Confession is good for the soul.  So let me start off by stating plainly: at face value, I was a carpetbagger.  It's undeniable.  Born and raised in Kent County, Delaware (technically a Union state, albeit a border one), with a newly minted teaching degree in hand, I took a position at Central High School in Woodstock, instructing Shenandoah County's young people in both American government and foreign language.  I refused to call the Civil War either the "War Between the States" or the "War of Northern Aggression."  It took me three years to correctly pronounce Staunton and Maurertown.  And to this day, I still disdain the Confederate flag, all the while acknowledging its display as a matter of free speech.  But unlike the carpetbaggers we see infiltrating our community today, who arrive with a desire to conform others to their supposedly heightened sense of rightness and superiority, I...(Read Full Post)