Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Oh what a mess of a marathon we talked about this week we did. First, I want to talk about a couple of things related specifically to this, and then I'll go on my TI rad or they'll get intertwined. I don't know one of the things that made me infuriated, and obviously, like I mean, I would say that those athletes were fully abused, no qualifier at all. I agree were abused by race organizers. It would have sucked and been really bad if they were just really bad at planning and that's why things went so poorly. But because they purposefully treated them like lab experiments and almost killed two of them, I have no sympathy for them. Yeah, it's very bad. Charles Lucas in his book is that's a fascinating and like I said, gross and racist at points read. But what's really interesting is that he both praises Hicks for his you know, incredible drive to finish the race and says really insulting things about him. And he's kind of that way with a lot of them, But like at one point, there's one quote where he's talking about Hicks towards the end and he said his mind continually rove towards something to eat, and in the last mile, Hicks continually harped on the subject. And I'm like, I hate you, Charless because he was hungry, hydrated, and hungry and possibly dying from the strick nine. You gave him right so much anger. That entire read is again fascinating because it is an insight into how race organizers and the Olympic Committee perceived what they were doing, and horrifying because it is super racist and also treats all of the runners like labrats. Yeah, human beings. But to make it a little bit funnier, I wanted to talk again about Felix Carva Hall because he I think, here's why I believe the Apple story. So after he went to the nineteen oh four Games, and even though he didn't meddle, he was considered to have really been a pretty good representative for Cuba and Cuban athletics. So when the nineteen o six Games happened in Athens, they actually sent him there like they he didn't have to do the whole like I just want to go on the strip by myself. They actually like fundraised and but he did go by himself again and he didn't make it to the Games, but we don't know why because after he got to Italy he disappeared well okay, and nobody knew his whereabouts and there was no sign of him, and so he was presumed dead. Wow, newspapers in Cuba ran his obituary. But then he just showed up in Havana one day on a steamer from Spain with a Spanish flag, and he didn't ever relate, to the best of my knowledge, explain where he had been. But it seemed like he had a fun time in Europe and then came home. So funny. So I went hundred percent believe that he ate some apples, didn't feel good, took a quick map. Yeah, he seems like a very fun guy. Little focus issues. One of the things that is uh cool, I don't know if that's the right. Thing helpful about this particular race is that there is visual documentation of it. There are photographs of those runners there. You know, we see a lot of a lot of the things that we talked about are photographed, and some of it is hard to look at because you see how like Hicks is is not there. He looks like he is comatose as he's you know, kind of being pushed along essentially. But it is cute and you do get to see Carva Hall in his cute little dandy outfit. And I listen, this is where we talk about like you and I have both run distance races, not like big competitors, but I've done a marathon. Run is generous, right I did. I completed a half marathon right, same, same, same. I'm a run walk interval gallery. That was when I was running regularly. Two water stops is often what you would get in a five k. Yeah. So this made me particularly mad in this moment that we're living in because we've had so much here in the US, and I'm sure else. I can't speak for the rest of the world. I am not up to the minute on other nations weather, but here in the US we have had a whole lot of record breaking heat this summer and a movement for federal safety standards for worker safety during heat that includes things like water. And I think as our climate has gotten warmer, more people have become aware of how dangerous heat and humidity can be, especially if you don't have a way to cool off, a way to get in the shade, ample water, and so this like just the whole idea of We're going to start a race when it's already ninety degrees and humid and not give any people. We're not going to give people hardly any water, and we're gonna do that on purpose. It just made me really angry. And then we're going to poison some of them. Yeah, because Lucas was involved in that decision to give Hicks strick nine, So that came from like one of the organizers, right, what the actual bleep? Right? Like I can't what This also is interesting because that gets referenced as the first known instance of doping in modern sports m which is like a I have like the quizzical puppy question mark face because I'm like, well, doping slash poisoning someone. But you know, Hicks is very lucky he didn't die. Those organizers are very lucky that he didn't die, and that Garcia didn't die on the court, right right. I also feel like there is a difference between when someone becomes injured or in some other way is struggling during an event, and another competitor, like in a display of short of sporting behavior, helps them and they finish together. Right, I feel like there's a difference between that and staff people literally carrying a competitor who honestly should be in the hospital. And like this is also a good I don't know if it's a good example, but it's a good contrast to see how things like regulation and sport are vital and to see just how far we've come. Right, The thought of somebody going, okay, you have the Olympics and then like go with God, make that thing happen would never happen today. There are so many regulations, rules, checklists, guidelines, and I mean, everything has to start somewhere. But this is kind of like the good cautionary tale of like, I know, sometimes rules can become convoluted and probably frustrating for people trying to organize things, but also no rules leads to this oof. I literally think about you know, I have done one marathon. I hated it. You were there that day, Thank goodness, Like I I mean, I'm glad I did it. I can say like, oh I did a marathon, I have friends that do it, that do them regularly and love them and like, but I just no think I want to do that again, and I cannot. And I had like all of the benefits, right, like I did the Disney World Marathon, which is like support support, support support. They have you know, nurses stations, they have all of the water stops, they have things to entertain you and keep you occupied. They have all of the help you could possibly need. And I still found it miserable and difficult. And I was running in you know, modern, very engineered running clothes, right, and also in you know, moderate cool temperatures on a pretty flat course. M hmm, because you're in Orlando. Yeah, they start the races at like ungodly hours of the morning so early. I feel like we got up at three am or something. I don't remember. We got it really yeah, yeah, I mean I have run. I think the hottest I have ever been in a race wasn't a race in Orlando. It was only a ten k and I remember at the end of that feeling like ooh that was dangerous towards the end, and again same, I had all of the support on earth. There was water, there was food waiting for me at the end there were you know, so I just my hat is off to anyone who even got past the mile marker on this one. But also like that's all very wrong and I wish they did not do it. But right, right, yeah, I've only done the one half marathon, which I kind of did on a whim, and occasionally I will think should I do that again? And I enjoyed having done it, Like the process of training, the training that I did was like not something that I enjoyed. I would say the race itself that was that was fine. Uh, but like the process of feeling confident that I would finish, I would finish it and I would not have to be picked up in a golf cart and transported somewhere. Like the process of getting physically to that point was just a lot. And I try to, like I try to exercise regularly because my mental and physical health feel better when I do that. But like the what I had to dedicate myself to to do that half marathon was like not was not the same. Oh yeah, the training was the worst part, right, Like because I was doing the stupid Listen, it's not stupid if you're doing it, It was stupid. For me, I shouldn't probably have done it. I was doing the Goofy where you eat the half on Saturday in the full on Sunday, and so to train like in the months leading up to it, I was just like, I don't have a social life anymore. I don't. I have no balance to my life because I'm either working or running. That's stopped being fun. Yeah, we also did a five k before all of that. I did, and there are people now that do the five k. They have since added a ten k to that race weekend and then the half and then the full, and again, my hat is off to you. Some of those people are amazingly conditioned. But for me, have I ever told you about the hilarious things that I have encountered, specifically during the Space Coast half marathon, I don't think so. So one the Brandy thing reminded me this was not at Space Coast, this was a Disney thing. There was a woman who finished several races, several half marathons, pretty close to a similar time to me. Because I saw this happen at least three times, and it was the same woman. Because you know, there are people who love Disney races and they'll do all of them. And she always had pretty close to the finish line, like, you know, just a little ways up from it, friends that were there with a pitcher, and they would pour her a margarita and she would finish the race holding a margarita. Okay, always thought was really funny and great. But on the Space Coast Half Marathon, which starts in Cocoa Beach and it goes up and down the coast there and it's absolutely beautiful and it's a really fun one and you get very cool space themed medals because it's right there by the Kennedy Space Center. You're running through neighborhoods and there is one family who I do not know their names, but I wish all of the blessings of life upon them, who basically set up their own unofficial AID station. And when I tell you it's an AID station, what it really is is an amazing party on their lawn. Like they have things you would want like water, you know, sports drink, et cetera. But they also are out there with full chafing dish is full of like bacon, oh wow, other light sandwiches. If you don't want to do something foolish and eat bacon. Yeah, I was gonna put through some people, but I ate the bacon every time, and I was the idea of eating bacon in the middle of that immediately turn by stomach. I don't remember if it was at their house or another one nearby that they had somebody out there with essentially like a bar out posts where they would pour you a drink if you wanted. And for people like me that were not like I gotta run this thing for a time, I'm going like that one is is I will say before you think like nobody should have bacon on a course that particular race, because the half marathon you have the same allowance of time that the full marathon has because it's the way the course is laid out. The marathon is running part of the half marathon course, so like they don't close it, and there are people that walk the whole thing and it's a pretty casual, like I'm just gonna have a long morning of walking around the beach, enjoying the beautiful weather and smiling and waving at people, and I'm going to get my big you know, space shuttle metal at the end. And so for those people and often by the end because it's an out and back course. You would pass that house twiceh So I wouldn't always take bacon on the way out, but on the way back when I'm like, I got two miles left, I'm just gonna walk it and eat bacon. That sounds great. Yeah, I'll take a Yeah, I'll take a cocktail. That sounds amazing. I have had some amazing experiences running half marathons. Yeah, and I really enjoyed them when I was doing them all the time. But now I just feel like it's too much effort and my body doesn't want to do that anymore. Yeah, I am. Then the one half marathon that I did, I injured my foot and had to see a podiatrist afterward. I remember, I remember, but if you do such things, please take care of your body. Don't do foolishness. Don't do it. You know. It's I think about and I wonder if you know. Years down the road, Hicks was like, yeah, that was worth it. I don't think he ran again. I didn't pursue it, but I saw one right up that said that was his last race, and I'm like, yeah, it would be mine too. I got poisoned, like so in any case if you do distance running one, I cheer you to take care of yourself out there, especially in very hot weather. It's rough. You gotta be really looking out for your hydration and your your health. We talked about Emily's Sergeant and Judith Sergeant Murray this week on the podcast, which was a great excuse for me to take a little field trip out to Gloucester. I love kpe Ann. I've been out to Cape Ann a few times. I find the whole area very beautiful. And I went on the Friday before July fourth because that day we had as a half day, uh, and I was like, I have things I want to do in Gloucester, being going to these museums for work. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to Gloucester, go to these museums, and then my half day will begin and I will already be in Gloucester and I can walk around and look at the water. And that is exactly what I did. One amusing thing that happened the way this so the Sergeant House Historical Home museum. It is largely focused on Judas Sergeant Marie, but there are also other families that owned the home after she lived there, and there's some reference to them also, and so there are guided tours of the house that leave on the hour, and I was there for the first one of the day, and so it was just me and these two other women and a docent, and it was also pretty early in their season. It's a museum that's only open in the summer because it does not it's not like climate controlled for winters in Massachusetts. And so we got near the end of this tour and one of the other people who was on it asked our tour guide, how many men come on this tour. She just kind of paused and went almost always only with a woman, which I found to be funny. One of the things that they have on display in this museum are some childhood drawings done by a John Singer sergeant, and they one hundred percent looked like something a child could have drawn with a pencil today. There's one that I think is supposed to be his father that if you look at it, maybe his father's like at a writing desk, or maybe it's supposed to be a book. But I was like, this looks like a six year old drewet yesterday, and that's their dad. On a lap top, which I have pretty great. Something about Judith's Sergeant Murray that I could not find a place to fit in the episode but wanted to mention is that she actually agreed with Noah Webster that there should be an American language in an American dictionary. I don't know if she went quite as far as the spelling reforms that he proposed, but she was very on board with the idea of, like, we need an American way of speaking and writing, yeah, to which I go, okay, yeah. I have such conflicted, weird feelings about that, about the language part, well, just about like the idea of rejecting things that have gone before in favor of establishing a new identity. I understand that completely, but it's also kind of like it makes me think of the French Republican calendar, where it's like, you you don't have to disrupt everybody's everything to prove that you are your own unique identity. Like yeah, it's okay, uh, you know, people were already functioning. It's fine. I would I would vote in lieu of we need to make a new American English dictionary, saying we are gonna be less fussy about all the rules. As long as everybody understands each other, that'd be cool. Yeah, that should be the identity. Yeah, everybody be cool. That's always my bottom line, Like that should be the driving decider. There are reasons I don't hold positions of power or government. Yeah. Uh. One thing that I noticed as I was researching Judith Sergeant Murray specifically was kind of a weird debunking tone in some recently written work about her. And the reason it was weird to me was that it was sort of judging how feminist she was. Humh. And I kind of feel like like she was one of the first, if not the first women writing, you know, people of European descent writing in North America specifically about women's rights, like one of the first people to do that. And it's true. She wrote a lot of other stuff on a lot of other subjects, a lot on universalism, a lot on how she thought the country should operate, like a lot that wasn't about women's rights. And her views on women's rights like definitely reflect the time she was living in and her upbringing and like existing thought on the roles of women, Like that's true of everyone, and so I, like I felt like the things that have not been discussed as much about her, Like there hasn't been as much discussion of like how really focused she was on other women like herself and sort of not even really observing women of other classes or other races, Like I think that's an important thing to note. Also really important to note how slavery was connected to all of this, because that is not mentioned at all in a lot of writing about her, and I had to do a lot of digging to talk about that. But like there was just this sense that what people were focused on was like a yardstick of how feminist she was. And I was like, this is weird to me because anytime we're talking, we're like anytime we're using the word feminists to describe a woman who was living before that term was really coined and used in the way we use it now, like it's always not going to compare to later thought about gender and sex, right, And I just I found it odd. I was like, this is I feel like there's a weird debunkery happening, but that it's focused in an odd direction. I mean, I haven't read these things, so I am talking strictly from your descriptor, but I think what often happens, right is those sorts of comparisons of like saying, well, she wasn't really x amount feminist. It's almost the same as things going like from any direction. Is that I understand the desire to boil everything down to like kind of you know, simple identifiers to parse the world that we live in, but that robs all of it of its nuance a little bit which is worthy of consideration and is sort of looking at a human's life as a whole. Yeah, it's a tricky balance. Like I said, I understand the impulse to kind of do the checklist, but I also recognize that that is not going to give you a true representation of the thing that you're measuring. Yeah, there was kind of a vibe of like, people keep calling her a feminist, but she thought that women should be mothers, And I'm like, so did a lot of early suffragists. Why is this what we're pointing out? Uh. The one other thing that I wanted to note is I think there may be folks who are thinking about Emily Sergeant and the fact that Emily Sergeant never married or had children and was lifelong friends with Vernon Lee, also known as Violet Paget and Vernon Lee, as we know, had a number of like long term, committed relationships with other women. So I feel like a logical reasonable question is do we know anything about like Emily Sargent's sexual orientation or romantic life. I have no idea. I found no reference to any of that in any work about about her. There's a lot more writing about John Singer Sargent, and the episode was not about him, and so I did not even really try to get into that at all. Right, at that point, everything is conjecture. Yeah, if people are curious about Emily, I honestly I don't know, don't know it all. So I am still very captivated by her life story and hope that one day, as there's more interest in her, as more museums have more of her work and there will be more of it on display, that I hope there will be more research into her life and maybe a full biography of her own one day. Thinker's crossed. Yeah, So happy Friday. Whatever's happening this weekend for you, I hope it's as great as possible. If you want to drop us a note about anything, We're at History Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com. We will be back with a Saturday Classic tomorrow and something brand new on Monday. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Oh what a mess of a marathon we talked about this week we did. First, I want to talk about a couple of things related specifically to this, and then I'll go on my TI rad or they'll get intertwined. I don't know one of the things that made me infuriated, and obviously, like I mean, I would say that those athletes were fully abused, no qualifier at all. I agree were abused by race organizers. It would have sucked and been really bad if they were just really bad at planning and that's why things went so poorly. But because they purposefully treated them like lab experiments and almost killed two of them, I have no sympathy for them. Yeah, it's very bad. Charles Lucas in his book is that's a fascinating and like I said, gross and racist at points read. But what's really interesting is that he both praises Hicks for his you know, incredible drive to finish the race and says really insulting things about him. And he's kind of that way with a lot of them, But like at one point, there's one quote where he's talking about Hicks towards the end and he said his mind continually rove towards something to eat, and in the last mile, Hicks continually harped on the subject. And I'm like, I hate you, Charless because he was hungry, hydrated, and hungry and possibly dying from the strick nine. You gave him right so much anger. That entire read is again fascinating because it is an insight into how race organizers and the Olympic Committee perceived what they were doing, and horrifying because it is super racist and also treats all of the runners like labrats. Yeah, human beings. But to make it a little bit funnier, I wanted to talk again about Felix Carva Hall because he I think, here's why I believe the Apple story. So after he went to the nineteen oh four Games, and even though he didn't meddle, he was considered to have really been a pretty good representative for Cuba and Cuban athletics. So when the nineteen o six Games happened in Athens, they actually sent him there like they he didn't have to do the whole like I just want to go on the strip by myself. They actually like fundraised and but he did go by himself again and he didn't make it to the Games, but we don't know why because after he got to Italy he disappeared well okay, and nobody knew his whereabouts and there was no sign of him, and so he was presumed dead. Wow, newspapers in Cuba ran his obituary. But then he just showed up in Havana one day on a steamer from Spain with a Spanish flag, and he didn't ever relate, to the best of my knowledge, explain where he had been. But it seemed like he had a fun time in Europe and then came home. So funny. So I went hundred percent believe that he ate some apples, didn't feel good, took a quick map. Yeah, he seems like a very fun guy. Little focus issues. One of the things that is uh cool, I don't know if that's the right. Thing helpful about this particular race is that there is visual documentation of it. There are photographs of those runners there. You know, we see a lot of a lot of the things that we talked about are photographed, and some of it is hard to look at because you see how like Hicks is is not there. He looks like he is comatose as he's you know, kind of being pushed along essentially. But it is cute and you do get to see Carva Hall in his cute little dandy outfit. And I listen, this is where we talk about like you and I have both run distance races, not like big competitors, but I've done a marathon. Run is generous, right I did. I completed a half marathon right, same, same, same. I'm a run walk interval gallery. That was when I was running regularly. Two water stops is often what you would get in a five k. Yeah. So this made me particularly mad in this moment that we're living in because we've had so much here in the US, and I'm sure else. I can't speak for the rest of the world. I am not up to the minute on other nations weather, but here in the US we have had a whole lot of record breaking heat this summer and a movement for federal safety standards for worker safety during heat that includes things like water. And I think as our climate has gotten warmer, more people have become aware of how dangerous heat and humidity can be, especially if you don't have a way to cool off, a way to get in the shade, ample water, and so this like just the whole idea of We're going to start a race when it's already ninety degrees and humid and not give any people. We're not going to give people hardly any water, and we're gonna do that on purpose. It just made me really angry. And then we're going to poison some of them. Yeah, because Lucas was involved in that decision to give Hicks strick nine, So that came from like one of the organizers, right, what the actual bleep? Right? Like I can't what This also is interesting because that gets referenced as the first known instance of doping in modern sports m which is like a I have like the quizzical puppy question mark face because I'm like, well, doping slash poisoning someone. But you know, Hicks is very lucky he didn't die. Those organizers are very lucky that he didn't die, and that Garcia didn't die on the court, right right. I also feel like there is a difference between when someone becomes injured or in some other way is struggling during an event, and another competitor, like in a display of short of sporting behavior, helps them and they finish together. Right, I feel like there's a difference between that and staff people literally carrying a competitor who honestly should be in the hospital. And like this is also a good I don't know if it's a good example, but it's a good contrast to see how things like regulation and sport are vital and to see just how far we've come. Right, The thought of somebody going, okay, you have the Olympics and then like go with God, make that thing happen would never happen today. There are so many regulations, rules, checklists, guidelines, and I mean, everything has to start somewhere. But this is kind of like the good cautionary tale of like, I know, sometimes rules can become convoluted and probably frustrating for people trying to organize things, but also no rules leads to this oof. I literally think about you know, I have done one marathon. I hated it. You were there that day, Thank goodness, Like I I mean, I'm glad I did it. I can say like, oh I did a marathon, I have friends that do it, that do them regularly and love them and like, but I just no think I want to do that again, and I cannot. And I had like all of the benefits, right, like I did the Disney World Marathon, which is like support support, support support. They have you know, nurses stations, they have all of the water stops, they have things to entertain you and keep you occupied. They have all of the help you could possibly need. And I still found it miserable and difficult. And I was running in you know, modern, very engineered running clothes, right, and also in you know, moderate cool temperatures on a pretty flat course. M hmm, because you're in Orlando. Yeah, they start the races at like ungodly hours of the morning so early. I feel like we got up at three am or something. I don't remember. We got it really yeah, yeah, I mean I have run. I think the hottest I have ever been in a race wasn't a race in Orlando. It was only a ten k and I remember at the end of that feeling like ooh that was dangerous towards the end, and again same, I had all of the support on earth. There was water, there was food waiting for me at the end there were you know, so I just my hat is off to anyone who even got past the mile marker on this one. But also like that's all very wrong and I wish they did not do it. But right, right, yeah, I've only done the one half marathon, which I kind of did on a whim, and occasionally I will think should I do that again? And I enjoyed having done it, Like the process of training, the training that I did was like not something that I enjoyed. I would say the race itself that was that was fine. Uh, but like the process of feeling confident that I would finish, I would finish it and I would not have to be picked up in a golf cart and transported somewhere. Like the process of getting physically to that point was just a lot. And I try to, like I try to exercise regularly because my mental and physical health feel better when I do that. But like the what I had to dedicate myself to to do that half marathon was like not was not the same. Oh yeah, the training was the worst part, right, Like because I was doing the stupid Listen, it's not stupid if you're doing it, It was stupid. For me, I shouldn't probably have done it. I was doing the Goofy where you eat the half on Saturday in the full on Sunday, and so to train like in the months leading up to it, I was just like, I don't have a social life anymore. I don't. I have no balance to my life because I'm either working or running. That's stopped being fun. Yeah, we also did a five k before all of that. I did, and there are people now that do the five k. They have since added a ten k to that race weekend and then the half and then the full, and again, my hat is off to you. Some of those people are amazingly conditioned. But for me, have I ever told you about the hilarious things that I have encountered, specifically during the Space Coast half marathon, I don't think so. So one the Brandy thing reminded me this was not at Space Coast, this was a Disney thing. There was a woman who finished several races, several half marathons, pretty close to a similar time to me. Because I saw this happen at least three times, and it was the same woman. Because you know, there are people who love Disney races and they'll do all of them. And she always had pretty close to the finish line, like, you know, just a little ways up from it, friends that were there with a pitcher, and they would pour her a margarita and she would finish the race holding a margarita. Okay, always thought was really funny and great. But on the Space Coast Half Marathon, which starts in Cocoa Beach and it goes up and down the coast there and it's absolutely beautiful and it's a really fun one and you get very cool space themed medals because it's right there by the Kennedy Space Center. You're running through neighborhoods and there is one family who I do not know their names, but I wish all of the blessings of life upon them, who basically set up their own unofficial AID station. And when I tell you it's an AID station, what it really is is an amazing party on their lawn. Like they have things you would want like water, you know, sports drink, et cetera. But they also are out there with full chafing dish is full of like bacon, oh wow, other light sandwiches. If you don't want to do something foolish and eat bacon. Yeah, I was gonna put through some people, but I ate the bacon every time, and I was the idea of eating bacon in the middle of that immediately turn by stomach. I don't remember if it was at their house or another one nearby that they had somebody out there with essentially like a bar out posts where they would pour you a drink if you wanted. And for people like me that were not like I gotta run this thing for a time, I'm going like that one is is I will say before you think like nobody should have bacon on a course that particular race, because the half marathon you have the same allowance of time that the full marathon has because it's the way the course is laid out. The marathon is running part of the half marathon course, so like they don't close it, and there are people that walk the whole thing and it's a pretty casual, like I'm just gonna have a long morning of walking around the beach, enjoying the beautiful weather and smiling and waving at people, and I'm going to get my big you know, space shuttle metal at the end. And so for those people and often by the end because it's an out and back course. You would pass that house twiceh So I wouldn't always take bacon on the way out, but on the way back when I'm like, I got two miles left, I'm just gonna walk it and eat bacon. That sounds great. Yeah, I'll take a Yeah, I'll take a cocktail. That sounds amazing. I have had some amazing experiences running half marathons. Yeah, and I really enjoyed them when I was doing them all the time. But now I just feel like it's too much effort and my body doesn't want to do that anymore. Yeah, I am. Then the one half marathon that I did, I injured my foot and had to see a podiatrist afterward. I remember, I remember, but if you do such things, please take care of your body. Don't do foolishness. Don't do it. You know. It's I think about and I wonder if you know. Years down the road, Hicks was like, yeah, that was worth it. I don't think he ran again. I didn't pursue it, but I saw one right up that said that was his last race, and I'm like, yeah, it would be mine too. I got poisoned, like so in any case if you do distance running one, I cheer you to take care of yourself out there, especially in very hot weather. It's rough. You gotta be really looking out for your hydration and your your health. We talked about Emily's Sergeant and Judith Sergeant Murray this week on the podcast, which was a great excuse for me to take a little field trip out to Gloucester. I love kpe Ann. I've been out to Cape Ann a few times. I find the whole area very beautiful. And I went on the Friday before July fourth because that day we had as a half day, uh, and I was like, I have things I want to do in Gloucester, being going to these museums for work. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to Gloucester, go to these museums, and then my half day will begin and I will already be in Gloucester and I can walk around and look at the water. And that is exactly what I did. One amusing thing that happened the way this so the Sergeant House Historical Home museum. It is largely focused on Judas Sergeant Marie, but there are also other families that owned the home after she lived there, and there's some reference to them also, and so there are guided tours of the house that leave on the hour, and I was there for the first one of the day, and so it was just me and these two other women and a docent, and it was also pretty early in their season. It's a museum that's only open in the summer because it does not it's not like climate controlled for winters in Massachusetts. And so we got near the end of this tour and one of the other people who was on it asked our tour guide, how many men come on this tour. She just kind of paused and went almost always only with a woman, which I found to be funny. One of the things that they have on display in this museum are some childhood drawings done by a John Singer sergeant, and they one hundred percent looked like something a child could have drawn with a pencil today. There's one that I think is supposed to be his father that if you look at it, maybe his father's like at a writing desk, or maybe it's supposed to be a book. But I was like, this looks like a six year old drewet yesterday, and that's their dad. On a lap top, which I have pretty great. Something about Judith's Sergeant Murray that I could not find a place to fit in the episode but wanted to mention is that she actually agreed with Noah Webster that there should be an American language in an American dictionary. I don't know if she went quite as far as the spelling reforms that he proposed, but she was very on board with the idea of, like, we need an American way of speaking and writing, yeah, to which I go, okay, yeah. I have such conflicted, weird feelings about that, about the language part, well, just about like the idea of rejecting things that have gone before in favor of establishing a new identity. I understand that completely, but it's also kind of like it makes me think of the French Republican calendar, where it's like, you you don't have to disrupt everybody's everything to prove that you are your own unique identity. Like yeah, it's okay, uh, you know, people were already functioning. It's fine. I would I would vote in lieu of we need to make a new American English dictionary, saying we are gonna be less fussy about all the rules. As long as everybody understands each other, that'd be cool. Yeah, that should be the identity. Yeah, everybody be cool. That's always my bottom line, Like that should be the driving decider. There are reasons I don't hold positions of power or government. Yeah. Uh. One thing that I noticed as I was researching Judith Sergeant Murray specifically was kind of a weird debunking tone in some recently written work about her. And the reason it was weird to me was that it was sort of judging how feminist she was. Humh. And I kind of feel like like she was one of the first, if not the first women writing, you know, people of European descent writing in North America specifically about women's rights, like one of the first people to do that. And it's true. She wrote a lot of other stuff on a lot of other subjects, a lot on universalism, a lot on how she thought the country should operate, like a lot that wasn't about women's rights. And her views on women's rights like definitely reflect the time she was living in and her upbringing and like existing thought on the roles of women, Like that's true of everyone, and so I, like I felt like the things that have not been discussed as much about her, Like there hasn't been as much discussion of like how really focused she was on other women like herself and sort of not even really observing women of other classes or other races, Like I think that's an important thing to note. Also really important to note how slavery was connected to all of this, because that is not mentioned at all in a lot of writing about her, and I had to do a lot of digging to talk about that. But like there was just this sense that what people were focused on was like a yardstick of how feminist she was. And I was like, this is weird to me because anytime we're talking, we're like anytime we're using the word feminists to describe a woman who was living before that term was really coined and used in the way we use it now, like it's always not going to compare to later thought about gender and sex, right, And I just I found it odd. I was like, this is I feel like there's a weird debunkery happening, but that it's focused in an odd direction. I mean, I haven't read these things, so I am talking strictly from your descriptor, but I think what often happens, right is those sorts of comparisons of like saying, well, she wasn't really x amount feminist. It's almost the same as things going like from any direction. Is that I understand the desire to boil everything down to like kind of you know, simple identifiers to parse the world that we live in, but that robs all of it of its nuance a little bit which is worthy of consideration and is sort of looking at a human's life as a whole. Yeah, it's a tricky balance. Like I said, I understand the impulse to kind of do the checklist, but I also recognize that that is not going to give you a true representation of the thing that you're measuring. Yeah, there was kind of a vibe of like, people keep calling her a feminist, but she thought that women should be mothers, And I'm like, so did a lot of early suffragists. Why is this what we're pointing out? Uh. The one other thing that I wanted to note is I think there may be folks who are thinking about Emily Sergeant and the fact that Emily Sergeant never married or had children and was lifelong friends with Vernon Lee, also known as Violet Paget and Vernon Lee, as we know, had a number of like long term, committed relationships with other women. So I feel like a logical reasonable question is do we know anything about like Emily Sargent's sexual orientation or romantic life. I have no idea. I found no reference to any of that in any work about about her. There's a lot more writing about John Singer Sargent, and the episode was not about him, and so I did not even really try to get into that at all. Right, at that point, everything is conjecture. Yeah, if people are curious about Emily, I honestly I don't know, don't know it all. So I am still very captivated by her life story and hope that one day, as there's more interest in her, as more museums have more of her work and there will be more of it on display, that I hope there will be more research into her life and maybe a full biography of her own one day. Thinker's crossed. Yeah, So happy Friday. Whatever's happening this weekend for you, I hope it's as great as possible. If you want to drop us a note about anything, We're at History Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com. We will be back with a Saturday Classic tomorrow and something brand new on Monday. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.