An Interesting Experience

Yesterday, Susan and I traveled up to Lake Erie. There’s a place called Lakeside, which is near the Marblehead lighthouse. It’s near the Cedar Point amusement park, and also near the Johnson’s Island Confederate prison camp/cemetery site.

Lakeside is part of the Chautauqua movement. It was founded in the 1870’s, and it’s like a little oasis. It is very much like taking a step back into the past. It’s a very quaint little religious community. The place is definitely oriented toward Christianity and toward spiritual and religious growth. This was one of those times when having a good Lutheran-sounding name has its advantages. At one point last night, I jokingly told a friend in an e-mail that I hoped that we wouldn’t be struck by a lighting bolt and that we were undoubtedly the only Jews within several miles of the place. 🙂

To get there, we had to pass through the town of Bucyrus, Ohio. On Monday, Bucyrus had eight inches of rain in one day. The Sandusky River, normally not much of a stream, was horribly flooded. Nearly half of the downtown area was under water. There was floodwater everywhere. We had to find a way around it, which took the better part of half an hour. It was, without doubt, some of the worst flooding I have ever seen.

Anyway, this is Civil War week at Lakeside. They have three seminars per day for five days. The folks there had contacted me months ago, and I figured that it might be an interesting experience. They also indicated that they were willing to pay me, which is always music to my ears. 🙂

I ended up giving two different 90 minutes talks today. The first one was on the Battle of Trevilian Station and the second one was on Stuart’s ride during the Gettysburg Campaign. I had almost 130 people for the first talk and about 85 for the second. It was quite a day. Normally, I don’t like working with microphones, but they had a lavalier mic for me, and it worked perfectly. It’s a good thing, too. If I hadn’t had that, I would not have a voice left at all now. As it is, I have very little left at the moment.

It was an attentive but not especially knowledgeable crowd. I had a few good questions and few uninformed looks. However, it got me out of the office for a day, I got paid to talk about the Civil War, and Susan and I got a tiny get-away. Since we haven’t gotten to take a vacation this year, and our only out-of-town trips have been to deal with my father, any little get-away is a good thing. It looks like we will be going back again next year; my usual trick of speaking without notes had the usual effect. 🙂

Tomorrow, it’s back to work for the day, and then it’s off to Gettysburg. JD and I are meeting our third co-author, Mike Nugent, there to shoot the photos for the driving tours for our retreat book.