UNDERGROUND: Stephanie and The Battery Wall!

Hello Everyone

I just thought that I would send you this lovely picture of me pretending to dissassemble the battery wall that they found while they were digging the new subway tunnels at the foot of Manhattan. Based on the bricks that they found, the archaeoligists think that this wall dates back to the Dutch occupation of New Amsterdam in the late 1600s. Our job [Stephanie works for Jablonski Berkowitz Conservation in New York City] was to map the pieces of the wall, label them and then stand in the muck and mud while contractors cut the pieces out and then we would load them into crates. The goal is to rebuild the sections of fort wall that they found in a park above ground. The MTA blasted one of the walls and put a back hoe though the center of this wall, but there is one wall left to take out that is about 6' high. They are threatening to dynamite this wall but, but I don't think that will happen and I should be spending next week back in the"pit". The last wall even had wood logs embeded into it which will quickly deteriorate once they bring it above ground, but the archeaologists are going to do testing on it to date it definitivly.

The walls havegotten a lot of press in the NY Times here and it has mostly been about our office, which has some of the subway people mad, but that is what you get when you threaten to blow stuff up. By the way, I am not really as fat as I look in this photo. The tempurature that day was about 32 degrees and I had about five layers on. Which still did not keep me that warm. When I got home at night after taking off my scarf, outer jacket, outer sweater, lighter sweater and turtle neck, I still found dirt inside my bra. I don't know how it got there. One of the girls in the office even found dirt in her panties. Now that is something to question. I havebought a new Carhart jacket to help keep me warmer for the next go around.

Stephanie