I'm away from home with only a laptop and no internet connection. I'll post this when I get home.
Lascassas, TN Dec 10 -
I went to see an old friend yesterday. Gerald is a retired social studies teacher and a life-long Civil War buff. He collects books, weapons, uniforms and anything else related to the Civil War. He also has used a metal detector to search much of Loudon County for artifacts left behind by armies that passed thru in the 1860's.

Soldiers are notoriously wasteful. If you have to carry everything on your back, you don't keep stuff you don't need. So you throw it away or "lose" it. In a combat situation, your own safety is more important than your equipment. So a metal detector tends to find bullets, belt buckles, knives, and other small objects left by soldiers. Brass and glass items are sometimes in remarkable condition.

Gerald's collection is very impressive. The lower floor of his home is a library/museum with artifacts carefully displayed. He has several rows of floor to ceiling book shelves, with hundreds of volumes that probably average more than 100 years old There are rifles by the dozens, beautiful old revolvers, uniforms, artillary shells and cannon balls. An adjoining room contains his wife's collection of Civil War period womens clothing.

If you look hard enough, you can find a few World War II items.

Gerald has written a book titled "The Loudon County Area of East Tennessee in the War 1861 - 1865," which is based on years of research. Unlike most Civil War books, this one focuses on a relatively small area. It includes photos and I'm sure most of them have never been published before. In order to write an account such as this, an author has to become even more familiar with the territory than the generals who fought there. Gerald sought help from another retired social studies teacher and one of his former students. He has worked on his book for 10 years, and only published it after his wife referred to it as his "never-ending book."

Our grandson, who is 15 has become interested in that part of our history and has already started a collection of artifacts. He is getting a copy of Gerald's book for Christmas, and I plan to borrow it sometime, as I have not read it yet.
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Lascassas, TN Dec 11 -
The recent revelation that Strom Thurman had a daughter that nobody knew about, has started me to thinking.
What would I do if I suddenly found that I had a sibling that I had not previously known about?

This lady has four half-siblings, all younger than she is. She has know for some time who her father was, but the news reports that I have seen are not clear as to how much the other Thurman siblings knew about her. What if they were unaware of her? I wonder what their reaction was when they first got the news.

How would you react to such a turn of events?
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Lascassas, TN Dec 12 -
Maybe the secret of getting this country back to normal is to restart the space program. I can just hear them shouting,"What? Spend billions in space when people are starving?" When you mention space exploration people tend to see stacks of hundred-dollar bills being stuffed into an enormous rockets and shot into space where they sift down on the moon.

But the truth is that not one dollar of U.S.government cash has ever been shot into space. Those dollars always go to companies all over the country, and most of it winds up in the pockets of working people. This stimulates the economy like nothing else. Well, not exactly,`because wars stimulate the economy pretty much the same way, but the choice is a no-brainer.

There is that other arguement, about how space flight is dangerous, but when compared to war, it's a fairly safe endevor. A ride on a space shuttle is probably safer than a ride in a HumVee through Baghdad.

And don't we already have an active space program? Yes, but it's a mere shadow of what it was during the so-called space race, when we beat the Russians to the moon. The Russians are no longer in the running, but keep an eye on China.

China worries me. Why do they want to go into space? They don't seem to have any economic problems (Have you seen any "Made in China" labels lately?). And they aren't known for spending money on research for the sake of research. Maybe they see space as place for weapons.

Let's face facts. Our space hardware is largely out of date. All of our boosters and manned space vehicles are relics from the 20th century. Some of them date back several decades. We have new technology that would enable us to build much better hardware.

In the meantime, Mars just sits there waiting. It's not a question of if we will go, just when. It surprises my generation that the 21st century got to Earth before people got to Mars. Back in the 70's it seemed like we had a running start. We really seemed to be on our way. But we just stopped. It was as if the Wright Brothers had completed that first flight and then packed up and returned to Ohio to sell bicycles.

I think America needs to get back on track. We have always been explorers and adventures. Why stop now?
Howard