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Sprite saved us all from an invasion this morning. Our little hero…

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YIKES! I always had this worry when doing my research but fortunately never ran into anything like this. I did question how I should be handling doctors’ notebooks from a smallpox hospital that looked like they hadn’t been opened in centuries, but luckily no scabs.

Sprite has announced that this game is over and it’s time for *him to play ball.

Much is made of the 27 grievances in the Declaration and how some of them are thin or contrived. It’s really a wonder that blaming the King for spreading smallpox among them. It was widely thought that the British army was purposely trying to infect both the Continental Army and the American people🧵

Today is the 250th anniversary of Boston’s mass inoculation against smallpox on July 3, 1776. The city was effectively closed to commerce from July through September 1776. The mass immunization effort was cheered as evidence of true independence. Here's how I described it in my book:

I’m with my son at the orthodontist and they have a “fun fact” slideshow about teeth in the waiting room. One of the facts is that George Washington had wooden teeth. I’m currently doing my best to suppress my historian rage. We’ll see if it lasts.

I very much endorse pretending to read my book while lying in a hammock. Thanks, Library of Virginia!

I showed this with a shocked face to my wife (who is not a soccer fan), and she too looked shocked and said “how did they get half a goal?!”

Here’s a police dog that I saw in France. There’s no need for police dogs to be intimidating if their job is just to smell.

I was happy to see these large banners in Lyon commemorating the lives of historians Marc Bloch and Simonne Vidal in Lyon this week.

Currently in France and wondering if these are lawyers for octopi or indeed octopus lawyers.

I’m saddened to hear the news of the great historian Gordon Wood. I got into grad school in part based on bashing his “Radicalism” in my cover letter, but I was fortunate enough to have dinner with him a couple of times and he was lovely and supportive of my scholarship. Truly a loss of a giant.

“It’s difficult to apply history to modern day; most scenarios are deeply nuanced, with too many extraneous factors to allow for a fair equivalence. Even so, Boston’s early public health system relied on an essential ingredient lacking today: trust.”

I’m happy to have had my research featured in this piece for @wgbh.org! It’s a short version of the arguments I made in my book, namely that revolutionary Americans understood their government had a duty to protect them from epidemic disease. www.wgbh.org/news/local/2...

The other enemy America was fighting 250 years ago: SmallpoxAs smallpox spread, colonists equated public health with self-governance, demanding that local officials track outbreaks and protect the public from contagion.www.wgbh.org

Someone is upset that he’s not coming on our upcoming trip…

You’re probably asking in this 250th anniversary of 1776: “how did Americans in the Revolutionary era handle people who tried to leave quarantine early?” Well, in 1774, sailors in Mass. threatened to kill patients who broke quarantine rules and later burned the hospital that allowed early exits.

American Passenger Blocked From Leaving Federal Hantavirus Quarantinewww.nytimes.com

My wife has been painting bricks for our garden to look like classic books. Here are a couple of favorites:

Yes! Like building hospitals and inoculating the public for one.

Making a mental note to give extra points to the student who wore a Dr. Joseph Warren t-shirt to the final exam.

This is my state district. I don’t think I’ve ever received more campaign flyers. The unhinged negative ads on Greene were omnipresent, but he still won overwhelmingly.