what I agreed to today:
“You each do swear that, without respect of persons or favor of any person, you will well and truly try, and true deliverance make, between the State of Minnesota and the defendant, according to law and the evidence give you in court. So help you God.”
While I don’t personally care much for that very last bit, I must say the rest has a certain ring to it. My favorite part was the alliteration in the middle there: “you will well and truly try, and true deliverance make.” It’s actually quite nice. I didn’t expect any beauty from the oath, I’ve got to confess.
I should neither have expected any from the courtroom. Hennepin County courtrooms are not beautiful. They are carpeted. With graying, fraying, industrially ugly carpet.
Also, the lighting is awful. There’s this weird waffled ceiling, and recessed somewhere down at the bottom of each waffle indent, where the syrup should be, are horrible garish fluorescent lights.
On the other hand, the walk to the Hennepin County Government Center was lovely and refreshing. I am never up early, and I am especially never out early. (Please note that, for me, “early” means before 8:45 A.M. And frankly, that’s still pretty “early.”) I am also never in the governmenty part of town. I’m more in the warehousey part. These two things effectively combine to make it so that I rarely see or am exposed to any of the following things:
- “early” morning sun. Today it shone from behind City Hall, a magnificent green-roofed castle that stands across the street from the government center.
- people in suits. People in the warehousey part of town tend more toward jeans and black sweaters and black tights and there’s basically lots and lots of black but almost never in the form of a suit.
- fountains. There’s a big huge fountain in the plaza on the 5th Street side of the government center, very wide and ripply and with multiple geysers and tiers. This morning it looked nothing so much as miserably cold. By lunchtime, however, a bit of sun found its way down into the plaza and the fountain looked almost summery as I wolfed down my sushi lunch and watched people talk on their cell phones and pace and smoke.
- Light Rail. True, it runs right across Hennepin, and so technically I see it every day. But now that I walk down 5th Street (“early” in the morning), where the tracks follow a quick-and-dirty downtown route between Dream Girls and the Metrodome, it runs right alongside me. It whooshes slowly but purposefully past and rings its bells and I just feel soooo urban as I head towards my civic duty.
quote to go:
USHER: Oh, will you swear by yonder skies,Whatever question may arise,
‘Twixt rich and poor, ‘twixt low and high,
That you will well and truly try?
JURY: To all of this we make reply
To all of this we make reply
By the dull slate of yonder sky:
That we will well and truly try,
ALL: They will well and truly try!
JURY: We�ll try!