the venerable bede stores here

This is a gift for my pal Sherry Hall.

It will probably give her a heart attack.

For any of that to make any sense, you need to know her job. She is the Clackamas County clerk. My old home county when I first started practicing law. She is in charge of maintaining the county's records.

I did not shoot this photograph at the Clackamas County courthouse. I had driven a Mexican friend to Cihuatlán, our county seat, so he could apply to get his bail money from an old charge refunded. I thought it would take 30 minutes. It took all afternoon.

Instead of kicking my heels, I started nosing around the little courthouse on the second floor of what my friend elegantly (and inaccurately) calls the Palace of Justice. Just around the corner from the court clerk's office is a glass-fronted storage room for the court's records.

Sheaves of paper bound in baling twine. Stacked in no appreciable order.

At first glance, I thought some of the files might date back to Spain's colonial rule of Mexico. Not even close. Even though the papers appear ancient, the oldest date I could see was 2009. Our tropical humidity and temperature are not kind to even the most important documents.

And, like court documents the world over, once their immediate utility is over, they will never again be touched. Time will have its way with them.

I guess, as it will with all of us.

I am now in Los Angeles. It is early Saturday morning. Around 10 PM I will shuttle over to the airport for my flight to Hong Kong that leaves just after midnight.

As soon as I hit the publish key, I am walking to a Best Buy to find a replacement for my cracked-screen Surface.

After all, I do not want to lose contact just because of a technical difficulty.