Why Is My Face Red And Hot After Eating

Serial

These last Friday, I started an activity to which I declined for several years: the systematic analysis of a series intimidating by its size. These are big books (see below cons ... volume 3) having, by quarter, copies of letters sent by the Department of the Navy regarding the manufacture of artillery.

In fact, it's a bit more complicated than that: the series begins under the Convention, in year III, before departments are restored - they are just after the election of the Management Executive in Brumaire Year IV. The first two volumes are therefore correspondence commissions departments that prefigure an IV, but in my case, it does not change much. As the Republican calendar, but rather a simplification: we made it very quickly and finally, one wonders why they did not keep, the gallant calendar ... A little mental math to find out if you are under the snow or heat wave, and we found it very well.

What is new for me is the scale of work: methodically go through thousands and thousands of pages, extract relevant information, knowing that we take stuff that will not be used and that one passes in whom there may need one day - at least we try to remember it's there.

I do not quantitative history, and it is therefore not complete a database, hoping to collect enough data to have consistent statistical significance. I'm not saying this is not a valid approach: simply, this is not mine. I try to find connections, qualitative elements to understand the processes of production, the relationship between government and producers of artillery, unspoken of these reports ... More specifically, I photograph what interests me and I noted a few words on a page, story to find my kids. Needless to say I made a ton of photos: I have two batteries for the camera, three or four memory cards, and it runs! Say a picture every two or three minutes on average, is also the time to read the documents. And own the minute is that these are documents of an exclusively internal: the clerks do not necessarily treat their writing, not to mention that they often use the register of minutes as a draft before writing the letter itself . Of the four or five scripts that I found in these records, there is one that is almost unreadable, two or three rather readable and perfect - but it is one that returns the least often. Luckily, the least readable mainly deals with issues that do not concern me. * * *

What makes this methodical work, as opposed to cherry picking (sometimes fairly systematic, though) which was my dominant mode is that it can hang up a thread that documents we had met also to reintegrate them in a broader frame. The drawback, of course, is how long it takes: I'm one or two volumes per session, two and a half by making a very big day, and there are four per year. Knowing that it takes at least that I consult the first eight years series is not won!