11 September 2013
Elder and Sister Goff,
It took a little while but here is our letter to you with information to acquaint you and give you a feel the record preservation activities that you will be involved with.
We love downtown Cleveland. Cleveland has worked hard for the past few years to make the city beautiful again. One of our volunteers, Carol, worked out a ‘gawking’ tour of downtown for us. She sent us to several buildings and said for us to go in and look at the beautiful old architecture and then go to the next. It is fun and takes only an hour or so, depending on how long you choose to gawk. Below is the courthouse where we work; you will enjoy, at times when you take a break, just walking around in the upper floors to see the beauty that exists here.
(Note added by Pat on 1/5/2014: photos of workplace and courthouse are by Larry and Pat, instead of Brumfields)
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| Cuyahoga County, Ohio courthouse where we work |
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| front entrance of courthouse |
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| Intricately carved wooden doors to courtrooms |
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| Marble walls and floors, murals, gold lamp posts |
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| Lady Justice stained glass window and marble staircase |
Another view of your work station, you can use the setup with the fluorescent lights or they can be removed and the flood lamps positioned for use. In this picture you can see the X-key on the desk just below the black board; the X-key has eighteen buttons that we use to delete and insert images but the main use is to select the appropriate template for the size and orientation of the document to image. To the left of the X-key is the ‘touch pad’ which is used when there is more than one document of the same size. With the large number of documents using these tools, we can image quickly and efficiently. The camera is shown on the vertical frame.
After retrieving the records from the file room, they are brought into a work room for our use in preparing the documents for imaging. Each document has to be unfolded and flattened, then placed in order by date. When needed, we use a regular hot iron to help flatten documents. After a few weeks of working here we became very comfortable with document preparation and imaging. Sister Brumfield and I share time with one preparing documents and the other imaging throughout the day.
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| Pat at preparation table |
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| Larry at preparation table |
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| Pat at digital imaging camera |
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| Larry at camera |
The Area:
We live in a very good area. The drive to work takes 20 - 25 minutes. For most of the way the speed limit is 35mph except for the last few miles when reaching downtown when it is 50mph. We enjoy looking at the beautiful homes along the way.
There are shopping centers and malls within a ten mile radius of the apartment. You will enjoy checking out the various downtown areas of the villages (little towns).
Another side benefit is the pier across the street from our apartment complex on Lake Erie. At sunset there are people who just come out to watch the sun go down; below is a picture of the pier and a sunset earlier this summer.
Yours, Elder and Sister Brumfield
