1791

 

Started reading Hogeland's book yesterday. The "hook" that drew me in, I think, was this line in the prologue. It was in the fall of 1791, when "gangs on the western frontier started attacking collectors of the first federal tax on an American product, hard liquor." That and the fact that it was enough of a problem to cause George Washington to raise an army of 13,000 soldiers to put it down. Oh what a peace-loving people we Americans are! :-)

Notes by Firefox

  

Notes by Firefox is a pretty helpful extension. I like the way you can launch internet searches directly from your notes. In the case of the photo above, I searched for and found information concerning the word "obsequies". 

Garboils

Rather sinister looking character, don't you think? Found him on the back cover of Alice Hogge's book God's Secret Agents. It's a detail from a painting in the Palazzo Pitti collection. 

 

Also, I found a couple of interesting words during yesterday's reading, traduce and garboils.  The former was one I was at least somewhat familiar with. One of those rarely used SAT words, I think. The latter, though, was one I'd never heard of before. Here's I found it used in Hogge's book:

 

"Robert Persons, for whom the greatest contempt was reserved, was described as 'the principal author . . . of all garboils at home'." 

Library Haul

Headed to my local library and picked up two more books, Hogeland's The Whiskey Rebellion and O'Keefe's One Day in August. Still working my way through Miller's Music Theory and Hogge's God's Secret Agents.