The manila folder is found wherever paper gathers to die slowly and with dignity. Its habitat is the drawer, the banker's box, the underside of other manila folders. It does not migrate, though it is often relocated against its will, and it survives these upheavals with a composure that borders on the geological.
Observe the specimen at rest. The color is not quite yellow and not quite brown; it is the color of patience itself, selected, one imagines, by a committee that has since disbanded. The tab rises from the top edge like a small fin, offering just enough surface for a name, a date, a word underlined twice and abandoned. The fold at its base is engineered to a tolerance nobody measured, and yet it holds. It always holds. The manila folder performs one function and performs it entirely. It holds things. It asks for nothing. In an age of features, this is almost radical. It requires no updates. It cannot be discontinued, only forgotten, and even then it waits, in storage units, in attics, in the flat dark of filing cabinets, keeping some record of us in order long after we have stopped checking. Field notes indicate that a folder labeled TAXES 2011 will outlast the taxes, the year, and quite possibly the field researcher. We rate this specimen essential and unremarkable, which is the highest state an object can achieve.