Stay tuned…

I suppose I’m a little late mentioning this, but I decided to take a bit of a break for a while. There are a few reasons / excuses for this, some worth mentioning, some not. But fear not, I’ve already got some upcoming posts written, and will continue to share more information about Robert Windsor Smith, Kirkwood history, and more in the future.

First and foremost, at the beginning of the year I was very focused on preparing a presentation I gave at the DeKalb History Center in March. One of the biggest challenges for me was to whittle down the information I wanted to present to a one hour timeframe… In addition to presenting what I felt were the most relevant historical events in the Smith family timeline I recognized that it was important to also share some of my thoughts about why history matters, why birds matter, and to hopefully prompt attendees to consider not only Robert Windsor Smith’s legacy, but what ours will be as well.

If there is but one takeaway from my talk, I hope it would be for us to consider not only the importance of what bird species Robert Windsor Smith saw in Kirkwood ~125 years ago, but to also consider what species may be here 125 years from now. If the population loss trend of the last 50 years continues, what will our legacy be? My concerns and thoughts on these matters (and some general conservation notes) are collected here: Hope to action.

With that said, I want to personally thank both the DeKalb History Center as well as Grace Donnelly for writing a wonderful summary article for Decaturish. I also want to thank everyone who came, we had a wonderful turnout for a Tuesday evening (somewhere around 85 people). There is a YouTube video available of the talk, and I’ll give a spoiler warning that the video covers material that I haven’t written about yet, albeit in less depth than I intend to here on the blog.

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Next we’ll delve back into some Kirkwood history before circling back to the Smith family as they settle in to Kirkwood in 1890.