Elizabeth Skene

I’m lucky to be married to a wonderful man who not only loves to cook, but doesn’t mind doing the dishes. I’m definitely spoiled. He often writes about the delicious things he makes, which you can check out on his blog. Well last night I took it upon myself to make dinner & I wanted to blog about it. So: here’s my 90% all-local chips & cheese & salsa dinner! Just wait until I’m on Top Chef – I’ll be making toast & cereal!! Fancy!

Chips: Better Made, Detroit, MI
Cheese: Meijer, Grand Rapids, MI
Beer: Founders, Grand Rapids, MI
Salsa: not local
[It was still delicious, even if it wasn't very impressive]

I came across some really cool seaweed specimens from Japan the other day:

Until I’m able to get on a plane, I’ll be satisfying my wanderlust by virtually traveling the Trans-Siberian railway. This joint project by Google & the Russian Railways not only lets you watch the scenery roll by, but you can listen to the rumble of the wheels, some Russian literature or a Russian radio station on your journey.

I started this post at 8:30 this morning & I’m just now finishing it up. I’ve had a hard time concentrating today – my head is foggy, my throat hurts & my sinuses are feeling crummy. Despite that, today was wonderfully sunny & I spent a lot of time walking around campus enjoying it.

Instead of attempting to write anything else, I’ll leave you with a photo of the city I’ll be in 70 days from now. [!!!!]

Photo by Jeff Werner, used under a Creative Commons license.

The snow has come as promised! Joel’s work has already closed for tomorrow & I’ll be taking the day off work [since everyone else probably will], which means SNOW DAY!! So exciting!

Today at work I came across the oldest plant I’ve seen so far, from 1870:

According to the annotation tag, it’s hyoscyamus niger & was collected in nearby, in Detroit. Not familiar with the plant, I looked it up & this is what I learned [& it's really interesting!!]:

Henbane (Hyoscyamus niger), also known as stinking nightshade, is a plant of the family Solanaceae that originated in Eurasia, though it is now globally distributed.

It was historically used in combination with other plants, such as mandrake, deadly nightshade, and datura as an anaesthetic potion, as well as for its psychoactive properties in “magic brews.” These psychoactive properties include visual hallucinations and a sensation of flight.

It was sometimes one of the ingredients in grut, traditionally used in beers as a flavouring, until replaced by hops in the 11th to 16th centuries.

Henbane is thought to have been the “hebenon” poured into the ear of Hamlet’s father.

I’m also working on another project at work where I’m putting bryophyte  specimens [non-vascular plants, like moss] from Greenland into new packets & gluing the labels onto the front. These specimens were collected in the 1950s.

Plans are settled for the ASB/conference conflict – I’ll work at half day at the National Library of Medicine on Friday, fly out of Washington National at 4pm, land in Indy at 6pm & drive to Bloomington where we’ll spend the night & I’ll present the next day. I bought the plane ticket & booked the hotel room & it feels great to have those crossed off my list.

Lately, my thoughts frequently drift to the fertile crescent & this beautiful library.
It’s only about 4 months away, Insha’Allah…

While I’ve been writing this, Gwen has come & perched herself on my shoulder. She’s adorable.

Time to do homework & watch the snowflakes fall.

Oh I really, really [really] want to go to this:
Preserving the Memory of the World International Symposium

Inspired by UNESCO’s Memory of the World Program, the Association of Canadian Archivists UBC Student Chapter is organizing a seminar and conference aimed to opening an interdisciplinary dialogue among the custodians of the world documentary heritage—librarians, archivists, documentalists and museum curators—and the users of such heritage.

Even though any travel is completely out of our budget, I checked flights & they’re about $500. I sent an email to the SI Student Affairs office asking if there were travel grants to attend a conference, but not present [there wasn't a call for papers, otherwise I'd happily send off my archives/cultural genocide one]. While it’s all very unlikely, it doesn’t hurt to try.

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I’ve been working on an interesting project at work. Last week I was given the contents of a drawer from the herbarium, containing the work of a researcher & told “find out what’s in here.” Since a typical archivist task is to describe & arrange offices/drawers/papers, I was excited for my first “real” chance to practice my profession.

It’s a collection of field journals & various photographs from Stephen White, [who I was unable to locate in Google] who collected primarily between 1939 & 1942 in Texas, Mexico & Central America. When he passed away, the University herbarium was the recipient of the  journals & photos he had taken during that time. Within the collection are various pieces of ephemera [postcards, fliers, library materials]. Today, a researcher is studying the same areas as White did 70 years ago & any information we have in White’s collection about the plant life will be helpful. And so, I was given the drawer of materials & got to work. It has been one of my favorite projects to date.

The not-so-fun part of this project involved standing at a copy machine for about 4 hours making duplicates of the journals. On the bright side, I was able to listen to a lot of podcasts, specically a few TED talks & Radiolabs.

If you’ve never listened to Radiolab, I highly recommend that you give it a try. The episode I listened to today is a good start. It’s called Yellow Fluff and Other Curious Encounters & in it you’ll hear Oliver Sacks convince you that the periodic table of elements is beautiful, about fields of yellow fluff under the ice near Greenland & about a man who had a botfly larva growing in his scalp & the affection he felt for it. It’s all fascinating.

What are your favorite podcasts??

When I tell people I work at the university herbarium as a museum assistant & that we maintain a collection of approximately 1,700,000 plant specimens for study, no one really has any idea what I’m talking about. Really, I didn’t either until I was hired &, four months later, I’m still learning a lot about the herbarium & the types of work they do.

Yesterday I took the camera to work with me & took some photos.
[Having a new camera is so exciting!!]

Some day to day tasks at the herbarium.

Continue reading

Guess what:
Work was really interesting today! So much so that I lost track of time & left 45 minutes later than I was scheduled to!

As a museum assistant at the herbarium, most of my responsibilities involve preparing plant specimens to be shipped out on loan or handling specimens that have been returned. Usually they’re quiet, simple tasks that allow for me to listen to podcasts, drink coffee & daydream about moving across the ocean. However, today, after catching up on those duties, I got to start on a really interesting project.

The university had a number of specimens out on loan in New Orleans with Hurricane Katrina hit. Although the specimens were inside a freezer, they still suffered a great deal of water damage and mold growth. They were eventually returned, but most have significant damage. Today I was given the stack of damaged specimens, a tiny paint brush, some tweezers & got to work cleaning them up. It was actually a lot of fun & I took some pictures with my phone:

my desk, with a begonia

working on a specimen

specimen with mold & water damage

cleaned & ready for remounting

So far, the majority of the specimen were gathered in the 1950′s in Nayarit, Mexico.

This type of work really appeals to my crafy nature & is the reason I wanted to do preservation as another school specialization. However, I’m glad to be doing community informatics since people will always be my passion and preservation & conservation will always be available as hobbies. Regardless, it definitely made my day at work & I hope to get more similar projects!

I just realized that Christmas is next week!! That came up fast.
Today we stressed a bit trying to figure out what to do with our dog while we’re visiting my family. My mom’s condo association doesn’t allow big dogs [even if he is the gentlest puppy, he's still a 90lb labrador to them...] & my dad offered to take him, but he lives almost an hour out of the way, which would mean extra trips & extra gas money. I wish it was acceptable to take him everywhere. He would love it too, I’m sure.

Gwen just climbed into my backpack. Too bad school is over & I can’t bring her with me!

Time to finished up this homework & cuddle up in front of the fire & read the new issue of Archival Outlook that came yesterday!

Also, I wish I knew this snowshower [Geo. Fairchild, President of the Oritani Snowshoe Club of New York] in real life, he looks pretty awesome.

Ciao!