Since I launched this blog about three years ago, I’ve claimed to be a newcomer to Tucson. After all, I had just moved here from L.A. In those three years I’ve gone all over the place taking photos and discovering new things about the city — well, things new to me –focusing mostly on features that others often overlook. I mean, how many other blogs show you chrome bumper sculptures in a front yard or Trashy Divas picking up debris in the Santa Cruz riverbed or where to get a tree for just $5? I deliberately avoided sunsets and saguaros, the two most common images associated with Tucson.
Change came in the mailbox
Then came a jury duty summons in my mailbox a week or so ago and I suddenly realized that I was no longer a “newcomer”. Newcomers don’t get called to jury duty. But just because Pima County now classifies me as a responsible citizen suitable for a jury, I am not changing my ways much. I will still keep exploring Tucson and Southern Arizona and posting photos and commentary about what I see.
The story doesn’t end there
After receiving the summons and completing the online questionaire, I read the listing of reasons to be excused from jury duty and –Eureka! — found one that fit my circumstances. And the court agreed. Yesterday, the mail brought a postcard from Pima County Superior Court stating that I was permanently excused from jury duty!
As a postscript to this, I was summoned to jury duty quite often in Los Angeles. Usually it meant going downtown and sitting around all day in a big room with a bunch of other bored people and then being sent home. Only once did I wish I would actually serve on a jury. It was for the Phil Spector trial — he’s the famous “Wall of Sound” music producer from the 1950s and 1960s who killed an actress. I missed being in that jury pool by two days, which was too bad. I had decided that if I was called to that jury I would write a book about it. Didn’t happen. Phil died in prison in 2021.
