The Subtle Landscape

   …Pretty soon all rose, we were sworn in, and one of the two young men in the center of the courtroom told us that the other guy, ‘The State’, got to go first, but that we should withhold judgment until his turn to present.  The twenty something Rebenesque brunette seated before us had been at a bar, admittedly, had had two beers, admittedly, and the on the way home rear ended a parked car.  “State’ll tell you she had been drunk.  Truth is she’d fallen asleep after two twelve hour shifts and then an emotional late meeting with her sister.”

  This should be easy I thought.  She had declined the breath test, but we were going to be able to see the squad car video of her performing the series of field sobriety tests.  Long story short though, no one thought that she appeared obviously inebriated.  Especially given the facts that she’d been up nearly twenty-four hours at the time of filming and that her last nimble moment had likely been more than several years prior.

  In the deliberation room a forewoman was quickly selected by reason of  previous experience and, well, her ebullience.  “it made me proud to be part of this system.”  Her charge was to help us get to a unanimous position “beyond a reasonable doubt” regarding the defendant’s sobriety or lack thereof.  There was considerable back and forth, give and take.  First vote was six to six.

  The basic contention was between those who felt that with the first gulp of the first Blue Moon the defendant was “under the influence” and those with a need to be convinced that to be guilty the young woman’s blood alcohol content had been close to or in excess of the state’s limit of .08%.  Some never spoke, some (such as me) offered pithy words of wisdom (“they have car wrecks in Utah”) and some regaled the groups with extensive tales of familial yore. 

  All conversation, but for one brief exchange, was reasoned, polite, and earnest.  After another vote, we had become eight with reasonable doubt of insobriety and four with none.  By 5:00PM there had been much repetition and no more changes of mind.  Clerk came with judge’s instructions to go home, not discuss (not even with wife or dog – I asked), and return at 9:30 AM the following morning.

   9:30 to noon more of the same.  We were summoned into the courtroom where sat the judge and stood the lawyers and defendant.  Told of no progress, the judge asked us to return to the jury room, reread his instructions, and wait for the pizza he’d ordered for us.  By this time we were all sort of friends and enjoyed good natured probing for weakness in the other side’s line of reasoning. 

  We all wondered why neither side had procured witness from the bar.  It was apparent that had some disinterested sworn soul have told us that defendant either had indeed imbibed only the two beers over the course of the two hours or  in fact had had more, deliberation would have ended with first vote.  Absent that, the group could not be convinced, beyond a reasonable doubt, that defendant was guilty of more than falling asleep at the wheel.  Or that she’d been drunk.  Hung.

  Afterwards, Judge told us that the case would never have come before a jury had not both sides good reason to be hopeful of holding sway.  That from his preview a decisive first vote seemed highly unlikely.  And that fully a third of the proceedings over which he’d presided had ended with a hung jury.  I was amazed.  And impressed that some combination of fatigue, boredom, and callousness hadn’t yielded a more decisive denouement.   

*I am thrilled that there was not more here at risk – for anyone.

 **I cannot but wonder about the numbers of incarcerated innocent and those guilty wandering about carefree.

*** We were each paid $70.00 for the experience.

 While back I mentioned a project I’d undertaken.  It’s a biography of the woman you see above pictured as a young girl.  She was born on Bastille Day in 1920 in an aerie nestled in a valley of the mountains of central China.  She led an amazing life and as proof that I’m not the only one with that opinion, behold a small portion of her papers held deep in the vault of an Ivy League archive.  Access is limited and they’re tended by several learned and caring souls.

  The lady has left us, but relatives, friends, colleagues, as well as a few detractors are yet around to recollect.  Interestingly, the level of candor is in direct proportion to emotional proximity.  The process of going through papers, reading books, and talking with these folks feels like having embarked upon a treasure hunt, the spoils of which to transmute into a fabric of essential truth. 

  Only part way in I’m incredibly humbled by both the scope of the undertaking as well as the tremendous responsibility I owe the entire cast of characters.  In each of those with whom I’ve had the good fortune to cross paths a subtle apprehension has manifested one way or another.  They know that a tale of high point short shrift would be easy, quick, and likely command rapt attention.

  Nope.  This is going to take a while.  Besides, I’ve got to figure out how to go about it.  I’ve never done anything like this before.  “I am always doing that which I cannot do in order that I learn how to do it.”

*Picasso

**Toyo Ito won the Pritzker Prize.  Read about him below at 4 13 12 and 2 12 10      

  Translating something from one language to another, it is impossible to convey the depth and richness of meaning of the original.  The essence with any luck, but not the full flavor.  Surprisingly perhaps, a good way to demonstrate this is by first examining a random passage in English.  The last page of, say, of the Economist, which is usually an obituary.

  Indeed, the last page of the January 19, 2013 issue of the magazine is the obituary of computer programmer and activist Aaron Swartz.  In it will be found the following sentence: “He already had access to the library network; no need to hack into the system.”  Fairly simple and straightforward, right?  Well not so much as it might seem.  The word “hack” proves to be problematic.  In my pocket French/English dictionary there is no ‘hack’, but the translation of ‘hacker’ is given as “pirate informatique”.  “Pirate” is basically the same in both languages.  So “hacker” translates into French as “computer technology pirate”.

  Gets the point across, but not the etymological provenance and thus much is lost.    Look up “hack” in an American dictionary and you get: “To cut or chop with repeated and irregular blows; To break up the surface; To cut or mutilate as if by hacking; taxi driver”.  Only in new dictionaries do the final possible definitions refer to computers.  Thus with “technology pirate” one would not understand what we here do innately, that “to hack” is the infinitive form of a verb  adapted by Americans to describe the process of unauthorized entry into or usage of an information system through actions analogous to the cutting and chopping in days of yore. 

   This all came to mind while attempting to translate an article* from French to English about lessons for the French from the sexual harassment case of Dominque Strauss Kahn in New York City some months ago.  L’Affaire DSK caused quite a bit of discussion about “harcelement sexuel” in France where it has had a much lower profile and different tone than on this side of the Atlantic.  Hard for us to imagine, but a former French minister essentially said about the DSK incident: “what’s the big deal, it wasn’t a murder”. 

  As opposed to in the USA, the rare person accused and convicted of workplace sexual harassment in France may suffer minor punishment, but not the employer.  Thus, there is not in place a system of sensitivity training, reporting responsibility, and serious adjudication with the potential for severe penalties.  There has even been some snickering about American prudishness.

  The article concludes with the following: “… le subject ne risqué pas de tomber aux oubliettes”.  First part is easy: “the subject doesn’t risk falling into…”  The last word is the problem.  A quick glance at my dictionary has the whole phrase “tomber aux oubliettes” and translates it as “sink into oblivion”.  The word alone translates as jail cell.  So, now, in France, due to  all the publicity surrounding the affair DSK, a reexamination of sexual harassment doesn’t risk falling into oblivion. 

   Good thing certainly, but as above, richness of meaning is lost.  Knowing that the infinitive “oublier” means “to forget”, I was curious and got a bigger dictionary where I found that an “oubliette” is a particularly awful sort of medieval dungeon down into which prisoners were lowered through the only opening.  Native French speakers would have understood the emotion attendant to the use of that word and that all hope would have been lost for the occupant of the oubillette as well as any relatives, friends, and sympathizers.    

*Les lecons de l’affaire DSK, interview of Abigail Saguy by Anne Senges, France – Amerique, September 2011