Deadly Dudley is Dead!

Hoooooooooooooooooray!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The two-month-long Tilford Dudley marathon has come to a close, and I am exceedingly grateful. I am also exceedingly worn out. T-Dud nearly did me in. You may notice that I haven't posted anything for a couple of days because I haven't had one single free second to sit down and write about how crazy everything got, but now I can breathe and reminisce about the craziness that was my life for the last 48 hours. Where to begin? Well, first of all, before the craziness began, I had a great day yesterday with Greg up in Springfield and Athens (remember, it's pronounced like "Ay-thens"). I had to leave kind of early, and I was up a little late the night before trying to finish Dudley stuff, so I could tell that it probably wasn't going to be a weekend when I would catch up on sleep. I drove up to Sullivan, where Greg's parents live, and rode with them up to Springfield. We got all of the big stuff moved from his Springfield apartment to the house he'll be renting in Athens, which is about 15 miles north of the big city. He only lives about a block away from the funeral home there (which is haunted, I have decided), so that will be convenient for him. We almost got to go dig a grave, which I thought would have been the perfect Halloween-ish activity, but someone else ended up doing it, which made me a little sad. Because I thought it would be funny to say that I had gone grave digging for Halloween. Then Greg's parents took off back to Sullivan, and he and I went to a Halloween party at his boss's house (which is not the funeral home) :-) Pretty much the whole town of Athens was there, and everyone was very, very nice, so we had a good time. They had a big bonfire outside, and everyone wanted me to tell ghost stories. I don't know why they wanted me to do it--they're the ones who work at a funeral home! :-) But I told them the story about the Myrtles, the most haunted house in America, where Mom and I went last Halloween, and they loved it. Greg and I then went back down to Sullivan, I picked up my car, and headed for home. Unfortunately it was a little late when I got back, so I couldn't resolve some Dudley issues last night, but it was sooooooo much fun! I like Greg a lot, and we had a great day together. As I was coming back into town, it was really quiet outside, but then I seriously saw Raggedy Ann and Andy running across the street. I thought that maybe I was so tired that I was hallucinating, but I think then I realized that there was a costume party going on at one of the bars by campus :-)

So, this morning is when all of the excitement began. I was planning on going to part of church, probably leaving after sacrament meeting, but that definitely did not happen. I'm glad that the Duds are done now so I can return to normal church activity. I got up at 6:30 a.m. to try to download some service packs for my computer since Catherine finished up our Powerpoint yesterday in Powerpoint 2007, which I do not have and which is not compatible with earlier versions of the program. I tried everything, but the program would not work. I also had to finish pulling some of my facts together, and I was getting very afraid that what I was going to say didn't make any sense. By this time it was about 9:30, and I realized that church wasn't going to happen and that I'd better switch into crisis recovery mode. I talked with Catherine, and we figured out how we could get the Powerpoint from the computers at school to her computer (complicated by the fact that her Internet got disconnected), and we could use her laptop for the presentation since she has the 07 version of Powerpoint.

So, we decided to go over to school, where we discovered there was no paper for printing our presentations. We finally rounded up paper, and then got to work trying to get the Powerpoint to work on Catherine's computer. I had made the original Powerpoint to match the exhibit--using the same fonts and colors, but Catherine's computer didn't have the right fonts, so everything looked funny. So there we were trying to download fonts two minutes before we were supposed to meet Dan at the Dud's to practice the presentation (he was going to be our Powerpoint operator during the show). We were scrambling around like crazy, but finally got it and took off. When we arrived at the Dudley House--by this time it was about 11:15 a.m. (the presentation was to start at 2:00), we found it in complete disarray. We decided it must have been that angry ghost who lives there, but found out later that one of the community theater groups had a meeting there last night. The chairs were all over the place, tables were moved around, the Powerpoint projector and screen were gone, and when we opened the door to the exhibit room, we found that a bunch of the exhibit panels had come unstuck from the walls and fallen to the ground. All was chaos! The three of us scrambled around, looking for projectors, taping panels back up on the wall, arranging chairs, and moving tables. We finally got to the part where we practiced our presentation, which was good because there were a few errors we needed to fix. We had a couple of minutes to eat lunch, and then it was showtime.

I forgot to say that all last night, during what little sleep I had, I dreamed that Mr. Riccio came to the program and disliked it so much that he was yelling at us telling us what a bad job we did (he's probably the last person in the world who would yell at anyone). In the dream he asked my why I had done such a terrible job, and I said, "Well, I didn't get any sleep last night!" He said, "That's no excuse! You are all fired!" :-) So when I saw Mr. Riccio and Dr. Small walk into the Dudley House today, I started laughing and told them the story about my dream. They thought that was soooooooooo funny. Greg also came to the presentation this afternoon! It was totally like bringing him to a family reunion because everyone wanted to meet him. Dr. Hardeman even showed up for the program, and the first thing he asked me was "How's the mortician?" I said, "Well, he just so happens to be right here so you can meet him." Dr. Hardeman thrilled about that and had a great time asking Greg questions about dead people and such. Thankfully the Dud's house was not full to overflowing. We had about 40-50 people there, so everyone could squeeze in. There were quite a few students there for extra credit :-) It must be a rough year in their political science class.

I think that the presentation went really well today. I was realizing last night that parts of mine were quite boring when I was talking about all of the court cases Tilford was involved in as trial examiner for the National Labor Relations Board, but I had a big, funny finish, so hopefully that made up for any boringness experienced during the rest of it. I ended by bringing the topic back to the town of Charleston and talking about some of the labor unions that were formed here while Tilford was back in Washington fighting for labor unions. There was a place here in town during the 1930s called the Brown Shoe Factory where the women employees were only making 11 cents an hour. They decided that this was not enough, went on strike, and violence erupted. In an article entitled "Fists, Clubs Fly During Fracas," (fracas is my new favorite word) a local newspaper reported that: "Numerous women took part in the fighting and their presence was evidenced today by the finding of a skirt in front of a newspaper office, lost by some unfortunate feminine battler." This really got everyone going. In fact, Dr. Barnhart was laughing so hard that I wasn't sure if he was going to be okay. :-) Catherine did a great job, and everyone seemed to really enjoy the afternoon.

I am now back at the apartment, completely pooped, but I need to finish drawing some exhibit ideas for class tomorrow. I have to do architectural drawings of how I would set up a theoretical exhibit, so we'll see how that goes. Tonight I am determined to go to bed really early! I am so happy that the Dudley drama has ended. We were saying today that we never have to speak of him again, but we surely will, as he has now become like another appendage to us. And, we need to find his grave for Halloween, so we'll talk about him more this week.

Haunted Dudley House

I know that you have all been dying to see a picture of Greg, the mortician, so here he is--he doesn't really look like a mortician, does he? Tomorrow is our big moving party up in Springfield, which should be very fun. Dr. Small, Dr. Reid, and all of the students are quite intrigued by the fact that he is a mortician, and they are all looking forward to meeting him on Sunday. It will be kind of like taking him to a family reunion because everyone will be wanting to talk to him--hopefully it won't totally scare him away!

I found out today that the Dudley House is haunted! Well, I didn't find out from my own experience, but supposedly some crazy stuff has gone on there when people have been in there by themselves. These people, mostly members of the Coles County Historical Society, have decided that the ghost at the Dud's house is not one of the Dudleys, but one of the patients that T-Dud's dad, Gerry, who was a doctor, treated (or maybe failed to treat properly--thus the angry ghost?). Very spooky. It's a good thing that I don't plan on hanging out there by myself anytime soon. Speaking of T-Dud, it says in Who's Who in America that he's buried in Charleston, but we all thought he was buried up in Washington state. If he really is buried here, we are totally going to go find his grave on Halloween!

The T-Dud presentation has been coming together well today. There's just so much stuff to talk about with his career! Catherine and I are going to meet tonight to put everything in place. Aly, Kristen, and I were supposed to go out and do house surveying today, but it's nasty rainy weather outside, and quite cold, so we're postponing until T-Dud is done and the sun comes out next week. We were going to have Kristen over for dinner tonight, after surveying, and then we were going to have Catherine come too--since we'll be doing T-Dud stuff, but somehow the word leaked out, and before I knew it, everyone assumed that we were having a class dinner over at our house tonight! I have no idea how that happened, but I knew that I was NOT going to make dinner for everyone tonight, so we decided that we'll go try out the new Mexican restaurant in town. In fact, there are two new Mexican restaurants in town, which is quite a big deal, considering that there aren't all that many restaurants, but we're just going to try one tonight.

Today Dr. Reid was telling me about Amish funerary practices--very interesting! I told her that I have decided not to ever die so I don't have to be embalmed, which she thought was quite funny. Last night we all went to hear Dr. Small's presentation about architecture and Nathaniel Hawthorne, and it was awesome! Well, I'm off to do more Dudley stuff. We keep teasing Catherine about marrying Tilford's grandson who is going to school in Colorado right now--then her last name could be Dudley! But then we decided she might not want to marry into the Dudley family. Speaking of Colorado, I've been rooting for the Rockies in the World Series, but they're having a tough time. Everyone here but Aly is hoping that they'll rebound once they get back to Denver for the next game. Aly is a huge Red Sox fan, so she has been quite excited that they are winning. It's kind of funny--she's from New York, and her dad is a huge Yankees fan, but she became a Red Sox fan during college (this makes her dad very sad). Dr. Reid and I are hoping that the Red Sox players won't be able to breathe when they get to Denver because they won't be used to the thin air!

Tilford Studley

The plot thickens! There is a labor union on campus called UPI, and today Catherine and I were informed that all of the UPI members, which I understand includes a large number of the faculty, have been notified about and encouraged to attend Sunday's presentation about Tilford Dudley and his work with labor unions. Hmmmmm, it's cool that there is all of this interest in the program, but the million dollar question is: where are we going to put everyone, and how is Norma Winkelblack, the president of the Coles County Historical Society, going to make enough cookies and punch for all of these people? The Dudley House really is not very big. We were joking today that we could close down 7th Street and hold a street meeting outside with megaphones :-) The only thing we have going for us is that there is a Chicago Bears game on Sunday afternoon, and people here get pretty fanatical about their Bears, so hopefully a lot of them will stay home to watch the game. I mean, it would be cool to have a lot of people there, but too many would be a little hard to manage.

Today I've been trying to hammer everything into place for my part of the presentation, then tomorrow night Catherine and I are going to put all of our stuff together and have a practice run. Everything is coming together really well--it's just that there is sooooooo much information to sift through, and the hard part is putting it together in a way that makes sense to people who don't already have a lot of background information about these topics. (Especially since I don't have a lot of background information about these topics!!) But, everything seems to be coming together. In fact, I think it's going to be such a good presentation that everyone will start calling him Tilford Studley! Family issues aside, Tilford really did do a lot of work for people during the New Deal years. Catherine and I are a little nervous because this is the final Dudley lecture, and our topic covers the fruition of all of T-Dud's work. We are basically giving the culminating lecture that is supposed to get at the "meat" of his work and explain the significance of his life. No pressure there! It's okay though--because I have been learning a lot and the previous experience I've had with presenting at conferences has been coming in handy. Most of the other students haven't ever done anything like this before, so I've been able to offer some good advice based on what I've learned in the past.

Today after class, I went to the Charleston Public Library to the genealogy room to look up some stuff about Charleston during the Great Depression. There were three ladies working there in the genealogy room, and they were just tickled to pieces to have a student come in there. They were really funny and nice, and they told me all of their stories about living through the Great Depression and surviving the dust storms in Kansas. It was all very interesting. Tonight we students are going to go hear Dr. Small give a presentation about Nathaniel Hawthorne's use of architecture in The Scarlet Letter, and then we have to meet to work on a Museum Exhibits project--it never ends!

Lincoln Gardens

Tonight, as we students were all frantically reading Historic Preservation articles for tomorrow, we realized that none of us had really eaten truly substantial meals for a while. So, we thought we'd go try the "family restaurant" called Lincoln Gardens (of course it has "Lincoln" in the name!). It is a funny place. It's definitely some "down home cookin'," but I think I got spoiled with the down home cookin' in Mississippi. Tonight's meal was okay, but it wasn't anything awesome. It was fun to go to dinner though and just hang out for a little while. In a few minutes I'm off to go vi sting teaching--our last visit for the month.

Today's presentation in Museum Administration went really well--Mrs. Miller loved the MET Memory game, and everyone thoroughly enjoyed the Oh Henry! candy bars. It's good to have that presentation under my belt, and now I need to finish getting the T-Dud presentation ready. Speaking of which, we found out that there are going to be at least 60 or 70 people there at the presentation on Sunday--since that Political Science professor has offered extra credit to his students (and he has about 200 students). I have no idea how everyone will fit inside the little Dudley house--we've had about 30 people the last couple of Sundays, and it was pretty crowded. Now I'm totally feeling the pressure since there are going to be so many people there! Oh well, it's all good. Dr. Reid is very excited. I can't say the same for Catherine and myself, but it will be all good.

Speaking of Dr. Reid, today we figured out that she visited Natchez during June of 2006. She was in Baton Rouge for a conference and decided to take a day to come up and see Natchez. I told her that I was there at that time, so we decided that we must have crossed paths but not known it at the time. It makes me wonder--how many people that we see each day will we end up meeting at a later date? Hmmmm. It would have been really funny if I had taken Dr. Reid on a tour of Melrose! She said that she drove past Melrose, but the park had already closed for the day. The other day on my date with Greg, we decided that he and I would have been in Nauvoo at the same time during the summer of 2002. After I graduated from high school, Mom and I took a trip back to Nauvoo to attend the temple open house. Turns out that Greg was a security guard at the open house and checked everybody's bags before they went inside, so we probably saw each other then but didn't know it! It's kind of funny how that all works. Speaking of Greg, he called today, and we're going to do something this Saturday, AND he's planning on coming to the Dudley stuff on Sunday--so I'd better get everything ready before Saturday!

Night at the Museum

Tonight I am surely going to dream about the movie "Night at the Museum" because I've been thinking and writing about museums all day in preparation for my presentation about Henry Watson Kent tomorrow. For Museum Administration, we were all assigned a "museum master" to research and make a presentation about. I happened to end up with the most obscure of all museum masters! It took me a while to understand why exactly Henry Watson Kent was so important, but I guess he is. He was the secretary to the Board of Trustees at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for about 30 years. During that time he developed systems for organizing collections and really stressed educational programs and public outreach. So I guess he's cool. The trick is that I need to speak about him in front of the class tomorrow for 10 minutes--and I only have about 5 minutes-worth of info., but I have a wonderful solution. Everyone likes games, right? So, I devised this way to play concentration, or "MET Memory," as I call it, in my Power Point presentation. It's pretty neat--you can click on a box, and then a painting from the MET's collection pops up, then you can go back, click on another box, and try to match the painting with its title and artist. Mrs. Miller was very specific about our 10 minute time limit though, so I didn't make the game very large or complicated, and I can cut it short if need be. The best part of the presentation will be the candy! Since I will be talking about HENRY Watson Kent, it is only appropriate that we will be eating "Oh Henry!" candy bars. :-)

This morning we had our Historical Interpretation class with Dr. Barnhart. When he got to class, his voice sounded really scratchy. He announced that he wasn't feeling well and that in order to save what he could of his voice for his two classes tomorrow, we would "only meet for a couple of minutes to touch base on things," and then he would let us go work on stuff. Well, in typical Dr. Barnhart fashion, the "couple of minutes" turned into an hour. We were all kind of smiling at each other in class because he would get started talking about something, then he would totally change topics and remember something else he wanted to say, so he ended up talking for 60 straight minutes. Poor Dr. Barnhart--hopefully he can get his voice back. I'm quite impressed though, that even with no voice, he can still talk for an hour! I really like all of our professors--they're all cool and have funny senses of humor.

This afternoon I helped Dr. Hardeman grade some papers. He was very tired today and kept falling asleep, but the crazy thing today was that even when he would stand up, which usually keeps him alert, he would fall asleep--standing up! It was amazing--I didn't know that people could do that and still keep their balance.

Tonight we had our weekly HA meeting. I forgot to say that last week our meeting only lasted for one hour--it was incredible, and I fear that we will never have that short of a meeting again. Tonight's meeting went from 8:00 until almost 10:00, and I think that the only thing we accomplish at these meetings is making ourselves more stressed out. Theoretically the meetings are supposed to keep all of us on the same page, but I think we actually all end up in different books! When I think of everything I have to do between now and Sunday, I get totally stressed out, so I'll try not to think about everything all at once. I tried writing down a "To Do" list last night, but it got too long, so I gave up. There is not enough paper in the whole world to contain this week's "To Do" list, let alone a list for the rest of the semester! Would anyone like to volunteer to come cook for me, eat for me, do my laundry, grocery shop for me, exercise for me, balance my checkbook, and, most importantly sleep for me? That would be wonderful and very helpful :-) I could also use some help getting through some books and writing some papers. I'll just do as Mom and Dad say and take everything one day at a time--then it all seems more doable.