Last week while I was watching the PBS miniseries Wolf Hall, my son happened to wander in during a particularly sad scene and, immediately intrigued, asked me what was going on. Without spoiling it for you if you haven’t seen… Read More
Note to teachers/parents: This blog may contain information/language that is inappropriate for kids under ten.When I showed my husband Wednesday’s blog about divorce corsets, he stopped at the part about busks and asked me what a busk was. I was… Read More
During the sixteenth century, cocoa was a drink reserved for Spanish royalty. In 1579, some English pirates searching for gold aboard a Spanish ship mistook the cocoa beans for sheep droppings, and burned the valuable cargo.… Read More
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, fashionable women wouldn’t consider travelling without a black velvet mask, called a vizard, to protect their complexion from the sun, from the dust kicked up by horses, and from gritty, polluted city air. Such… Read More
During the Revolutionary War, as many as half of the enslaved African adult males in Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia fled their masters to fight on the side of the British, believing they had a better chance at freedom than with the American side.