Taking the plunge!

Planning for My First Blogging Experience…

Well, I am finally taking the plunge and starting a blog! I feel like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, as played by Paul Newman and Robert Redford when they jumped off the cliff into the river to avoid the posse! When Sundance informs Butch he can’t swim, Butch assures him not to worry for more than likely the fall will kill him before he can drown!

Here is my plan today, which will likely change as we progress. I am hoping to crank out a post every other week. I envision the following categories to guide my blogs: “Hindsight is Never 20/20,” “Stories I Tell to Friends,” and “Revisiting Old Stories.”

Blog Categories:

The “Hindsight is Never 20/20” category will examine how historians interpret the past, giving readers a sense of a historian at work. I stole the idea of “Stories I tell to Friends” from Dwight Eisenhower’s book At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends. Living in Wyoming, one often finds themselves around a campfire with friends sharing stories, a great venue to practice storytelling. So when you see this category, imagine you hear the fire crackling. I will share with you stories about living in Wyoming, my adventures and misadventures, as well as stories about my family’s past. In “Revisiting Old Stories,” I plan to discuss my favorite histories, novels, movies, and TV programs, offering my insight on these works. Consider this category to be an informal book review section.

Please Respond!

As I told my past students, please ask questions and comment as we go along. I only ask you to be respectful in your responses and limit your swearing to the cusswords “Hell,” “Damn,” and “B.S.” And, as we say in Wyoming per Owen Wister’s cowboy hero the Virginian, if you’re going to call me an “S.O.B.,” be sure you smile when you say it! Anyway, I am getting ready to jump off the cliff and I hope you’ll join me. The fall may kill us, but we’ll have fun along the way!

Your Pardner, the Wyoming Historian!

NOTE: This is my personal blog. The views expressed do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the institutions I have worked for in the past, or are currently working for now. I plan to begin another blog for the Buffalo Bill Center titled “Living in the Wild West,” which will reflect my current role as the Historian and Tate Endowed Chair of Western History at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming.