1) Moving back to the City. Yeah, it’s expensive, and I’m going to have to sell the car before I can really live here w/o being in debt, but I still love it, love my apartment, etc.
2) Trifecta of trips (Egypt in April with Jacob, Alaska with Kyle in July, and a Christmas Markets River Cruise through Germany and Austria with my birth mom). No wonder I’m in debt - but it was worth it!
3) McCullum Youth Court. Part of the coolness of this is being in charge again, but it’s also a genuinely awesome org that I’m psyched to be a part of it and I continued to be blown away by the youth involved in the program!
4) My year of Wine. From SueLin’s Winter Wineland Birthday Celebration to start the year off to my Wine Tasting Holiday Party Fundraiser to end it, I definitely drank more wine this past year than probably the past 7-10 combined! AND have a new fave: Pinot Noir over Cab.
5) Other parties. From the party that was absolutely amazing up until the moment someone killed our cat to the end of year festivities, I was reminded how much I enjoy hosting (and going to! why won’t someone ELSE throw a party and invite me?) a good party!
6) Thanksgiving road trip. Perfect in that it only took a couple of hours to get to our “base” in Santa Cruz, and then included fun side/day trips to Monterey and Big Sur, PLUS getting to hang out with my “El Lay” buddies AND my boy. Good times.
7) The only decent thing about Obama’s presidency: that so many gap-toothed, slack-jawed, inbred, backwoods, racists are SO upset by him. If only half of what these dimwits thought was happening, was happening, I’d be much happier.
8) Kyle walking. Even though it was “only” for a Certificate of Completion, he’s still the first one in his birth family history to do even that, so I'm still proud of him!
9) Asterios Polyp. I need to get back to reading more, but am definitely glad I went outside my normal genres to devour this awesome graphic novel. Loved it loved it loved it!
10) Good entertainment for a change. This was one of the best years for me in terms of discovering new and old “mainstream” entertainment. Awesome movies like Fantastic Mr. Fox, Christmas Carol in 3-D IMAX, Avatar in 3-D IMAX (seeing this weekend, but feel safe in putting down now!), The Princess and the Frog, Coraline, Star Trek, Harry Potter, District 9, In the Loop, and The Damned United were all amazing. Tho I only watch DVDs for TV, I continued/discovered awesome series like: Dexter, Lost, 30 Rock, Desperate Housewives, Mad Men, Heroes, and Flight of the Conchords. And my personal “entertainer of the year” is/was Ryan Reynolds. Not only is he a stud, but he actually has some range as witnessed by his roles in “The Proposal,” “Adventureland,” and “X-Men.” Oh, and he’s got a decent body, too. :)
Showing posts with label Youth Court. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Youth Court. Show all posts
10/15/09
Youth Court Night!
So the "highlight" of McCullum Youth Court, my new job, is Court Night. We usually have it twice a month, on Wednesday nights, at the Alameda County Superior Courthouse in Oakland. In some ways, it was about as I expected; but in most ways, it was even better! :)
First of all, we've got some rock star attorneys (the attorneys, clerks, and bailffs are all youth--some of whom came through the program initially as an offender), and it was both cute and inspiring to see them up there arguing for or against the offender (these kids have pled guilty, so basically it's a sentencing hearing). Each youth juror gets to also ask 1-3 questions before going into deliberation.
Deliberation is awesome to watch. The kids take it seriously and totally get into defending and explaining their positions. Again, many of the jurors have come through as offenders, as one of the sentencing options they have is to require the offender to "volunteer" for 1-3 court nights on jury duty.
There's interesting sociological stuff going on in the deliberation room. I observed this boy's high school-age case (we have 4 courtrooms: 1 middle school, 1 high school girls, and 2 high school boys coz boys are, well, boys). This guy had been with a friend who'd waved around a replica of a handgun in a mom & pop store in Chinatown (Oakland). The young man is African-American.
As it so happened, the jury was split between 3 white kids and 3 black kids. One of the black kids had come through as an offender himself, and he basically wanted to throw the book at this guy. Wanted the maximum jury duty, maximum community service hours, maximum workshops to attend, etc.
These two white boys (probably from Piedmont), were all "progressive" and were arguing for the minimum sentence, saying the guy had basically been arrested for being Black in Chinatown. The truth, of course, was somewhere in between, and after much TORTURED negotiation, they reached an agreement.
One kid made me almost laugh out loud, coz as the two sides kept arguing over the number of hours of community service the boy should do, this juror kept insisting that the most logical, and fair, thing to do was to total up everyone's suggested hours and then divide by the number of jurors.
But the "hawk" on the juror then hiked his number to skew the results and when the Piedmont boys dropped theirs to zero, the hawk smugly pointed out that now he could just make a number that would then average out to whatever he wanted. I felt badly for logic boy. That kind of anal-retentive approach always appeals to me. :)
The other thing that was kind of a surprise, is I figured the youth offenders wouldn't be taking it so seriously, but they were seriously scared/worried. But of course I realized it WOULD be scary to be facing a group of your peers, firing questions at you, and holding your fate in their hands. This middle school boy was just terrified as the prosecuting attorney ripped into him for stealing a bike.
While there's some structural changes that need to be made at McCullum, and the culture needs to improve in some areas, I lucked out in that it's an awesome, awesome program that is having a serious impact on at-risk kids' lives at a critical juncture. Yay!
First of all, we've got some rock star attorneys (the attorneys, clerks, and bailffs are all youth--some of whom came through the program initially as an offender), and it was both cute and inspiring to see them up there arguing for or against the offender (these kids have pled guilty, so basically it's a sentencing hearing). Each youth juror gets to also ask 1-3 questions before going into deliberation.
Deliberation is awesome to watch. The kids take it seriously and totally get into defending and explaining their positions. Again, many of the jurors have come through as offenders, as one of the sentencing options they have is to require the offender to "volunteer" for 1-3 court nights on jury duty.
There's interesting sociological stuff going on in the deliberation room. I observed this boy's high school-age case (we have 4 courtrooms: 1 middle school, 1 high school girls, and 2 high school boys coz boys are, well, boys). This guy had been with a friend who'd waved around a replica of a handgun in a mom & pop store in Chinatown (Oakland). The young man is African-American.
As it so happened, the jury was split between 3 white kids and 3 black kids. One of the black kids had come through as an offender himself, and he basically wanted to throw the book at this guy. Wanted the maximum jury duty, maximum community service hours, maximum workshops to attend, etc.
These two white boys (probably from Piedmont), were all "progressive" and were arguing for the minimum sentence, saying the guy had basically been arrested for being Black in Chinatown. The truth, of course, was somewhere in between, and after much TORTURED negotiation, they reached an agreement.
One kid made me almost laugh out loud, coz as the two sides kept arguing over the number of hours of community service the boy should do, this juror kept insisting that the most logical, and fair, thing to do was to total up everyone's suggested hours and then divide by the number of jurors.
But the "hawk" on the juror then hiked his number to skew the results and when the Piedmont boys dropped theirs to zero, the hawk smugly pointed out that now he could just make a number that would then average out to whatever he wanted. I felt badly for logic boy. That kind of anal-retentive approach always appeals to me. :)
The other thing that was kind of a surprise, is I figured the youth offenders wouldn't be taking it so seriously, but they were seriously scared/worried. But of course I realized it WOULD be scary to be facing a group of your peers, firing questions at you, and holding your fate in their hands. This middle school boy was just terrified as the prosecuting attorney ripped into him for stealing a bike.
While there's some structural changes that need to be made at McCullum, and the culture needs to improve in some areas, I lucked out in that it's an awesome, awesome program that is having a serious impact on at-risk kids' lives at a critical juncture. Yay!
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