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