Hello friends,
I've been called to jury duty three times. Once was in Washington, D.C., and it was a pretty miserable day. Maybe the jury room there is nicer now, but back in 2015 it was crowded, smelly, loud and tedious. I made it as far as getting called into a courtroom, where I filled out an exhaustive questionnaire. But I didn't get picked for a jury.
In 2020, I got called as a potential grand juror here in Portland; it was in early May of the pandemic, back when all we had to protect ourselves were cloth masks. The clerk had all of us potential grand jurors sit six feet apart in several spacious but about-to-be-replaced courtrooms. The presiding judge went from courtroom to courtroom to repeat her welcome to the socially distant grand jury pool. Civic duty never felt so vital—or life-threatening. I was relieved not to be picked. Grand jury duty is a major time commitment that can span weeks or even months.
Since then, Multnomah County has opened a new courthouse, and I've been called to jury duty once again. The new courthouse is a bright modern office tower with a multi-story glass entryway. All the glass was supposed to suggest to the public a sense of openness and transparency in the judicial system. It's an impression that went unconveyed in the building's first few years, until the county removed the protective plywood barriers around the entrance.
Upstairs on the third floor, there's a coffee kiosk outside the jury room, a large, open space with ample places for people to sit at their laptops and work. There are lockers to store valuables, a coat rack, and a kitchen to refrigerate or heat up your lunch. Plus library books and a stash of board games. It’s nice! The courthouse is peppered with intriguing public art, and there's been an obvious effort to include all sorts of comfortable seating for different kinds and sizes of bodies. Everyone at the courthouse who I interacted with was friendly. And the view of the city is sweeping—in fact, the most coveted spots in the jury room were the comfy armchairs overlooking the Willamette River.
Jury duty opened at 8 a.m. with a video explaining how trials work. Then, one of the judges entered the room to discuss the importance of fair jury trials in a democracy. When she asked us if we were excited to serve as jurors, about half of the 300 or so people in the room raised their hands. I did not, although I would not mind serving on a jury; I'm just busy right now, and as a freelancer, I don't get paid if I'm sitting in court all day. The spiel was similar to what I'd heard in 2020, so I put my head down and plugged away at my pitch deck for a documentary project.
My ears perked up, though, when they put on a video featuring former Oregon Supreme Court Justice Adrienne C. Nelson, now a federal judge, talking about unconscious bias. That’s the brain's tendency to make unfair distinctions among individuals based on race, age or other factors, despite our efforts to be impartial. I looked around the room. People were riveted. Maybe this video in the jury room was their first introduction to unconscious bias, also known as implicit bias. If so, it seemed a fine time to educate a captive audience about something so vital in our judicial system and beyond. I wondered: Do other states tell their jurors about implicit bias? Would you hear about it as a juror in Florida or Alabama or Idaho?
Before heading back to her courtroom, the judge suggested that we jurors wander around the courthouse to peruse the public art or to take in the views on the upper floors. Make sure to look at the mural in the lobby before you leave, she said. The artist, Lynn Basa, has described the colorful panels as "a landscape that reflects the ripple effect of behavior and the passage to redemption and rehabilitation in the community justice process."
Eventually, one of the jury coordinators started calling out names, thinning the room about 20 people at a time. The rest of us in the jury room waited, yearning toward the 11:30 a.m. lunch break promised by the clerk. The room was as quiet as a library, maybe quieter. A lot of people tapped away at their laptops. (I bet that more than a few of us were working on pitch decks!) A surprising number of people read physical books. Some people did crosswords or Sudokus on paper. One woman did needlepoint. A few people just sat and stared into space, bless their zen little hearts. A handful napped. Most people scrolled on their phones, but no one blared anything noisy without headphones.
I finished my pitch deck just before the lunch break. (Feel free to take a look at it here.) I thought idly about how, since there was a captive audience in the room, wouldn't it be fun if all the potential jurors working on slide presentations, like me, could practice our pitches on the state-of-the-art AV system they used to show us the implicit bias video? It would kill some time, at least. The guy sitting near me was drawing fonts in a notebook, but before I could strike up a conversation to ask his opinion about the font in my pitch deck, it was time for lunch, and everyone skedaddled for 90 minutes. I got tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich at the deli down the street, then wandered around Nordstrom Rack to look at sneakers.
After lunch, the energy in the room was heavy with waiting room tedium, an exaggerated version of that desultory feeling that can settle in after lunch. You know that energy—you should start something new but, ugh, why? Even the people who called in to work conference calls did so quietly, with respect for the library-like quiet in the space: "I did share my bullet points with Bridget over Slack," one woman said, while on a call that seemed to be about landing pages linked to an ad campaign. Another apologized to her boss: "Sorry for throwing the week out of whack," she said. (Both of these women, it should be noted, got picked for a panel.)
By 2 p.m., the judges had all the jurors they needed for trials for the rest of the week. Those of us remaining in the room were released from jury duty for the day—and for the next two years. More people than I expected waited in line to get notes to excuse their work absences. In three weeks or so, I learned, I will get a check for the daily juror pay of $10, plus bus fare, for my service.
I packed up my laptop and walked down the main staircase. I paused to look up at the mural, just like the judge had suggested. It's an abstract swirl of vibrant oranges and golds that transition to blues and aquas from left to right. It looks almost like the reflection of a fiery sunset in an ebbing ocean tide. It’s beautiful, befitting a grand public building, but the shapes and colors did not otherwise speak to me as a representation of justice. The rest of the freed jurors streamed by me, already on their way to the remainder of their afternoons.
Until next time,
Erika
THE NEWS
All the links…
The best thing I’ve read recently on how much it stinks to have to constantly be our own “personal brands.” The perpetual state of promotion isn’t just a requirement for writers, but for accountants, too, and for aspiring college students hoping to land a spot at their dream school. Personally, I have developed carpal tunnel in my right wrist from spending the past year posting to Instagram to promote Windfall. Has it even made much of a difference in book sales? Who knows?!
Slow change can be radical change. Rebecca Solnit on how the work of a lifetime isn’t “knowing,” it’s becoming; and when it comes to climate change, what’s required is a shift in culture and consciousness.
This link is dedicated to my college roommate Stacey and her beloved Indiglo watch.
Related: “Let’s see you at 21.”
Your weird yoga link of the week. It’s about how authorities nabbed the yoga teacher who in 2022 murdered a professional cyclist—her romantic rival—and then fled to Costa Rica. (Basically, she answered an employment ad for a yoga instructor.)
Someone stole a statue of Jackie Robinson in Wichita, Kansas. It was found last week in a trash can, "burned and dismantled." Yet another example of why monuments matter.
Bravo on your pitch deck!