Hello The Illinois General Assembly adjourned after 1 a.m. Saturday morning having passed a budget that includes funds to purchase the Old Slave House. Thank you to all of you who contacted the governor's office or various state legislators. Both the local state represetative, David Phelps, and the local state senator, Jim Rea, requested the funds as part of their district project list. Although many of you who wrote received form letters as late as Friday stating that the acquisition was not likely, the letters didn't reflect the strong bipartisan effort made in support of the house. On the Republican side, Jack Hill, the former president of Shawnee Community College and a candidate for state representative in the 118th District (where the house is located), lobbied the governor and his staff last Thursday. Gov. Edgar must have thought it was a tag team match that day, because Democratic former U.S. Senator Paul Simon visited him the same day to pitch the effort. I'm sure Simon was also trying to get Edgar to agree to come to work at his new public policy institute in Carbondale. I'm not sure what happens next. Neither do the owners. They didn't know about the appropriation when I called them around 1 p.m. Sunday. With the holiday, it will be Tuesday at the earliest before we can get any new information. I'm in the process of producing a half hour radio documentary on the house - which may have to be changed now to add the latest information. And there's a book about the house coming up sometime, probably next year at the earliest. There's is an extremely strong chance that there will be a new non-profit organization formed to work with the state to acquire and operate the site. If you would like to receive updates on what happens with the site, please email me back and I will add you to the list. I'm sending this message out to the same group I did before. If you forwarded that message to another list or person then, please do so again with this one. Jon Musgrave jonm@midamer.net jonm@midamer.net Check out Jon's Southern Illinois History Page at http://www.midamer.net/users/jonm