Living Conditions for Park Rangers in Boston

Before going on with the rest of our adventure, I wanted to show you Liz's rooms at the old Marine barracks at the Navy Yard and rant a bit. There are several other park rangers living in this old building. The house has a lot of potential and I imagine at one time, it was gorgeous. There is a basement, then three floors. The first floor has a livingroom, diningroom and kitchen. The other two floors have two bedrooms each, as well as a shared bathroom per floor. There are wooden floors and banisters, throughout. My favorite part is the servant's staircase, built so the servants (back in the Day!) could get to the kitchen and basement without going on the main staircase! However, the house has fallen into disrepair as you can see from the photos. Portions of the walls are moldy and flaking off. Then there is the problem with the carpenter ants! They are everywhere, especially now that the weather is warming up. I even found one on the back of the toliet! EEEK! There is one room on the first floor where no one goes and the door is kept shut, because of the toxic mold and other things growing in there. They even had a giant mushroom in that room at one point. The maintenance workers (who don't deserve that title as WHAT are they doing to "maintain?") have come several times to scrape the mushroom away. The last time, they finally removed the soggy damaged floor. Underneath was a huge carpenter ant nest. Instead of getting rid of it, they went away for a few days to give the ants time to move their nest. So...the ants are still there. In the walls, crawling across the floor...everywhere. This building, housing our Park Rangers, is falling apart and no one is doing anything to save it. The Rangers who live there, do their best, but they are outnumbered...by the ants...and the rats. I didn't mention the rats. But UGH! RATS!





BTW, The last photo here is the Alaska quilt I made for Liz when she graduated from the University of Alaska in 2001. :-) It was really fun to make. I thought I should put something halfway pleasant in THIS post!