me-OW!!!

Poor Greg keeps getting injured by our animal children. A couple of weeks ago Lily gave him a pretty good slice on his thumb. She and he play a game where he bites her on the back and she bites him on the ear, but it got a little out-of-control, and she wanted no more of it. So she pulled out her claws and jumped out of his arms, but caught his thumb on the way. Then the worst injury occurred last night when Big Spike bit Greg's finger. Big was supposed to go into his bedroom, but he went and hid under the couch instead. When Greg tried to pull him out, Big chomped down on Greg's finger and almost went clear through it. Big got in BIG trouble!!!! Greg's finger looked pretty bad, but we disinfected and bandaged it up last night. Hopefully he will be okay!

Unfortunately today is the only day off I will get this week. I have to go into work tomorrow for living history volunteer training. And then next Wednesday is going to be the craziest day ever. Wednesday will be Girl Scout Day at the Lincoln Home, and there are going to be 2,400 Girl Scouts AND 19 school buses full of 8th graders AND the regular general public in the park!!! How is that going to work? I have no idea. All will be madness.

Random Ranger Adventures

Wow--what a week it has been at the Lincoln Home! Something kind of exciting happened this afternoon in downtown Springfield: a big rig blew up. It was a few blocks away from us, so we didn't have to close the park or anything, but there was a big plume of smoke that came through. I didn't even know it had happened--I was in the house at the time--but then there was this weird smell in the air. I just thought that someone on my tour had really bad gas, but then I noticed that the smell got worse when I went outside, and I later found out what had happened. Luckily no one was hurt. Then the other day I got to ride in the Ranger patrol car!! It is such a sweet ride. Even though our park only encompasses four blocks, Ranger David, one of our Law Enforcement guys, loves to drive the patrol car around the park. I needed to go pick up a key from him the other day, so I was walking down to his office but saw that he had the Ranger patrol car out in the street. A gentleman had fallen on one of the boardwalks, so David was tending to the man's first-aid needs. After the man was taken care of, David asked me if I wanted to ride back to the office in the patrol car! Even though I was only in there for about 10 seconds while we drove around the corner, it was still pretty cool. I definitely wouldn't want to be in the back of that car though--behind the bars! Then the other day I had to give a tour to a group of crazy Chinese businessmen. They were seriously out-of-control. They had to have an interpreter because they didn't speak any English, and that made the other people on the tour mad because they thought everything was taking too long. I don't know what the interpreter was telling the Chinese guys, but they were SO loud and unruly. I couldn't keep them contained in the rooms we were going through, and they kept wanting to wander off and touch everything. Finally I got some help from some other rangers, but it was a pretty messed up tour. Also, I am so tired of 8th graders!!!! Speaking of China and 8th graders, 8th graders need to be shipped off to China--then they can come back when they are adults. All of the other school group ages have good and bad kids--but 99.9999% of the 8th graders are either: a) bored--they really don't want to be there b) waaaay too cool to be there c) smart alecs who think they are really funny--but they are not d) oblivious to everything going on around them. I have found that as it gets toward the end of my week, I get a little cranky around the kids, but I'll try to be nice for one more day :-)

History Detective

Here is the mysterious brick path in our yard. I still need to work on removing more of the dirt from the bricks, but it looks kind of cool and rustic right now. The second picture is of the strange area at the end of the brick path where I have been finding pieces of old glass, porcelain, and other interesting little things. I think that the place at the end of the path used to be a fire pit or something like that because I keep finding what looks like charred wood under the dirt. With the way that the flowers are planted along the path, I wonder if our house used to have a cool little garden area. Maybe we can restore it to its former splendor! We put a bird feeder out there by the brick path because we have the cutest pet cardinal in the whole world. We named him Louie (for the St. Louie Cardinals). Big Spike found Louie in the bushes last year when Louie was just a baby, and Greg saved him from Big Spike. Then Louie got stuck in the garage and Greg rescued him, so now he just hangs out by our house singing songs all day. He (and his many girlfriends) now love to hang around our house even more with the bird feeder out there. All of the neighborhood birds love it--except one ungrateful bird who pooped on Greg yesterday. I am enjoying my day off and the beautiful weather outside. While Greg is at a funeral this evening, I think I'll go over and watch the Athens High School soccer game.

Hooray for IHPA and Teddy Roosevelt

FINALLY! Illinois is slowly but surely recovering from the damages done by the evil dictator Blago. Yesterday my friend Linda started back to work with IHPA, and today the Dana-Thomas House, one of Springfield's biggest attractions, reopened. Click here to read about the big celebration. And here is a link to an excellent article Mom found in the Chicago Tribune: "State Historic Sites to Reopen Next Week." I still can't believe that the historic sites were ever shut down. I have only been at the Lincoln Home for a few weeks, and I can't tell you how many visitors have expressed disappointment and dismay that the governor would have ever closed the sites. Thankfully that will change now. Even the smaller sites, like the Pierre Menard Home in the southern part of the state, will be reopening. They are still trying to hire staff back, so the opening date for the other sites has yet to be determined, but at least the reopening process has begun.

Today was another busy day at work, but at least I have once again made it to my weekend. I also had one especially fun tour today--there were some people from Thailand! I told them that my sister spent some time there, so my family loves their country; and when I said, "Sawatdeekah," they were so excited. They all wanted to have their picture taken with me after the tour :-)

I have a new dilemma to figure out at work: what to do with Teddy Roosevelt. There is a Theodore Roosevelt re-enactor named Gib who wants to come do something at the Lincoln Home. The Chief of Interpretation handed the situation off to me and said that having Teddy come to the site would be a good idea, but I need to figure out why a Teddy Roosevelt program would be relevant to the Lincoln Home. Well, they are both on Mount Rushmore . . . . I know I could round up an Abe Lincoln re-enactor, but then I'd have to find Thomas Jefferson and George Washington too. Hmmmm. One of the other perplexing assignments I've been given is figuring out something to do to commemorate Constitution Day in September. Maybe I could have Teddy Roosevelt come for Constitution Day? That would kill two birds with one stone. I love Teddy Roosevelt. In fact, one of my favorite Mississippi adventures was when I stumbled across the town where the Teddy Bear was born: Onward, Mississippi. It was there that Theodore Roosevelt went bear hunting, and some people he was with chained up a bear so that he could shoot it. He refused, however, to shoot a chained bear and had it released. Cartoons about the incident evolved into the creation of the Teddy Bear. It was in Onward, Mississippi that I had the most delicious sweet potato fries I have ever tasted. But there aren't any bears in downtown Springfield--or sweet potato fries that I know of. So, I'll have to figure out something to do with Teddy Roosevelt--if they will ever give me time to work on things! We have been so busy with tours that there hasn't been time for anything else. Tours are good though. I love telling people about Abraham Lincoln.

Guns 'n' Ghosts

I am quickly learning that there is never a dull moment at Abraham Lincoln's house. Today was quite a day! We almost had to go into lock down after getting a call from the Grace Episcopal Church located at the northwest end of the park--just across the parking lot from the visitor center. The National Park Service technically owns the church building, but the congregation is leasing it from the government. So anyway, we got a call at the visitor center this morning asking for help and claiming that there was a man with a gun at the church who was threatening to shoot everyone. Yikes! Our law enforcement rangers and the Springfield Police Department rushed to the scene. It turns out that the man didn't really have a gun--just a crowbar, and they were able to arrest him before he did any harm. But that was pretty scary! Everyone was kind of on edge after that one.

A little while later I was the ranger assigned to patrol the neighborhood. It was kind of like someone opened a big can of weirdness in Springfield this morning. The first incident involved a domestic dispute. This man and woman came walking down the street right through the center of the park, yelling, screaming and swearing at each other. I don't think I've ever heard so many expletives dropped in such a short amount of time. I called law enforcement on the radio, but they had their hands full with the crow bar guy, so we had to just let the disgruntled couple swear their way out of the neighborhood. Then a drunk guy came riding through the neighborhood on his bike. He pulled up to the Arnold House, where we have some exhibits, and said in a slurred voice, "Iddis wheda mooveehowz idat?" It took me a minute to figure out what he was saying, but I finally figured it out: "Is this where the movie house is at?" Random question. Answer: No. So then he wandered around the neighborhood for a while--or should I say stumbled--and then left. Then two more guys came walking down the street and introduced themselves as "Brother Paul" and "Brother John." They were looking for a clothes store where they could buy belts and shoes. They had pretty shifty eyes, and when one of the other rangers was pointing in their direction (the ranger was just pointing out one of the other houses in the neighborhood to his tour group), Brother John said, "Hey man, he's pointin' us out. Let's get outta here." So Brother John took off, but Brother Paul was too busy telling me how wonderful history is and how Abraham Lincoln saved the world. Then he started to cry. Seriously. I was thinking to myself, "Could this day get any more strange?" Thankfully it did not get more strange. After Brother Paul finally went on his way, the rest of the afternoon was relatively uneventful--though it was very busy. But busy is normal.

Something that is not normal, however, is the weird stuff that has been going on in the Lincoln Home lately. I've heard ghost stories about the house, but during ranger training we were told that when visitors ask if the house is haunted, we are to say simply, "Not that I know of." Well, it turns out that things really aren't that simple. A number of rangers have had some pretty crazy experiences there. Lately some strange things have been happening like old deadbolts on the doors locking, things getting moved around in bedrooms, and items getting knocked to the floor when no one has been in the room. Supposedly things were especially crazy at the time of the Bicentennial back in February. I don't know quite what to make of it all, but I guess I wouldn't blame the Lincolns' spirits for being a little unrestful. But I'll stick to the story that I don't know anything :-)