When in the course of human events

Well, I decided to start blogging again. Any of you that know me very well know that I have an almost dysfunctional need to explain, justify, and rationalize things that I do. So, this first post will mostly be dedicated to doing just that. The reason for the title of this post is fairly simple, one of the ways I "explain, justify and rationalize" (maybe I need to just use the acronym EJR to save space), my overwhelming need to EJR, is by using the Declaration of Independence to claim I'm not dysfunctional, I'm merely American. You probably know that the Declaration of Independence was a relatively bizarre document because the Founding Fathers were the first people who really felt a need to explain to the world, in detail, the causes and justification for their revolution and new nation. So, I'll steal Tom Jefferson's first line as the title of my introductory blog post where I EJR my reason for blogging.

I had a blog under this title, before, and it may well be floating out there somewhere in cyberspace. I just can't find it anymore. I stopped it basically because it seemed to me that posting comments on a blog was the ultimate in narcissism. I guess I've reached the point where I'll just have to embrace my narcissism and post away

Another logical question might be, "couldn't this be handled by sharing my wonderful information on Facebook?" Perhaps, but that's not a good option to me for several reasons. First, Facebook is not a "verbose narcissist friendly" platform. It takes me more words to introduce myself than are allowed in a Facebook status. (As for Twitter, forget it. It takes me more than 140 characters to even START to say anything. Plus, "tweeting" in public seems like something my mother would have told me not to do.) Second, even though I'm addicted, Facebook has not been a good place for me to share ideas. I have many Facebook friends that I'm not even sure precisely who the "friend" is that suggested I add these other persons as "friends." Political comments on Facebook that were misunderstood or were taken in the wrong way by folks not accustmoed to political comments have cost me some very significant things over the past year. I have a few goals left in life, one of those is to once again be allowed to teach a Sunday School class. Further political comments on open Facebook are only going to prevent that goal from every being reached. If someone bothers to come over here and read, I will assume they probably know me and know me well enough to know my heart, a lot of those folks on Facebook, particularly my "brothers and sisters" in Christ who told me I needed to ask for forgiveness or that I was a fake Christian because of my political beliefs probably won't appear on this blog, I hope.

With that said, the posts on this blog will not mainly be political. However, I was a political junkie before I became a political historian. I teach politics, I read politics, I watch politics, so politics will appear here, it is inevitable. The real purpose of this blog is to discuss various topics related to local history in the Minden area. These will be topics that don't merit a full version of my newspaper column, topics I'm researching for upcoming columns or books and anything related to local history that crosses my mind. That's the reason for the name of this blog, I live in North Overton (more or less) and in essence, Minden first emerged as a northern suburb of Overton.

Now, I already know that my first post, probably coming later today, is actually going to be on a political topic, but one that I don't think is controversial enough to get me fully expelled from church, I hope.

I hope someone is reading this, and if you are, welcome. Many times the things I post will be asking for comments, so it will be good if there are readers. Talking to yourself isn't very productive, BELIEVE me, I KNOW!!!!