Good day to you, good people!

I hope you had a glorious weekend; I know I did. I spent it on the sandy beaches of Gulf Shores, Alabama at the Reformed University Fellowship Spring Conference. It was wonderful--and I wish they hadn't picked my last quarter in school to have the first Auburn RUF beach trip. I don't know about you folks, but I figure the more beach trips, the better life is. I made the most of mine; I got on the road before dawn, and about the time everybody else in Auburn was finishing their 8 o'clock class, I was dipping my toes in the surf. I walked down the beach for about an hour, grabbed some lunch, bought a beach towel and then settled down on the sand for the day.

And got BURNED.

Oh man, did I burn. Even now, I'm positively pink, all over the place. Feet, legs, stomach and chest, back--everywhere. Except for my shoulders; I strangely decided to put sunscreen there, and nowhere else (weird, huh). In a few days, I'm gong to be shedding skin like a big snake.

But of course, the reason I burned was a good one; I was reading "War in Kentucky," a book about the failed Confederate attempt to wrest control of Kentucky from the Yankees, and bring her into blessed association with her beloved sister states. It's a lively narrative--good historical overview sprinkled with interesting details.

Like the details of my hometown: Huntsville, Alabama--undoubtedly the greatest city in the history of human civilization. Huntsville has the misfortune to be located north of the Tennessee River, which meant that it spent the bulk of the Late Unpleasantness under direct subjugation of the Yanks. But the fact that Huntsville is the greatest city known to man is self-evident--even to coarse, uncultured, uncouth, low-class Yankees (that's why they're all moving there now--ugh.). Listen to what George Landrum said about it:

"I have never been in so pretty a place before, nor have I ever seen a more beautiful valley than this. the views from any of the hills are magnificence and grand."

But that's not all; listen to the the author's account of the lovely women of Huntsville, "the worst Sesesh town we have had the fortune to get into":

"A number of Union soldiers, not surprisingly, recorded their impressions of the women they encountered, evidently being disturbed by the females' open hostility. Some of the Federals were convinced that the young women were playing a major role in persuading the young men of the South to join the Rebel forces. The 29th Indiana's Bergum Brown wrote his mother that 'the women of the country would sour milk, half sugar at that'....To George Landrum the southern girls were 'fiends in woman's form.' They are 'heartless, soulless, and barbarous,' he told his sister, as he wrote from Huntsville.....

"John Beatty....said they were 'outspoken in their hostility, and marvelously bitter.' He thought 'the foolish, yet absolute devotion of the women to the Southern cause does much to keep it alive. It encourages, nay, forces, the young to enter the army, and compels them to continue what the more sensible know to be a hopeless struggle.'"

Good folks, I may not know a whole lot, but I do know this: regardless of what any Yankee invader thinks, it is NEVER sensible to go against the wishes of a Southern woman. The bullets are definitely a less dangerous risk.