Great night last night at the Chamber’s Centennial celebration. It was a treat meeting George Foreman and trading memories of Judge Sam B. Hall, Jr. who he knew well. (We traded impressions, and his is way better than mine). We were so fortunate he was able to come, as we all enjoyed his talk about Marshall, and he was kind of enough to stay afterwards so everyone could get a picture. He lives here, but as he preaches in Houston four days a week and spends most of the time here at his ranch, you don’t see him around town a lot. But for a lot of us, he made the evening very special, and we really appreciate him coming out.
I’ve attached my slides (with notes) on the history of Chambers of Commerce from Mesopotamia to the present in case any readers want to impress their local business community with a detailed knowledge of the maritime needs that created the first one in 1599 in Marseille, as well as the differences between the Boston and Charleston Tea Parties in 1773-74, and the relative merits of rodent control strategies in small towns. The Bingo aspect went okay except that I missed just enough key words during my presentation that no one hit blackout. But we gave prizes to the first ten to Bingo, which make my job half-speaker and half-lookout. The consensus seemed to be that if you liked history, it was okay, and if not, Bingo is always fun. Win/win.
Interestingly, the audience including a former Annapolis grad that knew a little bit about historic sites in ancient Mesopotamia from his deployment in the area in recent years, so we had a nice visit about the effect of recent looting on the sites I was talking about, as well as whether I correctly identified the class of the hypothetical U.S.S. Fire Ant. (You kinda had to be there).