Lakeisha visits the Governor's office

Here we are at the Michigan State Capitol Building.   Lansing is the state capital for Michigan.  Can you find it on the map below? 

Michigan has two "sections." The top part is the "upper peninsula" and the bottom portion is "the lower peninsula."  Lansing is in the lower peninsula. 

We used to "own" the city of Toledo, but we gave that city away to Ohio in exchange for the Upper Peninsula.

It takes about 10 hours to drive from the opposite ends of the state! It takes about 12 hours to drive from Lansing, Michigan to Little Rock, Arkansas.

Lansing wasn't always the capital.  This is the third building. The one before this was a temporary wooden building here. And the one before that wasn't even in Lansing! It was in Detroit.  

The capital was moved from Detroit to Lansing because it was further away from enemy territory.

Detroit was considered too close to a foreign country being ruled by our national enemies at that time. Can you look at a map and figure out what country that was?

Now we're inside the building....much warmer!! 

The capitol building was in really bad shape and some people wanted to tear it down. Some people decided it was worth saving and a LOT of very talented people worked to restore the building over many many years.

We went up to the first floor of the capital dome.  The floor is made of glass!

You can see light coming up through the floor. It was kind of scary but the tour guide said the floor was really strong and we didn't need to worry about falling through.

Guess what we saw when we laid down on the floor and looked up? This!  There are so many beautiful hand painted murals and designs and they go way up high.

 

Here are a bunch of flags in the capital rotunda.  These are all replicas of old flags...some dating back to the civil war period.

Outside the governor's office is a picture of Gerald R. Ford. He is the only President of the United States that came from Michigan.

Here is the entrance to the Governor's office. Can you see the sign above the window? 

There are alot of original lights in this building. But building was made before electricity was invented. So the lights used to work by burning gas rather than using electricity. Now all the lights use electricity. But there are no light switches anywhere in the building.

How do they turn on the lights?  We learned that all the lights are connected to a computer in the control station.  The computer automatically turns all these overhead lights on and off.

Here I am inside the Governor's office. The governor doesn't work here much. There aren't any computers in here because the building was not modernized to keep it in its original character. So the governor does most of his/her work in a building across the street. 

The current governor is Rick Snyder. He is just getting started on his job as governor.  He was born in Battle Creek, Michigan. That is where Kellogg's cereals are made.

But just before that Michigan had its first female governor, Jennifer Granholm.  Who is the governor of your state? Have you ever had a female governor before?  She was a two-term governor and did some work with President Obama when she was still in office. 

She will never be president though because she was not born in the United States.  You have to be born in the U.S. to be president.  (She was born in Canada, a nation that was once occupied by our enemy!) Isn't it interesting how countries change who their friends and enemies are over time?

On the way out I got to go behind the desk at the tour guide station.  I picked up a bunch of materials to bring back home.