What Is an American, and the Ones Who Went to Canada
by A joke about a trade spat over cheese arrived the week I taught the French farmer who first wrote of the melting pot and then …
Month: October 2026
Forty-Seven Pages That Went Around the Colonies Like a Rumor
It is two hundred and fifty years since Common Sense, and a joke about banning a messaging app sent me back to what a pamphlet …
The Almanac Maker and the Fuzzy Ball of Light
Colonial Americans got their astronomy from a pamphlet hung on a nail by the fireplace, and a joke about an interstellar visitor made me take …
A Virginia Gentleman at the Races, and Maryland’s Eighty-Five Million Dollar Horse
William Byrd kept a secret diary of every bet he lost, and a headline about the Preakness shows how little the gentry’s amusements have changed …
Rereading Common Sense, the Pamphlet That Called Kings Ridiculous
Thomas Paine 1776 attack on hereditary monarchy reads differently in the week a royal family is laughed at for quarrelling over a book Tuesday, a …
Benjamin Franklin Son Stayed Loyal to the King, and They Never Forgave Each Other
Long before the royal traitor headlines, one of America most famous families split over loyalty to the Crown, and the rift lasted until the father …
Phillis Wheatley Wrote to the King, Then Sailed to London as a Celebrated Poet
Teaching the first published African American poet the same week a royal family is in the headlines, and thinking about who gets to write about …
Standing in Independence Hall, Where Every Signer Was Technically a Traitor
A visit to the room where the Declaration of Independence was signed, and a reminder that the word traitor depends entirely on who wins Thursday, …
Remember the Ladies: Reading Abigail Adams Letters and Calling My Brother
A weekend with the 1776 letters of John and Abigail Adams, a family that argued by post for decades and never stopped writing, and a …