Where have you been the last ten years?

Salem is the state capital
of Oregon.

We are quickly coming up on the ten year anniversary of the Roving Historian blog. For those of you who check the blog routinely or are signed up to receive emails, I want to thank you for your attention and support of public history. Posts have been pretty sparse the past couple of years. But summer is here and the Roving Historian is free again! I thought it might be time to review where we've been and make a re-dedication to sharing history for the rest of us.

Ten years ago I started this blog to share places, books, and ideas about history with a non-academic audience. You know, regular people who like history (which is not meant to say that regular people can't be scholarly at times). The blog was used to help document an intern project for my master’s program in applied history. We also talked about a book I wrote about the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion. We reviewed some other books and told you about some historic sights that we visited. However, our frequency of posting fell off about five years or so into it. What happened? We moved to California in 2013 to help out my aging parents. While we were there I went about teaching history in both a regular high school environment and in a alternative education program. While doing that I also earned a master's degree in education. With all of that going on, the blog suffered. As they say, life gets in the way.

Great places to walk and bike along
the Willamette River.

My wife, Sheila, and I are starting a new chapter in our lives. We have moved back to the Pacific Northwest. This time we are trying out beautiful Salem, Oregon. With that move it is time to rededicate to this blog. Certainly we'll talk about new sites we've visited, new books to read, finish writing that book on the 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment, and we'll probably talk a bit about education and how we teach history. I'm looking forward to it. I hope you are too.