Part 2: Oh Deer, we arrived!
This is Part 2 of (Idon'tknowhowmany).
Synopsis: Friday, March 14th, was our first morning at the conference. This day consisted of a bus tour of timber framed barns in and around the Shepherdstown, WV area (shown in the next vid). This vid shows what happened upon our arrival. Rafe went up to the registration area to see where we were to meet the busses and I got out the camcorder. It was about 8am and there must have been a dozen or more deer grazing on the NCTC property in front of the main registration area. So I filmed them (they had no fear) and waited for Rafe to come back. The audio was boring so I replaced it all with this song, which is awesome and I credit below. The busses were going to be late so the NCTC staff gave tours of the basement archives.
This temperature/humidity controled area houses items confiscated by the Fish and Wildlife department. For example, the stuffed tiger you see belonged to a sheik that was going to have it in the entryway of his home with a matching lion so it looked like they were fighting. Never mind that the tiger and lion never shared the same continent... it would look macho! So he bought the tiger from a U.S. zoo when it died of natural causes and paid $36,000 to have it stuffed and mounted, neither against the law. He tried to get it out of the country (problem) and it was confiscated. He was fined $56,000. The person giving our tour said unfortuantely he probably has another in his possesion now. Quite a lot of the items had been located on eBay. Most of these items wouldn't be illegal to own if you, say, inherited them. However, if you try to sell them, that's when there's a problem. then the busses arrived and we started the tour... but that's the next vid ;-)
The last time we went to this conference at the same site we went specifically to visit barns from the Civil War era found around Sharpsburg, MD and the Civil War site, Antietam. The battle of Antietam was the bloodiest single day in the history of our country. On September 17, 1862, 12,401 Federal and 10,318 Confederate casualties.
Background: From March 13-16th we attended a symposium (fancy word for a shindig) in Shepherdstown, WV at the National Conservation Training Center (NCTC), the training center for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. This place is amazing. It was built in 1997 and this is the kind of place you don't mind paying taxes for. Later in this series of vids you will get a video tour and more info!
Why did we go? We attended the 2008 Traditional Timberframing Research and Advisory Group (TTRAG) symposium. TTRAG was organized in 1990 as a special-interest group within the Timber Framers Guild, to focus on the documentation, repair, preservation, reconstruction and reproduction of historic timber framing. This was the second time we attended and both times were at NCTC, but it is held in a different spot each year.
To find out more about the Guild and see what they/we do:
http://www.tfguild.org
Side Benefit: While we were there the resident bald eagle pair, Liberty and Belle, became parents again. The first of their 3 eggs hatched, with the second hatching on the 17th and the final one 3 or 4 days later. They have a 24/7 camera up 85' looking into the huge Sycamore tree where the pair have established a nest the size of a Buick! Here is the link for the nest cam. Please check this out, it's amazing! As I type, the babies are getting huge! Mom can no longer sit on them and soon will not be able to join them in the nest at all!
http://www.fws.gov/nctc/cam/videoinstr.html
Music by Poxfil, from the album "Who is on my Sofa". The song is called, Solid Ground
Its free and legal distribution is done by jamendo:
http://www.jamendo.com/
Author: ravensky23
Keywords: ravensky23 TimberGeer NCTC Fish Wildlife deer
Added: April 17, 2008
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