...more stuff...

Beard Baird

Odd, isn't it, for someone named after a razor blade to have such an aversion to shaving...

Historic Fort Wayne Battalion Drill

Some images taken at this week's light infantry drill at the Historic Fort Wayne (on the south side of Detroit on the Detroit River). We slept in barracks built in the 1840s and where real soldiers stayed before heading south during the Civil War. The fort was first built to protect the US from an attack by Canada. And it seems to have worked; they've never dared to try!

Yet.

For more information about the fort and its restoration work go to http://www.historicfortwaynecoalition.com

A page from my sketchbook...

Sure, you laugh (well, I hope you're laughing), but mark my words, the day is coming when we'll see such wretched excess as a disposable super-compact as the "spare" for the driver of an expensive Titanic SUV.

Maybe I should patent the idea instead of ridiculing it...

Family matters. A lot.

This cartoon is in honor of my dear old mom. She never lived to see her grandkids, but without a doubt she would have gone absolutely nuts over them. Like this dear lady, Ma would have framed each and every photograph and hung them all over the house. And anybody coming to the door would have had to come in and see them all! The Charles Chips man, Girl Scouts, Mormons and Jehovah Witnesses would have all quickly learned to avoid the homestead like the plague.

The Democratic Irrational Convention

This was reprinted in the weekend edition of USAToday. When I got to work on Monday, the principal of the grade school where I was janitor had hung a copy of the OpEd page on the bulletin board. Right next to the warning about the head lice outbreak. I had made the big time!

"I am not a crook!"

Boy, do I miss Dick Nixon. This was reprinted in the Woodrow Wilson Quarterly after he died (Nixon, not Wilson).

There's always a class clown. No matter the century.

I just wanted to show everyone that not all photographs taken at Civil War Reenactments are serious and bereft of joy. The young boy mugging at the camera in the earlier post's group picture is not alone.

At least, not when I am around.

A Ball and the Fall

A few recent photographs...

My esposita and I attended a Civil War-era formal ball last weekend in Lansing, MI. Just call us Red Adair and Ginger Rogers (I was told my dancing skills took the pressure off from everyone there). Karen made her gown. I didn't make my uniform. But I did dress myself.

The second photograph is from the 21st Michigan's end-of-the-season pre-Thanksgiving dinner. If you left click on the photograph, it will pop-up much, much larger. Reenactors oft times are told to give a Civil War Smile in having our likeness taken (which is no smile at all - the exposure time of the day was too long to hold such an expression)... so that explains the dour faces.

However, you will notice that there is a young man who must not have gotten the memo.

Jackson, Michigan 2007

Jackson, Michigan 2005