Donald and Caroline Ellis settle into new house, visit England

We seem to have settled into our house in Russellville, KY, after 7 months of bathroom renovations (a triple job that was estimated to take "a long month"--a very long month indeed).

We are getting acclimated to small town life and have made some very interesting friends tucked away in this rural backwater, but thank heavens for Nashville and Louisville with their symphonies and museums which are both easy drives from here. We have had lots of visitors and have scoped out some points of local interest to show them.

We had a good trip to England, leaving the USA at the end of September and returning at the beginning of November (just in time to vote) and were thus ideally placed to watch the collapse of capitalism spread to Europe (hope you didn't throw away your copy of Das Kapital), including the fall of the pound sterling which lost 25% during the course of the month, thereby greatly increasing our purchasing power.

We spent two weeks in London concert- and museum-going as well as researching the history of the last of the German WWI zeppelins (LZ113)--even going so far as to acquire the onboard anemometer of same at auction--wow, the pearl of great price! and spent another two weeks in the west country, shopping real estate.

Since we flew out of and into Washington DC and then drove back to KY, we experienced one of the most dazzling fall displays in memory.

Our next trip will be in a few weeks time to Oklahoma, returning via our favorite Arkansas state park lodge where we will spend 3 days with friends, followed by a trip to New York City in the spring to see our latest grandson.

We would be delighted to see anyone heading in this direction. Call us on: 270.726.6567

Donald and Caroline Ellis

Scott Marler visits the United Nations while recruiting for the Department of History

Dr Scott Marler and Dr Aram Goudsouzian were in New York during the first week of January 2009 attending the convention of the American Historical Association and interviewing applicants for the department's position in southern history.

Dr Marler had been in New York on several occasions, sometimes for several weeks in a row, but he realized that he had never seen the United Nations. During a break he remedied that deficiency by going with his wife Candice, who, as it happens, lived only a few blocks away some years ago. He remarked that given the current crisis over Gaza, he was a little surprised that there were no demonstrators in evidence when he was there on Friday.