The Conspirator

Yesterday I got to go see the movie "The Conspirator" with my good friend Melissa. The sad thing was that yesterday was Melissa's last day here in the Springfield area, as she is headed off to Richmond, VA for a new job. I'm excited for her, but really sad to see her go. So we had one last hurrah yesterday and went to see the movie. It was interesting, and, as a movie it was very good--but as a history lesson it wasn't so good. Melissa and I cracked up at the end of the movie because there seemed to be a lot of people in the theater who were really shocked when Mary Surratt was hung. That's kind of like being surprised that the ship sinks at the end of "Titanic." The movie really does try very hard to make you think that Mary Surratt was innocent and treated unfairly, but it didn't change how I feel about her. The way I see it, there is no way that she didn't know what J.W. Booth and the others were meeting about at her house--in fact, she was probably in on the planning. But we could tell that pretty much everyone in the theater was falling for the movie--there were tears for Mary Surratt and angry noises for Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (not my favorite person, but not THE devil as the movie makes him out to be). One thing that the movie did get right was that John Surratt, Mary's son, was a big jerk. I think that if John had turned himself in, his mom would not have been hung, but he just went into hiding until after his mom was executed and then he fled the country. While his mom was far from innocent, I think that John was more a part of the assassination conspiracy than she was. But anyway, it was just fun to see a history-based movie at the theater--especially one involving Lincoln!

Yesterday evening we all went out and had a fun farewell dinner for Melissa. The food and the company were both great, but it was sad to say goodbye. I hope that she has a great experience in Richmond! On Tuesday I am heading out to Utah for a three week trip to help Mom and Dad get ready to move and to help Sarah take care of her kiddos while she's teaching a class at BYU. I am so excited to see everyone, but sad to leave Greg behind. Luckily he has the animal children here to keep him company. Happy Easter everyone!

Kalamazoo and Wrigley Too

Whoa, it has been a CRAZY week, and the week isn't even over yet!!! It all began on Monday when Greg and I took off for Michigan . . . to pick up a body in Detroit. Luckily we were able to make it a two-day trip, so it didn't seem quite as long as if we'd tried to fit it into one day. On Monday we drove to Kalamazoo, Michigan where we spent the night. Then on Tuesday morning we headed for Detroit. My friend Catherine (she was one of my classmates at EIU) works at The Henry Ford museum in Detroit, and she was kind enough to get us some last-minute tickets so that I could go see the chair from Ford's Theater in which Abraham Lincoln was killed! I know it's kind of morbid, but I have always wanted to see that dang chair. It was everything I had hoped it would be. Catherine told us that what appear to be blood stains are actually "hair oil" stains from all of the people who have sat in this chair over the years, but there are a few small blood stains on the chair.

The Henry Ford, founded, of course, by Henry Ford, has an amazing collection of historical artifacts. They even have the limousine in which JFK was assassinated (there seems to be a Presidential assassination theme going on here). They actually have quite a few Presidential limousines.

But they do have other things too, like this HUGE Allegheny Locomotive that weighs 600 tons and is their most-photographed object. Greg and I wondered how on earth they got that thing into the building. Catherine said there were tracks built into the floor so it could just roll in.

And here are Catherine and me in front of the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile. Catherine has a really cool job and it was so fun to see her! She was one of my best friends in the Historical Administration program at EIU. After visiting Catherine, Greg and I drove through the ghetto of Detroit (scary!!!) to go pick up a body at a funeral home there. The funeral home was really nice, but the surrounding area, not so much. We put the casket into the back of the van and headed for home.

As we neared Lincoln, Illinois on Tuesday afternoon, the skies started to get dark, and we started hearing severe thunderstorm warnings on the radio. I whipped out my trusty weather radio (which goes everywhere with me once tornado season hits), and we started hearing about ping pong ball sized hail near Elkhart, Illinois. We were headed right for Elkhart! Thankfully we avoided the hail, but boy was it raining! There was so much water--it was hard to see anything except for the crazy lightning all around us. It's a good thing that Greg was driving because I would have had a nervous breakdown if I had been at the wheel. We finally got to our exit at Williamsville, and right after we got off of the Interstate, it looked like someone took a knife and cut a slit in the clouds--you can kind of see it in this picture. The sun started to poke through right in front of us, but on either side of us, the sky was GREEN, and there were crazy storms raging to the north and the south of us. It was kind of spooky to be driving right between two storm cells. We got the body safely to the funeral home and then we made it safely home. Later that evening there were tornado warnings down in Carbondale where Sarah and Joel live, but thankfully they were safe!

As Greg and I were driving through the rain earlier in the evening, we kept hearing about tornado warnings near Girard, Illinois (about 20 miles south of Springfield). I forgot that my friend Chet and his family live in Girard! He is the site manager of the Dana-Thomas House, and Linda and I have been working with him a lot over the past few weeks. Here is a picture of his house which was hammered by the tornado. Luckily he and his wife were safe, but they were afraid that their puppy Patches had been killed in the storm. They looked for him all night after the tornado and couldn't find him, but then the next morning he showed up at home! Even though Chet's house was basically destroyed, he was just happy that he and his family (and Patches!) had made it through the storm. What a scary thing though! We are supposed to have more bad weather tomorrow :-(

After our Detroit and storm adventures, Greg and I went up to Chicago yesterday with his boss, Rich, to a Chicago Cubs baseball game at historic Wrigley Field! Greg and I have been wanting to go to a game in Chicago, just for the experience, and Rich is a big Cubs fan, so we had a good time going together. Unfortunately it was FREEZING, but we were bundled up. Wrigley Field is the second-oldest Major League ballpark still in use, and it was a lot of fun to see a game there.

Before the game, I kind of snuck down to the field by where the visiting San Diego Padres were warming up, and I got an autograph from Luke Gregerson, a pitcher who used to play for the St. Louis Cardinals! He was really nice, and we even got to see him play later in the game. The game went to extra innings (usually a good thing, but we were SO COLD), and it ended up being Luke Gregerson who pitched the ball that one of the Cubs players hit into the stands to win the game! We felt bad for Luke, but we were happy that the Cubs won--and also happy to be able leave and get into the warm car :-) It was a fun adventure to attend a Cubs game, but Greg and I think that one Cubs game is probably good for us. We like the Cubs, but not the Cubs fans (except for Rich). There were a lot of really obnoxious people there, and at one point someone on the upper deck spit over the railing--and it landed on my coat (which has since been washed)! But other than the annoying fans, it was a lot of fun. It made us appreciate St. Louis Cardinals fans! :-)

Today I had a job interview over the phone with BYU. Please keep your fingers crossed for me--it is a really great job!!!!

Spring has Sprung

I guess that the tornadoes hint that spring is here, but luckily we've had some more pleasant reminders of spring--like the birds that have been loving our bird feeder outside! Greg has been taking some great pictures of them. There is a big, fat cardinal that keeps showing up too--he is SO pretty!!! But he is also very sneaky and leaves before we can get a picture of him. Maybe one of these days we'll sneak a shot of him. Unfortunately yesterday it felt like winter again outside, but today the sun is shining, so hopefully we'll stay on the right track from now on. The Spikes and Lily are loving watching the birds outside. When we have our back door open with just the screen door closed, all three of them sit there for hours and just stare at the birds (sometimes Lily clucks at them too). To them, it must seem like a giant, smell-o-vision, 3-D TV! We love spring around here.

Tornadopalooza

Today I had some excitement at the Lincoln Home--I got to see a coprolite ("fossilized excrement") that was excavated from the outhouse behind the Lincoln Home. According to the archaeologist who made the discovery, it possibly dates back to Lincoln's time. It was really big and gross-looking. Little did I know that this was just the beginning of the day's excitement! About five minutes after I arrived home this evening, Greg pulled the weather up on the computer, and it said there was a tornado warning for our county. We were pretty shocked because it seemed too cold outside for there to be any tornadoes forming, but according to the Weather Channel, the tornado was headed for eastern Sangamon County (which is where we live). So, we decided to head west. We packed the animal children up and put them in the safest place in the house--the dogs were in the downstairs hallway, and the kitty was in the bathroom. Then Greg and I left home and started driving west. Then the weather radio said another tornado warning had been issued for WESTERN Sangamon County. Then another one was issued for CENTRAL Sangamon County. It seemed that Springfield was being surrounded by tornadoes. We decided that the safest place to go would be the mall, which has an entire level underground.

Before going inside I wanted to take some pictures. We snapped this one facing south in the parking lot just as the tornado sirens started going off. You can see that the storm is sending down some "feelers." My weather radio was saying that the tornado was coming from the south, so we're pretty sure that this was the storm that prompted the first warnings.

As the storm moved over us, the clouds started looking all crazy. In the very middle of this picture you can kind of see a funnel cloud trying to form. At this point Greg and I decided that we should go inside. Some people coming out of the mall said that the mall was closing because of the tornado--they said that people were being forced to leave the building! That didn't sound right, so we went in anyway, and people weren't really being kicked out. Some stores had put their gates up, but the building itself wasn't closed--luckily. So we were down on the bottom level of the mall for a little while, but I was getting kind of nervous since I wasn't able to see what was going on.

By the time we went back upstairs, the first storm had blown over, but now there was this SECOND storm blowing in from the southwest--which prompted another tornado warning. So we went back inside, and within just a few minutes we could hear the hail hitting the skylights in the mall. The weather radio was saying that there were reports of golf ball sized hail in Springfield! We ended up being at the mall for about another hour because as soon as one warning would expire, another would be issued. Finally at about 7:15 p.m. we left the mall (we had gotten there at about 5:30), even though there was still a bit of a thunderstorm going on. The sky was literally green--but we could tell that the worst had passed over us. We drove back home and found the animal children were fine, although a little freaked out. There was a line of pea-sized hail around our doorway (luckily is was not golf ball sized!). It turns out that the only reported damage so far was from up in Athens. When Greg and I first left our house and heard all of the warnings of tornadoes surrounding Springfield, we had talked about driving up to Athens--but luckily we didn't! After all of this excitement Greg and I were pretty worn out and hungry, so we went out for a stake dinner. We are glad that tornadopalooza is over.

150 Years

150 years ago TODAY marks the fall of Fort Sumter and the beginning of the Civil War. At 1:00 p.m. on April 13, 1861, Confederate artillery took out the flagpole inside the Union fort--and the soldiers inside knew that surrender was inevitable. Interestingly enough, TOMORROW marks the 146th anniversary of Lincoln's assassination, and Friday is the 146th anniversary of his death. In recognition of this important date, the new movie "The Conspirator" comes out on Friday. I am excited to see it! (I'll have to go with one of my friends who is equally as Lincoln-geeky as me, since Greg refuses to see a movie directed by Robert Redford.) Supposedly the movie will hint that Mary Surratt was not guilty, which I don't agree with, but it will still be an interesting movie to see. You can click here to see the preview for the movie. This is a historic week!