Tag: History

Madeira Mondays: America’s 250th Birthday, Independence Revisited

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I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that a lot of Americans don’t know why we celebrate the 4th of July. And I get it. You learn about American history in school and then life gets going and some of those details just fall away. Maybe you vaguely remember some stuff, but not a lot. And, after all, it’s easy for things that happened hundreds of years ago not to feel very relevant in our day to day lives.

But the truth is that history is always relevant, and America’s founding, and the documents it produced, have a direct impact on the lives of everyone who lives in that country (and, I would argue, anyone living in a democracy in the modern world).

When I started this blog (like seven years ago?!), one of my goals was to get people excited and interested in this period of history, which always fascinated me so much! The last year or so I haven’t written too many “Madeira Mondays” and that is in part because of major new career developments that I can’t yet talk about (hopefully soon!). My head and my heart has not been in the 18th century. Pair that with the fact that I’ve just been so sad about a lot of America’s current political climate (see my post on John Donne), that I’m still not quite sure where to take this blog. As this new chapter of my writing life opens up, I’m figuring it out.

In the meantime, I wanted to share with you a look back at some of my favorite posts from the last seven years about America’s founding and independence. It felt wrong to not share anything in honor of the 250th! So here are my top five posts about the topic. A “Best of” list, if you will!

Since I live in Scotland, I was feeing homesick this holiday and missing neighborhood BBQs, parades, etc. Although admittedly not the heat.

Anyway, I hope that you had a lovely 4th of July if you are in the the US and celebrate it, and that one of these posts inspires you to learn more about this complex, turbulent, inspiring, and endlessly interesting period of history.

Independence Hall in Philadelphia, from when I visited in 2019

1: The John Adams TV Series

We’re going back to the beginning! One of my earliest posts about one of my favorite depictions of this time period of America’s founding: The HBO John Adams miniseries starring Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney! Part of my PhD actually looked at different pop culture representations of one real historical figure (Adams) in different eras.

(I’d highly recommend Episode 2: Independence from this miniseries, as it gives a great sense of what a Big Deal it was for a group of colonies to declare their independence from Great Britain)

Giamatti and Linney in their iconic roles as John and Abigail Adams

And if you’re interested in break-downs of historical fiction films, check out my look at The Patriot.

2. The Poetry of Phillis Wheatley

A lot of people haven’t heard of Wheatley (though she was famous in her day!), and this post in honor of her birthday explores her unique position in American literature as a young African-American woman in colonial America who was also an internationally famous poet.

3. Colonial Fashion on RuPaul’s Drag Race

One of the queens dressed up as a redcoat soldier and I had to talk about it! (If you wanna see me dressed up like John Adams, there is also a photo of that in this post haha!).

5. Tracy K. Smith’s poem ‘Declaration’

Probably the most read blog post from my “Madeira Mondays” series and one of the ones I’m the most proud of! An analysis of the poem “Declaration” by Tracy K. Smith. It also features an explanation of what the Declaration of Independence was (that’s what the Continental Congress signed on July 4th “declaring independence” from Great Britain). If you need a refresh on why we celebrate 4th of July, start here!

6 (Bonus post!). The best songs in 1776

I was going to only choose 5 posts, but I had to include this one too. It’s about one of my favorite musicals: 1776!

The cast from 1776 meeting Richard Nixon at the White House, everyone looking just a little bit awkward

And there you have it, folks! If you’ve been reading the blog for years – thank you! If you’ve just dropped in for this post, thank you! There is a big archive that you can explore…

You can follow the blog (I’m thinking I’ll still do history content, but maybe different eras…) and/or follow along with my literary endeavors either on my quarterly newsletter or on my new Instagram account: @goodgriefcarlybrown

And a happy belated 4th of July!

PS Today’s featured image is John Trumbull’s famous painting depicting the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Madeira Mondays: Climbing Arthur’s Seat (Edinburgh, Scotland)

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Arthur’s Seat is an iconic local landmark in my city. If you’ve ever been to Edinburgh, you’ve definitely seen it. Rising above Holyrood Park, this ancient extinct volcano – with its craggy cliffs and verdant green slopes – is a memorable sight and it definitely adds to the city’s unique majestic, almost magical, feel. (Though the fact that we’ve also got a castle here, and a palace, and some of the most beautiful historic buildings in the world doesn’t hurt either!)

Once described by Edinburgh local and famed author Robert Louis Stevenson as “a hill for magnitude, a mountain in virtue of its bold design”, Arthur’s Seat has been featured in books, movies and TV series past and present. Off the top of my head, I recall scenes in the recent Netflix adaptation of Dave Nicholl’s iconic love story One Day where the couple hikes up there for a graduation picnic. There’s also a very memorable and spooky scene in James Hogg’s wonderfully weird and compelling 19th century novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner.

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Madeira Mondays: “No Man is an Island” by John Donne

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Howdy folks! It’s been a couple of months. I was surprised to see that my last post was in March. It’s now June. Oof, time flies. There’s been a lot on my mind, and I’ve been meaning to post, but, between teaching responsibilities and working on a new novel, I just…haven’t.

I must admit: the year started off a little gloomy for me. Back towards the start of the year, my sci fi novel almost sold…then it didn’t. This, in and of itself, was disappointing. Hopefully the book will sell to another publisher. My agent is confident; I am optimistic. But my personal disappointment was compounded by a general feeling of malaise, even helplessness, at the political situation in my home country of the US. Sometimes I still feel shocked, or speechless, at all that’s happened or that I fear might happen (just now as I write this in a coffee shop: there’s a table next to mine where they’re discussing the administration’s recent moves to revoke Harvard’s ability to enroll international students).

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Madeira Mondays: Meeting the mummies (Bordeaux, France)

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Mummies are a staple in Halloween movies. I remember a particular episode of Are You Are of the Dark? (a spooky kids’ show in the 90’s) that featured a centuries-old mummy accidentally brought back to life! The concept was never particularly frightening for me, and I wasn’t riveted (as some kids are) by adventure tales of exploring ancient tombs, pyramids, and the like. Though of course I saw the Indiana Jones movies and The Mummy (1999), for some reason it didn’t ignite that spark of imagination inside me. However I was still curious, when we recently visited Bordeaux, France, to check out an exhibition at a local museum: Living and Dying in Egypt. Apparently, they had real mummies to see!

And what I found wasn’t a spooky experience but more of a spiritual one. I really enjoyed learning about death rituals in ancient Egypt and getting to see a mummy up close wasn’t scary, but oddly moving.

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Madeira Mondays: Sights from Edinburgh’s Past and Present

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I have seen a ghost.

Well, not literally – but I’ve come pretty close!

Recently I’ve been teaching a creative writing course I designed at the University of Glasgow which is all about ‘time travel’. We looked at a few straightforwardly sci-fi books about characters actually traveling backwards and forwards in time, as well as poetry, memoir, and historical fiction books that invited us to think about memory and imagination as forms of time travel too.

Teaching this class made me think of a walk I took a few months ago with a dear friend of mine, Alan, who I met while volunteering at The Georgian House. We walked around the Canongate area of Edinburgh (near Holyrood Palace) and he showed me some photographs of how the streets looked in times past. It was almost spooky to see the black and white images of the chaotic shop fronts, the women in their wide-brimmed hats full of flowers, and then look up at the very same street today.

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Madeira Mondays: A Visit to Kulturen Museum (Lund, Sweden)

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As regular readers of this blog will know, I’m absolutely fascinated by how people lived in the past. It’s one of the reasons I read and write historical fiction, it’s why I volunteered as a historical guide at a restored 18th century townhouse and it’s why – whenever I get the chance – I love visiting historical buildings and museums.

My favorite type of museums are open-air museums (or ‘folk museums’) where you get to go inside a collection of historical buildings, which are usually full of objects and sometimes even costumed guides. These are my favorite museums because they are immersive and really give you the feeling of ‘stepping back in time’.

I’ve been to Skansen in Stockholm (the world’s oldest open air museum, opened in 1900), Colonial Williamsburg in the USA, and even an open-air museum in Transylvania (though that’s a story for another time!). Longtime blog readers might also remember The Highland Folk Museum. Earlier this month I had the pleasure of traveling to beautiful southern Sweden (my partner’s brother lives there). When we found out there was an open air museum – Kulturen – located in the nearby university town of Lund, we knew we had to go!

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Madeira Mondays: A Visit to a Georgian Dining Room

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Longtime readers will know that I often spend my weekends volunteering as a costumed historical guide at The Georgian House here in Edinburgh. It’s a beautifully restored 18th century townhouse, where you can visit and see what life was like for the family who owned the house, and their servants who kept it running, in the late 18th/early 19th century.

I’ve written posts inspired by several spots in the home already: including the bedroom, the parlor and the drawing room. BUT I don’t think I’ve done a post yet about the dining room, which is often a favorite of visitors when they come to tour the house. I was in there last weekend telling people all about dining and food in Georgian Edinburgh so I thought this would be the perfect time to spotlight the dining room on the blog.

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Madeira Mondays: A Visit to Skara Brae (Orkney, Scotland)

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Orkney is unlike any place I’ve ever visited before. It’s a wild, somewhat desolate island, with jaw-dropping views of windswept cliffs and rolling hills dotted in ancient stone circles. It’s a peaceful place that feels like it’s at the edge of the world, and where, if you’re lucky, you might catch sight of a giant or a fairy or some other type of mythical creature. While I didn’t see any of those, what I did get to see, on a recent trip there, was Skara Brae, the best preserved Stone Age village in Europe. Over 5,000 years old!

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Madeira Mondays: Marie Antoinette (2006) revisited

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It’s hard for me to describe how excited I was when I first saw the trailer for Marie Antoinette directed by Sofia Coppola. I was about 15 when the trailer came out and I was riveted: cool punky modern music mixed with 18th century fashion and this glamorous story about a doomed queen in revolutionary France. Sign me up!! Remember, this was many years before Hamilton and while I totally found the 18th century cool and exciting and hip, I don’t think that was the consensus and a lot of period pieces I’d seen felt really staid and kind of stodgy. The idea of a fun, edgy, period film with a rock-and-roll vibe about, and presumably for, young people was really, really exciting.

When I saw the film though, I was disappointed. Assuming my expectations might have been too high, I watched it again a few years later: still didn’t like it. Now, when I was at home sick with a cold (not Covid btw if you’re wondering. I tested a lot), I decided that I’d give it a THIRD try, over 15 years after its original release, to see if the film, which had failed to win over fifteen-year-old Carly could win over thirty-year-old Carly. The answer was, sadly, no. It didn’t.

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Friday Finds: American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld (book review)

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Welcome to the first Friday Finds: where I share mostly book recommendations (or recommendations of other cool things I’ve come across). For this week I wanted to chat about American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld. This book came out in 2008 and it’s a novel inspired by the life of the former first lady Laura Bush. A friend of mine handed me the book when I visited York recently and while I was initially a bit unsure – I have no particular interest in Laura Bush and I don’t read a lot of political biographies or autobiographies – once I started it, I was totally swept away. It reminded me more of a sweeping 19th century novel – something like Anna Karenina maybe – that encompasses a coming-of-age story, explorations and reflections on love and marriage, a good bit of melodrama and tragedy, a smattering of politics, and a whole lot else in between.

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