Today, I am in transition to my next career as a researcher and writer of different aspects of history, biography, and, maybe political philosophy. I have had a few careers already: Marine during the Vietnam War, international communications satellite controller and engineer, information technology manager, transformational change consultant, small business executive, and US Army acquisition program manager. Through all of them, I was always reading and researching history and brought a historical understanding and context into my various jobs.
In the humanities, I’ve studied European history, American history and historical geography, and American government with a foundation in political philosophy. My current historical research interests include: the life and letters of Captain Edward Brownson USA (1843-1864), the role of the Orestes A. Brownson family in the American Civil War, some aspects of the first and second battle of Ream’s Station, Virginia in 1864, the 1968 Tet Offensive and the first digital computer casualty in a war, and an assessment of the Progressive Governor of California, Hiram Johnson’s pardon of convicted attempted murderer, Dr. Willard Buke, in 1913. On the political philosophy front, I am working to master the thought of Italian political philosopher, Augusto Del Noce, and his analysis of the post-World War Two evolution and intertwining of Marxist and nihilistic thought. Not to mention his suggestion that the thought of Simone Weil pointed a way out.
I became interested in history while playing with toy soldiers in the sandbox as a kid during the Centennial of the Civil War with, and my father’s encouragement to read his copy of Bruce Catton’s trilogy on the Army of the Potomac, and some of his historical novels. The interest in history was linked with an interest in politics by a visit to a Congressman’s office on Capitol Hill in the late1960s. Then furthered by an internship with the Virginia State Legislature, and by a college geography project where I studied the settlement patterns of former slaves in Montgomery County Virginia. As an intern, I heard senators refer to the, “War of Northern Aggression”, and I worked near the Home for Confederate Widows wherein five or so of them still lived. In the geography project, I interviewed children and grandchildren of slaves, and through that came into contact with Professor Richard Dickerson who studied the impact of the Freedman’s Bureau schools on the strength of the slave family. Which led to my discovery in the Montgomery County archives of one of the few remaining registers of slave marriages (slaves were not allowed to formally marry under Virginia law), and a related register of manumitted slaves. Both subsequently published by the National Genealogical Society. All of the foregoing immersed me in the Civil War and its aftermath, but as an avocation, my work life was in engineering and management.
Before this class, my online presence was found on my personal Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter sites, on Army Facebook and Twitter sites, and on various Army¸ trade association and news media websites. Because I had a government position, was part of an investment management company, or was consulting with clients with confidentiality expectations, I kept my personal opinions to myself and my communications in those forums were limited and of a technical nature. I used Facebook for family posts. On Twitter, I have a private account, and although I follow over 1000 people, I have posted or retweeted maybe 12 tweets in ten years.
Conversely, I do have a couple of Blogger websites and one WordPress site that I put up between 2009 and 2011 when I had some spare time, and before I went full time into intense Army work. Those sites have historical content related to the history and biography research interests listed above.
The class and the articles from week one’s readings make it clear to me that I need to make all the sites that I control consistent and interrelated. I am in a transition, post-Army retirement, to a new career as a researcher and writer of history and biography. After looking at myself online, it’s clear that my professional identity is anchored in my past career as a management consultant and as an Army acquisition program manager. The exception is the Blogger sites and the one WordPress site, but those do not easily come up in a Google search. My task with this class is to use the class website as the vehicle for working out my new online identity and transferring that identity to all of my other sites. I imagine I can also transition my pre-existing Blogger and WordPress sites into the site I am making for class. Ending the semester with online sites that are more consistent with a historical research and writing identity.
