Bragg Family South

Well, I am pleased to say that to date, Bragg Family South has weathered the COVID-19 pandemic as well as can be expected.  Hope has used her "craftiness" to fashion some washable cloth masks from some fabric she had on hand--my choice of pattern was obvious!--and she has adapted our front office space to fit her needs for telework: I am fortunate enough to still be able to work at my office on the UAM campus, which is virtually deserted of students, staff, and faculty.  I have worked some at home, but am usually in my quiet office every day.  I have taken advantage of my lack of work and personal travel to get some cleaning done around the home place...While the picture below may not seem like it, my shed is MUCH cleaner and more organized now than it was just weeks ago: The kids have been doing their schoolwork at home, as best they can.  Kenny was actually graduated part-way through the term, as he only had about 6 weeks of courses left.  Beth...

I just realized that it has been over two months since my last Bragg Family South post, and that is too long!  It is not that we haven't been doing things, but time just happened to get away from me...and I wasn't quite a huge shutterbug.  Oh well...time to catch up.  Kenny's big announcement, as you can see from the picture above, is that he has decided to follow in our footsteps, and plans to attend Michigan Tech in the fall of 2020 with an anthropology/archeology major! Below, Kenny recently helped me on a volunteer day at a local archeological station (he got to sort chipped stone and tools, and I got to sort and weigh animal bones and shell): Needless to say, we are thrilled with his choice of major and choice of college! Our other big news over the last couple of months is that Beth got outpatient surgery to fix her tricky kneecap, which has this tendency to pop out of place at the most inopportune times.  Below, Beth and Hope immediately prior to s...

Whew!  Bragg Family South survived another frantic holiday season, and are slowly getting ourselves ready for a new start in 2020.  Tomorrow, Hope and I go back to work, and our kids go back to school.  But first, here's a quick recap of our December and holiday season...  The picture above is of the recently restored Taylor House and interpretative center in eastern Drew County (about a half hour from our house in Monticello).  The big house in the back was originally constructed in the 1840s and was one of the first large homes in this part of Arkansas.  After years of neglect, the University of Arkansas-Monticello acquired the home, a couple nearby family cemeteries, and some other related structures, and got grants to start a restoration process.  You may recall some posts on this blog over the years where Bragg Family South helped on various archeological projects at this site--these helped with the restoration. While not yet quite done, the ...

And what has Beth so dismayed, while Stephen and Hope have big smiles?  Why, the Wade Clock Museum (https://www.visit.msstate.edu/clockmuseum/) at Mississippi State University!  We walked through this neat if rather unusual venue while waiting for Kenny's campus tour at MSU.  This was the first stop on our Thanksgiving week adventure east... After a long drive in a driving rain, we arrived in Virginia.  Because of how much driving we had to reach our first main objective, we didn't stop and see too many places.  We did, however, make a stop at a curious (if underwhelming) winery near "Peaks of Otter", and then a short drive to Thomas Jefferson's nearby personal retreat called "Poplar Forest" (https://www.poplarforest.org/).  While most people will be more familiar with his main home, Monticello, Poplar Forest is an architectural gem that provided us a number of insights into this complicated man: The picture above is in the dining room in his P...