End Of Summer
Well here it is Labor Day 2009, can someone please tell me where
the summer went?
The girls are back in school, Michelle is a freshman and
Raquel is a senior. The garden did pretty good early on and we
got lots of nice vegetables out of it. Home grown veggies are
the best! We turned some of our tomatoes into sauce and canned
it. We also put up peach preserves and they are really
good. The drought is still with us and the heat has been
terrible, we have had 56 days over 100 degrees which is a new
record. The garden died out due to the heat, lack of rain and
water restrictions. Our yard looks like a dirt patch with some
dead grass in it. So far the pecan trees are holding up but we
are not sure if they will be able to take a third year of this.
As you drive around all you see is brown, the only place you see green
if there is a water leak. We were talking and if we ran the
water company we would send out our drivers to look for green patches
so we could fix the leaks, but what do we know?
This summer, while the girls were off visiting
relatives, Cathy and I took a minication and went driving. We
went to Crater of Diamonds national park and looked for
diamonds. Hard work with no return, a young man did find one and
showed it too us, even uncut it glowed. We drove back roads
and stayed off the interstate. We went to the sunflower festival
in Other than that our summer flew past and I am sitting
here wondering where it went. Hope every one had a great summer
and remember that Christmas is right around the corner.
Jury Duty
A couple of weeks ago I received a summons to appear for jury duty in China Grove. China Grove, Jury Duty???? A little background is in order here. China Grove has a police department, consisting of 1 full time officer and 1 part time officer. As is the case with most police departments, their job is to protect and to serve the city of China Grove - they do a great job. They patrol the streets on a regular basis and we always wave and they always wave back. In the middle of our town there is a redlight where FM 1516 intersects with Hwy 87 and the speed limit is 50 MPH. Seems that lots of folks don't like the 50 MPH speed limit and just ignore it. The other thing they ignore is the stop light, it gets run quite a bit, and there have been some major accidents at that intersection. Our police department issues a lot of tickets for speeding and running the red light. We have sat on our back porch and watched the officer on duty make stop after stop in the evenings.
Well issuing all of those tickets was all fine and good, but a lot of the tickets were not being paid. So the city hall folks decided that they would fix this and hired a magistrate to start their own court. So now when tickets are issued they have a place to go and pay it. They can also contest the tickets in court, a win situation for all. If you contest it, there must be jury to decide your case, and the jury pool comes from the 1200 or so residents of our fine little town. On the day of the summons I got there around 5 minutes early and was told to sit in chair number 10 (I was the 10th to arrive). The court room is the same room they use for the city council meetings. There were 30 chairs set out for prospective jurors, off to the right six chairs were set up where the jury would sit. There was a witness chair and two tables set up, one each for the prosecutor and the defendant, and of course the judge sits front and center of it all. We were supposed to be there at 0830 and around 0845 Judge Morales came in and said we were waiting for a few other jurors to show up and we should get started around 9:00 AM.
At 9:30 with a total of sixteen prospective jurors we were given our welcome speech and a description of what would go on. There were four cases, each involving running the red light and all four of them had requested a jury trial. A short time later the prosecutor came in, introduced himself as Mr. Mead and then sat at the table on the right side of the courtroom. The four defendants came in, three men and one woman and they sat at table to the left. We then went through the process of voir dire where the entire jury pool is questioned by the prosecutor and the defendants; each were allowed to challenge three of us. We were then given a short break and after being brought back into the courroom were told whether we had been selected to be on one of the four juries.
The first two juries were made up completely of women, the third one had one of the four men in the pool on it and the 4th one had three men on it, including me! The trials ran like this; first the jury gets sworn in, the charges are read, and then opening statements are read. Then witnesses are called and each side gets to question them. In all four cases there were only two witnesses, the officer who issued the ticket and the defendant. After both sides have rested, the charge gets read to the jury and closing arguments are made. After this the jury goes to the jury room, elects a foreperson and decides guilty or not guilty. If a guilty verdit is reached, they also decide on the fine from $1 -200. The jury comes back into the courtroom, gives the bailiff their decision (which is read by the judge) and then the jury is released. Then on to the next case. All in all about one hour a case.
The results of the four trials were:
1st case a young man who said he was there out of principal -
not guilty.
2nd case a middle aged woman - guilty.
3rd case a young man who said he didn’t run the red light -
not guilty.
4th case a middle aged man who said he went through a yellow
light next to an SUV and he was the one who got pulled over - guilty.
Things I learned from these cases. If you believe that
you are right then this is the venue for you, you have a 50% chance of
being found not guilty. Practice what you are going to say
before you get there, the two who were found not guilty had notes and
looked like they had rehearsed.
Being your own lawyer is not as easy as it appears to be on TV
or in the movies; the prosecutor who is a lawyer takes notes on what
you say
and then uses them on you. Say the wrong thing and your
going to regret it.
The biggest thing I learned was that being young and naive is a lot better than old and cynical - because young and naive was found not guilty both times!
End of the school year
Well it is the end of the school year.
Raquel will be a senior next year and Michelle will be a freshman,
it just does not seem possible! Raquel's school held a
sports banquet and silent auction. It was a great time,
good food, friends and of course the chance to help the school out and
get a good deal at the same time. Raquel received a medal for
tennis!
Raquel had a great year in school and is looking forward
to her senior year and then College.
Michelle finished 8th grade this year and next year will be a freshman. She was recognized for A/B hornor roll, citizenship award, and is a member of the National Junior Honor Society. It was a great year for Michelle and she is looking forward to High School.
We have posted pictures from these events.
Catching Up
It's been a while since we did an update, so to catch you up.......
The drought is still going strong, we have had rain but not enough to really matter, looks like it's going to be a long hot dry summer.
The turkeys have been laying eggs and we have been incubating chicks and are on our second hatching. The first hatching produced 13 chicks and we sold all but 3 of them.
The second hatching is underway. We started with 36 turkey eggs and
one chicken egg. Midway through we candled the eggs and discarded 6
eggs that were not developing. So far out of what is left we have 18
poults (baby turkeys) with 6 left to hatch. We have posted
pictures of them, we also posted pictures of a turkey poult
hatching. It is amazing the way they are packed into the shell
and that they still manage to peck through the shells, they are
very tough.
The garden we put in the old chicken yard is doing great, we planted tomatos, yellow squash, corn, lettuce, white egg plant, green peppers, round suzccini, radishes, green beans, oriental beans and a few others. We have been eating lettuce, green beans, yellow squash and they have all been excellent. The tomatos are growing like crazy and are just starting to get ripe.
We just got back from our nieces wedding in Austin. It was one of the best ceremonies we have been too. We wish Amy and Aaron all the best life has to offer!
We are back!
Our site was down for a while, we were in the process of moving from one hosting site to another and the old one was being dfifficult. But it looks like we finally got everything taken care of, so we are back up and have even made a few small improvements.
The first major change you will notice is that we are now a blog. Not only can you read what is happening here, you can make comments about it. So if you have something to say feel free.
If you are looking for our pictures they are still here, click on the pictures link on the right hand side of the page and you will get a whole page of updated pictures. Speaking of which we also updated the way the pictures are being displayed, hope you like it.
We hope to hear from you!