Tried to get back onto it right now and hey presto - here we are - back in business. However, did get an email to my friends who might be on the list of readers but will still need to monitor this problem in case it happens again.
Here is what I wanted to post this morning and so you can catch up on what we have been doing.
This week, as we were driving home, I noticed something moving from the river up over the Memorial bridge – right over the top of us. It was a Raptor that had been successful at fishing in the Kennebec River and it had quite a large fish in its talons. There are many fish in the Kennebec and they seem to thrive in the part salt part fresh water. It is a tidal river and so we have salt water come in with the tide and fresh water always coming from upstream. This weekend we are slated to have at least 5 inches of rain and coastal flooding and of course, the Kennebec will be brimming with water as a result.
Two days ago I saw my neighbor walking on Riverside Drive and it gave me inspiration to start walking myself. This morning I went walking down towards the traffic light at Rte. 3. The Rhododendrons are all in full bloom and there are many different colored Iris also in bloom. Last week I went on a side street and took a picture of all the Tampopo (dandelions in seed stage). Tampopo is the Japanese word for dandelions in this stage. The seed have all flown away and there is only the skeletons of the dandelions left but in their stead there are loads of Buttercups in full bloom. These little flowers are hard to capture but they turned the field into a yellow-green haze. At the edge of this wonderful display of yellow and green, is a stand of daisies. They are fresh and wonderful to see. At one house there is a thick stand of poppies – the opium kind……………..I prefer to think that they are harvesting the seeds to put in poppy seed rolls at Christmas.
Further down the road there is a sorry old house that is being worked on. The man across the street from it told me that the old couple who lived there died and that the cat comes across to his house to eat and then goes back to wait for the old couple to return. I used to see the cat a lot but not lately. Perhaps it has become road pizza from crossing Riverside Drive and the incessant speeding traffic. They have removed the cover from over the LP gas cylinder. It was threatening to fall off the house anyway if there was so much as a breeze come by. They have removed the front porch and steps and with these decrepit parts of the house removed, it does look like they might be able to resurrect this house, but not without a lot of work.
A few doors down from this house is a pile of logs. I was wondering where the logs were coming from and have seen a lorry (big truck for hauling logs) taking loads of logs out of the yard. As I walked by today I saw that they have been logging back down towards the river. These trees are quite old because they have a hefty circumference. I do not think they are logging for firewood, but then one can never tell these days. This house also is in sad condition. It is a pity that people do not take care of their homes and spruce them up to make them presentable. Martha Stewart could have a field day with some of these homes.
There are lots of birds in the trees and they are really making lots of pretty sounds but sadly I do not know the birds of the east anymore and certainly do not recognize any of the calls they make – except the ravens and the robins. I do occasionally hear woodpeckers doing their daily rounds of food gathering. In one front yard there are some plastic Canada Geese and goslings. Another house sports a bright pink Flamingo. It’s pretty sad when you have to resort to plastic birds to decorate your abode.
We had success last week with 63 folders turned in and no reworks. Hooray for us! It has been a long time coming and that was because of a string of malfunctioning equipment. The other missionary couple in this mission who are doing records preservation over in Vermont have had a real setback. It appears that brother Duncan was helping split wood for a member when the wood splitter bucked and his finger got smashed really badly. He had a surgeon fix it up and they tell him that he is extremely lucky. Of course the Priesthood blessing he received went a long way to contributing to the success of the surgery and saving the finger.
Our supervisor sent around a letter to all the missionaries in his district saying that we are leading the other records preservationists in other areas by ½ a percentage point. I guess a ½ % point lead is better than being behind ½% point……………but who knows just how many images that represents. He also said that for two weeks in a row his cadre of missionaries have not had any reworks. Yep, it pays to keep the adjudicators on your personal payroll………ha ha ha ha ha I do have a problem with being judged on the business model of whipping people into a frenzy to get them to “beat the other guys”. I really thought we were all on the same team – guess not. The business model is ok I suppose and it works well when the equipment is up to par, but we work with the most primitive of equipment and it is very old and does not work well and at times the computer programmers have not ‘gotten it right’ and it did not work and we suffered. If you represent yourselves to the world as the Cadillac of operations, then provide the workers with Cadillac quality equipment so that we can produce Cadillac quality results. At the Rootstech conference this February, they photographed a lady sitting at a digitizer that was doing a book and it was computer controlled. I want one of them to play with! If I had this most up to date reader/digitizer, I could turn out many times more images than we can with our primitive equipment. Christina, a worker in our room here, has a digital reader that is digitizing the BDM of Maine at thousands of images per hour. How many more percentage points would we be ahead if we had modern equipment? In the same vein, the pioneers with the wagons or even the handcart groups would love to have had a Ryder truck to carry their belongings across the plains. And so it goes.
this morning I received a call from my Relief Society President and she asked me to attend the Fiber day in a nearby community. I went and will post the pictures on Monday when I have a more secure and reliable system to work with other than the hotspot.
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