Shannon McNear, Author

This past Saturday a friend and I drove upstate to Old Ninety Six historical park, site of a Revolutionary War era town and fort, held at different times by the British and Americans. I took my digital camera and caught a few shots ... To the right is a view of the paved path as it follows the old Island Ford Road just down from the original town site, where it intersects with the old Charleston Road. At the visitor's center is a small but really nice museum with artifacts from digs at the fort site, and a gift shop where I spent entirely too much on books and historical music. See the frozen-in-time British Regular and American Continental soldiers, and a cannon that shot 3-lb. balls! A case filled with assorted artifacts: ammunition of all types, both for cannon and muskets; buttons, coins, pipes, and tiny dice with an emblem of the crown carved into them; an insignia seal that probably belonged to Thaddeus Kosciuzko, the Polish engineer who assisted the Continentals during

Egad ... I've been tagged again. Thanks, Ronie . :-) This time, it's looking back. It's called 10-20-30 ... where was I 10 years ago, and what was I doing? 20 years? 30? 10: November 1997. Age 31. My fifth child and second daughter was a mere four weeks old. She was sweet and plump and ... and oh, yeah, her birth week was filled with lots of drama. That was the week of the Stomach Virus Story to top all stories in our family so far. (Another blog, p'raps? Or, p'raps not. LOL) I was not writing fiction at the time, but my writing surfaced in its own way. This was the year we discovered the internet and I spent some time on debate boards, sharpening my ability to defend issues I cared about, through the written word. Interesting, to say the least. I learned a lot. Also, the year I found the Practical Homeschooling message board on AOL and fell in with the Homeschooling A Houseful (hereafter known as HAH) crowd ... I still remember posts by Marye of TX and Tamm