Library of Congress

The U.S.'s Library of Congress has some great images available online. Most 19th century and earlier images are copyright free and available for download. The Civil War collection is especially large and impressive.

LoC's holdings can be searched online. You can even order copies or microfilms of most items. This is a great asset for the serious researcher.

Smoked Barbecue

Okay, this is off topic but I want to share. My husband and I built our own barbecue smoker after watching an episode of Good Eats (Food Network). I finally got pictures of it in action. If you're interested in trying it yourself, check out my Squidoo lens. I give a list of components and provide a play-by-play of how we built it. This being 4th of July weekend, it's a fun and original project to undertake.

Getting Started

I think I finally found something 'productive' to do with all this military history stuff my husband and I have been collecting. I've setup a couple domains. One to provide information on weapon development and evolution - including regularly sections to give readers a reason to visit regularly. The other domain will host a monthly online newsletter; we'll write 3-4 articles on military history and include things like coming events. My husband's more into this than anything in a really long time.

I can't believe how much time I'm spending on a project that I'd intended for my husband. I've done the initial website design. Created the first installment of our regularly updated sections. Completed one article and created the template for our newsletter. Then I discovered CafePress.com and have been intensely working on creating merchandise. I am no artist so I spend a lot of time refining. On the positive side, a few years ago I did a lot of research to create a list of military history sites in the US. My list is almost 300 sites long; I finally put it into a document as one of our merchandise items. Its a small step, but it felt good to finally get it finished.

As I find cool sites or infos, I'll blog about them here. I've found a few already. This post is getting a bit lengthy already though, so I'll save them for next time. For now, check out a content preview on my Squidoo page.