This is a peek behind the curtain, as the expression goes.

Mike Messner and I (Claude Call) share the duties of putting this podcast together. Mike did a lot of the calendar research (in fact, he did nearly all of it). I got a bunch of the technical stuff in place before the show launched.

For the episodes themselves, he and I usually take turns researching, writing and recording the episodes. At that point, everything goes into my hands.

I edit the episode if necessary (rare), check it for any weird glitches, and run it through some software to even the volume out across the episode. I also write all the show notes and put together the artwork that appears alongside each episode.

More often than not, the artwork is materials that can be found in the public domain, which is pretty easy when you’re looking for images from 250 years ago. But for our July 2nd episode, I failed to do that.

The cover art for that episode (assuming you didn’t click the link and look) was a closeup photo of a button created by Aaron M. Peasley. The photo came from a web-based article about the creation of the emblem that appears on the US Marine Corps’ uniform buttons written by 2nd Lt. Kevin Rosentreter, and if you think it’s a niche topic…well, you’re correct in that respect.

On the other hand, if you think it’s a boring topic, you’d be sorely mistaken. Lt. Rosentreter has woven a fascinating tale which is also comprehensively sourced. What’s more, he took several of the photos of the buttons seen in the article, including the one I used.

When he called it to our attention through a comment at our sister webpage (Acroasismedia.org), I did reply to him that I was the person to blame, plus I corrected the original post to give him credit. I’m also apologizing to him here publicly and I’ll be sending him an email shortly after I post this, just in case he’s written us off entirely.

As I said to Lt. Rosentreter at the Acroasis site, the rule in the military is that you can delegate authority but you can’t delegate responsiblity. The responsibility for this lies entirely with me, and I hope you’ll see better effort in the future to credit materials appropriately.