I Read a Book about America's Founding Daddy, Baron von Steuben, and I Have Thoughts

Baron Von Steuben statue at Valley Forge, October 2024

Washington's Gay General: The Legends and Loves of Baron von Steuben by Josh Trujillo
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Baron Von Steuben and the issue of his queerness has been one of my Special Interests for a while. This biography is accessible, interesting, and brings up one of my related Special Interests, the impossibility of understanding sexuality, particularly queerness, in any historical context, along with the importance of trying to bring forth, discuss, and interpret historical queerness anyway.

One of the many complicating aspects of writing a biography outing von Steuben is that historical expressions/perceptions of homosocial relationships aren’t our contemporary expressions/perceptions. It’s a great example of the fact that gender, sexuality, and really even sex identity are cultural constructs. And because a certain cultural concept of heteronormativity was prescribed and assumed in all of the cultural contexts that von Steuben experienced, nobody thought it necessary to put into writing (that has survived, at least) exactly what the rules were for maintaining that heteronormativity, nor what rules could possibly be bent/broken and still maintain one’s heteronormativity. And because of the prescriptive nature of heteronormativity, people certainly weren’t writing down what rules they transgressed and exactly what that looked like and the extent of the transgression in terms of their contemporary society! So while I think it’s pretty clear that Baron von Steuben would have met our current contemporary society’s definition of gayness, there’s no evidence that he, himself, ever put it into words in such a way that we know for a fact that’s how he saw himself. And although it’s FAR more likely than not that his personal assistants/adopted sons Walker, North, and Mulligan, in particular, had some sort of sexual/romantic relationships with him, and in some cases some of them with each other, as well, Walker and North, for one, went on to have completely heteronormative marriages, and we have no idea how their male-male relationships impacted their self-concepts, nor how these relationships would have been viewed within whatever unwritten rules of sexuality that we also know nothing about.

AND our current concept of power dynamics and the taboo of power differentials within a relationship are very correct, but also very contemporary to us, so there’s no way to evaluate the morality of von Steuben’s strongly implied relationships with subordinates within his own contemporary culture. He absolutely had some relationships that we’d all consider criminal today… but were they then? We know there must have been some concept of some way to misuse the power dynamic between authorities and their subordinates and between older and younger people, because that gossip was used to discredit von Steuben back in Prussia… but did von Steuben’s behavior really meet that definition of misuse, or was the gossip about his relationships with teen boys back in Europe simply lies to discredit him? And later in America, when he did the same types of things and it was apparently fine… was it really fine, or did nobody simply care to protest? What were these younger assistants’ feelings about these relationships, and how did they experience them within their own contemporary views of work and emotional life? How would these experiences compare to, say, the experience of an underage wife to a higher-class husband, or really any wife to any husband, considering that women had no legal, property, or monetary rights, and sexual assault wasn’t an act considered possible between a husband and his wife, since the husband always had the “right” to sex with his wife? I haaaate strings of rhetorical questions in essays, and yet here I am, because we have no way of knowing what the reality really was, and it’s so frustrating that we don’t have time travel yet!

All that is to say that’s why tl;dr I’m distraught that this graphic novel biography doesn’t have a bibliography or even endnotes/footnotes. I want the sources that give the first-person statements that led the authors to their conclusions, and not even so I can try to argue with them, but so I can enjoy them, build context, and delve more deeply. Like, Baron von Steuben held a dinner party using his own funds for the entirety of the Valley Forge encampment, including the poorest, lowest-class soldiers, and the only cost of admission was that everyone had to be in their undies or naked? Please tell me where I can drink that tea straight from the source, please! The book notes that “John Mulligan’s written recollections and cataloging of von Steuben’s papers inform the first full biography written about the baron in the 1800s, after his death.” So… what is the title of that book?!? What would be some other authoritative but more current biographies to read? Or articles, even? Something peer-reviewed, perhaps? Hell, I’ll even take a PhD thesis! Since the book does bring up the problem of defining historical sexuality, I’d also expect to see some references or a bibliography or a recommended reading list for this. I did find a Valley Forge program (“The General Von Steuben Statue: Interpreting LGBTQ+ Histories of the Revolution”) in which Dr. Thomas Foster of Howard University drops a number of relevant book titles--The Overflowing of Friendship: Love Between Men and the Creation of the American Republic, Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus, Charity and Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America, Sex and the Founding Fathers, and Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity among others--so I’ve got a few to look up, but I’d rather have gotten relevant resources in an Appendix in this book.

Tangentially, but in light of that NPS program that thoughtfully discussed von Steuben and the relevance of interpreting LGBTQ+ histories, I was super disappointed when I went to Valley Forge earlier this year and did not see a single display, note, exhibition label, sign, icon, or ANYTHING that referred to von Steuben’s sexuality. Obviously, I get that the problematic nature of how sexuality was perceived in the 1700s makes it problematic to define von Steuben’s sexuality one way or another, but we all know that if you don’t bring up the possibility that a historical figure was queer, you’re basically giving everyone the impression that they definitely weren’t. And it’s not even just that they didn’t have signage, but I didn’t see any books on any kind of LGBTQ+ histories in the gift shop. I’ll even let you omit Washington’s Gay General from the shelf, since it has no bibliography, but there was nothing! I was so sad for all the queer young people dragged to Valley Forge as yet another boring stop on their boring family vacation who would have been SO excited to see some representation. Hell, I’m a 48-year-old bisexual woman in a heterosexual relationship, and *I* would have been excited to see some representation! 

I would have bought the snot out of a T-shirt with Baron Von Steuben’s face on it and the slogan “America’s Founding Daddy” and I would have put it on and worn it out of the store.

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My Kid Went to SEA and I Read a Book About It

The Robert C. Seamans in Auckland, New Zealand, November 2024

Reading the Glass: A Captain's View of Weather, Water, and Life on Ships by Elliot Rappaport
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I found this book while I was looking for any input about the very odd-sounding study-abroad program my college student told me she’d been accepted into. I mean, my perception of a study-abroad is a semester in Paris, or maybe Australia if you’re feeling really wild. You take some classes, you travel on the weekends, and you come back with a harmless affectation having to do with Vegemite or macarons or something. But, like… a study-abroad doing oceanographic research while sailing in a tall ship in the South Pacific? Does that honestly sound real to you? As for me, I low-key thought my kid was getting set up to be human trafficked.

Well, apparently the Sea Education Association IS real, and Elliot Rappaport captained for them for several years. So while everyone else was reading this book for the weather, which, to be fair, IS interesting content, I was reading to learn more about what life is like on a tall ship/oceanographic research vessel crewed primarily by college students.

I love how respectfully Rappaport writes about these student crews, while still telling cute and funny stories about them. On their first day at sea, he writes about them, “Stunned and eager, they rush to help, faces bearing the telltale signs of sensory overload and the glaze of freshly applied sunscreen.” Sounds about right, especially for my student, who in her one call home from a port in Tuvalu informed me of her realization that she “really needed to reapply sunscreen every two hours to keep from burning.” It’s not as if her mother has been telling her that her entire life or anything! Ah, well--everyone knows that experience is the best teacher.

In Rappaport’s writing, you see the benefit of experience, as the students transform from seasick and hapless students to competent sailors over the course of their couple of months together, and you get the idea that even when they’re leaving frowny-face Post-its on the navigational log or asking uncomfortable questions about colonialism in the South Pacific, Rappaport appreciates them and his valuable role in their education. I was especially interested to read his anecdote about seasickness and how it’s overcome, and to learn that even Rappaport occasionally suffers from it. I enjoyed his anecdotes of atypical adventures, the cyclones and storms, the occasional medical emergency on board, the time that they came upon a ship in distress in French Polynesia and the college student who happened to be a French minor was called upon to translate, but I’m also VERY happy to report that my student claims her own sailing was wonderful but fairly adventure-free.

At least, that’s the story she’s telling her mother…

My college student sailed on the Robert C. Seamans. Rappaport has this to say about the ship:

“The Robert C. Seamans is forty-two meters long, a sailing school ship built of steel and certified to carry a crew of thirty-eight on any of the world’s oceans. She has white topsides, tan spars, her gear well-kept but with the characteristic patina of working vessels. Her name is displayed on trailboards at the bow, raised wooden plaques that have from time to time been lost to the sea in severe weather.”

All of his stories and descriptions are equally as vivid as this description. I won’t lie and say that I was always following his meteorology explanations, because I really wasn’t, but his authorial voice is very real, both conversational and competent, if that makes sense. He’ll be telling you an interesting story about meeting a guy in a bar during a blizzard, and the guy telling him about being a rescue pilot and what his voice sounded like and how young he looked, and then he’ll hit you with, “On some days without warning you meet the people you most aspire to resemble, and in following can only strive after their example.”

Damn, Rappaport. That hit hard.

Even though I wasn’t reading for the science and geography lore as much as the “this is what it’s like to sail on a tall ship” lore, some proper facts did get pounded into my head. For instance, this fact I had to look up later to truly believe it: “The Hawaiian chain begins amid molten pyrotechnics at the eponymous (and geologically brand-new) Big Island and then runs northwest, farther than most people realize--a row of diminishing dots strung nearly to the 180th meridian, halfway to Japan.” There’s a really cool map on Wikipedia that shows the full archipelago! I also researched his brief anecdote about Moruroa and the nuclear weapons testing that the French did there, and OMG it’s so bad. And I found a new citizen science project in Old Weather, which transcribes old ship logs to collate the scientific data hidden inside. His section on Cook Strait also reassured me that I was justified in being miserable seasick on the ferry from Wellington to Picton, ahem. What else would one expect from “a giant funnel, set to amplify whatever wind exists into something more powerful”?

I’d love to read more histories by people with unusual career paths like this, especially sailors, which I honestly didn’t really think was still a career until my kid told me she was going to spend the semester being one. She’s an environmental scientist, and although she did proper scientific research on her trip, imagine the value of a thousand-plus years of ocean data that we’ve lost every time a sailor died without passing on their stories. The Old Weather database is unlocking the valuable information hidden in those ship logs, but imagine all the casual anecdotes we’ve missed that would have provided datasets about flora and fauna, ocean currents and weather, just from mining the lived experience of historical sailors.

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Day 2 in New Zealand: A Whole Day with the Hobbits

Want to know what an absolutely peak breakfast in New Zealand looks like? It looks like this!

That's a microwaved savory pie from the Newmarket grocery store, instant coffee, and some Whittaker's Hokey Pokey. Basically the same thing that I had for dinner the night before, but then I substituted Scrumpy for the coffee, ahem.

Now, onto Hobbiton!

In all of New Zealand, the prettiest thing I saw was sheep grazing on a hill:

Much of the North Island was clear-cut to make pastureland for them, and everywhere we drove, often on both sides of the road, there were hills full of sheep. Usually some would even picturesquely silhouette themselves on the hilltop for our special enjoyment. 

They don't photograph especially well, alas, at least not for me, but they were inevitably charming and delightful, and are my favorite thing about New Zealand.

This, though, is probably my partner's favorite thing about New Zealand, and for good reason:

I told you before that I wasn't real sure about the part where you can only visit Hobbiton via a guided tour, and I was less sure after seeing the size of the tour bus, and therefore tour group, we'd be with:

But actually it was awesome! The tour groups were far enough apart that I could take photos without anyone in the background, something that never would have been possible if we'd all been set free to wander at will:

So please pardon me, because I DO need you to see every single photo of every single lovely hobbit hole we visited:

Spring has to be the perfect time to visit Hobbiton. All the flowers were in bloom, so much so that you couldn't see some of the hobbit holes behind their owners' verdant blossoms. The weather also could not have been more perfect:

The entire place is set-designed to look like a busy hobbit village. It's a little disconcerting in that everything is left exactly as it would be if all the inhabitants had recently been Raptured--

--but, again, you can't say that it's not charming!

Our tour guide took this photo of the vista, including the adjacent farmlands--I imagine that getting to play with other people's cameras adds a little bit of fun to the process of taking forty tourist's photos in the doorway of the same hobbit hole five times a day:

There isn't actually an "inside" to these hobbit holes, but I love how all the smoking chimneys and busy windows set into the hillside make them look like there's a whole household inside every single one:

And of course, at the very top of the tallest hill is the most famous hobbit hole of all:

Every detail is book-perfect!

You can't really tell from my photos, but depending on where we were on the hillside, the hobbit holes were built to different sizes. Some are 100% human scale for the actors playing hobbits to interact with, some are 90% human scale, which I think is so the dwarves can look at little outsized(? Please correct me if I'm wrong, because I SUPER want to know!), and some are 60% human scale, which is for the actors playing humans to interact with, as the average hobbit is 60% the size of the average human. I think these next few hobbit holes are the 60% ones:

But you can't really tell from the photos, right, because regardless of the size, all the details are perfect!

Here's where Bilbo celebrated his eleventy-first birthday party. I, personally, wasn't really on the tour for its movie set-ness, but rather its book set-ness, but we still got lots of good gossip about what it was like to film the party scene here, including the secret ingredient to keeping small children party-wild over the course of an overnight film shoot: SUGAR!

And here we are making our way past the outskirts of Hobbiton and on towards the Green Dragon:

I don't really understand how they keep all these details looking so lovely out in the weather. The outdoor stuff looks appropriately worn, but little details like books left open on benches and newspapers inside mailboxes look perfect!

At the edge of town is a 90%-scale hobbit hole you can actually go inside, with book-accurate set dressing that makes it look exactly like the home of a busy, well-to-do hobbit family that just got Raptured.

Also, it turns out that I, too, am 90% scale, because I was perfectly comfortable here:

Lol at the emergency exit sign!

Now, time for a drink at the Green Dragon!

This view from the Green Dragon, across the pond and back towards Hobbiton, gives you a nice perspective of many of the hobbit holes, differently sized but still looking correctly proportioned to the viewer:

I don't know if you'd enjoy it if you didn't know the books, but I thought the whole place was absolutely enchanting.

DEVASTATED that this dish in the cafe was not named "Second Breakfast," however. Such a lost opportunity...


Pro tip for international travel destinations: if you want to encourage your most frugal travelers to buy souvenirs, get your airline that flies there to give them a free checked bag. I bought hardly anything in England last year, on account of we brought only carry-ons, but Air New Zealand gave us each a free checked bag, and so somehow this turned me into a cartoon version of myself, just absolutely tossing money at cashiers and filling my bag with chocolate bars and books and a Hobbiton hoodie and ciders and Jaffa cakes and yet more books. Don't tell the kids, but they're each getting an awesome illustrated copy of The Hobbit for Christmas! To be honest, I also really wanted a copy for myself, but presenting THREE identical copies of the exact same book to the cashier just felt like one copy too crazy, you know?

Even with eating lunch at the Shire's Rest Cafe and looking at every single thing in the gift shop twice, we had more time than we thought we would after Hobbiton. On the beautiful drive back to Auckland--

--my partner reminded me of the signs we'd seen at the Auckland waterfront the day before advertising a Lord of the Rings musical. Was it playing that night, he wondered?

It was!

Could we get tickets at the door, we wondered?

This was one of the best things we did in New Zealand. Y'all KNOW how I feel about musicals, and yet for whatever reason, I had no idea that this musical even existed! I don't know what the other productions might look like, but this Auckland production was chaotically, delightfully unhinged. The set looked sweet and homey--

--and at about 20 minutes until showtime I was just about to turn my phone off and put it away, when all of a sudden the cast came out in character and proceeded to go absolutely feral in the audience:

It was bonkers and hysterical, Gollum was like a circus creature but also weirdly hot(?), and by the time the show was over I was exhausted from joy.

The show itself wasn't the best musical production I've ever seen--there are serious pacing problems, most of the songs did nothing to forward the plot, a few parts were decidedly corny, and Galadriel gets way too much stage time--but it will absolutely remain one of the most fun musical productions I've ever seen.

Which actually does kind of make it one of the best!

As fun as it was, by the time the show was over I was about ready to lie down on the sidewalk and die, I was so tired, so before we left our downtown parking spot my partner parked me inside the rental car and ran across the road and got us Domino's, of all things. Thank goodness our hotel parking wasn't the nightmarish hellscape it was the previous night, so 20 minutes later I was in my pajamas eating pizza and Scrumpy in bed and staring befuddled-like at rugby on the TV.

Forty minutes later, I was sound asleep!

Tomorrow, I see the BEST thing in all of New Zealand: my daughter!

Here's the rest of our trip!

Day 1: Auckland

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