Monday, 6/21/04 - 18:01
(continued from April Montage)
I got called for jury duty the first week in May. I spent all day listening to the lawyers question potential jurors, but in the end they found their twelve angry people plus two substitute jurors before they reached my number. From what I could gather from the questions, it was a case of lesbian domestic violence based on very sketchy evidence. California has a law that says something to the effect that you can convict someone in a domestic violence case based on only the victim's testimony -- you don't need other witnesses. I can certainly see how something like this law might not be a bad idea in response to domestic violence, though I'd have to actually look at the law to say whether I agree with it or not. But whenever anyone with a scientific background sat down for jury selection -- engineers, ophthalmologists, etc. -- the prosecution asked him whether he'd be able to separate his professional standards of proof from the standards of proof in this case. Isn't it nice to know that convicting criminals isn't a science?
I met a girl with a buzz cut who was dabbing at some cuts on her face in the bathroom of the public library downtown, so I asked if she was okay or if she needed help. The girl's name was Finch and she was convinced that They -- I mean the government -- were out to get her, and that it probably wasn't even safe for her to talk to me. I took that as a good excuse to start weaseling out of the conversation -- you know, for her sake -- but of course such flamboyant declarations aren't typically a sign that your conversation partner wants to stop talking anytime soon. Furthermore, I didn't really want out; it's not like I can resist the cliché that tells me that I'm living in the first scene of a story.
Finch said that you couldn't trust anyone. I asked why I should trust her, and she said that was the smartest answer anyone had ever given, but after that she wouldn't talk about the government anymore. Eventually I offered to take her to lunch, but we ended up at a coffee shop instead. Finch said she wasn't hungry because she'd had so much to eat in jail.
She told me that more than anything, she needed a way to get out her story to the world. She wanted to be heard. However, the more I talked to Finch, the less she seemed to have any story to tell or any message other than to think for yourself and don't trust what you hear. She was homeless, fucked up on drugs, and had a lot of ideas that sounded like The Matrix. The funny thing about all of this is that I could agree with most of her crazytalk by translating it to postmodern or anthro speak. Of course people think in ways that are deeply informed by their cultures; the difference between me and Finch is that I don't think that you can ever really get the bag off your head, and I don't think that people have any intrinsic faculty for recognizing The Truth. And of course, the difference is that she's living in her ideas in a way that I'm not, or at least playing much more dramatic mind games.
Ted was gone more often this quarter than usual, down to Los Angeles on a couple weekends and then to Chicago for ABA. I got good work done and remembered what it was like to live by myself, reading during dinner and then taking long walks in the fading light. It would get boring eventually.
Our garden grew spinach and green onions, along with the usual herbs: rosemary, parsley, cilantro, sage, thyme, italian basil, thai basil, and volunteer apple mint. We were also growing eggplant until the snails got it. However, the only plants we used regularly were the salad fixings and the rosemary. I've been both busy and not that excited about cooking lately, so Ted's been making dinner a lot of the time and we've been aiming for simplicity -- unagi with avacados, tostadas, S&B golden curry, pasta with costco's surprisingly good pesto, and the like. Ted lavishes his cooking energy on desserts: delicious double chocolate cookies that leave you feeling sluggish when you don't eat anything else all day, and my mom's wonderful strawberry pie recipe with a cream cheese layer to protect the crust from sog.
I enjoy TAing more than I used to. I figured this out when I realized that I'm regularly in a better mood after certain sections than before them. It's possible that I may also be getting slightly better at teaching. It's still a horrible horrible timesuck, though. At least this quarter I didn't have to write the tests and paper assignments by myself. (okay, "by myself" is a slight overstatement of what happened over the winter, but only a slight one)
The class I was TAing for read Plato, Aristotle, Luther, Calvin, Descartes, Copernicus, Kant, Rousseau, Hegel, Wollstonecraft, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Darwin, Einstein, Weber, Wiesel, Levinas, Nancy, and Foucault. Yes we did. In retrospect, I spent too much time in section trying to get at the nitty gritty of how each author's arguments were put together and not enough time linking everything together, but I guess there are worse uses for a discussion section.
The other problem is that the social environment among the TAs wasn't that fun. Usually having 6 or 8 TAs for a class means lively discussions before and after lecture, but this time all the other TAs were South Asianists. Several of them were people that I enjoy spending time with individually, but in a group they jabber to each other about Sanskrit and what they did last weekend while I sit there feeling lonely.
Unfortunately, both my seminars were on Monday this quarter. Almost everyone in the second seminar was also in the first seminar, but we couldn't get it moved because the professor was commuting every week from Wisconsin. Six hours is a long time to concentrate and stay primed for discussion, especially when you've spent much of the previous night preparing for said seminars. I admit that as the quarter progressed there were times during the first seminar when I was completely distracted by the fantasy of sneaking back to my office for a half hour nap between classes. But we had to take the first seminar -- on the sociology of religion -- and the second seminar -- on the memory of catastrophe -- was amazing. Good reading, good discussion, good everything! But I'm getting tired of writing now, so on the off chance that anyone wants more details, ask me.
Long live Diaryland!
The five most recent entries:
More Naval Gazing - Saturday, 8/13/05
Anniversary Diving - Friday, 8/12/05
Academic Tip of the Week - Tuesday, May. 17, 2005
How to tell a Midwesterner - Sunday, 4/24/05
Academic Feelings - Thursday, 4/21/05
Ted's most recent entry:
Monday, May 12