Week two and everything is going well! I'm almost done with organizing two of the boxes of the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph. That means I've read through everything (and I mean everything) that was in the three boxes. The first box, I handwrote every thing that was in it - so, for instance, I would write the year that the item was published or written (or n.d., if I couldn't figure it out) and then the relevant topic - say, opera, or press, or correspondence. The second box, I color coded with post-it notes.

It's a good thing that I'm not being paid, because I've been using my weight in post-it notes. This method worked, to an extent - I kept running out of colors and eventually wound up handwriting on post-its. 

This is what I wound up with: 

 My favorite things to come across are sweet handwritten notes - this one was interesting...

I've also found some good stuff from early in Sr. Helen's life - like when she moved in to the projects shortly after Vatican II, teaching affluent students what it was like to be poor and conducting a literacy program for her neighbors. I also found poetry that was written by Sr. Helen before Vatican II, when she was Sr. Louis!

And, since I love theology (and my mom is a chaplain who does lots of end-of-life stuff), this was pretty fascinating: 

This is what my work station looks like, usually - the chaos is organized, I swear!

And finally, my massive pile of sticky notes when I was done refoldering the first box in to a coherent pattern.

It's a good thing Sr. Helen is so sweet. She's got a tremendous heart - it's all visible in this stuff - and a fantastic sense of humor. It's strange to feel like I know this woman who I've never met, and might even have handled things about her early life that she doesn't even remember!

All that said, there are side effects to handling this much paper: my hands are very dry all the time. I need to invest in some moisturizer. 

'Til next time, Internet!