Road Trip Through History: Fort Sumter

My Own True Love and I are spending a long weekend in Charleston, South Carolina.  For me, it’s a vacation/work sandwich.  Yesterday we bopped around together doing history-buff stuff.*  Today he heads off for twenty-four hours with his grandson’s Cub Scout troop aboard the USS Yorktown while I settle in for a day of reading…

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Road Trip Through History: Gettysburg National Military Park

Our recent trip to Gettysburg was a blast, and not just because I love to stand up in front of a crowd and talk about something I’m interested in. If you get a chance to visit Gettysburg National Military Park during the annual Sacred Trust event,* take it. The event is well-organized. Speakers start and…

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Word With a Past: Shoddy

In the early nineteenth century  British textile manufacturers began to recycle woolen rags into a an inexpensive woolen cloth.  The rags were shredded into fibers, mixed with new wood, and then spun and woven into the cloth, which was known as “shoddy”–a term that may have come from an old word meaning divide.*  The process…

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