The following is from my preservation journal; it is not long,, so take a
minuet We had to work some 10 hr days last week under some unusual
conditions...

Heavy demo hammers have a distict Rat-a tat -tat;not unlike the machine gun
known
as the "chicago Piano;only with a much heavier recoil  that vibrates the
floor and walls
and gets marbles running across the floor boards of the cranium to unlikely
spots of
desperation and uncertainity when you are just below.
There are two of these beasts at work overhead of us  in the Gothic tower.The
heavy
guns rake their fire into the 2' floors overhead to make holes for heavy I
beams of
steel that are passing through other newly made  floor openings rigged on
chainfalls
and interior hydralic air winches that sputter and buck as 7,000 lbs of steel
beam  turn
deftly clockwise just off our shoulders..
This is bedlam,the light is poor, and the long gothic tracerys windows are
broken open
with no glass save for some twisted lead hanging here and there.It is a scene
out of
Verdun and the first war. Demo particulate lies suspended in the air as weak
sunlite
streaks in  casting an eerie pall on the great room below.There among the
broken
rock and shattered glass must be 50 or 60 men transversing a semi opened tower
that is little more than 50x75 with cathedral stair winds
The stucatto and recoil of heavy guns create an opus of deafening rythym of
impact
that numbs the sences and  opens small cracks overhead that rains fine dust
and
small stone down on the hard hats of a  multitude of transient day laborers
struggling
in the darkened stone stair winds with lamps on their heads carrying  endless
buckets
of mud for the I-beam stabilization.
Overhead with the demo drills there is the sound of falling water in what
used to be
walls as core drills scream then punch plumbing lines tru the floor.
Teams of carpenters and steel men straddle huge cribbing for I-beam placement
and
guiding mud by bucket pours.off  a chain line of men on 40 ft  ladders..who
pour...
then vibrate......,then pour..for hours on end
We are 24 ft up working on the historic limestone gothic mullions;were in the
same
room where all this is going on.Our job is gommage; then dutchmen and
patching.
 No one can hear in this noise.Everyone is shouting.Black sal the Sicilian
labor
foreman is screaming and cussing at his mud guys.If there was ever a
personification
of evil  in a darken room with the roof falling in black Sal is it....A human
in the body of
a toad, with coal black eyes and matching tounge.and cold heart.
But then every big job has a Black Sal.
I think it is to remind us what purgatory is like ...so what ever we have to
do in this life
...to better it... just so we don't spend eternity under black sal ..we will
do it...we will do
it...believe me.
 The steel guys are calling in drops by radio;carpenters are yelling down for
specific
cuts on nearby table saws, helmeted torch men are cutting re-bars in a shower
of
sparks;
supers and trade foremen bellow and rage with plans in hand and flashlights
strapped
to their helmets
 everyone is moving or passing on stair winds as the heavy guns rake over our
heads
with skull numbing attonement
. Its odd to be peforming restoration amid such calmity  but the super says
this is our
window or be delayed a week, so   here we are
The falling debris is troublesome
.I have heard this sound before..it is deep seated in a 30 yr.old memory of
tragedy
and death..I was 1/'2 mile underground working night shift at the Horse head
mine in
Ogdensburg when the shaft collasped burying me alive and killing two of my co-
workers.
 It is a curious sound somewhat like rats scurrying in ceilings and walls or
among
bones and dry leaves in a tomb; irregular...then incestous,...high pitched
scurry and
monotous in a frenzy of falling plaster in strife resonating gluttony for
your soul.
. If the devil ever had music to tweak the ear
this is it.That dirty bastard likes nothing better than sinking ships,mine
cave ins and
the noise of war.
.Like virgil we all may stand some time in the hot place;before Horus
and the devouring Shiva....if were lucky we will part out with the grace of
Osirus ...if
not....well I like to look at it this way.... we all have friends there.
The haunting tempo of this falling particulate goes something like
this...first there is the Rat-a-tat-tat  of the
guns followed by a  fine falling of  dust and debris,.... then...a tense
calm....
nothing....., then little awful splitting sounds.made on their own....
followed by terrible continious yawns of more debris filling the acrid air
with moist dusts .
 The hammering is teribble
.,Debris is now raining down in sieves like a shower out of control.... men
pause
standing in water and mud putrid with cigarette butts ....and gaze upward with
whitened eyes.and stubled faces  besmirched with dirty wet  grimaces.
Conscious  of their own insignificant mortality.  they hug their sweaty
backsides
against the cold  stone walls., there is nowhere to go ...,we are in this
together...and
kiss your ass goodbye if something goes wrong......Best Michael
(to be cont)      all rts Mdd/2000