RE: "serum of milk"
On Fri, 27 Jun 2008, Jack Fulton wrote: A sad story indeed -- tho if you'd been forewarned, aren't there thin metal or other types of portfolio cases presumably impervious to bugs, at least in a domestic setting ? -- tho it hasn't quite come to that here.Judy S wrote: One of the Photo Miniature articles mentioned that bugs -- especially the "American water bug " -- had an affinity for the platinum emulsion of platinum prints... that some prints had had the entire surface removed (eaten) by bugs, but leaving the paper intact... . . . don't know if it is interesting, and surely 'off topic' but years ago, after a few trips way into Mexico, I accumulated a rather impressive body of work all printed in Agfa Brovira and Amidol print developer. My I was happy with it all. I filed it in boxes, intending to produce both exhibits and a book. Upon digging it out and opeing the boxes . . like well over 500 11x14's . . . I found that termites had eaten through ALL of the prints, silver and all. But, we have termites bad out here in the woods of California. One does not dare just let a 2x4 lay idle on the ground. Jack When we bought this old wreck in 1957 we hired an "expert" for $25 (the going rate) to check it over. He looked at the roof, the sewer pipes, and I suppose an electric line or two (probably 20 Watts to the entire house), the practicaully pre-civil war coal furnace, and advised us not to buy it... and he never even noticed the tunnels of termites all over the main wooden beam in the cellar, that is, the supporting beam for the entire (1834) house. Not to mention the waterbugs. But we knocked them off, sainted husband smashed them with a broom, and, so chastised, they didn't come back for a year or two (one was killed at our entrance door yesterday, I add, tho not by me (tho my screams at the discovery still echo in the cellar). We also hired an exterminator who perimeter drilled the entire plot with a residual termite poison that for all I know still remains... because each year for the next 5 or so years we saw fewer & fewer of those large ants with wings and the last 30 or 40 years none at all. even though we've been a bit careless about wood hanging around. (A neighbor obliged us by lopping off a huge tree shading our single patch of sun; we cut it into little pieces & gave to John for firewood, tho small stacks remain... all without a sign of a termite. (I note however that we did replace the 2 by 2s our predecessors had laid directly on the ground under our extensions with tar, cinder block, cement & whatever whatever, that termites couldn't digest.) Some years ago residual pesticides were outlawed, no doubt correctly for the environment, as hadn't even been suggested at that time. And for whatever reason -- perhaps also our prophylactic prodedures -- it did the trick. Certainly if we had actual emulsion-eating bugs in the studio where I store prints, I doubt it would bother me a lot: I'd be long dead of fright and rage... not that I'm realy so timid, but science proves that aversion to insects is an evolutionary trait: Those lacking it are not humans evolved from our primate ancestors, but Martians or Androids sent by sinister design. best, Judy
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