Damaged books and Trademarks

 The writing on these pages fascinates me.  People do not write like this right now.

 More fascinating writing.  These records are from the State of Massachusetts, because Maine was split off form Massachusetts in the 1850's or so I am told.  so if you are looking for early Massachusetts records, come to the Maine Archives  they are all here.

 Beautiful handwriting.  Too bad the book is in such disrepair.

 I doubt if the recipient of the fine etc. was impressed with the handwriting like I am.

 The cradle with one of these very old books relieved of the pressure of the glass top while we go to lunch.   Used a roll of paper towels to hold it open.

 the computer station that required constant attention to digitize these books with odd numbering system.

 Bill, looking at my lalptop trying to find out if our last batch of folders passed with flying colors - or will our fingers have to be flying over the keyboard as we re-digitize any failures.

On the big TV screen in the foyer, these trademarks are on display in random  order.  So you might see one of them, then a scene or two of Maine, or of a civil war soldier etc. but I did not have time to stand out there all day waiting for the trademarks screens to appear, so I took these photos in the Search room.

 this is the ominous sign that greets you after you enter the search room.  they provide lockers for personal things.

 The big map of Maine that is on the search room wall.

No, this is not me doing a search.  It is a patron of the search room.

I cannot believe where the time goes.  We get up, shower and get ourselves looking presentable for the day, do scripture reading, make lunch, eat breakfast, get out the door to the Archives, do the record capture process till lunch, eat lunch, go back to do capture process till about 3.45pm then shut everything down (we have to be out by 4pm when the archives close for the day) then we go to the YMCA to exercise, then home.  At home I have to make dinner, then we eat and clean up after the meal and then we only have about 2 hours before bed time and that gets used up in house hold duties etc.  I did not get to do the blog last night.

I have been quite puzzled about where the time goes – but goes it does.  Five months have passed since we were in the MTC and that has literally flown by.

We still have loads of ice to deal with but our neighbor says that Spring is definitely on its way.  The Ice Shacks have started to disappear from off the Kennebec, and I do not think it is because they sank, but rather that the ice has become too thin to support someone  walking on it.  Yesterday, in the paper,   there was a picture of some Canada Geese feeding on the banks of the Kennebec so I guess their migration is well under way.  As we come to work, there are great swaths of open water on the river and it is not one sheet of white any more.

They sent us a new camera last week and it has worked great Friday, Monday and Tuesday but this morning when we came in to work, the camera will not work at all.  I guess we speed up to a standstill this morning.  As I type, Bill is in touch with the computer guru wizards in SLC and they are trying to talk him through the process to get it going again.  How in the world do these people get to know all this stuff.   You can ask Henry just about anything about the camera, the comuters or the dCamX program and their workings and he has the answer.  The man is an ultimate WIZARD.  So the upshot of the call to SLC was that we had to go into the deepest entrails of the camera workings, click some sort of button, and hey presto,  It works.  I am always amazed at the connectivity, the knowledge base and the fact that they trusted us oldies to be on this mission and trying to do what is asked………Weeeeoooooo!

David called up and told me that he was going to build a two tier garden and grow veggies and herbs in Phoenix.  Way to go David!  However, I am a little concerned with the fact that he is beginning the garden this late in the season.  To have a successful garden in Phoenix takes lots of skill and time and effort and it needs to be started when the cooler weather begins in October through February.  He said he wants to grow fruit trees like we have in Prescott – he had better stick to citrus because stone fruit like we have in Prescott is not an option in Phoenix.  He sounded really happy about the garden and was really cute about it when he said, “You know Mom, I take after you and you taught me all you know”.  Well, not quite, but I did teach him a lot but not about gardening in the Desert.  My own efforts were pathetic to say the least and met with total disaster.  Prescott is a little better but still not top of the line garden skills even now after 12 years.

Nina left the office today.  It was her last day on the job and now she is off the job.  No fanfare, no prolonged goodbyes, in fact, she slipped away without anyone knowing.  And so it goes – off into the sunset driving her new automobile with its new tires and she is retired.  Her retirement date shifted so much that the office staff did not quite know if or when to hold a retirement party.  We held it last week.  I was amazed that she asked for a pizza party and how many pieces of pizza she ate – especially since last week she was eating cottage cheese and an apple for lunch for two days in a row because she said she did not want to get fat again.  Well, she is so short and extremely skinny that you would have to turn her around about 5 times before you could get a shadow.

We are working on some very very old and very sorry looking books.  The spines have long ago given up trying to hold things together, and the pages are all rippled and warped due to being wet at some time.  The ink has run, and the pages have yellowed and the calf skin covers have pretty much disintegrated to just a vestige of their glory days when they were first made.  They must have been really fine books over 200 years ago.  The ones we are working with today are unique in that they are only numbered on the right hand page of the book.  No number on the left hand page so we have to do an edit for each and every page we digitize.  The books are over 500 pages in length but come to only around 250 double capture.  Each of these books in this series takes us about 2 hours to digitize due to the extra process we have to go through.  We either are turning pages or sitting at the computer pushing buttons to do the edits necessary.  Clearly this mission is not for sissies or as Calvin put it one comic strip “or some sissy weasel tigers”.

The Non Sequitur cartoon this past week was of 8 cavemen standing on each other’s shoulders while the 9^th was at the top drawing on the cave walls.  The quip was “Just keep reminding yourself that 5,000 years from now, no one will be able to figure out how he did it.” and the title of the strip was EARLY SUPORT OF THE ARTS.  The sad part about digitizing all these hand written books is that in the not too distant future, they will be unreadable by anyone due to the fact that today in the schools, no one is learning how to write cursive,  it is a lost art.  Just like no one can easily read Mayan carvings, no one will be able to read what was written over 200 years ago as a record of court proceedings.  So sad.   I do hope  that our efforts are not turning out to being an exercise in future futility.