The Photography of Frances Benjamin Johnston

Fannie Johnston is tied to SO MANY people and events that we have talked about on the show before. She’s like a history nexus point. And she was able to make a very nice living for herself as a photographer in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Wilson. Uh. And,
as is often the case, sometimes when you work on
one show, you spiral off and start seeing other things

(00:24):
that are vaguely related to the topic of that show
that you really want to do an episode on. It
happens to us all the time, and sometimes I can
put those off for a while and I'm like, I
don't feel um like a burning need, like I gotta
do this now, But I don't know why this one
not the same deal. I wanted to do it right away.
So while I was working on our recent live show

(00:45):
that we did about spirit photography, I of course stumbled
across a whole bunch of other interesting photographers from history
that I wanted to talk about. But this one in
particular really stood out. And initially it was because of
a very striking and really fun sell portrait that she
made in the late eighteen hundreds. But here's what really
struck me about today's topic, Fannie Johnston and her work.

(01:08):
She has tied to so many people and events that
we have talked about on this show before that she's
kind of like a history nexus point. She was really
well connected and she was able to make a very
nice living for herself as a photographer. She had a
very long career that spanned the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. So Fanny was born Frances Benjamin Johnston on

(01:29):
January fifte eighteen sixty four. Parents were Francis Antoinette Benjamin
and Anderson Donophan Johnston. She was born in Grafton, West Virginia.
The Johnston's moved to Rochester, New York, when Fanny was
still very young so they could be nearer to her
maternal grandmother. By the mid eighteen seventies, the Johnston's had
moved to Washington, d c. Anderson was working at the

(01:52):
Treasury Department as a bookkeeper, and Fanny's mother, Frances, was
a journalist. She wrote for the Baltimore Sun and other
DC are in newspapers. The Johnston's really supported Fanny. They
encouraged her to study art when she showed an interest
in it. She was in a position of really rare
privilege for a young woman of her era. Her family

(02:13):
could afford to support her while she studied, and they
were a hun percent willing to just let her figure
out her own path and her own desires. Yeah, does
not appear at any point in time that they were like,
are you gonna get married? Are you going to find
a husband? Are you going to be a mom? They
really were like, great, go study art wherever you want.
In three, Fanny graduated from Notre Dame of Maryland Collegiate

(02:35):
Institute for Young Ladies, and after her undergraduate work, she
traveled to Paris to attend the Academy Juliem, where she
studied art, particularly drawing and painting. She's been several years
in Paris and then returned home to Washington, d c.
In five, she joined the Art Students League, which was
an organization that offered ongoing development as well as studio

(02:56):
space and a sense of community. Fanny also started working
in journal is um, first as an illustrator for news stories,
but sometime in the late eighteen eighties you'll sometimes see
it listed as eighteen eight Fanny discovered the field that
would become her life's passion, and that was photography. She
started studying photography at the Smithsonian Institution under the mentorship

(03:17):
of Thomas Smiley, who was a Scottish American photographer who
served as the Smithsonian's first staff photographer and first photography curator.
And that first camera she owned came from George Eastman
of Eastman Kodak. The story of how that happened is
a little bit fuzzy. Fanny would help people later in
her life that she wrote to Eastman asking some questions

(03:39):
about the camera and then he sent her one as
a gift. More likely than not, she had connections to
the Eastman's through her mother's side of the family. Yeah,
she kind of liked to tell it, almost as though
she was a random, anonymous person just sending him a
letter and asking some questions, and that he generously sent
this back. But it does seem, especially because the Eastman

(03:59):
family was also from Rochester, that they were somehow connected
to her mother's side. Fanny's formal art training was something
that informed her work with a camera and gave her
something of a head start in that field compared to
other photographers. She also was very aware of this and
a little bit proud of it. She had a sense
of composition and light value that really enabled her to

(04:20):
frame incredibly beautiful photos. Through her Lens. Her Parisian training
also gave her a degree of cash and esteem that,
along with her connections through Smelly and her family, put
her on really good footing to start her career. She
started that career right away. Not long after starting her
study with Smelly, Fanny also started working as a professional

(04:40):
freelance photographer. By eighty nine, she was publishing her own
articles with full photographic illustration for publications like Cosmopolitan, Harper's Weekly,
and a lot of other periodicals. The first of these
was a piece called Uncle Sam's Money that ran in
Demorris's Family magazine, and it showed the process of producing currency,

(05:01):
including both coins and bills. In eighteen ninety one, Fanny
Johnston had her first show, mounting an exhibit at the
Washington d c Venue the Cosmos Club, which was quote
a private social club for women and men distinguished in science, literature,
the arts, a learned profession or public service, which was
founded in eighteen seventy eight and still exists today. She

(05:23):
soon started having showings of her work in New York
City as well. In eight two and eighteen ninety three,
Fanny was one of the official photographers of the World's
Columbian exhibition in Chicago. While Fanny continued her freelance journalism
photography in the mid eighteen nineties, she also opened her
own photography studio. The studio she set up specifically to

(05:45):
take portraits, and it was behind her parents house on
V Street in Washington, d C. It was really portrait
commissions that made up the bulk of her income for years.
Her family was well connected and that meant that the
high society of Washington, d C. Which included some very
powerful people, would go to her for their portraits. These
connections in turn fed her journalism career. She got great

(06:07):
assignments from editors who knew that she could get access
to people that the average photographer might not be able to. Yeah,
this is kind of a good example of like how
a position of privilege can really help someone when we're
not conscious of it. It really was a case for
like her family's positioning and how many people they knew

(06:28):
and how many people like them were feeding both sides
of her career like one to the other. In the
late eighteen nineties, Fannie worked for George Grantham Bain, who
was a photographer who had started the Bain News Service,
which was a photosyndicate that served periodicals throughout the country.
I have seen the numbers as more than fourteen of
like the major newspapers in the country. We're using photos

(06:49):
from his service. Fanny also gained access to the White
House around this time as a regular photographer. That was
a job she initially got on assignment through demorists, and
she took photos in the White House beginning in the
Benjamin Harrison presidency, and she continued assignments they're right up
through the Theodore Roosevelt administration. Coming up, we'll talk about
some of Fanny's most famous photographs, which are self portraits,

(07:13):
but first we will pause for a quick sponsor break.
As we mentioned before the break, some of Johnston's most
famous photographs were taken during the eighteen nineties, and these
were self portraits showing her in a variety of different guises,

(07:33):
and they served as an interesting commentary on the way
women were seen and how they perceived themselves as the
Victorian era came to a close. This is also one
of these portraits that caught my eye initially when I
stumbled across her. In one self portrait, she looks every
bit the society lady. She's posing in a fur in
a wide brim hat that is trimmed with ribbon and

(07:54):
several ostrich plumes, and her elbow rests on the arm
of the chair that she's sitting in, and her gloved
hands sort of waches up to her face, with her
index finger resting on her jaw and the rest of
her fingers tucked under her chin. And another photo which
is quite famous, she's very unladylike for the time period.
She sits in front of a fire on what looks

(08:14):
like a box. Her right ankle is crossed over her
left knee so that reveals her petticoat and stockings. She's
wearing a plaid blouse with leg of mutton sleeves and
a dark cap on her head. Her right elbow is
balanced on her right knee and she's leaned forward at
an angle to do this. She has a cigarette and
her right hand and then her in her left hand,
which is that her hip. She has a beer stein.

(08:36):
She appears to be deeply interested in something to the
left of the frame from the viewer's angle, and there
are six photographic portraits on the mantel behind her, all
featuring male subjects. She titled this photo New Woman. It's
the striking self portrait that Holly referenced back at the
top of the show. Yeah, I really love that picture
me too. It's one of those things that it's staged,

(08:59):
obviously because it's a self portrait, but it she's so
good at it that it does look like you've kind
of caught someone in the middle of a moment where
they're completely unconscious of when they look. She looks like
she is super engaged with something, like she's leaned way forward.
It looks like she may be about to say something
or tell someone off. It's just that's a really great

(09:19):
photo and very much not appropriate for a lady of
the day. She also made several portraits in which she
is gender bending fully dressed in men's wear and sporting
a false mustache, and in some of the portraits where
she's dressed as a man, another woman appears who is
also dressed in the same style full men's wear with
a mustache, and a third woman in more traditional ladies

(09:40):
wear for the period also appears in those pictures. So
these are another self portraits, including one in which she's
going about her work in the studio, offer a unique
spectrum of identities for one woman, and it's possible that
her chameleon like nature was helping her make her way
in a profession that was really dominated by men. She
succeeded in this field in spite of it being so

(10:03):
dominated by men. She clearly understood the social rules regarding
the expectations of dress and behavior for women. She was
also comfortable stepping way outside those boundaries. Yeah. Again, that's
one of those things that I think most children that
had not been born to the privilege of having parents
going yes, explore yourself, would never have gotten to that

(10:24):
level of confidence where they would be able to do
those things, particularly in this era. Unsurprisingly, Johnston was outspoken
about the need for women to redefine their options and
their identities outside of the predefined roles of mother, wife,
and homemaker. She wrote an article for The Ladies Home
Journal which was titled what a Woman Can Do with

(10:45):
a Camera, and this article urged women to consider photography
as a profession and a means to support themselves. The
article opens with quote, in order to solve successfully the
problem of making a business profitable, the woman who either
must or will earn her own living needs to discover
a field of work for which there is a good
demand and which there is not too great competition, and

(11:09):
which her individual tastes render in some way congenial. She
goes on to mention that for some women that quote
restricted fields of typewriting, stenography, clerking, bookkeeping, et cetera, would
prove wearing and uncongenial to them. Fanny also listed the
qualities that she believed were necessary for successive photography. In

(11:29):
those included good common sense, unlimited patients to carry her
through endless failures, equally unlimited tact, good taste, a quick eye,
a talent for detail, and a genius for hard work.
She felt that a woman who was hard working and
energetic could find success, and that quote small beginnings could
reap large results. So this article is not a bunch

(11:51):
of cheerful fluff about how all you need is determination.
Fanny really broke down exactly how the industry worked and
what fields were good for beginners. Portraits she felt were
best saved for when you got a little more experience,
but taking pictures of homes, animals, and children outdoors, and
staging photographic copies of paintings were all good places for

(12:12):
beginners to make some money. And she really made the
point that while someone wanting to go into the field
could get training for taking photos, running a business was
a whole other skill set. She was very clear about this,
and she thought it was best learned through experience. She
also felt that professional photographers had to stay on top
of the latest advancements of the art. She then included

(12:35):
practical information about cameras and lenses and tips for taking
photos to help a newcomer get started. She concludes by
insisting that women have to charge an appropriate amount for
their work. Quote good work should command good prices, and
the wise woman will place a paying value upon her
best efforts. She explains that this is really where tact

(12:57):
is necessary and remains steadfast throughout the Photography is the
perfect career for an ambitious woman. I feel like the
good work should command good prices, should be like still today,
framed and hung everywhere I walk. Yep. She was not
one of those all work for exposure women. She was
very savvy. It was like, I made this art for you,

(13:18):
you will pay me now. Uh. That article appeared in
Ladies Home Journal in September of eight, and it was
much talked about even a year later. The same article
was quoted almost entirely in another article, this one appearing
in the periodical The Photo Beacon, which was of course
aimed towards photographers, and uh, this iteration of it makes
clear that Fanny's advice is good for not just women

(13:41):
but all photographers. In the October volume in which it
appears at states quote her counsel on the management and
arrangement of a portrait studio, on the treatment of sitters,
and on the business side of photography is so sound
and so applicable not only to those who were about
to enter professional life, but also to those who are

(14:01):
already in business, that we reprint it in full as
an interesting side note as we consider Johnston's writing, which
is full of ideas of empowerment for women. Johnson identified
as Bohemian and not as any kind of activist from
the suffrage movement or anything else that was related specifically
to the rights of women. Obviously, we don't mean bohemian

(14:23):
in the sense of someone from Bohemia, or in the
more pejorative connotation that it took on for a while
in connection with the romani Fanny was using it in
that romanticized sense that tied it to unconventional artists, and
that usage came into popularity in the mid nineteenth century
with the staging of the play La Vita la Boem

(14:44):
in Paris, which was an adaptation of the On Remorgay
novel Sende la la Bohem. And coming up, we're going
to talk about an event that has been featured many
times on the show. Uh comes up over and over
because it too was an excess point in history. We're
gonna get to that right after we first have a
spaw her break. The nineteen hundred exposition Universe in Paris

(15:11):
has come up a number of times on the show.
I feel like everybody who is anybody in nineteen hundred
was in Paris for that that show, And here it
is again. Fanny Johnston attended and entered a number of
photographs into competition. There. She won a gold medal for
a series of photos she took of public schools in
the Washington, d c. Area, and she also took home

(15:31):
a grand prize for her series of photos of the
Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute. So these photos over time
have become the focus of heated discussion because they show
black and Native American students really through a white Victorian lens.
We've talked about some folks that studied at that school
in the podcast before in the context of their era.

(15:52):
These images, which were commissioned by the school were intended
to show European audiences that the United States was progressive
and it's educational systems which were integrating black and Native
American students into white society, but that meant stripping them
of their own culture in the process. This is a
deeply flawed ideology. It's, like I said, something that's come
up on the show before, that mindset in addition to

(16:14):
the Hampton Normal School specifically, and if you want to
really dig into these pictures and how they've been perceived
over the years, there's a really interesting analysis of these
photos and how they've been viewed at three different times
when they've been on display. That that article came out
in the summer of two thousand eight in an issue
of History of Photography. We will have a link to

(16:35):
it in the show notes, but the abbreviated version is
that at the nineteen hundred Paris exhibition they were just
as we mentioned, a sort of self congratulatory promotional material.
The second exhibition mounted at the museum of Modern Art
in nineteen sixty six tried to decontextualize them from any
discussion of race and just treat the photos simply as art,

(16:56):
which is very problematic in its own way. Uh. And
in two thousand and a Williams College Museum of Art
exhibition mounted by contemporary artist Carrie may Weems focused on
the controversial nature of the photos and their history, and
the nature of racism in education and how it is
perceived both from the white perspective and from the black
and Native American perspective. While Paris exhibition was going on,

(17:20):
Paris was the host city for a concurrently running event,
which was the International Congress of Photography. For that gathering,
Fannie insured that the matter of women in the field
was up for discussion. She put together an exhibition of
art photos by women and also lectured on the topic
of women in photography. Yeah, I had read uh one

(17:41):
description of it that she had put together this exhibition.
She was one of only two women that actually were there.
But she had arranged really at like great personal effort
to have the work of women, both novices and professionals
exhibited at this show, and that those crates full of
photographs arrived before her, and the people there that were
repping it could not wait for her because they were

(18:01):
really curious what this collection of women's photos looked like.
So they had already opened all of the crates when
she got there, just because they wanted to see them.
There was such a great sort of curiosity about how
this whole thing was going to work and what this
idea of women in photography was. In September nineteen o one,
UH President William McKinley was photographed by Fanny at the

(18:22):
Pan American Exposition. We have talked about this on another
recent episode. This was the last photo that was ever
taken of McKinley, because he was shot the next day
and then died some days later. In nine five, fanny
story links up with another past podcast subject, which is
the Lumier brothers. As Johnston made her way around Europe
that year, she stopped in France to visit with them,

(18:44):
and she got up to speed on the color photo
process they had developed. She also took some charming photos
of their father, Antoine Lumier, including one in which he's
painting another man's portrait. I don't know why I really
love these pictures. They're just very sweet. He's just like
a eat French elderly man. In one he's like out
in a vineyard looking around. In another, he's just painting.

(19:06):
He seems very relaxed. I just love those pictures for
some reason. Uh. In nineteen o nine, Fanny was hired
for a job that ended up shifting her career away
from portraiture and into new subject matter. At that point,
she was hired by John M. Career to take architectural
photos of the new Theater in New York. And at
this point, Johnston was also growing a little tired of portraiture.

(19:28):
She felt like it had become too stressful and the
field was very competitive, and so she didn't really feel
like she had the freedom to get any sort of
artistic fulfillment from it any longer, and so architecture was
kind of a nice change of pace. After the New Theater,
Fanny also started exploring other photography opportunities outside of working
with people as her subjects. She turned her eye and

(19:49):
lens to gardens. From nineteen ten on, her work as
very garden focused. She gave lectures about them, she researched
historic gardens, she took in Numera doable photos of them
well into the nineteen thirties. As part of her ongoing
interest in gardening and architecture, she had a studio in
New York from nine thirteen to nineteen seventeen and that

(20:10):
specialized in garden and home photography. Yeah, those lectures she gave,
she made these incredible glass plate slides for them that
she hand tinted. They're really incredibly beautiful. Um. One of
the articles in our our show notes is the Smithsonian
article where they talk about them, So if you're interested
in that, check it out. Um. But that photography studio

(20:31):
that Tracy just mentioned was shared with another photographer and
kind of her partner in it, Maddie Edwards Hewitt, and
the two women had met at the Pan American Exposition
in Buffalo, New York in nineteen o one. Family, of course,
was already pretty well known by that point. She was
essentially a famous photographer, and the two women became both
colleagues and close friends. At that point. Hewett's husband was

(20:52):
a photographer and she was helping him, but she wanted
to transition to doing more photography work herself, and Hewitt
was eventually entrusted by Johnston with the development of her photos,
and there's been a lot of speculation over the nature
of Fanny and Maddie's relationship over the years. The two
women exchanged letters almost from the moment that they met,
and Maddie's in particular. Maddie also wrote more of them,

(21:15):
often include language about just how deeply she loves Fanny
and how she dares not hope that Fanny loves her back,
including passages like quote, I am not foolish enough to
expect you to love me in this way. Only it
was so sweet and meant so very much that I
could not but tell it over and over. There are
detractors who believe that Hewett's words were not unusual in

(21:39):
tone for women of the early DS. This is something
we've discussed a whole lot of time on the show,
that the correspondence of women is often much more sort
of romantic in nature, not necessarily always indicating that there
is a romantic relationship, but just an emotional closeness. But
in this case, it really really does sound like Maddie
was definitely roman to glee in love with Fanny. I

(22:02):
will say we have more than her letters, and we'll
talk about why in a minute, but we're we're not
as clear on Fanny's feelings in return. Yeah, So, in
nineteen o nine, when Maddie Edwards Hewitt divorced her husband,
she moved to New York with Fanny. The same year,
Fanny started focusing her lens on architectural subjects. From nineteen
thirteen to nineteen seventeen, both women became well known for

(22:24):
their work in architectural photography. This partnership was severed in
nineteen seventeen the two women had a falling out. Hewitt
bought out Johnson's interest in the business for five hundred dollars.
Both of them continued to have successful careers independently after
this point, thanks to all the connections that they had
made while running their joint studio. Yeah. Um, Fanny kept

(22:46):
Maddie's letters, but it doesn't appear that as many of
Fanny's letters to Mattie were preserved. So that's why it's
we don't have an abundance of quotes from her on
her feelings on the matter, and we're kind of having
to fill in some blame there. Fanny's work had often
had a documentary quality at this point because she was
working in gardens and architecture. But starting in the nineteen

(23:08):
twenties that became an even more prominent part of her
work when she started a project that would go on
for more than seventeen years. Johnston started systematically photographing and
documenting early American buildings and gardens, and this all started
when Fanny was contracted to photograph the Chatham Estate in Virginia,
as well as Fredericksburg and Old Falmuth. And that effort

(23:30):
took two years, and when it was done, Fanny decided
that she wanted to continue to use her camera to
document historic buildings and help preserve the architectural history of
the US. She started exhibiting her architectural photos and in
nineteen thirties started the Pictorial Archives of Early American Architecture
at the Library of Congress. In nineteen thirty three, the

(23:51):
Carnegie Corporation started issuing a series of grants, six of
them over the course of a few years, to keep
that project going and expand its scope. From nineteen seven
to nineteen forty four, she took thousands of photos of
more than seventeen hundred sites across nine states. They were Virginia, Maryland,
North and South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi.

(24:14):
And she didn't only capture grand mansions in impeccable historic gardens,
although those were in there for sure. She also made
a concerted effort to get images of buildings and spaces
that did not get the benefit of constant maintenance and care,
as she sort of saw their fragility in the face
of neglect. And the sizeable collection that she amassed eventually

(24:35):
came to be known as the Carnegie Survey of the
Architecture of the South, and that remains in the collection
of the Library of Congress. During this time, Bannie's work
was also published in several books as photographic illustrations to
the text. In nineteen thirties, she contributed to Colonial Churches
in Virginia with text by Henry Brock. In ninety eight,
Plantations of the Carolina Low Country, written by Samuel G. Stoney,

(24:59):
came out with Banni's photos in it. In nineteen forty one,
her work got top billing for early Architecture of North
Carolina at Pictorial Survey by Francis Benjamin Johnston. This included
an architectural history written by Thomas Waterman. Yeah though that
book she is listed as the author of that book. Um.
Once that photographic survey of the South she had been

(25:19):
working on was completed, Fanny moved away from Washington, d C.
To the South. She made a new home for herself
and her two cats named Herman and Vermin, which I
find quite charming in New Orleans, Louisiana, starting in nine.
By ninety six, she had found her permanent home in
the city at Bourbon Street, that is just a block

(25:39):
away from the Lulluri mansion in the French Quarter. I
think there are people who would argue about whether Washington,
D C. Is also the South, but New Orleans is
definitely much farther south. I call it the deeper South
for sure. The seed for this move was planted when
Johnson was doing her field work for the survey. In seven.
While taking photographs in Louisiana, she told her reporter that

(26:02):
New Orleans surpassed other cities quote in rare beauty of iron,
work of outdoor and indoor arts and crafts, in a
romance of aspect and spirit of character and charm that
are unique in America. She fell in love with New Orleans.
And I can't blame her, because I sure do adore
that's any very understandable. Uh, it is really pretty. And

(26:24):
during this same period that she had moved and she
was kind of into retirement, Johnston was inducted into the
American Institute of Architects as an honorary member for the
work that she had done for so many years in
preserving the record of architectural history with her photographs and
her advancing age. Fanny, who had a career that spanned
six decades, spoke of her work in almost a cavalier manner,

(26:45):
as though it was just all effortless guess work and
good luck on her part, which is very funny to me.
But she had been known to be utterly meticulous in
setting up shots and in creative staging techniques to capture
images in her own unique a. She also kept meticulous
notes while she was in the field as a journalist,
including her personal thoughts and feelings right alongside the more

(27:07):
technical notes that were related to her photos. On May sixteenth,
nineteen fifty two, Fanny Benjamin Johnston died. Her body was
transported to Washington, d c. For burial in Rock Creek
Park Cemetery. In nineteen fifty three, her remaining papers and
documents were sold to the Library of Congress. Over the
course of her career, she had photographed five US presidents,

(27:28):
as well as Booker T. Washington, Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain,
and dozens of other prominent people. She was also the
wedding photographer for former podcast subject Alice Roosevelt in nineteen
oh six. Yeah, and I will say those are very
beautiful portraits. She really was extraordinarily good at her job.
She also photographed Susan be Anthony late in her life, which, uh,

(27:50):
it's a very interesting profile photograph. And again it strikes
me as slightly interesting that she was not particularly interested,
it seemed, in the suffrage movement in terms of being
an active participant, but she took a very beautiful picture.
One of the people deeply associated with it. Uh, that
is Fanny Johnston, who I find fascinating in a variety

(28:11):
of ways. Her photographs I could look at for ever,
because they really are quite interesting. Um. I have two
pieces of listener mail, and they are unrelated except they
both came from Hawaii, Okay, which, like New Orleans, is
another place that I'm deeply in love with. Um. The
first one I cannot make out the name. It starts.

(28:32):
I think with the J it could be June or Julie.
It's a little bit of smearing and it writes Aloha
Holly and Tracy. I just thought you might enjoy this
Disney Hawaii postcard made from coal wood. Love the show
and glad it's appropriate for my two young history buffs.
Would love more Hawaiian content with a looha, and it's
a cute little uh as as it said, wouldn't postcard

(28:55):
from al Lanni, which is the Disney resort on Oahu.
It's so sweet. I of it. The second one is
from our listeners, Kristen and Todd, and they sent a
parcel and it excited me. You're right Aloha Holly and Tracy.
My husband and I listened to the episode on the
History of Vodka sometime ago and have been meaning to
send this to you. Like Holly, vodka is my spirit

(29:17):
of choice, so I really enjoyed this episode. We live
on Maui and have two distilleries on the island. Both
are delicious in my opinion. We have sent you some
to try, along with a few other goodies. Fun fact,
the word pow, which is the name of one of
the vodkas means finished or done in Hawaiian, so when
you finish recording, you can paw Hannah, which means like
that's like the time when you relax after you're done working.

(29:38):
So Kristen and Todd sent us two kinds of vodka,
one from Pow and another called Ocean, which is an
organic vodka that I have tried before when I was
in Hawaii, and I am deeply thankful and everyone in
the office was wildly jealous as I opened that particular part.
So Tracy, next time you're in the office, will have
to make a little cocktail at the end of the

(30:00):
day and enjoy the bounties of Kristen and Todd's um generosity.
And also, just again, I love I love hearing from
our listeners, especially when it's a place that I have
not been in a little bit and I'm kind of
longing to get back to so hopefully soon. Oh man,
Hawaii is the best. Thank you so much. It is
so sweet. I um, we say it all the time.

(30:21):
I'm sorry if you're tired of hearing it. Every time
we get gifts from people. I'm just kind of blown away,
and it's very humbling and moving because I don't make
the time to send things to people I know and
love and that I'm like related to. So it's it's
really very meaningful and it's something I'm very deeply thankful for.
Uh So, thank you, thank you, thank you again. If
you would like to write to us, you do so

(30:43):
at History Podcast at House of Works dot com. We're
also everywhere in social media as Missed in History, and
our website is missed in History dot com. You can
subscribe to the show. We would love for you to
do that. You can do that on the I heart
Radio app, at Apple podcast or wherever it is you listen.
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of

(31:05):
I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for
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