Day 252 - Sunday in Amherst

I woke up earlier than I thought polite to call Emily so I went downstairs at the B&B and talked with my fellow guests, a couple from Boston. He is a high school teacher and she is a librarian at the Harvard School of Public Health. She gave me the scoop on what librarians do; turns out there is a lot more to it than working in libraries. A lot of libarians archive things and some work as historians almost, trying to find interesting things in the archives of organizations. There is a thing where librarians help companies and organizations (like a school or a department of a school) figure out how long to keep which sorts of documents. She said she goes into professors' offices with them and says "Let's go through that file cabinet where you have just been stuffing everything for the past forty five years you've worked here and see what's there." She will take a lot of the stuff there and archive it so it can be found again and will tell the professor that it will be kept confidential for 50 to 80 years (depending on the nature of it) and then it will be available to researchers. Cool. I also learned that in order to work at the UN, you have to know both English and French. It was very interesting to chat with them and sort of a relief that I wasn't the person at the table with the most interesting job.
Later, Emily and I had breakfast at the Black Sheep, including live music from an Americana type band with a banjo, bass, fiddle, trombone, guitar, harmonica and drum set. They played what I think of as folk-blues while we ate croissants, drank coffee, admired cute babies and chatted. Then to FroYo World where Emily spends a lot of time so it was important for me to see and check it out. We chatted some more, stalled as long as we could and then I headed home, sad and excitedly awaiting early May when she returns to home for a few months.

Mountains in the distance

I am grateful for a safe and fun trip. I am hopeful for the same for Emily in a month and for all of us always.