Review of Battery Hooper Civil War Days 2016

Sorry for the lack of content lately, but my new job has turned things around for me, leaving me much less time for research and writing, specially as overtime has become mandatory lately. I have been surprised and disappointed by how little time I have spent here or on any other Civil War reading and writing, and need to reverse that trend, hopefully starting now.

I have also had some issues with the Blogger app not saving everything I type. That is frustrating as I have redone this post multiple times.

I do want to take some time to review the Ramage Museum's Battery Hooper Civil War a Days from this year, the thirteenth incarnation of the event and the ninth(!) with which I have been involved.

We facedsome new and interesting challenges this year, but still put on a successful event.

On Saturday morning, we had some issues with our museum building, but got them resolved well before any visitors arrived. That was certainly an interesting hour or two we had, though.

Saturday featured the worst weather I have ever witnessed at for any BHD event. We had a few downpours of rain, and when it did not rain, it looked like it would at any moment. It was a fairly unpleasant day overall, but our presenters put on goodshows. We even moved a couple inside, though maybe we should have done do earlier. The Belle Boyd presentation was new and very interesting, even in a fairly small room.The weather certainly impacted attendance and left us feeling a bit frustrated over events we could not control.

Sunday was a much better day, perhaps even perfect from a weather perspective. Attendance  rebounded quite nicely, bringing us a feeling if relief.nWe had more guests in the first two hours than we did all day Saturday, send we ended up with over 500 attendees for the day. It seemed like the beauty of Sunday was a gift to make up for the struggles of Saturday.

Overall, we faced some challenges, but put on a successful event. We had good sales in our gift shop and used book sale, and visitors were kind with their donations. As usual, it was a lot of work, but, again as usual, as soon as it ended, I started looking forward to next year, wondering what new presentations, displays and ideas we might try then.