I had in mind today to check out the local junk shop. I needed surface area for some cool crappy old stuff that needed to be consolidated in a semi-attractive fashion. So after I took the dogs to the over-grown pasture– where we recently found the fairly large (about 4′ long) but definitely dead copperhead— and after reading (on the world-wide-web and in crappy old books) a little bit about the history of freedom of the press in England, and oh yeah, after doing some work around the farm, I collected myself and my stuff and made my way to town.

Success!

Those are old desiccators on the second shelf.

Desiccant– charcoal, cat litter in a pinch– goes in the bottom. What you want to dry goes on the “shelf.” Both the rims of the vesicle and the lid are ground glass. An airtight seal is created when the rims are coated with Vasoline (TM).

While at the junk store, I had an exchange with one of the fellows here– an exchange that illustrates nicely just how polite my little community is.

First, of course, as soon as I walked in everyone in the place and I exchanged pleasantries. That’s customary. There’s a new guy working there and he was rearranging things while I was trying to not knock anything over.

I passed by him and he politely said, “Ma’am. There’s something hanging out of your backpack.”

And since there’s always something hanging out of my backpack, I politely said, “Oh. Thanks.”

To my surprise, the Thing hanging out of my backpack was not the thing I expected. I had neglected to fully zip a compartment.

It was kind of him to bring that to my attention. He needn’t have done so. He was just being polite.

*The quote you need to search is “An armed society is a polite society.”