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Stumpage Reports
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Wednesday, April 16, 2003 :::
I Want This Job Part II: or, A Kook's Message From God
This morning I was back downtown at the state archives doing research on death penalty commutations for some guy who is paying me to do it. Today I checked out the Governor's papers from the administrations of O. Max Gardner (1929-1933) and J.C.B. Ehringhaus (1933-1937). The records I ended up getting were correspondence dealing with the death penalty and not exactly what I was looking for. But I had made the poor slobs in the search room schlep back to get the records and figured I'd look at some of the letters for kicks.
I knew I struck kook gold when I saw a 1933 letter that began "My Dear Governor Ehringhaus: God is sending you a message through me; these are not my words but His Words; not my thoughts but His Thoughts." This was followed by six-page poem replete with semi-colons and bible verses. A small sample:
Governor, Please consider the Electric-Chair;
Men are paid, to take men's lives there;
The man they are killing haven't done the killer any harm;
There the killer is obeying man, in the wrong;
Put Away, The Electric-Chair:
All in all it was great fun, nothing to do with the information I was being paid to look for. I also ran into an ex-professor of mine who is the Assistant State Archivist. I was talking to him about some problems I was having with a paper on film restoration and the films of H. Lee Waters. He said, "I've got something that'll help you" and found me a three inch thick folder in his office all about a couple of the guy's films they had restored. I had thought I was doomed and had been considering changing topics on my paper.
I had so much fun and got so much done today that had nothing to do with what I was supposedly getting paid to do, I'm not gonna bill the guy for the two hours I was there. But Thursday or Friday I'll be down there wading through the Parole Commission Records and he'll be getting charged for that. Although of course, I'd do it for free.
Quote of the Day:
How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags!
--- William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act IV, Scene 1.
::: posted by tom at 10:29 PM
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