Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, Holly, here a little heads up before we
get into this week's behind the scenes. This episode is
one in which Tracy and I talk about TSA screening
at the Atlanta Airport, and this was recorded before the
current DHS shutdown, which has of course led to drastically
prolonged security wait times at airports around the country. So
(00:23):
just keep that in mind as you listen to us
talk about how easy breezy it can sometimes be to
go through security right now, obviously it is much harder
for everyone. I hope you're all taking care of yourselves.
Welcome to stuff you missed in History Class A production
of iHeartRadio. Hello and Happy Friday and Holly Frye and
(00:50):
I'm Tracy V. Wilson. We talked about Richard Peters this week, Yes,
and I said that I would talk about the thing
I understand I think about Richard Peters. All right, you
were going to psychoanalyze him, a thing we don't normally
do a lot of, No, but I have a kinship
here because all of the things that any write up
(01:12):
about him, and especially if you've ever seen the Oakland
presentations about him, where a character comes out as him
and talks about him. They're all very focused on how
driven he was as a businessman and how like he
was always chasing money, which can make him sound like
shallow and greedy. But I know exactly what's going on
(01:35):
in his head. Yeah, he is rebelling against his dad. Yeah,
his entire life, his entire approach to everything is about
saying never me. When he thinks about the way his
father operated and how many times he missed up financially,
I guarantee that was what he was driving, right, that's
(01:55):
like a hundred percent. I understand this rebellious life very
deeply because I'm the same way. I'm always like happen.
Ninety percent of my personality is about rejecting, you know,
things I grew up with. So ure, I one hundred
percent understand exactly. I had this thing that was making
(02:16):
me very frustrated because it was so hard to pin
down his thoughts regarding the institution of slavery, because he
never says anything about it openly. There are times when he,
you know, engages slave labor, right, although he is not
(02:41):
the only person like that's like a company standard that
was going on during some of these things, and certainly
his grandfather we mentioned, you know, had indentured servants, so
there had to have been part of him that was
just accustomed to similar concepts. But I was literally like,
this can't be that. There is literally nothing solid about
(03:04):
his position on this issue other than YO, my fellow Southerners,
don't do this. Don't go into this war. If you
love slavery, you're gonna lose it anyway, so don't do this.
There's nothing about him that ever comments on the morality
of it other than saying the rest of the world
already thinks this is absolutely wrong. And I thought I
was going nuts. I was like, what am I missing?
(03:25):
And then I was looking at another biography about him
that was like similarly frustrated, and I was like, Okay,
the time researching and writing this and you couldn't find anything.
I think I have turned over all the rocks and
there's not some secret rsive somewhere that I would have
access to. So that is frustrating about him. He certainly
(03:49):
benefited from it in some ways, Like I said, was
very open that he knew that it was wrong. The
world thought it was wrong, but not like his personal
and I think sometimes he gets very kind of whitewashed
in tellings about Atlanta history because they're like he didn't
want and it's like, well, I mean the scales, dude
(04:11):
seemed to lean that way in some ways, but also
like you cannot forget this other stuff that went on, right,
So he's a little tricky in that regard. His thing
that we referred to a couple times as his memoir,
which is really a biography of him written by a
relative when he was in his seventies, that starts out
(04:32):
with a very long I mean, it's basically like an
interview with him. It's just him telling, like talking through
his life story, which ends very abruptly at leaving Atlanta
during the Civil War, Like I didn't even find anything
that was specific about how he got out. Oh yeah,
just like I was running all over the city trying
(04:52):
to check on all the railroads. You know, people kept
telling me to leave or that there were Yankees coming
and that it was not going to be you know,
we knew that fires had started. Boy, I barely made
it out of there. And then it's like the relative
that's writing it kind of picks up there and is
like and then he was really tired. And then they
(05:12):
tell the rest of his story through letters, and it's
kind of funny his correspondence back and forth with people.
It is kind of funny in that regard. But I
like having his point of view because he was very
funny and telling his stories. And like I said, it's
very obvious that he had disdain for his father. He
(05:33):
would never say anything like my father was really stupid
or blah blah blah. But he would be like, well,
we lost everything and then we got it again, and
then we lost it again and we got it again.
And then at one point my dad mailed me ten
dollars and I mailed it back to him because he
told me he was super flush. And then the next
time I saw him, he was talking about how he
had nothing. So that kept happening, Like it's just yeah,
(05:59):
it's just very interesting. He, like I said, had many
witty anecdotes, but one of them that I liked was
him talking about the first time he went to Atlanta,
which was in eighteen forty four. And the thing that
I love is actually what he says about somebody else
that was on the trip with him. He says, quote,
(06:19):
it was after dark when we arrived and Judge King
unfortunately fell in a well which was being dug. What
it was only ten feet deep, and we soon pulled
him out, but he was highly disgusted and for years
would not buy Atlanta real estate. That's amazing. I love
that this person was just mad at all of Atlanta
because he sell it a well. It's reminding me of
(06:41):
how decades ago I had a boyfriend who broke up
with me, and my impression of what had happened was
that he had left me for somebody he was hanging
out with in Charlotte, and then I just had a
vendetta against the whole city of Charlotte for years. Afterward.
I was like, nope, I'm not going there, not going
(07:03):
to visit there. I hate it, not anybody from there.
Uh uh yeah, that's fair similar except you fell in
a well. I just love that, love it. He also
apparently had all of these maxims he would tell his
children and his grandchildren. Okay, and some of them are
(07:24):
very like obvious things you know about just like you know,
being smart and you know, treating people fairly blah blah
blahh okay. I loved this one that was included in
that account, which was if the weather be wet, don't fret.
If the weather be cold, don't scold. But with the
weather that's sent learned to be content. Ohkay. And I'm
(07:45):
like that's actually that's actually pretty good advice, just like
it's like, you get what you get and don't be
upset it is. It's great, which I feel like he
was very good at and I think that's part of
why he was so good business because he can see like, Okay,
this is a mess. How can we deal with this
in a way that will ultimately not be a mess
(08:07):
for me and make me a ton of money? Like
that flower mill where he's like, well, flower mill is
not gonna go. I can't keep I cannot keep trying
to make this happen because it's right. And his explanation
for that other mill that was selling flour below cost
was that the person that owned it had an iron
works that needed fast cash. Oh so he was willing Yeah,
(08:30):
it's like the lost leader for the iron works. He
was willing to lose out over here so that he
could actually keep this other thing going, which is interesting,
but yeah, where he's like what can I do here?
I know I'll just sell these things and make a
huge profitence, and he did astonishing. There are many other
things about the city that are attributed to him and
(08:50):
his family, like Ivy Hall, which is now owned by
the Savannah College of Art and Design, was built by
his son Edward in eighteen eighty three, when Richard was
still alive. You know, they're just like a kajillion little
things like that. I still just like, looking at a
map of downtown Atlanta, I'm like, in midtown, I'm like,
he owned all of this. It reminds me a little
(09:13):
bit of when we talked about Levi Strauss and oh yeah,
bought so much real estate in San Francisco, right, and
the prices went way up, and I can do that.
I also want to talk about Oakland Cemetery because I
love it. Yeah, Oakland is unique because it's one of
the few places in Atlanta that was not destroyed in
(09:34):
the Civil War, right, and it was founded before that,
of course, so it offers, you know, a lot of
history that would have would have been lost. One of
the things that I read while I was prepping this,
and I think I knew this from before, was that
the last lots that were sold at Oakland were sold
(09:54):
in eighteen eighty eight, but they were sold old and
purchased by families in large numbers, so they are still doing. Yeah,
active burials of family members descended from those people who
purchased those lots. Yeah, one hundred and fifty years almost later, right,
(10:17):
wild Yeah, many years ago, we were talking about Oakland
Cemetery and an event of some sort that had happened
had been that we had gone to one or both
of us had gone to it. Oh, I know exactly
what you were much talking about, because I was going
to talk about it too, and someone in the comments
was so upset, Yes, at the idea of a cemetery
(10:42):
being used as a public green space when that was
what cemeteries like this were created to do, to be
both a place for the burial of the dead but
also a public green space. Yes, I can tell you
exactly the specifics of what they were mad about, Okay,
(11:03):
because I don't remember that detail. It was a five K.
It was a five K called run like Hell. So
when Atlanta had tornadoes, I don't remember what year that was,
there was a lot of damage at Oakland. And Oakland
is a cemetery that does not have its own like
internal upkeep maintenance, fun so that group that we mentioned
(11:30):
at the end of the episode, the Historic Oakland Foundation,
basically does a variety of things so that they can
raise money to do this. And after that tornado, someone
on in the foundation came up with this idea of
what if we had a five K that goes through
the cemetery and in the surrounding neighborhoods. And I was like,
I'm all in. This is exactly my flavor of five
(11:50):
K and I ran it for several years, and we
had posted a picture of me from that race on
our Facebook page, and that's what somebody got really irate about.
And I think they had it in their heads that
we were just like racing over graves, when in fact,
there's like a whole paved path area through that that's
quite wide and easily traversible. But also like, if they
(12:11):
don't do things like that, that cemetery falls apart right
right like, and they do lots of great stuff there.
They do like a big picnic there every year where
people show up an amazing historical costume. I went to
that a number of times. They do I forget the
name of it. They do like a bruise in the
tombs thing, which you're not actually in the tombs, but
(12:33):
like they'll do like a beer night there where they
have local vendors come out and do crawdouts and stuff.
They do so many great things, and a lot of
it is great for the community. It keeps the history
of the space alive because they do have people that
come out and talk about the people who are buried
there and the important history of it. And also you know,
just all of these pieces of Atlanta history in the
(12:54):
community history that I always think about that person that
got really mad, and I'm like, I'm sorry you got mad,
but I think you've missed understood. Yeah. Well, and I
think they were upset because they were like if my
family member was being buried and there was a road
race going by, I would be really upset. Yeah, I
see that point of view. Ideally, a family would not
(13:15):
plan their loved ones burial during the five K like
there would be some communication there exactly. There is you know,
cross comparison of calendars. And I know you can't always plan.
You know, you can't plan when a loved one is
(13:36):
going to die, right you will need funeral services, but
you could still you know, work with the schedule to
make it all happen. Yeah, well, and it happens all
the time. People whose family members are being buried at
Oakland know that that that it is both a burial
space and a green space where things like this happen. Like, yeah,
(13:57):
just a community space part of it. Yeah. Yeah, it's beautiful.
I feel like so many people I know love Oakland.
It's one of their favorite places in Atlanta. Yeah. I
remember when that tornado happened. I don't remember if I
was still living there, That's my memory on the timeline
is vague, but I remember when that happened and how
there were a lot of like monuments that had been
toppled and had to be repaired. You absolutely were, yeah,
(14:20):
absolutely were still living here. Yes, because that was before
I think you and I were doing this podcast, oh
so long ago. I'm pretty sure I could be wrong,
but I think I think, yeah, that was rough, if
(14:43):
I'm remembering correctly. At one of the events that I
went to at Oakland, there was somebody who did a
one person show, I've Gone with the Wind. Yeah, yeah,
I think it was so funny. Yeah, just great, just great.
I yeah it I love it. Listen, we don't talk
about Atlanta history very much. No, we have a lot
(15:05):
more Massachusetts crap from me, and it does tickle me
to no end that all of the things that people
talk about is quintessential Atlanta. Many of them were instituted
by a dude from Philadelphia. Yeah, I did not know
that at all. That does tickle me a little, like, yeah,
guess what I did. Also want to mention, I like
(15:38):
how tickled you are by whatever it is? Well, because
I don't even know how to talk about it without
it's so absurd that it's funny to me and I
have to air quotes this. The grid of it, it's
a mess, right. There are parts of downtown and Midtown
that have some grid to them, but there's also some
(16:00):
cockamamy stuff going on just goes through randomly. Part of
that is my understanding I have a fact checked this
is that some of it was like this was a
cowpath and then we paved it and now it is
a road, right, which is not all that unusual in
various places, But in a city that grew as big
as Atlanta did, it's kind of unusual that they would
be retained as roads and not restructured to make the
(16:23):
infrastructure more square. But that just like every time I
was reading something that said he named the north to
South roads this, and I'm like, well, they're kind of north.
They're all meandery at times. Yeah, And I didn't even
delve into because does this get you When people talk
about Peachtree h and they go which one? There are
(16:48):
so many and there are so many, But if you
live in Atlanta and someone says it's on Peachtree, you
know which one they mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So for
anybody that's outside the city, I understand that when you
encounter in your directions in your GPS Peachtree Place, Peachtree Circle,
Patree Terraces, et cetera. It's all frustrating and confusing. But
(17:11):
if you say Peachtree Road, there's the one road that
they mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I also just want to
have a little bit of love for Hartsfield Jacks at
the International Airport. I love that airport because I feel
like the Atlanta Airport gets a lot of grief from travelers,
(17:32):
and I understand it. It is a delta hub. It
is very big, so if you have to go from
one terminal to another, it might be a long way.
If you have a connection, Yes, it is very busy.
The security lines can be very long. I've just said
a lot of downsides to the Atlanta Airport, But I
(17:54):
love how big it is. I love how spacious a
lot of it is. I love the plane train that
takes you to all the different terminals, or you can
walk through the tunnel and look at all the beautiful
art that's down there if you have time, and all
the historical displays. If you have time, if you want
something to eat and it's not in the terminal that
(18:15):
you're in, and you have a lot of time, you
can go to the other terminal and get back. It
is not a problem. I used to go to the
International terminal routinely and have my dinner there because it
was bright and pretty and brand new, and then I
would go to wherever my actual airplane was taking off. Yeah.
It also has like full size stores, yeah, yeah, like
(18:39):
that are not the little Kiosky style or even like
I call them pocket stores, like those little, you know,
mini ones that are like a tiny bodega of makeup,
but like full size. Yeah. I used to use a
lot of products from the body Shop, and there was
a full sized body shop store in the International terminal,
and I would go when I was traveling somewhere I
(19:01):
would go. I would go through security. I would go
on my little shopping trip, the body shop, buy all
my stuff. I've told a friend of mine the story,
and she was like, can we discuss how you're traveling
for work so much that you are buying your personal
care products at the airport. Yeah, but that way you
don't have to pack stuff. Yeah, it's already through security.
You could just have it. It's the best, the best,
(19:23):
the best. Yeah. I mean I listen, I'm at the
airport all the time. M hm. So I'm very familiar
with and comfortable with it. I am like that almost
obnoxious person that will help confuse travelers. Sure where, I'm like,
where do you actually need to go? Because I can
see on your face that you are befuddled and overwhelmed. Huh. Listen.
Have I snuck some people through the sky priority security
(19:46):
lane when they look desperate? Yes? I have, Yes, I have.
Because you know, like it it can be it can
be a little dicey. Yeah. When Patrick and I were
dating one time, I dropped him off at the Atlanta
Airport and the security line had wound all the way
through the windy path. Yeah, and all the way out
through the atrium and all the way out farther out.
(20:07):
It was the longest I've ever seen it, and I
was like, I don't love this, but I still love
that airport. It has, in my opinion, gotten better because
they have multiple security checkpoints now correct, so it's not
all wadding up in one place. And I just feel
like they're doing a better job of flow management for
(20:30):
the most part. If you're there at a peak time
when it's busy, you're still going to wait for a bit.
But also, again, I fly a lot, so I'm met
a lot of airports, and I know that there are
security people that can be brusket every airport, but I
also feel like in Atlanta, I have a lot of
great experiences with security in Atlanta where they've been extraordinarily
(20:51):
nice to me, you know, super cool. Yeah. I have
done whatever they could to make something easier. I've seen
them helping other travelers that are super were confused. Yeah. Yeah.
Also when those people were not getting paid and were
still doing their job, they were so nice. I would
have been biting every person that walked through and they
(21:14):
were lovely. Yeah. And if you thank them, one guy
thought was gonna cry because he just was like clearly
so overwhelmed and stressed. Yeah. Anyway, when I moved to Massachusetts,
I did so via the Atlanta airport, and I had
to go through airport security with two laptops and a
cat and my rollerboard, and because of how everything was packed,
(21:39):
I had to take both laptops out of the roller board.
And then when you are traveling with an animal, you
have to take the animal out and you have to
walk through the thing. So I'm walking with this cat,
and two things happened. One is a random other passenger
corralled all of my stuff for me while I was
being swabbed for explosive resident on my cat. And then
(22:01):
also there was another TSA agent beyond the one who
was like, I'm holding my cat and like getting my
hands swabbed for explosive residue in this other TSA agent
was like, please let that woman go. That cat is terrified.
And I think had I been at a different airport,
I would have had a way harder time. Yeah, my understanding,
(22:23):
And I haven't tested this and I haven't double checked it,
but I saw someone talking about it recently that if
you are traveling with a pet in Atlanta and possibly
other airports, you can say, I have a pet, can
we do a private screening ring? Oh? Nice? This was
also that way, yeah right right, years before this would
(22:43):
have been an option where they will take you to
a different room that is closed off so you don't
have to worry about how nice my cat freaked out
and jumped out of my arms and now I don't
know where it is in the airport. They might have
instituted that after some pets got lost in Atlanta, right,
So I know there are some options like that. You
just had to talk to a security supervisor, usually an
ask nice, but yeah there. I love the Atlanta Airport.
(23:05):
If you're going to the Atlanta Airport and you want
to know where the best place is to eat our man,
hit me up. I know, I'm all mm hmm. Cat
Corus got a great, great restaurant there on the on
the a con course, some good shrimp and grits and
a great cocktail program. Love it in any case, listen,
I love my city. I love Atlanta. We talked about
(23:30):
Elizabeth Bulhame in chemistry this week. Yes, uh, I enjoy
finding random name mentions and books and going and figuring
out if that was the real person. If I'm reading
a work of fiction. Yeah, what happens in nonfiction too, obviously,
Like I'll be reading a book about something and a
(23:51):
random historical person will be named as having been connected somehow.
There were other folks, and these last couple of books
in the Edinburgh Night series I noted as potential topics
who were just mentioned as side mentions at one point
in the book. We may come to those at some
point later. Elizabeth Fulham, though, I found her fascinating. Yeah,
(24:15):
even though we know basically nothing. Yeah, I have so
many questions. Yeah, tell me some of your questions. Did
any of this I mean, because you know, I'm a
textile girly. Yeah, and I die a lot of my
own fabric because I like customized stuff. Did she use
any of it for anything? Yeah? I don't know. So
(24:36):
I wear the clothes made of the purple fabric with
goldflets in it. Where are they? Yeah? So I read
the whole her preface, her introduction, and then I sort
of read parts of the experimental sections because it is
a fairly long book. And it reached a point where
I was like, reading every single one of these experiments
(24:56):
is not going to add more to the episode. Yeah,
so it's possible that she talked about using fabric for
something at some point and that I just didn't read
it in the parts of the book that I read.
Because it's also very interesting to me that she was
working mostly with silk because silk is, Yeah, this sounds
a little counterintuitive for people that have not worked with it.
(25:19):
Silk is a little easier to die than most other
fabrics because it just like slorps up pigment really fast.
So it's interesting that she was working mostly with that.
And I am I would be curious if there were
any like if she ever did a comparison of like
I did the exact same thing with a linen and
(25:40):
with a silk and here, because I mean, if you
do the same die bath with those two fabrics, they're
going to look quite different, right, even if you have, like,
you know, a really incredible high quality pigment. So that's
all fascinating to me. I also couldn't help but think
the whole time that if she lived today, she would
(26:00):
feel like a kid in a candy store, because you
can go to your local craft store and they're just
aisles of dying options. You can get fabric die in
the grocery store. Yeah, for heaven's sakes, there are entire
online forums of people just sharing tips about die, how
do you die, how to achieve a particular die if
(26:22):
you're trying to replicate one specific garment and people have
formulas that they share, And I'm like, she would she
would cry with joy. She would cry with joy, or
she would be like, you're all doing it wrong, you lazy,
lazy prop Other people did all the work. I don't know.
I also think she really would have enjoyed like today's
(26:45):
world of science communication that's really accessible to the general public.
Ye Like, like we said, we don't really know if
she went to any of the public lectures you didn't
have to be enrolled as a student. She may have,
she may not have. Those sorts of things definitely would
have been less accessible for women, even if they were
(27:05):
open to the public at the time. But if she
were living today in a world where you can go
to YouTube and there are a ton of different people
like explaining things or showing, you know, showing their process
for doing an experiment or for dyeing something or for
doing a craft, like all of that stuff. There's just
a much broader world of information access. Yeah that, you know,
(27:31):
as long as she had access to a computer and
an Internet connection, she would be able to get to Yeah.
I think she would have been very into. Imagine how
wowed she would be just studying the ways different cultures
have used dye and pigment textiles, you know, like techniques
(27:52):
like batique would just blow her mind, like, no, we're
gonna put a wax resist on this first, and then right,
we're going to do that whole process been working on Like, yeah,
I just think she would be wowed by it. Yeah, yeah, Yeah,
I wonder what she was like as a person. I
(28:12):
also wonder what her relationship with her husband was like,
because there's that part in the preface that makes it
sound like when she was like I have this idea
that he was dismissive. Was he dismissive because he was
underestimating her? Was he dismissive because of what he had
learned about chemistry that just made him think it wouldn't work?
(28:33):
Like which, right? But exactly was like how much was
he encouraging her and how much was he more tolerating her?
Don't really know, right? Or did he just lack the
imagination to envision what she was talking about. Yeah, which
is not that sounds like a criticism of him, but
like that's a thing that people come up against all
the time when they're like, I have an idea and
(28:54):
it's just so unique that people cannot cannot really perceive
or see or imagine what that would look like. So
they're like, I don't think so, I don't think that's possible. Yeah.
I imagine that her maps with gold cities and silver
rivers must have been really beautiful. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she
(29:17):
would put those maps on a fabric and then use
that fabric for a gown. I love it. I love it,
Like I literally my brain just keeps clicking through all
the things that she would be wowed by, like textile
medium that you can mix with paints so that you
can paint directly on fabric and it won't get crispy,
(29:40):
it will still have the flow of fabric. That would
blow her mind. No, you can just use gold paint, babe.
It's easy it so you don't have to do any
chemical processing. Yeah. Yeah. One of the things that was
kind of amused by and also annoyed by was the
review of her book in the Gentleman's magazine because of
(30:03):
its being like, wow, we really thought this must be
a disguised feminist screed, clearly written by Mary Wolstoncraft or somebody,
and wow, it turns out to me about science. And
I was like, did somebody send you a copy of
the book that didn't have the preface in it? Because
some of her preface? I feel like, would annoy whoever
(30:26):
wrote this review? Right? Yeah? No? Or did you just
skip over the preface and go write people? Do some
people do do that? Yeah? Yeah? How many prefaces have
we read on the show that start out with the
like some variation of the phrase no one reads prefaces.
But it's important to me to say this. I mean
(30:48):
I can think of several. So yeah. I'm also thinking
about the acknowledgments at the end of books, where it
seems like the author is just taking for granted that
nobody's going to read that part. Yeah. Yeah, Anyway, I
am very curious if in some you know, church parish
(31:10):
records somewhere we know more about her, or some very
local source of information, if there's more details that we
could find. I think a lot of other people that
we have been talking about on the show before from
you know, somewhere in the British and Irish Isles. The
(31:31):
fact that we don't that there wasn't a civil registration
when they were living was not as big of a
deal because they were a more prominent person and they
had families that were keeping up with that information or
other people writing about them is shortly after or during
their lives that like recorded a lot of that information.
We just don't have that for her, and so it's
(31:51):
a person with basically no biography for us to talk
about on the show. Oh Elizabeth, I love her. Next
episode is not about anyone named Elizabeth. I don't believe you.
I don't know what's happening after that may may not
be an Elizabeth, but after that is Unearthed, so at
(32:13):
least it will not be named Elizabeth, though there could
be an Elizabeth within it. I would say there are
good odds of someone named Elizabeth in some way coming
up during Unearthed, either as a subject or a researcher.
Great totally possible, Great totally possible. This edition of on
(32:33):
Earthed is all about Elizabeth. The first. We're only going
to have Queen Elizabeth unearthings, nothing else, So whatever's happening
on your weekend, I hope it is great. If there
is something that has sparked your curiosity, I hope so
much that you get to indulge that curiosity over the weekend,
(32:56):
because that can bring so much joy and fulfillment into life.
If you are just having to keep your head down
and keep going this weekend, I hope that is going
as well as possible. We will be back on Monday
with something brand new, and tomorrow we'll have a Saturday classic.
(33:21):
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