CGP

I am very happy to say that I was accepted at the Cooperstown Graduate Program for this fall! I interviewed there last weekend and received a letter today saying that I got in. I'll be living in upstate New York this fall! How exciting!
I was also accepted at Eastern Illinois University, which was an equally great program. They finish their degrees in one year with a six month internship afterward. I was impressed with the hands-on nature of the program. Much like Eastern, CGP is also very hands-on. To be honest, I'd had my heart set on Cooperstown for the last two years and when I got there, it just seemed like the perfect fit. I can't imagine going anywhere else!

This is what happens when I have my parents' Wii for a week

My parents were up last weekend and they left their Wii. I'll be down there tomorrow, so they really only lost it for five days. But, this is what happens when I have unlimited access to a Wii for a week. In Mackinaw City. Where there's not much to do. Somehow I bowled a 300!

Graduate School

I will be putting close to 3,000 miles on my car in the next month or so. I have been selected to interview at the historical administration program at Eastern Illinois University, as well as the museum studies program of the Cooperstown Graduate Program. These programs were my top choices, so that is very exciting!
The interview for EIU is this coming weekend. I'll be headed down to Coldwater the afternoon of February 27th. Luckily it's just about halfway between Charleston and Mackinaw City. Sunday morning I'll head down to Charleston for the interview weekend. We'll start out with a tour of the city and school from the HA students and then have a brief orientation to the events and the school. Monday the 2nd the interviews with the faculty will take place.



The weekend of March 19th-20th I will be headed to Cooperstown, New York for the interview weekend there. That will start on Thursday the 19th and go for the next few days. My parents have the letter at the moment, so I don't have all of the details yet.
This is so exciting! Things are finally coming together. Who knows what will happen, but hey at least I have an interview. I'm one step closer to completing one of my career goals and that's pretty satisfying.

Livin the good life in Mackinaw City

I've been here in Mackinaw City for three weeks or so and it's been a lot of fun. It seems like so long ago since I got here! I've been enjoying myself with the change of pace this internship has brought and I like the change of scenery.
The first photo here is the view out into Lake Michigan, about a two minute walk from my apartment. This is right under the Mackinac Bridge, looking toward the west at sunset.





The internship has been going very well. One of my first projects has been restoring the sword of Benjamin Morse. He was one of the officers at the fort during the 1880s and his sword is on display in the stone quarters. It has some spots of rust on the sheath especially, so I'm working with the conservator to remove it.

St. Anne's church inside of Fort Michilimackinac is getting a new altar for the spring. I've been helping to guild some of the pieces. What you do is sand the thing down until it is smooth, then apply a varnish and place gold leaf onto the varnish. I've been doing very basic things to help out with this, like photography and sanding.
Pete came for a visit on his way up to Marquette for the semester. One night we went to "scout" an Alpena High School game with my friend Sandy, who is Cheboygan's basketball coach.
The trip was fun and the company was great.
That week Pete came, I drove him up to Marquette....
....where we proceeded to pack ourselves into his giant duffel bag.
We've gone snowshoeing a lot since I've been up. I had snowshoes since my freshman year at Northern and never used them until a couple weeks ago. What a fun way to spend a cold afternoon though. I wish I had tried it sooner.

We had a sunny weekend and that was nice. This is within a five minute walk of my apartment and it's a nice view.
Mackinaw City had a winterfest last week and it was full of classy events like outhouse races and poker runs. One of the events was snow carving and I saw today that there were some very cool entries. This a carving of the Mackinaw, a Coast Guard icebreaker that serves in this area and it was one of my favorites.
This has been the last three weeks for me. Hopefully the rest of the winter goes as well as this has!

American Gothic

The history of photography is one of those things that is incredibly exciting for me; I suppose that is because it combines the two things I love.
Living in such a visual society, the history of the medium is very relevant to today. Think about it: how long do you go in any given day without seeing a photograph or image of some kind? From posters and billboards to televisions and computers, we go about our days surrounded by visual media. It defines us.
Though its subjects don't move, a photograph can be so dynamic and carry so much underlying meaning. The photograph here was taken by Gordon Parks, a black photographer for the Farm Security Administration during World War II. After moving to Washington, D.C. to work for the FSA, Parks encountered blatant racism nearly everywhere he went. This inspired him to photograph the daily life of Ella Watson, a cleaning lady for the FSA. This image, which he called American Gothic in reference to Grant Wood's famous painting, was intended to draw attention to the racism he experienced. We tout ourselves as being a free nation with equal rights for all, yet this is the America of Ella Watson and other African Americans at the time. The statement he made was a bold one for 1942, when the United States was still a very segregated place.
What a badass.

New Year's in Milwaukee

I went on a trip to Milwaukee to visit with some NMU friends for the new year. It was a great trip that started on Tuesday the 30th. The drive through Chicago was practically effortless, so my worry about bad traffic was proven wrong. My first stop was Lake in the Hills, IL where my friend Megan lives. We went to lunch with her parents and then headed up to my friend Ross' condo in Oak Creek, WI. Oak Creek is a suburb of Milwaukee and there were some very nice houses there. It was definitely upscale as you can see in the next photo.


This is Ross' condo. It's off of a main road and most of the windows look into the woods. If I went to UW Milwaukee (one of my choices for grad school) this is where I'd be living. Not a bad deal I'd have to say.
After we got settled there, Ross took us into Milwaukee itself. It is not as big as I remember it being, so that was a good thing.
He took us by the UW Milwaukee campus and I really liked the architecture. I wasn't sure about the school, but after seeing the campus I can say that it is a definite possibility.
There isn't really a ghetto in Milwaukee, but there are shady parts of town. Ross is a general manager for a Uhaul store in one of those parts of town. He showed us around his store and after seeing the area it's in, I can see why it has been robbed twice in the last year.
As we stocked up for the new year's festivities, I found Schlitz of Milwaukee, a beer the soldiers of Fort Mackinac drank in 1880s. I wasn't too impressed but thought it tasted like Labatt Blue. All the same, I wouldn't want to drink it warm like they used to.
We spent the evening playing games and having fun. It was a good new year's!

A violation of the 62nd article of war

One of my projects for the winter is going to be researching courts martial for the summer. We currently have three approved scenarios to use but my goals is to have 15-20. As the summer progresses we get bored with the cases and our testimonies get weirder and weirder! Hopefully this will stave that off just a bit.
Most of the cases make it sound like the officers were dealing with 50-75 bored children for the six years that the 23rd was stationed at the fort. A majority of the cases also had something to do with alcohol, surprise surprise. Here you have close to 100 men sitting around on an Island with nothing to do (except busy-work) and nowhere to go but an open saloon. I think to me a court martial would have seemed like an inconvenient part of a Friday night out rather than something to fear.
My friend Craig Wilson did some research over the summer and provided his notes to me, so I want to share my favorite court martial with you!

Charge 1
The prisoner, Pvt. Charles Costello, Co. K, 23rd Regiment of Infantry, is charged with being drunk while on duty, a violation of the 38th Article of War
Specification: In that he, Pvt. Costello, having been duly detailed for guard and selected as orderly for the commanding officer, and while on duty as such, was found drunk.

Charge 2
The prisoner is further charged with conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline, a violation of the 62nd Article of War
Specification 1: In that he, being at the time on guard and the commanding officer’s orderly, did without proper permission visit the village of Mackinac.
Specification 2: In that he did become grossly intoxicated and did vomit in the quarters of his company and on the floor of the same. All this, at Fort Mackinac, Michigan, on September 11, 1888.

This is standard fare for most of the courts martial. Think about this for a moment! The guy was the orderly, basically the aide for the commander of the fort and he got drunk. It's easy duty and something that speaks to your character and trustworthiness. How much sense does it make to get drunk during that time? The private was found guilty and ordered to 30 days of hard labor and he lost all of his pay during that time. I am excited to find a few more of these in the coming weeks.