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RAIN 01/13: Weekend Update 01/13



There are 11 stories in this posting.


Norwich Bulletin 01/13/02
A hidden history revealed
http://www.norwichbulletin.com/news/stories/20020113/localnews/1461661.html

by David Pencek
The snow crunches under Bill Bingham's feet as he makes his way through the wooded area near his Salem home. His family has owned this land for much of the past two centuries.
Bingham, 47, appears more natural in the woods, with his full-grown beard and shaggy hair than he does as an attorney, which is his profession.



Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 01/12/02
Auction recalls state's oily days
http://www.post-gazette.com/businessnews/20020112oil0112p4.asp

AP
OIL CITY, Pa. -- Crude oil may be called Texas tea, but a private collector is auctioning artifacts documenting that the world's oil boom started in northwestern Pennsylvania.
Auctioneer Larry Ploss of Corry hopes that the auction today at a hotel in the appropriately named Oil City, a city of 11,500 about 50 miles southeast of Erie, will draw national collectors and historians.



Orange County Register 01/13/02
Auditors' policies ambiguous
http://www.ocregister.com/business/enrondocs13cci2.shtml

by Bob Keefe
Cox News Service
As bad as they may appear, revelations that the Arthur Andersen accounting firm destroyed documents related to its outside auditing of Enron are neither unusual nor necessarily illegal.
But the latest twist in the growing Enron scandal does show how ambiguous the record-keeping policies are among the auditors that are supposed to serve as independent watchdogs of investor-owned companies.



Denver Post 01/13/02
Protecting Indian trust records creates suspicious roadblock
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1002,138%257E332025,00.html

by Bill McAllister
WASHINGTON - Even to U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lambert, the Interior Department's initial response to his Dec. 5 order restricting access to Indian trust records from Internet hackers seem ham-handed.
At the direction of Deputy Interior Secretary J. Steven Griles, the department closed down its entire website - www.doi.gov - and ordered virtually all the department off e-mail and many computer systems. Some of the restrictions have been lifted, but many remain.



Bergen Record 01/09/02
Harrington Park: Archivists dig into town's past
http://www.bergen.com/news/pmhistor200201097.htm

by Michelle Han
HARRINGTON PARK -- Preserving old things has always been in Ingeborg Nebel's blood.
So it was with great dismay when she discovered a few years ago that dozens of mementos from the turn of the century and earlier were haphazardly stored on the second floor of the municipal library.
"Things were just all over the place," says Nebel, a borough resident whose extended family in Germany has saved personal letters that date back four generations.



The Times-Picayune 01/16/02
Plaquemines courthouse burns; many files saved
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/metro/index.ssf?/newsstory/fire13_2.html


by Paul Purpura and Bob Ussery
Nine months after Plaquemines Parish voters rejected a proposal to move the parish courthouse across the river, the 100-year-old building was destroyed by fire Saturday in a blaze that could cripple parish government for weeks.



Computer World 01/11/02
Michigan aims to unveil business 'cybercourt' in October
http://idg.net/ic_788312_1794_9-10000.html

by Todd R. Weiss
When two high-tech companies become embroiled in a legal dispute, the technologies at stake can become quickly outdated by the end of the 18-month-long legal fight they might typically have to endure.
To speed up such litigation, Michigan Gov. John Engler this week signed legislation creating an advanced "cybercourt" that will use digital record-keeping, videoconferencing, digital presentation devices and other high-tech tools to drastically cut the time it takes for time-critical business lawsuits to be resolved.



The Press of Atlantic City 01/13/02
N.J. public records forecast: Mostly sunny
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/newjersey/011302ACCESS.html

by Michael Diamond and John Froonjian
The Brigantine Taxpayers Association ran into a brick wall last year when it asked city officials for salary information. It took six months and the threat of a lawsuit to get it.
"We had to spend more than $2,000 in legal fees," said Anne H. Phillips, a member of the board of directors. "It should never have come to that."



Baltimore Sun 01/13/02
The U.S. archives' greatest hit
http://www.sunspot.net/news/nationworld/bal-te.journal13jan13.column?coll=bal%2Dnationworld%2Dutility

by Kathy Lally
Where to begin the strange story? In December 1970, Elvis Presley is flying from Memphis to Washington, D.C., on American Airlines and asks a stewardess for writing paper. He proceeds to write a five-page letter to President Richard M. Nixon and personally delivers it at the northwest gate of the White House on the morning of Dec. 21.



TIME 01/13/02
That Old Feeling: Moving Images
http://www.time.com/time/sampler/article/0,8599,193492,00.html

by Richard Corliss
On Christmas Day 1955, I opened a present that opened a world. The gift was a book, "A Pictorial History of the Movies," by the composer and scholar Deems Taylor. But it wasn't Taylor's prose that beguiled me; it was the photographs of films I'd never seen, actors I'd never heard of, striking attitudes - of horror, romance, piety - that I never could imagine. Those photos, known as movie stills, conjured up a fictional universe and a bygone age. They told me there was something else out there and back then, something exotic, mysterious and worth knowing. Until that moment, "glamour" was the name of a magazine I saw on the newsstand while searching for the latest issue of Mad. Now it was the name of my new, and very old, religion.




TIME 01/13/02
Who's Accountable?
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,193520,00.html

by Daniel Kadlec
Just four days before Enron disclosed a stunning $618 million loss for the third quarter-its first public disclosure of its financial woes-workers who audited the company's books for Arthur Andersen, the big accounting firm, received an extraordinary instruction from one of the company's lawyers. Congressional investigators tell Time that the Oct. 12 memo directed workers to destroy all audit material, except for the most basic "work papers." And that's what they did, over a period of several weeks. As a result, FBI investigators, congressional probers and workers suing the company for lost retirement savings will be denied thousands of e-mails and other electronic and paper files that could have helped illuminate the actions and motivations of Enron executives involved in what now is the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history.




Peter A. Kurilecz CRM, CA
pakurilecz@aol.com
Richmond, Va