"Father, I Cannot Tell a Lie"

Happy President's Day! It didn't really feel like a holiday today because I had school, but I made the most of it by taking the yummy chocolate cherry sticks that Mom sent me to school and sharing the Taylor family tradition of eating cherry stuff on President's Day with my teachers and classmates. They all thought that was pretty awesome, and I was appalled to learn that no one had ever heard of cherry sticks before--or orange sticks, or raspberry sticks! Is the idea of fruit flavored jelly centers dipped in real milk chocolate just a Utah thing? I said, "You guys have never gotten orange sticks for Christmas??!!" My jaw hit the floor when they all said no. They think that cherry sticks are pretty amazing though. Of course somebody had to bring up the fact that the George Washington and the cherry tree story is just a myth--but that's what makes it extra cool! As the story goes, when George was about six years old, he got a new hatchet and found that he loved chopping things with it. One day he started whacking at a pretty English cherry tree in his family's garden. When his father questioned him about it, he said: "Father, I cannot tell a lie. I cut the tree with my hatchet." According to Parson Weems, the man who supposedly "invented" the story when he wrote the first biography of America's first president in 1809, George's dad replied: "Run to my arms, you dearest boy; glad am I, George, that you killed my tree; for you have paid me for it a thousand fold. Such an act of heroism in my son, is more worth than a thousand trees, though blossomed with silver, and their fruits of purest gold." It's kind of like the story of Santa Clause--by saying it's not true, you ruin all the fun! If the story was indeed invented by Parson Weems to honor Washington and teach kids values, then so be it. Historians say that there is no proof that the story is true. Well, I say, where's the proof that the story is false? :-)

Today I worked with Dr. Hardeman and read papers to him for a while. As usual, there were some crazy ones. They were critiquing a book about the origins of American slavery, and going along with today's President's Day theme, George Washington was the object of many of the students' papers. Unfortunately they kept calling him a hypocrite, saying that he professed "liberty and justice for all," but he held slaves. These students would probably also say that Columbus was an evil man. Hmmmm, they need to understand the first rule of being a real historian: don't impose today's standards on the past!! Try to picture things in the context of their time!!! I am not defending the fact that George Washington had slaves--I'm just saying that just because he did doesn't mean he was evil. Unfortunately slavery was a part of the lifestyle back then, and I believe that George Washington helped to put in place foundations for our country that were later able to be used to eradicate slavery--it just took time, as all history does. That's my little President's Day soap box. I'm a big George Washington fan.

Today was a good but very busy day. I had my architecture class this morning, then work for Dr. Hardeman, then 19th Century Social and Cultural History tonight. In that class we're reading a book called The Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837. It's basically all about the Second Great Awakening and religious revivals in upstate New York during the early 1800's. Hmmmm, sounds like a book that would at least mention Joseph Smith or the beginnings of Mormonism once!!! But it doesn't. The book talks about Palmyra a bit, but to mention a major American religion that was a product of the Second Great Awakening and that was founded by a young man who lived only 20 miles from Rochester would be an academic sin, I guess. I checked out the book's author, Paul E. Johnson, and discovered that he taught history at the University of Utah for about 12 years before moving to the University of South Carolina where he is currently teaching. That explains a lot--he's a U of U guy. Being the audacious person that I seem to be these days, I e-mailed Dr. Johnson and, trying to sound like an innocent, naive Illinois college student, asked him why, in his book about religious revivals in upstate New York, he never even mentioned the Mormons--the story of which epitomizes the social and religious turmoil of the Second Great Awakening. He hasn't written back :-) I'm kind of a smart aleck these days, aren't I?

Presidents, Pigeons, and Pie

Since it is President's Day weekend, here's an interesting tidbit about one of our most intriguing and complex presidents:

Andrew Jackson, or "AJ" as I like to call him, was the first president on whom an assassination attempt was made. A man named Richard Lawrence approached Jackson with two pistols both of which, for some reason, misfired. With the possibility of an assassination taken off the table, Jackson proceeded to beat Lawrence near death with his cane until Jackson's aides pulled him off the assassin. The guns were inspected afterwards and it was discovered that they were in perfect working order, leading some historians to believe that it was an odds-defying "miracle" that Jackson survived, while we're pretty sure that the bullets, like everyone else, were simply scared of Jackson. :-) Favorite Jackson quote: "I have only two regrets: I didn't shoot Henry Clay and I didn't hang John C. Calhoun" (which is especially funny when you remember that Calhoun was Jackson's VP for a while before they got into a big fight about South Carolina's right to secede and Calhoun resigned).

Whoa--it is SO WINDY outside! I've said it before, but I'll say it again: the weather here is really weird. Wasn't it just last Sunday, when Stryder froze to death, that is was something like 2 degrees outside? Today it is 55 degrees! But, before you get too excited and think that it is warm and balmy here, you must understand that the wind is also blowing at like 55 mph . Needless to say, the drive to and from church today was rather eventful. It wasn't as bad on the way over as it was on the way home. I just kept thinking that I'm glad Stryder has some meat on his bones and is a substantial enough car that he won't blow off the road. The 10 miles from Mattoon to Charleston is across flat, open fields, and so there is nothing to break the wind except for your car. I literally had to keep the steering wheel turned to the right the whole way to keep from blowing into the other lane. And, these creepy black clouds were moving so fast across the sky that is was kind of making me dizzy while I was trying to focus on the road. Craziness. Church was really good though. We had ward conference today. Someone in Relief Society said something good for me to hear: "When you take it by the inch it's a cinch, but by the yard it's hard." Mom and Dad are always telling me to just take things one day at a time--because when you try to think about the whole semester all at once, it gets very overwhelming, so I'll follow everyone's good advice and just try to take things by the inch.

We now have some pet pigeons. I'm thinking of training them to deliver messages for me :-) Just kidding--they're kind of causing problems because they poop everywhere (and we learned in our historic preservation class last semester that pigeon poop is highly toxic--seriously). I don't know who the lovely person was who left a bunch of bread pieces just outside of our apartment door, but when I opened the door yesterday morning, all of these pigeons flew away, nearly scaring the living daylight out of me. Two of the pigeons discovered that if they hid themselves under the stairs going from our apartment up to the next floor, it was a good place to stay out of the cold and be near the bread pieces. So, while the other pigeons have moved on, the two lovebirds have stayed, and I don't think they'll be leaving anytime soon. At least they don't fly out at you every time you open the door. They still poop a lot though, so I don't know what we'll do about that.

Mom sent me a special President's Day treat in the mail--cherry chocolate sticks--in case I didn't get any cherry pie for President's Day!! She is soooooooooooo nice. You will all be happy to hear that I ended up getting my President's Day cherry pie too! Last night everyone decided that we needed to go have some chicken wings at this place called Johnny's in Mattoon, and then after, it was decided that we needed to have a President's Day viewing of "The Washingtonians," and, since I have suggested the tradition to my classmates, eat some cherry pie. "The Washingtonians" is a great movie to watch while you're eating cherry pie. I think I've mentioned this before, but my favorite line in the movie is when this lady says, "George Washington chopped up cherry trees, not the arms and legs of little kids!" :-) Or did he??? Just kidding. The problem was, all of my classmates had gotten slightly tipsy while we were at Johnny's, and the talkative stage of being semi-drunk set in just as the movie ended. So, they kept talking and talking and talking. I finally just went into my room and did some stuff while they were out there talking (we had watched the movie over here at Aly's and my place). The classmates have come to a general concensus that the Campus Pointe apartments are the only places to live in Charleston. Our rent here is a bit higher than everyone else's, but they all have problems galore. All of their utility bills have been in the $200's since it has been so cold, but because we just have a set amount to pay for utilities every month, Aly and I really only pay about $25 each. And we have a washer, dryer, and dishwasher. It's a good place to live (despite the pigeons). Well, I'm going to go curl up in my bed with my heating pad to comfort my tummy, which is not happy today. Hopefully Campus Pointe won't blow away!

The VIEW from Here to There

Now that's what I call a view--a "view from here to there," as our museum exhibit will be titled. Today the Coles County Sheriff took Dan and me up to the very top of the cupola on the Coles County Courthouse in Charleston so that we could take pictures of "urban sprawl" for the museum exhibit. As you can see, we were up at the highest point in all the land. The first picture there is looking south from the tower--over towards campus (where the other tall-ish buildings are). The second view is looking north towards the tiny town of Bushton. You don't realize just how flat it is here until you see the horizon from up high. I always have to take pictures of myself, wherever I go, so I snapped one up by the cool old bell in the cupola. That's my "I'm freezing" smile because it was freezing up there. It was really cool though--the sheriff took us to the third floor of the courthouse, then we got to go inside a secret door with a really steep, old wooden staircase. It felt like we were climbing forever, and then the sheriff opened up a hatch, and poof!--we were on top of the world.

It was a year ago today that Mom and I left for Chicago to attend the Illinois State History Symposium at Illinois State University in Normal. We had planned to leave on Valentine's Day, but there was a snow storm in Chicago, so our flight got bumped until the next day. We had a great time in Normal (except that it was really, really cold), and then we swung down to Charleston during the week to check out Eastern Illinois University. As you can see from the picture, it was freezing cold in Charleston then--hmmmm, some things never change :-) At that point I had been invited to be interviewed by the facult at Eastern for possible admittance to the program, but I wasn't really sure if I actually wanted to come to central Illinois for school. Since I wasn't going to be able to come back out for the interviews (I ended up doing the interview over the phone from the comfort of my own bedroom), Mom and I thought we'd check out the campus and town while we were out there. We thought that campus was nice, but our first impression of Charleston was that it was a little ghetto-ish. Now I think of it as just "quaint." :-) We did like that when we drove through town we didn't get the yucky feeling inside that we felt when we had first driven through Macomb, Illinois, back when I was planning to go to Western Illinois University. After visiting Charleston for the first time, I still didn't think that I would really end up out here, but they gave me the best offer and had the best-looking program of all that I had checked out. So here I am--one year later! I wish Mom was here in Charleston with me again too! :-)

It's been sad to see some of the details surface about yesterday's shooting at NIU. It's especially crazy that the shooter, who had formerly been a grad. student at NIU was currently a grad. student at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign--that made it hit even closer to home! The U of I is just 40 miles north of Charleston, and I heard on the news that the shooter had purchased his guns just last week up there in Champaign. So, it could just as easily have happened at the U of I, or anywhere else for that matter. That's really, really sad and scary.

Yesterday Aly's boyfriend Darrin called and said that for Valentine's Day weekend he was going to surprise her by showing up at our doorstep tonight. Uh-oh. Well, at least he won't be bringing the friend with him who totally took over the whole apartment (and kept all of the windows open) the last time he came for a visit. And, maybe since he doesn't have his friend here to egg him on, maybe Darrin won't get so drunk this time. We can only hope. So, I guess it will be kind of a crazy weekend here, but I'm mostly just going to barricade myself in my room anyway because I have a lot of stuff to get done before Monday. That's the cool thing about our apartment--we each have our own big room and bathroom to ourselves, so if other people are here, I can just hang out in my own private space. I am going to go eat some delicious Valentine's leftovers for dinner, and then do some homework--my most common Friday night activity! :-)

Your Mine

I have gotten some relatively panicked phone calls and text messages this evening from friends and family who were afraid that the sad school shooting today happened at my school. It is hard to keep all of the Illinois schools straight because there is one for every cardinal direction, but thankfully I am at Eastern Illinois University instead of Northern Illinois University. NIU is up in Dekalb, Illinois--just east of Chicago and a little over 200 miles from Charleston, but it still hits pretty close to home. Thank you for being concerned for my safety and emotional well-being. It's sad to realize that something like that could happen anywhere. I read that the teacher in the lecture hall where the shooting took place was a graduate teaching assistant, which again hits close to home. He was injured but luckily he survived. I'm sure the next couple of weeks will be very sad as they try to figure out what happened and we find out the names of the students who were killed.

On a much happier note, today was Valentine's Day!! My favorite Valentine's decoration is the funny heart pillow that Mom found for me--which says: "Your Mine." When people write "your" instead of "you're," that's one of Mom's and my pep-peeves, so that pillow always makes us laugh. This afternoon when I went to our Digital Applications class, my classmate Angie was really mad because her husband Keith had sent her the wrong kind of flowers. He had sent a flower mix with only two roses, and she had wanted a whole bouquet of just roses. Picky picky! :-) Then, of course Alisha had to pipe-in because she can't resist talking about her boyfriend Matt all the time, so she said that she doesn't like flowers, and Matt gave her the best Valentine's gift ever. Someone asked what that was, and she said, "Oh! He finished filling out my application for owning a gun." We all just looked at her, and someone said in a very flat tone, "Are you serious?" I find this ironic because Alisha is a hard-core liberal, and liberals hate it when people have the right to own guns. You have to admit that that's not exactly what you'd call a romantic Valentine's Day gift. Mr. Riccio had been over at his desk during this whole conversation, and when he got up to start class, he said, "Wow! I am just feeling the love here in this room right now." :-) ha ha ha

This afternoon after class, Greg came down to Charleston and picked me up to go to Sullivan. His parents' house is for sale, so luckily he can still use it as a good waystation between Springfield and C-town. He had some wonderful Valentine's Day surprises for me and fixed a delicious dinner!! Angie would be so jealous that I got a boquet of roses--pink roses (my favorite), nonetheless! He also gave me some beautiful sapphire earrings, a cuddly teddy bear, and some See's Candy chocolates--from Utah! He is very sweet, and we had a wonderful evening together. He is quite the gourmet chef, and for dinner he fixed shrimp fettuccini alfredo, a delicious potato and red pepper dish, and some tasty garlic bread. And for dessert, he made the famous "better than diamonds" dessert--complete with a strawberry heart on top! It was a delightful meal, and he even sent the leftovers home with me, so now I will be eating very well all week. Then, he agreed to watch with me the chick flick of all chick flicks, the ultimate Valentine's Day movie: Pride and Prejudice!! And he didn't even fall asleep during it! :-) It was a very, very happy Valentine's Day today, and I am glad I got to spend it with Greg. Well, I'm off to bed because tomorrow I need to go meet the sheriff of Charleston at the courthouse. Don't worry--I am not in trouble, but Dan and I have to get a picture of "urban sprawl" for the museum exhibit, and we don't have access to an airplane, so the highest point we could think of from which to photograph what little urban sprawl there is in the area was the cupola way up at the top of the Coles County courthouse in downtown Charleston. Somehow Dan got special permission from the sheriff to go up in the cupola in the morning, so I guess I'd better show up with the camera. Tomorrow most of Charleston will be closed in observance of Abraham Lincoln's birthday, which was last Tuesday :-) Only in Illinois.

Stained Glass and Stryder

Whoa--it sounds like no matter where you are--whether it's warm or cold, 'tis the season for car trouble. That was crazy that Sarah and Joel's window shattered in their car! I'm glad that everyone was okay. 'Tis also the season for sickness, and I'm sorry to hear that both Mom and Rich have the gomboo now. Last night I was afraid that I was coming down with something too--I had a really bad headache and thought I might be getting the flu, but the day in Springfield seems to have cured me, and I feel much better. I hope that everyone else can get better soon too!!

I finally got Stryder back today, and he is happier than ever to be alive! It seems that replacing the distributor did the trick, and now everything works great. $668.34 was a pretty hefty price tag, but it's worth it to have the car up and running again.

Today we went to Springfield for the Collections Care class, and it was a long day, but we had a great time. We started out at the Old State Capitol building where I gave a presentation to the class about preserving historic textiles, and then we got to catalog some textiles from the Vachel Lindsay Home. Then, Dr. Reid treated all of us to lunch at this cool restaurant called the Feed Store. I had a tasty sandwich, and Catherine and I shared a piece of apple cake.

After lunch we got to go to the Dana-Thomas House in downtown Springfield. It is seriously one of the coolest houses I have ever seen! It was built by Frank Lloyd Wright from 1902-1904, and it is about 12,600 square feet, has 35 rooms, and 250 decorative glass windows. It was built for this really rich lady named Susan Lawrence Dana who was the social queen of Springfield at the turn of the century. My two favorite rooms were the gallery and the dining room. The original dining table has 16 leaves and can seat 40 people! Just one of the original Frank Lloyd Wright lamps in the home is worth about 2.3 million dollars. My favorite feature of the home was the bowling alley downstairs--it was so cool! We were supposed to go to Abe Lincoln's tomb today to talk about historic landscape preservation, but unfortunately we ran out of time because we were having too much fun at the Dana-Thomas house. Dr. Reid tried taking a shortcut on the way back to Charleston, but we ended up getting lost in the cornfields between Mattoon and C-town. Luckily we made it back, and I even had time to pick up Stryder before Midas closed. It was another fun day in Springfield! I wasn't as grouchy today as I was earlier this week--maybe it's because tomorrow is Valentine's Day and this year I have a Valentine! :-) I have decided that I have two new favorite things: Hershey's chocolate syrup (for making chocolate milk), and the show called "Ghost Hunters" on the SciFi channel.