first week in February 2012

 This is the front of the State house taken from the car as we drove to work.

 Bill preparing to do digitizing.  we have to wear ball caps to shade our eyes because the lights are very strong and cause problems for our eyes.

 We have to lift the glass, turn the page, then reseat the glass and then press down hard on the handle then click the camera.  A demanding job.

 taking the picture - handle fully down and surface of the book flush with the glass.

 Smooth area of the Kennebec river ice.

 tidal disturbance on the Kennebec River Ice.

 Some building across the river that are very elegant.  note the viewing chair in the foreground - but it is full of snow.

 a second view of the peaceful scene across the river.  In its heyday, I suspect that this was a very elegant place.

Kennebec Valley YMCA.

  

The past couple of days have been a whirlwind of phone calls between the last two couples and our supervisor and us.  We have been trying to determine just what else needs to be done in the archives.  When we came here, we were given to understand that we were just to finish up what the last couples did not get done and then we would be done and have to move to some other field of digitizing. There have been many groups here before us and today we found out that there will be many groups of digitizers after us because of all the records that have not yet been done or even prepared to be captured.  Many of the folded papers have to be put in a humidifier so that they are not so brittle and that they will not crack when they are opened up.  Many records are over 200 years old and I guess paper does have a “shelf life” after all.  A couple of weeks ago I found a piece of paper that had no writing on it and it was apparently used as a book mark or something, when I picked it up it looked fine but when I folded it, the whole piece just crumbled in my hands.

We have had some trouble with the Rosewill external hard drive.  Apparently when they loaded some messages to us from this shuttle, they loaded them in the more advanced version of dCamX and so our present system will not read it.  I wrote to the computer wizards in SLC and they sent back a very long, and extremely complicated step by step set of instructions on how to get the two systems to talk to each other.  After reading the instructions I got to the third line and just threw in the towel.  There are some things that tax my brain beyond belief and this is one of them.  Perhaps if I look at these directions in the morning before I get tired it may make more sense and perhaps I can do the reworking of the computer…….or perhaps not.

The days are very pretty this week with lots of sunshine, but the temperatures remain below freezing so the snow and ice are constant.  The locals tell me that these piles of snow which are now solid ice, will be here well into spring.  I walked along the rails to trails next to the Kennebec yesterday and saw parts of the river that are smooth and wonderful, and other parts that have thawed then refrozen and the surface is very bumpy.  The river flows rather swiftly here in Augusta and that is the explanation of the disturbed ice.