Today is my youngest daughter’s birthday. She’s six, and I can no longer cling to the delusion that my baby is still a baby. I call her “Bubbles” on the blog because 1) she is too young to allow me to plaster her name all over the interwebs and 2) she’s as sweet and good-natured… Read more Happy Birthday, Bubbles
Religious turmoil was ubiquitous in sixteenth century England. In fact, the entire continent of Europe was a roiling cauldron of ecumenical and dogmatic crazy-sauce. The question of who had the “correct” form of Christianity – the Catholics or the Protestants – was so controversial and important that people were burned to death over their answer,… Read more God’s Traitors by Jessie Childs
Today, January 25, is the day Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII wed in secret for the second time in 1533. From the Catholic perspective, it was bigamy, in that the Pope had not released Henry from his first marriage. The marriage was also wildly unpopular with his subjects because Anne was thought of as a… Read more An Anne Boleyn Analog in Modern China?
I am a huge and avid fan of Jane Austen and her works. I am a Janeite, and I wear that badge proudly because as an anthropologist I believe the academic mindset that named those who appreciate Jane Austen the “wrong” (read: non-academic “popular culture”) way is full of “high-culture” baloney. You do not have… Read more The Best Colonel Brandon
For this month’s adventure, I will discuss how I felt about visiting the city of Florence, Italy, a place rich with history. I first became interested in the history of Florence back in 2009, when I was gifted a fiction book about one of Cosimo I de Medici’s daughters. I was hooked. I picked up… Read more Heather Darsie’s Adventure in History
Iconic musical superstar David Bowie has passed away from cancer at the age of 69. His birthday was January 8th, 1947 and I am convinced he held onto life until 2016 because he wanted “69” to show up on every obituary. His overt sexuality and wry sense of humor would both be satisfied by that,… Read more David Bowie: Amazing and Transgressively Gender Fluid
I’ve posted about Maria de Salinas before, on more sites than this one, but she DESERVES multiple posts because she was awesome. On this day in history Maria Willoughby, nee de Salinas, defied a king and arrived at Kimbolton manor house to comfort Katherina of Aragon on her deathbed. Maria de Salinas is one of… Read more Once More About Maria de Salinas
I am writing this to help the many mothers-to-be that have written me about their Kell sensitive pregnancy and how it could have happened. I think the hardest thing for anyone in a modernized medical society to realize just how random and confusing the body still is. You can do every single thing “right”, and… Read more Kell inheritance