What's New?

Tonight - or rather this morning now - I'm starting off with the Bushism for the day. Not to ruin anyone's day by putting that there first, but rather to get it in and up and done with lest the senility factors set in and I forget about it. (I do have problems like that from time to time you know.)

March 20, 2007
"Listen, Al Gore is a very tough opponent. He is the incumbent. He represents the incumbency. And a challenger is somebody who generally comes from the pack and wins, if you're going to win. And that's where I'm coming from." - Detroit, Michigan; September 7, 2000.

Sometimes, I do wonder if DUBYA ever has a clear speaking plan when he pops off with some of these statements that, when reading them now, sound a little absurd to say the least. I'm thinking he must have flunked the basic speech courses in college anyway.

'Nuff said on my opinions of DUBYA's speaking prowess. Moving on to other things here now.

What's new? I'm going to be learning how to administer a website, that's what is new for me at the moment.

The website is one that is shown on my blog, under my favorite links about the ghost town of Peale, PA which is about two miles down the road (at most) from my home.

The man who put that website together is a professor at a college in northwestern Ohio and now, with his teaching, research and family - wife and two small children - he is pressed for time to try to keep the website up-to-date so I offered to take over some of that responsibility provided he teaches me how and what to do in order to maintain the site. I know nothing, absolutely NOTHING about tending to a website!

The current plan is also though for me to set up a companion blogsite to the Peale website and that, I think I can manage ok, provided some of my ideas about the blogsite idea go over ok with a few other people too along the way.

One thing I'd like to do with the blogsite is to post the articles I had written and which were published in a small local "monthly" newsletter here. These would be postings about not just Peale though but also about the township and the other little villages here. The blog would encompass then not just information solely about Peale but also about the township as a whole as well - history, other little stories of interest here and there.

A little explanation here about the ghost town though and how I came to get interested in it along with a few other little things.

I'm interested in the history of Peale because my great-grandparents and their children were some of the early settlers of the village back in 1884. Growing up, there was still one family still residing in Peale who moved out of there in 1957 or 1958 - not quite sure at the moment on the exact year. At that time, one could still see a lot of the remains of the old town and my grandfather as well as one of my uncles used to tell me stories that kept the town alive in my mind. I have you see, always been interested in history and especially any type of history that came down to me via my grandfather too.

When I first discovered the website - while surfing the net late one Saturday nite - I was really startled to find a website about a place that had no residents at that time for over 40 years. From reading an article on the website, I ascertained that the writer of that article was related to a family here and that I knew many of his relatives still in this area. I e-mailed him as well as the man who had put the website up to comment to them both on how much I had enjoyed reading all the data posted on the site. And from that, I have since established a long-standing friendship now with the author of the railroad article there as well as becoming acquainted by e-mails back and forth with Dr. Krygier, the owner of the site.

One point that I felt would make a companion blogsite to the Peale website a good idea is that it would make it easier for anyone visiting to submit comments, information, ideas etc. about the ghost town. And, by including the other villages in the township within the umbrella there, I could also do small pieces from the research I have been doing on the township for the past almost three years now. I had noticed from the sitemeter on my blog that a fairly goodly number of hits I was getting - visitors to my blog - were coming from people using the search words of "Peale, PA" and/or Cooper Township but I am assuming because there is no place on the website itself for folks to leave comments and I hadn't really posted anything pertinent to the website either in my blog, they just checked out the website and left leaving no traces then of their visit. And maybe, just maybe, those visitors may have had additional information they wanted to share or questions they wanted to ask but were unsure of trying to reach Dr. Krygier or Jeff Feldmeier, who wrote the excellent articles about the impact of the railroad on the old town of Peale.

I've no idea right now how long it may take me to set up this blog and get it moving or how soon I will actually be doing the administration of the website itself too - just that it's something that is coming as soon as possible and that will be my involvement in both aspects there.

So, if you happened into this blog post by way of searching information about Peale or the township (Cooper) or perhaps any of the little villages here - Drifting, Grassflat, Lanse, Winburne, Forest, Kylertown - feel free to leave a comment or contact me via my e-mail address in the contact area under my profile on this page.

I'd love nothing better than to hear from people who have roots back to this area and share a common interest with me about the history of the region. Or, if you are trying to do family tree research and your roots bring you back here, let me know and I'd be more than happy to try to help you any way possible with your research in that aspect too!

Any and all input in that respect would most definitely be very much appreciated. In the meantime, check out the website for now - if you've not already done so - and keep checking back for the new blog coming to cyberspace sometime in the very near future!