219. Transgender History and Connecticut Transgender Pioneer Dr. Alan L. Hart
Release Date: 10/15/2025
221. New Haven’s Lt. Augusto Rodríguez, First Civil War Soldier from Puerto Rico
Grating the Nutmeg
More than twenty thousand Hispanic Americans served in the Civil War. When Cuban-born Loreta Velázquez’s husband would not allow her to join him on the battlefield, she assumed the role of First Lieutenant Harry T. Buford to be near him. Philip Bazaar, born in Chile, was awarded the Medal of Honor for his courageous exploits during the assault of Fort Fisher. The spying efforts of Floridian Maria Dolores Sánchez and her two sisters led to a Union defeat at the Battle of Horse Landing. Delving into the lives of these individuals, historian A.J. Schenkman, author of...
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220. Connecticut Yankee Atomic Power Plant: The Promise and Peril of Nuclear Energy
Grating the Nutmeg
The Connecticut Yankee atomic power plant was one of the earliest commercial nuclear reactors in New England. Though it was dismantled at the turn of the 21st century, its legacy remains, both for the landscape of the Connecticut River Valley where it once stood, and for contemporary debates about energy today. This episode explores the plant’s life and afterlife, the activists who opposed it, and the promises and perils of nuclear power in the 1960s and today, through the reminiscences of Paul Gionfriddo, a former state legislator and longtime president of People’s Action for...
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219. Transgender History and Connecticut Transgender Pioneer Dr. Alan L. Hart
Grating the Nutmeg
The transgender community has struggled to receive recognition and equality. In this episode, we explore the history of the transgender community over the last 100 years with Dr. Susan Stryker and the life of Dr. Alan L. Hart, a transgender medical doctor working on the forefront of an urgent public health crisis, tuberculosis, in Connecticut. Hart, Director of Connecticut’s Office of TB Rehabilitation, is credited with saving countless lives. My guest is Dr. Susan Stryker, author of Transgender History, the Root of Today’s Revolution, published in 2017. Transgender...
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Get cool stuff in our second annual online #GTN benefit auction!
Grating the Nutmeg
We have amazing items for you in our second annual online benefit auction! The auction is the largest fundraiser of the year for our award-winning CT history podcast. New episodes are released every two weeks full of CT history makers and untold stories, and all episodes are free for all to listen to! Bidding begins on September 25, 2025 at midnight. Bids close at 11:59 on October 18, 2025.
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218. Connecticut in the Industrial Revolution: Making Buttons in Cheshire
Grating the Nutmeg
A button sounds like a very ordinary thing. But button production in Cheshire was part of Connecticut’s pioneering role in the precision manufacturing revolution of the nineteenth century. According to connecticuthistory.org, button production began with pewter buttons in the mid-eighteenth century but quickly turned to brass in the early nineteenth century. By 1860s, machines in the Scovill Brass factory in Waterbury produced 216,000 buttons per day. This type of industrial production volume for an everyday necessity such as buttons propelled investors and entrepreneurs to establish...
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217. The Smith Family of Glastonbury: Hannah and Her Daughters
Grating the Nutmeg
In this episode of Grating the Nutmeg, Natalie Belanger tells us about how two journals kept by a Revolutionary War-era girl in the ’s collection have inspired an original work of music. Several years ago, Leonard Raybon (Associate Professor of Music at Tulane University) encountered two journals and other writings by Hannah Hadassah Hickok, held at the Connecticut Museum. Hannah was the matriarch of the non-conformist Smith Family of Glastonbury. Her daughters would go on to became nationally famous for protesting their lack of voting rights in the 1870s by...
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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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The transgender community has struggled to receive recognition and equality. In this episode, we explore the history of the transgender community over the last 100 years with Dr. Susan Stryker and the life of Dr. Alan L. Hart, a transgender medical doctor working on the forefront of an urgent public health crisis, tuberculosis, in Connecticut. Hart, Director of Connecticut’s Office of TB Rehabilitation, is credited with saving countless lives.
My guest is Dr. Susan Stryker, author of Transgender History, the Root of Today’s Revolution, published in 2017. Transgender History, Third Edition: A Resource for Today’s Struggle-and Tomorrow’s will be published in Febuary, 2026. Dr. Susan Stryker holds a distinguished visiting appointment at Stanford's Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University, and is Professor Emerita of Gender, Women's and Sexuality Studies at the University of Arizona, where she directed the Institute for LGBT Studies for many years. She is the author or editor of numerous articles, books and anthologies. A collection of previously published short works, When Monsters Speak: A Susan Stryker Reader, was published by Duke University Press in 2024. She is also an Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker for Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria. In the documentary, you’ll meet Dr. Stryker and some of the transgender women and drag queens who fought police harassment at Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco’s Tenderloin in 1966 three years before the famous riot at Stonewall Inn bar in New York City. You’ll find the documentary on Amazon Prime.
To contact Dr. Stryker, visit her website at www.susanstryker.net/about
For more information on Dr. Alan L. Hart, go to these resources:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trailblazing-transgender-doctor-saved-countless-lives/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12328259/
https://college.lclark.edu/live/news/43320-from-the-archives-dr-alan-hart
West Hartford Pride
West Hartford Pride supports, celebrates, and uplifts the LGBTQAI+ Community by providing resources, events, education, and social justice initiatives. Find out more about visiting their website at westhartfordpride.org
Preservatlon Connecticut LGBTQ+ Historic Sites Survey
Preservation Connecticut, in partnership with scholars and activists, has embarked on documenting Connecticut’s LGBTQ+ sites. Interwoven through these places are stories of resilience, innovation, and the pursuit of equality that transcend the traditional boundaries of class, race, ethnicity, and religion. If you're interested in learning more or contributing to this survey project, please visit www.preservationct.org/lgbtq.
Grating the Nutmeg Three-part LGBTQ+ Series 2025
Connecticut Explored magazine and our podcast, Grating the Nutmeg, have featured many of the heritage trails that mark the important histories and sites of Connecticut’s people. Preservation Connecticut 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, Episode 212, a transgender medical researcher working on an urgent public health issue in the center of Connecticut politics, Episode 219, and a gay, Jewish, best-selling children’s book author in affluent Fairfield County, Episode 215.
Connecticut Humanites
The 2025 LGBTQ+ Three-part series received grant support from CT Humanities, connecting people to the humanities through grants, partnerships, and public programs. Visit our website to learn about our funding opportunities and capacity building grants.
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This episode of Grating the Nutmeg was produced by Mary Donohue and engineered by Patrick O’Sullivan at www.highwattagemedia.com/ Follow GTN on our socials-Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and BlueSky.
Follow executive producer Mary Donohue on Facebook and Instagram at West Hartford Town Historian. Join us in two weeks for our next episode of Grating the Nutmeg, the podcast of Connecticut history. Thank you for listening!