Return to Sacramento

Went back to Sacramento yesterday to continue my research at the State Archives.

I really got off on the wrong foot with the archivist on duty. For one thing, it never occurred to me that you're not supposed to bring your own papers into the archive room, and I had all these print outs from old newspapers with me with dates on them that I needed to reference, because I'm looking up all these old prison records, right? And you have to know the date when the person was incarcerated to get the record.

So I had to write down my dates on my notepad and put all my paperwork in a locker with my laptop case.

And then you have to fill out two or three forms for each corrections record you want to see. And Lord help you if you're researching somebody who was in San Quentin and Folsom, because then it's three forms for San Quentin and three forms for Folsom.

That's not the hardest part of the research though. The hardest part is when you go to some bank that got robbed seventy years ago and you start asking questions about the location of the vault and the fire exit and stuff like that.

Damn near got arrested on Tuesday.

But it was a great trip to Sacramento. Tony and I had a nice lunch at some microbrewery there, and we got Jeffrey his birthday present, finally.

And there was a demonstration, of course, but it wasn't like last time with the police and you couldn't get across the street and all that. It was Code Pink people demonstrating for peace, and, one of them, Connie, even stopped and posed for photos.

Plus I got some great shots of the turtles. I mean actual turtles, not Flo and Eddy.

Kurt "big daddy" True
9 march 2006