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.

George Washington

When I posted my little bit about Abraham Lincoln's birthday today, and when I said that I'm glad that at this time of year we can all eat cherry pie and remember Presidents Lincoln and Washington, I forgot to say that in Illinois at this time of year, they only remember President Lincoln :-) I don't think it's that they don't like George Washington here--they just don't want him stealing any of the spotlight from their native son. I'm being totally serious though--we don't get this coming Monday, President's Day, as a day off of school. Instead, all of the Illinois schools will be closed this Friday for "Lincoln's Birthday Observed." Then President's Day is just a regular old day for everyone except at the banks and post offices. Ha ha ha. They're funny here! And none of my compadres here had ever heard of eating cherry pie for President's Day before, which has been a tradition in my family for a long time, but the compadres think it's a wonderful idea--especially since in the movie "The Washingtonians," the scary Colonial people who were trying to eat everyone's kids had a cherry tree patch on their shoulders. I would prefer having Monday as a holiday instead of Friday--since I don't have classes on Fridays anyway, but it's okay. I think I have reached mid-stream in the semester, when it feels like I'm getting swept away in the current. But I need to just keep swimming until I get to the other side, right? Tomorrow we have to leave really early to go up to Springfield for our Collections Care class, so I'd better head to bed. I always enjoy the Springfield field trips, so it should be a very good day.

The Big 199!

BIG NEWS: The Master's program in History at BYU has officially been "furloughed"!!! I don't know exactly what that means for the program, but they are no longer accepting applications; and it kind of sounds like the program will be suspended for an undisclosed period of time. Wow!! Maybe they just got too many "smart" students who got perfect scores on the GRE and who could bake a lot of cakes, and the whole program imploded from smart-ness. :-) Just kidding--I'm being facetious (I learned that word from Dr. Barnhart). I guess it is good that I didn't end up in that program even though I was totally crushed when I didn't get accepted. My favorite history professor, Dr. Rugh, told me that it was better for me to go somewhere else because she thought the program at BYU would go under someday, and she thought I would learn more someplace else--thus, I ended up at EIU. I thought she was just trying to make me feel better about not getting into the program, but there was obviously some foresight there on her part. Anyway, today is Abraham Lincoln's 199th birthday!!!

No, your eyes are not deceiving you--this is Abraham Lincoln that you see here, and he is indeed winking at you :-) Unfortunately, since Stryder is still at the car spa, I don't think I'll be able to make it out to the world's tallest Abraham Lincoln statue today, but I will still pay tribute to my favorite President here. People sometimes criticize Lincoln for things, but in my opinion, he always did what he believed to be the best thing for the country, and when you consider the incredible burden that was placed upon his shoulders, it seems quite remarkable that one man was able to bear all of that. And, he did it with a smile on his face. My favorite Lincoln quote is: "If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?" :-) If Abraham Lincoln hadn't done what he did during his presidency, what would have happened to the country? If you think about it, allowing the South to secede could have opened a gigantic can of worms. Where would the whole secession thing have stopped? If Lincoln had recognized the Confederate States of America as an independent nation, then what would stop New York from seceding from the Union, or Vermont, or Illinois? The United States could have become what Eastern Europe is today--a whole bunch of little independent nations that are always fighting about something. I think he was a very remarkable man and did a job that only he could have done--with help from God, who, as I mentioned yesterday, he wasn't afraid to acknowledge.

My favorite Lincoln speech is his Second Inaugural Address, given on March 4, 1865--just a little over a month before the Civil War ended and he was killed. I love the end of the speech, when he said:

"Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

I also love his most famous speech, the Gettysburg Address, given at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on November 19, 1863, when he said:

"The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Abraham Lincoln was a great man, and even though it's really cold and they have tornadoes here, it's cool that I get to live in his home state right now. John Wilkes Booth thought that he would be recognized as a hero for shooting President Lincoln, but his plan backfired on him, and instead he made Lincoln into a martyr and one of the most famous and beloved American Presidents. I'm glad that at this time of year, we all take time to eat cherry pie and remember Presidents Lincoln and Washington.