Baker Mansion, Altoona, Blair County

Those of you who follow the blog's Facebook may have seen a post from me a few days ago, which I've since deleted, about how I was contacted by a literary agent who was interested in my work. It was a scam. I'm addressing it now because I want to warn fellow creatives about it - the company, Sourcebooks, is legitimate, and Anna Michels really is their senior editorial consultant. However, they've had a number of instances of people being sent spoof emails in recent months, wherein authors and illustrators are being approached with possible offers of being published by the company. Long story short, if you get an email from someone claiming to be with Sourcebooks, unless it comes from an email address ending with sourcebooks.com, it is not legitimate.

Fortunately, I did a little research before I responded to the email or did anything more than reporting it as spam, so no harm done except to my ego. I'll live. Just be careful out there!

Moving on, I realized that it's been a long time since Kevin and I went to the city of Altoona for his birthday. A lot has happened since then; sadly, Leap-the-Dips has been officially closed, because Lakemont Park has shifted its focus to things like picnics rather than amusement rides. It was already closed when we were there, so we didn't get to ride it, but since then it became official that it will not reopen, or at least not any time soon. I was looking through my folder of photos from the trip, and I realized there was one more marker I photographed while we were there that I haven't profiled here on the blog yet. Seems like a good time.

Hockendauqua Indian Town, Northampton, Northampton County

This is an odd one, which is part of why it's taken me so long to put it together. The borough of Hokendauqua as we know it today is in Lehigh County. However, this marker - like the original settlement by that name - is in Northampton County, although very close to the border.

This marker located right next to one of the (many, many) markers for the Walking Purchase, which is going to be a ridiculously long blog post. It's taking me forever to collect them all and I might end up skipping some, depending on my mood. This marker is clearly at least somewhat associated with the same thing. I know that in part, the situation is the way that it is because this marker is a plaque, and dates from back when the PHMC was just called the Pennsylvania Historical Commission, so it's a lot older than the standard blue and gold collection and the wording is, shall we say, less politically correct.

1902 Anthracite Coal Strike, Lackawanna and Schuylkill Counties

I hope that whatever holiday (if any) that my readers observed in the past couple of weeks, it was enjoyable and peaceful for you. Someone needs to keep the chocolate bunnies away from me, personally. This was supposed to have gone up last week, but I was dealing with a stomach bug (unrelated to the chocolate, as far as I can tell) and just didn't have the spoons.

This week's quest took a lot of reading, because it was a big deal and covered in two markers at a pretty fair distance from each other. Frequent contributor Kaylee Lindenmuth, of the Shenandoah Sentinel, was the one to send me both of the marker photos used here - she sent the first one last year, when I asked my readers to tell me about your favorite historical markers, and happened to come across the second fairly recently.

New Hanover Lutheran Church, Gilbertsville, Montgomery County

Today is April Fool's Day, but this is not a prank: the hit count on this blog in the month of February was over 28,000, which was an all-time high. But in March? You crazy history fiends smashed that number! March ended with a monthly hit count of 39,726, and I was stunned speechless. That's a rare event, as many people could tell you. So whoever has been coming here and reading what I have to say, thank you so very much. It means a lot.

There are a lot of history-related events happening around here in the coming weeks, now that the onion snow has fallen and winter is finally leaving us. In particular, on April 11th and 12th, the community of Trappe will be dedicating the Speaker's House, which was the home of Frederick Muhlenberg and his family. He has a connection to today's blog post. The community has spent the last 25 years (no, that's not a typo) restoring the house to its colonial glory and preparing it to be a jewel of the historic community. The event is free to the public and you can find details here.

Also, one month from today - May 1st - will be the grand opening of the Stevens & Smith Center for History and Democracy in Lancaster. I'm hoping I can be there! The festivities will begin at 9 in the morning, though, so the odds are not in my favor. If you're interested in being there too, get the details here.

Meanwhile, it's time to get back into the regular flow of blogging and kick off this month with a return to scenic Montgomery County. Hopefully we can keep this momentum going.

Markerless Quest: Samurai in the White House

I have returned from Zenkaikon and am, however reluctantly, taking up my real-world activities once again. (But I have no reluctance about returning to the blog! On our way home, Kevin and I took a detour to the city of West Chester to collect some markers, so I've got plenty of Chester County content for a while.) Our anniversary was very pleasant and the convention was a lot of fun - the entire week's vacation was a great time in so many ways.

If you're visiting this blog after meeting me at Zenkaikon, hi! Thank you so much for coming to see what I do here! And if you aren't familiar with Zenkaikon and are wondering what exactly it is, here's a video explanation. This documentary was created for the con's 20th anniversary, but I wasn't involved; my contributions to being on the anniversary committee involved the museum and the trivia game we held on Friday night. I was there for the documentary debut on Saturday evening, though, and it's beautifully made.

My presentations all went extremely well, and the one on which I got the most feedback was the one which had a tenuous connection to Lancaster. As you probably know, President James Buchanan was a native of Lancaster. But what you probably don't know is that during his presidency, the White House welcomed a delegation of visitors from Japan, including three actual samurai warriors. Several of the people who attended this presentation mentioned wanting to share it with others, so I thought I'd make it the final blog post of March. This one didn't get filmed; instead, I'm sharing the write-up I used to narrate the slide show, as well as the pictures which appeared in the slides. At least this way I don't have to worry that I'm mangling the pronunciation of Japanese names or words, as I did when presenting.

Also, to make a blog-ish version of my perennial con presentation joke, if you're not completely satisfied with this post, please return the unused portion for a full refund.

James Joseph "Jim" Croce, Lyndell, Chester County

 St. Patrick's Day is my wedding anniversary; Kevin and I are hitting a big milestone this year, 25 years of married nonsense, so we're taking the day for ourselves. Two days later, we leave for Zenkaikon. My annual panic is in full swing. I have my own three presentations to give, plus it's the convention's 20th anniversary and I'm part of the group running events related to that (we have our own museum!) and I'm just a busy, busy girl. To that end, therefore, there will be no blog post next week.

Yesterday, meanwhile, was my best friend Andrea's birthday. We both had the day off, and when I asked how she wanted to spend it, she surprised me by outright requesting that we take a road trip to collect some markers for the blog. I wasn't about to say no, of course, so off we went. This was a marker for which I had wanted to attend the dedication ceremony when it was placed a couple years ago, but I wasn't able to make it for whatever reason.

Harold "Red" Grange, Forksville, Sullivan County

March came in rainy and chilly, which I don't especially like. It's going to be an extremely busy month for me, for multiple reasons, although the panic has not quite set in. Not yet. Probably next week, when it hits me that Zenkaikon is coming up fast and I need to be ready to present. Did you ever hear that advice about how, if you get nervous when public speaking, you should picture audience members in weird costumes? At Zenkaikon I don't have to picture anyone, because half the audience is in costume. I don't get very nervous anyway, but the costumes make it a little easier to relax.

But before I head to Lancaster and prattle about historic buildings and Japanese cherry blossoms and samurai visiting the White House (yes, those are my topics this year), we'll take a run up to lovely Sullivan County and talk about a guy who played football. That is, of course, putting it mildly.