Jury Duty

THE TIME ARRIVES, as it does every few years or so, when one has asked for and received the requisite number of postponements and actually has to call in and perhaps show up to assist in the judicial process that guarantees every person her or his right to a trial by their peers.

Yes, Rebel Girl has jury duty.

And not just any jury duty. Noooo.

She has been called to the Harbor Justice Center of Newport Beach.

Jury duty with a view, no less—and the option of eating out at some of the finer establishments that Orange County has to offer (though actually she plans to take her lunch, gobble it down in the car and spend the rest of her time at the Friends of the Library Bookstore in the Newport Beach Public Library where the pickings are great).

She does entertain an elaborate fantasy of being installed on a jury of a high profile trial (the Jeffrey Neilson case, perhaps?) which will result in being sequestered in the Four Seasons hotel, with cable TV and room service and strict admonishments to cut off all ties to the outside world. She hopes the hotel has a spa with as steam room and that the air conditioning isn't too cold.

Rebel Girl was instructed to call in and listen to a message on Friday and she did. The recorded message directed her to call back on Monday at noon – and see if her services are needed at 1:15 on that same day. Yes, she teaches from 11-1, so she'll dial from the classroom, mid-class, and see what her fate is.

All things considered, she is happy to serve. Rebel Girl is a girl scout in that way. Six years ago, in the first week of September of 2001, she served on a civil case in Santa Ana. Back then, most people she saw tried their darnedest to disqualify themselves. Rebel Girl was certain that the man she saw with his hands and feet wrapped in plastic grocery bags was sure to get bounced – but later in the week, she saw him marching along with another jury, his hands and feet still bundled in plastic.

Usually, simply stating that one works as a college professor is enough to be removed from a jury once the defense and the prosecution start playing poker with their recusals, but we'll see. Maybe she'll just try and work Erwin Chemerinsky's name into the proceedings and see what happens.

Last time, the case was moved along well, with a few disagreements and some surprising but entertaining drama during deliberations. Rebel Girl enjoyed the experience. Midweek, she discovered that she was pregnant and that the pregnancy, unlike previous ones, was viable. She was keeping that to herself though, on the advice of her doctor. Better wait and see. It's still early yet. But on that last day, Friday, as they were all walking out of the courtroom, people who would never see each other again, she matched stride with an older woman she had been friendly with during the week. A retired stewardess. A grandmother. I'm pregnant, she told her, I just found out. The woman stopped walking. That's wonderful, she said, good for you. Congratulations. They smiled, hugged, went on their way.

Rebel Girl was practicing, she sees now, just wanting to see what it was like.

****

FROM THE SOMEBODY OUT THERE LOVES REBEL GIRL DEPARTMENT:

Last week Rebel Girl received the gift of five CDs in the mail - the live recordings for five recent concerts by Lucinda Williams, each concert dedicated to one album in its entirety.

Yowza.

It's nice to have friends out there, especially ones who still go to concerts.

Rebel Girl used to see Lucinda Williams back in the day when Lucinda played fish restaurants in Culver City. She knows all the words to Pineola, including the verse that Lucinda doesn't sing anymore.

Lucinda's music meant a lot to her then, still does now.

That cool new high-tech campus in Tustin (part 2)

1. OK, so here's part 2 in my series about the SOCCCD's new "ATEP" campus in Tustin. I posted part 1 on Friday after visiting the new facility.

2. ATEP's administration building may be small, but it's pretty spiffy. Here are some pics from inside. Naturally, everything looks new—because it is new. The staff is terrific.

3. As one enters, one encounters computers for student use just off to the left. It's a nice atmosphere for work.

Check it out. Say "hey" to the gal at the desk for me.

4. This is some sort of conference room, I think. Someone explained it all to me, but, on Friday, after class, my mind is a sieve.

5. This blue gizmo is part of ATEP’s Center for Applied Competitive Technologies (CACT), which, according to the ATEP webite, "this year was designated a National Center for Photonics Education, a National Science Foundation Center of Excellence...The prestigious designation was awarded to thirteen centers across the U.S. that have committed to increasing the pool of well-trained technicians in optics and photonics by creating a secondary-to-postsecondary “pipeline” of highly qualified and strongly motivated students...."

6. No, it's not a vending machine. This gadget makes models. It's called a "3-D printer," but it really makes models, like that one you can see inside and that doohicky sitting on top. It's extremely cool to watch models slowly come into being in this contraption after having been created on a computer.

Students are all over this thing, of course.

7. This equipment is near the model-making gizmo. I dunno what to tell you. Students learn to make cool stuff, and then they get jobs somewhere.

And why the hell not?

LET'S GET ON BOARD.

Lemme change the subject for a second. First, some logical truisms.

When you’re evaluating something, some facts are relevant and some are not (to the question of the worth of the thing). So, for instance, the fact that, say, Senator Larry Craig is a hypocrite is relevant to his character, but it has no bearing whatsoever on the merits of his policies or philosophies.

The origins of a thing, too, are irrelevant to its worth. For instance, the founder of chiropractic (“medicine”) was a crackpot, a nut. But that fact has no bearing on whether chiropractic adjustments (of the sort he advocated) are an efficacious treatment for back pain.

This is all obvious, right?

“Guilt by association” is a similar fallacy: maybe Hitler—or was it his German Shepherd "Arsch mit Ohren"?—was a vegetarian, but that fact surely has no bearing on the merits or demerits of vegetarianism.

SO HERE'S THE THING. I say all of this because we in the South Orange County Community College District have this thing, this ATEP, and it is what it is as a facility and a potential campus.

I think it’s pretty exciting. No, I won’t be happy if the Young Americans end up camped here, but, even if they do, they’ll be a small part of something much bigger, and it all strikes me as exciting and forward-looking.

I could be wrong, but I think many of my colleagues are having trouble seeing all this—or at any rate, they’re having trouble seeing ATEP for what it already is and what it can be—because, of course, ATEP is “associated” with our spectacularly unpopular and loathsome Chancellor, Raghu P. Mathur and perhaps the current board, which is, well, Neanderthalesque. Flintstonian even.

But, as the Chancellor asserted recently, ATEP is here to stay. So we may as well make it work.

But what about process? Yes, absolutely, Mathur and crew have screwed that up. If one asks, what will ATEP be?, the answer really is: ATEP will be the outcome of “negotiations” that are occurring now, very much behind closed doors, between the private Money People and the District.

One day, a door will open, the Chancellor will emerge, he'll have a big smile on his stupid face and we’ll finally be told what ATEP is gonna be. Mathur will arrange to get awards for his labors. Maybe the Medal of Freedom. Maybe fabulous cash prizes.

That sucks, I know. But, in the meantime, we’ve got ATEP Jr., and it is what it is, and what it is is cool.