24 hours until Event at Politics and Prose!

February 18, 2018

SO MUCH TO SHARE!!

Getting myself ready to speak tomorrow night at Politics & Prose for Presidents' Day. Given the setting and the holiday, this talk will celebrate the Schuyler sisters and the witty, rebellious PEGGY, of course. But I will also be talking about George Washington who LOVED to minuet, adored his dogs, to wrestle to solve arguments, and to give very sound love advice to his nieces. (They were to look for men whose gaze was only, truly, for them.) He also happened to be godparent along with Peggy to the Schuyler's youngest daughter. So he and Peggy definitely knew one another AND had the opportunity to contredanse.

I'll also be sharing tidbits about the Schuyler sisters' father, Philip, who among many other things ran one of the most important spy rings of the war; his friend Benedict Arnold, who I think it's fair to say Congress made a traitor by its petty, regional bickering and favoritism; a dashing Frenchman who hoped to marry Peggy and showed such valor at Stony Point that he was one of only 8 honored with a Congressional Medal of Honor during the Revolution; a double agent named Moses Harris who saved himself from death by "giving the Masonic sign of distress" while being hanged; how the rapscallion who Angelica eloped with won her heart; and, oh yes, of course, Alexander Hamilton, who Peggy once quipped would like to be a knight "of the bedchamber." And so much more!

Hope to see you there or maybe in March, on St. Patrick's Day, at Scrawl Books in Reston. (There I'll be honoring the thousands of Irish-Americans who served in the Continental Army, including her Uncle Johnny, the Army's surgeon, lovingly nicknamed "Dr. Bones" by Lafayette because of a song Johnny liked to sing, and whose favorite damnation of stupidity was to call someone "nincompoopa!" I think I will start using that word myself. After all I am a Malone...)