Tanya Bowie

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I am a maintenance technician at the National Park Service. I painted the Reflecting Pool.

There are about 4,000 fewer of us than last year. I have not been cut yet, so I do the work the cut people used to do, plus mine.

The spec said American Flag Blue. A dark blue, for a pool that sits in full sun all day. I asked why dark. The work order did not have a field for that question.

The estimate was $1.8 million. The contract is at $14.7 million now. No bid. The form said "unusual and compelling urgency." The urgency was the 250th anniversary of independence, which has been on the calendar since 1776.

The contractor had not held a federal contract before. This was the first. The qualification on file was a private golf club. The margin was 20 percent. The standard is 6 to 12. The Service accepted it in writing and noted the reason as a difficult job and a tight schedule. Both of those are accurate.

On May 8 a vehicle crossed the pool. The pool was empty. The crossing was not in the spec. After it there was a gash in the surface, 250 feet long. The supplemental work order following the crossing was $6.2 million.

The filtration was removed because a prior administration installed it. The phosphates entered the water under a prior administration. The sun predates this administration as well.

We sealed it. We filled it from the Potomac. The Potomac carries phosphates. Phosphates feed algae. The dark paint holds the heat. Heat and phosphate and sun is the recipe for growing algae on purpose.

We did not do it on purpose. We followed the spec.

The pool turned green in one day.

Interior said the green was residual. A normal startup process. I wrote "normal startup process" in the log, because that is what the log says now.

On June 18 the Department posted that the water was crystal clear, and compared the dead algae we vacuumed to the remnants of the Iranian Navy at the bottom of the Persian Gulf. The water was green on June 18. I logged the post. I did not add to it.

I poured the hydrogen peroxide myself. 12 percent. The label says it burns skin and eyes. Interior says it has no harmful side effects and is safe for marine animals. On Sunday a duckling was found in the pool. There are no marine animals in the pool. It is freshwater. It has ducks. I wrote in the log that the duckling was not a marine animal. That part is accurate.

No necropsy has been done on the duckling, or on the two birds found near it. The Department has not released a cause. I do not have the staff to commission one. I filed it under resource allocation.

This morning the spec changed. The target color is green. The work order says the pool is achieving its color ahead of schedule. I am no longer removing the algae. I am maintaining it to standard.

The standing water developed an ecosystem. An ecosystem of this profile meets the federal definition of a wetland. Wetlands are protected. We now require a permit to drain the pool. The permit office lost 4,000 people last year. I am told the wait is considerable.

The review that was required before we painted it was the one we did not do. There is a process for altering a historic landmark. The Service used the streamlined version, the one for work that changes nothing. In the filing it is recorded that we knew it did not qualify, and that the schedule came from White House leadership. The permit to drain it is required. The review to paint it was not completed. Both are in the record.

The blue chips are American Flag Blue, so they are flags. There is a code for flags. A flag may not touch the ground. A flag may not touch water. I lift each one out with the net before it sinks. The torn ones go in a box marked for dignified disposal. I run a flag retirement ceremony, all day, for a pool I painted.

I am the filtration system now. They removed the old one because it was inadequate. I am cheaper than $1.74 million of nanobubbles.

The south wall says government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. I was standing under that sentence. The log does not have a field for what is on the wall above the work.

A reflecting pool reflects the monument. This one reflects nothing. So we provide the reflection another way. At the east end there is a designated viewing area. It faces a photograph of the pool. The photograph is from 2019. In the photograph the water is clear, and the monument is in it twice, once above the water and once in it. Now there is just the one.

My metric used to be water clarity. It is now unflattering angles mitigated. Last week I mitigated 31 angles. The site log has a prior entry, August 1963, attendance about 250,000, at one time, at this end. I do not have the conversion to angles. I logged it as a units mismatch. I have not been cut yet.

A man at the World War II end asked me to take his picture with the memorial behind him. His cap said which war. The memorial is the direction we discourage. Inside it, on the north wall, it says to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan. I told him the light was better at the other end. There is no other end.

The statue faces east, down the length of the pool. The worst angle, the one we discourage, is the one Lincoln has. We cannot move him. We have discussed it.

For one day it was the right blue. I have a photograph of it. It is the last one taken from this end.

On May 1 the reference photograph was updated. The new one shows the Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of State, and the Vice President, shirtless, on inflatable furniture, in clear American Flag Blue water. The President is in it as well, on an inflatable lounger. There is also a woman. I do not have her title. The water is the correct color. It is the only photograph in the project file in which the water is the correct color. I filed it as the current reference.

Someone asked me what I was protecting. I told them the view.

We could not drain it. Now we are not permitted to.

On May 4 the sealant was certified. If you had a knife, you could not cut it. So strong, so powerful. Like a piece of glass. I logged it under material properties. On June 4 the water was certified from the Oval Office. Clean, beautiful water. I logged it under water quality. The algae was logged on June 15. I have no field for the interval between a certification and its failure. I labeled it other.

The cause was updated this week. The cause is vandals. People who illegally placed chemicals in the water. There have been arrests. Taking a paint chip from the pool is now a felony. I poured the chemicals in myself, on the work order, at 8 in the morning. The arrests were announced at 2. I do not know how to reconcile those two entries. I have left them both in.

It is the 250th year of American independence. You may not photograph the water. You may not drain the water. I am not cleared to tell you its color.

The Department says the water is crystal clear.

I am standing in it. I can show you the exact line where it is not.

[Wu Tang is for the Children @WUTangKids]

Happy Juneteenth!

Time for the annual schoolhouse rock style history lesson about slavery and the origins of Juneteenth from @theroots

[Greta Berlin @Truegreta]

I stood at this pool, at both monuments and saw both reflections…
He’s a God damn idiot, as are the fools that support him. The “Reflection Pool” wasn’t designed by American architect Henry Bacon a hundred years ago to look like a swimming pool. It’s designed to have a darkened characteristics that has reflective qualities to reflect the monuments.
That way, the Washington Monument is reflective to you when at the Lincoln Memorial, and when at the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial is reflective to you.
It’s designed to enhance the grandeur of monuments, create an illusion of reflection, and inclusion of expansive space of unity.
He’s a tacky vulgar person that vulgarizes everything he touches. America isn’t becoming great, it’s becoming vulgar.

Credit - Mathew Reed

[Stephen King @StephenKing]

Melania Trump says Jimmy Kimmel should be canceled. Last week her husband commented on Robert Mueller’s death: “Good. I”m glad he’s dead.”
Said Pretty much the same about my old friend Rob Reiner.
People who live in glass houses should’t throw shit.

[Kerry Kennedy @KerryKennedyRFK]

Are you alive today? If you didn’t die from COVID, HIV/AIDS, Ebola, SARS, swine flu, anthrax, tuberculosis, malaria, or other diarrheal diseases, you have the great Dr. Tony Fauci to thank.

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

The Cat Ba langur (also known as the golden-headed langur) is one of the rarest primates on Earth. It lives only on Cat Ba Island in Northern Vietnam and nowhere else in the wild.

There are only about 70 to 80 individuals left in existence.

[ABC News @ABC]

The San Francisco Police Department and the Marine Mammal Center were involved in the rescue of a sea lion pup that had wandered out of its usual habitat and found its way to a neighborhood multiple blocks inland. https://t.co/lif1i0MzbU

[Nature is Amazing ☘️ @AMAZlNGNATURE]

The first human to discover these birds was probably not okay for a few days 😂

[CONSEQUENCE @consequence]

Jack White on Trump depicting himself as Jesus Christ in a new meme:

"Hey evangelical Christians? Remember that anti-Christ you been squawking about all these years and how he'd present himself as Christlike and bring about the end of days with a final war in the Middle East involving Jerusalem? Well...check out your boy now!

"Listen, if the felonies, epstein files, rapes, bombing of schoolchildren, gestapo ICE agents attacking his own citizens, threatening to invade Greenland, Cuba, Venezuela and Iran all didn't convince you that you fell for this deranged grifter, maybe this lil' post will? How can any so called Christian support him after this blasphemy? How could any Catholic support him after he attacks the character of their Pope multiple times? How did so many millions of people fall for this conman? He's already got worst President in the history of America on lock, but I'm gonna go ahead and take the honor of pronouncing trump 'Worst American of All Time.'

"P.S.: after some backlash (looks like SOME christians actually take their own religion seriously) trump is now saying that this AI image depicts him as a doctor for the Red Cross! He lies, then lies about the lie, then doubles down on that lie with another lie and they Just. Keep. Falling. For. It."

📸: Gregory Shamus/Getty Images

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

Different angles results in different styles

[Ronan Farrow @RonanFarrow]

I have a PhD in political science from Oxford, focused on US foreign policy; worked as a State Dept. official in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Middle East; and wrote a celebrated foreign policy book taught at universities like Princeton. That's why I get geopolitical questions.

[Stephen King @StephenKing]

I predicted someone like Trump many years ago, in THE DEAD ZONE. So now I'm saying this--in the next 12-16 months, we're going to find out if the two machines for the removal of a man unable to fulfill his duties actually work. They are impeachment and the 25th amendment. He is deeply unwell .

[NASA Mars @NASAMars]

The @NASAArtemis crew captured this view of the Moon eclipsing the Sun yesterday. The three "stars" to the lower right of the Moon are actually planets. The middle one has a slightly red tint.

That's Mars.

[George Conway ⚖️🇺🇸 @gtconway3d]

Happy War Crimes Day to all who celebrate.

[sui ☄️ @birdabo]

we got an astronaut posting on 𝕏 from a spacecraft that’s about halfway to the moon.

what a time to be alive.

[Keith Edwards @keithedwards]

I’m so worried. What if the president is ok?

[Peter TOTO💜 @petermarietoto]

john waters at the no kings rally in provincetown

[Governor Newsom Press Office (parody) @AwesomeNewsom]

IF YOU'RE PROTESTING DON'T FORGET THAT WE'RE PAYING $100/HOUR, PLUS DENTAL, PARKING, AND A FREE JET FROM QATAR. OVERTIME PAY INCLUDES $2 BILLION FROM SAUDI ARABIA AND A JARED KUSHNER CALENDAR. BRING YOUR ANTIFA ID AND HAVE FUN! REMEMBER TO GRAB YOUR BALLROOM ON THE WAY OUT. --GCN