Hang the King and Queen in the Dining Room
Back to the seventeenth century, where I am working my way through a series of instructional books produced to meet the apparent and universal demand for better health, more wealth, and an enhanced...
View ArticleSeptember Strategies
I had high hopes for this particular September, one of the very few Septembers that I didn’t have to go back to school as a student or teacher in my entire life as I am on sabbatical. I’ve always...
View ArticleConsiderations on Color
I teach what is commonly known as the “Scientific Revolution” in several of my courses, and I always endeavor to expose my students to the broad range of the “new science” in the seventeenth century as...
View ArticleThe Worst Day/Samuel Wardwell
I always think about the Salem Witch Trials in September, as the cumulative hysteria of 1692 was coming to a close with the execution of the last eight victims on September 22. Every year at this time...
View ArticleSugar and Sage in the 17th Century
I’m working on three projects during my sabbatical this semester, but the one that has (re-)captured my attention, and to which I have devoted the most time so far, is an old study of the more...
View ArticleFireworks for the Fifth
I’ve been immersed in seventeenth-century English instructional texts during my sabbatical, so it wasn’t difficult to find directions for fireworks for Guy Fawkes Night. Whether it was the foiled...
View ArticleReally Rubbish Royal Relics
Sometimes, no all the time, I think that I’m devoting too much time to social media, but occasionally you find yourself in the middle of some very interesting exchanges. The other day a really funny...
View ArticleIf We Can’t Picture Them, Were They There?
We don’t have any portraits of Salem women before the eighteenth century: the (European) women of Salem’s (European) founding century are therefore difficult to picture. We are left with nineteenth-...
View ArticleUnder Cover in the Renaissance
It’s a beautiful day here in Salem, but I’m in lockdown in my study, more than halfway through the very last chapter of my book! I am taking a break to show you some early modern masks, just because...
View ArticleIn Which I Try to Understand the Peabody Essex Museum’s Current Exhibition on...
The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM), located here in Salem, deserves considerable credit for engaging in and with the history of the city’s trademark event, the Salem Witch Trials, in a series of...
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