They don't want anything that could be used as a weapon. YogaLady -- did you do embroidery while you were actually impaneled on a jury -- during court testimony? Or did you mean while sitting around waiting to see if you'd get put on a jury?

We Americans have a tendency toward the use of words of overemotional hyperbole these days. I see jury service in a different way. Whether you agree or disagree with yesterday's or today's political leaders and system, decisions have been made on what the laws are and how they are enforced. "We" The People have hired employees to carry out those rules and procedures, and they are doing the jobs we've asked them to do. When I'm paying someone to work for me, I do everything I can (and certainly anything I'm asked) to assist and facilitate their efforts. No less so with a public employee than with a private one. If a fresh line has been painted on the road, I avoid driving over it. If a public safety worker tell me to pull off the road, or leave an area, or to do whatever, I do what I'm told. If the court system asks for help to carry out trials, then similarly people should do what they can to cooperate and help out. There's no need to fly a flag or suggest it's the defense of freedom. It's simply one of thousands of tasks our governments perform and it's one they need the help of individual citizens to do. If you don't like the system, or don't like the laws, or think it should work differently, those are different issues.

I realize this is a slightly old thread and its purpose is over, I just wanted to add my voice to those wishing you well on finding a job and getting settled into your new/old town. I am about to make a monumental move myself, so many things have changed in my life family and friend wise, I find myself thinking about home and "place," as in finding one's place among people, a great deal. I think undertaking such a change in mid life is much harder as there are no natural new groups forming, like through school or children. And for an introvert it must be doubly hard. I am convinced it is possible though. The right people will present themselves, so long as we put ourselves in their path through our interests and our service. Wishing you all the best.

<Massachusetts has a "One day, one trial" policy. So if you don't get called the first day, you've still fulfilled your obligation. Your name is put back into the mix 3 years afterwards. You can postpone your date up to 6 months after the first one assigned, but you can only change it one time. Once you turn 65, you can request to have your jury duty at the courthouse closest to your home. Once you turn 70, you can decline to serve.> This sounds very similar to California, except that I believe that your name gets put back into the mix in two years instead of three, but I am not sure about that. I was not aware of being able to request to have the jury duty at the courthouse closest to my house after 65, but that sounds like a reasonable idea. You can certainly decline to serve after 70 in California by simply writing a reason on the form. What is odd is that I posted on this thread two days ago (on Saturday), but the it did not show up on the front page until today for me. So I tried to start my own thread on Sunday, and it disappeared within two or three minutes after I posted it, and I attempted three times. I had saved my message as a text file before attempting to post, and so I did not have to keep writing it. It was basically the same message that I wrote here two days ago. I have no idea why those thread disappeared, but I blame it on the Sunday gremlins. Our sister, who is a lawyer in Austin, Texas, told Kevin and me that we could get dragged into court for not showing up for jury duty, but if they did that for everyone in L.A. County who did not show up, the courts would be doing nothing else. I think it is slightly more difficult to get a jury when the population is very diverse - at least it seemed that way when I went for jury duty in San Francisco. A lot of people had English as their second language, and they got dismissed fairly quickly. One woman from Guatemala got dismissed because she told the judge that she could not be fair. She said, "No, I cannot be fair - I am brown," meaning that she could not have fair skin. There were a lot of characters that got called up for jury duty in San Francisco when I got called, which was around 1979, I think. We were not allowed to read books in the courtroom, but one woman had brought her knitting and got stern looks from the judge and the D.A., but it was not against the rules, and so they could not make her stop. It made me wish that I had known how to knit.