Gaming Report - Antietam

     My older son and I have once again taken the plunge into a tabletop wargame. This time the subject is the Battle of Antietam, (Sept 14, 1862). The game is part of SPI's Blue & Gray set (1975); SPI was James Dunnigan's game company. This was the battle where Union General George McClellan squandered an opportunity to deal a decisive blow to General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Some have argued that if Lee had been crushed here, the War Between the States might have come to an end in 1862. I don't know about that, but I've been interested in this battle for several years, after visiting the battlefield in Sharpsburg, MD, and discovering that my side of the family has an ancestor who fought in this battle, Benjamin F. Jamison, of the 125th PA Regiment (1Bde, 1Div, 12th Corps).  When I covered this battle in my military history class last year, I used this book from the Army Center of Military History: Antietam Staff Ride.
    My son elected to play the Confederacy, which is the less complicated side to play. All the Confederates have to do is survive and be able to exit the map via ferry over the Potomac by the last turn. The Union's task is to capture/eliminate as many Confederates as possible and secondarily to capture Sharpsburg. The Union has one big limitation, though. To model McClellan's indecisiveness, the Union side can move only 10 units per turn, while the Confederates have no restriction. 
     Five turns into the game, and very little of significance has happened. The Confederates have retreated and massed around Sharpsburg, they have units protecting the ferry and are maintaining a decent perimeter. The Union forces, such as I can get to move, are across Antietam creek, but so far have had no luck in getting past the Confederates to cut off their retreat. I am in position to get troops into Sharpsburg; possession of the town is a major victory point consideration. The Confederates managed to isolate, surround and destroy two Union brigades, pinning them against the Potomac upstream from the ferry. 
     The last half of the game proved to be much more exciting.  The Union forces momentarily broke the South's hold on Sharpsburg but lost it on the next turn; the Confederate counterattack was costly to them, but effective. Then on the following turn, a small Union force cut off the bulk of Lee's army from the ferry with a picket line of units. On the last turn of the game Confederate forces launched a costly assault on the western end of the picket, which succeeded in turning the Union flank, and were able to break through to re-open the line of retreat to the ferry. With the setting of the sun, the Union forces were ordered to hold in place, and watched in frustration as nearly all of Lee's force marched away to safety on the far side of the Potomac. 
     I haven't studied the battle sufficiently to really venture an opinion in print as to whether another Union commander would have been more successful, say Meade for example. In the game, though, the movement restriction on the Union forces meant that over half of my forces spent the battle sitting on their setup hex, never getting orders to advance. There were maybe 20 brigades out of the over 40 on the field that did all the fighting. Simply infuriating to see opportunities open up that I couldn't exploit simply because I didn't have enough units to move into the area. 
     In the final analysis, while I picked off over a dozen Confederate units while losing only four myself, the accomplishment of his two objectives meant that my son won a substantive victory. Next we're going to try Chicamauga, and see how that plays out. A good game, over all.

Report from the Library - Reference has Moved!

       With the help of staffers and especially our wonderful student assistants, the Reference books are now interfiled with the circulating collection in our main stacks area. I expect that now the reference works will see more use, as they are now 'discoverable' right next to circulating books. I saw many instances where a Non-Circulating copy went on the shelf right next to its circulating twin. As mentioned before, a lot of books in the Reference collection have been turned loose to circulate, so the 'Reference collection' is much smaller now, but we only want the big, expensive and foundational works to stay in the libary.
     The space Reference has occupied is going to be re-purposed as study space, along with a redesigned Reference desk which will also incorporate Circulation and Interlibrary Loan. When the students return in the fall, the library will have a new look, which in my mind is a good thing, as it will encourage students to take another look at us and the services we offer.I think it would be good to add another copier/printer into the new study area, as a lot of students will want to take articles or chapters from the non-circulating books with them. Having to trek across the library to the existing copiers, not located near the new study area, will discourage the in-house use of non-circulating books.

Report from the Library - Reference is Moving!

     As I posted last month, our Reference collection is being integrated into our Main collection, now that a goodly portion of the books have been converted to circulating status. Today we began the laborious process of moving and inter-filing the remaining reference books into the main collection. Why on a Friday?  Because we've got new furniture coming in next week to take the place of the vacated shelving, and the furniture delivery can't be pushed back or put on hold. We should have it done in time for the guys from buildings & grounds to tear them down and put up the new stuff.  Many hands make light work, so they say, but I say encyclopedias are heavy no matter who lifts them. Our team of staff and students pitched in with gusto, and made a good start. We've got a quarter of it done, and I suspect that this quarter will prove to be the hardest. First, because we were developing our processes as we went, so there were bugs to work out, and secondly, classes A & B, which cover General Works, Philosophy, Psychology and Religion, have a lot of multi-volume sets in them, which have to be filed as sets. This means that we have to open up entire shelves or more to fit these sets in, which means we have to shift as many as 30 shelves away to make room. Once we get into the History classes (C, D, E & F) there will be fewer sets and less mass shifting. I'll report back on our progress next week.

Animals in the Kingdom of God

     Yesterday afternoon I buried a cat. A friend of ours, a single mom, had to put the family cat down, and the kids wanted it to be buried in the back yard. So I dug a hole (no easy feat in Virginia red clay) and we laid the cat to rest.
     Although the kids did not ask me "is our cat in heaven now?", I believe that we very well may see beloved pets in the Kingdom of God. I can't speak formally for the Church's position on this, to the best of my research she doesn't have one. It has never come up as a question that needed a definitive answer. All the same, taking what I do know about the life of the world to come, I'd like to lay out my case for why we may have pets in the kingdom.
      The Church confesses in the Nicene Creed that God created all things visible and invisible, which includes pets. Genesis (1:25) tells us that when God created the beasts of the field, He saw that it was good. The Church teaches that Jesus became Incarnated to redeem not only fallen humanity, but all of creation as well.
      Many of the prayers of the Church (St. John Chrysostom's liturgy is full of these) which ask for God's mercy include the statement "For You are good and love mankind" It is in God's nature to love us, and do good for us.
     So, God made animals, and animals are good, and the animal kingdom will be redeemed along with mankind at the Second Coming when Christ makes all things new. The dead in Christ will be raised and their bodies restored and glorified. It is not at all a stretch to believe that beloved family pets may be so raised as well. This would be a cause for much joy among His people, and our loving Father loves to give good gifts to His children.
     This is my reasoning which leads me to believe that we may (I cannot say will, for I am no prophet, nor do I read God's mind) have our pets with us in the Kingdom of God.

Didn't See That Coming, Round Two

     This evening, while I was out walking my dogs, I happened to notice a bit of commotion in front of the townhouse directly opposite mine. I walked over to investigate and found my across-the-street neighbors, college students at the school where I work, had succeeded in locking themselves out of their house. Fortunately this was not one of those movie setups where someone got out of the shower and went outside in a towel. But I digress. Despite the niggling concern that I might have been aiding and abetting housebreakers, I fetched my ladder and one of the students hoisted themselves into an upstairs window that was unlocked. As the fellow was half-way through the window, one of the ones holding the ladder optimistically opined "what could go wrong now?" I was reminded of THIS entry over at TV Tropes. Yes, I spend a lot of time reading there. It's fun. You should go have a look. Well the fellow got in, and the door was unlocked, and they weren't thieves, and now I'm going to bed. What fun it is to have college students for neighbors.