Presidentress Gift Guide 2016

If this November hadn't been such a crappy, hectic month I would have had this post up and ready in time for Black Friday and Cyber Monday and whatnot. Sorry. But better late than never, right? If you're looking for the perfect gift for the history nerd in your life, you've come to the right place. (You might also want to check out last year's gift guide, as most of it is still relevant.)

The Amazon links contained here are affiliate links. Shopping through them helps support this blog, so please do me a solid and use them. The other links are not affiliate links, so if you don't like me you can still feel good about clicking on them because they won't support me in any way.

Without further ado, here are my 2016 Holiday Picks:

If you don't already have the Broadway cast recording of Hamilton, you should really get it. Really. And if you already have it, your next purchase should be the Hamilton Mixtape. It puts a new spin on those "old" beloved favorites from the show, with artists like Ja Rule, Kelly Clarkson, Alicia Keys, and Jimmy Fallon & The Roots. You can preorder it right now (some tracks are already available) but the whole album will be released next week.

Do you want to act out the musical while listening to the soundtrack? Then why not pick up some Hamilton, Jefferson, and Washington finger puppets?

We also have the Lincoln and Poe ones. (The Poe can represent John Wilkes Booth if you want to do any other theater reenactments.)

Or get a little radical with an Emma Goldman finger puppet. Think of all the fun you can have!

Maybe you're looking for something a little more sophisticated? Perhaps a nice, world-leader-scented candle to set the mood? Then you definitely need to check out JD and Kate Industries' shop on etsy. They're the folks behind Hottest Heads of State, and they've recently expanded their expertise into the candle-making business. You can select from candles that smell like Justin Trudeau, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump.

I have the Justin Trudeau-scented one, and it smells just like a warm, tender, Canadian hug. Also, it comes with a Justin Trudeau temporary tattoo!

If you like supporting independent artisans, and if you also like presidents overrun by rodents, this next item might be perfect for you.

I got this Andrew Jackson-hamster magnet last year from The Atomic 50s Housewife shop on etsy. I don't see it listed there anymore, but if you really, really want one, maybe you can contact her and she'd make one?

Next up are some great shirts from Amorphia Apparel. They have a ton of nerdy/geeky/funny shirts, but my favorite series are their History League shirts, which take historic people/events and turn them into pseudo-sports logos, and the Hirsute History shirts, which feature famous historical hair.

I couldn't decide which History League shirt I wanted, so I have two. The nice thing is that you can get a single logo or you can get two on a shirt to represent a "matchup." I have one shirt for the Muckrakers of the 4th Estate, and the other shirt is a matchup between the Roosevelt Trustbusters and the Robber Barons.

I don't yet have any Hirsute History shirts, but Chester Arthur is high on my list.

Or if you really want to stick with that Justin Trudeau theme, they've got him covered, too.

They also have the hair of actors, musicians, authors, philosophers, and more. Shirts are available in unisex and women's cuts.

If you're looking to support some non-profits, here are some ideas for you.

This year's White House Historical Association Christmas ornament honors Herbert Hoover and the four-alarm fire that occurred at the White House on Christmas Eve 1929. I'm planning on picking mine up at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, but you can order one online.

And while we're talking about Chester Arthur (we were, a minute ago), last year I created a picture of Chestnut A. Arthur. I had kind of forgotten about him until I recently read that the chestnuts we eat in America have been imported ever since a blight wiped out American chestnut trees in 1904. The American Chestnut Foundation is trying to reintroduce blight-resistant chestnut trees, and for a $10 donation, they'll plant one in honor of a person of your choice. It seemed fitting that I should have a tree planted in honor of Chestnut A. Arthur, and you can, too. (Or pick someone else...Chestnut A. Arthur won't be offended. In any case, help make American chestnuts great again.)

Oh, and if you want a presidential ring for that special someone? Let's talk.

Happy shopping!

Separated at Birth, Pt. 15

Rudy Giuliani and the alien from Alien.

A Tale of Two Podcasts

A few weeks ago I decided to try listening to some podcasts instead of playing the Hamilton soundtrack for the 34,000th time (not that there's anything wrong with that). I'd never listened to podcasts before, mainly because I didn't think I could. I'm more of a visual person than an auditory one, and I've never done well with audiobooks because my mind wanders too much. But I'd heard about the Presidential podcast from the Washington Post, and I rarely pass up an opportunity to engage in presidential stuff. Obviously.

The Presidential podcast started back in January with the goal of exploring one president per week leading up to the election. Because I didn't start listening until September I had a lot of catching up to do, but thanks to a few long drives and a couple long flights, I finished just a few days before the election. Whew!

Presidential looks at each president in chronological order. I know of several people whose goal is to read a biography of every president, and I commend them for that because I could never do it. There are some presidents I just don't find interesting enough to devote that kind of time to (I'm looking at you, James Monroe). But I could easily and happily devote 45 minutes of drive-time to learning about them.

Host Lillian Cunningham interviews experts from the Library of Congress, award-winning biographers, journalists, staff members (for more recent presidents), and even some family members to help give listeners insight into the presidents' lives, their terms, and their legacies. Although the episodes are largely serious, they're not at all stodgy. I think the podcast would feel approachable to presidential history newcomers and long-term aficionados alike.

Best of all, the episodes I thought would be the most boring often turned out to be the most interesting, particularly the ones about William Henry Harrison and John Tyler.

As I said, I finished that podcast (other than the post-election wrap-up episode) just days before the election. After the election, I desperately needed something to cheer me up, and that's where the next podcast entered my life.

The DC Improv has a podcast called The Other Side, and one of their features this year is something called Headliner of State, a search for the funniest president of all time.

Like Presidential, Headliner of State devotes an episode to each president, but not in chronological order. There's actually not any order I can discern, but that's okay. I like mixing things up.

Despite being produced by a comedic entity, the episodes are educational and often serious, but with a good dose of humor thrown in. I especially like the formal introduction given to each president by the announcer, who plays it very straight. I laughed out loud several times and almost drove off the road during the William Howard Taft introduction.

The people interviewed for Headliner of State include a wide range of experts. Sometimes the host, Chris White, speaks with biographers or staff members at presidential sites. Sometimes he talks with television humor writers who devoted time to a particular president (like a writer for Futurama who spent a lot of time on Nixon jokes, or the woman who wrote the "William Henry Harrison" episode of Parks and Recreation). For the Chester Arthur episode, he interviews facial hair historian (there is such a thing). For more recent presidents, he interviews the presidents' official joke writers, a position I didn't even know existed and led me to wish I had taken a different path in life.

The episodes always give an overview of the presidents' lives and administrations in a scholarly way, but also spend a lot of time (as one might expect) looking at the lighter side of their personalities.

I'm only about halfway through the series right now and they're still working on more episodes, so I can't tell you yet who is eventually deemed the funniest president of all time. Lincoln certainly seems to be the frontrunner right now, and unless there's a huge upset somewhere, Andrew Johnson will likely be crowned least funny.

If you're looking for a great way to pass the time on a road trip or just running around town, I highly recommend both of these podcasts. If anyone has recommendations for other good ones, please let me know. I have no problem going back to Hamilton but I'd like some other options, too.

Don't Blame Me. I Voted for Kodos

If you don't know The Simpsons, this might not make a lot of sense. Also, if you don't know The Simpsons, I feel very bad for you.

A while back I stumbled upon some election signs reddit user potmat had created for his yard. They're signs featuring Kang and Kodos, the aliens who make an appearance in every "Treehouse of Terror" episode, including one in which they impersonate Bill Clinton and Bob Dole in an attempt to win the 1996 election and take over the earth.

Obsessed with the idea of having these signs in my yard, I asked potmat if he was okay with my stealing the idea, and he said sure. So I sent the picture to my friend Heather and asked her to create a file with quality high enough for a yard sign. She did, and then I let it sit in my inbox for several months.

Finally the other day I sent the files to Office Max to be printed on heavy poster paper, which I then planned to glue onto an existing yard sign. Unfortunately, I guess someone at Office Max knows The Simpsons well enough to know that Kang and Kodos are, technically, copyrighted characters, and they wouldn't print them.

I resigned myself to not having awesome election signs.

Then, yesterday afternoon, inspiration struck: I could just paint them myself! But then I flashed back to junior high art class and having to make a grid over a comic strip and a grid on poster board, and having to freehand each part of the grid onto its corresponding square and how deathly boring that was, and I gave up. But then my brain remembered that I have a portable projector I use for showing videos in some classes I teach, and I realized I could use that to project the image onto a blank yard sign and trace it. Of course there would also be a lot of painting (and more and more tracing) involved, but at least I'd have my signs.

I hit the craft store (with lots of coupons, thankfully) for some acrylic paint, some paint pens, and some sealer. Mr. Presidentressor had already purchased a blank sign, probably at some man-store. (Sarcasm, people. I know women like Home Depot, too.) (Except I really don't. I always worry that one of those giant saws or a coil of wire balanced on a high shelf is going to fall on me.)

I set up the projector, hooked it up to my phone, and taped my blank sign to the wall. My 7-year-old "helped" me by talking incessantly about my tracing (which I did in pencil, by the way). I did Kang on one side, Kodos on the other.

Next I headed to the kitchen table and outlined the aliens in Sharpie. I wound up painting over Kang's name because the pencil showed through the paint and I figured it would be easier to go over them in white paint than to try painting around the blank parts with red.

Then we painted the red and blue background on the first side. I wasn't happy with how splotchy the paint looked at first, but a second coat of each made them better. Filling in the alien was actually lots of fun, although I did need to go back over some of the lines with Sharpie again once the paint had dried, just to keep them bold.

For the Kodos side, I decided to change up the color scheme. Instead of blue on top and red on the bottom, I left it white on top and went with blue on the bottom. That was partially because I'm impatient, and not painting something is quicker than painting it. But it's also because the white paint pen I got for doing the large letters wasn't working very well and I didn't want to deal with it anymore. As for the blue, it just covered better than the red.

From the beginning I had planned on going back and doing the smaller lettering at the end, I just wasn't sure how. I didn't want to freehand it, but I also didn't want to project it up against a wall, especially because I wasn't sure if the paint pens would even work that way. Ultimately, I wound up using the projector, but I rigged it (with a step stool and my kitchen table) to project down onto the floor.

When it was all done, I added a few coats of varnish. Unfortunately, there were a few places where the varnish (or more likely my brush) took off a bit of the acrylic paint, most notably on Kodos. Oops. Overall I'm happy with the results. It wound up costing less than getting the signs printed (although it also cost me about six hours of my life).

Since I wound up doing these on my own, I could have customized them to be different (or more different) than the ones the reddit user created. And had I started sooner than 72 hours before the election, I probably would have. (Heather pointed out that both aliens are Kodos---I could have used a different image for Kang.) Luckily we have four years before we have to go through this again, so I've got time to work on the next one.

Teddy Roosepig

I tried finding a good presidential Halloween costume this year, but I came up short. You'd think with it being an election year there would be tons of options, but I just wasn't feeling any of them. I considered dressing up as Sexy Abraham Lincoln again and recruiting friends to go as Sexy Jefferson, Sexy TR, and Sexy Washington so we could collectively go as Sexy Mount Rushmore, but surprisingly few friends (read: none) wanted to join me. Their loss.

It's okay, though. The strange-presidential-costume theme continues in the Presidentress household thanks to my 5-year-old son insisting on being Teddy Roosepig.

I need to state here, emphatically, that this was not my idea. I'm not sure if I'm giving him all the credit or all the blame; I'm just saying.

It started when I showed my kids the Teddy Roosevelt costume I found on Amazon. They all rebuffed me, so I let it go. But then a few weeks later, my youngest came up with this pig thing and decided that he needed to morph it with Teddy Roosevelt.

At first I thought it would be disrespectful (unlike that classy Lincoln costume of mine), but I asked on Facebook and Twitter, and everyone who responded said that it was a great idea. A couple even said that Teddy himself would find it hilarious. So it happened. 

I bought the costume from Amazon, but when it came I saw that it didn't include the boots. So I found some kids costume boots on Amazon, too. (When I bought them, they were $10 with free Prime Shipping. They've gone up since then, which is unfortunate because you could buy some real kids' cowboy boots for the current price, I imagine.) Then I found a "pig kit" with a nose, clip-on tail, and ear headband. 

I cut the ears off the headband and hot-glued them to the hat, and I hot-glued the mustache to the snout. (I also trimmed the mustache a bit because it was far too bushy for TR.)

Because of my affinity for aardvarks, I know that the word "aardvark" comes from the Afrikaans (South African Dutch) words for land (aard) and pig (vark). Hence this costume should really be called Teddy Roosevark. Plus Roosevelt is a Dutch name, so it's even more appropriate. ("Roosevelt" apparently means "rose field," so Roosevark would, I suppose, mean rose-pig, and pigs are pink, after all. It's perfect.)

Maybe I'll reuse my Lincoln costume from last year so my kid and I can comprise half of a very dystopian Mount Rushmore this Halloween. 

The Cubs, Trump, and Armageddon

The Chicago Cubs haven't won a World Series since 1908 and haven't even appeared in a World Series since 1945. It's not exactly a novel joke to suggest that the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series would result in armageddon. I've heard that joke all my life and have alluded to it on numerous occasions. And that's all it is: A joke...or is it?

The Cubs have made it into the postseason a few times in recent years, and each time I've been reminded of a particular short story by W. P. Kinsella. For those of you who aren't fans of baseball literature, Kinsella is a Canadian writer known in the U.S. for his stories about baseball, and his plots often involve at least a slight supernatural element. (His best known work is a novel called Shoeless Joe, the basis for the movie Field of Dreams.)

The short story in question is called "The Last Pennant Before Armageddon" from the collection The Thrill of the Grass. The premise is that the Cubs are having an unbelievably good year, but their manager has been receiving messages from God in the form of recurring dreams in which various people (including Al Capone and longtime Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley) plead with God to let the Cubs win. God tells them that the Cubs will win the last pennant before armageddon. Finally, with the team on the verge of clinching the pennant, international tensions between the United States and USSR have reached a critical level, and the Cubs' starting pitcher is showing signs of fatigue. The manager needs to decide whether to leave his starter in, which might cause the Cubs to lose but would also keep the world from ending, or whether he should pull his starter and bring in his reliable closer, thus winning the pennant but leading to a nuclear war that would wipe out civilization. (I won't tell you what happens.)

Even though that story is about the Cubs winning the National League championship, not the World Series,  I've always considered this a creative look at the typical "The Cubs winning the World Series will lead to armageddon!" joke. In the past it was just amusing but this year, just a few days after the end of the World Series, America will vote for a new president. That president might be Donald Trump, which could very well lead to the end of the world.

As I write this, the Cubs have won their Division Series and are headed to the National League Championship Series against the Dodgers. (It should be noted that in Kinsella's story, the championship series is against...the Dodgers!)

Now, I'd love to see the Cubs in the World Series. I'm not exactly a Cubs fan, per se, but they've always been my favorite National League team. I spent good chunks of my childhood in Chicago and live in the Chicago 'burbs now. (It would be even better---though possibly more damning---if they face the Cleveland Indians, another perennial loser that hasn't won the World Series since 1948. I grew up an Indians fan in Northeast Ohio and have been waiting my whole life for them to finally win the whole thing. There's no doubt that a Cubs-Indians matchup would signal an apocalypse.)

Over the past few days, Donald Trump's campaign has taken a nosedive, so it seems less likely that he can win. Does that also mean the Cubs will lose? We'll have to wait and see.

Back in 2003, the Chicago Tribune ran an article about Kinsella's story. The Cubs were in the playoffs that year as were the Boston Red Sox, who hadn't won a World Series since 1918. In that article, Kinsella said that he wasn't rooting for either team to win because he likes them more as lovable losers. Neither team made it to the World Series that year. The Red Sox did wind up winning the World Series the following season and the world did not end, which is further proof that armageddon is dependent on the Cubs and not any other team.

In that 2003 article, Kinsella was asked what would happen if the Cubs won. He said, "You never know. We'll just have to see." Sadly, Kinsella won't know how it turns out this year because he died last month, which seems like a classically Kinsella-esque twist to this whole scenario.

Am I being melodramatic and superstitious? Yes, absolutely, and hopefully that's all it is. But if the Cubs and Donald Trump both win, there's no way you'll convince me it was just a coincidence.

DIY Presidential Rings

A few months ago, as the Fourth of July approached, I realized I didn't have anything specifically presidential with which to accessorize my holiday outfit. Then I remembered some presidential spoons a friend had sent me a while back, and I realized I could turn one of those into a bracelet.

I scoured the web and YouTube for tutorials on making a bracelet out of a spoon, and somehow I decided it would be better to turn the spoon into a ring. I don't remember how or why I came to that conclusion, but I'm not sure that matters.

This is a mandrel

The problem with this plan was that I really needed a ring mandrel, something I hadn't even heard of until I started researching this whole thing. Luckily they sell them at Michael's, and with a 50% off coupon I got my mandrel for only $10. Turns out you can also get them for around the same price on Amazon. Make sure you get one that's all metal! There are some that are plastic, which is fine for making wire rings or whatever, but if you're going to be hammering this thing, it needs to be solid metal.

You'll also need a presidential spoon, of course. The spoon collection my friend sent included George Washington, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson, Rutherford B. Hayes, William Henry Harrison, James K. Polk, and Calvin Coolidge. Since this was for the Fourth of July I decided to go with Washington (plus I had a backup Washington spoon in case I destroyed the first one).

Besides the mandrel and spoon, the other tools you'll need are a rubber mallet (or something similar), a block of wood (or something similar---this is for you to set the ring and mandrel on when you pound away at them), a hacksaw or something else that will cut through metal, and a metal file. Thankfully Mr. Presidentressor had all those items. Well, actually, he didn't have a rubber mallet, so I wrapped two thicknesses of washcloth around a regular hammer for my first attempt, but I got a mallet for the second one. I recommend the mallet (more on this later).

I didn't take photos while I made the ring because for some reason I didn't think I'd blog about it, but then the ring came out so well I realized I had to. As it turned out, the only other person in my life who was actually excited about my Washington ring was my cousin Christina, who demanded one for her birthday. She chose Andrew Jackson because she hates him and wanted to be ironic. I just recently made hers, and I was smart enough to photograph the process this time. (Also, her birthday isn't until December so she's probably going to see this in advance and it'll ruin the "surprise." Sorry, Chris.)

So, how to make one of these rings? First thing is to measure how much spoon you'll need. I wrapped a thin strip of paper around my finger, cut it to the right length, then I used that to mark the back of the spoon in Sharpie.

Bent spoon. I wound up
bending it even more
before we cut it.

(Come to think of it, the very first thing you should do is check eBay to make sure the spoon you're cutting and bending isn't worth, like, $900. I didn't check until after my ring was finished, but the first auction I found for the George Washington spoon was $3.95, so it's all good.)

At least one of the tutorials I found said to pre-bend the spoon into a loose ring before cutting it, since the extra length of the spoon would allow for more leverage. I did that, and while it's true that the spoon is easier to shape that way, it also made it harder to cut with the hacksaw later. For the Jackson spoon, I left it straight for cutting, but then it was really, really hard to bend it without that extra leverage. When I make another ring (and yes, there will be a next time), I'm going back to bending it first, and we'll just have to struggle a bit to cut it.

Cutting Andrew Jackson

Once your spoon is cut, the edges will probably be a bit sharp. Use a metal file to smooth those down.

Okay, so when your spoon is cut and filed, it's time to start using the mandrel and mallet/hammer to bang the ring into shape. The idea is to put the spoon on the mandrel and use the mallet to bend the spoon around the mold. Don't worry too much about properly sizing the ring right away. Start big and work your way smaller. You can fine-tune it once you're further along. Remember to set the mandrel on a wooden block while you hammer. I covered the block with an old washcloth to help protect the spoon and to keep the block from chipping.

Some tutorials showed using a vice to hold the ring onto the mandrel to keep it in place while hammering. That would probably help a lot, but when I made the Washington spoon, Mr. Presidentressor was in the middle of some other stuff and I didn't want to bother him for a vice. For the Jackson one, I just forgot, plus I'm not sure that would have worked with these spoons anyway. So what I did was set the mandrel down on the block of wood with the spoon in the middle. I held one side of the mandrel down with my right foot and the other with my left hand, then used my right hand to beat the crap out of the spoon. This was...maybe not the smartest setup, but it worked.

A few words of caution: Be really careful when you're banging away at the spoon, especially if you have body parts nearby. It hurts to whack yourself with a mallet. What hurts even more is when you hit yourself and skin your hand with a mallet. Don't be me.

The shaping process was fairly quick and easy with the Washington spoon. The Jackson one took some more effort because I hadn't pre-bent it before cutting. For that one, Mr. Presidentressor wound up clamping the mandrel to our block of wood, with the spoon between the mandrel and the block. He then used some pliers to bend the spoon up enough that I could start hammering away at it.

(At this point, could I have left it clamped and continued to hammer the ring that way rather than holding everything with my foot and hand? Probably, yes, but it didn't occur to me. Also, it's important to rotate the ring to hit it from different angles, and it needs to be moved up the mandrel as it gets smaller, which would have involved a lot of unclamping/reclamping, so I'm sticking by my rudimentary process.)

It's also important to note that (at least with my spoons) the part with the presidents' heads just would not bend. That wound up not being a problem, though, because it looked fine---possibly better---on my finger with that part lying flat.

One other minor snag was that at some point while making the first ring, the washcloth I'd wrapped around the hammer tore, but I didn't realize it. As a result, there's some scratching on the spoon to the left of Washington's head. His face is intact, though, so all is well. I didn't run into any issues with the rubber mallet and Andrew Jackson. For this reason, I strongly recommend a mallet.

My spoons started out quite tarnished, but by the time I was done, they were sparkling. Don't waste time and effort on silver polishes before you start. It'll probably work itself out.

All in all, I'm very happy with the way the rings came out.

Jackson looks like Buchanan here, doesn't he?

There was something cathartic about whacking away at Andrew Jackson's head. Also, before I made the Washington one Mr. Presidentressor and I had been out at breakfast. When we were done I said, "Okay, I need to get home so I can bang George Washington." Crafts are always better with innuendo.

Now, if anyone has any ideas on what to do with the other end of the spoons, let me know. The Jackson one has a scene of the Battle of New Orleans, and I can't just throw it away.