Yes indeedy!

It has arrived! The official document of home ownership: the DEED. S-i-i-gh.

As you can see I have redacted super secret double foreground information. We are all becoming use to this redacted look in our government documents. No? Freedom of information is for elite eyes only. Everyone else can read between the lines. If you look at the top right corner, you can see that I paid one-thousand-six-hundred-fifty-dollars ($1,650) to the City of Baltimore to have this Deed transfered to my name. Unbelievable.

This document, the Deed, is an historically important document. It guarantees, unequivocally, that I am the true owner of the property. This system of deeding property is basic to the stability of neighborhoods, cities, states and ultimately the government. I never thought about the Deed before, mainly because I never had one before. But billions of dollars of property changes hands every year. Without the system of deeding land, there would be a chaos of a dark ages magnitude.

Wikipedia says here that the South African system of deeds is haled as the best system in the world. Hmm. Further cruising of the Wiki reveals that Frederick Douglas, the Lion of Anacostia, great African-American orator, and one of Baltimore's most revered historical figures, was for five years, the Recorder of Deeds in Washington, DC! Knowing that it took over two months, $1,650 and some help from some knowledgeable friends (thank you A + T) to get this Deed in my hands, I now understand the other possible implications of Douglas's famous saying: "Without struggle, there is no progress."