Grating the Nutmeg
206 episodes - English - Latest episode: 11 days ago - ★★★★★ - 45 ratingsConnecticut is a small state with big stories. GTN episodes include top-flight historians, compelling first-person stories and new voices in Connecticut history. Executive Producers Mary Donohue, Walt Woodward, and Natalie Belanger look at the people and places that have made a difference in CT history. New episodes every two weeks. A joint production of Connecticut Explored magazine and the CT State Historian Emeritus.
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Episodes
144. A Visit to the Katharine Hepburn Museum at "The Kate" in Old Saybrook
June 15, 2022 04:01 - 34 minutes - 32.3 MBPainting by Everett Raymond Kinstler, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery Join Walt Woodward on a visit to the Katharine Hepburn Museum at "the Kate" in Old Saybrook. His interview with Executive Director Brett Eliott and Director of Community Relations Robin Andreoli about this gem of a museum for America's most Oscar-winning actor (and long-time Saybrook resident) should convince you to put both the Katharine Hepburn Museum and "the Kate" on your must-see-this-summer list. It's a m...
143. The Need for Speed on the Connecticut River
May 31, 2022 18:28 - 31 minutes - 71.5 MBIn this episode, CTExplored publisher Elizabeth Normen talks with Connecticut River Museum curator Amy Trout about the museum’s summer exhibition Speed: Hydroplane Racing on the Connecticut River, 1900 – 1940. Trout tells us what a hydroplane is and why racing them became popular in the midst of the Great Depression. As opposed to yachting, she explains, hydroplane racing was an everyman’s sport that people flocked to the riverfront to watch. She talks boat design, which outboard engines we...
142. The Institute of Living at 200
May 16, 2022 14:01 - 47 minutes - 109 MBIn 1822, the Hartford Retreat for the Insane was chartered as one of the first mental health centers in the United States, and the first hospital of any kind in CT. In 2022, the CHS is exploring of the story of mental health in our state. Recently, the CHS invited Dr. Harold I (Hank) Schwartz to talk about the history of the Hartford Retreat, renamed the Institute of Living in the 20th century. His presentation took us through the state of mental health care in the early 1800s, the reasons ...
141. Saving the Merritt Parkway
May 03, 2022 02:03 - 30 minutes - 69.5 MBMost people in the tri-state area have driven the Merritt Parkway with its extraordinary bridges and landscaped vistas. But can a roadway built in the 1930s during the Great Depression survive today in the 21st century without losing its charm? In celebration of Historic Preservation Month, we will learn how the Merritt Parkway, the state’s most heavily visited National Register historic district, was saved from modernization and restored to its original design. In this episode, Asst. P...
140. New Hope For a Connecticut Champion
April 15, 2022 04:01 - 40 minutes - 37.5 MBFor over 2000 years, the American chestnut was the tallest, largest, and most omnipresent tree in all Connecticut. It’s a tree for which a hundred hills, countless streets, and at least one Connecticut town were named, a tree whose nuts we sing about on the holidays, and a tree which helped frame our houses, shape our furniture, fence and feed our livestock, make tracks for our trains, and hold our utility lines. In this episode, Jack Swatt, President of the Connecticut chapter of the Ameri...
139. Architect Donn Barber Designs Hartford’s Early Skyscrapers
April 01, 2022 04:00 - 29 minutes - 34.6 MBIn this episode, architectural historian Mary Donohue and podcast engineer Patrick O’Sullivan explore the Hartford work of early twentieth century architect Donn Barber especially his magnificent Connecticut State Library building and two of the city’s early skyscrapers. Her guest, retired Connecticut State Librarian Ken Wiggin, explains how Barber got the plum commission to design the Connecticut State Library. Donn Barber, born in 1871, a New York City architect, could be called the ...
138. The Glorious Wide Awakes
March 15, 2022 04:56 - 32 minutes - 37.7 MBSpurred by Abraham Lincoln’s campaign stop in Hartford in March 1860, the Wide Awake movement spread from Connecticut throughout the North like wildfire. In this episode of Grating the Nutmeg, the Connecticut Historical Society’s Natalie Belanger takes a look at this pivotal youth movement of the Civil War era. Listen to find out how this home-grown political movement and their signature torchlit parades helped to redefine American democracy on the eve of the Civil War. This topic was inspi...
137. An American Woman Artist Abroad — Mary Rogers Williams
February 28, 2022 02:29 - 37 minutes - 42.8 MBMarch is Women’s History Month and in this episode publisher Elizabeth Normen talks with author Eve Kahn about her 2019 book, Forever Seeing New Beauties: The Forgotten Impressionist Mary Rogers Wiliams,1857 - 1907 (Wesleyan University Press, 2019). It’s a rare insider view of the challenges women artists faced in the late 19th century. Kahn drew from a collection of Williams’s gossipy letters home in which she describes her desperation to escape her teaching job at Smith College to paint a...
136. The Lemon Law Turns 40
February 15, 2022 05:01 - 49 minutes - 68.5 MBForty years ago, a freshman legislator in the Connecticut General Assembly wrote and engineered passage of one of the most important pieces of consumer protection legislation in history – The Lemon Law (actually two laws passed in 1982 and 1984) that required automobile manufacturers to repair defective vehicles in a timely manner, replace the vehicle with a new one, or refund the customer's purchase price. Today Lemon Laws are in place in every state of the union and countries around the wo...
135. Zinc Gravestones - Bridgeport’s Monumental Bronze Company
January 30, 2022 19:18 - 24 minutes - 25.7 MBAs we all ease into 2022, we want to thank our listeners for supporting Grating the Nutmeg! We’ve just had our 6th birthday and hit over 100,000 downloads! We couldn’t have done it without you. Be sure to let us know if there are topics you think we should investigate. If you could manufacture something out of stone or metal and make a buck, chances are it was produced in Connecticut. Asst. Publisher Mary Donohue explores the history of an unusual and unique--in the truest sense of the wor...
134. "Another Name for Happiness:" The Life of Ann Plato
January 15, 2022 15:19 - 38 minutes - 44.4 MBIn this episode, Connecticut Historical Society’s Natalie Belanger, frequent contributor to Grating the Nutmeg, talks with Antoinette Brim-Bell, Professor of English at Capital Community College, about Ann Plato, one of the first Black women to publish a book in the United States. Ann Plato is part of Capitol Community College’s NEH-funded Hartford Heritage Project which highlights the history of the Talcott Street Church, the first Black congregation in Hartford and where Plato was a teach...
133. P.T. Barnum Builds a City
January 08, 2022 01:23 - 25 minutes - 29.3 MBIs there a sucker born every minute? I don’t have the answer to that but it is attributed to one of Connecticut’s most famous residents, circus showman P. T. Barnum. Did he really say it-no one knows for sure but we do know that he made and lost several fortunes, helped to create the American circus, exhibited a phony mermaid cobbled together from a monkey and a fish and that he loved Bridgeport! Mary Donohue, Asst. Publisher of Connecticut Explored, the magazine of Connecticut histor...
NEW YEAR'S FLASHBACK!: GRATING THE NUTMEG'S ALL TIME TOP FIVE EPISODES
December 31, 2021 21:26Thanks to you, last year Grating the Nutmeg passed it's 100,000th download. We're proud to be a fixture of so many Connectican's playlists, and proud to be among the top 20% of all podcasts made in terms of listenership. To celebrate, we thought we'd have a New Year's flashback, and link back to our five all time most listened to podcasts. Just click on the link below, then click play on the next page, and enjoy! Number One: Connecticut and the Pandemic of 1918. As Covid began rocking ...
132. "John Norton's Vagabond," A Victorian Christmas Story
December 16, 2021 17:10 - 1 hour - 94.7 MBIn the spirit of the season, we’re pleased to present a Victorian era Christmas story, written by the celebrated 19th century author from Guilford, Reverend William Henry Harrison Murray. Better known as “Adirondack” Murray, because his books almost single-handedly transformed that region from a New York wilderness to one of the country’s most popular tourist destinations, Murray was one of the first mass audience authors to promote recreational camping as a leisure time activity, and coine...
131. When Contraception Was a Crime: Griswold v. CT
December 01, 2021 07:47 - 35 minutes - 81 MBNatalie Belanger of the Connecticut Historical Society is joined by historian Barbara Sicherman, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor Emerita at Trinity College, to discuss the landmark reproductive rights case, Griswold v. Connecticut. Professor Sicherman talks about the origins of the lawsuit, what it meant for women in our state, and its long-term influence on civil rights rulings. If you want to learn more, you can read Barbara Sicherman’s article, "Connecticut Women Fight for Repr...
130. Whatever Happened to Nick Bellantoni?
November 15, 2021 05:01 - 55 minutes - 51.3 MBRecently, Connecticut State Historian Walt Woodward announced he will be retiring next July 1st. To find out what "historical" retirement is like, Woodward sat down with Nick Bellantoni, who retired as state archaeologist in 2014, and is now Connecticut's state archaeologist emeritus. The resulting conversation was a fascinating discussion of archaeological sites in Connecticut, Nick's successor state archaeologists, and Nick's own career of amazing discoveries.
129. Revolver: Sam Colt and the Six-Shooter That Changed America
October 31, 2021 01:04 - 37 minutes - 85.8 MBWhat more do we need to know about Sam Colt? In Hartford we have the iconic blue-domed Colt Armory, Colt Park, the Colt addition to the Wadsworth Atheneum, the Church of the Good Shepard and Colt’s home Armsmear. But it turns out that we may not have known much about Colt’s life before he became fabulously wealthy—he traveled with a novelty act, womanized, drank, smuggled guns to Russia, bribed politicians, and blew up ships in New York Harbor with electricity. Mary Donohue, Asst. Publish...
A Connecticut Historian Makes History: Recovering Phyllis Wheatley's Lost Years
October 15, 2021 04:01 - 1 hour - 49.7 MBA Connecticut Historian Makes History: Recovering Phyllis Wheatley’s Lost Years UCONN legal historian Cornelia Hughes Dayton was searching through Massachusetts Court cases from the 1700s, working on a project involving mental disabilities in early America, when she came upon a find that was itself history-making: a cache of court cases that illuminate the formerly “missing years” in the life of America’s first published African American author and the mother of the African-American l...
128. A Connecticut Historian Makes History: Recovering Phyllis Wheatley's Lost Years
October 15, 2021 04:01 - 1 hour - 49.7 MBA Connecticut Historian Makes History: Recovering Phyllis Wheatley’s Lost Years UCONN legal historian Cornelia Hughes Dayton was searching through Massachusetts Court cases from the 1700s, working on a project involving mental disabilities in early America, when she came upon a find that was itself history-making: a cache of court cases that illuminate the formerly “missing years” in the life of America’s first published African American author and the mother of the African-American l...
127. Telling Your Family Story with Jill Marie Snyder and Orice Jenkins
October 01, 2021 18:14 - 30 minutes - 71.4 MBAre you your family’s historian? The one that listens to all the elders' stories or digs into that big box of old family photographs? Ever wonder how many of your dad’s stories are really true? Or if you have a big family secret that hasn’t been revealed for generations? If so, this episode is for you! In celebration of National Archives Month, we’re talking to two accomplished family historians. Mary Donohue, Asst. Publisher of Connecticut Explored, the state’s history magazine, intervie...
126. The Three Lives of Kevin Johnson
September 15, 2021 20:09 - 50 minutes - 47.1 MBHistory has often been described as the present having a conversation with the past. Meet Kevin Johnson, who makes those conversations both real and personal: as a Technical Assistant in the History and Genealogy unit of the Connecticut State Library in Hartford; as William Webb, a Civil War volunteer in the 29th Connecticut Colored Volunteer infiantry; and as Jordan Freeman, the African American who died a heroes death at the Revolutionary War Massacre at Fort Griswold. It's 250 years of h...
125. Precious Memories Captured in Hair
September 01, 2021 21:52 - 20 minutes - 48 MBIn this episode, join Mary Donohue, Asst. Publisher of Connecticut Explored, for a discussion with Dr. Helen Sheumaker about Victorian jewelry and wreaths made from human hair. Dr. Sheumaker is the author of Love Entwined: The Curious History of Human Hair Work. She teaches history and American Studies at Miami University of Ohio. Find out more about this now unfashionable way to remember your loved ones! Read Dr. Sheumaker’s feature story in the Fall 2021 issue of Connecticut Expl...
124. Lydia Sigourney, Benedict Arnold, & The Battle of Bunker Hill
August 19, 2021 02:12 - 35 minutes - 33.1 MBWhat do the nineteenth century author Lydia Sigourney, the 18th century hero-turned-traitor Benedict Arnold, and the Revolutionary War battle of Bunker Hill have in common? They all come together in the story you are about to hear from Sigourney’s 1824 book SKETCH OF CONNECTICUT FORTY YEARS SINCE. Sigourney’s book, written early in her career, is a rare historical treat: a tale by a future-famous writer, written in 1824, reminiscing about life forty years earlier in 1784. The past rememberi...
123. Connecticut Seen: The Photography of Pablo Delano and Jack Delano
July 30, 2021 20:07 - 36 minutes - 89.9 MBIn this episode, join Mary Donohue, Asst. Publisher of Connecticut Explored, for a discussion with Pablo Delano, visual artist, photographer and professor of fine arts at Trinity College - and the artist behind the new book Hartford Seen, published in 2020 by Wesleyan University Press. His work is featured in the photo essay “Visually Breathtaking Hartford Explored” in the Summer 2021 issue of Connecticut Explored magazine. Professor Delano’s father, Jack Delano, was a renown American New D...
122. The New Connecticut Yankee
July 15, 2021 04:01 - 55 minutes - 51.8 MBIn this special summer episode we visit Frank and Lisa Catalano, who in their 18th-century home garden in Lebanon, are using some very inventive approaches to bring back an old Connecticut tradition – self-sufficient food production. It's a history show for garden geeks . . . or maybe a garden show for history geeks.
121. Rooted in History: Connecticut’s Trees
June 29, 2021 17:41 - 1 hour - 155 MBIn this episode, Dr. Leah Glaser and students from her 2021 Public History class at Central Connecticut State University present stories about the state’s witness trees — a project that evolved out of a semester-long class on local and community history. Trees are central characters in the state’s history, myths and legends. They witnessed the changing environmental, political, social, economic, and cultural landscape for decades and even centuries. What’s a witness tree, you ask? Find out ...
120. How Four Connecticut Inventors Helped Change The Way We Live, Think, & Act
June 15, 2021 04:00 - 52 minutes - 48.7 MBState Historian Walt Woodward talks with award-winning author and materials scientists Ainissa Ramirez about her award-winning and highly acclaimed book The Alcehmy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another. On virtually every national Top Science Book of the Year List for 2020, The Alchemy of Us is a wonderfully readable, lively, smart and witty account of the development of eight inventions that have not only transformed the way we live, but have transformed us, too. Not surpr...
119. Uncovering Connecticut’s LGBTQ History
May 28, 2021 20:00 - 34 minutes - 78.8 MBLives of the state’s LGBTQ citizens have moved from being hidden and solitary to claiming visible, powerful, valuable, and contributing places in society. In this episode, Mary Donohue, Asst. Publisher of Connecticut Explored, interviews CCSU Assistant Professor of History William J. Mann about when and how the LGBTQ movement started in Connecticut, what legislative goals and strategies drove the movement, and what the current goals are for the LGBTQ movement. Mann discusses the impact of ...
118. The Connecticut RIver Valley Flood of 1936
May 15, 2021 04:01 - 46 minutes - 43.4 MBIn this episode, Josh Shanley – firefighter, paramedic, and Emergency Management Director for Northampton, Massachusetts, talks about the Great Connecticut RIver Flood of 1936, its devastating effects, long-term consequences, and the message it has for a world in climate change. Based on his new book, Connecticut River Valley Flood of 1936 from the History Press.
117. Before 42: Ball Players of Color in Connecticut
May 01, 2021 13:21 - 30 minutes - 69.9 MBConnecticut Historical Society's Natalie Belanger talks with labor historian Steve Thornton of The Shoeleather History Project about Black baseball in Connecticut. Thornton is the author of Connecticut Explored's "African American Greats in Connecticut Baseball," Summer 2018. Read or Watch More! To learn more about the Negro Leagues, check out this recent talk at the CT Historical Society by Bob Kendrick, President of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City. "African American G...
116. Connecticut In Motion: The Story of Our Time
April 15, 2021 04:01 - 54 minutes - 50.7 MBNo one knows more about transportation in Connecticut than historian, civil engineer, and highway and transportation planner Richard DeLuca. In this recent virtual lecture for Cheshire Public Library, promoting his new, second volume on Connecticut transportation history Paved Roads and Public Money (Wesleyan University Press), DeLuca underscores the inseparable relationships among population, technology, and the environment.
115. America’s First Public Rose Garden - Elizabeth Park
April 03, 2021 17:43 - 31 minutes - 71.7 MBVisitors have been enchanted by the thousands of soft and fragrant rose petals in Elizabeth Park’s Rose Garden since it opened in 1904. Climbing roses intertwined in overhead garlands, hybrid tea roses and heritage roses in every color symbolize romance, friendship, and passion. Elizabeth Park on the Hartford-West Hartford border is home to the country’s oldest public rose garden. Visitors by the thousands come to stroll in the rose garden and sit in the vine-covered gazebo. Generations o...
114. When Tombs Are Also Crime Scenes
March 15, 2021 04:01 - 37 minutes - 34.9 MBSometimes tombs become crime scenes. State Archaeologist Emeritus Nick Bellantoni talks with Walt Woodward about two such cases in which he was called in to do forensic archaeology, and the process of doing historic detective work in pursuit of justice. He also provides the latest developments concerning the discovery of revolutionary war skeletons in a basement in Ridgefield in December 2019.
113. Yale Needs Women
March 01, 2021 03:04 - 43 minutes - 102 MBIn 1969, women were allowed entry to undergraduate study at Yale for the first time. Their experience was not the same as their male peers enjoyed. Isolated from one another, singled out as oddities and sexual objects, and barred from many of the school’s privileges, the young women nonetheless met the challenge of being first and changed Yale in ways it had never anticipated. Mary Donohue interviews historian and Yale alumna Anne Gardiner Perkins, author of Yale Needs Women: How the Firs...
112. And So The Tomb Remained
February 15, 2021 05:00 - 58 minutes - 54.3 MBWhat secrets about the past can an ancient tomb reveal? The answers, as State Archaeologist emeritus Nick Bellantoni explains, are many, surprising, and incredibly interesting. In this conversation about Nick's new book, And So the Tomb Remained: Exploring Archaeology and Forensic Science in Connecticut's Historical Family Mausolea, State Historian Walt Woodward and Bellantoni, who in his 30 plus years as state archaeologist entered more tombs that any other archeologist, talk about Nic...
112. And So The Tomb Remained
February 15, 2021 05:00 - 58 minutes - 54.3 MBWhat secrets about the past can an ancient tomb reveal? The answers, as State Archaeologist emeritus Nick Bellantoni explains, are many, surprising, and incredibly interesting. In this conversation about Nick's new book, And So the Tomb Remained: Exploring Archaeology and Forensic Science in Connecticut's Historical Family Mausolea, State Historian Walt Woodward and Bellantoni, who in his 30 plus years as state archaeologist entered more tombs that any other archeologist, talk about Nic...
111. The New Haven Black Panther Trials
February 01, 2021 21:33 - 21 minutes - 50 MBFifty years ago, Ericka Huggins and Bobby Seale of the Black Panthers were on trial for their lives in New Haven. In this episode, Natalie Belanger of the Connecticut Historical Society takes a look back at the New Haven Black Panther trials, using some of the many primary sources available. To learn more about the New Haven Black Panther Trials: To see Robert Templeton’s courtroom sketches of the Black Panther Trials, go here. The trial transcripts are available digitally thro...
110. Polish Jewish History, World War II and a Jewish Child’s Survival
January 18, 2021 16:36 - 53 minutes - 122 MBThis lecture was presented by Dr. Leon Chameides for the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford, Voices of Hope, and The Emanuel Synagogue. Learn more about Polish-Jewish history and how our guest Dr. Leon Chameides survived the Nazi occupation of Poland as a Jewish child. Despite the fact that many American Jews trace their family to Poland, there are many misconceptions about Polish history and the history of Polish-Jewish relations. Dr. Leon Chameides was born in Poland in 1935 ...
109. Communicating with the Spirits: Theodate Pope Riddle
January 01, 2021 17:48 - 30 minutes - 71 MBIn 1938 pioneering female architect and founder of the Hill-Stead Museum, Theodate Pope Riddle of Farmington enjoyed an excursion through Europe. While in London she participated in three sittings with trance mediums, continuing an avocational interest in spiritualism that lasted 34 years. Hear more about Riddle’s efforts to scientifically prove the ability to communicate with the deceased in this episode hosted by Mary Donohue, Asst Publisher of Connecticut Explored and Melanie Bourbeau, ...
108. Up and Down the River
December 15, 2020 20:31 - 55 minutes - 91.5 MBMohegan Medicine Woman, Tribal Historian, and award-winning playwright and screenwriter Meissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel does a virtual sit-down with state historian Walt Woodward to talk about the radio drama Up and Down the River she and her equally accomplished daughter Madeline Sayet recently wrote, produced, and directed for Hartford's Heartbeat Ensemble. The five short plays provide a unique and important window into key moments in Mohegan history and culture. Zobel provi...
107. Miss Florence’s Boardinghouse and American Impressionism
December 06, 2020 16:45 - 31 minutes - 57.7 MBIn this episode, Mary Donohue talks to Curator Amy Kurtz Lansing about one of the most beautiful places to visit in Connecticut - the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme. Did Old Lyme become the home to an art colony because of the good food at Miss Florence’s boardinghouse or because of the soft, lovely light on the salt marshes along the Lieutenant River? The episode uncovers the roots of the Old Lyme Art Colony and also new exhibitions up now including Celebrating 20 Years of the Hartf...
106–Part 1 Steve Grant's Legendary 1991 Source-to-Sea Connecticut River Journey
November 16, 2020 20:40 - 1 hour - 77.1 MBIn the summer of 1991, reporter and environmentalist Steve Grant traveled the entire 410 miles of the Connecticut River from its source near the Canadian border in New Hampshire to the Long Island Sound by self-addled canoe. Throughout the 33 day journey, Grant reported on his voyage in stories for the Hartford Courant. His every-other-day tales made Grant a celebrity and his journey a legend. Twenty-nine years after that life-changing trip,State Historian Walt Woodward met Grant on the ba...
106 - Part 2. Steve Grant's Legendary 1991 Source to Sea Connecticut River Journey
November 16, 2020 20:24 - 59 minutes - 98.8 MBIn part two oof Steve Grant's Legendary 1991 Source-to-Sea journey on the Connecticut River, we'll talk about Some of the Connecticut RIver's endangered species, the issues that affected the river's health then and now, the celebrations at the end of the voyage, and what the journey means to Grant some thirty years one. "The Connecticut River: First National Blueway Runs Through Connecticut," Spring 2014 "Connecticut River Legends," Spring 2019 "Pleasure Boating on the Connecticut River...
105. Connecticut’s Rosie the Riveter: Working Women in WWII
November 01, 2020 16:05 - 38 minutes - 87.7 MBIn this episode, Natalie Belanger of the Connecticut Historical Society takes a look at the iconic Rosie the Riveter character. To get the scoop on what it was like to be a real-life "Rosie" in CT during WWII, she speaks to Gretchen Caulfield, President of the American Rosie the Riveter Association. (https://rosietheriveter.net/) Get our Commemorative 75th Anniversary of World War II Fall 2020 issue-full of CT WWII stories-by subscribing to Connecticut Explored at our Special Podcast...
104. Great Traditions: The Connecticut Election Cake
October 15, 2020 04:01 - 47 minutes - 65.5 MB(Image - Brookfield Registrars, chistinascucina.com) With elections leaving so many people with a bitter taste in their mouths, we're celebrating one of Connecticut's oldest – and for centuries best known – traditions; the Connecticut Election cake. In this conversation with Allie Kyff of the Connecticut Democracy Center at Connecticut's Old State House,state Historian Walt Woodward discusses the fascinating history of this delicious tradition. BAKE YOUR WAY TO GLORY! ...
103. Cannonballs and Skyscrapers: Keeler Tavern Museum
October 01, 2020 16:56 - 39 minutes - 81.2 MBOwned by the same family for its first 200 years then purchased by star architect Cass Gilbert in 1907 for his summer home, the Keeler Tavern was there when the American Revolution’s Battle of Ridgefield happened and it has a cannonball embedded in the façade to prove it. New York City architect Cass Gilbert, designer of early skyscrapers like the Woolworth Building in New York City, kept all of the home’s Colonial charm and added to it! Cass Gilbert had a big impact on Connecticut’s archi...
102. Archimedes, Silk Worms, Vanderbilt & The Perfect Screw
September 17, 2020 12:06 - 33 minutes - 56.5 MBIn this podcast from the memoir of Ellsworth S Grant, one of the state's great historians, Walt Woodward tells us about the invention of the world's best fastening device. It's a story that begins with Archimedes, and that came to fruition because of silk worms, Cornelius Vanderbilt, an entrepreneur named Dimoch, and an Irish inventor who gave this unique tool its name. It's a story for anyone who ever put together a piece of Ikea furniture - the story of the recessed hexagonal screw and the...
101. Sophie Tucker, Hartford’s Red Hot Mama
August 30, 2020 22:32 - 20 minutes - 48.9 MBSophie Tucker was one of the 20th century's most successful and highest paid performers. A singer and humorist, she transitioned successfully through vaudeville, recordings, Broadway, radio, movies, nightclubs and finally television. Born into a Jewish family that immigrated from Eastern Europe, her parents ran a kosher restaurant in Hartford’s Front Street district. Many of the threads that run through her life resonant with women now including body positivity, female agency, an artist’s c...
100. The Unlikely Legend – and History – of the Charter Oak
August 19, 2020 09:21 - 44 minutes - 30.3 MBFor our 100th episode, a revealing new look at Connecticut's oldest and most iconic legend - the Charter Oak. State historian Walt Woodward dug deep into this time-honored tale, and offers a new, true, and sometimes amusing look into the history behind this foundational legend.
99. Connecticut’s Mount Rushmore Connection
August 01, 2020 16:07 - 21 minutes - 40.1 MBIn this episode of Grading the Nutmeg, Mary Donohue, Asst. Publisher of Connecticut Explored, reveals Connecticut’s connection to Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor of Mount Rushmore, and the run up to his most contentious project, the Mount Rushmore National Monument in South Dakota. Perhaps the largest outdoor sculpture in the country, Mount Rushmore has been controversial since it was proposed. Where it’s located, who it commemorates, and its sculptor are all part of the national convers...