216. Brewing Community: Labor, Alcohol, and Unrest in Industrial New Britain
Grating the Nutmeg
Immigrants from Lithuania who made their way to New Britain, Connecticut at the beginning of the twentieth century found work in the city’s factories turning out tools and hardware. Their weekly routine included work, church and socializing at neighborhood saloons. But major upheavals in American society were happening at the time that affected their lives including the rise of organized labor, the temperance movement, anti-immigrant sentiment, and labor strikes. In this episode, we have two new voices in public history, Central Connecticut State University students Jon Kozak and...
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215. Connecticut’s Wild Visionary: Children’s Author Maurice Sendak
Grating the Nutmeg
Artist and author Maurice Sendak was able to achieve significant and enduring success in art and children’s literature during his lifetime. But what secrets did he had to keep from his family, publishers, parents, librarians, and readers as a gay, Jewish man negotiating the field of children’s literature? Sendak wrote and illustrated books that nurtured children and adults alike. Winner of the 1964 Caldecott Medal for Where the Wild Things Are, in 1970 Sendak became the first American illustrator to receive the international Hans Christian Anderson Award, given in...
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214. Monstrous: The Business of Whaling
Grating the Nutmeg
Whaling was big business. Connecticut and her sister New England states built ships, forged cast iron tools, produced wooden storage casks and outfitted sailors. Stonington, Mystic, New London, and New Haven were part of New England’s predominance in successful whaling. We’re going to get into the nitty gritty of the trade in this episode and hear about some of the striking artifacts from Mystic Seaport’s whaling collection - tools, ship logs, harpoons, blubber hooks and scrimshaw - that are on view. They speak to the staggering risks and rewards of the whaling industry that lit...
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213. When the Continental Army Camped in Connecticut
Grating the Nutmeg
The Redding Encampment, Connecticut’s first State Archaeological Preserve, is located in Putnam Memorial State Park. Understanding of the Revolutionary War has emphasized the battles, maneuvers, and war meetings; but far more time was expended during the long periods of winter encampment. The winter months were a brutal test of individual fortitude, unifying command, and local support. In the journal Joseph Plumb Martin kept at the time, he wrote, “We arrived at Redding about Christmas or a little before and prepared to build huts for our winter quarters. And now came on the time...
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212. Ingredients for Revolution: Feminist Restaurants featuring Bloodroot Restaurant
Grating the Nutmeg
and our podcast, , have featured many of the heritage trails that mark the important histories and sites of Connecticut’s people. has undertaken a survey of LGBTQ+ heritage sites across the state. Now, Grating the Nutmeg and Preservation Connecticut have teamed up to bring you a three-episode podcast series that pairs new research on LGBTQ+ identity and activism with accounts of the Connecticut places where history was made. The episodes include a thriving vegetarian cafe-bookstore run by lesbian feminists in a working-class former factory town, a transgender medical researcher...
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211. Leviathan: New Englanders and the History of Whaling
Grating the Nutmeg
American whale oil lit the world. The Industrial Revolution couldn’t have happened without it. Connecticut was part of the whaling industry of the nineteenth century that sent thousands of American ships manned by tens of thousands of men to hunt whales across the world’s oceans. Stonington, Mystic, New London, and New Haven were part of New England’s predominance in successful whaling. In fact, New London, Connecticut is known today as the “Whaling City”. My guest Eric Jay Dolan is the author of sixteen award-winning books on maritime history. In...
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210. The Mattatuck Museum: Waterbury and Summer Leisure
Grating the Nutmeg
In this episode, host Mary Donohue visits the in Waterbury, a place that includes stellar architecture, art by some of the most renowned artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and an exhibition that tells the story of Waterbury’s rise as a manufacturing powerhouse. The Mattatuck Museum is an art and regional history museum on the Green in downtown Waterbury, that started out as a historical society in 1877. Our guest is Rebecca Lo Presti, Assistant Curator. She served as the curator for “ The Art of Leisure” an exhibit that is up now until June 15, 2025. From...
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209. Mary Hall and the Good Will Club
Grating the Nutmeg
In this episode, Natalie Belanger of the CT Museum of Culture and History tells the story of the Good Will Club, the forerunner of the youth club movement that got its start in Hartford. But the story of the club can't be separated from that of its founder, a woman who's an inductee of the CT Women's Hall of Fame for her barrier-breaking work in the legal field. There are lots of ways to learn more about the history of the Good Will Club and about Mary Hall. Here’s a partial list of sources consulted for this episode: Elizabeth Warren, CT Explored, Spring...
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208. Saving Connecticut’s Mid-Century Modern Homes
Grating the Nutmeg
We’re celebrating May, Historic Preservation Month, with an episode on the Modern houses of the 1950s and 1960s. Could you live in a glass house? New Canaan, Connecticut’s Mid-Century Modern homes designed after the Second War are world famous. In addition to Philip Johnson’s Glass House, now a museum, New Canaan has homes designed by Marcel Breuer, Eliot Noyes, Frank Lloyd Wright and Edward Durell Stone. Each one is a part of architectural history and is a masterwork of the era’s most talented architects. But by the 1990s, people began to demolish these relatively...
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207. Book and Dagger: Yale Professors Become Successful WWII Spies
Grating the Nutmeg
In her new book, Book and Dagger, How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of the World, Dr. Elyse Graham tells the story of academics, like Yale literature professor Joseph Curtis, who hunted down German spies and turned them into double agents, and Sherman Kent, a Yale history professor who rose to become the head of analysis for all of Europe and Africa. At the start of World War II, the United States found itself in desperate need of an intelligence agency. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a precursor to today’s CIA, was quickly formed—and in an...
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Early voting has already started in the 2024 presidential election and I just couldn’t resist the suggestion by my guests to explore what Samuel Clemens alias Mark Twain, Hartford’s greatest Gilded Age humorist, had to say about the United States presidents. Was Twain the John Stewart or John Oliver of his day? Known for his sharp wit and scathing satire, what presidents met with his approval? Corruption, national identity, the power of big business, and America’s global role were just as contested then as they are now. His funny, insightful observations about the presidents of his day apply readily to the modern presidency.
Guests on this episode are Twain experts Mallory Howard, Assistant Curator at The Mark Twain House & Museum and Dr. Jason Scappaticci, historian and Associate Dean of Student Affairs at Connecticut State Community College Capital in Hartford.
Looking for a fun and informative event for your library, book club, or historical society?
The Mark Twain House & Museum can bring you distinctive, entertaining, and interactive presentations on Mark Twain’s life, work, interests, and era. You can book a presentation on the subject of this episode at the Mark Twain House website here: https://marktwainhouse.org/outreach/
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We’re almost there! This is our 197th episode. Thanks to our listeners, Grating the Nutmeg is going to hit 200 episodes soon! We love bringing you a new episode every two weeks. In celebration of our 200th episode and to help fund Grating the Nutmeg in 2025, we are holding our first ever Grating the Nutmeg Benefit Online Auction. The auction bidding opens on November 1st. You can bid on art, special one-of -a- kind experiences like a private tour of the Connecticut State Capitol including the Hall of Flags, theater tickets, museum admissions, hands-on genealogy assistance, behind the scenes tours at fascinating places, and restaurant gift cards. You’ll be able to bid on a delish lunch at one of Hartford’s best restaurants with our publisher Dr. Kathy Hermes and the Connecticut State Historian Dr. Andy Horowitz. All the bidding information is on our website and links to the auction bidding are on our social media pages. Go to the auction here: https://secure.qgiv.com/event/gtn2024/
It’s easy to bid on your phone or laptop. The holidays are coming up-you may find that perfect gift in our auction items for that hard to buy for person!
Toast the start of conservation work with the team working to stabilize the 18th-century wallpaper adorning the Phelps-Hatheway House. Enjoy exclusive access to the expertise of conservators who will explain and demonstrate their work caring for the papers.
To reserve your spot for the Nov. 3, 2024 event, go to https://ctlandmarks.org/wallpaper/
To celebrate our 200 episodes, we’re asking listeners to donate $20 a month or $200 annually to help us continue to bring you new episodes every two weeks. It’s easy to set up a monthly donation on the Connecticut Explored website at ctexplored.org Click the donate button at the top and look for the Grating the Nutmeg link. We appreciate your support!
Subscribe to get your copy of Connecticut Explored magazine delivered to your mailbox or your inbox-subscribe at ctexplored.org. We’ve got issues coming up on food, celebrations and the environment with places you’ll want to read about and visit.
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This episode of Grating the Nutmeg was produced by Mary Donohue and engineered by Patrick O’Sullivan at https://www.highwattagemedia.com/ Follow GTN on our Facebook, Instagram and Threads pages.
Follow host Mary Donohue on Facebook and Instagram at WeHa Sidewalk Historian. Join us in two weeks for our next episode of Grating the Nutmeg, the podcast of Connecticut history.