Two Temples

When we got home the other day, we took a walk around the block.  Of course that means walking around the Philadelphia Temple.  Elder Syme is standing at the southwest corner of our building so you can see how close we are.  

You mostly see the wall of the visitor center from this side.

Around the other side of the temple is a better view, although they have that fence all the way around so we can't see as much as we would like.  Since this picture was taken, they have finished the brickwork and are now putting up the granite.

To the west of the temple you can see the courthouse and the city library.  We walked along there. (I took this picture on the way home from work in the van on another day.) You can just barely see the top of our apartment building to the left of the temple spire (straight up from the black car.)  The tall building in the middle is a retirement/care center.  That's where Brother Mike (can't remember his last name) lives.  We give  him a ride to church every Sunday.  He has a PHd and has written and translated books.  He even translated the Book of Revelation from Greek to English.  He said he will give me a copy.  But he struggles now remembering things.  Sometimes when we pick him up he asks where we are going.  He is such a nice, sweet man.  

As we go around the block we pass this place.  It is the Rose Tattoo. At first I thought it was a tattoo parlor, but it is a cafe that we're told is pretty good.  We haven't been there yet, but will soon.  I think it's a neat looking building.

Around the corner, heading back toward home, we pass this restaurant where we have eaten.  The Tabors from our ward took us here to eat the first week we were here.  It's pretty good.  The Tabors are wonderful.  He is a counselor in the Bishopric and she is the primary president.  I see her a lot because I am now the pianist in primary.  Love it!  Love all 12 kids in the primary!

On the north side of the retirement/care center is this mural.  There are murals all over the city.  I have been trying to get pictures of as many as I can to post later.

You can't really see because of the tree, but we have a 7 Eleven in our building.  Nice to have in a pinch.

There are two ways to get into our building.  You can go through the garden area on the west side to the right of 7 Eleven.  To the right is where the swimming pool is.  Across the hall from the pool is the exercise room with treadmills etc.  

Or you can go through the main door on the north.  We use this door the most.  This is where we catch our shuttle.  Also directly across the street is where our car is parked. 

This is our parking garage.  It's nice to have a secure place that is very close.  Another senior missionary couple in another part of the city have to park almost 1/2 mile from their apartment.

We have a pretty nice lobby but I seldom see anyone in there.

We have 3 elevators to take us up to our apartment on the 7th floor.

So, we have finished our walk around the block.  Actually it was 2 blocks.  Our apartment is at the end of the hall.  You have seen the inside on a previous blog.

A couple of weeks ago the Tabors invited us to go with them to the Washington DC Temple.  It is about a 2 hour drive from here.  That is sister Tabor on the right and Elder Syme is getting a head start toward the temple.

This is the entrance.  I had heard it was a large temple and is really is.  It is very beautiful.

This is the group we went with who are from our ward.  From left to right:  Elder Syme, me, Brother Mike, Sister Monica Montana, Sister Suarez, and Bother and Sister Tabor.  Sister Montana is from Columbia, South America.  She is going to be a pediatric neurologist who is studying here for a couple of months.  She spent some time at the Primary Children's in Salt Lake before she came here.  She is going home next week where her husband is waiting for her.  She is awesome and I will miss her.

It was a lovely day and I'm looking forward to our next trip.

Working at the Library

This is the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.  This is where we go to work each week-day from 9:00 am until 4:30.  It's an amazing place to be, with so much history here.

When we first got here, we looked into riding the bus or subway to the library.  Each possibility required a fair amount of walking, which I wasn't too happy about with my arthritis.  But happily we found out that the apartment building we live in has a shuttle that goes from our front door to a route right through the middle of downtown Philadelphia.  When we checked the route we discovered that it will take us a block from the library!  It is included in our lease, so, no extra cost.

Here's our Van Gogh:

It seats 24.  The driver, Sam, is so very nice, and the most patient man I have ever seen.  Nothing in the traffic riles him at all.  

Elder Syme riding the van and looking at the scenery, which is rather interesting.

Here are some typical street scenes on our way.

There are a lot of banks, big name banks.  And of course you can't go anywhere without seeing a Hard Rock Cafe.

The best part of the ride is going by the Philadelphia City Hall.  It sits in the center of the city and the main streets meet there where they circle around it.  So we drive around and I see three sides everyday.  It is so beautiful!

That's William Penn on the top:

This is where we are dropped off in the morning and picked up in the afternoon.  I liked the planter where I could sit and wait, but they have removed it and I have to lean against the wall now.  The van comes anytime from 4:25 to 4:40 depending on traffic. 

This is looking back the other way from the previous picture.  See the restaurant with the reddish sign on the left?

This is Pandora's.  During our first week here, we came here to lunch with Tim and David who were getting us set up.  I got my first Philly steak and cheese sandwich here.  Delicious!  

After our 1 block walk, we arrive.  We don't go through the main door, we go through the staff entrance with our security card and code.  

Coming in that door, this is the room you see first.  Through the doors on the opposite wall is where the reading room is.

This is the reading room.  In the far left you can see a door that leads into the Family History section of the library.

This is the Family History room where we look for books to scan.

There are a lot of books here.    There are close to 10,000 books in here.  We have done the A's and are into the B's now. When these are done, we can start on the next room. It isn't specifically family history but has many possibilities.  If you turn around . . . 

. . this is the next room to work on.  There are many other books and records in other parts of the library that would be of interest to Family Search.  It's easy to see how this could be a 5 year project.

Here is our work station on the 2nd floor.  There are two other volunteers that work here on different projects a few days a week.  They are locals working for the library.

There is our Zeutschel scanner, an amazing piece of technology!  We place the book on the 'bed' which has two sides that raise and lower separately to accommodate the different thicknesses as we go through the book.  There is a glass cover that snaps down with a strong magnet to hold the book  flat as it is scanned from above.  Scan, turn the page, scan, turn the page. . .  One of us does that while the other is on the computer seeing that the pages are cropped properly.  We have to keep track of the page numbers, so we don't leave any pages out.  (We've done that, but it isn't hard to rescan the page and put it in, thank goodness.)  The book on the scanner is the largest one we have done so far: 602 pages.

We have these four shelves to keep track of the books. Bottom: books that have been bib-checked (checked to see if copyright protected or already on-line) and can possibly be scanned.  Next up: books waiting for "metadata" information from SLC approving them for scanning. Next: books approved and waiting to be scanned.   Top shelf: books that have been scanned and are ready to be reshelved.

This is in the same room looking down toward the back.

Here are vault doors behind which are some real treasures.

Looking through one of the windows:

The library director took us in there a couple of weeks ago with some other guests and showed us some of the treasures.  

We saw the first printing of the Declaration of Independence.  It had " " marks on some phrases, indicating where the person reading it on the street should take a breath.  It's the only copy that has those.

We also saw the very first draft of the Constitution.  It was written with a quill pen using ink that had iron so the writing is turning a little reddish.  Both of these documents were encased in air-tight enclosures, but I was able to hold the one with the Constitution.  I was so excited I was shaking!  Wow!

Also, she showed us the original hand written copy of the Star Spangled Banner by Francis Scott Key, written by his own hand.

We saw the diary of George Washington's secretary where he had recorded the details of the day George Washington died.

She showed us the notebook of William Stills who worked on the Underground Railroad.  He made note of everyone that came through, where they came from, where they were going, and even recorded personal information about their personalities and the clothes they wore.

We saw the first photo daguerreotype done in North America.  It was about 2 inches square and quite dark.  She had an 8 X 10 print from it that showed an old school.  I found it on line:

  What an experience!  The director told me she would come and get me the next time she shows them!

We also see some very old books.  The oldest we have scanned was from 1824.  Many are from the late 1800's and early 1900's.  Some are in pretty good shape, but some are fragile and the edges of the pages are crumbling.  The smallest "book" was 2 pages.  It was a pedigree chart.  We've done others of 5 to 15 pages, but most are 100 to 300 pages.  

This isn't the largest or oldest book, but it is the most interesting.  It it was printed in 1894.

It has wills dating from 1400's to the 1800's.  

The pages are very thick, as you can see, almost card-board like.

It's a lovely old book.

We scanned The Alger Jackson Hubbell Ancestors.  This was one of the books they warned us about, that we may spend too much time reading and slow down our work flow.  It had many pedigree charts with famous people like Miles Standish and others who were the first signers of the Mayflower Compact.  There were ancestors of Winston Churchill in there.  The earliest date I saw was 1095 for a man named Roger, the Count of Montgomery and Earl of Shrivebury (where ever that is).  The funniest: a man named Partridge married a woman named Dove.  There were some other interesting names in there: Crackbone, Starbird, Rand (maybe Ayn Rand's family?) Symms, Ward, and Fiske.  Who knows, maybe there's a relation in there.

We are still working out an efficient system and have our share of bumps in the road, but we are doing better each day.  It amazes us all the time that we are here, and that we are the ones who get to do this important work for the Lord.  There are some real gold mines in some of the books we have done and we are hoping that their families will find them on-line. 

Family Search has quite a project of book scanning.  They are adding an average between 6,000 and 9,000 books a month on familysearch.org.  So keep checking, your families' books could be there sometime soon.