Thursday, September 17, 2008

Waking up in our dorm rooms, we went to work nearly immediately, as the lab was only fifty feet away. Caitlin and I began tackling the “George Washington Carver clay mess.”  Clay had absorbed water in the flood, slid out of its storage jar and resealed itself, becoming moldy. We needed to get the mold out. We siphoned off the water and left the portion of the clay that was still wet to dry. The clay still inside the jar was dry but moldy, and we decided to take out the clay, wash the glass with Orvus liquid, then attempt to scrape off the mold on the surface. Mold, however, had penetrated every cranny and we scraped away most of the day, in between visiting the local dollar store for bamboo sticks and cotton and containers, and learning other techniques from Helen. The objects in the photo are the items that we managed to complete under Helen’s supervision.