Year and a Day

Yesterday was the first day in a year that I haven't posted daily on this blog.

I started the blog largely to give myself a reason to write. Since I retired, I haven't had any real reason to write much, and it felt like I was getting out of practice. I suppose I could have just posted directly on Facebook, but a blog felt a bit more permanent and accessible.

Ideas haven't been that difficult to come by. Between world events, local news, things I've been doing, and just random stuff I run across on the Internet, I've not lacked for topics. Nearly any idea can turn into a few paragraphs within a half-hour or so.

The idea of posting every single day wasn't the plan at first. I had several ideas when I first started, of course, since I hadn't done any writing at all in a while. After a couple of weeks, I looked back and saw that I'd managed to put up a post each day and decided I might as well keep it going.

I did eventually start to feel a bit tired of posting something up every single day. I almost took a few days off in July when I was out of town for a few days visiting with family, but decided I'd like to push on until I'd hit a full year of daily posts.

Now that I've gotten to that full year, seems like a good time to cut back a bit on the blog postings. I'm thinking once a week for now. Maybe a bit more if something especially interesting is going on. In any event, I don't plan to stop entirely. Still plenty to write about.

Happy 100th Anniversary, National Park Service

The National Park Service is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.

I'm not an outdoor person, for the most part. I like my comfortable chairs, air conditioning, and lack of insects too much to spend a lot of time in the wilderness. Nevertheless, I have fond memories of the visits I've made to places of natural beauty across our country, and many of those are part of the National Park system.

Congress created the National Park Service back in 1916. National parks existed before then, but there was no single agency to manage the entire system. According to Wikipedia, the US Forest Service actually opposed the new agency, for fear of losing control of various lands being used by the timber industry. Doesn't sound all that different from environmental-versus-industry battles from more recent history.

I've visited the oldest National Park, Yellowstone, on a couple of different occasions. I have some good memories of the neighboring Grand Teton National Park as well. Seeing the Grand Canyon is something that I think everyone fortunate enough to visit won't ever forget. I haven't been to anything close to the entire system of parks, but I certainly appreciate all the ones that I have seen.

Happy anniversary to the National Park Service. May all the places under its management stay natural and beautiful for future generations to enjoy.

Jury Duty

I was called to jury duty recently, here in Kent County in west Michigan.

This is the first time I've actually gone to a jury summons. I've been called before, but in the past my work schedule has been an excuse. Generally they let you off the hook if you travel a lot, and I certainly used to do that. But this time, no reason not to go.

I was fairly pleased with how easy the initial process was. Most of the necessary information came in the mail, and I was able to fill out the information they requested on an online form. The only mildly strange thing was that you had to call into an information line over the weekend, before reporting Monday morning. I guess that was the best way they had to get out last-minute details, but when I called it there was no new information.

Some jurisdictions keep jurors on call for service for a long time - weeks or even months - but here the service time is only a week. Could be longer if you get assigned to a really big trial, but that's rare. Once your week is up, you don't have to worry about another summons for at least a year.

I had a little trouble figuring out where I was supposed to park, since the information wasn't very clear on the phone line. Turns out there was more detail in the mailer that I'd received, but I didn't notice it until after I'd already parked in the wrong lot. Minor issue, only cost me $4 for the lot I used, and it's my own fault for not reading more closely.

Once I arrived at the courthouse, the waiting began. There was a whole lot of that. The report time is 7:45, but nothing happens until a brief intro speech at 8:30. Then you sit around until they call a group of around 30 people to go up to a trial. That happened four times in about three hours, and I was in two of those. Once you're in a courtroom, 12 of those 30-ish are chosen for the jury, and you wait around some more while they answer questions. Once the 12 are confirmed, then you go back to the waiting area and sit around some more, repeating the process until all the cases have juries. I feel fortunate that I was able to leave around 2 PM - not a very heavy case-load on my week.

Of course, there's less waiting if you're one of those 12 people that actually gets on a jury. My name was never called, but quite a few of the folks in my groups-of-30 did get called up. The lawyers and judge are able to dismiss people for various reasons, so you might get called even after the initial 12 are chosen. Sitting in the audience, I wasn't sure if I wanted to be called or not. I was tired of waiting, so doing anything would have been nice, but of course then you have the responsibility of deciding a case. In the end, I'm not unhappy that I didn't get called.

The process certainly didn't seem very efficient, but then I don't know all the details behind it. There's probably a reason for all the waiting around and delays before potential jurors are called into the courtrooms. I did appreciate that a judge came down early on to the juror waiting area and gave a short speech about the trial-by-jury process. It was a nice way to explain the importance of jury service, and made the waiting slightly less annoying.

That's a civic duty discharged for at least another year. I know it's important, but I'm OK with having done nothing more than spend a few hours sitting around and waiting.

Power Outage

Lost power recently for about 90 minutes in the early evening. I couldn't help but be reminded of this bit of genius:

A quick Internet search didn't turn up the info of where it was originally from, but I know it's several years old at least. Anyway, kudos to whoever wrote it, great bit of work.

Losing power certainly brings home just how reliant we are on electricity. Can't see once the sun goes down, can't watch anything on TV, no music, no air conditioning, no computer, not even cooking. Even my garage door is electric, so getting in the car to go anywhere else isn't easy. (You can raise it manually but then you have to reset the opener, which is a royal pain.) Worst would be losing refrigeration and spoiling food, but the outage would have to be longer for that to be a real issue.

Having said that, I still managed to spend the outage time on an electronic device. My tablet does just fine for a couple of hours of comic-book reading on battery power. Good thing, since it was too dark to read anything without back-lighting. Saved me from having to pull out the candles.

My power company sent me an email about the outage, which is a nice bit of customer service that I don't remember seeing before. It had a time estimate for restoration, which they actually beat by about an hour. It also included the cause: "Car/Pole accident." Sounds unfortunate for the car and driver, wherever it happened.

This outage didn't last long, fortunately. Great response by the power company folks, taking care of the problem quickly. But it does make you appreciate having constant, steady electricity the majority of the time!