John Adams on HBO
I think the upcoming miniseries on HBO about the life of John Adams will be great. It’s so nerdy that I found out about it at the local post office, where they had a large ad in their window. Is it weird to see a movie poster at the post office and think “I need to see that”?
The USPS, in promoting the miniseries, is celebrating “The Power of the Letter” and letter writing, which is neat.
They have some good links and info there, like the Massachusetts Historical Society’s John Adams minisite which has images of letters sent between Adams and his wife. You can catch a lot of neat, strange English with lovely phonetic spelling, interesting capitalization and the penmanship, oh the penmanship! There are also some sweet sentiments, like:
“There are perticuliar times when I feel such an uneasiness, such a restlessness, as neither company, Books, family Cares or any other thing will remove, my Pen is my only pleasure, and writing to you the composure of my mind.”
- Abigail Adams, September 23, 1776
Aww. :-) Also:
I feel that agitation this Evening, a degree of Melancholy has seazd my mind…
Darn English spelling reform. Seazd is much better than seized, come on…
Adams was the shit. Totally complex and troubled but also really amazingly bright and driven. You could write a book on Adams’ friendship with Jefferson and the weird forms it took with them becoming enemies at one point, then rekindling their friendship through correspondence in their twilight years, then dying within a few hours of each other on July 4th. Mad respect.
My favorite figure from that time is Aaron Burr, and not just because he wasted Hamilton. But Adams was pretty awesome. His son, John Quincy Adams, was also a badass who had kind of a warrior-scholar thing going on. Yeah, I’m pretty much a total dork.
I hope they do the miniseries on dvd too, i really would like to check it out.
[…] Dave’s recent “Adams was the shit” comment reminded me to share these great animations. They’re hilarious for history lovers (or haters) and regular people, since they have curse words and funny imagery. They’re a tad childish, but so am I. […]
“Adams was the shit” should be the movie’s tag line.