Zion Vote

Since November is far away and Mitt Romney is no longer a Presidential candidate, I have a happy voting opportunity for all of you. The next deadline for my Zion book is on April 22, and I have to submit at least five possible cover images. These are the ones I have narrowed it down to at this point. Though my editor will ultimately choose what picture goes on the cover of the book, she would like my recommendations. So, I need your help picking which image to recommend for the cover.

1
1926 - Carnelia Crawford, wife of early Springdale resident William R. Crawford, poses in front of Walter Ruesch's Chevrolet with her daughters Annie, Mary, Marilla, Fanny, and Emma







2
1930s - Zion National Park administrative staff, including Donal Jolley: the first Chief Ranger at Zion






3
1950 - Tourists on top of Angel's Landing after riding horses up Walter's Wiggles












4
A Zion "sing-away," where park employees would sing to departing visitors. Notice the cool Utah Parks Company tour bus







5
Zion National Park staff--including, front and center, Grandpa Taylor!!!!







Please vote for your favorite by leaving a comment below. Keep in mind that the cover image is supposed to embody the people aspect of the park--whether that be visitors or employees. Thanks for your help!

SPRING Cleaning!

Ahhhh, today was a real spring day outside. And it was General Conference! What could be better? I love that people can watch conference anywhere in the world over the internet. It's great at home that they show it on Channel 5, but there is not KSL 5 here in Charleston, so I'm glad that they do show conference online. And, it was nice because when I had to miss a little bit to run to the post office, I could just watch it later. It was very neat to sustain President Monson today as the prophet, and I think that Elder Christofferson will be a wonderful addition to the Quorum of the Twelve. It's cool that he is Uncle Kevin and Aunt Wendy's next-door-neighbor! Maybe they'll get to have security guards on their street? :-)

Ever since I was in high school, Elder Wirthlin has been my favorite conference speaker. He always seems to say just what I need to hear. Today when he said, "With all of the pressures and demands on our time and the stress we face each day, it's little wonder that we get tired," I realized that once again he was talking to me. I'm tired all the time! :-) He said that the "power of God can infuse our spirits and bodies with energy and vigor." He said that when he feels tired, he remembers the words of Joseph Smith: "Shall we not go on in so great a cause? Go forward and not backward." (That's one of my favorite Joseph Smith quotes!) What a great talk! It was really just what I needed to hear--especially as the end of the semester draws near.

In between sessions today, I gave Stryder a very thorough spring cleaning. He had gotten quite dirty inside and out during the long winter, but he is now clean, shiny, sparkly, and smells good inside and out. Even his tires are glistening! There are quite a few birds around, and I'm afraid that they target the cleanest cars, but hopefully they won't hit him. It had been so long, in fact, since Stryder had gotten a really, truly thorough cleaning, that today I even found some elusive shards of glass from when the windshield got smashed by the pecan tree in Natchez this summer! But now he is all clean and happy. I spring cleaned our apartment the other day--except for my room, which I began working on today, but I'm kind of buried in books, papers, more books, more papers, and clothes. I'll need to work on my room some more.

Hooray that Memphis beat UCLA in the NCAA tourney today!!! I picked Memphis to win it all, and I hope that they can do it. I'm tired of the usual teams that are always in the championship, so it's nice to see Memphis going there!

The Boxcar Children

Catherine, Sarah, and I now refer to ourselves as the Boxcar Children. Why, you may ask? Well because today we built a boxcar--a freaking 8-foot-tall boxcar!!! :-) It was so funny. I don't know how we did it, but we got to the sculpture studio this morning at about 10:00, and when we left at 3:00 this afternoon, there was a boxcar painted to look like it was made of weathered wood. Some of our classmates had assembled the frame yesterday, and today the three of us, with Mr. Riccio surveying our work, attached a Masonite front to the frame and made a door for the boxcar out of two-by-fours. We then did this amazing paint job, and voila--we had a boxcar that looked like it was covered in old, wood panels. I must say it's cool-looking, even though I still think that the train car thing is a stupid idea :-) Our train car is actually going to consist of three parts: part one is the boxcar, part two will be an "economy class" setting, and part three will be "first class." I don't know how we're going to finish the other two cars, but hey, I didn't know how we were going to build a boxcar today. Then, this afternoon Catherine and I were sent to Dave's Decorating to buy some wallpaper and carpet for the "first class" section of the train car. We had no idea what we were looking for--except that whatever we got was supposed to be "1920s-ish." (Typical Mr. Riccio instructions.) We felt like a newly-married couple choosing wallpaper for our first home :-) We found some really cool wallpaper, but when we calculated how much we would need, we saw that it would cost about $70. We called the Tarble Arts Center to ask them how much we could spend on wallpaper for the train car, and they looked at the budget Mr. Riccio had given them. Mike, the Tarble guy said, "Ummm, Mr. Riccio has budgeted $5 for wallpaper." I started laughing so hard. That sounded about right for Mr. Riccio's planning techniques. The Dave's Decorating people were really nice, and they decided that they would just donate some other wallpaper and carpet to us that they had left over from some other projects. Hooray for Dave's Decorating! Now the trunk of my car is full of wallpaper and wallpaper paste.

I think that in the real museum world, I would not be actually assembling exhibit props like train cars and shopping for train car wallpaper. I think you'd have carpenters and other people to do that, but I am definitely not in the real museum world right now, so that would explain why I spent the day in front of a miter saw with a paintbrush in hand.

By the time Catherine and I finished shopping for wallpaper at 5:40 this evening, we were both pooped. We had worked all day, but not gotten anything done that we had planned on doing when we got up this morning--like homework. Oh well, I guess that's what tomorrow is for. I'm planning to have General Conference playing on the internet while I am working on things I needed to do today. Catherine and I are so pooped, in fact, that we think tonight we need to watch "Nacho Libre" and make chocolate chip cookies, so that's the plan.

History According to Dr. Hardeman's Students

Ha ha. Dr. Hardeman's students wrote about some good historical "facts" today that I wanted to share with you. First, did you know that Abraham Lincoln was a Democrat? Hmmm, I always thought he was the first Republican President, but I guess that to a lot of people these days, every true American hero is (or should have been) a Democrat. Then, I learned today that Abraham Lincoln enacted the "three-fifths clause." (That was actually something presented at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 saying that slaves counted as "three-fifths" of a person towards the population of the Southern states, so the Southerners could have more representatives in the House of Representatives--a far cry from the Emancipation Proclamation.) I also learned today that the United States acquired California and Arizona during the French and Indian War--which is impressive since the French and Indian War took place from 1754-1763--over 40 years before the Louisiana Purchase and about 92 years before the war with Mexico! And, I learned that Virginia seceded from the South right before the Civil War. (Granted, West Virginia seceded from Virginia, but the capital of the Confederacy was in Virginia, and it was Robert E. Lee's home state.) And, I learned that John C. Calhoun wrote the Compromise of 1850--he was actually its biggest and most vehement opponent. So, anyway, it was a funny day of good laughs reading papers to Dr. Hardeman.

Natchez Nostalgia

I miss Natchez. Ha ha, after I first got there in 2006, I never thought I would ever say "I miss Natchez." But I do. I had a great time there in 2006 and 2007. This morning before the day's activities begin I was going through some of my journal entries from my first summer in Natchez.

Here's one from shortly after I began working at the Natchez National Historical Park:

May 10, 2006

"Rangers Tim, Ayne, and myself were getting ready to close Melrose, when . . . the Natchez tornado sirens went off!!!! It was sooooooooo creepy! We were the only ones left at the park, there were these dark clouds outside, the air was totally still, and there were these loud, droning sirens going off. It reminded me of the World War II movies you see where the bomb raid sirens are going off (except that there were no airplanes involved today). The three of us looked at each other, and we were like, 'What do we do?' Ranger Tim tried to get the radio to work, but it didn’t. We looked online, and it appeared that the strong storms were a little north of us. They sent me back to close up the slave cabins, and I was totally freaked out. I decided that, even though I had always thought it would be fun to see a tornado from a distance, I could probably do without ever seeing one. So I ran back to the cabins, closed them up, and ran back to the visitors’ center. Tim said, 'Let’s get out of here.' So, I trucked it home on my bike, but by this time the sun was poking through the clouds, and I figured the worst was over. Then I remembered how in movies like Twister, the weather can be great, and then all of a sudden a tornado will pop out of the sky. Jessica hadn’t heard the sirens because she was at Girl Scouts this afternoon, and her girls were being kind of loud. She was pretty surprised to hear that they had gone off. I was just getting ready to get in the shower, when more dark clouds blew in and the sirens went off AGAIN! Two sirens in one day—I could hardly stand it—it was exciting and scary at the same time! This time Jessica heard them too so we turned on the Weather Channel. The screen was red and the same strange man from the thunderstorm warning the other night was saying, 'A tornado warning has been issued for Adams County, Mississippi until 6:30 p.m. Please take the proper precautions.' I decided to go take a shower anyway, because the bathroom is probably where I would go if there ended up being a tornado. When I got out of the shower, I turned on the TV in my room, and they were talking about a large tornado that had touched down about 9 miles northeast of Natchez. I was like, 'Ahhhh! I’m in Natchez!' Luckily the storm kept moving east, but it was a little too close for comfort. This could be a long tornado season—and hurricane season starts on June 1. I’m beginning to think that weather-wise, Utah is definitely the place for me. It is kind of exciting here though. It’s like the movie Twister, only it’s real life! Cool."

I had some seriously good times in Natchez. When I first got there I was really homesick and didn't want to be there, but everyone told me to hang in there and that things would get better. Everyone was right--it did get better. In fact, I was sad to leave in August 2006, and when I ended up not staying at Western Illinois University that fall, I went back to Natchez to work for the rest of the fall--and I went back the next summer! Good times in Natchez. I did like all of the Spanish moss on the trees, the kudzu vines, the Mississippi River, the historic houses, the tourists, and, of course, my cool ranger friends. The picture up there at the top is of the Great Mississippi River Balloon Race in October 2006--that was super cool. A little nostalgia is good for everyone now and then, right?

Well, I'm off to change some light bulbs, do some laundry, vacuum, write papers, work with Dr. Hardeman, go to Institute, and do more homework.