Cove Fort Days and the Mad Serbian Dictator

On Friday, Mom and I had a very fun trip home from St. George! We were both in the mood for a drive-in hamburger, so we stopped at Mel's in Beaver. They had just the type of yummy hamburger we were looking for. We then, of course, went to the cheese factory to get some cheese curd and ice cream. They had my new favorite ice cream flavor there: birthday cake! Then we headed to Cove Fort for Cove Fort Days. It was such a fun event! The missionaries had a lot of fun things going on. We went on a tour of the fort, then we posed with the two funny oxen (those are real oxen in the picture and, yes, they are big), and had a fun time looking around the "Pioneer Camp." Seeing the Stagecoach Office at the fort was especially meaningful to me--since I'm really in to stagecoaches these days. They even had a real stagecoach there at the fort and were giving people rides in it! It was quite an enjoyable event. I hope that they do it every year. Thank you for the fun vacation, Mom!!!

While we were in St. George, a few more things went down with the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency in Springfield. The agency had to lay off virtually all of its seasonal employees due to Gov. Blagojevich's 3 million budget cut, and they are having to close a number of sites--including LINCOLN'S TOMB!!--for a few days a week. That is bad news, especially with the Lincoln Bicentennial coming up in 2009. Unfortunately, laying off all of the seasonal workers will only save the agency $150,000, so they still need to figure out how they are going to cut out another 2.5 million dollars from their operating expenses. Basically it's nothing but bad news for Illinois history people. I don't know what this will mean for the future of the IHPA--since they run all of the major historic sites (except Abe Lincoln's house which is an NPS site), including the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. Governor Blagojevich's budget cuts are preposterous! Especially since he is currently under investigation for a missing 2 billion dollars that he claims has been used for "miscellaneous" government expenses. Three million isn't a lot of money to Blagojevich, but it is to the IHPA. People in Springfield are starting to refer to Blagojevich as the "Mad Serbian Dictator," which is actually an accurate description. His dad was from Serbia, and he is indeed mad (as in insane) and a dictator. He obviously doesn't care about the history of Illinois, and he's going to do everything he can to take the state down with him as he heads straight to prison. As I've said before, Illinois is infamous for having corrupt governors.