woke up at the usual time, but it was late considering the things i had to do. i wanted to make a fire in the cabin and walk the dog but i had lost some sleep worrying because, according to one report, there would be freezing rain on the hill. we have to cross our own ridge, about eight miles half gravel, to get to the highway, and then go up and cross another 8700-foot mountain, cloudcroft itself, to get to the steep hill down to alamo.

and i had to go to alamo, and get there by nine o'clock, for jury duty. i am on the grand jury these days. that means, every other wednesday december through february, and this morning was one of my wednesdays.

at first, on the grand jury, they had twelve, they had two alternates, and they really didn't need me. but there was attrition. i went there an hour late one week and they put me on the second alternate's position (#14) where i couldn't hear that much but tried to get the hang of what was going on. by the time it was over i thought i knew, at least a little.

but waking up at seven the issue is whether you can make it over two 8700-foot ridges with what snow and ice is sitting on the road. out at our house it was mostly snow, though snow turns to ice pretty quickly on roads that are steep and in the shade. i almost called in can't-make-it but decided at the last minute to go. i gave myself only an hour and a few minutes, which is just a few minutes more than i need on an ordinary day going to alamo. but i could tell when i started out that i'd have to take it pretty easy over the first ridge. there was plenty of ice though most of it was in patches. there are cliffs off the edge of the road if you miss or go too fast.

down at the highway, though, it was clear. cloudcroft was clear too. i would have made it easily but two things happened. one was a slow truck on the way down to alamo. i hate passing people on the steep hill because you can never see far enough to do it safely. so i hung behind him and it cost me a few minutes; finally i was able to pass him about halfway down. then the second thing was, i actually got lost and turned on the wrong street once i was in alamo itself. and when i got back and turned on the right street, i still drove past the courthouse not even recognizing it.

so all that made me five minutes late, but it didn't seem to matter much. they stuck me in the first alternate's chair, but i noticed that not all twelve of the jury were there - one was missing. later the woman who had been first alternate slipped in and sat in that chair, but i wasn't clear about that, it could have been someone else. but for a while there, i was a necessary twelfth.

so what happened to all the others? not sure. it seemed to me that we started out with maybe eighteen, and that there were about eighteen or twenty on the list when i signed in. plenty of blank spaces. my impression is that people are using covid or whatever to get out of it.

now that i was in the first alternate's chair, i could actually hear more, and i began to take lurid interest in the cases. everyone was wearing masks including the policemen who testified, but still if i concentrated i could catch more of it than before, when i was actually somewhat behind them. Now i wanted to hear how each arrest was made. the cops seemed to want to justify themselves - how did it come to your searching his socks? this kind of thing. they kept referring to their training as if they were doing what they were trained to do.

No matter, we didn't have to decide whether people were innocent or guilty, only whether they had enough evidence to prosecute. we always said fine. these prosecutors were not going around prosecuting people for flimsy or contrived reasons, in fact they'd probably rather send these guys to some rehab program if there was such a thing.

so i'm sitting there in this room. the prosecutors were nice to all of us. two women seemed to act as bailiffs or recorders or some such thing. the twelve jurors looked kind of dead-faced, like they got sick of it long before i ever will. not a one had any idea of the icy conditions i'd faced. the desert, after all, is cold in the winter, but bone dry and not nearly as cold as what we have a mile up. when it was over they shot out of there, to go back to work, or wherever they wanted. i however was starving; i'd forgotten breakfast.