Puttering in the Study

Dad and Lad - 2010

Well, at least it didn't drop below freezing overnight like last year - it bottomed out at 40 F this morning, which was plenty cold enough!  This year I took all three of my Cub Scouts to the Dad and Lad campout at Camp Pirtle (apparently a dad showing up with three biys is a bit of a novelty).  Grayson, Collin and Parker and I had a great time doing crafts, and going fishing, archery, BB guns and other things, along with three great meals in the dining hall (you work up an appetite with all the walking).

High point was when we lost Collin and had to collect him at the health lodge - or maybe it was when Parker got whiny and accidentally knocked over the deer made of twigs, or when Grayson couldn't stop whining about being cold this morning while in full ski trip gear - as a dad with a USMC tatoo walked by in a sleeveless T-shirt. 

Of course it's worth it all for the patch - all three are shown with their patches after a LONG night in a cold tent!  Fortunately everyone (but me) slept well, and they were a big help loading the car this morning.  Dad was a bit tired - I got in bed with Jamie as soon as we got home at 9:30 this morning and she had to wake me up at 3:40 this afternoon.

No time to rest, it turns out - we leave for DC tomorrow with Grayson for spring break - we're going with the Marshall Chamber of Commerce group, but going up a couple of days early so we can take Grayson on tours of the White House, Capitol and hit a couple of museums.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter - Seth Grahame-Smith

May God have mercy on my soul, this was the next thing I read after listening to 24 hours of lectures on the history of the Civil War.  I just could not help it - it looked like it would be a fun read.  And boy, was it.  I got it in the Shreveport airport late Monday morning, and by the time I went to bed that night in Washington, I'd finished it.  I actually apologized to President Lincoln's statue on the Mall on the way back to the hotel room. But it was so good, and how many books about Abraham Lincoln can you say have a happy ending?  I can't say I'm going to be reading the author's prior work Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but you never know.

Video promo for the book is here (and well worth watching).  The gist of the book is that Lincoln led a secret life hunting the undead, which eventually concluded in his leading the war against the secret vampire society that thrived on slavery which was the real reason for the Civil War.  There a great review of the book by the Los Angeles Times here.

After reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's book on Lincoln and his Cabinet, I feel like I know him well enough to know that he would have been enormously entertained by this book, and would have deeply wished that so much of the loss that he suffered during his life had a reason that was as logical as vampires.

American Civil War - The Teaching Company

It took two round trips to Austin and two to Tyler but I just finished this excellent set of 48 lectures on the history of the Civil War by Gary W. Gallagher of the University of Virginia.  The Civil War is not a period I'm very familiar with, and it was very interesting hearing it told from beginning to end.  Even with 24 hours of lectures there was virtually nothing on the causes of the war or on Reconstruction, which tells you how much there is to cover on just the war itself.