LOOMING

I cannot recall if I have talked about this before, but.... SOON..... I will be in the throes of chaos in that I will begin my 9th damnable time ( NINE TIMES!!!!!! ) to be required to do JURY DUTY.  Please do not take this wrong way:

• Jury Duty is IMPORTANT.
• Jury Duty is everyone's responsibility.
  

BUT..... it is not MY RESPONSIBILITY to do this NINE TIMES!!!!!!!! My wife was called once.  I know many people who were never called.  I have siblings who were never called.  My Mom was called once, my Dad was called once.  

Jury Service can be relatively interesting, or it can be dull like dry toast.  It is not hard........ BUT is is REALLY DAMNABLY HARD being forced to do Jury Service in the middle of a semester.  It makes life chaos.  It makes me have to work to make a variety of backup plans.  I am making electronic lectures "just in case" my group gets called so my student do not fall behind.  But, if I am not called, I need to go in and teach anyway..... so it is really requiring me to do TWICE the work no matter what for all five of my classes.  

Please let me know if the following makes any sense to you:

• In my neck of the woods.....FULL TIME COLLEGE STUDENTS can AUTOMATICALLY defer their Jury Service to times that are not part of the semester's courses.  
• In my neck of the woods..... the FULL TIME COLLEGE PROFESSORS WHO TEACH STUDENTS cannot defer their Jury Service.  

The "logic" of the above eludes me. And, unfortunately, it is not really possible to have a "substitute" professor in the vast majority of college classes, because the subject matter is often super specialized and there really are not a helluva lot if any stray, unemployed or underemployed folks with my specialization to agree to "sub pay".  

When K-12 teachers require a "substitute", there is at least a higher possibility for there to be an actual teacher who does not have or may not want a full-time classroom.... but would like to substitute teach on occasion.  But, even when that is possible for a K-12 teacher, it still tends to be rather disruptive to him/her and is not ideal.  And.... in some districts, "sub pay" is so atrociously low that no teacher unemployed or otherwise would take the job.... and many states have started to allow undergraduate college students with as little as 1 or 2 years of college classes to substitute.  That makes the use of a "sub" even more chaotic for the K-12 teacher and they usually have to do extensive classroom triage when they return. 

I remember the first time I was called to Jury Service.  At that time, smoking was still permitted in the Courthouse.  I remember sitting in the corner,  quietly smoking my pipe and reading journal articles and a novel much of the time. This first time of service was when I was in graduate school, and I had a research assistantship that semester, so it was not the challenge it would have been if I had been on a teaching assistantship that semester.  I was actually focusing on much of the writing for my dissertation at that time, so it was not even too cumbersome in the lab.  

Speaking of pipes.... here are some truisms I know I hold true for me:

• pipes are often very beautiful works of art (corncobs, IMO, may be an exception 😁)
• I cannot ever recall finding the actual smoking of any of my pipes or pipe tobaccos unpleasant in any fashion.  Every bowlful was a vivid, pleasing experience.  Well, maybe I am incorrect.... perhaps there is one time that was a bit less than pleasant... the time long ago when I had my pipe in the pocket of my outdoor jacket and I absentmindedly pulled out the pipe and filled it without looking..... and an M&M was in the bottom of the bowl because I also had a half consumed bag of the candies in that pocket.  The M&M did NOT enhance my pipe smoking experience.😜 
• pipe smoking makes boring as hell times (like Jury Service) more palatable.  

PipeTobacco