Obama: bowls like a girl. Clinton: girl.

March 31, 2008 / Historiann / Leave a comment

If like Historiann you’re concerned about the longer-term effects of bias in the media and the left blogosphere against Senator Clinton, check out Susie Madrak’s posts about Escacon ’08 last weekend at Suburban Guerrila. Madrak reports on revealing conversations about Hillary hatred with Eric Bohlert of Media Matters, and with Paulie the K., Princeton’s coolest Professor/Columnist/Blogger extraordinaire. (Apparently, Paulie dished about former student and top Obama advisor Austan Goolsbee over spring rolls and nam pla. Yum!) See also this analysis of how the orgy of Clinton-bashing works to keep all of us mouthy broads in our places, and this one too.

I think we need to consider that while Obama’s candidacy benefits now from both Dem-on-Dem insults and media bias, these gendered and sexuality-based insults and press coverage will be used to demean Obama too. Let’s take a trip down memory lane to recall what damage this kind of bully-boy towel-snapping did to The Breck Girl, or Al Gore and his allegedly feminized Earth Tones. Now, let’s see what washed up on the beach today: Yes, Joe Scarborough called Obama “prissy” and “dainty” on the basis of watching Obama bowl, and contrasted his performance with other politicians who looked like “real men.” (Bowling? Did I miss Clinton’s “Candlepin Smackdown” in New Hampshire that assured her victory with that state’s voters?) And let’s not forget that one of Scarborough’s sparring partners today was Congressman Harold Ford (D-TN), who in his Senate run in 2006 was the target of smarmy ads calling him “Fancy Ford” and used race, sexuality, and gender to smear him.

Indulge me in a little nostalgia, in the service of making a larger point: Historiann attended a women’s college in the 1980s and 90s, and then I taught at one briefly right after I finished my Ph.D. in the late 1990s One commonality of being affiliated with a women’s college is that as soon as you step off of the campus–and some jerk driving by sees you do it–you’re greeted with hostile screams of “Lezzie!” “Dyke!” Now, it didn’t matter if you were alone or with a crowd. It didn’t matter if you were a femmy girlygirl with long hair and a miniskirt, or if you were a “Dyke to Watch Out For” in a flannel shirt and jeans. And as I learned when I was briefly a faculty member at a women’s college, it didn’t matter if you were obviously a professor leading a group of students on a field trip to look at headstones in a local cemetery. More often than not, we got screamed at, and occasionally, some people had objects thrown at them. To jerks driving by in cars, the fact that we were affiliated with that campus was the only distinguising feature that mattered, and that distinguishing feature meant that we were subject to constant verbal harassment.

So, I’d like to remind all Democrats that to the rest of the country, it looks like we all live and work on a relatively small campus. To the rest of the world, we look pretty much the same–when the jerks drive by, they can’t see if it’s a Clinton or an Obama for President button that we’re wearing. And so, for some of us to tolerate–or even perpetrate–ugly insults based on gender and sexuality–it endangers all of us and our chances for electoral victory. Because if it’s OK for some of us to be targets, it’s OK for all of us to be targets.

UPDATE, 4/2/08: Via Suburban Guerilla, here’s an interesting look at what happened with blog traffic last month at 2 pro-Obama blogs, 2 pro-Clinton blogs, and one neutral blog. Bottom line: the 2 pro-Obama blogs, which have been the leaders in misogynist invective against Clinton, have seen a drop in unique visits, while the neutral and 2 pro-Clinton blogs have had relatively stable traffic without the noticeable declines that the pro-Obama blogs had. (This may be because from my observations, the “pro-Obama” blogs are more anti-Clinton, whereas the 2 pro-Clinton blogs really are pro-Clinton rather than anti-Obama, and most Democrats like both candidates and don’t bear extreme animus against one or the other.)

UPDATE, afternoon 4/2/08: Check out this post by Tom Watson called “MoDo Sets her Gaydar to Stun.” Money quote: “Liberals are just so gay. Wink freaking wink. Hillary’s been a lesbian since she first came to public attention. Gore and Kerry – well, a couple of sissy boys. Now it’s Obama’s turn.”

History and astronomy lessons from They Might Be Giant Plagiarists

March 31, 2008May 6, 2015 / Historiann / Leave a comment

Check this out, via Corrente, to see a most undeserved tribute to our eleventh President, “Mr. James K. Polk, the Napoleon of the Stump,” by They Might Be Giants.

Incidentally, a close family member of mine has discovered that TMBG has tried this schtick of “borrowing” from textbooks before. When perusing an old astronomy primer (don’t ask!), he discovered that the first line of their song “Why Does the Sun Shine?” was cribbed directly from Stars: A Guide to the Constellations, Sun, Moon, Planets, and Other Features of the Heavens, a Golden Nature Guide (Western Publishing Company, 1951, 1956), shown here on the left (click for larger view). Below, you can see the proof on page 16–note the first sentence in the second paragraph shown here:

That’s OK–writing new song lyrics is hard, so why not turn to used bookstores for inspiration? (Don’t you?)

It's your misfortune, and none of my own

March 30, 2008May 6, 2015 / Historiann / Leave a comment

In a sad and thought-provoking article in High Country News called My Crazy Brother, Ray Ring writes about the fact that the West has the highest suicide rates in the U.S. He writes, “for suicide, nine of the top 11 states are in the West, a trend that holds year after year, decade after decade. And the degree of the lethal regional difference is stunning: Nevada, Montana, New Mexico, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and Oregon range from 19 to 15 suicides per 100,000 people–more than twice as high as New York and Washington, D.C. . . . . Some 8,000 Westerners will kill themselves this year, a hefty portion of the national total of more than 30,000 suicides.” His brother John killed himself in 1993 at age 46, after nearly a lifetime of struggling with mental illness.

The worthy purpose of the article is to urge us to make mental health treatment as much of a priority as other health care needs, and it features photographs from an interesting traveling exhibition called “Nothing to Hide: Mental Illness in the Family,” sponsored by Family Diversity Projects.) But, since the article appears in High Country News, a magazine dedicated to environmental issues in the West, I wish Ring had offered more analysis for why Westerners have such high suicide rates. (Historiann’s first guess is that it must be the high rates of gun ownership out here–but, while household firearm ownership is strongly associated with higher suicide rates, the South is the region with the most heavily armed householders, followed by the Midwest, according to this 2005 Gallup Poll.) The vast majority of Westerners are now urban dwellers, so it’s not the stark isolation of ranch life or mining camps that does it. Ring offers only the High Plains Gothic musings of historian Patricia Limerick, who says that Westerners “won’t admit our sorrows until they become cataclysmic,” but he doesn’t follow up on those comments, or explore their meaning further. (H/t to historian Richard White, whose 1993 book title It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own: A New History of the American West I cribbed for this post. Said title was itself cribbed of course from the song, “Git Along Little Dogies,” and for all of you living at 4,000-foot elevation or below, it’s “dogies,” not “doggies.”)

Ring also briefly discusses the Wallace Stegner’s 1943 novel, Big Rock Candy Mountain, which hints at an interesting analysis. Stegner’s father was an erswhile farmer and bootlegger who moved his family 20 times in 10 years, and ultimately killed a mistress and then himself in a Salt Lake City hotel in 1939. A character in the novel, supposedly based on Stegner’s father, is described as someone who was perpetually disappointed by his failures in life because “people had been before him. The cream, he said, was gone. He should have lived a hundred years earlier. Yet he would never quite grant that all the good places were filled up. There was somewhere, if you knew where to find it, some place where money could be made like drawing water from a well, some Big Rock Candy Mountain where life was effortless and rich and unrestrained and full of adventure and action, where something could be had for nothing.” To me, Stegner’s description of the Westerner’s attitude really rings true, although I don’t know if it’s necessarily connected with mental illness.

Stegner’s description of a man who expected a life that was “effortless and rich and unrestrained and full of adventure and action” seems to suggest something about Western culture that endures. This is the region of the country that was only opened for intensive development by Anglo-American migrants with massive infusions of federal dollars: the Frontier Army, irrigation, railroads, and federal grants of land, grazing, and mineral rights. Those infusions of cash, water, and infrastructure worked–in fact, the West remains the fastest growing region of the U.S. While Westerners are happy beneficiaries of national tax dollars, they are allergic to payting taxes and claim to be suspicious of the “big government” that won the West for them. All of the Western states (except California, Washington, and Utah) are in the top twenty states with the lowest state and local tax burdens: Colorado (#30), Arizona (#31), Idaho (#35), Nevada (#36), Oregon (#37), New Mexico (#40), Montana (#41), and Wyoming (#42). This suggests that Westerners think that they’re entitled to something, if not for nothing, then at least for less than the average going rate. Perhaps this is because so many people are recent arrivals and they don’t feel rooted in the West (if they ever will), and so many “native” Westerners are resentful of the immigrants, whether they’re from Texas, California, New Jersey, or Mexico, that they don’t feel the need to pay taxes to educate or vaccinate the newcomers’ children. (A popular bumper sticker in Colorado sports the white-outlined green mountains of the old Colorado license plates, with the word “NATIVE” spelled out as an aggressive boast.)

Perhaps the most fragile and despondent among us are caught up in the crush of new migrants, old hopes, and fresh disappointments and can’t see any way out. Communities of new migrants aren’t necessarily stable or supportive, and people cut off from their families and native communities may be prone to despair if their big dreams don’t work out. Then again, they may live for a while on the hope that their luck will change with the next move, and that the next Big Thing will lead them to their Big Rock Candy Mountain. (If you’re interested in contemporary Western issues, especially having to do with the environment, land use, development, and industry, then consider a subscription to High Country News—it’s an excellent publication that reports stories you’ll see nowhere else in either the local or the national media.)

And, sorry about all of the buzzkills at Historiann.com lately–suicide, bullies, the gendered wage gap, and the mendacity of tenure review–you’d think it was still midwinter, instead of a lovely early spring. I promise to lighten things up around here with a little Barbie blogging this week.

Somerby: incomparable! Ehrenreich: now comparable to Dowd.

March 24, 2008 / Historiann / Leave a comment

Very foolishly, I posted today before reading Bob Somerby’s The Daily Howler. Go read now. Money quote: “Eight years ago, [Barbara] Ehrenreich was getting good solid laughs with her comments about how wooden Gore was. Today, Gore holds the Nobel Peace Prize, and the dead of Iraq stare up from the ground. And Ehrenreich has moved on-to talk about Clinton’s vile haircuts.”

What a disappointment that Ehrenreich, a feminist who has written some very intelligent and important books, has typed up a screed so full of cliches about Hillary Clinton that I would have deemed it worthy only of Maureen Dowd. Despite the troubling prayer meetings and hairdos (both of which were no doubt carefully designed to conceal her sprouting devil horns), Clinton appears to be up 12–15 points in Pennsylvania, and a whopping 28 points in West Virginia. It must be witchcraft, or something. Poor deluded fools–I guess they don’t spend enough time reading the prestigious, peer-reviewed internets, otherwise they would know that “that stupid bitch” doesn’t have a chance! She should quit now, before Pennsylvania, West Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Indiana, Oregon, and Montana hold their primaries.

Democracy is so divisive! We should just all unite now behind St. John McCain, because the Republicans are threatening to vote for him instead of the Democratic nominee.

Can you play short, ugly, and second-worst?

March 17, 2008 / Historiann / Leave a comment

If your name is Paul Giamatti, the answer is yes! Giamatti is starring in HBO’s docudrama on the life of John Adams, officially the second-worst President in American history. Ari over at Edge of the American West finds the casting unconvincing, mostly because he doesn’t think Giamatti’s John Adams captures Adams’ truly monumental asshattery. According to Ari, Giamatti’s portrayal “extends from neurotic to nerdy, with occasional detours into petulant,” and he concludes that Giamatti “seemingly has no clue how to embody a man like Adams.” (Yes, Ari finds that even this portrayal is too flattering to Adams!)

Jill Lepore expresses frustrations similar to Ari’s in her review of the HBO movie, which appears in The New Yorker this week. Entitling her review “The Divider,” she writes that minor quibbles about the movie aside, “the bigger problem is how far the writing has to go to make Adams both more important and more virtuous than everyone around him except his wife, as if to justify his prodigious self-regard and disdain for his contemporaries. Adams didn’t ‘unite the states of America,’ but he accomplished a hell of a lot. He was bold. He was brilliant. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t also a heel.” She rightly reminds us of his outsized outrage after reading Mercy Otis Warren’s history of the American Revolution. “Adams wrote Warren ten letters-some more than twenty pages long-of petty, rambling vituperation,” protesting her portrayal of him in her book. “But his reading of Warren’s ‘History’ was paranoid and hysterical,” Lepore aptly observes, “and his letters to her are the rantings of a bully: she is unladylike; there are things he could say about her if he weren’t such a gentleman.” This was certainly a side of Adams that was ignored or downplayed in David McCullough’s John Adams, which was the inspiration for the HBO movie.

Historiann is just relieved that HBO didn’t cast George Clooney or Colin Firth in the service of flattering Adams even further. Unattractive actors still get work in Hollywood–some of the most unattractive (Giamatti and Philip Seymour Hoffman, for example, and they’re dumpy too!) are offered really interesting roles that win them big awards and fabulous reviews. (By the way: in real life, alcoholic junior high school teachers who are also failed writers and look like Giamatti don’t get to run away with Virginia Madsen! Interestingly, Laura Linney has been cast with both Giamatti and Hoffman recently–John Adams, 2008, and The Savages, 2007, perhaps because she’s about as average-looking as any successful actress is allowed to be these days, and she’s of course gorgeous compared to actual humans.) When directors need to cast an unattractive woman, they pop an ugly prosthetic nose on Nicole Kidman, or they make Charlize Theron wear weird dentures and a fat suit, or Renee Zellweger gains twenty whole pounds, because there are apparently no plain or even average-looking good actresses. (Or actresses who have eaten a cheeseburger since the 1990s). Full employment is only for sylph-like goddesses between the ages of 24 and 39–remember, makeup artists can do amazing things putting wrinkles on gorgeous young things, instead of having to employ a has-been like that old bag Julia Roberts. (Happy 40th, Julia! Love ya!)

UPDATE: See also Marc Bousquet’s review of the movie at How the University Works, where he constructs John Adams as an exemplar of the revolt of the “professional-managerial class.” Bousquet writes, “Giamatti’s performance as Adams didn’t quite do it for me. His note for Adams seems to be ‘every revolution needs good management.’ Still I found many moments to like. Gruesomely cool was the inoculation of the Adams family against smallpox.” (Alert for PalMD!)

UPDATE II, 3/19/08: A clever and funny local yokel columnist for the Denver Post, Ed Quillen, published a column this morning called “Adams Deserves Obscurity.” Like Historiann, he wonders why Adams gets the fawning treatment by HBO. The money quote: “John Adams had many virtues. But he also gave America the Sedition Act of 1798, which made it a crime to criticize the federal government or its officers. A revolutionary who betrays his ideals has little right to complain about his treatment by history.”

A-hem! A-men.

March 12, 2008 / Historiann / Leave a comment

On this very blog Tuesday, March 4, at 11:32 a.m., Ari from Edge of the American West wrote this in the comments to my post called, “What is wrong with Maureen Dowd?”:

“If you can arrange for do-over in MI and FL, I’ll agree to campaign for Hillary from this point forward. Seriously, I’d love to see it. But it’s not going to happen.” (This was in response to Historiann’s comment that she “would strongly support [a re-vote in Michigan and Florida], rather than the seating of the Clinton delegates from those two states, which would indeed be unfair.”) If you recall, in the Michigan primary Clinton was the only candidate on the ballot. In Florida both Clinton and Obama were on the ballot, but they had agreed not to campaign there, and Florida Democrats were told their votes in that primary wouldn’t count.

Well, Ari, Historiann has personally arranged for this, along with my BFF’s Ed Rendell, Jon Corzine, all of the Democrats in Florida and Michigan, and Clinton campiagn manager Maggie Williams. We’ve just about cinched the deal. According to this letter from Williams, the Clinton campaign is go-go for a re-vote. Now, it’s true that we haven’t sealed the deal yet. When that happens, you may sign up to start making phone calls on behalf of Senator Clinton in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida at hillaryclinton.com. (To which address should I send you the tee-shirts and campaign buttons?)

UPDATE, this afternoon: Obama Michigan campaign co-Chair rejects a re-vote; Obama campaign rejects mail-in vote in Florida and Michigan.

Wanted: a non-U.S. American for President

March 11, 2008 / Historiann / Leave a comment

Go read this commentary by William K. Wolfrum over at Shakesville, a smart and spanky group blog. He makes the fascinating point, long-overlooked by professional ~~killjoys~~ historians, that American-born presidents have been real losers compared to the British born ones. “You need to go all the way to the eighth President – Martin Van Buren – to have a U.S. president that was born a bona fide American. And what is Van Buren best known for? The Panic of 1837 . . . . If Van Buren showed us anything, it was that true Americans were inept when it came to leading the country.” (Kind of weird that his nickname was “The Little Magician,” no? Compare that to “Old Hickory” or “Old Rough and Ready”–it just doesn’t inspire.) Wolfrum makes exceptions for Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the other New York Democrat after Van Buren to be elected President. As a professional ~~killjoy~~ historian, I’ve got a few quibbles with Wolfrum, natch: The “no person except a natural born citizen” rule kept us from what would have been the early national nightmare of a President Alexander Hamilton, but we’ve amended the constitution considerably in the intervening 200 years since that would have been an issue. And, you have to admit that this guy is definitely the second-worst President in American history despite being born in Massachusetts, which contrary to recent rumors, is not and never was a French colony.

When you think about it, considering only U.S.-born Americans for the job limits our options considerably. We could have a President Jennifer Granholm (born in Canada) one of these days if we did away with that rule, or a President Mary Robinson. (We also could have a President Kindergarten Cop, though–something to consider, my fellow Americans!)

On a related note: HNN is once again asking us professionals to rate and rank George W. Bush’s presidency. (Guess who beats out that guy in Historiann’s book? One guess only!) Anyway, if you want to submit your own answers, have at it. I think we almost need to adjust the rankings for the newest soon-to-be ex-president to create five or six spaces in between him and the next-worst. It almost makes me feel a little sorry for this guy–but not really all that sorry. After all, until January 20, 2009, he’s Number One!

p.s. Please keep sending me nominations for quality women’s history blogs–read the post below! And as long as I’m sending hugs and kisses out to Shakesville, read this excellent post by Jeff Fecke on Geraldine Ferraro’s egregious comment that Barack Obama is somehow benefiting (unfairly!) from being a black man. It’s embarassing, and just dumber than a sack of hammers. Don’t go all Ralph Nader, Gerry, saying and doing dumb things that undermine your historic achievements and make us hate you in spite of them! Apologize now! UPDATE 3/12/08: Ferraro bows out of the Clinton campaign. Kind of a whiny letter, but brief!

Why no women's history? Blame the Patriarchive! (An International Women's Day omnibus spectacular and bee-yatchfest.)

March 8, 2008 / Historiann / Leave a comment

someone was going to have to set a bad example Well, we’re a full week into Women’s History Month, but Historiann has been so immersed in one woman’s fate that she hasn’t had time to come up for air–until today. Apologies, sisters and brothers! Consider this an “open thread” for any and all random thoughts on Women’s History Month–but just for kicks, here are a few l’il tidbits for your brain to nosh on:

1. Check out The Patriarchive, which I’ve blogrolled under “History Geek Squad” at left. Aside from having a most excellent name, this blog is about “gender, libraries, archives, technology, outreach, teaching, the digital divide, and blaming the patriarchy.” Whew! And what will she blog about after breakfast? Who is this young mystery Marxist feminist librarian, and can I read what she’s reading? We know only one thing about her–that like this dangerous woman she attended a subversive undergraduate college–but I hope we’ll learn more.

2. Anxious Black Woman is following up her excellent Black Herstory Month series with Women’s History Month blogging. Go check it out, especially because today is International Women’s Day. (Ortho at Baudrillard’s Bastard might be especially interested in her most recent post on Global Lockdown, an edited collection on women in the prison industrial complex.)

3. Women in medicine: part of an occasional series on the lives of women professionals around the world. This is a true story, although some of the details have been altered: one of Historiann’s college roommates is in academic critical care. (I know! Thank goodness no one’s life depends on me!) She writes: I’m a meeting for [The Very Important Research Physicians in Intensive Care Conference]. I am approached by an ICU Professor at the University of [Ben & Jerry’s] who introduces himself and then asks, “So what do you do?” I respond, “I’m here in [Whoville], and I work with [this Division Chief]”. He looks very puzzled. “But what do you do??” he repeats. “I mean, are you a resident or a nurse?” Uhmmm, no Jerky McJerkface, she’s just like you, an actual professor of this bullcrap, although she apparently has lady parts! This is just one in a series of insults that she has been offered in partial recompense for her lifelong dedication to her field. Is it better to get angry every time this happens, so that one doesn’t get become blase about these things, or is it better to take happy pills and say, “whatevs, Last Century Dude.” (Or, in l’esprit de l’escalier, should she have said, “I’m an attending physician dumbass, are you looking for the Senile Dementia conference?” What say you, PalMD?)

4. Do any of you have recommendations for a good picture book (ages 3-8-ish) that would serve as a good introduction to women’s history for the preschool/kingergarten set? Perhaps a moving story about a little girl in history? (Example of something like what I’m looking for: there’s a very good book for preschoolers that introduces the concept of slavery and emancipation called Henry’s Freedom Box, by Ellen Levine and illustrated by Kadir Nelson, about Henry “Box” Brown.)

5. Et vous, mes amis? What’s happening around your council fire?

Simply perfect!

March 7, 2008 / Historiann / Leave a comment

Let’s pretend that there are two women who might potentially be the next First Lady of the United States.

Lady A is a graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law School, and until her husband started running for president, she had a successful career as a corporate lawyer and a hospital vice-president. She has never had a drug problem, is her husband’s first wife, and to all appearances, looks pretty much perfect. Lady B, the heir to a beer distributor fortune, took up with her husband (18 years her senior) when he was still married to his first wife. (Oops!) Lady B attended the University of Southern California and has a degree in teaching, and had a drug problem. (Double oops!) She used her inherited money to set her husband up in his political career.

One lady is profiled in a high-profile magazine whose reputation as either interesting or authoritative has, well, slipped in recent years, to put it charitably. In this article, the author writes that her “lack of pretense has made her popular with the portion of the electorate.” However, she also points to her “tendency toward deflation” and “dismissiveness” of other people and their efforts. She quotes a local newspaper columnist who said he [heard] “rumbles a mink coat reportedly belonging to [this lady], wife of [this candidate], may have gone missing following [a local politician’s] birthday bash.” The author also notes that because in her job this lady made $121,910 four years ago then made $316,962 three years ago, a random letter-writer to a local newspaper complained that “Mrs. X is extremely overpaid.” In sum, the author writes, “Some observers have detected in [this lady] an air of entitlement.” Which lady was it, Lady A or Lady B? Answer here.

The other lady is profiled on a cable news program in a segment called “Can [this lady] really be that perfect?” The lede of the summary on the web reads, “She’s always dressed in a killer suit and never has a hair out of place.” A friend and former local official in her home state describes her as a “fun down to earth person with a great sense of humor.” Which lady was it, Lady A or Lady B? Answer here.

Your thoughts?

(p.s. Here’s the full quote from the last part of the summary of the The New Yorker article linked above: “Some observers have detected in Obama an air of entitlement. Her defenders attribute these charges of arrogance to racist fears about uppity black women. While it’s a stretch to call the suggestion that Obama projects an air of self-satisfaction bigoted, it may at least reflect a culture gap: last April, after Maureen Dowd wrote a column criticizing Obama for undermining her husband’s mystique, a blog riposte, circulated widely on the Internet, was titled ‘The White Lady Just Doesn’t Get It.'” Does anyone understand how the last sentence describing a supposed “culture gap” refutes the earlier “charges of arrogance” due to “racist fears about uppity black women?” How does refuting a dumb Dowd hit-piece make one “uppity?” Why do successful African American women seem to make people totally insane when trying to write or talk about them?)

UPDATE, 3/7/08: I should remember never to publish a post after 9 p.m., when it’s sleepytime for Historiann! I think I understand better now what that writer was suggesting in that paragraph–not that I think she’s correct. She’s still insane, but for different reasons than I thought. The writer insists that it’s legitimate and not “bigoted” to say that Michelle Obama “projects an air of self-satisfaction,” but acknowledges that there may be a “culture gap” (although I think she really means, black people and white people seem to have different reads of this accusation.) Well, how many Princeton and Harvard Law grads do you know who are very successful professionally and personally at the age of 44 and who don’t “project an air of self-satisfaction.” Why isn’t that allowed, as Susan points out in the comments below, if you earn your own money instead of inheriting it from a rich daddy?

Friday doll blogging, 18th-century "action figure" edition

March 7, 2008 / Historiann / Leave a comment

Here’s another photo of my Seven Years’ War lead soldiers and captives, which were a very cool recent birthday present. I’m considering using them on the cover of my next book–they’re much cooler, more ambigous, and more mysterious than the portrait of Esther Wheelwright that hangs in the Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS, for short). And, a portrait is what you would already expect in a biography cover, right? Esther commissioned a portrait shortly after she became Mother Superior, and then sent it to relatives in Massachusetts as a remembrance. According to the curator of paintings I consulted with at the MHS in 2001, Anne Bentley, the painting is probably singular in their collection because it’s a portrait of a woman that wasn’t commissioned by her father or husband. It’s pretty good for an amateur portrait–I wish I could show it to you, but I don’t yet have a digital copy, and the MHS doesn’t have all of their paintings on-line. It was likely painted by an artist in the convent, as the Ursulines were known for their artistic excellence in producing elaborately embroidered altarcloths and giltwork items for churches, as well as humbler embroidered objects for the tourist trade.

The MHS has done a wonderful job digitizing a bunch of other documents and images and organizing them into web displays. For example, you can find this most excellent bit of military intelligence there, along with other Seven Years’ War-era maps. Other rich web installations are African Americans and the End of Slavery in Massachusetts, and a featured “Object of the Month.”