Booth Library

The library here on campus, which is the one building besides Coleman Hall where we HA students spend a lot of our time, is called the Booth Library. I can't remember who the Booth is that it's named after (I think either an early professor here, or a donor, or somebody like that), but we decided it would be funny to start telling people that it's named after John Wilkes Booth! Ha ha ha, wouldn't that be funny if, in the heart of Illinois--Lincoln Land--there was a university library named after the hated assassin? We thought it would make a good story of irony: Only five miles from the world's tallest Abraham Lincoln statue, an 80-foot monument to the man who saved our nation from certain destruction, is the Booth Library on the campus of Eastern Illinois University--named for the man, John Wilkes Booth, who martyred the saintly President. Don't you think that would be cool to put in travel brochures? Okay, so maybe it's not the best idea, but we thought it was kind of funny.

Today is a beautiful fall day! This morning Aly and I went over to the Tarble Arts Center to meet Alisha and Dan to take pictures of items that will be displayed in our exhibit next spring. Now I'm off to work with Dr. Hardeman for the afternoon, and after that I'm going to hit the books and get some homework done so I'll be free to head to Springfield tomorrow. It should be a fun weekend! I'm also going to be stopping over at Dr. Reid's house sometime in the next few days to learn the ropes of, you guessed it, taking care of her kitties while she's out of town next week :-) I love taking care of people's kitties, and Dr. Reid's are super cute. Their names are Eleanor and Katie. Well, I'm off to work!

Sad China

Here are some pictures I've been wanting to upload, but my computer was being silly the other day. The first picture you see is of Catherine and me out in front of the Dudley House on Sunday just before the big presentation. I was really, really nervous because all of my professors and a bunch of people were there! Next, you will see a picture from Monday's Marshall adventure. This picture was taken out in front of the Moonshine--which, unfortunately, was closed when we got there. It's definitely a funny place though--I especially like the "Population: 2" sign :-)

Well today in Historic Preservation Laurie and I presented our Marshall Main Street findings. We concluded that Marshall is doing a good job with what they have, but they just don't have enough money to do what needs to be done there on Main Street. One of the buildings we featured in our presentation was a restaurant in Marshall called Happy China--only we renamed it Sad China because it was really shabby looking. Everyone enjoyed that.

After class I drove up to Sullivan and met Greg at his parents' house. We went to this really pretty park with a lake and walked around for a while. I didn't know that there could be any super pretty parks like that out in the middle of the cornfields--except for Allerton Park. It was a little chilly outside, but it was a beautiful fall day. The leaves on the trees looked awesome! We then went and got Chinese food with Greg's mom and dad--and his mom was sad because this was her last dinner in Sullivan before heading to Utah for a few months to work at the AF hospital. I'm glad I've gotten to know her as much as I have--she's a really nice lady! After dinner, Greg and I went and saw the movie "Dan in Real Life" with Steve Carell in it. It was a very funny, cute movie. My favorite part was when Steve got pulled over by a policeman for the second time in two days and he said to the officer, "Just put it on my tab." The officer didn't think it was very funny :-) I had a great time today, and I really do like Greg a lot!! I'm going to head up to Springfield on Saturday to help him get settled in his new house, and we're going to go visit Abe Lincoln's house--my favorite place!

Tilford Scaredly

Happy Halloween!! Today we all decided that there would be no better way to get into the Halloween spirit than to dress up like a bunch of Tilford Dudleys. So this afternoon, just before Dr. Reid's Material Culture class, we all painted mascara mustaches on our faces--just like Tilford used to have. Dr. Reid thought it was hilarious, and everybody we ran into in the history department appreciated the humor of it all. Then the next two pictures are from our scary cemetery adventures this evening. We started out at Shiloh Cemetery, where Thomas Lincoln is buried, and heard ghost stories from Matt about how "Tom" still checks up on his farm every now and then. After that we went looking for Tilford Dudley's grave in this random cemetery out by the train tracks in town, but it was to no avail. We kind of creeped ourselves out though, by being out there after it got really dark. But we had flashlights and each other, so we were okay. It was a very fun Halloween adventure! After that we got some pizzas and went back to our classroom to watch "Dracula." That is a seriously messed-up movie, and I wasn't too disappointed when Laurie and I had to leave to work on our presentation about Marshall's Main Street in Historic Preservation tomorrow. Earlier today we had more fun Halloween times at the Dudley House. We met there this morning to get our picture taken for Mattoon Journal-Gazette. The man who will be writing the feature story on us this Sunday interviewed Catherine and me about Tilford's career. He said that it's going to be a pretty extensive article, so we're all quite excited. After the pictures and interviews, we walked around the Dudley House looking for the angry ghost. Paul Bauman, the guy from church who used to be in the HA program, had told us before that he swears he encountered the ghost when he was at the Dud's house one night. He was working up in the archive room, and then he heard the downstairs door open, footsteps come up the stairs and walk down the hall, and head into the back bedroom where Dr. Dudley (T-Dud's dad) had his office. Paul heard things being thrown around in the bedroom (which he had locked earlier), and then he heard the footsteps go back downstairs and leave--but he never saw anyone. Paul went and checked out the bedroom, which was still locked, and found it in complete disarray--but he had just organized everything in there earlier in the day. Yikes! So we went looking for the mad ghost today, but did not find it. We even opened the door to the attic, but no one was up there. After the T-Dud House, we all went and had a Halloween breakfast at the South Side Cafe. I had a delicious omelet. After breakfast I went and got a flu shot, then it was off to school for class this afternoon. It has been a very fun and spoooooky day! I saw a lot of funny costumes today, but my favorites were those that I saw pictures of Camden, Riley, Sidney, and Eliza wearing!! One year ago today, Mom and I had the funnest Halloween ever at the Myrtles Plantation in St. Francisville, Louisiana!! That was a Halloween I will surely never forget. It's not every day that you get to spend Halloween at THE most haunted house in America!

Halloween Eve!

Happy Halloween Eve! Last night there was a very spooky moon--it was bright orange, and the "Man in the Moon" looked especially sneaky. Tonight I am hosting our weekly HA meeting--which I still maintain that we don't really need to have, but alas--it's worth it just to keep everyone happy, I guess. I will be serving doughnuts and apple cider--very fall-ish! Today was the perfect fall day! It was in the 60's outside, sunny, just a little cool, and the leaves on the trees were brighter than ever. I love fall and spring!

I walked to Wal Mart this afternoon to buy some paper plates for tonight, and they already had their Christmas stuff out!! But it's not even Halloween yet! And what about Thanksgiving??? Hmmm, very strange. Well, I guess they had their Halloween and Thanksgiving stuff out simultaneously.

Today in Dr. Barnhart's class, he was talking about maps, and it was interesting, but he was talking so much that it was putting everybody to sleep :-) We were trying our best to stay awake, but it was nice and warm in the room and we kept dozing off. I was sitting by Catherine, and Kristen said that when one of us would finally give in and close our eyes for a second, the other would wake up, and visa versa. Kristen herself petered out a couple of times, and everybody else had very heavy eyelids. I have decided that this Local History and Interpretation class is the most random class I've ever had :-) We've stopped having formal reading assignments, and these days he just kind of talks about whatever, but it's always interesting.

Tomorrow, for Halloween, all of us are going out for a spooky breakfast! We don't have Mrs. Miller's Museum Administration class in the morning , so we'll have time to sit down and enjoy a Halloween meal. Then we have Material Culture in the afternoon, and then after that . . . we're going on a Haunted Cemetery Tour of Charleston!!!! Hooray!! This is something that Catherine, Sarah, and I thought up today, and Sarah is going to develop a tour route for us. There are lots of crazy stories about some of the cemeteries here, and we're going to visit the graves of some of the city's most famous residents--including Thomas Lincoln (Abe's dad) and Sarah Bush Lincoln (Abe's step-mom). We can't find where Tilford Dudley is buried though, so we might not be able to visit his grave. I kind of think he's not really buried here, but I'm not sure. Well, I've got to go vacuum for tonight! Oh, one more thing--tomorrow morning, before breakfast, the Mattoon Journal-Gazette wants to take a picture of all of us in front of the Dudley House because they're going to do a huge feature on Tilford Dudley and the projects we've done!!! Yay--we're famous!

Moonshine and Marshall

Oh, the adventures today! First off though, the first picture you see here is from a couple of weeks ago when we had Disability Awareness Day in Museum Administration. I just barely got the photos from Kristen, and I thought that this one captured just how ridiculous we all looked! Thankfully I didn't have to walk around school being both hearing and visually-impaired, but I did have to walk around with those headphones on--I certainly got some strange looks!

Now, about today--after Museum Exhibits class this morning, Laurie, Catherine, and I took off for the little town of Marshall, Illinois, which is a member of Illinois's Main Street Preservation program. We have to do a report on the Main Street program this Thursday, so we thought we'd go take some pictures and gather information today. We took a little detour on our way down because we wanted to stop at this place out in the boonies south of Martinsville (which is south of Marshall) to eat at this place we'd heard about called Moonshine. I know what you're thinking--a place serving strong drinks? That's what I thought at first, but it's actually a world-famous burger place. They serve what's called the Moonburger. It is literally out in the middle of NOWHERE!! My GPS was guiding us through the farmland to get there, and we were going down dirt roads, gravel roads, through cow pastures, and we finally made it . . . only to find that they closed at 1:00 (it was 1:30)! :-( We were so sad. But, we want to go back another day and try it out--it is a hilarious little place, and usually it's the places like that where you'll find the best food. So, we drove up to Marshall for lunch. A lot of places there had already closed too, but we were able to eat at the Marshall Family Diner. It was a hilarious little place, and the food was really good. They had Mexican decorations all over the place, which we thought was funny, and all of the locals were there shootin' the breeze and drinking lemonade. They were telling each other funny stories, and my favorite comment was when this older lady said, "Bill, will you internet me that picture?" That's way more fun to say than "e-mail." We had some tasty grilled cheese sandwiches there, and then we went out to look at buildings. They have some really cool buildings there, and it's great that the Main Street program is helping them restore and preserve them all. We were cracking up today because Marshall has to stretch a bit to tie themselves to Lincoln, but as is the case with all Illinois towns, they've done their darndest. They have an inn there downtown (which is for sale--anyone looking for a business?), which Abraham Lincoln supposedly slept in one night. And our favorite was a brochure that featured a stone well from which Abraham Lincoln supposedly drew water one time. They're stretching it with the well! We met some really nice people who let us come in and look around their buildings. They've got some great restoration projects going on, and it was neat to see the work they're doing up close. When we were back inspecting the rear of one of the buildings, we couldn't help but notice some brick pieces on the ground that had fallen off the building's exterior. We broke all historic preservation laws and took one of the little brick pieces--we just wanted a relic to show we'd been to Marshall! :-) Later we went out looking for bridges along Route 40--also known as the National Road (which we will be featuring in our corridors exhibit next spring). We were looking for one bridge in particular, and we ended up doing a little off-roading to try to find it. We never found it, but we did find this old road made of bricks--maybe an older version of the National Road? Since we were gathering relics, we decided that we needed to just take one little piece of brick that had been chipped off of the road--and we can say that it's part of the National Road! It was a beautiful fall day today. The leaves were soooo pretty, and it was nice and brisk outside. We were gone much longer than we had planned, but we were having so much fun that we just lost track of time. On our way back to Charleston we had to stop at Dairy Queen in the town of Casey to get pumpkin pie blizzards--which were delicious. Also on the way back, we had to stop at the World's Tallest Abe Lincoln statue since Catherine and Laurie had never seen it before. You can see from the third picture up there just how tall Abe really is in comparison to little Laurie down there by his feet. They thought the statue was hilarious and decided that it is the ultimate Land of Lincoln icon. Well, I'm off to bed. It's been a fun day but I'm pooped!