Making politics palatable
Jimmy Carter is one of the presidents that comes up when I talk to strangers about this strange Head of State Cakes projects. Everyone bets that the Jimmy Carter cupcake features peanuts or peanut butter. Jimmy Carter means more to me than having been a peanut farmer. Jimmy Carter is the first president during whose […]
I have a soft spot for Herbert Hoover. My first Herbert Hoover memory (I understand that it’s not normal to begin a sentence like that) comes from a book about the presidents that occupied a number of my childhood hours. His entry listed his full name Herbert Clark Hoover. The owner of an associative mind, […]
One of the memories that I have of high school history from the year before I started to hate it (some teachers will do that to you), was a discussion of World War 1. It’s not the discussion that I remember so well, but one student’s ardent desire for peace and hope for what could […]
His muttonchops! Okay, now that we have that out of the way. Martin Van Buren was a man of many nicknames. Old Kinderhook is one of them, based on his home, Kinderhook, New York. While this is up for debate, some believe that Martin Van Buren gave us the word, “okay.” As in O.K. As in […]
Andrew Jackson is one of those larger-than-life presidents. There are so many interesting details about him that it is difficult to choose a starting point. So, let’s just go all the way back to his beginning. Andrew Jackson started his life under difficult circumstances. His father died before he was even born, leaving him with […]
John Quincy Adams is the son in the first US father-son presidential pair. (George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush are the other. Relatedly, William Henry Harrison was grandfather to Benjamin Harrison.) The younger Adams watched as his father performed founding-father duties. Actually, John Quincy Adams did more than watch. As a teenager he […]