This is not really a story about corrosion, kids, but of a different kind of decay. We'll get to corrosion presently. While I was winding up the 12th year of art school I lived in a big old rowhouse in Charles Village with 3 other shiftless souls. This house had many maintenance problems, among them a persistantly leaking gutter that had stained an interior wall on the first floor a dark, mottled brown. Because my mother owned the property, it was my job to collect the rent and maintain it and a handfull of other houses she owned in exchange for staying there, free. When we finally figured out what caused the re-occuring water damage in the dining room and fixed the offending gutter, I was assigned the task of sealing the wall and repainting it. And seal it I did. In varying thicknesses of shellac I painted an image of the Madonna with Child, halos 'n all. Over top of this I sprayed a light coat of "Kilz" stain sealant. Over all this I painted the wall an eggshell white. In the fullness of time, I bought the house from my mother. And speaking of the fullness of time...because shellac and Kilz have different rates of resistance to absorption, and because shellac is so much more permanant than Kilz, I expect that when the gutter inevitably fails again and the water damage returns along its familiar channels of rot, The Virgin will slowly appear in white against the new water damage's brown stain. Unless, of course, the minister to whom I sold the house has unwittingly drywalled over it.