| --- |
| title: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12) (HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017121)" |
| source: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12)" |
| sourceUrl: "https://www.justice.gov/epstein" |
| date: "2026-01-01" |
| category: "House Oversight" |
| eftaNumber: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017121" |
| ocrPages: 1 |
| ocrChars: 3829 |
| ocrElapsed: 0.0 |
| parseTier: "external-legacy" |
| engine: "engine undisclosed (ep-nov-12.greg.technology mirror)" |
| externalSource: "greg-ep-nov-12" |
| externalLicense: "not granted" |
| externalCredit: "ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| externalUrl: "https://ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| --- |
| |
| 4.2.12 |
| WC: 191694 |
| my head as a 55 year old memory association from a high school English class in which we had to |
| memorize the author's various works that we read but probably didn't understand. (To show how |
| little has changed in more than half a century of poor education, my daughter in her sophomore |
| year at Yale had to memorize and spout back on the final exam, the name of British landscape |
| portraits, the year they were painted and the museum in which they hang. It's as if God hadn't |
| invented Google precisely to eliminate such absurd memorization tasks.) |
| A few years earlier, I impressed my children at Steve's ice cream shop in Cambridge, which |
| offered free ice cream to anyone who could answer really obscure trivial pursuit questions. The |
| question of the month that no one had answered was: "What was the Lone Ranger's family name? |
| (Most people said "Ranger.") I immediately blurted out "Reed." I added that Reed was also the |
| Green Hornet's family name because according to the "origin story" in a comic book that I had |
| read half a century earlier, they were cousins. |
| During my junior year in high school, my memory for obscure facts and the "parlor tricks" I |
| played with it got me an interview with the producers of a television game show called "The |
| $64,000 question," but I failed the personality part of the test and was rejected. That was |
| fortunate, since the show was rigged. (I still have the letter from "Production Services Company" |
| at 667 Madison Avenue informing me that the results of my written examination "are gratifying" |
| and inviting me for the personal interview I failed). But my "mother's memory" has served me |
| well as a lawyer, teacher-and joke teller. (The downside of remembering every joke I ever |
| heard is that I rarely get to hear a "new" joke, because I've heard —and told —a good many jokes |
| over my lifetime). |
| I not only remember the jokes I've heard (and told and retold) over the years, but more |
| importantly, I remember nearly every case I ever read, nearly every fact in the records of cases |
| and nearly every principle of law I ever learned. I try to teach my students to develop and rely on |
| their memories rather than on their stereotypical skills. During the first two weeks of law school, |
| I forbid my first year students to take any notes ("meturnished"). I assure them that nothing |
| discussed during this "listening" period will be on the exam and I urge them to learn how to listen |
| and remember, because this will be very important in court and other professional settings. Many |
| of the students react nervously because they have never been denied the ability to take notes, but |
| after a few days they acclimate, and some even appreciate, the different regime. |
| My good memory went mostly to waste in my early years, because there was so little worth |
| remembering. We would be given a quarter to memorize passages from holy texts and a dollar if |
| we could recite "by heart" (what does that mean?) an entire chapter from the Bible. Only once |
| did my memory serve me well during my adolescence, and that was at my Bar Mitzvah. Prior to |
| "becoming a man," I had never really excelled at anything. I was good, but not great, at athletics; |
| good, but not great, with my social life, and God-awful in academics and behavior. But my Bar |
| Mitzvah performance was perfect. I had read the Torah portion-"Judges and |
| Magistrates" - flawlessly, because I was able to memorize the entire reading, melody and all. My |
| performance was the talk of the neighborhood. But a month later, my friend Jerry (now a |
| prominent rabbi) read his Torah portion in the same synagogue. He was awful, making mistake |
| after mistake, and singing off tune. It was embarrassing. The rabbi then got up to give the |
| sermon. He recognized that Jerry had not done well and in order to console him, he referred to |
| 34 |
| HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017121 |
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