Well, all I can say is that I am thrilled we have such a fantastic team to kick off the Stage 2 of this project. Roos Keppler is back from Amsterdam, and she is doing a fantastic job moving the project forward-- she is thoughtful and careful, and really puts her heart into her work. This time around we are lucky to have Batyah Shtrum on board as well, a dear friend and wonderful conservator. Like Beth and myself, Batyah is an objects conservator, but she has lots of experience working on painted surfaces. We also have some wonderful graduate students-- Katie Gordon and Linsly Boyer--and even a pre-program person working with us. I hope they will post their thoughts about this project as we make progress.

We met with two interested members of the congregation yesterday, including Molly Yestadt. Molly worked with us to raise awareness and interest in the project, and we are so happy she is still involved and helping us liaise with the shul. It was such a wonderful opportunity to talk about this stage of the project. One important issue we discussed is Elul, the mazel we treated intially. This treatment was completed as a Stage 1, which involved lots of testing and researching (still going on now!). We developed our treatment method during stage one-- and now, several months later, we are able to review its success. We are quite pleased with the results actually-- there is some minor lifting of paint flakes that were consolidated originally, but this is only very minor and we will be able to go back in and set them down. It really is fortuitous that we have this time to review work done earlier, during a very different season-- with a lot more humidity!

I will be working one day a week, as with the initial treatment-- wish I had more time to work on this. But I am thrilled with the team and very proud of how hard everyone is working.
Till next time, good night!