Gayle's Update

Oh, my! Have I really not posted a message since January?

I am still researching and writing. Kicking it into high gear this summer. I hope to make a research trip at least once a week. I've been organizing my research more--I now have over 600 entries in my database for the book. I've also decided to go back and read through each court case again. Today I went to the Colorado State Archives and spent 4 1/2 hours looking at each document in 2 cases and writing an inventory of what documents are in each case and which copies I have.

Around 1:00 (when my head was swimming) a woman walked in and asked the staff for some records in Park county. When she mentioned Buckskin Joe, I wondered if it was Christie, a member of Women Writing The West with whom I'd corresponded by e-mail and met briefly at the WWW conference last fall. When she sat down, I asked about her Park county research and she looked at me like I was familiar to her. So I asked, "Are you Christie?" And it was her!

Christie, who has a background as a law clerk, looked at some of the documents and explained some that totally flummoxed me. She has also offered to go over some of the cases with me. It could only be Divine intervention!