Subject: FYI: Fr. Marquette Gets a Blog Father Marquette (1637-1675) seems an unlikely blogger. But the Wisconsin Historical Society has converted the journal of his famous 1673 trip down the Mississippi with Louis Joliet into electronic form, and through the summer we'll stream it out every Tuesday and Friday. This week they leave a village of 3,000 Indians southwest of Green Bay, make the first recorded crossing of the Fox-Wisconsin portage, and start down the Wisconsin - - whose name was first put on paper in Marquette's journal 332 years ago this week. See the Mississippi Valley as it first appeared to European eyes. Eavesdrop on conversations with Indians who'd never seen white men. Encounter monsters that lurked under their fragile birchbark canoes, and bizarre petroglyphs that guarded ferocious whirlpools. See how the unarmed priest repulsed attacks by hostile warriors as he and Joliet became the first explorers to descend the Mississippi. Running commentary by WHS staff will try to pin-point their location, quote other contemporary accounts, explain archaic words and phrases, and offer insights that make reading the journal more fun. It's all free, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, at http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/diary/marquette_1673.asp<http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/diary/marquette_1673.asp>. There's even an RSS feed, so you can have each installment delivered automatically to your personal home page, or add it to a Web site you maintain for a class, club, or organization. Feel free to pass this note along to anyone who might like to know about it. If you'll be camping or canoeing in the Midwest this summer, come to wisconsinhistory.org and experience America's heartland in the words of the first Europeans who laid eyes on it. NOTE: -there is lots more on the site and not specific to wisconsin tho wisc is the basis... -for those of German ancestry, Wisconsin was (and still is) heavily populated by Germans..