Ava started a Bear Blog question challenge this month and Kev adapted them to be a bit more generic. Several indieweb pals have posted their responses. I miss these kind of meta posts, so here are my responses:

1. Why did you start blogging in the first place?

I don’t remember the exact inspiration, but it was probably when I came across Blogger or maybe it was a Xanga blog. I had been tinkering with my GeoCities site since the late 90s, but that was more of a general collection of pages than a “weblog.”

In 1999, I decided to get this domain in part because I was coming around to the “gRegorLove” nickname that my friend Phil had given me. I thought it would be funny to set up a wife application (archived) on my own site. I also wanted to experiment with things like Blogger. I remember thinking it was so cool to be able to publish posts by FTP.

Sometime in 2000 I started posting more blog-type posts. It seemed so novel and was cool to be able to share text like that in my little corner of the web.

2. What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it?

I have been using the ProcessWire CMS/framework for almost ten years now. Before that I used Nucleus CMS for a long time. And before that I briefly experimented with B2evolution and Blogger.

I switched to ProcessWire because official development on Nucleus had stopped, unfortunately. I really enjoyed Nucleus’ extensibility and I made some of my first open source contributions there, but I wasn’t in a place to take on being one of the few remaining contributors.

I had used ProcessWire professionally for several sites and I really enjoyed its flexibility for building any type of site, not just a blog system that could be hacked into other types of things. ProcessWire is built entirely on custom fields and custom templates, so it allows a lot of creativity and not just a timeline of reverse chronological posts.

3. Have you blogged on other platforms before?

I posted on Xanga for quite a while. I think most of those posts still exist on my site, though. The phrase “Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere” (POSSE) didn’t exist then, but I definitely had the desire to keep the original posts on my site and cross-post them.

4. How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that’s part of your blog?

Half the time I will write in the ProcessWire editor (like now). The other half of the time I will use Sublime Text or Obsidian. I have used Writemonkey in the past because I enjoyed the ability to type in full-screen with no distractions. It has optional typewriter sound effects, too, which was fun. I think my use of that mostly dropped off because ProcessWire has a decent visual editor.

5. When do you feel most inspired to write?

Whenever I see that the last post was a month or two ago? 😂 Though seriously, I updated my homepage to show the full content of the latest article for the first 45 days. After that, it changes to just the title + link under the “Other Recent Articles” heading. That can serve as a little visual nudge for me to write something if I notice that.

Inspirations vary. Sometimes I want to document everyday things for myself to look back on. Sometimes I want to put together various bits of information in one space and (hopefully) make it easier to digest, e.g. with some of my posts about health and safety. Sometimes I just want to vent.

6. Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?

Most posts I am pretty casual about. I might let a draft sit overnight and re-read it to tweak some phrasing. My longer or more important (to me) posts will definitely be drafted and re-written over time, like “Four Years of Blank”.

7. What’s your favorite post on your blog?

Oof, this question is unfair. You saw that I’ve been posting for almost 25 years, right? 😂I think I might have to stretch the rules on this one and give some favorites in entirely arbitrary categories.

• Favorite look back/in-the-feels: “Ten Years On”
• Favorite short fiction: “Drabble: A Paradox”
• Favorite visual creative stuff: “Don’t Multitask with Fire”
• Favorite weird: “Top Five Worst Ways to Refer to Human Hair”

8. Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?

I have thought several times that I should bring back and modernize the wife application. That was some good silly fun.

I have been pretty pleased with the design I’ve had since 2011. It’s definitely the longest period I’ve gone without a full redesign. I have added a lot of different types of posts since then, so the navigation probably needs some updates. I have made updates to the homepage to try to highlight some of those, like photos and notes. I don’t think I want the homepage to strictly be a reverse chronological feed of everything, though. Short notes would drown out the blog posts, so I still want to promote the blog posts by “pinning” them or something.

One of my favorite things about the design is the picture of me in the footer. That was taken in Chicago at Lake Michigan quite a while ago. Now that I live in California, I have thought about getting an updated version of that shot, but at the beach instead. I need to ask Al about that.

Bonus round: tag/nudge some other people to fill this out

This is my little addition to the prompts. If you blog, I’d love to read your responses as well. If you don’t, maybe this is a good time to start!

I’d like to nudge: Sheryl, Isha, Rachelskirts, and Tyler.

In late 2023, I gave myself a very loose challenge to listen to one distinct album each day(-ish). I wrote a post about the first week and after that I tried to keep track of them offline in Obsidian. I didn’t do it every day or always keep track of it very well, but that’s alright.

The handful that I did track were pretty balanced between new-to-me albums and new releases by artists I follow. I had forgotten about a couple of these since they were one-listens — not usually because I didn’t enjoy it, but it’s easy to get distracted by old and new favorites. There’s always so much music!

New to me

• Sleater-Kinney, Little Rope (2024): A band I’ve known of for a while, but had never really listened to much.
• The Rentals, Lost in Alphaville (2014): A vinyl guy on TikTok was raving about this album. It lived up to the hype and is one of my favorite finds of the year. Somehow I had not heard of The Rentals, despite it being Matt Sharp, formerly of Weezer.
• The Warning, Keep Me Fed (2024): A really solid rock album by some mujeres Mexicanas. I’m a sucker for ladies who rock.
• Chappell Roan, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess (2023): Another favorite of the year. I hope it wins the Grammy. “Um, can you play a song with a fucking beat?!”
• julie, my anti-aircraft friend (2024): I came across a fellow GenX on TikTok who publishes the blog “New Music for Old Heads” and this album in one of their best-of posts caught my attention because shoegaze.

Aside: I love the idea of that blog and recommend it:

“This is a place for people who want to get into new music but feel overwhelmed by it, or maybe even think it hasn’t been good since [insert whatever decade it was that you were in your 20s]. Basically, I’m trying to get you excited about music discovery again.”

— New Music for Old Heads

New-ish by artists I follow

Interestingly, several of these were one-listens, but writing this reminds me to listen to them more.

• Oh Land, Loop Soup (2023)
• Casandra Jenkins, My Light, My Detroyer (2024)
• DK the Drummer, Lockers Volume 1 (2024): Darren King, former drummer of Mutemath. This is a fun, high energy album with a lot of great collaborations.
• Thomas Powers, A Tyrant Crying in Private (2024): solo album from singer of The Naked and Famous
• Lauren Mayberry, Vicious Creature (2024): solo album from the singer of Chvrches

Concerts

I only attended a couple concerts this year: Zoe Boekbinder’s Covid cautious backyard concert and Five Iron Frenzy with their old-school set. Both were a lot of fun!

I had a ticket for Sixpence None the Richer at the end of the year but unfortunately missed it. :/

Scrobbles

If you’re not familiar, “scrobbles” are the song listening data you can send to Libre.fm, Last.fm, or similar services. I’ve been on Last.fm for a long time, but I haven’t checked it in quite a while. There was a time when scrobbling stopped working on Android due to some security updates, so a good chunk of my listens from my phone weren’t reported. I just played around with some settings and got it working again, though! That’s why my 2024 listening report is kind of slim.

• My top artist was Cinnamon Chasers, mostly Dopamine (2024): great electronic music to work to
• Runner up was BT, The Secret Language of Trees (2023): some chill ambient music, also great to work to
• 2,791 listens; 309 artists; 452 albums; 2,154 tracks
• 54% new artists; 72% new albums; 55% new tracks; among my small set of friends on Last.fm, I apparently came in first for percentage of new artists
• My first track of the year was apparently “Speak to Me” by Pink Floyd. I’m not a huge Pink Floyd fan, but I was talking to someone who had never listened to them before so decided to give it another listen.
• I apparently listened to 14 tracks with “fire” in the title

I joined Libre.fm in September, so only have a few months of listens in my 2024 recap. I’m glad there’s an indieweb version of services like this. Boards of Canada came in first over there, since I finally listened to most of their catalog for the first time (I know).

What were some of your (new or old) favorites that you listened to last year? Happy new year of music!

Last weekend was the second IndieWebCamp San Diego. I think it was a really successful and productive event. My friend Joe organized it, though he kept insisting (playfully) that I was a co-organizer due to my contributions. I resisted the label mainly because I’m not ready to take on that responsibility again. I am good with the wiki, though, and a lot of the processes from attending and organizing past IndieWebCamp events.

I advocated for a stronger health and safety policy for this event and really appreciated Joe being fully supportive. I borrowed parts of the policies from North Bay Python, XOXO, E&W, a local board game group, and mine. I think we did pretty well with the two policy aspects I wrote about before:

“1. They should be in place well before the event and communicated clearly in key places: on the website, during registration, in announcements, and discussed during the event.”

— More on Health and Safety

There wasn’t a formal registration process other than RSVPs on the event page, so I made sure to include the Health and Safety subheading with a one-line summary and link to the full policy on the wiki. I don’t think we discussed it during the event, but all attendees were masking indoors without being reminded, so I think having the policy in those places worked well.

The venue was this lovely little risograph publisher/zine shop/zine archive called Burn All Books, which I think was very well aligned with the IndieWeb principles. They very graciously provided the space for free, so I encourage attendees to support them with a Mail Bag membership — get art, poetry, and “real risograph magic” mailed to you monthly!

I didn’t go into the event with a solid idea of what I wanted to work on for my site. One of the things I love about these events, though, is that the attendees propose and facilitate the sessions. There’s a lot of opportunity to get inspired and that’s exactly what happened for me. There was a session on venue recommendations because Foursquare is imminently shutting down their City Guide app. Tantek wanted to find the simplest way he could export his recommendations and start sharing them on his own site. That inspired me to start sharing my own recommendations, so I started a food and drink recommendations page with subsections for different cities. I think this will be just as helpful to remind myself of places as it is to suggest places to others who ask.

The schedule page has links to all of the session notes. Most sessions were recorded, so videos will be eventually be posted on there as well.

If you’re interested in learning more about the IndieWeb, I recommend one of the virtual Zoom meetups, called Homebrew Website Club. There are regular ones held in the Pacific and London timezones; check the HWC tag on the events site and stop in sometime! Joe also regularly hosts a Front End Study Hall meetup focused on HTML and CSS, with all skill levels welcome.

A bit of meta blogging up front (everyone’s favorite!): I’ve called these posts “Roundup” before, whether they were weekly, monthly, or some longer period of time. I think I am fine with the inconsistent timing of them, but I would like to use some name for them that is consistent so I don’t get bogged down thinking about it. Maybe it could be “A Roundup for [date]” or maybe I should just be more chill about it like Joe: “Misc Notes And Recent Updates.”

Anyway, on with the actual post.

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I was reminded of this Instagram reel that I meant to share months ago. It was about the grief of witnessing all the death and destruction in the world, specifically Gaza. It remains relevant for that, of course, but I think is also applicable for the uncertainty many of us are feeling after the US election. I transcribed it because I wanted the words to be a bit more permanent.

“Something coming up a lot for folks is they are stuck in their overwhelm and grief and I wanted to offer some indigenous solutions to colonial problems. Mine come from the Moana Lasi from Tuvalu and from many lands and healers and knowledge-keepers around the world.

One of the things I’m doing to support myself and other people is that when I’m watching images of unimaginable loss and pain, I’m taking a moment to thank my exquisite sensitivities for reminding me of my humanity. I would much rather feel this much pain than be numb to this kind of suffering and that makes me feel really grateful.

The second thing I want to offer is that my understanding of grief is that it is love with nowhere to go. And when I’m looking at these images that are making me feel so angry and underneath that anger is grief and underneath that grief is love. And so when I trace my grief to the love underneath, I can give that somewhere to go. I can go out into my community. I can care for people. If you live in a settler colony, there is no shortage of suffering around you and we can go and spend that love somewhere.

Settler colonialism thrives on fear and separation. And so every time we have faith and every time we lean in for connection, we are resisting this system. So I wanted to remind us this because when we do our resistance in this way, in this generative way, it keeps our bodies safer, our community stronger, and it means we can keep it up for a lifetime.”

— Leah Manaema, Instagram Reel

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I also enjoyed this recent post on The Marginalian, “Oliver Sacks on Despair and the Meaning of Life” and this quote from a letter he wrote:

When moods of defeat, despair, accidie and “So-what-ness” visit me (they are not infrequent!), I find a sense of hope and meaning in my patients, who do not give up despite devastating disease. If they who are so ill, so without the usual strengths and supports and hopes, if they can be affirmative — there must be something to affirm, and an inextinguishable power of affirmation within us.

I think “the meaning of life” is something we have to formulate for ourselves, we have to determine what has meaning for us… It clearly has to do with love — what and whom and how one can love.

— Oliver Sacks

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Last Friday I went to an event at Burn All Books to hold space together post-election, create art, share feelings, share resources, etc. I loved the idea and that they required masking. They had a bunch of art supplies, paper, and magazines for people to craft into zines, collages, or whatever struck your fancy. There were a lot more people than I expected, about 20 of us. I only talked to a couple people, but it felt so warm to be around people and everyone being masked reminded me we have community that cares. I drew this quote from Mariame Kaba that is also the title of one of her books. It’s been on my to-read list for a while and I’ll definitely be reading it in the near future.

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Marcy Wheeler has a good post today, “Go Stare at the Ocean”:

“…take some time, however long you can, to go stare at the ocean. Or the sky. Or a meadow or mountain or river. Or even a swarming city street.

Go stare at something and just stare.

Oh, and also, breathe. If you need to, do something that will help you breathe: yoga, walking, swimming, singing, playing the tuba.

And after you’ve stared for a while, sit down and think about how you’re going to pick yourself back up again. I’m not asking you to pick yourself back up again.

Yet.

Just asking you to make a plan about how you’ll do so.”

— Marcy Wheeler, “Go Stare at the Ocean”

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Imogen Heap released a new single!

Imogen Heap, “What Have You Done to Me?”

The Boston Anarchist Book Fair had a free, virtual workshop yesterday about holding COVID Safe(r) events, led by Fan Club. (Aside: I love their use of Neocities for the site)

It was a great workshop covering a lot of bases: ventilation; air purifiers, including the homemade Corsi-Rosenthal box; the Swiss cheese model of layered mitigations; Far UVC; and different types of masks. As a lover of live music, I appreciated that their background was in promoting punk and hardcore shows around Boston.

I learned of the precautionary principle:

“When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. In this context the proponent of an activity, rather than the public, should bear the burden of proof.”

I had an idea of this general concept, though not necessarily by that name or stated so succinctly. Similarly, this quote resonated with me:

“People involved with organizing or hosting an event have more power to initiate and normalize good infection control practices.”

Check out the Fan Club zine linked in the sidebar of their site as well as their “we have the tools” site, which has a lot of resources.

Whoosh, there went July and August. And almost September. I did remember the 21st night of September, though.

It’s been a weird summer, lots of ups and downs. A good chunk of my blahs are from the weight of still taking Covid precautions while watching the majority of people pretend things are normal. I’ve been trying to combat that by intentionally connecting with more Covid Conscious (CC) communities online. I connected with a couple nearby that started up a CC Discord server for games of all types. They’ve had a couple in-person events in their garage. Masks were required, air purifiers were running, and there was good airflow with the garage door open. It’s been great to meet more people in a safe way like that. Yesterday, we had our first virtual board game night using Board Game Arena. It was a success! There’s also some general CC servers for San Diego and broader SoCal. They’ve been a great place to ask questions, learn, commiserate, and just have fun.

I’ve been following the Fan Favorite SD Instagram (formerly CovidSafeSocal) for a while now. It’s a mutual aid group that distributes high quality masks and Covid tests to anyone that needs them. They also loan out air purifiers (get it, Fan Favorite) to help make events safer. Every layer of protection helps and every broken chain of transmission has a tangible impact! Earlier this year they set up a Discord to coordinate volunteers. I was excited to get involved in any way I could, but especially with improving the web presence so we’re not reliant solely on Instagram. It’s still very basic, but we have fanfavoritesd.com now and we’re taking control of our links by using our own links in bio instead of Linktree. I look forward to adding more to the site like a local event calendar, links to resources, and of course a blog.

When the people who started up Fan Favorite were starting to get burnt out from juggling everything, I offered to help out with the mask pickups and mailings. I’m privileged to work from home and have a pretty flexible schedule, so it made sense to jump in. Seeing the requests for masks come in reminds me that I’m definitely not alone in this and it helps me maintain hope during times of despair. It’s really important to me to fight for hope. I am also enjoying the logistics of keeping track of our stock of masks 🤓 and thinking about open source software that might make it easier for groups to do this type of work without relying on big corporate silos. More to come on that sometime.

I can’t forget to mention that I went to the final XOXO Festival in Portland. I loved seeing some IndieWeb friends that I hadn’t seen since the before times; sharing the XOXO experience with Joe and Kelly; and the care the organizers put into their health and safety policy. I might write more about XOXO soon, but for now let’s click publish!

The LA Times has a reader survey with this title. I started to fill it out, then realized I should share my responses. If you want to fill it out, too, note that they request your name, email, and city.

How concerned are you about COVID right now? How often is it on your mind in daily life?

Very concerned. It is a daily consideration in order to protect myself and my community. I feel like it takes more mental and emotional effort now because so few are taking precautions; everyone is a potential risk vector. In the first couple years it was taxing, especially with the unknowns, but the majority of people around were masking at least. It felt like there was some level of solidarity and shared understanding, which feels almost entirely gone now.

How have the precautions you take changed over time? Or have they not?

I wore cloth masks for the first year or so. I briefly stopped masking as regularly in the summer of 2021 after the initial vaccines, but quickly started again when we learned that breakthrough infections could happen. In winter 2021-2022 I switched to using high quality respirators like KN95 or N95 and have continued since.

What have you noticed about how COVID is now viewed in your community or social groups? Do you think the average person is taking it more or less seriously than you are?

Most people have loosened up their precautions or stopped entirely. I blame this largely on the minimizing language that our leaders and public health institutions have promoted. They’ve basically ended their response to the pandemic and are not communicating the risk of repeated COVID infections, despite more and more research confirming it. This leaves individuals to fend for themselves in an incredibly unjust and expensive healthcare system. I think most people want to believe that if things were really bad, these institutions would be doing something. It is difficult to face, but these systems favor capital and profit more than our lives. A prominent example of this was the CDC reducing the infection quarantine from 10 days to 5 at the request of the Delta CEO, with no scientific backing.

The average person is definitely taking it less seriously than me.

A Rant: Chapter 369

I was back at my cardiologist today for a routine device check and echocardiogram. I wore an N95 as usual.

Nurse: “Mr. Morrill, we’re ready for you *cough*”

When I got in the room, the nurse checked my stats. Then two techs came in to check on my pacemaker. All were unmasked. I didn’t have the courage to ask them to wear a mask, even though I’ve had them put a request in my record that I’d like anyone in the room to be masked. One of them coughed while talking to me.

Then I was taken to another room for my echo. While we were walking there I kindly said, “Could I ask that you please wear a mask?” She initially said “We aren’t required to anymore,” which made me nervous... I have heard stories of people responding like that, but hadn’t experienced it myself. Thankfully, she continued, “it’s up to you, it’s fine if you want to keep it on.” So she had misunderstood me and wasn’t being a jerk after all. I clarified I was asking if she would. She seemed a bit surprised but obliged, “Oh, yes, I can if you’d like.” I said yes and thanked her. She came back in with a surgical mask on. Better than nothing and about the best I can expect these days.

When you get an echo, you’re laying on your side and they are sitting close beside you. As she got started with the process she said, “I actually like it when patients mask, not even because of covid so much, but because of bad breath. We sit so close to patients during this.” I kind of laughed it off and said something about how I’d definitely brushed my teeth, but internally I was definitely thinking WTF.

A bit later in the process she said “Something I just learned recently, since I wear N95s in the hospital, is it’s important to take breaks from them because of the buildup of air that you’re breathing in. It’s good to take it off and get some fresh air. I’m sure you’re not wearing them 24/7, but just so you know.” This is a common anti-masking talking point and is not true as far as I know. I don’t even remember how I reacted, probably just a verbal “Mm” and more internal screaming.

Look, even if you buy into “only the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions are at risk from covid,” shouldn’t a cardiologist’s office be a place you mask up all of the time? The majority of your patients meet both of those criteria!

I forgot to bring my Aranet4 with me to get CO2 readings. I need to get in the habit of taking that more places.

I’m tired, y’all. 😫

Previously

I was a high school kid in the ’90s and fell into the more alternative music crowd thanks to influence of friends like Tim Kilbourn. Granted, it was mostly the alternative Christian music scene, but there was still some good music there. I think I started to develop an anti-pop bias as a result. I definitely remember having the attitude that there wasn’t much value in “bubble gum pop.” I thought it was a better art form if the artists wrote their own music/lyrics and the lyrics dealt with “deeper” ideas.

I wouldn’t really reflect about this for many years to come. I’m not sure if it was the main catalyst, but I have a memory from the XOXO 2018 festival where they were playing Carly Rae Jepsen’s Emotion often between speakers. I had only known her for “Call Me Maybe” before that. That was definitely a catchy song, but it had been overplayed so I never really gave her a listen after that.

The Emotion songs were really catchy, but there was also something about hearing it in a crowd setting where a lot of other attendees were big fans and were getting into it. It made it more energetic and obviously stuck in my mind. When I finally listened to the whole album, it became one of my favorites.

The more I thought about it, I realized that there were a lot of artists in pop or pop-adjacent genres that I enjoyed and it didn’t really make sense to have such an arbitrary line about who made the music and how. Why did I love synthpop like Shiny Toy Guns but ignored pop like CRJ? I consciously started to try out more music I had written off or ignored before, and I’m really glad I did. I’m in my mid-40s now and I’m very aware of the tendency to get stuck in our ways, stick with what we know. Trying to expand the music I listen to is one small way I’m trying to avoid that. I have no illusions of it making me hip, but maybe it will help keep me young-ish 😃.

Speaking of “Call Me Maybe” and giving music another chance, I highly recommend this track break down by Christian Hand. I had no idea that Dave Ogilvie from Skinny Puppy mixed the song! Even if you’re tired of the song, suspend judgment momentarily and listen:

Christian Hand breaks down “Call Me Maybe”

Eventually this also led to me giving Taylor Swift a better listen. There’s still a lot of her music I haven’t listened to, but I particularly love folklore.

Taylor Swift, “this is me trying”

More recently, I’ve really been enjoying Chappell Roan. The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess is so good.

Chappell Roan, “HOT TO GO!”

Look, even America’s dad loves CRJ. Tell me this song isn’t a bop.

Carly Rae Jepsen, “I Really Like You”

What’s some music that you might have written off before but ended up loving?

I was summoned for jury duty a couple weeks ago. It wasn’t the most opportune time with work scheduling, but I did not think to defer it and it sneaked up quickly. I was last summoned for it in 2018. That was very shortly after I got my CA license and I remember thinking “wow, they’re fast.” That time I only had to stick around for a few hours before I was dismissed, so I hoped I’d have similar luck this time.

This was my first time going in the COVID era. I brought my new Aranet4 CO2 sensor out of curiosity. The jury assembly is a big open room that I would guess could hold a couple hundred people. I think there were 100–150 there that morning (? I’m bad at guessing large numbers of people). CO2 levels peaked about 1200ppm and didn’t get below 800ppm. That was not as bad as I was expecting, though still not great. I played “count the masks” and saw at least 10 other people masking. It’s unfortunate when such a small percentage seems like it’s worth celebrating, but alas.

After some introductory things, one of the judges came out to greet and thank everyone. He asked by show of hands how many had served before and a good portion had. Then he said, “It can’t be that bad if all these people came back, right?” which made me laugh because, uh, we’re mandated to show up.

They explained that most cases are 3–7 business days, but there was a longer case that could be up to four weeks. They wanted to pre-screen out people who couldn’t serve that long and gave a few reasons. I really didn’t want to serve that long. It would have definitely put stress on our small work team, but I didn’t technically meet the financial hardship criteria, so I didn’t fill out the form.

After lunch my name was called and I went up to the 20th floor. There were 67 of us called, though somehow between the morning check-in and then, we lost a person. That delayed the process of getting everyone in the courtroom because they have really specific procedures and can’t start until everyone in the jury pool is there. We were finally seated and got started. The judge briefly explained the criminal case and how the jury questioning process would go. He was very careful to explain that some things might trigger traumatic experiences, like questions about crimes we or loved ones have been victims of. I appreciated the care he took with that and that we had the option to answer more privately instead of in front of the whole jury pool. We got through a couple hours of questions before being sent home for the day.

The next day we only had a morning session, which was also delayed a bit by jurors showing up late. I was juror 40, so I was pretty sure they wouldn’t get to me that day. I also realized that the judge was only going through the first 50 people with the questions. I guess they only go through the last ~16 jurors after they start dismissing jurors and need to fill in those empty spots. (That “I guess” might be a bit of a spoiler for what’s coming…)

On Monday we were back for a full day. It was definitely interesting listening to other people’s answers. Some heavy things were discussed and it was fascinating hearing people talk candidly about their biases. One thing the judge explained very thoroughly is that we’d need to make our judgement only based on the evidence presented and the law as the judge explained it to us. We weren’t supposed to do any research of the law ourselves or ask other legal experts.

The case would apparently have some testimony in Spanish and we were directed to only take the English translation as the testimony, even if we understood Spanish. A couple people fluent in Spanish indicated that would be difficult, since they’d hear the Spanish first and sometimes nuances/slang can get lost in translation.

One of the last questions was if we would have any difficulty using only the evidence and the law explained to us in making our judgment and specified “even if you disagree with the law.” The expected answer is “no,” but I could not honestly respond that way. I think there can definitely be instances where a law is unjust and it’s the right of people to follow their conscience and vote not guilty. This is known as jury nullification, though I definitely don’t recommend using that phrase if you want to serve on a jury.

I was honest and answered that I could potentially have some difficulty with that, depending on the laws in question. I explained my thoughts (without using the phrase) and, understandably, the judge had some tough follow-up questions like, “so you would replace it with your own law?” I stuck to it, though, and explained I wouldn’t characterize it like that. He asked a few more questions and I think got a pretty clear picture. He didn’t even touch on some of my other question responses, like the attempted break-in that my mom experienced, and a potential work scheduling issue I mentioned. I took that as a sign I was probably going to be dismissed.

I didn’t say this out loud at the time, but I think I also have an issue with the potential impact on a person’s life by returning a guilty verdict. We wouldn’t be determining the sentence itself, but I have a hard time separating the two. When the prosecutor got to ask questions of us, another juror did basically bring this up. The prosecutor asked by a show of hands if anyone else felt similarly. I raised my hand and she said, “I think we already have a pretty good picture of you, juror 40.” I was quite certain I was getting dismissed at that point.

I was surprised the defense and prosecution only got about 20 minutes each to ask questions of the first 50 jurors. The defense was much more conversational and only asked about 4–5 questions in that time. The prosecutor had a slew of papers with sticky notes and rattled off like 15 questions of different jurors, though. It was impressive.

The judge and attorneys went out of the room for a little while and oddly, they played some white noise in the courtroom speakers. I guess it was to be extra certain that no one could overhear them. They came back after about 15 minutes and called about a dozen of our numbers, informing us that we’d been dismissed for cause. I was relieved, honestly, though glad I got to experience at least part of the process.

I might get to experience more of it this month, though, because I’ve also been summoned for jury duty in federal court. Oof!

My friend Al also had jury duty on Monday, so we were able to meet up for lunch and have some good conversation. Here is an obligatory picture of us in front of the courthouse. Apparently I forgot to check if I was blocking part of the name on the building. 😂