I’m realizing why it’s been so hard to blog lately… I’m not really doing anything. My week mostly looks like me coming home exhausted from work, putting on my pajamas, and reading until I pass out. I feel a little like a fuddy-duddy. I let Brian make me dinner every night. I haven’t even been working on projects, to be honest. The quilt is still mostly done, and so is the Totoro mobile
Instead, I’ve been reading a weird combination of romance novels and parenting books, rotating back and forth between them. I consider this the equivalent of Target putting the underwear section next to the baby stuff. Ironic, yet with plenty of precedent.
I have been going through old “inactive” employee files at work, and it’s been a hilarious and poignant time-capsule of documents. There are pictures of nerdy scientists in those thick-rimmed 1960’s glasses, or wearing vibrantly striped ties from the 1980’s. The documents are mostly type-written, and my favorite are the ones that are obviously tissue-thin mimeograph copies that someone stuck in their file, some stretching all the way back to the 1940s, in dusky brown. There are form documents, too, where most of it is typewritten except where the Dean wrote in the person’s name by hand. Or student evaluations that are also hand-written and then copied for the file.
It’s a strange treasure-trove of old scoldings, merit raises, newspaper articles and pamphlets, and sometimes obituaries. I found one for a Botanist who was almost sent to a Japanese Internment Camp, but was able to find a home on the east coast with a family in South Carolina instead, to finish his education.
The task itself isn’t supposed to be interesting. I’m just supposed to run this stuff through the scanner and then save it to the electronic drive. I got lucky that many of the files are fun. We’ll see what turns up next…
Casey E. Hamilton 