Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, A production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to Casual Friday
Speaker 1: Chatter Chatter with Polly and Tracy. I'm Polly Fry, I'm
Speaker 1: Tracy Vie Wilson. Our first episode this week was kind
Speaker 1: of all casual chatter. That's exactly what I was thinking.
Speaker 1: It was like, we had casual Friday on Monday. Yes,
Speaker 1: uh in talking about this this wild time that we're
Speaker 1: living through. But then we got to talk about someone
Speaker 1: that you picked out and who is one of the
Speaker 1: more charming figures we have talked about in recent history
Speaker 1: in my opinion, Yeah, lighthousekeeper Ida Lewis. So I had
Speaker 1: a circuitous path of getting to this topic that I
Speaker 1: alluded to at the beginning of the episode. This sort
Speaker 1: of illustrates how my working life has changed. UM. The
Speaker 1: first thing was I had thought about doing UM an
Speaker 1: episode on the Athenian Play and I'm I'm not saying
Speaker 1: I'll never do that, but so many, uh so many
Speaker 1: of our listeners have talked about how stressed out they
Speaker 1: have been, and we're so appreciative when we dropped a
Speaker 1: playlist of just goofy offbeat stuff. But I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe a really stressful episode about a plague
Speaker 1: is not where I want to go right now. Like,
Speaker 1: I know there's value in talking about the historical context
Speaker 1: for things, but there are so many places to get
Speaker 1: pandemic news right now, and so many people have told
Speaker 1: us about just how phenomenally stressed out they were. I
Speaker 1: was like, let's let's do something. Let's find something that
Speaker 1: feels positive and uplifting but also seems thematically appropriate to
Speaker 1: what we're living through. And that's how I eventually wound
Speaker 1: up on Idle Louis. But Idle Louis was not actually
Speaker 1: my first choice, which was not the first person that
Speaker 1: occurred to me. UM. The first person that I actually
Speaker 1: thought about doing was Emily Dickinson, who was not as
Speaker 1: solitary as a lot of people think of her UM,
Speaker 1: and that was one of the things that I was
Speaker 1: I got very excited about this idea of doing an
Speaker 1: episode about Emily Dickinson and talking about that that aspect
Speaker 1: of her. But then I was like, Amherst is just
Speaker 1: down the street, not literally, it's but you know, we
Speaker 1: could get in the car and go there. We can't
Speaker 1: right now, though, Can I go to Amherst uh, And
Speaker 1: I was like, you know, I would kind of rather
Speaker 1: do this episode at a time when I can go
Speaker 1: um and visit where she lived, because you know, when
Speaker 1: I have the opportunity to do that, I really enjoy
Speaker 1: doing that. UM. So I said, Okay, I'll put Emily
Speaker 1: Dickinson back on the list of things to talk about later. Um.
Speaker 1: But then when I got into the Idle Louis episode,
Speaker 1: I kept running into situations where I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: it really felt like UM. Because I do so much
Speaker 1: work at home, Because I do so much work that's
Speaker 1: related to sources that are online, I was not expecting
Speaker 1: a big disruption in my work. However, Ida Lewis's personnel
Speaker 1: record is something that's open to the public. It cannot
Speaker 1: be requested right now because the library is closed. The
Speaker 1: biography that was written of her in the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: that we referenced in the episode is a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff of that age has been digitized, and you can
Speaker 1: get to it at places like the Project Guttenberg or
Speaker 1: archive dot org or something similar. That particular work does
Speaker 1: exist on microfiche and as a physical copy in two
Speaker 1: different libraries that I can access. The library is closed, though,
Speaker 1: so It's just like, this is a case where I
Speaker 1: would have had some physical sources I might have gone
Speaker 1: to consult, but I sure cannot do that because the
Speaker 1: library is closed. I do feel like that's the correct
Speaker 1: decision for the library to be closed, but it it
Speaker 1: kind of tickled me a little bit that it turned
Speaker 1: out that that was the case with this particular episode.
Speaker 1: I like that. Um, Again, not to make light of
Speaker 1: any of it, but we have been very frank that
Speaker 1: we're very fortunate because we can keep doing our jobs
Speaker 1: from home relatively uninterrupted, but that somehow it managed to
Speaker 1: be interrupted just the same. UM, it's interesting. I have
Speaker 1: a question for you, which, UM, let me just ask
Speaker 1: a question. Are you and Emily Dickinson person? Uh? I
Speaker 1: own a copy of her entire I have a complicated
Speaker 1: relationship with Emily Dickinson. Okay, me too, UM trying So
Speaker 1: Emily Dickinson is so it tends to be such a huge,
Speaker 1: huge part of American literature classes. She gets kind of
Speaker 1: shoved on people in high school. And and then also
Speaker 1: when you notice patterns in the rhythm of her writing,
Speaker 1: noticed them. What song is it for you? Um? Because
Speaker 1: I've discovered over the years, I mean it's a simple pattern,
Speaker 1: and so everybody has like that thing where they're like
Speaker 1: And then it becomes obvious that you can sing every
Speaker 1: one of her poems to this song. But I've discovered
Speaker 1: that different people have different songs. Yes, you don't want
Speaker 1: to know the song if you don't want to never
Speaker 1: be able to unhear it, just like I don't know
Speaker 1: Skip ahead by thirty seconds. The theme from Gilligan's Island
Speaker 1: Oh Mine is yellow Rose of Texas. That also works
Speaker 1: both of them. But then the thing is, her life
Speaker 1: has been so mischaracterized, um, and there are so many
Speaker 1: just wonderful biographies of her that have come out more
Speaker 1: recently that have given us a more honest look, UM
Speaker 1: at what her life was like and what uh what
Speaker 1: happens to her literary legacy after she died, Like I
Speaker 1: found all, I found all that really fascinating. I in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways feel like she is a kindred spirit,
Speaker 1: even though I can't stop myself from singing songs while
Speaker 1: I'm reading her poet. I will say I'm not the
Speaker 1: hugest fan of her poetry because that sort of makes
Speaker 1: it feel a little simplistic to me in a way
Speaker 1: that I don't connect to UM. But also I think
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where she has been so romanticized.
Speaker 1: And we talked about this phenomenon on the show before.
Speaker 1: She and her biography and her life story has been
Speaker 1: so romanticized that it does the great disservice of completely
Speaker 1: including the person that she actually was. So I'm glad
Speaker 1: that you're planning an episode because we are Emily Dickinson
Speaker 1: MythBuster H. We will keep our fingers crossed UM that
Speaker 1: at some points the pandemic has ended, UH and you know,
Speaker 1: are the places in Amherst, Massachusetts that are related to
Speaker 1: her life will be open for visitors again. And I
Speaker 1: will UH coerce my husband into going on a road
Speaker 1: trip with me, which is UM actually that that my
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know what is. I have
Speaker 1: not asked him about this at all. He has been
Speaker 1: just very accommodating and on board. Various times that I
Speaker 1: have suggested some random road trip to go to, usually
Speaker 1: somewhere in Massachusetts or an adjacent UH state, to do
Speaker 1: some kind of podcast research. UM. He has, he's been
Speaker 1: on board. He's been game for all of that. UM.
Speaker 1: Possibly because of the like the ubiquity and weird representation
Speaker 1: of Emily Dickinson and most people's high school lives. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you would be on board for
Speaker 1: that one. I could just go by myself. He'd be fine,
Speaker 1: that's true. Uh. Yeah, I'm trying to think of any that.
Speaker 1: I don't think I have any in the hopper right
Speaker 1: now that I'm like, I would like to travel to
Speaker 1: go check this out. Well, another place that is not
Speaker 1: quite as close to here, but is doable and is
Speaker 1: somebody that everybody hit not a lot. A lot of
Speaker 1: people have got a lot of request to talk about
Speaker 1: Lucy maud Montgomery. I know, I'm Prince Edward Island though
Speaker 1: it's just right over there. We can all travel again.
Speaker 1: I would like to go to their. Yeah, that's less
Speaker 1: of a like a day trip, a bore of a
Speaker 1: weekend trip though, right I keep thinking about where I
Speaker 1: would want to travel first when all of this blows over,
Speaker 1: presuming we may it through and all of the places
Speaker 1: I might want to travel are once again open and available.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know who I'm kidding. I'm going.
Speaker 1: I'm getting in the car and going to Disney World
Speaker 1: the minute. The minute you have a chance. I also
Speaker 1: want to make it clear and just in case anybody
Speaker 1: is feeling frustrated, Uh, we understand absolutely that this is
Speaker 1: not something that is literally going to just go away
Speaker 1: without human beings taking concrete steps to stop it. So
Speaker 1: when we say blow over, we don't mean like a
Speaker 1: magical ferry is going to make it stop being a pandemic. No,
Speaker 1: I mean when we are on the other side of this.
Speaker 1: However long it takes to get on the other side
Speaker 1: of this with we hope as as little animal yes,
Speaker 1: as minimal loss as possible, we hope. Um. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I think about I think we're all thinking about
Speaker 1: what it's going to be like to resume normal life.
Speaker 1: And part of that for me is because I have
Speaker 1: been traveling so much. Part of it is, um, like,
Speaker 1: where would I travel to just for fun? Initially it's
Speaker 1: one of the things that we think about. But yes,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm sure there will be somewhere historically relevant that
Speaker 1: I will go. I don't know where yet, though, I
Speaker 1: will want to probably go everywhere after not not being
Speaker 1: anywhere for a while, So we'll see, Yeah, we'll see.
Speaker 1: Oh and just in case people are curious, we were
Speaker 1: planning to go to Italy in May that is postponed
Speaker 1: is postponed, yeah to October, just in case people were like,
Speaker 1: whenever it happened to the only trip, that's what happened.
Speaker 1: The folks that have booked on it are all aware. Yes, yes, yes. Michael,
Speaker 1: who handles all of all of those travels and who
Speaker 1: managed our our trip to Paris last year, has been
Speaker 1: really great about making sure that everybody's bookings can transfer
Speaker 1: over till later in the year and getting that all
Speaker 1: ironed out and squared away. Um. So uh universe willing.
Speaker 1: We will be in Italy in October hopefully. Um. You
Speaker 1: have questions about the cruise to Alaska that we have
Speaker 1: advertised on the show as well. That is not something
Speaker 1: that Holly and I are personally involved with planning, so
Speaker 1: you would need to contact Like, if you're booked on that,
Speaker 1: you would need to contact whatever information you got when
Speaker 1: you booked that. Yeah, yeah, that's um, we have no
Speaker 1: we we are still trying to figure out what is
Speaker 1: going on with that as well, so we don't have
Speaker 1: any updates there. But in the meantime, everybody continue to
Speaker 1: take care of yourselves and stay safe. Stuff you missed
Speaker 1: in history classes, a production of I heart Radio. For
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