A Re-Introduction

Since I have decided to attempt to amuse myself with a project this quarter, this blog is going to be one of those projects.  I am also going to try to finish at least one of the books that I have started over the years.  This book is a children's book (I think) about a doll's perspective of the Great Depression, and is sort of based on the the childhood of my maternal grandmother and her siblings.  I had put the story away last year because I was simply too busy to work on it.  So why pick it up again?  Well, the simple answer is that I needed a project to do because my course load this quarter seems to be lighter than usual and I have more time to devote to writing.  The more complicated answer is that this book needs to get done.  My grandmother, her sister Dory, and brothers Wally and Kenny are all that are left of the eight children that her parents had.  So, this is a labor of love that I would like to finish before they are gone.

The other part of the answer as to why I am starting to write again (both this blog and the book) is because I am a historian.  Historians write and teach - that is what we do, or at least should do.  I am fortunate to teach for an institution that focuses more on teaching, but in some ways I do miss the researching and the writing that I had to do in grad school.  This summer I was fortunate to be able to do some research and writing, but I feel that I should be doing more especially since I received a tenure-track history position at the college that I work.  This sort of position, at least in my view, demands that I research and write and do more with history than I ever have before.  I know that there are other history professors that have blogs they write on regularly, telling the world about the tidbits in history that would be forgotten (and in some cases not even be known about).

My problem is, I don't think that I am a good enough writer, let alone that the things that I find interesting would be interesting to anyone else.  In fact, I started this particular blog back in the fall of 2011 as a place to throw out stuff that I was thinking about and experiencing at that time.  I didn't make it public other than to a couple of friends, but now if I am going to truly write like a historian should, this blog needs to be more. It is going to have to be public.  It also needs to cover topics (historical ones) that I find interesting and want to tell the story of.  So, now that I have yet again started this blog up, stay tuned for some random historical blathering.