South Mississippi Genealogical and Historical Society Talk AAR, 4/5/16

When I have a talk approaching, I create an event for it on Facebook in order to help spread the word for those who are interested in attending.  At one point, I was able to embed one of those events into a blog post so I could share it here, too.  But alas, it hasn't worked since.  I keep getting an error about privacy settings and some such.  But my event announcements are set to public, so I don't get it.  Grrr.....

Anyway.....

Monday, I pulled up my schedule of talks in order to get the address of the location where I would be speaking Saturday so could add it to the event I was creating.  What I saw absolutely scared me to death.  I probably resembled a cartoon character whose eyes were bugging out of the head.  With a tingly feeling rushing through my body in a wave of panic, I quickly pulled up the other two copies of my schedule I have posted elsewhere.  They only confirmed what I feared.  My talk was the very next day, not Saturday!


I had not heard from the president of the South Mississippi Genealogical and Historical Society, so I shot her a quick email.  All kinds of frightful thoughts were running through my head.  Had they forgotten about me?  Did I have the wrong date?  No, an email wouldn't do........this was an emergency, so I decided to call.   Thank goodness Ms. Goss answered and we were able to confirm everything.   Disaster diverted!  PHEW!!!

So yeah, I showed up on the right day and proceeded to set everything up.  The room was the smallest I have ever spoken in.  But everything fit.  So all was well.

.....except for my technology.  You know how it's always messing with me?  This time, it was my title slide.  Yeah, right off the bat!!  I have it set up so that as soon as I display it, a song plays.  The melody serves two purposes:  entertains the attendees as they are getting settled in, and allows me to adjust the volume of my sound system.  It's hard to do that when it doesn't play!  Oh well....no big deal.  So I started talking and when I mashed the button to advance the slide, music permeated the air.   Right.  But at least that was the only issue I had to deal with.

The tiny room was packed.  I honestly don't know how they got all of those people in there.  One lady had also come to my presentation to a DAR group back in September.  It was good to see her again! This group was awesome!  They laughed, smiled, made comments and asked questions during and after my talk.    

I was asked to keep my talk to 45 minutes, which means I had to cut out a lot of cool stuff.  But there were so many questions afterwards that it ended up going nearly the full length anyway!  Since this was a genealogical society, a lot of folks shared their own history,  and I enjoy listening to them.  I think the most interesting question I got was which battle I have enjoyed reenacting the most.  Hmmm......Pickett's charge at the 150th BGA Gettysburg was neat just for the numbers involved.   We did Peachtree Creek at Boscobel, Wisconsin a couple of years ago which was also memorable. I've always been drawn to Franklin, so that was special to recreate several years ago, again at Boscobel. 

A lady mentioned that she read this particular novel about a woman soldier and wanted my opinion of it, so I told her.  It sucked.   But that's a whole other discussion.

Mark was unable to accompany me, so there aren't any of his cool pictures to share.  You have to settle with this poor attempt of me snapping this one with my phone of the banner draping the table that held the lectern.

 Until next formation......rest.