History
The Trial of Margaret Douglass
From American State Trials: “A Southern lady (Margaret Douglass) living with a daughter in Norfolk, Virginia sixty-six years ago (1853) and being greatly interested in the religious and moral instruction of colored children and finding that the Sunday school where they were allowed to attend was not sufficient, invited them…
A Girl’s Two Paths
Here is another interesting historical document. Again with a feminist theme. Or anti-feminist. Also anti-romance. Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to read Sappho. Who actually wrote poems, not a novel. Unless they mean this…. They probably meant this. (It was first published in 1888.) Yet again, romance will…
Woman To Woman
This is an interesting historical document – it’s using Sisterhood to forward the abolitionist cause. Not surprising in the North, since abolition was taken up by many churches and church work was one of the few acceptable public spheres in which women could participate. And, of course, Uncle Tom’s Cabin…
Lizzie Borden Not Guilty – Her Period Did It
This is the bedroom where Lizzie Borden allegedly took a hatchet to her step-mother. (And you can actually stay here in this room – the house is a bed & breakfast now.) I’ve long known about the infamous axe murder of her parents and the fact that Lizzie was generally…
Trial for Bastardy – 1808
Place: New York City Time: August 1808 On Trial: Alexander Whistelo, “a black coachman” The Story: “Adam-colored” Lucy Williams and her black lover Alexander Whistelo had a child together, a child whom Whistelo accepted as his own until his friends (possibly named Iago?) “put it into his head that it…
Forking
Have you ever wondered why Americans switch hands to eat with their fork, but Europeans don’t? Yes you have. You lie awake at night, in the cold early morning, pondering life, the universe, the number 42, and why Americans eat with a zig-zag fork pattern. Admit it. Well, now there…
The Nude That Launched a Thousand..well, One Trial
Meet Narcissus. The original of this statue of him was discovered in Pompeii in 1862 and housed in the Naples Museum. In 1873, an enterprising art dealer of New Bedford Massachusetts, one Charles Hazeltine, purchased a replica of this very Narcissus in Boston and displayed it in the front window…
The Erotic Diaries of a Victorian Seafarer in the US Navy
An American Seafarer in the Age of Sail: The Erotic Diaries of Philip C. Van Buskirk, 1851-1870 by Barry Richard Burg My rating: 4 of 5 stars This book is not what you think it’s about. 🙂 Philip C Van Buskirk was an educated young man whose family fell on…
The Saga of Kate O’Hare
Kate Richards O’Hare, American socialist and anti-war activist in 1917, went to Bowman, North Dakota as part of a speaking tour and “in the presence of 125 people” said: “that any person who enlisted in the army of the United States for service in France would be used for fertilizer,…
Do You M/M?
Are you one of the many (many, many) readers of m/m romance? Do you swoon to Alex Beecroft’s False Colors: An M/M Romance or Erastes’ Transgressions: An M/M Romance? For anyone who might be thinking, “What, M&M’s have romance?” and trying to picture the green girl M&M in something slinky…. no. M/M is…