sopping wet papers to work with.

We have been writing up papers to put with the court papers because the state does not have the $17,000 in the budget to purchase all the manila folders to house the court papers individually.  These folders that they need are all acid free and are what is touted as being necessary to keep the papers preserved forever.  Well, they are almost at confetti level now so I do not think that extra special care of them at this point is going to change things much.

As I was working through the court papers I discovered that they are still wet from being humidified.  Therefore, the typing paper they are having us use as separator papers are going to be wrinkled when the next persons come to digitize them.  Sometimes stopgap measures are more bother than they are worth.  However, I am not the one making all the decisions here, just working with what they give me to work with.  Between the court sessions is usually a piece of cardboard with the record type and date written on it.  Imagine my surprise to find a piece of hide being used as a separator tag.  I do not know what animal it came from or how it was prepared but it is the same stuff that they used for the Maine Constitution to be written on.  The inscription on this piece of hide is dated April 1802.

The notation that we put on the typing paper is the name of the two people in the writ, the county they come from, the term of the case, whether it is a new entry, continued entry etc.  and then we have to look up the case in a volume they gave us.  This volume is wonderful.  The paper is excellent quality and has a high rag content.  It feels wonderful to touch the pages.

The surprise of the day is to find that there is actually a family name “Doe” and that they really existed in 1802.  In today’s world a person found on the streets with no ID is usually referred to as Jane Doe or John Doe, but in  1802 there actually was a family named Doe and they lived in York county, Maine.

We have finished off one ream of typing paper separating these court case papers.  However I wonder at the practice of just putting the papers from the humidifier between sheets of tractor feed computer printout paper to dry out and then insisting on this acid free paper as separator paper when we prepare the court papers to be collected together ready to be digitized.  Yep! I’m scratching my head over this quirky practice too.  We have opened up the second ream of paper and I guess it will not take too long for that to be used up as well.

We had a phone call from David last night and he says that he is flying to Omaha next week to be with Sara and he does not know when the plane leaves or when it arrives in Omaha or when he leaves to go back to Phoenix.  He also said he was moving into the section 8 home the day before he leaves for Omaha.  A thousand things can go wrong with this stunt.  His case manager wrote to say that he has spent all his paychecks and has not saved a dime for spending money for the trip.  Well, isn’t that special?  That’s typical David………………..he’s on target again.