NARA II at NARA II

So I spent a couple of days in the Washington D.C. area again this week. It was a training/general followup visit, and as always it was tremendously helpful to be out here on the ground. As before I won't get into the business details of the trip, but I do want to share a few stories I picked up at NARA (National Archives and Records Administration). NARA really is a fabulous place because even if you are not really into history (me) you run into stuff that is so cool and so real that history kind of comes alive. So here are a few stories and pictures from my week. DISCLAIMER: These are all unofficial comments and pictures and not NARA publications. I tried to remember in most situations to ask before taking pictures, but overall I am surprised and pleased that NARA is generally not opposed to photography.



The Stacks. Most records are stored in controlled, but not entirely unusual rooms referred to as The Stacks. This concept made a lot more sense to me when I toured the American Antiquarian Society, as there were a number of large stacks of documents, but at NARA the room I got to go in was just a big room with really cool moving shelves. Each shelf was full of boxes of documents with labels saying what was in them. Since this is just my blog, I don't feel bad about saying that I am EXTREMELY disappointed in NARA's organization. Even in our company we have the ability to track a book or box of documents to the exact room and shelf where they are. Nara has no such system. They can't query a database and tell you where a certain set of records are. The best they can do is teach their people how the system SHOULD work and then turn them loose to find customer requests. What an opportunity lost. Ok, that was my disappointment for the trip. The rest of this is about the cool things NARA has and does.



So this is a facsimile copy of the Declaration of Independence. We only peeked, so I just stuck my camera in and shot the best picture I could get. It was cool. I don't know if you can read it, but at the bottom of the page protruding from beneath the top document is the signature of William Ellery. He was one of the signers of the Declaration, and I hear that there is an awesome exhibit about him in Philadelphia. Just something else to add to the list of things to do if you are ever in Philly.

This is obviously a shot of Abraham Lincoln's signature, pulled from a handwritten letter that was hundreds of years old and in remarkable condition.
The conservationist was able to fold it an unfold it like it was yesterday's newspaper. I learned that the difference was the quality of the paper, and that there are paper quality standards even today for any official document that comes from the White House. They want those documents to last.

Now this is one of my favorite stories. I guess that during World War II there were a handful (6?) German saboteurs that secretly landed at different site on the Eastern shore of the US. They came ashore in German uniforms, but immediately changed into American duds and buried their belongings in the beach. They were soon found out and caught, and the US government went back and dug up their stuff for proof to the world as to what happened. Everything found that belonged to those men was preserved, and this picture is of some of their personal clothing. There was a whole stack of boxes of this stuff, but we just got to look into the top one. The weird perspective of the picture is because I had to hold my camera over my head to get a decent shot. Sorry. On a different table they were piecing together a newspaper from 1943 (or was it 42? I don't remember) that had also been among their belongings. You might be wondering why these items were at the archives instead of a museum, and for that I will give the best description of NARA's purpose that I can, although it will be inadequate.

So all of our government agencies are out there producing documents. Those documents, or at least some of them, need to be preserved for either a set period of time or indefinitely. So the National Archives and Records Administration has the task of taking only the most important of those documents after a period of time and having them preserved for long-term use by the public and others. The room I took a picture of above was almost completely dedicated to records from the State Department. I think that only about 5% of all documents that are important enough to be stored by their respective agency are important enough to come to NARA. Right now NARA is over 1 million cubic feet behind in processing all of the newly arrived documents, and as time moves on, more documents come of age and are moved. As I mentioned, NARA is also responsible to see that the public has access to those documents that they are entitled to. Like many other organizations, I get the feeling that they are often struggling to really figure out the best way to implement new technology in their situation. The inventory control issue mentioned above is one such example.

So back to the German invaders: Those items are at NARA because they are evidence that was held by the government, not just cool antiquities. While NARA can not handle all of the issues that might arise out of artifacts such as those, they can handle many of them and being in the D.C. area means that they have all of the experts needed close at hand.

So I also got to visit the vault. This is where even more valuable and rare documents are kept. The door is bigger, heavier and the lock is fancier. I got to see the surrender document of the Japanese in World War II, as well as the birth certificate, final will and other personal papers of Adolf Hitler. Those had been mounted on tough pages and bound into a hardcover book by the British for use in the Nuremberg trials. The book had metal hinges and just a simple "AH" embossed on the cover. After the trials the British government gifted the artifact to the US in show of gratitude for US assistance. Hitler's signature was small and unimpressive, barely bigger than the type on the page. Weird.

Being a Disney nut I was excited to see the Disney company's contribution to the war effort. Their contribution was in the form of two stylized cartoon characters meant to be logos/mascots for various military regiments. They were cool to see (complete with Walt's signature) but they were definitely off limits to my camera. Disney was smart from day one and I don't think he relinquished rights to anything he ever produced. In the the early forties he licensed those images to the government. Brilliant.

So those are a few highlights from my trip. As I said, it was educational, both from a business standpoint and in a personal sense. Being back east makes both history in general more real and our country's heritage more meaningful.

Setting the car on fire -- Do I need a better title than that?

People have asked, and since I don't want to offend either of my readers (you and that other person) I can't help but tell my set-the-car-on-fire story. I can't believe I am publishing this.

So to make myself feel better, I will start out by blaming my wife. She is beautiful, smart and a pretty good cook when she wants to be, but she is the one who left the DVD player on in our van a month ago and sucked the life out of the battery. Of course, by the end you will see that this weak attempt to shift the blame is trash because I more or less prove that the fire and the dead battery aren't related, but for now let's just go with it. It wasn't my fault.

Being a good husband, I hurried home and parked my father-in-law's red Cadillac nice and close to the van, hoping to make quick work of this task. While I haven't spent a lot of time under the hood lately, I am definitely experienced at using jumper cables, and so I popped both hoods and hooked the cables up. No, there weren't any sparks. I had parked so close that I had to turn sideways to slide between the cars and into the driver's seat of the van. The key turned. The engine started. Still no sparks. Everything was going according to plan.

I slid back out of the driver's seat and back between the cars. I removed the cables. No sparks. I completed the whole process with my bare hands. Nothing but cold metal. I shut the hoods. I turn off the Caddy. I start coiling up my extra-long (and therefore very convenient) jumper cables when I smell something. Something electrical. I turn around and there is a trickle of smoke coming from underneath the hood of the my father-in-law's car. My first thought was that I had let it idle too long and it had overheated or something. I was contemplating this option when the smoke became worse, and I decided I should take a look. I pop the hood. A small orange flame was burning something on the left side of the engine, the same side as the battery, but not really next to the battery. A small (1/4" +/-) pipe was glowing red hot, but I didn't recognize what it was.

So this is where I have no excuse for myself. I panicked. Somewhere I remembered somebody telling me that the fuzzy stuff under the hood was meant to fall off if there was a fire and smother it, thereby saving the engine. Yes, I have been appropriately taunted for this since then, but as I stared at the growing orange flame, right next to a gasoline powered engine, I just wasn't quite thinking clearly. So I slammed the hood shut. This was an internal combustion engine, and I wanted to keep it that way.

Those of you who know me know that I am a deeply caring individual, and the welfare of others is always on the top of my list. Interestingly, since the flame was still burning under the hood I wasn't myself, so instead I acted out of self-interest. I jumped in the van and moved it far away. My thinking was sound. If the Caddy blows up in a huge ball of flame and heat and smoke it would be a bad idea to have our van sitting next to it. I jumped out of the van and ran back to the car and then stopped.

Now that I had acted in self-interest I didn't really have a plan. The smoke was pouring out from under the hood and I was beginning to doubt the hood-liner-smothering-the-fire plan, but I didn't really know what to do. At that point the kids had figured out what was going on and were coming out hoping to watch Grandpa's car burn up. The explosion scenario, unlikely as it was, still seemed possible so I yelled at them to go back inside. They reappear every 30 seconds for the rest of the story, wanting to see some action. Or roast marshmallows. Or both.

Now, years ago, when I was like 7-8 years old, I remember taking a family trip over the mountains in southern California, where the steep grade caused cars to overheat. Along the windy mountain roads were cement "barrels" filled with water to assist the unfortunate travelers whose cars overheated. It was on that trip that my dad explained to me why you never throw water on a hot engine. So as I stood there watching the borrowed car fill our neighborhood with smoke, I knew that water wasn't the answer. I had also learned (as a cub scout) that you should throw baking soda on an oven or grease fire, but I didn't know if (1) that strategy would work on an engine or (2) if we had that much baking soda.

Yes, this whole time I stood there and stared at it.

Heather, being prone to action in emergencies came running out of the garage with a 2 quart pitcher of water. She obviously hadn't been on our family vacation when I was 8.

"What am I supposed to do with that?" I asked.

It wasn't what she said but how she said it that counted.

"Put out the fire. Don't you think it will work?"

Her tone suggested that I didn't know what to do, and that I was just standing there being worthless, both of which were true at the time, which made it worse. Remembering that moment, I think I can relate to Adam's predicament in some very small way. I knew it was wrong, but what else could I do? So I threw the water on the car.

In the end it not only a harmless action, but also incredibly lame. The hood was closed, and thanks to General Motor's excellent hood design, the inadequate amount of water just drained over it without entering the engine comparment, i.e. where the fire was. I stood there holding the empty pitcher feeling stupid while the smoke continued to come. At this point, in my mind, the car was toast. If I didn't put it out somehow that unlikely ball of flame was going to become a reality. Maybe not by explosion, but probably a slow, depressing, consuming fire very close to my home.

Now there was motivation: our house. I ran to the back and grabbed a hose, turned on the water flow and pulled it to the front. I was just about to turn it on the car when there was a muffled pop and fluid leaked out from under the car. I sprayed the car a few times, but now the smoke was lessening, and I got the feeling that if it was going to get more exciting, it would have happened already. I had done everything I could think of, all of which was useless and wrong. The adrenaline from the possiblity of an explosion was gone, so I went inside and called my father-in-law feeling pretty stupid.

He just laughed.

So what will I do next time that I unknowingly set a borrowed car on fire? I will move my car out of the way. After that I will go inside and watch TV. It will be a lot more entertaining (for me), and lot less embarassing, and in the end, just as effective as anything I did in this story.

My Disappearing Booklist

I have said before that I didn't feel like my blog has a purpose. I just can't get excited about maintaining an ongoing "virtual visiting teaching visit" --sorry if that reference offends anyone. My personality (red/blue, Choleric/Melancholy, INTJ, depending which personality classification system you prefer) requires me to always have a purpose of some sort, and so I am looking to do something with this blog to develop a purpose.

So I looked at what I liked best about it, and my hands-down favorite feature was my book list. I love to read, and I like watching the list of links grow as I revisit many of my childhood-favorite reads. Often, as I finish a book, I have thought of adding a quick opinion or perhaps just a synopsis of the story, but either time has never permitted or it didn't seem like the right place for that. Well, I decided that it was time to make a place for it, so I created a new blog: called The Fiction Room. There I will be writing a quick blurb about each book as I read it. I think I will also need to start something similar for the infrequent, but important, selection of business books I pick up. At the very least I will split them up in some way. I would generalize it to The Reading Room, but some smart soul already took that one. While there is a link on this side, you won't see a link back from that site to this one. I have decided to try to keep this one a little more anonymous.

Anyway, that is why my book list is gone and you can click through the link to the right or in this post to see the new site, although I am not under any illusion that anyone found my list interesting besides me. As usual, my initial review happened after midnight, so the quality is not what I would like, but it is a start.

The new site also represents my first attempt at affiliated marketing. Allowing people to purchase books through my site, especially those I read and discuss seems like a good time to try it out. We will see how it goes.

That leaves one large problem: the gaping hole on the side of my blog. I love lists, so it has to be a list. Probably my next favorite list outside of my book list is my Birthday/Christmas list. Ever since I was little I have made extensive lists of wants, and I have found that the fun is in the list. I rarely get anything on my list, but year by year that concerns me less and less for some reason. I just like to keep the list up. I figure that since my birthday just passed, now is a socially acceptable time to post it. Posting a list before my birthday would be construed as a bit materialistic I think.

So there it is. All open to comment and ridicule as always.