Jamie,

I only write when I know an answer to something, which explains why you haven't heard much from me lately.

The recent legislative session voted to spend $850,000 on developing Fort DeRussy. Until the money is approved by the Bond Commission, it's only pretend money. Right now we are hoping the Bond Commission will OK the project, but nothing is certain yet. About 70 acres of land was donated to State Parks in 1999 to be developed, and the place is an official State Historic Site, but no development has taken place yet. The state is spending about a quarter million dollars later this month to rebuild the road to the site, so maybe that's an indication that things are fixing to happen. (The road project was separate from the money voted by the legislature.)

Ah, the Red River Log Book Project! For those unfamiliar, in early 2002 the Red River Waterway Commission sent me up to the National Archives to get copies of the deck logs of the US gunboats involved in the Red River Campaign, with the intention of getting them transcribed and maybe published one day - or at the very least, put into a useable form and stored at the Fort DeRussy library. Got the log copies, brought them home, and put some inmates from the library at the Avoyelles Correctional Center (a State Prison branch at Cottonport) to work transcribing them. They were doing a great job, had gotten familiar with the terminology and the handwriting, and finished quite a few of the books. The rough drafts still need to be proofed and formatted, but the information in the books is great, and is unavailable anywhere else. Most of my paper copies were finished, and they'd started working on some microfilm copies. Unfortunately, there's a reason that inmates are in prison, and my transcribers got into trouble, and got sent from the library back to the general population. The replacements never really got the hang of things, and we had to cancel the operation. Got our microfilm reader, which I'd loaned to the prison, back with its insides taken out. Now we are at a standstill until I can find another microfilm reader, and some more free labor. Both will be hard to find.

That's where we stand now. Still have tour groups coming by every once in a while, and a book on the history of the fort is in the works. Anyone wanting to join Friends of Fort DeRussy, or make donations, is welcome to contact me and we'll get you on our mailing list. Dues are only $15 a year, and we need all the help we can get to get our message out. We had the Lt. Governor out to the fort last fall, and filled him and a few other VIPs up with some good gumbo. All that chicken and sausage costs money.

And if anyone out there has a microfilm reader they no longer need . . .