Still Hanging Around

Yes, I am still here, or maybe I should say I'm baaaaaaack!

A year without posting is shameful and though I will likely touch on some of the reasons (excuses?) for my absence in this and maybe future posts, I do have a few topics to mention today. It will probably not come across as the most prepared or researched posting ever, but I hope it will be evidently honest and straight-forward about some of my life experiences and studies and reasons for such an absence.

First, despite the lack of posting, I have maintained my interest in the Civil War. I still serve as President of the James A Ramage Civil War Museum. My previous post was a preview of our Battery Hooper Days event for 2013, but this post comes just In time to review the 2014 version of this event. It went well, as temperatures were low for August in this part of the land, and the rain stayed away despite cloudy skies.  We had  several new displays inside the museum and out, including a medical tent set-up in our encampment,  a new display on the 1864 election and a re-enactors group from Camp Nelson, portraying Company L of the 12th Regiment U.S Colored Heavy Artillery.  We also had a temporary display of a statue that Civil War veterans donated to a local group of nuns as a thank you for care they had given to their wounds. It is a beautiful statue and we were fortunate to have it on display.

Attendance was a bit lower an usual, at least on Sunday. That was frustrating as we thought we had done a good job of greeting publicity, buy maybe the threatening skies scared some visitors away from a mostly outdoors event. We controlled what we could and are satisfied with our efforts, though we will always look for ways to do even better.

I also continue to volunteer at the Campbell County Historical and Genealogical Society, as acquisitions manager. We will celebrate our 25th anniversary in 2015 and are in the midst of planning a special event on June 27 of next year, so that will require some time and effort on my part as well.

I also am scheduled to give so talk on Abraham Lincoln at the society's January meeting. I am not an experienced public speaker, so that will be a challenge for me, though one I do welcome. As of now, my talk will focus mostly on the 1864 election, the 13th Amendment and Lincoln's Second Inaugural, with some background information about the war's first three years and some of the things that influenced Lincoln as he approached late 1864 and beyond. Hopefully I will be able to do this as a PowerPoint presentation (including finding the equipment to use) as I think that will help me quite a bit.

One of the reasons for my hiatus from posting was, ironically, BHD last year. Preparing for and then going through  It wore me out physically, mentally and emotionally, and just sapped me of my motivation, not only from blogging, but also from basic reading or research also. My job at an insurance company was also extremely busy at this time last year, with lots of mandatory overtime. That did not help me at all.

The good news is that within the past few months, I have started reading much more. I have not dug into much research yet,  but I can feel my desire to do research h and to resume blogging growing as I continue to read more. I think I am back on the right track, and though I cannot promise how much research I will do or how often I will blog, I am confident it will be much more common an in the past year. I have plans to do more cemetery research and with the renovation of the Covington branch of the Kenton Count Library being complete, I should be able to head over there more often too. Book reviews should be another good source of material for me as well. I don't know if I will do full reviews of the books I have read in the last few months, but I know that I will want to post at least some thoughts on a few of them as I did make some good choices in reading material.

Also. I believe that my use of my IPAD, and less use of my desktop computer, has made me less interested in posting such long posts (at least compared to message board or Facebook posts) and I hope I can overcome that excuse as well.

I also should mention that I took a very informative (and fatiguing) walking tour at Perryville in May. I saw parts of the field I had not seen before, and learned quite a bit of new information about the battle. The guides were super knowledgeable and did a fantastic job leading the group,of about 40 people over the many hills and trails in the park.  This tour also influenced some of my reading choices in the weeks that followed, a fortunate occurrence, I do believe as I learned even more and was able to understand what I read better, since I had just been on the ground the authors described. Perhaps I will post a few pictures from that tour, though I continued to focus on cannons and split-rail fences . I also took several shots of open fields and hills, though those may not appear interesting, unless I can attach accurate captions to describe what the show. I will see what I can do about that, as Perryville remains one of my favorite places to visit. I even have been there twice already this year, which is unusual. Hopefully I will make at least one more trip, sometime in the fall of this year.