MY BLOGS
FEMMES FATALES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
According to David Hackett-Fischer, on Christmas Eve 1776, a beautiful young widow entertained Colonel Carl von Donop for almost a full twenty-four hours, stalling the progress of his battalion. While the proud and arrogant Hessian enjoyed the widow’s favors and his men twiddled their thumbs, Washington defeated the British at Trenton. There is reason to believe that the beautiful young widow was Betsy Ross.
CASANOVA’S ESCAPE FROM THE LEADS
No one had ever escaped from the Leads—so-called because the prison was on top of the Doge’s Palace in Venice, which was roofed with lead tiles. This roofing made the cells into ovens in the summer and freezers in the winter. The only good thing you could say about the Leads was that it wasn’t the Wells: cells beneath the palace that always had two feet of water in them and were infested with giant sea rats.
WOMAN’S WORK
Resistance Fighters in Epirus
“Woman’s work” is a loaded phrase because it has often been used disparagingly. It brings to mind a woman caught in the endless daily grind of cooking and cleaning for her unappreciative family. I want to suggest with a few examples that the reality for many women was somewhat different. Not easier, by any means—in fact, harder, scarier, but also richer, fulfilling, and, above all, essential for our humanity.
THE MOHAWK CAPTIVE
Seated beside her Mohawk husband, Eunice, at first, refuses to talk to the trader. He represents her father, John Williams, a notable New England pastor, who for nine years has tried to redeem his daughter. The situation has become political. There is a tenuous peace between the French and English colonies. Pressured by authorities in Canada, the village priests, and powerful officials in New England, who all want Eunice to return to her influential father, she has to speak her mind, so she finally replies in her husband’s language, “Ya!” or in English, “No!”
THE FIRST SAILOR
Do we recognize us in him?
DID WE DRINK BEER BEFORE WE ATE BREAD?
A scholarly debate in 1953 asked, "Did Man Once Live by Beer Alone?" and suggested that selectively picking plants for beer led to the origin of agriculture in the "Cradle of Civilization." The consensus was that the cultivation of grain for food preceded the use of grain for brewing because of the technical reasons involved in making beer. The argument is being revisited in light of the discovery of evidence of brewing 13,000 years ago in a Jordan cave.
THE SAVIORS OF MONTREAL
The French settlement of Canada would have likely happened without both of them.
WILL THE REAL JOAQUIN MURRIETA PLEASE STAND UP?
Joaquin seemed to be a favorite name of Californian bandits. Perhaps the bandits found it convenient to call themselves Joaquin to take advantage of the name's formidable reputation and lay their crimes on the other Joaquins out there.
LOVE OF THE DEVIL
Two hours after the doctor pronounced him dead, Sir Richard Burton’s wife pronounced him alive and insisted the priest give him extreme unction so his soul would go to heaven.
Bukharin’s Last Stand
In 1938 Fitzroy Maclean was one of the foreign diplomats allowed to witness Stalin’s show trials of Nikolai Bukharin, a former Secretary-General of the Communist International, the leading theorist of the Party, Genrihk Yagoda, the feared head of the secret police N.V.K.D and a dozen other comparatively lesser officials. He described what took place in his unforgettable memoir, EASTERN APPROACHES.
EMPRESS THEODORA AND BYZANTINE NASCAR
In the history of sports, the rivalry of Byzantium’s Blue and Green chariot teams stand out in the savage fanaticism of their supporters. It was as if the scientist/god of history decided to make an experiment with our species: take away principles, religious and political, take away territory, take away all the reasons cited for conflict and substitute the colors Blue and Green, give them to two different chariot teams, then see what happens.
What in the world did martyrs have in mind when facing their end? Perpetua, a young Roman mother, kept a diary.
A MODEST THEORY OF GHOSTS
The phenomenon of believing in ghosts and haunted places seems to span all cultures since recorded time. Is it just superstition, or is another aspect of our humanness at play?
BASKET MEN
A modern morality tale from the Brazilian rainforest.
THE FIRST KISS (ever)
COWARDS OF US ALL
The Antihero in our genes.
“IF WE EVER GET AWAY FROM HERE, I’M COMING BACK FOR MORE.”
John Denton, a teamster in the Donner Party, sat down in the snow to rest and have a smoke. He knew his time was up. His last act was to write a poem.
DOCTOR PINEL AND THE MAD ENGLISH SEA CAPTAIN
Doctor Phillippe Pinel, director of the Bicêtre Asylum in Paris, made a request to the revolutionary French government to allow the inmates to wander freely outside their cells. After repeated petitions, Pinel received permission. He boldly tried his experiment on an English sea captain who had been in chains for forty years. He was most feared because he had killed a jailor with his manacles.
THE MARRIAGE OF INCONVENIENCE
John II of the Paston family wanted a wife. Unfortunately, if you belonged to the propertied class in the fifteenth-century England, getting married wasn’t all that simple. The goal was to obtain an amiable, attractive mate with a dowry befitting the position and dignity of one’s family. The attractive, amiable prospective brides with hefty dowries usually had a say in choosing their husbands within the limits of their class. They, therefore, were fully aware of their consequent power.
NAPOLEON’S GRAND ARMY AT THE BRIDGES OF BEREZINA
I take this incident from Phillippe-Paul de Segur Napoleon’s Retreat from Moscow. It occurs near the end of the retreat when the Grand Army has been reduced to few fighting units and a great horde of stragglers. What is left of the ninth corps of General Victor is making its way toward the partially iced-over river of Berezina. Accompanying the soldiers, many of whom have abandoned their arms, is an unorganized mass of thousands—in many cases whole families—who supplied the Grand Army’s needs. Two bridges cross the river, one for artillery.
HENRIETTE
Casanova was a monumental egoist. Few affairs rose above the level of infatuation, yet there was one woman who eclipsed him in his memoirs. It is hard for a reader, even at a distance of two hundred and seventy years, not to fall in love with her as did Casanova.
Rommel told Lucy, his wife of thirty years, that the generals had presented him with evidence of his part in the plot against Hitler’s life, and because of that, he was to die shortly. He had been given a choice: face the people’s court or take poison that would kill him in three seconds.
The Ice Saint
Gontrans de Poncins begins the chapter about his visit to Pelly Bay in the Arctic thus: “I am going to say to you that a human being can live without complaint in an icehouse built for seals at a temperature at 55 degrees below zero, and you are going to doubt my word.”
THE FIRST TEAR
We are the only animal that sheds tears, but we are not the only animal that grieves. When did tears appear? Did the first human cry, or does it go further back? I have a story that isn’t wholly fiction.
THE MAN WHO SET FREE THE ENGLISH TONGUE
Sir Thomas More spent almost as many words as there were in the Bible refuting William Tyndale because he knew in the core of his being that with words came dreaded freedoms.
THE ANTI CHRISTMAS CAROL
William James examines the conversion experience of a man who found meaning in becoming Scrooge.