Snap, Crackle, POP Culture Overload

Recently my family traveled from all over the world to gather in New Orleans for my sister’s wedding.  One of the great things about a destination wedding is that the guests can treat the weekend as a vacation as well as support the bride and groom.  It’s pretty much a win-win situation. 

My family members are all pretty much reluctant to hang around each other for extended periods of time independent, so we all branched off and did our own things around the French Quarter during our down time between scheduled wedding festivities.  On one of the days I met up for lunch with my sister, Joyce, and her husband, Ted, who were visiting from their home in New York.  Ted was giving me a run-down on that day’s events, which included several historical building tours.

Ted: It was pretty neat.  The ceilings and walls were covered with beautiful paintings, you know, like that artist guy, Leonard Da…what’s that guy’s name again?  Leonardo Da…

Me: Caprio?

Silence

Joyce: Isn’t that the guy from Titanic?

Me: Oh yeah…ooops.

Ted: Vinci!  Da Vinci.  Yeah… him.  Beautiful paintings.

It was then that I realized I probably needed to scale back my pop culture magazine consumption and visit a few high culture art exhibits before my brain turns to mush and I go all “Jersey Shore” intelligence on people.

Yeah, we’re a cultured bunch.

Stamping out ignorance

Nila, my co-worker, recently began researching the assets for a succession our office is working on this week. Occasionally she asks me questions regarding procedures and protocol, but for the most part, she is on her own in the process. The succession is riddled with various stock certificates and life insurance policies from the 1940s which makes the preliminary work all the more difficult. At one point this morning Nila walks into my office with a furrowed brow and photocopy in hand.


Recreation of the inquiry



Nila: "What are these stamps?"

Me: "What do you mean?"

Nila: "When you copied the Cash Sale Deed, what were these stamps copied on the same page?"

Me: "Let me see that…they’re just stamps on the cover page of the deed. Maybe the clerk’s office mailed it somewhere."



Nila: "No, they aren’t NORMAL stamps, their SPECIAL stamps. You think they are collector’s stamps?"

Me: "No way…collector’s stamps? I think someone just mailed something somewhere."

Nila: "You never know. They could be worth millions. I use to collect stamps. They weren’t worth millions. But these could be!"

Me: "Surely not."



Our boss walks in at this moment and we brief him on the current discovery session and conversation.

Tudor: "Did you figure out what they are?"

Me: "Nila just Googled it. Are they some sort of receipt?"

Tudor: "Not really. Back in the old days you use to have to pay a state tax on real estate transactions, that’s what those stamps are for. It helped keep people in check when declaring the value of their property."



Non-productive history lesson for the day: Not regular mailing stamps, not collector’s items worth millions…just taxes.