Near New York

Last week I was hanging out in beautiful Madison, New Jersey, at Drew University, where the United Methodists have their archive. Madison is one of those towns that used to be a real town, but has since been swallowed up in suburban sprawl. They seem to have done a pretty good job controlling it, though, as there's still a healthy, walkable downtown.

The Methodists keep a good archive, too--their archivists are friendly and amusing, they know not only their own records but also quite a bit about related archives, and they can even find most things that their finding aids claim they have. This, as any archival researcher can attest, is a rare and valuable thing. They even suggested "good" things for me to eat.

This weekend I've been in New York, doing some touristy things, seeing friends, and eating a lot of good stuff. Kathy, Alex, Lisa and I took the ferry to Governor's Island...


...where we took the walking tour, ate a picnic, got a little sunburned, and saw some weird art show. For me, the highlight of the walking tour was learning that what seemed like 90% of the buildings on the island were once military prisons.


I was also reminded of the story I've been telling everyone all summer. Earlier this summer I read Confederates in the Attic, which I highly recommend. The author went to Fort Sumter in South Carolina, where the first battle of the Civil War was fought. He took the National Park Service tour and went up to talk to the tour guide afterwards. The tour guide ends up telling him some of the funny stuff people have asked him on the tour over the years. The best question, by far, was, "Why were so many Civil War battles fought in national parks?"

Yeah.

Also, of course, there was the Harry Potter book release on Friday night. We went to the party at Books of Wonder, where they had REAL LIVE OWLS. It was excellent. Unfortunately I forgot my camera, but I'm hoping that someone else will send along pictures. I have not yet bought/acquired/read the book, so please please please don't tell me anything about it. Karrie finished it in my presence tonight, and didn't say anything except that it was great. I like Karrie.

We did get temporary tattoos, though...


Food highlights:
Nicky's Vietnamese Sandwiches (I had the Classic, Raj had the portobello mushroom)
Pio Pio (I ate at least 3/4 of the ceviche, but Kathy and Lisa did a number on the chicken)
Once Upon a Tart (mmmm I could eat everything)
Shake Shack (I still feel a little bit sick...but that was a mean chocolate shake)
And, of course, the bagel shop across the street from Raj's apartment.

Also, two new (to me) software possibilities, if anyone is still interested:
Mozy (free online automatic backup)
Yojimbo (seems very similar to SohoNotes)

And last but not least, Helen and Dave got a dog, Edie! I'm very jealous.

I even go to historical sites for fun

Today the parents and I drove down the Mississippi to visit Chester, Illinois, where my dad lived from 1946 to 1956. (I highly recommend looking at the Wikipedia site, since the third sentence is about as objective as you can expect from Wikipedia.) Here's a photo that shows all three types of transportation into Chester--railroad, river barge, and bridge!


Chester is a couple of miles downstream from the site of Fort Kaskaskia, which the French halfheartedly built sometime in the mid-18th century. If you don't feel like squinting to read it, the lesson of the plaque below is: most useless fort ever.


The French thought about building the fort for thirty years before they got around to it, it played no part in the Seven Years' War, the British decided to build their fort somewhere else, and the Virginians/Americans went for the village and ignored the fort during the Am. Revolution. The village of Kaskaskia, across the river, was home to a church that began as a Jesuit mission in 1675 (or 1703, or 1714, depending on who you ask--it moved a few times). The original village, however, washed away beginning with a flood in 1881, when the Mississippi changed course.


So now the village is entirely gone, and the fort is a bunch of grassy hills with a flagpole in the center.


They also have a big, new Lewis and Clark sign at every available spot (L&C recruited some people from the town of Kaskaskia). This makes me understand why people get their chronology mixed up.

It's a really interesting site, but the problem is that nowhere do the signs tell you who lived in Kaskaskia, why they lived there, what they did, why Kaskaskia was such an important village, what happened to the inhabitants when the village/fort changed hands, etc etc--basically all the interesting historical stuff. This is always my beef with historical markers, though. I'm just picky.

It's pretty, though, and there's quite a view--you start to understand why the fort was built on the bluff.


Oh, and today I learned a fun new word: freebooter!

The Road to Missouri

Today I drove for twelve hours, from Austin to Joplin, Missouri. That's four states, since I snuck into a corner of Kansas. A sampling of the sights:
- armadillo roadkill
- a cow, wading up to its belly in a pond
- other cows obsessed with eating the grass on an embankment as close to the interstate and a state road as possible (Oklahoma has weird cows, I guess)
- an Arby's sign claiming that their new sandwich, the Baconator, "can smell fear"
- many rivers, including the Red, Arkansas, and Keosha, very muddy, moving fast, and flooding their banks
- the Cherokee casino
- the Shawnee community center and gift shop (it was closed...too bad)

Altogether, a good trip. I got off I-44 in Miami, Oklahoma, hoping to get a motel, but the National Guard was not letting anybody in. Just my luck to pick the town with the serious natural disaster. I was even listening to the radio for flooding news, but didn't hear anything. So I drove the back roads to Joplin.

The car is okay, although no one seems to know what's wrong with it. The garage in Austin looked into it and couldn't find anything wrong. My strategy is to never fill up the gas tank, since that seems to be the trigger.

Tomorrow, my mission includes driving to St Louis and finding sparklers along the way.

Still in Austin...

Stacy and her family are being so nice to me, I decided to stay the weekend. Well, not exactly. The car is having a little problem, which I hope will be easy to fix. The car does not like it when I fill the gas tank and then get on the highway--when I do this, sometimes it does a frightening little shuddering/jerking thing. It's not pleasant.

So, I came back to Stacy's house on Friday afternoon, and because it was so late in the day no one could look at it. I'm hanging out here for the weekend (not a bad place to spend a weekend, really) and am really hoping that the mechanics will work their magic on Monday. Keep your fingers crossed for me. Also, while I don't recommend hearing funny noises that come from your car, this experience did give me a chance to peruse the Car Talk website, which I did enjoy.

Archival update: I skipped the Episcopalians entirely, which is pretty disappointing, but UT had some good stuff and the Texas State Archive was alright too. The lesson I learned from the Episcopalians is: never plan a trip to an archive unless you are able to either a) look at a finding aid in advance, or b) talk to an actual archivist about their holdings. I only talked to an administrator, who while being very nice and knowledgeable about procedure, also led me to believe that they had a lot more relating to my research than they did. So, lesson learned.

Truthfully, the archives here pale in comparison to the food. For lunch today I had a fish taco and limeade. Yum. We also did some Texas-style shopping. And by "we" I mean "Stacy." I have not bought any cowboy boots.

Eating and drinking in Austin...and, uh, researching. And whining.

I have been running circles around the Episcopalian archive, trying to get them to let me see their records. They ignored me for a good six weeks. They also refused to send me their finding aid. Now I find out that there is actually a gap in their records, right around the time period I'm interested in (or, in which I am interested, for the grammaticians out there). I really wish I had known that six weeks ago...But, I can't be too mad, because their web site tells me that 2/7 of their staff positions are vacant, and the guy I talked to on the phone was very nice. Such are the travails of research.

At UT, things have been okay. I found one diary of an army private from San Antonio who was slightly quirky. There were a few colorful entries, including one about how he and his buddies sneaked off their boat when it was moored in Havana harbor, to go explore the city. And he wrote an entry about how seasick he was, complete with a ---------------- in the middle, after which he wrote "I just fed the fishes." Good stuff. I like quirky documents.

Tomorrow I will probably go to the Texas State Archive (I wonder if it is bigger than the National Archive, just because it's in Texas--maybe I'll ask) to look at a few things. I have one more box at UT, but it's being delivered from offsite storage and won't be there until Thursday. Then, since the Episcopalians are unhelpful, I guess it will be on to St. Louis!

Oh, and today Stacy took me to Draught House, for a post-archival drink, and then we went with her parents to County Line, for some TX barbecue. SDLB says that to really get a feel for all there is to eat in Austin, you need to stay for a month. Clearly, she is right.

Austin!

Yesterday I drove for ten hours. It was a bit much.

But, happily, now I am in Austin! Not much to report, other than it's wonderful to be staying with real people rather than in a hotel. Today I'm trying to figure out what exactly I need to look at this week.

And I want to share two websites which help to distract me from work:
Daily Puppy
Paperback Swap

The South has great names for their towns

Cuba, AL
Chunky, MS
Toomsuba, MS
Bovina, MS

...and that's just from today's drive, and just along I-20.

Had a lovely visit with Brian and his mom in Birmingham, where I got a great personal tour of the sites: the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, the Vulcan, the obligatory ice cream stop, and, of course, the mall. Well, actually, we just saw a movie at the mall. I assume it was a mall...hmm. I'm not very observant.

Brian is much more photogenic than I am! Especially when he is holding Yahtzee.


So, my dad is fine--he had gallbladder surgery on Wednesday, and is now home--and my car seems to be behaving, so I am going on to Austin as originally planned. I still haven't heard whether or not my application to do research at the Episcopalian archives in Austin was approved...although I can't imagine why it wouldn't be. I really think six weeks should be enough to get that done (I sent in the app May 9, I think). But what do I know. Maybe they need to get my FBI file or something.

Tonight I'm staying in Vicksburg, MS, right on the Mississippi River. The main industries of Vicksburg seem to be riverboat gambling and the Civil War.

Kentucky and Georgia

Here's a nice picture from my side trip to Mammoth Cave. Isn't the cave exciting? It was even better visiting Helen and Dave, though, even if the peach ice cream experiment didn't turn out as well as we had hoped.

Now I'm in Atlanta, and as it turns out, the records at Emory are pretty much a bust. I photographed everything they had even remotely related to Cuba, but it only took me a day and a half, and I think it's mostly pretty dull anyway. Ah well, live and learn.

Tomorrow I'm off to Birmingham AL to visit Brian, and then I have to figure out where to go next. Rather suddenly, my dad is having his gallbladder out today, so I might head up to St Louis to see if I can lend a hand. Not in the surgery, though. Just around the house. Then, if the car holds out, maybe on to Austin, or maybe I'll head back to Nashville and from there to DC, and do Austin later. It's an awfully long drive to Texas. But I don't want to miss out on having Stacy as a research buddy! I am torn.

I'm sure this is all fascinating to everyone.

That's right, scandal

Today I took 617 photos of documents. I think that's a personal best. Scandals are great because they generate a lot of records--I only looked at three folders today, but they were chock full of letters, reports, financial information, etc etc. This scandal seems to be a real classic, about money and control of a pretty valuable bit of property in Havana. Apparently the Cuban Baptists thought they owned it, and the US Southern Baptists thought they owned it. Yay, scandal!

Tomorrow I'm going to go visit Helen and Dave in Lexington, stopping off for a picnic and some spelunking at Mammoth Cave. I'm in the area--why not? For the geeks in the audience, check out their many fun brochures.

Apparently everyone in Nashville except me is here for something called Bonnaroo. Some guy in my hotel told me that it was like Woodstock.

Today in the archive I ran across every historian's dream--scandal! Yay! More on that later. I didn't get through all the files today.

Side trip!

Today I drove to Nashville, to go to the Southern Baptist Library and Archives. Turns out I only needed four days at Earlham. I am sad to move on, because not only do I miss out on my second helping of ratatouille tart that we made at Jon and Jen's on Monday night, but I will get no more daily updates on how the baby robins are doing. Sigh.

Oh, and things went pretty well at Earlham. Blah blah blah, research. 408 pages copied. I guess now I have to read them. Maybe I'll do that after I do some fun stuff in Nashville, where the waitress at Shoney's called me "sweet pea." I like Nashville.

And I hope none of you missed the no-hitter pitched by Justin Verlander, one of my beloved Tigers.

Hi Kristen!

I don't read blogs

...but I like this one. I've only looked at it three times, but every time I get sucked in and read a whole bunch of posts.

Today Show in Cuba

This morning the Today show broadcast live from Havana, and I missed it! There are a couple of surprisingly good stories on their website, though. Amidst the usual goofy ones.

Be sure to take the "what do you know about Fidel" quiz.

going on the road

I'm heading out, probably tomorrow, for 3-4 weeks on the road to archives. Here's where I'll be:

Earlham College in Richmond, IN -- collection of Quaker missionary materials
Emory University in Atlanta -- has the records of a Methodist bishop who was involved in missions to Cuba
Episcopalian Archives in Austin, TX -- has a bunch of missionary records
UT-Austin Center for American History -- has three collections of papers of soldiers who participated in the occupation of Cuba

I'm staying with my brother and sister-in-law while researching at Earlham, and I'm hoping to visit Brian R. and his family in Birmingham on my way from Atlanta to Austin. Plus, I'll get to hang out with Stacy in Austin, and have a research buddy! Then, on my way back to DC, I'll visit my parents in St Louis.

Also, my secret hope for this trip is that somewhere on the road a stray puppy will find me and need a new home. One cannot abandon a needy puppy. I also hope to eat a lot of ice cream. Other suggestions are welcome.

Note-taking programs, and other random software, for Macs

I've been doing some research on note-taking programs for Macs. I decided on SOHO Notes, but others might like something else (especially considering that once my 30-day trial is up, it will cost me $40). Many of these ideas came from Allison's blog.
VoodooPad
NoteTaker
Mori

I also use Zotero for keeping track of references, inserting footnotes, and creating bibliographies. It's free!

Also found a few other interesting software possibilities for other jobs, which I like the idea of playing around with. But realistically, I will never use them.
RapidWeaver -- for creating websites
Sente -- for keeping track of new journal articles, etc. in your field. I might use this someday
VersionTracker -- for keeping updated on, um, updates to your software
PDFShrink -- for making PDF files smaller. I have my own probably inefficient system for this
SuperDuper! -- for backing up. I really should use this
OmniOutliner -- I have several friends who swear by this
DevonThink -- I don't really know what this is; it seems to be a database, but from the way they talk about it on the website you'd think it's one of those better-than-human cyborgs or something. pretty funny.
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