car, he's covered with snow besides, and his next stop might be the car wash, which would really give him something to think about!
Well, what is so rare as a day in January, I tell you, I just don't know. We've made it through the first week of 2005, and none the worse for wear, I hope. Around here, the weather had been so moderate for the most part, I'm sure many people were under the impression that I had gotten a new bird bath heater, with the result that we would never have any more cold weather. In fact, anyone watching the ball drop on December 31st could have found out that it was 60 degrees in Times Square at midnight, so that has to tell you something right there. Alas, that was not the case, and there were a few days with freezing temperatures, and even snow and ice, and the bird bath was frozen solid to prove it. But since then, the weather has been having its ups and downs, mostly in the mid-40s, so the erstwhile fountain has been more of a bird bath than skating rink, at least for now.
I'm sure that everyone will be relieved to hear that The Trial That Would Not End, did in fact end, and even before Christmas, which would have seemed unthinkable just the week previous to that. We were more surprised than anyone when the government rested, and the following day, the defense rested, and suddenly, here we were with the case in our hands. I had said right from the beginning that once the jury got the case, we might come up with a very bad verdict, but by golly, we'd come up with it quick. How wrong I was! I didn't realize until that day, that apparently everyone had sat through a completely different trial from anyone else, and no two people felt the same way about anything. This was a disheartening discovery at this late date, I can tell you that. People were so far apart on everything that we had no choice but to request massive amounts of testimony, evidence and other documentation sent in to the Jury Room, to help our fuzzy recollections of the details and clarify the areas of disagreement. The way things were going, I honestly believed that we were going to have to replay the entire 6 weeks of the trial, all over again, in the Jury Room. I don't mind saying that the outlook was bleak, and I was not the only one who gave way to despair, or worse. Our salvation came from an unlikely source. What seemed originally to be a significant drawback, having this lengthy trial at the end of the year close to the holidays, instead turned into the key that magically unlocked the fetters. After days of fruitless deliberations, everyone finally realized that if we wanted to be out of there before Christmas, and everyone did, we'd have to work together a whole lot better, in order to make it happen. That finally did the trick, and we turned in our verdict on the Wednesday before Christmas, and happy to be out of there.
Not so fast! Apparently nowadays, even after you hand in your verdict, they still make you come back after that for some other phase of the process before sentencing, so we weren't off the hook quite yet. When the judge said that we had to come back on Thursday, I would not have been surprised if all twelve of us had just jumped out of the windows instead. But we did come back, and I don't mind saying, in very ill humor, and left after another long, hard day in an even worse frame of mind, which would have seemed impossible, but turned out not to be after all. We were roundly criticized throughout the media for our horrible verdict, and the ink wasn't even dry on it before the defense filed an appeal. Well, I say that everyone who thinks they can do a better job, next time, they can take my place. And I would like to see anyone else make heads or tails out of what they fancifully refer to as "Jury Instructions" and which consist of 71 pages of dense legal gobbledygook, which is read aloud in court in a mind-numbing exercise that is like being locked in a room with a boring lecturer for 5 hours where you can't take notes or leave. Here is only a smattering of it, and as Dave Barry says, "I'm not making this up," and which has also not been edited for comic effect in any way --
===================================
You must determine whether the government has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant you are considering knowingly and willfully became a member of that conspiracy. A defendant may be found to have knowledge if he consciously avoids confirming the objective of the conspiracy. However, I caution you that the principle of conscious avoidance of knowledge has no bearing on the question of whether the conspiracy existed, or even whether the defendant participated in the conspiracy. In particular, a person cannot be found to have participated in a conspiracy based only on a finding that he consciously avoided knowing whether he was participating or not. In order to find that a defendant participated in a conspiracy, you must find that he actually knew he was participating. However, you may find that a defendant had knowledge of the objective or purpose of the conspiracy, either if he had actual knowledge or if he consciously avoided obtaining knowledge of the objective or purpose of the conspiracy.
===================================
Anyway, I admit that my impressions of Jury Duty were irrevocably ruined when they made me sick for Christmas, so after all that, they can just kiss my habeas corpus. In other news, many people might be wondering whatever happened to Lessons & Carols, the annual service of Bible readings and Christmas hymns that we have at church every year. Somehow it managed to get squeezed in among everything else that was happening in December, and came and went without a hitch. I don't think we did any more damage to poor George Handel than we usually do, although this year was unique in that we had practically no rehearsals at all. The music that we do regularly for this service was only moderately shaky, while the new pieces only escaped total disaster by the indulgence of our audience. (That rustling noise you hear is the sound of poor G. Pergolesi spinning in his grave after we rendered his lovely "Glory to God in the Highest" nearly unrecognizable to anyone familiar with it.) But still and all, a good time was had by all, as it always is, and we all lived to tell the tale, which the way things had been going last year, was not to be scoffed at.
I did mention that we had some snow in these parts recently, and it was like old times when I climbed into the Tempo last week and found the entire front seat awash in pearly white flakes. That always used to happen in the Gremlin, which had long since outlasted its weather stripping, and the driver's side door never did close properly, and you could always count on there being a lot of the great outdoors on the inside of the Purple One. I don't expect that from the Tempo, which is not only much newer, but with a reassuringly robust framework, rock solid doors and wads of no-nonsense weather stripping to beat the band. All of this would probably have gone a long way to keeping the snow off the front seat, if only I had remembered to roll up the window when I got out of the car the day before. The devil's in the details, you know. And in my car, he's covered with snow besides, and his next stop might be the car wash, which would really give him something to think about!
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 7:53 PM
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