as an exploratory journey through that old party question: if you could have a drink with anyone in history, who would it be? History is full of people you’d love to have a drink with. Let’s meet a few.
as an exploratory journey through that old party question: if you could have a drink with anyone in history, who would it be? History is full of people you’d love to have a drink with. Let’s meet a few.
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: The Weller Brothers Blow, me bully boys, blow. Ask them about: Sugar and tea and rum Amidst other things people probably did not have on their bingo card in 2021 was the rise of Sea Chantey TikTok, but it’s been a strange year already, so why not? So the biggest question…
Have a drink with: The Greely Expedition Survivor: Climate Research Edition Ask them about: Eating your shoes Hey folks! If you think you’ve got it bad having to stay home for Thanksgiving, well, at least you’re not marooned in the Arctic having to eat your shoes for dinner. My piece on the ill-fated Greely Arctic…
Have a drink with: Carl Hagenbeck Ask him: But do you sing country ballads? Like many other people, I spent the first chunk of my home confinement (thanks, coronavirus) plowing through Netflix’s hot documentary series “Tiger King” whilst eating an inordinate number of Girl Scout cookies. And the show is so relentlessly bananapants that it’s…
Have a drink with: Astronaut Snoopy Houston? How about Petaluma? Ask him about: Getting NASA to the moon Tomorrow will mark fifty years since the splashdown of the Apollo 11 lunar mission (it’s easy to focus on the July 20th landing and next-day lunar walk, forgetting that the astronauts had to go through the equally…
Have a drink with: Henry Opukaha’ia Aloha oe. Ask him about: No pineapple on Pepe’s, right? We’ve talked before about how Connecticut has given the world a wide assortment of innovations, some good, some bad: speed limits, law schools and scary Puritan judges, sure, but also Pepe’s pizza, submarines, constitutional government (maybe?) and P.T. Barnum….
Have a drink with: Robert Louis Stevenson Under the wide and starry sky… Ask him about: Self-care Sundays I need a vacation. This makes me think of Robert Louis Stevenson. If you believe, as I do, that history is an act of community through which we use the experiences of others to learn about ourselves,…
Have a drink with: The Riders of the Pony Express Colt pistols, bacon and beans, buns of steel. Ask them about: Are horses allowed in the Dunkin’ drive-thru? It’s December 1860, you live east of the Mississippi, and your options for sending Christmas cards* to West Coast relatives are, shall we say, limited. You can…
Have a drink with: Abercrombie and Fitch Do’s: Rifles, tweeds, pickaxes. Don’ts: flip-flops. Ask them about: How to build a fish pond on a Manhattan rooftop The words “Abercrombie & Fitch” might suggest any number of things to you: overpriced t-shirts for cool kids, shady employment practices, shirtless models, or maybe the soothing feeling of being locked inside…
Have a drink with: Astronauts Charlie Brown & Snoopy Just don’t ask about kicking a football in zero-G. Ask them about: getting America in the mood to fly again I’ve got space on the brain. There’s New Horizons doing its Pluto drive-by, and my toddler running around with a plastic pail on her head insisting…
