I've looked a bit at sites that I'd hoped would yield information on the planning for the bicentennial of the War of 1812. Of course it's early yet. I expect that closer to the time (June 2012) there'll be more. Already I see that tall ships are due in Boston on July 4, which is always fun.

But in fact this war started long before June of 1812, and I'm interested to see if anyone is looking into the details. The war itself has received bad press, and with good reason -- yet the factors that contributed to it are fascinating when viewed as a snapshot of how the American Experiment was working out at the time. The nation was new -- still a collection of states with different perspectives and little cohesiveness. The War of 1812 is nothing if not a showcase of that! But it's where we started, and I think it deserves a little thinking about.

And so I will think about it.