Provo Rocks!

I was trying to write this morning, but I began experiencing a severe brain cramp, so I decided to get online for a minute. Sometimes when I switch gears it helps to alleviate my brain blockage. As I was reading the news, I discovered that Kiplinger has listed PROVO, UTAH on its Top 10 list of "Best Cities to Live, Work, and Play!" They said that in their search for "the ten best cities in which to live and work, we sought places with strong economies and abundant jobs, plus reasonable living costs and plenty of fun things to do." Hooray for Provo! Since Orem and Provo are pretty much the same place, hooray for Orem too! I seriously love Utah Valley--it's beautiful here and there truly are a lot of fun things to do (after you finish writing your book). Okay, back to work.

BOOK

I have much to catch-up on here on my blog--Father's Day, dressing up like an 1857 U. S. Army soldier, and selling $450-worth of candy to school children--but that will all have to wait for a few more days because my Zion National Park book has, out of necessity, temporarily consumed my life. My editor called the other day, and a proposition was made for me to finish the book by this Friday instead of next Tuesday. At first I didn't think I could do it, but then Mom and I figured that if I worked it out with my boss at Camp Floyd to switch some of this week's work days to next week, and if I was willing to really buckle down and eat, sleep, and drink Zion National Park, I could do it. Arcadia Publishing will reward me bounteously for turning my book in early (even though I don't understand how four days makes a big difference for them, but obviously it must), so it's worth the extra effort for the next couple of days. They said that they needed my images sent to San Francisco by Thursday morning, and my text e-mailed to my editor in Arizona by Friday morning. So, I stayed up for most of the night last night getting all of the book images ready to be mailed to SF this morning. I got all 199 pictures to fit onto one USB drive, which I sent via UPS overnight air, so it should arrive there by 10:30 tomorrow morning--pretty cool how that works. I have spent the rest of the day writing and will do the same tomorrow to see if I can finish all of the text by Friday. The end is in sight and the book is coming together very well. I wouldn't be able to do it if it wasn't for Mom's help though--she's the best!

Confederates in the Attic of Stagecoach Inn

I'd like to think that if I had lived in Civil War times, I would have been one of those independent-minded, musket-toting women who protected my home from the invading army with my rifle. I think I would have lost the hoop skirt though--you can't do anything in that without knocking somebody down or tripping yourself. Here is musket-toting, hoop skirt-wearing me this morning on Day #2 of the Boy Scout adventure camp. I am posing in front of the non-historic Kawasaki Mule with Sergeant Van--one of the volunteers. We are both holding authentic Italian reproduction 1857 Springfield rifles--pretty cool.

We started out the morning at 7:00 a.m. giving the boys a breakfast of apple fritters, beef jerky, and hot chocolate. Then, we had a flag raising ceremony. The first flag the scouts hoisted up on the flag pole was the 36-star American flag, followed by the first flag of the Confederacy--since 75% of the officers stationed at Camp Floyd in 1861 joined the Confederate Army. It's a good thing that no NAACP people stopped by the park today because they surely would have complained at our leaving the flags, including the Confederate one, up all day. Too many people consider any symbol of the Confederacy to be a sign of pro-slavery sentiment, rather than just looking at it for its historical value. But anyway, I will refrain from going off on a tangent about that.

After the flag ceremony the scouts got to roll their own musket cartridges, then they learned how to fire the real muskets. I was a little concerned about allowing some of those boys to fire any sort of weapon--even if the bullets were made of tissue. But, no mishaps occurred and no small animals died--even though the wild kids aimed at some. The scouts were all decked out in their Civil War kepis and their blue wool jackets, so they looked pretty soldierly. At one point, some kids who were part of a family reunion group there at the park came running over towards us with a handmade sign that said, "The South will Rise Again!" They also had a Confederate battle flag colored with magic markers. That was random. In Mississippi something like that would totally happen, but in Fairfield, Utah? :-)

It was a really fun day at the park, but I was super tired when I got home. I'm also a bit worn out because I pretty much need to have my Zion book finished up and out the door on Monday, June 23. Unfortunately there is much that remains to be done on it, but I keep telling myself that it will be worth it when I'm finished. This evening I came across a great quote from Alta Jolley Halverson that pretty much sums everything up. She said: "Springdale was a little town and still is, but it was even smaller then. Almost everyone was related in one way or another. It was made up of a lot of Giffords, Crawfords, Ruesches, Winders, Hardys, etc." That pretty much describes Springdale :-) Tonight we also got to see some cool fireworks for Orem Summerfest!

The Hoop Skirt in My Car

I have finally officially arrived as a history professional. How could one tell that I have arrived? If one were to look into the back of my car, they would see a giant hoop skirt. And they would see me driving around in said car wearing a shirt with gigantic poofy sleeves. Tonight as I was driving home from Camp Floyd, listening to my "Songs of the CSA" CD which I purchased at Vicksburg a while back, I was thinking to myself, "I love my job." Today I didn't have to go to work until 5:00 p.m., and I got PAID to wear a hoop skirt, tell people about history, and watch part of two of my favorite movies with the Boy Scouts: "Gods and Generals" and "Gettysburg"! Could it get any better than that? Certainly not. I am not really looking forward to being back to Camp Floyd by 7:00 in the morning for roll call and musket drills, but I will not complain because I pretty much get to spend the whole day playing pioneer games and, again, I get the added bonus of being paid to do so.

I am truly a history nerd, but that's okay--I love it. I realized that anyone who owns both "Gods and Generals" and "Gettysburg" and enjoys watching them multiple times (they are both about 4 hrs. long) is truly a history geek. Speaking of history, I just realized that the other day when I posted my Nauvoo blog, I neglected to mention the COOLEST birthday present in the entire world that Greg gave me!!!! My birthday is not until the end of the month, but I have been curious about the gift for a long time and I didn't think I could wait any longer to find out what it was--and it was nice to be able to open it while I was there in Illinois with him. Greg gave me this really nice framed picture of Abraham Lincoln, and included with it are . . . a REAL, TRUE, AUTHENTIC piece of Abraham Lincoln's hair and a REAL piece of the American flag that was draped on Lincoln's funeral train!!!! How cool is that???!!! How many people can say that they own a piece of Abraham Lincoln's hair? The author of one of my favorite books, Sarah Vowell, who wrote Assassination Vacation, received one of John Brown's eyelashes from her sister for Christmas one year, but she does not have Abraham Lincoln hair!! Well, I'm off to bed (and will probably dream about muskets and hoops skirts--and Abe Lincoln's hair) so that I can get up bright and early tomorrow.

The Family Rosebush

This past Monday I began my internship at Camp Floyd State Historical Park, which is a very fun place and I think I will enjoy my time there very much. I will write more about the internship in the future. Meanwhile, I've had yesterday and today off of work, so I have been working on my Zion book 24/7. I nearly went insane today as I was writing the chapter that tells about the early settlers of the Springdale area--because THEY ARE ALL RELATED!!! I was having a terrible time trying to figure out how people in the pictures I have tied in with other people, but then Mom and I finally discovered that they all just tie in together.

I was trying to make a family tree to help myself figure out who people were, but then all of a sudden, my family tree tied back into the top of itself--so I guess you could say that instead of a tree it's more of a rosebush!

The whole Springdale population basically started with two families: the Crawfords and the Rueschs. A Crawford married a Ruesch, then their daughter married a Jolley, whose aunt married Oliver DeMille Gifford, whose son married the daughter of the first Crawford family. The Gifford and the Crawford who married were first cousins! I know that none of this makes sense, but that's the way it really is. Not only is the family rosebush a tangled mess, but now my brain is too!