"Race Relations"

Aaaaarghhhhhh. I must vent for a moment so that my head does not explode from frustration. This morning we had our monthly all-staff meeting at the Lincoln Home. Said meetings usually involve reports from all divisions, a message from the superintendent, and a short safety presentation. Today's meeting, however, featured a "special guest" invited to the park by none other than Jason Boyd--the tyrant ranger whose reign of fear and unfairness nearly ruined about three months of my life. (Though Jason is no longer our direct supervisor--thank heavens!--he is still the park's "Outreach Coordinator," meaning he can come to work and leave whenever he wants and not do anything all day.) So someone made the mistake of allowing Jason to schedule a guest speaker for this morning's meeting. The speaker, an African-American gentleman, got up in front of our entire staff and said he was going to speak about "race relations" in Springfield. He proceeded to, for the next 45 minutes, basically chide us for all being racists and not doing more to promote African-Americans at the Lincoln Home. He said that Springfield is the most racist city in the country. Are you kidding me? This guy was off his rocker. He said (I'm not kidding--this is his exact quote): "Black people have always been and are still denied any power and privilege in the United States." WHAT? Has he looked outside lately and seen who is President? If that's not power and privilege, I don't know what is. How many millions of dollars do African-American football and basketball players make each year? And has this guy heard of Oprah? Then he said, "You all don't do enough to incorporate African- Americans into the story of Abraham Lincoln." We tell people why he was assassinated--which, in a nutshell, was because of his idea that black people should have freedom! And I know that none of the rangers here sugar coat the issue of slavery. Slavery was very bad, but it was stopped, and Abraham Lincoln and 620,000 soldiers died in the process. If you ask me, it is people like our guest speaker this morning who cause racial problems in our country today. Okay, I feel better now after getting all of that out.

On a happier note, today is a beautiful fall-like day! We have a high of 75 and a nice, cool breeze outside. If only the weather could stay like this forever.

Chiefs and Lumberkings

Yesterday Greg and I had a really fun time going to our first-ever Peoria Chiefs baseball game! The Peoria Chiefs are a Minor League affiliate of the Chicago Cubs. They were playing the Clinton (Iowa) Lumberkings--those Minor League teams certainly have some funny mascots. It had rained earlier in the day, so we were hoping it would let up for the game. The sun literally came out right as they were getting ready to start.

Greg and I strategically got autographs from almost everyone on both teams. Before the game, I went over to the Lumberjacks dugout and Greg stationed himself at the Chiefs'. We both got a lot of autographs--including the two Chiefs managers! One of them was a catcher for the Cubs, and the other won the World Series with the Detroit Tigers. So it was a fun and fruitful evening. Right as the sixth inning was coming to a close it started to rain. Greg and I didn't want to get home too late, so we took off. It was good we did because they ended up delaying the game for a while, waiting for the rain to let up, and the Chiefs ended up losing. But it was still a really fun game!