This week, we discuss listener questions about architecture, Sally Hemings, revolutionary war, Jefferson as a scientist, recommended books and how Clay's life has been affected by performing as Thomas Jefferson.
"What I discovered was that Jefferson embodies — in many respects, not in all of them — the world that I want to live in. I want to live in Thomas Jefferson's America. I want to live in a rational country, a country that prizes books and the liberal arts. I want to live in a country that believes that science is our guide; he called it our oracle. I want to live in a country that attempts at social equality and extending due process and the rights of man to every living human and maybe beyond the limits of humanity. I want to live in a world in which harmony and civility are the principles of our public life, rather than rancor and shaking of fists and mean-spirited talking points and innuendo and character assassination. I love the agrarian — Jefferson's view that a human with his hands in the soil is almost automatically a better human than somebody whose hands are not in the soil. I love the Lewis & Clark expedition. So, in almost every respect, becoming acquainted with Jefferson and eventually, I hope, mastering him, has made my life much, much, much more than it otherwise would have been."
— Clay, responding to a question from listener Ryan McKenzie
Further Reading:
- The Portable Thomas Jefferson edited by Merrill D. Peterson
- Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation: A Biography by Merrill D. Peterson
- American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson by Joseph J. Ellis
- Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams by Joseph J. Ellis
- The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed
- The Thomas Jefferson Papers at the Library of Congress
- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
- Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari
- NPR: Behind The Founding Foodie, A French-Trained Chef Bound By Slavery, about James Hemings
Countdown to the Eclipse
The Jefferson Watch
Start planning. A total eclipse of the sun will occur on Monday, August 21, 2017. These things don’t happen very often—a few occurrences in a lifetime and not always where you can observe it without helicopters and speed boats.
Read this week's Jefferson Watch essay, "Countdown to the Eclipse".
What Would Jefferson Do?
“In my ideal America, I would have preferred a barter economy to a money economy.”
Tune in to your local public radio or join the 1776 Club to hear this episode of What Would Thomas Jefferson Do?
Clay Jenkinson has returned from his annual Lewis and Clark trip in Montana and Idaho, and he gives us a report on the 2019 tour. Clay also offers a list of eight items Lewis and Clark would have certainly wished for on their journey, could they have had them.
Drifting down the river in the afternoon, gazing up at the blue blue sky, slipping past golden eagles as if they were sparrows or wrens, examining the famous White Cliffs that Lewis said had the feeling of “scenes of visionary enchantment,” and at times just pulling the paddles into the canoe to feel the gentle but inexorable tug of the continent, this too is paradise on earth.
We discuss the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo moon landing and then are joined by two special guests. Jeff Huss of the Huss & Dalton Guitar Company in Staunton, Virginia talks about a very special project: the Jefferson Edition 00-SP Custom guitar which is crafted in part with wood from Monticello. Later in the program, Monticello’s head gardener Pat Brodowski tells us about the trees the wood came from and why they had to be cut down.
"I never traveled farther than about 75 miles west of my birthplace. I never really saw the other side of the Appalachian Mountains."
— Clay S. Jenkinson portraying Thomas Jefferson