mind your p's ~

poore, pitmann, and peterson brothers, that is.

okay, i was up after midnight (so so bad) just going through Poore's and trying to demarcate (with posties) the division of days.

poore's is a nightmare! the manuscript is completely random and disorganized. was this guy on the pipe or what?

on the positive side:

the context and wording of the various objections and rulings on the objections is much more explicit. in both Peterson and Pitmann, they kinda summarize what the deal is. here the arguments are transcibed (sometimes at quite some length ~ boy, that ewing can talk!)

the content is very similar to the Peterson copy, but the variations in word choices
are interesting ~ enough to make you wonder whose copy is more faithful. the subject matter isn't affected, but there are small nuances throughout worth mining.

after reading Poppet's cross-examinations in Poore's copy, two things strike me: Poppet comes off much much more aggressive in this transcript than any others ~ in fact, several times the president of the commission tells him to let the witness answer a question in their own way when Poppet insists on trying to strangle a yes or no out them. i did not expect this at all. though it's hard to ascertain tone from the page, my impression on this read is that Poppet's a great deal less level-headed and much more frustrated in this version than any of the others.

on the negative side:

it's incomplete!!! holy mackeral! poore published the first three volumes and the last installment didn't sell so well, so i guess they didn't bother publishing the testimony and closing arguments from June 14-25th.

this is crazy-making for me because all the important stuff in the case i'm looking at happens in the last week of the trial! foo! foo! foo! i really desperately wanted to see Poore's take on the June 14th testimony of the doctors especially, etc.

[and there followed the gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair].

( some couple of things that stand out even stranger than they did before and impressions of Poppet in a different light )

anyway, so now i can say i've seen Poore's transcript and i'm glad i did because it's provided some much-needed objectivity about Poppet's temperament during the proceedings. I have to remind myself that he wrote his memoirs 40 years after the fact and that at the time he was 28 years old, had just passed the bar, and was basically working what had to be the crappiest job for a lawyer in all of washington, and had been assigned a case which it's evident (by his own words) that he didn't want to undertake in the first place ~ on top of which he had clients who were pretty obviously guilty, had just about admitted as much, and were unwilling or incapable of giving him any information to help themselves.

one of the historians somewhere mentioned that it's a wonder Poppet bothered trying to mount any kind of defense at all.

no. lie.

: o p



~ crabby bingham, self-absorbed holt, and squirrely burnett ~
all three prosecutors were so bent on convicting jefferson davis, et al.
in absentia at this trial, that the particulars of the accused before them
seemed to be treated as almost inconsequential.

some mindless closing words for the day ~

i went ahead and got a 7-day trial over at Footnote.com so i could get access to the LAS (which would otherwise require a trip to the National Archives). i mostly wanted to get another take on the missing parts of Poore's transcript. i downloaded the stuff but haven't looked at it. i also started looking for the Branson affidavits, but gave up after a while. with ten billion pages to sift through, i need to figure out a strategy, otherwise it's needle in a haystack.

in spite of the busy day, i wrote about 1,900 words. most of them are destined for the chopping block, but i'm just throwing words down to see what might stick. today's scenes were about the funeral in d.c., col. (pigpig) wells, and a scene in which the Chammy is asked to stand in the lineup (another one of those precious moments that will more than likely get the axe ~ especially since it's ripped off from Usual Suspects).

( and by the way, Poppet (or it could be his secretary if he had one, but i think this is Poppet) had really nice handwriting )

hope everyone is getting along okay ~ i'm taking friday off, so I only have one more day to the weekend! yay!

: D