Have a drink with: Stede Bonnet The Gentleman Pirate, if you please Ask him about: the shipboard library Like many, many other people around now, I am smitten with Our Flag Means Death, Taika Waititi’s comedy series about real-life pirate Stede Bonnet and his journeys with the famous Blackbeard. What may be surprising to viewers…
Have a drink with: Hugh Henry Brackenridge Attorney, nog enthusiast, clothing optional Ask him about: Pork as medicine It’s the holiday season, and that means it’s time for nog. Where did eggnog come from? If you look into it, you get a linguistic soup of suggestions (“nog” being an old word for strong ale, or…
Have a drink with: Your Local Mountebank Healthcare! Fireworks! Toads! Ask him about: What ails you We’re all getting a lot of weird healthcare advice lately, and I admit that it’s hard to stomach the idea that our country, which vanquished polio and smallpox with scientific elbow grease, is entertaining the medical expertise of a…
Have a drink with: Black Historians Ask them about: Maybe just listen. Here’s something I found while I was researching this week. It’s a column from a September 1863 issue of Scientific American: Part of the process of researching a subject is looking at all the adjacent issues that you encounter along the way, building…
Have a drink of: ANYTHING BUT BLEACH. Disinfectants are not medicine. Ask about: No. Don’t. Just DON’T. I can’t believe I have to say this, much less marshal the historical evidence to prove it, but, please: don’t drink bleach. Don’t inhale bleach. Don’t inject bleach. DON’T USE BLEACH TO DO ANYTHING BUT CLEAN UP AROUND…
Have a drink with: Joseph Priestley Chemist, radical theologian, likes bubbles. Ask him about: favorite La Croix flavor? Part of social life for well-to-do Europeans in the eighteenth century was to visit a spa town – someplace like Bath in England, or the town of Spa in Belgium – and “take the waters.” Not unlike…
Have a drink with: The Committee of the Proprietors of Common and Undivided Lands at New Haven Say that one five times fast. Ask them about: Food trucks, church buildings and underground parking structures There are situations in which you are pleased to find your hometown has made national news. A horrific instance of mass…
Have a drink with: George Logan Officious intermeddler, or really nice Quaker? Ask him about: Working vacation in Paris As the public becomes suddenly, intensely interested in any shred of previously-confined-to-textbooks arcana that might be dragged out of the law closet to explain or mitigate the current Presidential administration, this is a bizarrely entertaining time…
Have a drink with: James Jay They’ve given you a number and taken away your name… Ask him about: passing notes in class With the recent news that Congressional Republicans have rolled back broadband protections on the harvest and sale of Internet search data by service providers, information on how to protect the privacy of…
Have a drink with: The Mainstream Media Fake news. Sad! Ask them about: thin-skinned Federalists Today I’m over at the wonderful Historista blog with an essay on how the Trump administration’s efforts to control news media echo the 1798 Sedition Act. Go check it out!
