We Cannot Escape History

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Country First.

I wanted to write a quick message tonight just to say how freaking AWESOME Sarah Palin's speech was tonight!!!!!!! I love Sarah Palin and John McCain. Her speech rocked. My favorite line was, in reference to Obama, "What's he going to do after the stadium lights go down and the styrofoam Greek columns go back to the warehouse? After he finishes parting the waters and healing the earth?" Right on!!! I loved that one. Take that, Obama! I also liked when she said, "Harry Reid says that he can't stand John McCain." (At the mention of Harry Reid, the crowd began to boooooooo.) Then she said, "I can't think of a better accolade to show that we've chosen the right man to run for President!" Hahahahaha!! I love it. Sarah Palin rocks. I seriously started to cry when she was talking about Baby Trig and how she'll be an advocate in the White House for families who have kids with special needs. I also loved that during part of the speech, Cindy McCain was holding little Trig, and then when his big sis. Piper was holding him, she would lick her hand and slick his hair down :-) It was too cute. My favorite part was when the whole Palin family was up on the stage with John McCain. Little Trig, who had been asleep before, was wide awake. He is SOOOOOOOOOOO CUTE!!!!! I almost died of being overcome by his cuteness. I am so mad at the Dems for being mean to her and her family. She rocks. And she's not afraid of the mean media. She just sets her jaw, nods her head, blows a kiss, and she's good to go. I love her! Watching the RNC tonight renewed my hope in America's future.

Speaking of which, thank you everyone for signing the Illinois history petition! I still need a lot more names, but today we've gone from 11 signatures to 204, and more people keep signing it every few minutes (knock on wood). THANK YOU!

Hello Hanna

Thank you to all of those who have signed the petition to save Illinois history. If you haven't yet signed the petition, please, please, please, please, please do so: http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/ihpa. I don't mean to beg, but I am really hoping to gather at least 1,000 signatures before the end of the month when all of the IHPA employees lose their jobs. Please also tell other people about this petition. The quicker we can get the word out there, the quicker something will hopefully happen within the Illinois legislature to fix the problem.

I was very excited that the Chicago Sun-Times contacted me this morning, and they are thinking to print something about the petition this coming week! (The Sun-Times is the more conservative version of the Chicago Tribune.) I have written to numerous Illinois newspapers, Senator Durbin, and many IHPA employees. Hopefully we can get the wagon rolling here and try to do some kind of good. It breaks my heart to think of all of the work that people like Linda have done to try to preserve and protect Illinois' historical resources, and now they're basically being told that all of their efforts have been in vain. There is something definitely wrong with that picture. Thank you again for your help, everyone!

Tomorrow Mom and I are heading to Washington D. C.! Unfortunately so is Tropical Storm Hanna, who is expected to turn back into a hurricane here pretty soon. I guess that will make our trip more exciting? We were originally planning to visit Mount. Vernon on Saturday, which is the day Hanna is supposed to arrive, so we might change our plans and head to George Washington's house on Friday instead. I am very, very, very excited to see Washington D. C.!

Mount Vernon is a completely self-sufficient historic site. The house is owned by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association which was started by Ann Pamela Cunningham back in 1853. Ever since its creation, the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association has relied solely on private donations for its operations. Now Mount Vernon is maintained completely by entrance fees, gift shop revenue, and restaurant purchases. That's the way to run a historic site--then you don't have to answer to anyone or worry about a crazy governor taking all of your funding away. I'm afraid that eventually any historic sites left in our country will have to become private entities.

I will write about all of Mom's and my Washington D. C. adventures when we return next week!

Things Fall Apart

If I had five dozen eggs and I was in Chicago right now, I would throw all of the eggs at Governor Blago's house. And then I would toilet paper his house. Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh! I am frustrated beyond words about the situation with the Illinois state budget and historic sites. As of today, the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency basically ceases to exist. All but five state historic sites will be closed (as in doors locked, lights out) on November 1, and on September 30, all full-time IHPA employees at the Springfield headquarters office (including the woman who was to be my favorite future boss, Linda Nobut Suits) will no longer be employed. I can't believe this! Since I was planning to finish the last two months of my required six-month internship with Linda in Springfield, she called me today and told me that she had just received her layoff notice. She is understandably in a state of shock. She said that the worst part of it all is that she won't even be handing all of the state historic site collections off to anyone else--they'll just go into a state of limbo. I told her that Blago will probably try to sell the collections on e-bay to make up more of his "missing" 2 billion dollars, and she said that she wouldn't put it past him to do such a seemingly unthinkable thing. I feel terrible for Linda. She said that she feels terrible for me because I had been counting on completing my internship with her later this year, but I told her not to worry about me. She is an incredibly nice person, and she said that she will do her best to help me find another internship and/or job possibility. I had originally thought that Springfield would be the perfect place for me to excel in the museum field because I love Abraham Lincoln history, but more and more it is looking like Springfield will not be a good place for me to work because the governor doesn't care about Lincoln history or any other history. So I now have no idea what I am going to do when I head to Springfield with Greg at the end of October. But I feel even worse for those, like Linda, who are now having their careers ripped out from underneath their feet. How can the governor do this? There is a huge public outcry against his actions, but it seems that no one can undo whatever he does.

I know that there isn't much I can do, but in an attempt to at least do something, I have created an online petition to restore IHPA funding. Once I have enough signatures, I will send the petition to members of the Illinois legislature and other influential figures. If you wouldn't mind helping the cause by signing the petition, that would be great. The web address is: http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/ihpa. You can just scroll down to the bottom of the page and type your name, e-mail address (don't worry, they don't send you e-mails), and any comments you have on the matter. I'm hoping to get at least 1,000 signatures before I send it off to the authorities. I have also created a link to the petition on the right hand side of my blog. Thanks for your help everyone! Even though it seems that Blago doesn't care what the public thinks, maybe if enough people complain to enough people in power, something will change back to how it was before.

Change--ha ha ha. That's Barack Obama's mantra. Unfortunately his "changes" have already started happening, and I think that the historic site closures in Illinois are a good example of that. Blago is one of Obama's pawns. As I've said before, they're all from the same political cesspool. Today Mom sent me a quote from a speech given by Obama's wife, Michelle, in which she said, "We're gonna have to change our traditions, our history; we're gonna have to move into a different place as a nation." Scary. Yes, let's change our history by erasing it from everyone's memory. And, Abraham Lincoln is a good starting point. I'm afraid that people like Obama would like nothing more than for everyone to forget white males like Abraham Lincoln who was an advocate for the African-American. He issued the Emancipation Proclamation for crying out loud! But Obama is so caught up in "re-writing history" that pretty soon we won't know who people like George Washington are anymore. It all makes me sick.

Anyway, on a happier note, today is Riley's #4 birthday!!!!! Happy Birthday, Riles!!!!!!! I truly have the cutest nieces in the entire world, and it's fun to see them grow up. Last night we had a very fun birthday party over at the Barrett's house. Here are Camden and Riley being mesmerized by the cake and candles, and Miss Sid ready to party:










Today Riley got to have her special day with her mom, and she got her ears pierced and made a cute Build-a-Bear!

While Riley was out with Lindy and Camden was at school, Mom and I went to lunch and hung out with Sid. She's too cute! I also got a fun haircut and color today. My hair looks much better than it did before. It was funny because when I get my hair colored, they pull strands of hair through a plastic cap, and this morning after the cap was on my head and my hair strands looked all crazy, I went to get a magazine to read from the front of the hair salon. There was this guy sitting out there waiting for a haircut who looked exactly like the actor Luke Wilson. As I walked past him, he looked up at me and then got this kind of stunned look on his face. I said, "You'll have to excuse my crazy hair." Then he stammered, "Uh, n-n-n-no. It looks . . . cool." :-)

Football and Fall

Victory!!! Yesterday the BYU football team won their first game of the season against Northern Iowa. The Cougars had a great first half, but the second half was not so pretty. I think the team will have some things to work on at practice this week, and then hopefully they can get their A-game on when they head to Washington. It was so fun to go to the game with Dad yesterday!!! We were glad that our seats were in the shade because it was very hot outside. I love LaVell Edwards Stadium--you can see the whole Wasatch front from the stands, and there's nothing quite like the excitement in the air and the ambiance of a BYU football game. Hotdogs also taste better at football games for some reason. I love stadium hotdogs. The Cougars won 41-17! Northern Iowa's mascot is the panther--just like Eastern Illinois University. Maybe it's a Midwest thing? Last fall when I was at EIU, I felt very out of the BYU football loop, so I'm glad to be back in it this year. I LOVE BYU!!!

Speaking of fall, it definitely feels like fall outside tonight. There is quite a storm blowing through, and the temperature tomorrow is supposed to be 20 degrees cooler than it was yesterday. It will be a chilly Labor Day. Speaking of Labor Day, I am going to need to labor at Camp Floyd on Labor Day. That's okay though because I'll be taking the end of this week and first of next week off for Mom's and my trip to DC!! So I'm glad to get in work hours when I can. It's supposed to be quite rainy and cold tomorrow, so I don't know if we'll have many visitors, but we'll see.

Today at church the Primary kids were CRAZY! I only had three kids in my class, but even they were waaaaaay too much to handle. They were literally bouncing off the walls. Our lesson was entitled "Love One Another," but I quickly learned that to five-year-olds, the word "love" means only two things: marriage and kissing. Tanner asked Nauvoo to marry him several times during class today. No matter what I did to try to turn the conversation back to the lesson, there was no changing their train of thought. I was pooped by the time church ended today.

Poor Southern states that are going to get slammed by Hurricane Gustav! They haven't even finished cleaning up from Katrina yet--and that was three years ago. I snapped these pictures in May 2006 when my Natchez ranger roommate Jessica and I took a road trip down to New Orleans. As you can see, even nine months after the hurricane hit, much of the downtown area was still in disrepair. The thing Jessica and I couldn't believe was that there were still cars piled up on top of each other under the freeway--right where they had ended up during Katrina. Of course that has since been cleaned up, but the Southern coast definitely doesn't need another big storm. Hopefully my friends in Mississippi are far enough north that they won't be affected by Gustav. They said that when Katrina came through they all hunckered down and prepared for the worst, but they only lost power for one day and there wasn't a lot of wind damage. She had lost a lot of her strength by the time she made it up as far as Natchez. Luckily people along the coast have actually heeded evacuation warnings this time around. Unfortunately the heart of Gustav is projected to make landfall near Houma, Louisiana--that's where Natchez ranger Jessica is from! Hopefully her family has gotten safely out of the way of the storm.