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.