Round Tables and Ironclads

The Round Table Discussion at the Caldwell Heritage Museum on Monday evening was a smashing success. There were twenty-two people present, and we spent two and a half hours talking about many different aspects of the war. The folks in Caldwell are already talking about holding this program again in the near future. If you are interested in doing this type of program in your area, please drop me a line. I would love to help. To date, I’ve helped with similar programs in Watauga, Avery, Mitchell, Yancey, and now Caldwell counties.

There is an interesting article this morning on Channel 9, out of New Bern, Washington, Greenville, and Jacksonville. You can read the article here. The gist of the article is this: in times of tight economics, do we need to spend money on the SCC Neuse project in Kinston? The reporter is right. We are in tight economic times. If you are not experiencing it, you must live further up the hollar than I do. I think the real question is this: why have we not already finished this project – a decade ago?

I don’t mean to rant off topic here, but there is much that is being spent these days that has no meaningful impact on our society; that it is astounding (and sad). I'll give just one example: we are getting millions in federal dollars to fix old roads and build new roads. And, granted, some of these are worthwhile projects. But at the same time, our schools are being forced to cut thousands of teachers because we don’t have the money to pay their salaries. THAT IS NOT RIGHT! We already have students that have no knowledge of history or the arts, because there is not money in the system to teach those subjects. I could rant more here, but I won’t. I will say that it is not only in the elementary and secondary grades. Our community colleges, those schools that are trying to retrain people who have lost their jobs, are being forced to do with less, including teachers, as are our colleges and universities. Maybe we should stop some of this road construction and shore up our educational institutions so in the future, we will have enough intelligent people to prevent us from getting into this position again. Of course, I could argue that our educational system needs major reforms, but, I guess that is why we home school our kids. And no, we have not cut history or the arts here.

Should we be funneling funds to the CSS Neuse project? As I said, it should have been done a decade ago.

You can learn more about the CSS Neuse here and here.