nitratelady

I knew this day would come. I'd been anticipating it since September. Yesterday I spent two hours cleaning raw sewage off of film from a New Orleans courthouse basement. The bag it came in was swirling with brown chunky water. My Supervisor handed me a blue plastic suit, gloves, and germ filtering mask and told me to go to work. I slowly opened the bag which emitted the fumes of excrement, bile, and rotting food, but, I didn't gag. I slowly peeled away the reel, which was sticking badly, into the sink. It looked sad, with the emulsion having been washed away for the first 100 ft. or so, the next fifty with sections sliding away. As I spooled the whole reel out I wondered what made this reel so important. There were people with children, people with people, people at a (perhaps thee) courthouse. The leader at the end said that it was of civil rights leaders from 1964-1966. I wondered who'd been washed away. As I poured several gallons of distilled water over the film, I watched a little more of the images slough away. Slowly and lovingly (I did feel sorry for it, after all) I cleaned and rubbed it down with soft towels and heaped it onto a large metal tray. I slid it into the tape baking oven at 85 degrees and hoped for the best. After about half an hour the film was dry and safe to wind up without the suit or mask, but I kept the gloves on, just in case. So, now it's ready to be cleaned again in the ultrasonic machine and transfered to DVD by the A/V lab. My work here, is done.

I'm really bad about posting things. I used to be really into it, but now it just kind of tires me. Now that I have this blog thing I feel an obligation to keep up with it. To let everyone know how cool, wonderful, and exciting my life has been. And, therin lies the trouble. My life really isn't many of those things, and certainly isn't on a regular basis.

Take today for instance. Here are the things that I did today that I don't do usually:

Drank Hazelnut Coffee (usually, it's just the plain stuff)
Had biscuits and (turkey) sausage gravy for breakfast
Walked to the Farmer's Market to look for Grass Fed Cow Flank Steak for Peter to make homemade jerky
Unclogged the laundry sink drain so I could continue to do the laundry
Talked to Jessica about the mortgage side of buying a house
Decided which tour we'll be going on in Alaska

Okay, so planning a trip to Alaska and freaking out over the biggest purchase in my life IS exciting, but unclogging a drain and drinking coffee really ISN'T.

I had some more thoughts too, but I'll stick them on my myspace blog (www.myspace.com/nitrateldy) so I have something to say there. Maybe that's the problem. Too many blogs, too much pressure, and too many other mundane things to be done that get in the way.

Write me a letter. I'm much more exciting after several weeks.

Pension Application Contains Unique Memento


NWCTB staff member Glen Siple was pulling a pension application file a couple of weeks ago. It seemed a little bulky. When he opened the file, he discovered that the widow, Charity Snider, had submitted some unusual evidence of her marriage to James J. Van Liew. Within the file was a preserved mole. It seems that Van Liew sent her the mole after catching it in his tent as a memento of his time in the service. It was such a unique gift that Charity had letters from four others stating that she had received it from her then-husband Van Liew. She submitted all of it with her application. She wrote, "I trust these will prove satisfactory. Please return them to me." She got the pension. She died July 25, 1918. Obviously, she did not get her memento back.

To see photos of said pension and mole go to:
http://www.nara-at-work.gov/nara_organizations/nw/updates/fy2006/qtr1/#memento

Groundhog's Day always seemed SO stupid to me. Tormenting a poor critter so he could "tell" us whether or not it was going to be winter for longer or not (especially since we've had trees budding here for at least three weeks). And it made me a little more ticked off at the Catholics for letting the Celts, kind of, sort of, hang on to one of their feast days. Today is Imbolc (or one of the many other variations of the name).

Imbolc celebrates the offical mid-point between Winter and Spring. If you celebrate Imbolc you'd get to eat pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, poppyseed cake, muffins, scones, and breads, all dairy products, raisins, spiced wines and drink tea. It's traditional to light candles and go hiking in search of signs of spring and try to spot different types of animals to see if spring is on its way. In many ways it's a bit like having New Year's again combined with spring cleaning. You clean everything to welcome spring and lay out your hopes for the coming year.

So, how did it morph into Groundhog's Day? Parly, it's thanks to the Germans.

"This practice of divining the weather on this day spread to Germany, and was brought to this country by some of its first German settlers, also known as Pennsylvania Dutch: hence the location of the most famous groundhog. The groundhog (also known affectionately as a woodchuck) was not the original prototypical weather-divining creature: in Europe it was a hedgehog. But early American settlers were nothing if not adaptable, and so the local creature most closely resembling a hedgehog was chosen for this ritual. Like hedgehogs, groundhogs are no-nonsense, practical animals; the same can be said for bears and badgers, who were also associated with weather divination in European folklore. If a groundhog sees his shadow on the 2nd, some inner sense tells him it's not spring yet and he hightails it back to his burrow."

Today was not the best day to go to the National Postal Museum. Not because of the museum(it is a wonderful Smithsonian gem that receives too little attention), but because I got caught up in the hordes of anti-abortion protesters thronging through Union Station. There were your usual clutches of clergymen and and women who'd recounted after having one. And, I certainly would never dismiss their opinion, not that I would ever dismiss anyone's opinion not to have one, but the majority of individuals there were CHILDREN. At least 80% of all those there were under the age of 18. And what could they possibly know? Do they realize that they may be spelling out their own doom? What would they do if they found themselves with an unwanted pregnancy in the future? Would they keep the baby, give it up, or abort? It's not an easy choice, but humans inevitably do what's best for themselves as an individual, and with increasing regularity, do what's easiest for them. But regardless of all that, I found it very unnerving and am rather disgusted with all of the adults who would assume these kids are mature enough to handle such an issue and then send them out into the cold to stump for a position that may not necessarily be theirs. Most of them seemed to just be glad they weren't in school and were running around yelling and shopping. I remember going to the Pro-Choice march and being very sobered about what I'd done, but then, I am an adult. The thing that I found most appalling was that a group of them were picking on a homeless person. I'm just not sure what to make of it, and if that's being a good Christian while being part of an event that's supposed to endorse positive values, you can count me out.