Seeing Pink

I finished up our display* for Tennessee Archives Week today. This year, my coworker Sonya and I decided on a theme of records relating to health/disease. We’re calling our display “We’ve Come a Long Way Baby: Sickness and Health in the Knox County Archives.”

Today in particular, I was putting together some material on bloodletting to go with a 1798 medical invoice we have in our court records. I chose this great scarlet color to go along with the subject, but I forgot that our printer is out of yellow ink. My scarlet came out pink—a pink reminiscent of sweetarts or raspberry Popsicles, of many things sweet and perhaps a little sassy. But not of blood.

The staff upstairs let me use their spiffy laser printer, and all was well.


*We’d been calling it an exhibit until yesterday, when the communications administrator told us to switch to “display.” Exhibit, you see, might make people think they’re going to see the work of professionals. I’m trying not to be offended. (But I’m not doing very well, even though I know very well that I’m not a professional.)