I've been catching up on recent episodes of the NPR radio show/podcast Bullseye with Jesse Thorn this morning. This episode from the end of October features a fantastic interview with Elizabeth Gilbert about her new novel The Signature of All Things. The book tells the story of a spinsterly 18th century lady botanist who goes adventuring and ( Read more... )

So! Looking back to Wednesday evening, the natural history lecture focused on the 18th century proved to be every bit as compelling as I anticipated it would be. We dealt with many of the expected topics--the Enlightenment, Diderot's Encyclopédie, Linnaeus, Buffon--before our professor did a most delightful thing, and dedicated a large portion of ( Read more... )

Good morning! So, now that I feel like I'm properly back into the swing of things with regular posts, it's about time I start sharing a bit more of what I've been up to lately. Although working the night shift is as taxing as ever, over the past couple of months I've been trying to make a more concerted effort to get out of the house and do things ( Read more... )

If you've ever wondered whether or not the Founding Fathers could rock out...well, wonder no more! Thanks to georgianagossip for the link :)

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It's pretty much a given that whenever I let my History Book Club membership lapse--that is, go for six months without a purchase, usually because I am broke--inevitably they try to lure me back into joining again with offers of cheap books. Come on, you want more books, don't you...? No actually, I don't. I've already got about a million and one ( Read more... )

Just wanted to give you all a taste of the hideous temptation that confronts me on a daily basis, in the form of the bakery markdown table. I don't know why I even let myself go near that part of the store...If you're wondering, I got the stripey blue 'Easter Egg' sugar cookies. They are good.


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That was a wonderful lecture! I only wish it had been longer than an hour. Mr. Holmes is a very personable English scholar, who told amusing anecdotes about 18th century naturalists in Tahiti, Samuel Taylor Coleridge getting high off nitrous oxide, and French baloonists launching their craft out of a prison yard in Revolutionary era Philadelphia ( Read more... )

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This article isn't exactly breaking news, especially to anyone who has read Patricia Brady's excellent 2006 biography Martha Washington: An American Life (the cover of which is adorned by the Michael J. Deas portrait seen below); but I thought it was worth sharing if only for the mention of deep purple, sequin-studded silk high heels the future Mrs ( Read more... )