And I’m disoriented as hell. My six days in Miami already are beginning to feel like an extended dream. If I didn’t have the pictures to prove I was there, I’d wake up tomorrow and wonder if I had ever really left. But I suppose I do also have the sunburn as further evidence. How the hell did I burn my eyelids and my lips, but nothing else? I’ve also resolved to learn Spanish. It can’t be that much different than French, which came relatively easily to me. I’ll start posting some of the photos later tonight. But here are a few things I’ll remember from my trip:
Eating lunch at a seaside restaurant on Islamorada in the Florida Keys
Sipping hot, sweet cafe cubano at a little bakery on Calle Ocho
Dipping my feet in the Atlantic Ocean
Talking to two very animated African-American women on the front porch of my hotel until 2 in the morning
Sitting on a beach chair and feeling sand under my fingertips
Spending way too much money on a Versace shirt
Eating dinner with my new friend Elizabeth (I’ll explain this one in more detail later)
Gazing at the streaks of neon scattered across the streets of South Beach from my hotel roof.
So, did y’all miss me?

So I deposited the check I got from the state for my jury duty last month. It was a nice little eighty dollar surprise for a day and a half of nothing more than watching a video, reading a book and answering 24 extremely personal questions in front of 75 people. I had almost forgotten about it completely when that check came in (and in a very official envelope from the state, I thought I was in real trouble when I first saw it).
The experience wasn’t much. I was subjected to a video of Ed Bradley telling me how serving on a jury wasn’t just a civic duty of mine, but it was also a civic honor, which could only score an eye roll from me. I can handle jury duty, it’s just when I’m being patronized that I get irritated.
So as I noted, it ended after I went up to the courtroom and answered a bunch of questions about myself to first the presiding judge, and then the two attorneys in the case. It was a case about a guy who got nailed on Interstate 87 with 10 pounds of marijuana in his car. Police here have been pretty rough on the Interstate recently, since my exit is no more than 75 miles from the border. But I digress.
New York State’s a no exemption state, meaning that there are no automatic exemptions from jury duty, unlike other states where I’ve lived, so apparently private attorneys, police officers, prosecutors, convicted felons and even judges may be called on occasion to serve on a jury, but as I was sitting in the box answering questions about myself, I couldn’t help but wonder if de facto exemptions still exist.
The judge asked me about my attending law school, and my work for a judge, and about the criminal cases that the judge oversaw, and I realized quickly while I was answering those questions that there was no way that either of those two attorneys would want me on that jury. While none of the questions were especially probing or personal, there would have been too many risks they couldn’t have accounted for by having me in there, and this wasn’t because my situation was unusual; the same could be said about anyone who had gone to law school.
So when the attorneys came back after spending some time with the judge in the judge’s chambers, I was told I could go home and that my jury duty had been fulfilled. I had not been selected for the jury. So off I went, eighty dollars richer for having spent two days hanging around the Essex County courthouse.
But I have to wonder if the no-exemption rule was just in place to give the appearance of equity that simply doesn’t exist. Two answers for two questions from me and I’ll never see the inside of a jury room. The same probably could be said about the convicted felon down the row from me, who was also dismissed (from answers to different questions, of course :p). So was this nothing more than an elaborate waste of everyone’s time just to give the public the incorrect impression that “no one is exempt from jury service”?
I’ll have to write my senator.
But there was another interesting thing that I noticed during my brief stay. As all 180 of us prospective jurors sat in our waiting room, I overheard plenty of grousing about having to come in for the service. But upon the judge asking us questions about ourselves, not one of us took the easy opportunity to get out of it. Here’s the example for me, which did not differ in any practical sense from anyone else examined as I was there:
The template questions asked me if I had any members of my family or close friends who worked in law enforcement. I have a cousin who works as a deputy for a sheriff in Arizona, and another who is an FBI agent (who actually spent time busting large scale marijuana producers, but I was not asked about that specifically) and told this to the judge. He asked me if I felt that my relationship to either of my cousins might affect my ability to fairly consider the case of the guy busted with pot in his car. I could have said “yes”, of course. Hell, everyone there who had a family member or friend in law enforcement could have said yes to this question, and been assured an easy one way ticket out of the process. But none of us did. Not one.
I guess Ed Bradley and his “civic honor” really got to us.
Next week I plan to volunteer to help out at the Lake Placid Film Festival. Martin Scorsese’s going to be coming this year, so it looks like quite an event.

At the same time, Miami feels like a foreign land and completely familiar. My hotel is a ten minute walk from the ocean. I spent much of yesterday and today along the beach. Yesterday felt like being inside a wind tunnel because of the strong ocean gusts. But I still somehow managed to get a little sunburnt. The architecture in South Beach is like nothing we have in the midwest. Everything is clean shapes and lines. Lots of circles and squares.
And the women. My God, the women. Physically, they aren’t that much different than women anywhere else, but they dress and carry themselves in a way that demands attention and a little awe. I think midwesterners have a certain sense of discretion about their own bodies that simply doesn’t exist here. I experienced a little culture shock when I started seeing topless women on the beach. I had to catch myself because I think I was gawking more than once while walking along the beach. At lunch, we were sitting at a sidewalk restaurant on Lincoln Drive when an absolutely beautiful woman with long hair and olive skin walked by. She looked at me and I looked at her and she smiled so brilliantly and I was filled with a bittersweet longing for the rest of the afternoon.
Don’t know when I will write again. Maybe not until Tuesday.

Writer’s block has always plagued me since the early days, back when I was using PFS:Write and hoping to God that the save function didn’t render my entire document unusable, (Those were the days) so my current trepidation and inability to write much of anything is decidedly familiar.
But I get ahead of myself. I’m Charles Whitney. I’m 32 years old and I live in the idyllic hamlet of Keene Valley, New York. Mark and I got to know each other when we were tossed into the same first year section at the U of M back in 1995. We became friends because he always seemed to be hanging out in the break room whenever we didn’t have class, and that’s where I’d go whenever I didn’t want to spend my free time up in the library (which was distressingly often, looking back at it now).
Which has me wondering if I’ll look back at this guest blog debut with similar distress. Oh well. I’m here now, deal with it. I’ll dig up something a bit more interesting tomorrow.

Goddamnit. Something had to come along and foul up my mood before vacation. On Friday, I received a letter from my condo association saying I owed $900 in overdue association fees. I figure it must be a mistake because I always pay my fees on time. I call the management company this morning to straighten things out. I discover that my association fees had been raised by $20/month in January. January, 2003. Why did I never find out about this? Because they were still sending billing statements to the previous owner of my place. So I’ve been unknowingly racking up late fees for over a year now. The management company waived the late fees after realizing their fuck-up, but insisted I had to pay the remaining $300 and some dollars. I wrote a letter of appeal to our Board, so we’ll see what happens. If I had a little less dignity, I’d play the “poor cripple” card, but I can’t bring myself to do that. I refuse to let this affect my trip, so I may just have to resort to a couple drug runs to Mexico. After all, who’s going to search the inside of my ventilator? Or I may have to start producing and selling some amateur porn on the Internet. Other ideas on how I can make some quick cash?
You know, I’d like to think that Richard Clarke’s allegations regarding the Bush Administration’s pre-9/11 handling of counter-terrorism will piss off a lot of voters, but I think so much of this comes across as too wonky for the average American. It gives something for the talking heads to joust back and forth, but I think most people just want to know whether they’ll have a job in six months and how the hell they’ll pay for the next hike in their health insurance costs. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Kerry can find a way to spin it so that people sit up and start asking questions. But I’m not optimistic.