Read this book!!

The silver lining in this endless jury selection process is an opportunity to read. The icing on the cake was that the book, recommended to me by one Peilin C., was one of those that I couldn't put down.

The book is a look Ed Rendell's first term as the mayor of Philadelphia. But more importantly the book is about the place the large urban cities have in our society today. Are they valuable? Are they worth the investment? The best books leave us with more questions that they answer.

Spring has arrived

OK Next time there won’t be Mr. Nice Guy

Back in February, I received my summons for jury duty service for the criminal division of the San Francisco Superior Court. Two years ago, also in February, my summons was for the civil division of the Court. Each time, I asked to reschedule my service to the week of my Spring Break.

Two years ago, I was nearly selected to be the second alternate in a seven-week asbestos trial. Avoided that one by the skin of my teeth because I was the third to last person in the jury pool and who knows what might have happened had they needed more people. The selection process lasted all of two days.

This time, I wasn’t called in on Monday or Tuesday, but my scheduled appearance time was 1PM on Wednesday. This first court appearance was logistical. Who qualified for hardship dismissals and filling out a small questionnaire. I was there for an hour.

Thursday’s adjournment was at 1030AM. The judge is a very nice grandfatherly looking man. He spent some time explaining the process and then stated what the charges were against the defendants. I am not at liberty to say what the case is yet, but let’s just say that everyone will be doing their best to NOT get on this jury. It’s planned for five weeks.

Usually, the district attorney questions the 26 jurors in the hot seats and then the defendant’s lawyer does the same thing. This is a tedious and time-consuming process. In this case, there are two defendants and each has their own attorney, so we must listen to questions three times instead of two. We had a full day of questioning jurors on Thursday. We adjourned on Friday again at 1030AM but were let out for the afternoon at 1230PM. We were told to return on Monday at 10AM. At this point, I went to the court clerk and asked whether or not I would be able to reschedule my service until June, when school was out. She said that it wasn’t possible. I asked what would happen if I simply didn’t show. The clerk said that the judge could issue a warrant. So, I told her that I would be there on Monday, but I wouldn’t be happy about it.
What are some of my observations? Well, the theme of personal responsibility kept coming up in questioning. I’m glad that they are visiting a topic that I harp on constantly in my job. I also notice that there is a preponderance of single people. Yes, a great many single people may inhabit SF but the proportions can’t be this out of whack. Where are all the married Caucasians?

Lastly, I learned that there is a different burden of proof between civil and criminal. In civil, the burden is a preponderance of evidence, but in criminal the burden is beyond a reasonable doubt. Interesting.

Under different circumstances, this would be called a “Perfect Storm”

This story as so many different strands that come together at the same place at around the time. I am apprehensive about having missed something so as per usual, I’ll set the story with a list of characters and or a mosaic of other things. Of course they’ll be listed in as close to chronological as I can possibly remember.

About a year ago, I purchased a set of Klaus Teuber games at the HRS annual auction. The game I was after in particular was called Settlers of Catan. Subsequently, I began hosting games nights pretty regularly for friends, some of them my HRS colleagues.

The Alumni Director, being that it is her job to know what’s happening in the alumni world, catches wind of the fact that some faculty is playing Catan. She promptly tells a 1993 graduate of HRS about the game being played at school. Why would this 1993 alumna (I would mention her name but I can’t remember it) care? This alumna is married to none other than Klaus Teuber’s son Guido, who is heading the small Teuber office in the US.

The 1993 alumna’s younger brother, Nick J (not the Nick J that I advised for those of you in the know enough to ask that question) graduated from HRS in 2001. In college he earned a degree in marketing. During the years in college, he worked in bits and chunks for his future brother-in-law at the Teuber office. Upon graduation, he secured a job at the Teuber office trying to develop new markets of for the game.

Nick J. and I must have had the same epiphany around the same time but totally independent of each other. The genesis of my use of Catan lay when my Economics students didn’t truly understand the concept of an Economy. The way the game is constructed and some of the dynamics that occur in a typical 2-hour game mirrors quite closely the struggle that the poorer countries of the world face in trying to move up from the third world.

I seized the moment and asked my students to come in on an evening to play the game. In compensation, they got a class period off later in the week. Nick came by and we talked shop and about how Catan might be able to open an Economics market. He came to see how I would run the game and how I would relate it to Economic topics.

The students loved the game, a true testament to the high quality fun and challenge that Settlers of Catan possesses. I’ve emailed my students some of the things I wanted them to think about and be ready to discuss in class on Monday, but you’ll find out next why I can’t be there.

There is a bonus for the HRS Math Department and that is our Department will be the recipient of a set or two of the Catan series of games. Also, Nick stated that he and his boss (Teuber’s son) are always looking for game testers. How cool is that? And more interestingly, how crazy is the path of this story. No way one could have predicted something like this.

My oven mitts now have some homemade hangers

This is one of the many little changes that I am left with after my Mother visits every year. I've had to work really hard at not interpreting my Mom's cleaning of my kitchen the moment she arrives as a implicit disapproval of the cleanliness of my home. It's hard to not hear some hidden meaning in each and every statement and question. I can't say that I was perfect, but at least I'm cognizant of the fact that this is in fact MY ISSUE and my issue alone. Unfortuately, you know how a person can be so unattractive when they aren't completely nice to their mothers? Uhhhh, I was guilty of it at some points during her three day visit.

One thing that Mom did do, purely coincidental, was bring the sun with her. We've been having rain everyday for nearly a month, and she arrived on one of the first sunny days all Spring and the rain has been minimial since. We toured the new deYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park.

Mom posing in front of the deYoung Museum tower. (Dad, I know the composition of this photo leaves a lot to be desired. Guilty)

Since Mom and I were honest about the fact that neither of us was particularly interested in the art and artifacts in the museum itself, we just toured the grounds outside and went up to the top of the tower, all of which was free. Now the tower is the signature component of the deYoung.

At its base, it is a rectangle (an equiangular quadrilateral for those of you who are geometric terminology purists) that is aligned along the axis of museum complex and quadrangle within Golden Gate Park. It twists and at the top, it is in the shape of a parallelogram (a quadrilateral with two sets of congruent and parallel sides) that is aligned along the axis of the North-South streets of the Richmond and Sunset Districts outside the park. The view from the tower is simply gorgeous and shouldn't be missed.

As we walked around the grounds, my mother commented on the fact that every Spring when she comes to SF, she sees the trees pictured below that are all nobby but with one sprout coming out of the end. Anyone who knows what the name of these trees are and what the deal with them is, please email me.

What's the name of these tree's and what's up with the single shoot coming out of the ends?

After we left the park, I took Mom on a stairway walk through the Forest Hill section of San Francisco. It's one of the first neighboorhoods west of Twin Peaks to have been developed because it's right next to the Forest Hill Municipal Railway Station, which is what brought mass transit to the western portion of San Francisco. The houses are all large and have yards. The Pacheco stairway is one of the most elegant stairways in all of San Francisco.

The rest of the weekend was calm except for those times when I had to inform/educate Mom that when I told her that I was thinking about trying something new that if she reacted by laughing at the thought, that it was only going to have me not tell her things. Also, that if I asked to not talk about something, it didn't mean that she could continue to ask about it. We got real and it was hard at times, but what I learned is that the issue I have about asking for what I want is also something that I find my Mom also has. Well, she knows what she wants, it's just that she goes about it (perhaps learned as a way to get stuff from my Dad?) in a not very direct way. Perhaps more analysis and thought needed here.

Lastly, because of Mom, I'm now hooked on Sudoku puzzles. I even went onto my Geometer's Sketchpad program and created blank grids for the two of us.