Read America! By Parker A. Poodle™ Hello, Alexandria! I, Parker A. Poodle, am reporting from the backseat of my mistress’ car. We have just crossed the 14th Street Bridge en route to The White House. Massachusetts-er John Adams—slaveless property owner, husband of Abigail, father of three and dog owner of two—was the first President to inhabit The White House. His stay was short, four months. The election of 1800, Adams v. Jefferson, was bitterly fought. Adams dogs, Juno and Satan, were the first First dogs to dabble in Washington politics. To—how shall I say?—speak smartly, snarl angrily, perhaps pee on The White House lawn. March 2 is National Read Across America Day and, as biographer David McCullough confirms, children “should read history.” “If it should be the Design of Providence that you should live to grow up, you will naturally feel a Curiosity to learn the History of Causes which have produced the late Revolution of our Government,” John Adams wrote son John Quincy in 1777. “It will become you to make yourself Master of all the considerable Characters….” Reading Education Assistance Dogs are characters, of a type. We went home by way of the Alexandria library. Children are educated. Dogs are trained. I entered the library quietly. George Washington’s Breakfast, a book by Jean Fritz explains the library process. “The librarian smiled when she saw [a poodle patron] come through the door,” Fritz noted. “[I] walked up to the desk” and sat. The librarian “picked out four [children’s] books to take home,” then “promised that she would look at the rest.” “As [George] Washington was the father of our country and [Thomas] Jefferson the author of its ideals, John Adams was the champion of government,” Cheryl Harness wrote in The Revolutionary John Adams. “When the Congress…
By Sarah Becker © 2016 “Alexander Hamilton spoke in paragraphs,” 36 year-old playwright, composer, and actor Lin-Manuel Miranda told 60-Minutes. Miranda’s Broadway musical Hamilton is New York’s hottest new show. Who-da thunk an 18th century politician of Hamilton’s type capable of drawing record-setting crowds? Former Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, a Democratic-Republican, did not think him swell. Jefferson served as Secretary of State from 1790 until 1793. Aaron Burr, Hamilton’s 1804 dueling partner, serves as the show’s narrator. The hip-hop, rap-style musical starts: “How does a bastard orphan, son of a whore and Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean by providence comma grow up to be a hero and a scholar?” The song My Shot is the show’s anthem. Hamilton, a transplanted New Yorker, was General George Washington’s aide de camp (1777); a Federalist and Secretary of the Treasury from 1789 until 1795. His is the threatened face of today’s $10 bill, or maybe not. The musical, which opened on Broadway in February 2015, generates $500 million in profit weekly. “After so long an experience of your public services, I am naturally led, at this moment of your departure [as Secretary of the Treasury]…to review them,” President Washington wrote in 1795. “In every relation, which you have borne to me, I have found that my confidence in your talents, exertions and integrity, has been well placed,” Washington said. “I more freely render this testimony of my approbation, because I speak from opportunities of information wch cannot deceive me, and which furnish satisfactory proof of your title to public regard.” Like Washington, critics and audiences give Hamilton rave reviews. “Alexander Hamilton, an illegitimate orphan from the Caribbean, was painfully aware of his lack of status; an outsider trying to fight his way into the inner…