Article of secession

the family and I visited the Old Capitol building in Jackson, Mississippi, recently. It's one of those places that you never go if you live there so I was interested to see how the kids liked it.

They were very impressed to see the original document declaring that Mississippi would secede from the union before the Civil War:

Some of the exhibits were more fun than others. We all took a nap during one of those slide shows narrated by someone with a heavy Southern accent.

But we came back to life when we went to the chamber where legislators argued about new laws. Each side of the legal case was presented in a book so we could argue the case ourselves in front of the judges.

Here's Mel making an important point -- the lawyers certainly look like they are paying attention:

So that was a lot of fun -- we went upstairs to look down and I was struck at how the white mannequins looked like ghosts. It gave the exhibit new depth to me: