My friends - I hope everyone is enjoying these few days of the Holiday season which we have remaining. Last week, I mentioned a couple of terms which were more common in the 19th century than in the 20th, and said I would be back to define them this week, so here I am. I had a number of private replies to one of the terms("keeping batch") and one to the other term. "Keeping batch" referred to a single man, or perhaps two or three(sometimes brothers)who were living in the same household without women present(perhaps away at school together if they were older) - no wives, sisters, etc. They were keeping their bachelorhood, and were, therefore, "keeping batch". The quantity involved with a "turn" of corn was about a bushel and a half. One of our astute subscribers mentioned to me that it was often the miller's "cut" of the crop he was milling - one turn of the milling wheel's worth of the crop. Just as an FYI, those who use the Bureau of Land Management website may have noticed last week, after it was reopened, that it became difficult or impossible to reach. Apparently, as the word rapidly spread among former users, the site was overrun with hits and just stopped working under the load. It seems to be back in operation again now. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Question Most of our tenured subscribers will recall that in 2000, we had a genealogical conference in Murray which we dubbed, "The 2000 Jackson Purchase Homecoming Genealogical Conference". We had an attendance of about 150 individuals, which was outstanding. It was the first such endeavor to be undertaken by the subscribers of a larger mail list, as far as I could determine at the time. I think most of the attendees felt it was a success, given the fact that it was a first effort. At the time, there was also a general consensus that we would explore again the possibility of another conference in about 5 years. Those 5 years have now passed, and I am wondering if there is sufficient interest among the subscribership to look toward holding another such conference, perhaps next summer, headquartered in Paducah at one of the hotels there, which would allow conference facilities and lodging in the same building, if one wished to avail themselves of that convenience. We asked for written, anonymous feedback at the close of the conference from the attendees of the 2000 event, and found that the most often mentioned ideas for changes, should we do it again in the future, were to hold it in the summer(children out of school, vacation time available, etc.), have a central point offering lodging and the conference facilities together, and to obtain some lecturers who could cover a broad range of KY research. In this latter case, we could very likely have someone from the KY Land Office come to present particulars about the land office and the overall land grant system in KY, in the JP and elsewhere for those working with other parts of KY. In addition, we could also very likely obtain one or two nationally known speakers, although those would be fee based. Without any research having been done at all as yet, I could only speculate at this point as to what the conference registration fee would be in order to cover the expenses of the event, but, as a ballpark figure, and perhaps a little on the liberal side, I would look at $65 or so per attendee. That is, as I said, only speculation and research would have to be done to determine the exact figure, which could be somewhat more or less. So, my question to our subscribers is this: would you be interested in attending an event such as this in the summer of 2006? We would probably have to have an attendance figure of at least 100 people to justify moving forward. Our current subscribership to this JP List in 752. The other JP county lists which I host have a total subscribership of 322, but many of the subscribers to those lists also subscribe to this JP regional List. Please send a *private* message(not to the lists, please, so we won't fill up everyone's inbox) to me indicating if you have an interest in doing this sort of thing. A lot has changed since 2000, especially in the world of technology(which could be a topic for a speaker to address), so the time may be ripe to get together again and refresh our knowledge, as well as our contacts and networking, which is done so well by subscribers to the JP List. I will keep the lists posted on the results of this informal poll. -B ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++