The ILacqua Experiment

It should be no surprise that I would be involved with a project with a title like “The ILacqua Experiment.” It was something that my wife, Janice, wanted to do. It began on a chilly November day in 2015 in a cold coffeehouse in our town of Longmont, Colorado. Our young son was in his pre-school class and we had a little time to each other.

Over coffee, as I suspect so much of my life has been, we decided that we needed something to focus our energies on, a creative endeavor we could do together and independently. I suggested a blog.

Of course, as it was, I had only been away from The Sophia Ballou Project for about a year and I missed it terribly. So when I suggested a blog, I had in mind a place where the two of us could do what we wanted to do and get the feel good feedback from each other.

Initially, I did not have an idea about what I might like to write. So, as usual, I thought about something practical to write. What I came to was a memoir about my days working for the Boy Scouts of America. I felt like I had something to say about this time of my life. In late 2015, and to be written weekly in 2016, I would recall the years 1995 to 2000 as I worked from camp program director to a district executive. I felt like I would have an interesting perspective as I was not the typical Boy Scout.

It was also an opportunity for me to reconcile myself to that portion of my life. Until the time I begun to write this story, I harbored a great deal of guilt about who I was at that time, and how awful my actions were.

I completed my memoir on September 1, 2016. Although I feel like the memoir entitled A Scout is Brave was a success, I do not feel like the ILacqua Experiment was. I feel like as an experiment, it was a failure. Janice did not post very much. She wrote a few very lovely “mommy” posts. She attempted to revise her novel. But ultimately, the blog became almost solely my work. I wonder sometimes if I caused her lack of contribution because I was so prolific.

It did spur her to start her own blog, and that in itself was worth the price of admission.