The whirlwind trip is over. Here’s a recap. Susan will post my photos over the weekend.

I left on Wednesday morning. My flight out was at 6:00 AM, meaning that the alarm clock went off at 4:15, an obscene hour. I can remember times in my youth when I wasn’t finished throwing up at that time of the night, but those days are LONG gone. Now, the thought of getting up at that hour is enough to make me tired just to think about it. I flew to Atlanta and changed planes, arriving in New Orleans a few minutes before 10:00 local time.

Charles Nunez, my host, took me straight to Metairie Cemetery. PGT Beauregard, John Bell Hood, and …

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As I was looking at my blog earlier today, I realized that the last two posts were the result of random violence leading to multiple gunshot deaths committed by mentally ill individuals. Unfortunately, mental illnesses remain highly stigmatized in this country, and people like the perpetrators of these two crimes did not get the mental health care they obviously needed. It’s clear that something needs to change, and change soon, or else these types of nightmarish scenarioes will continue to play out.

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While working away at my desk this morning, I learned of the senseless tragedy at Virginia Tech University. Nearly 25 years ago, when I was still an undergrad, I spent a weekend at Virginia Tech that was one of the most fun weekends of my life. Consequently, I’ve always had very fond memories of the place. Today’s news was shocking, to say the very least. That this sort of thing continues to happen is nearly incomprehensible to me. My friend Tom Perry is a Virginia Tech alum, as is fellow blogger and regular reader Ken Noe. I can’t imagine what they must be feeling tonight knowing that something like this happened at their alma mater.

Susan and I have an …

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One thing that I particularly enjoy is meeting other writers. I especially enjoy meeting other writers from other disciplines, because I learn from comparing their research and writing methodologies with how I do my work.

On December 8, 2004, the 24th anniversary of the assassination of John Lennon, a tragedy occurred here in Columbus. A mentally ill gunman rushed the stage at a local venue called the Alrosa Villa, shot and killed a prominent thrash metal guitar player named Darrell Abbott, and was going to go after other members of his band, called Damageplan. One of the band’s roadies, a patron, and a member of the Alrosa security team rushed the gunman and tried to take him down and …

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Robert E. Lee’s adjutant, Col. Walter Herron Taylor, had some interesting insights on the Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid. I’ve owned a copy of Taylor’s published war-time letters for some time, but it just never occurred to me to bother checking them. Thanks to old friend Teej Smith for pointing out to me that there is a treasure trove in this book for the student of the Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid. Taylor is the officer standing on the right side of the Matthew Brady photograph of Lee taken in Richmond shortly after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox; the officer on the left side of the photo is Lee’s oldest son, Maj. Gen. George Washington Custis Lee.

I knew that Dahlgren’s column of the raid nearly …

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Tonight was the monthly meeting of the Central Ohio Civil War Roundtable. I’ve been a member on and off since the very first meeting of the group in the spring of 1999. I come and go; I spend so much time talking to Roundtables that it’s difficult for me to motivate myself to go to meetings. As an example, I am speaking to the New Orleans CWRT a week from tonight and the Austin CWRT the next night. That’s a lot packed into not a lot of time. I make maybe 20% of the group’s meetings. It has to either be a friend speaking or a topic that REALLY interests me to get me to go. Tonight was the first …

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I’m an avid supporter of battlefield preservation. I’ve worked extensively with the Civil War Preservation Trust and will always be stout advocate for battlefield preservation causes.

To date, most preservation work has focused on the Civil War, which is understandable. Fortunately, Congress has recognized that battlefields of the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 are equally threatened and that they face the same pressures and threats that Civil War battlefields face.

There is a House of Representatives (HR) bill (HR160) to appropriate money for a grant program to help State, Local, and Tribal government agencies and non-profit organizations to acquire and preserve Revolutionary War and War of 1812 Battlefield land (as currently enjoyed only by Civil War battlefields) , …

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My regular readers know that I am a hockey nut. Susan and I made it to nearly half of the home games of our local NHL team this year. Watching NHL hockey is one of my favorite things to do in the world, and I just love watching it live.

Last night marked the end of the sixth season for the Columbus Blue Jackets. When the Jackets entered the league for the 2000-2001 season, they entered with another new team, the Minnesota Wild. Two years earlier, the Nashville Predators and the Atlanta Thrashers entered the NHL as expansion teams.

This year, the Wild finished 48-26-8, for 104 points and a playoff slot. The Predators finished 51-23-8, for 110 points and …

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Yesterday, I finalized a deal for office space. It’s not going to be a permanent thing, but it will do for now. It gives me a place to work and resources–conference room facilities, copier, fax, etc. The space is nice, and it will certainly do for now.

In August, I will have been in the practice of law for twenty years. The truth is that I have never particularly enjoyed it. When I was younger, it was a reasonably good outlet for my competitiveness, but I find that as I age, I am much less competitive than in my younger days. I simply don’t need that outlet any more. This whole situation has prompted me to reassess where I see …

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Last August 1, I left one law firm to join another. The new firm was brand new and based on some interesting ideas and some interesting approaches to the practice of law, and those things appealed to me. I spent eight months there, and they were, for the most part, eight good months. Unfortunately, the economics there don’t work for me or our family, and I made the difficult but necessary choice to move on this past weekend. As it was the end of a quarter, it made good sense for me to make the move right away so I could start fresh right at the beginning of a quarter.

So, for the first time since 2001, I am, once …

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