Duty Calls

I’ve had too much contact with local governments since the beginning of the year. Earlier this week, I got a jury duty summons in the mail. Almost jury duty, that is, since it says “Summons for standby jury service.” There’s a number to call the day before to see if Cook County really needs my help in court. If so, I'll go downtown to Daley Plaza.

The last time I went in for jury duty was a few weeks before I moved from Chicago in 1990. It involved a fair amount of sitting around, and just before we were to be interviewed by the attorneys on either side, some kind of deal was made, and that was that.

Didn’t get any such notices from 1996 to ’98, when we last lived in Chicago, and DuPage County never paid me any mind in jury-duty terms when I lived there from ’98 to ’03. Since returning to Cook County, the wizards of county government have summoned Yuriko a few times, who does not go because resident aliens aren’t eligible for juries. We have to tell them that each time.