Catching Up

I trust that everyone has had a happy holiday so far. The last of our Christmas plans have been postponed due to snow here in eastern NC. I know that all my northern friends find this amusing, but when it snows here everything pretty much shuts down. We don't have a lot of snow on the ground yet, but it's enough that I don't want to be on the roads myself, let alone with all the other idiots out there. So I guess we'll be going to my mom's house for dinner tomorrow night if the roads clear up tomorrow. That leaves me with plenty of time today to do other things, like catching up on the blog, so here we go.

Back on November 20-21 our merry band known as the Carolina Living History Guild attended the annual Confederate navy living history program at the CSS Neuse State Historic Site in Kinston. This is always our annual meeting as well so pretty much everyone shows up. This year we were also afforded the opportunity to put a navy crew on the 3-inch ordnance rifle from Bentonville Battlefield. The annual meeting went well; we got our 2011 schedule set, voted on officers for the coming year, and discussed various points of unit business.

December 11 found us at Historic Halifax for their annual colonial Christmas program. Not much changes with this program from year to year. The weather this year wasn't very good, being rainy and cold. We spent much of our time inside the Tap Room playing tavern games and drinking warm cider. The visitation was surprisingly good for such a bad weather day. This event wound down the year for the Guild. We don't have another event until February.

The week prior to the Halifax event found me at Brunswick Town-Fort Anderson State Historic Site, teaching a certification class for 18th century small arms. An in-house militia unit has started up at that site and a number of their members wished to obtain the state's volunteer level of certification. I was assisted in teaching the class by Scott Douglas from Fort Dobbs State Historic Site. We had nine students in the class, all of whom passed with flying colors. It was a cold weekend, but sunny and as pleasant as possible with such cold temps. Our class braved the cold all day Sunday as we had them outside drilling in the manual of arms, conducting the blank firing exercise, and cleaning their weapons. Everyone had a good time and now they have a well certified volunteer group.

That pretty well covers the end of year activities. The new year will bring new ventures. I will be participating in my first Twelfth Night program at Tryon Palace on January 5. This celebration is set in the 1790s in the Stanly House, which is my favorite house at that site. I am very much looking forward to something new for the new year!