Well, it is out of the way now, nicely on the very last day of February!
After admitting partial defeat and printing it all out, I took Erika's brief to the MU Bookstore
to buy a French back-clip binder and a padded envelope.
Just in time I remembered to take the brief out
of the envelope before the helpfull storeclerk was to tape it shut, so I could copy the address of
Erika's transmissal letter onto the soft envelope which required a special pen she happened to have handy.
I asked if the store might be able to mail it? "Downstairs is a UPS !" was the welcome response:
welcome because it had just started snowing, at 11:00 a.m instead of yesterday at 6 pm, midnight,
or this morning at 6 am as the weather experts had serially promised.
I then held off a pretty blonde, Victoria, who invited me for a free lunch in the lobby -
at least long enough to go down in the basement to find UPS - to be met by a confounded look of a stick-thin
girl behind the counter who apparently did not know that "they" also functioned as UPS. Fortunately, a more
experienced lady took over and and
after a minimum of effort and a maximum of numbers on the UPS tracking number (remember, it was
1225570703048413153, phone 871-2110) I climbed back to Victoria, 2 chicken thighs, potato salad, corn bread
and lemon juice to celebrate the completion of my (our) achievement. WOW!
Let me track back a bit: the report I mailed was the response by my favorite daughter Erika to the "brief"
prepared by the attorney of her estranged husband Greg to settle - hopefully once and for all -
the distribution of their marital assets. Although Erika could not afford an attorney, she responded to sa(i)d
"brief", item by item , in a far more professional manner, and also touched on other items which Greg's attorney had
neglected. Frankly, I was so proud of Erika, that I had volunteered to edit out dozens of her spelling errors
and set straight her sometimes convoluted prose.
From the very first paragraph, where the attorney had managed,
once again, to mess up the birthdates of the parties' three children, I sensed that the document severely lacked
human dimensions and was as insensitive as the legal profession probably likes (not loves, that's too forward).
Consequently, I conceived of two intermessed ideas:
(1) to use modern internet technology and put Erika's brief on my Website - which might save hundreds of trees and, as well,
(2) allow me to use links to try and humanize the resulting document by refering to some specific relevant webpages
among the many I have made over the last decade. For example, pages dealing with the happiness of the entire family when each of the
three children was born, regardless of whether it was on the right or wrong date.
Possibly I overdid it, but I maintain firmly that this is the way Judges and Attorneys should go, so they
can exchange simple "URLS" (unique designation of a web document, not unlike a soc sec number for a person)
instead of reams of multiplicate documents requiring entire buildings to house them.
The use of "links" seemed even more appropriate to streamline existing legal procedures and would allow any party to follow up
to their own satisfaction how far to pursue specific topics ("go surfing") . . .
Of course, after preparing "our" (not just Erika's anymore) "brief of the future", I had to eat crow and come back to the present:
would the divorce master (of to-day) have a computer with internet connection at his/her disposal? Of course, in principle
everyone ought to be connected, but in practice? So let's make certain we can also use our futuristic brief by
providing the standard "APPENDICES", which was a lot of extra work. In fact, I had to print out, re-make, scan and print out
once again each "link" I wanted the master (or anyone else) to see.
So, in fact, I would have a package of APPENDIXES, possibly with
a standard Table of Contents, but wait, maybe there was a compromise on that last requirement?
So, I made a page of thumbnails of
the
List of Attachments, which you,
sophisticated Web-user, can now actually use to click on each individual
thumnail to get an enlargement onto your screen.
Perchance you wonder about the privacy issue? Which one, exactly, since it seems to me that all legal documents should be freely
accessible (sorry, I may go against the Patriot Act or whatever, but I am still adhering to a Freedom of Information predecessor).
Heck, by now you may as well see the original web page of this our own soap opera and click the underligned links to take you to the "real" Web pages
rather than clicking on the [APPENDIX-xx] links behind them which show progressively worse scans and prints of documents for which we had to sacrifice more trees.
