I had the pleasure of attending the FUN show in Orlando, FLA this past week. It was a very fun and interesting show. Very well attended. I shared corner table 1135 with Colonial and early Americana expert John Kraljevich. My wife and I travelled to Austin TX and New Orleans LA to visit family over the holidays. Over the New Year's weekend, I travelled back to Boston to swap out a lot of clothes and pack up my coins and paper money and headed to Orlando. She would join me a day later early in the week.

January 15, 2012, a date soon to be upon us is actually a very important date. It is the 150th anniversary of the date that President Abraham Lincoln appointed Edwin McMasters Stanton to be his Secretary of war. Stanton replaced Simon Cameron who was dismissed by Lincoln for including in his yearly report the call of freed slaves to be armed and used against the Confederate Army. Stanton was Lincoln's closest adviser during the Civil War. Lincoln described Stanton as “the rock on the beach of our national ocean against which the breakers dash and roar, dash and roar without ceasing.

Just as Scott Lindquist disclaims creative writing cred, I am no blogger. But like Tina Turner’s famous ex once said, “I’ll try anything…one time.” Shawn Hewitt, the patient, resolute slave-driver behind getting this wonderful new site up and at ‘em for the benefit of our members, seems to think that I as President need to say something in blog form. As if anybody really cares what I have to say. And if you do, you can wait a month and a half and read it in Paper Money! As if! Shawn is, of course, right.