Meet Me in St. Louie, Louie

Hello everyone! Yesterday was sooooo much fun, but we didn't get home until pretty late, so I'm just getting to writing about it now. Here are some pictures from our St. Louis field trip: first you will see my drive-by shot of the Arch, taken from the van window. Then you will see St. Louie himself--King Louis IX of France (for whom St. Louis is named). They have a big statue of him in front of the St. Louis Art Museum. Then, finally you get to see all of my fellow students. As you can tell, it was a little sunny and windy, so that's why we all look kind of funny. From left to right you will see Dr. Reid, Catherine, Dan, me, Alyson (well, Alyson's hair), Alisha, Sarah, Laurie, Kristen, and in front we have Matt. The only person missing on the trip was Angie (she's in Alaska for a few days). So, that's us! This picture was taken from out in front of the Art Museum, overlooking the Forest Park area of St. Louis--the place where all of the 1904 World's Fair festivities took place (I feel a song coming on: "Meet me in St. Louie, Louie, meet me at the fair. Don't tell me the lights are shining anyplace but there. . . ). It's pretty cool because all of the landscaping is original from the fair. Next you will see a picture I took when we stopped at Cahokia Mounds on our way back to Charleston. Cahokia Mounds is a World Heritage Area, and features the Indian mound remains of one of the largest Native American communities in North America. It dates back to around 1400 A.D.! It was a little late by the time we got to Cahokia, but it looked pretty cool with the sun setting over the mounds.

So, here's the wrap-up of the trip: we left Charleston at about 10:00 in the morning and arrived in St. Louis just after 12:00 noon. We ate lunch at the park there around the Art Museum, and then we spent the next four hours inside. It was awesome! The traveling exhibit at the museum right now is called "Symbols of Power: Napoleon and the Art of the Empire Style, 1800-1815." They had a whole bunch of Napoleon's stuff there, and you can tell that he was a little full of himself because everything had a big "N" on it! We saw Napoleon's sword, his ceremonial breastplate, a snuff box containing a gold leaf from the Corinthian crown, Napoleon's throne, and his royal robe. We also saw a bunch of furniture that either belonged to him or was of the style of the times. Everything was very ornate and had a lot of symbolism. It was pretty cool!

Then we saw the rest of the museum, which has a lot of neat paintings, sculptures, and, of course, furniture. Since we were visiting the museum in lieu of next week's Material Culture class, we had to do a furniture interpretation activity where we all chose some furniture and interpreted its meaning to the class. Kristen and I chose a desk-and-bookcase from Boston that dated back to 1780. We couldn't really think of anything to say, so we said that the flame-shaped finials surely represented the eternal flame of true love (it sounded like something we had seen in the Napoleon exhibit). That made for a hearty laugh from the crowd :-)

The museum has a bunch of cool paintings. My favorite area contained the George Caleb Bingham paintings. He was a folk painter from Missouri who painted a lot of Mississippi River scenes. Here is my favorite painting, entitled "Jolly Flatboatmen in Port."

After the Art Museum, we went to dinner over in Dogtown. It's a part of St. Louis that was settled by Irish immigrants, and gets its name from the fact that the Irish workers used to have dogs to guard their homes. During the 1904 World's Fair, a group of people from the Philippines came over, and they were known to steal dogs from Dogtown to eat--as dog meat is a Philippino delicacy--yikes! We ate at a cool Irish restaurant there, and I had the best Reuben sandwich ever! After dinner we headed out and made a quick stop at Cahokia before driving back to Charleston. It was a really, really fun day and I learned a lot!

Today we have the History Department picnic where we get to meet the rest of the History faculty as well as the grad. students who are doing the regular History grad. program (their nickname is the "Trad Grads," for traditional history grad students, and we're the "HA's," for historical administration students). There is also a barn dance at the Lincoln Log Cabin today, as well as a football game this evening, but I've got loads of work to do, so we'll see how much we can fit in today.

Queen Anne #2

You may remember that a couple of weeks ago, I posted something called "Queen Anne"--and I wrote about a chair. Well, in addition to being a furniture type, Queen Anne is also an architectural type! So, here is a picture of the Queen Anne house located over on Harrison Avenue that I studied for my house survey in my Historic Preservation class. I had to evaluate and describe all of the features of the house and present them in class today. I still really don't know hardly anything about architecture, so I was terrified that I was going to get grilled during class today, but Dr. Small actually thought I did a wonderful job :-) This house is one-and-a-half stories tall, was built probably sometime around 1900, is covered with wood siding and has a brick foundation. Its wrap-around porch is characteristic of the Queen Anne style, as are the wood shingles on the front face of the upper gable. I really don't know what all of those words mean, but it sounds pretty good, don't you think? Now we have to survey a whole bunch of houses for the city!

Today after class I worked with Dr. Hardeman grading tests for a few hours. It totally exhausted me--not because we were working frantically, but because in three hours, we only made it through four tests! It was definitely slow going. But, it's all good because I don't have to pay tuition thanks to my assistantship, so I will not complain. Tomorrow my Material Culture class is going on a field trip over to St. Louis! I am really, really excited. We are going to visit the St. Louis Art Museum and see their current Napoleon exhibit, among other things. We're going to make a day of it and have dinner over there, so it should be good times. If you don't hear from me tomorrow, you'll know it's because of the trip, but I'll give you a recap on Saturday.

Rococo

Rococo is just a fun word to say. I think that would be a good name for a cat: Rococo--you could call him Rocky for short, or you could call him Coco. The furniture style we discussed in class today was Rococo (1755-1790), also known as Chippendale. Here is the desk-and-bookcase that I wrote a paper about and presented in class. Distinct features of this furniture piece include the corkscrew finials at the top of either side, as well as the center plinth and fluted pilasters. You will notice the rounded bonnet at its top and the distinct ball-and-claw feet down below. There are also carved scallop shells at the top and on the skirt. It was constructed in 1779 in Salem, Massachusetts at the workshop of Salem's richest cabinetmaker: Nathaniel Gould. Don't you just love furniture?!

I discovered something wonderful today--sweet potato fries in the freezer section at Wal Mart. I have some in the toaster oven at this very moment, and I am anxiously awaiting the completion of their cooking. I found in the South that I love sweet potato fries!

Today my work assignment was to walk Dr. Hardeman over to the student union building for an appointment with the school's Judiciary Committee. They're the ones who decide if the punks at the university should be expelled from school. I came back to pick Dr. Hardeman up after about an hour, as he had requested, but the "hearing" with some students lasted for an additional hour. So I hung out there at the Union and then took Dr. Hardeman home. He was pretty riled up about the court case--I guess a guy and a girl had been discovered on the floor of the men's bathroom at the union building one morning. They were both unconscious after a night of hard drinking (and they had made a terrible mess on the floor!). Nasty, nasty. I say kick the punks out! They should put me on the Judiciary Committee.

I am going to try to be nicer about Tilford Dudley, but I just have to tell you all one more thing we discovered about him. Kristen interviewed one of Tilford's friends here in town, and he informed her that Tilford was an hour late to his own wedding . . . because he was WORKING on a court case! Grrrrrrr. Okay, that's the last mean thing I'm going to say about him. :-) Oh, I think my sweet potato fries are ready!

Feels Like Fall

When we went outside this morning, it was actually cold outside! We were completely in shock because it's been so hot. It warmed up this afternoon, but there is definitely a little bit of fall in the air. Today I had my Historical Research and Interpretation class, and it never ceases to amaze me how much our professor can talk :-) It's incredible. It makes it kind of nice for us though, because we don't have to say much, but wow--after two-and-a-half hours, I need a break. It was pretty interesting though. Tonight we have our weekly meeting together with the students--which hopefully will finish in a timely matter as our others have. This afternoon I watched a September 11 show on the History channel for a little while, and it was pretty sad. I can't believe it's been six years since then already! I also can't believe that it's only been a month since Mom and I left Natchez. Alyson and I were saying that it feels like we've been here for a couple of years! Well, I'm off to go do some homework before the meeting.

Field Trip

Today I got to go on a field trip--it felt just like elementary school! For our Digital Archives class, we took a drive up to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (about 60 miles from Charleston) to visit their digitization facility. U of I has the fifth largest library in the country, and they are currently working on a massive book digitization project. We got to go into the lab where they scan books, and they had these awesome high-tech book scanners that take pictures of each page in a book. The scanners are set up so that really delicate books can be placed under glass, and everything is automated so the book doesn't need to be handled very much. We felt kind of bad for the kids that have to sit in there all day in the dark and take pictures of book pages though. We also got to see their paper conservation lab where they have all of these chemical tubs, freezers, and vacuums to take care of old and/or damaged paper. I didn't know you could vacuum mold off of paper, but I guess you can! Then, the coolest part was when we got to see the vault where they store all of the books that are not on shelves at the library. We went into this room that was set at 50 degrees (we froze!), and there was row after row of book shelves--that were each 40 feet tall! It was awesome--kind of like I had died and gone to heaven. They had this fork lift that drives around and can be raised clear up to the top if they need to get books down from up there. The lady showing us around said that the facility can currently store 1.2 million books, but they're going to be expanding it so that in a few years they can store 10 million books--that's a lot of books! We learned a lot of cool things up there, and then everyone's favorite part was when we stopped at Jarling's Custard Cup--a world-famous frozen custard place in Champaign. I had a blueberry cobbler custard concoction. It was heavenly! I always wondered why the University of Illinois is called "Urbana-Champaign," but I guess it's because half of the university is in the city of Urbana, and half is in Champaign--makes sense. If BYU spread out a little more, maybe it could become the University of Utah Provo-Orem :-) Just kidding--that's too close to the University of Utah (and we don't want to get confused with them)! We got back from the field trip earlier this evening and then Alyson, Kristen, and I went out to take pictures of houses for our house survey that's due on Friday. I found a cool house over on Harrison Avenue to survey, but I don't know as much about house terms as I do furniture terms, so I need to go read up a little. I think people wondered why we were taking pictures of their houses.

Oh! Some good news is that I aced my next writing assignment in Dr. Reid's class--20/20! Yay! Also, I got a random e-mail yesterday from Lavina Fielding Anderson, the editor of the Journal of Mormon History--the king of all Latter-day Saint scholarly publications. She said that she wanted me to submit my LDS tourism paper from the Mormon History Association conference this summer to be considered for publication! I've submitted stuff to them before that got rejected, so I was kind of surprised that she came seeking me out. She said that the subject matter would be of great interest to Mormon scholars. So, I'll get that ready to go, and we'll see what happens. If you get published in the Journal of Mormon History, you've pretty much arrived as a LDS scholar!

Utah Chicken

If there's one thing I learned in the South, it's how to host a party :-) Tonight Alyson and I had all of the other students over for dinner. Everybody brought tasty food, but they all liked my "Utah chicken," as they call it, the best. Mom sent me one of our favorite chicken recipes, which is always good when she makes it, but surprisingly it was good when I made it too! We had a really fun evening together.

My talk at church today went well--at least everyone said it did, but maybe they were just being nice. They are very kind people, and they're determined to take good care of me since I'm far from home. It's especially nice when taking care of me involves food :-)

This afternoon Catherine and I interviewed a man who lives here in town and who stayed with the Dudley family back in Washington D.C. He thought Tilford was a great guy--in fact, at one point his emotions overcame him and he started to cry. He was really nice and we enjoyed talking with him. He wondered where I'm from, and when I told him Utah, he got all excited and wondered if I was a Mitt Romney fan :-) (It's funny that Mitt Romney is the governor of Massachusetts but is probably associated more with Utah in people's minds!)

Tonight Kristen said that she found some love letters at the Dudley house written to Tilford from a lady named Halle who was engaged to him at one point. But I guess he waited around too long to do anything about their wedding, because the letters got progressively more bitter. On the last letter, she addressed it to "A Distant Acquaintance," and signed it "Miss Harriet C. Watson" instead of Halle. We wonder if maybe he really loved Halle but was just too hesitant to get married at that time, and later wished he had married her (he did keep all of her love letters). Maybe that's why he was a little cold to his own family? Hmmm, he was a very complex man.