Sanitary Day

In Russia (and maybe in other parts of the world, I'm not sure) there is a phenomenon called "Sanitary Day". Yes, this is a direct translation. It usually happens once a month, and is generally regularly scheduled or announced in advanced. Almost all businesses and organizations do this. From my stint as an intern at the American Center here, in 1997, I am still not convinced that this has anything to do with its stated purpose, namely, sanitation. I seem to recall that we took a long lunch, did some straightening up in the office and got to have a whole day where we did not deal with patrons. Its a lot like teachers' in-service days at school. No students - no customers.

I bring this up because this morning I trekked down to the Metro Kakhovskaia to go to the Moscow Regional Archives. (I visited there in 2002, so I managed not to get lost this time). Only to discover that they were having Sanitary Day today, so I would not be able to use the reading room. The woman at the front door was very nice and told me to come back tomorrow, and so I shall. But this necessitated a return home to re-evaluate my plan for the day. It just so happened that my blood sugar crashed anyway, so I'm having lunch about 2 hours after I ate breakfast.

I think I'll go to the Russian Historical Museum and see if I can start the process of getting into their archive. They have a division specifically related to Novodevichii Cemetery, which is one of the case studies in my dissertation.