Since I have some 3-4 hours to kill while my SO does what ladies call
"getting dressed to go out" and men call "trying on every garment they
own...three times," my reply to Chuck Spanish bureaucrats brought to
mind an interesting, at least to me anyway, story of old bureaucrats
meeting new. Several members of my paternal Grandfather's family came
to the US as diplomats/businessmen and among them was the Ferdinand's
representative to the US. He presented his papers to then-Sec. of
State, Thomas Jefferson, who, albeit a friend of this ancestor and an
educated, worldly man himself, couldn't seem to get his "writer's mind"
around the concept of names differing in French, Spanish, and English -
for example, Jacques, Diego, and James all being interpretations of the
same name. Jefferson was apparently a poor speller, who also apparently
thought, well, close was good enough for government work when it came to
spelling and even names - i.e., John Smith might become "Jno. Smythe,"
"Jon Smit," and "Jm. Smith" all in the same writing. This has led some
to come up with all sorts of interesting, but totally incorrect,
theories regarding this particular ancestor's geographic origin, etc.

In any case, while our family copies of certain documents are clear, the
"official" versions are in the Jefferson collection at the Library of
Congress, which contains 1000s of important and, like the documents in
question, not-so-important documents. On a trip to the Library, I
decided to go look at the "official" copy. The first person I met was
a/the curator of the Jefferson papers, who acted like I was asking to
dry my hands with the Declaration of Independence or something.

While the file and papers in question are historically interesting, they
are not historically significant, and I suspect my request was the first
such in years, so the "too much handling" initial objection seemed,
well, like (bull) . Then came the "there are transcripts..." objection.
Yes, there are, but the transcripts of the document are at odds. Then
came the "it's on film, on the internet" ploy. Again, true, but the
microfilm version is not clear. Yet, he insisted, HE, being
oh-so-familiar with Jefferson's handwriting, could read it. So he
tried. He got it wrong, but still refused to budge, my seeing the
actual documents. He acted like it would take cutting miles of
bureaucratic red tape and literally, an Act of Congress, to gather the
senior personnel together who had access to the codes needed to bring
this stuff up through several airlocks from some cryogenic storage deep
under DC. I was imagining scenes from "National Treasure" or something.

Well, I thought, vaults and airlocks be damned - I wanted to see this
copy now more than ever, so I appealed to his boss. I made my case, he
agreed the microfilm version was unclear, and said I could see the
documents. He asked me to wait a moment and he'd be right back. I
expected him to return with special suits, respirators, a team of
security people, etc. Nope. He returns in about 90 seconds with what
appeared to be a normal file folder, opens it, and hands me the
documents, which were simply stored in it like any other government
paperwork.

TC,
R