Episode 14: Savor & Yore's Melanie Hamilton Talks about Ida B. Wells, Part 2

Part 2: Savor & Yore's Melanie Hamilton tells us about the harrowing story of American investigative journalist, educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement Ida B. Wells. Melanie, a native Texan and writer by trade, lives with her husband, Brett, and "dog-child" in Tbilisi, Georgia (the country not to be confused with the state) where she writes about history, food and culture.

In part 2 of this interview, Melanie shares the journey that led her to Tbilisi, Georgia, becoming a freelance writer and much more!

The story of Ida B. Wells is timely as we are in the midst of Black Lives Matter protests throughout the US, and indeed the world, in the wake of the George Floyd murder at the hands of police officer Derek Chauvin while other officers looked on. In the 1890's Well's documented the lynching of African American men throughout the South and exposed the unjust barbaric practice by whites for what it was.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:16

Thank you for joining us today for armchair historians. I'm your host Ann Marie Cannon. Armchair historians is a Belgian rabbit production. Stay up to date with us through Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Wherever you listen to your podcast, that is where you'll find us. You can also find us@armchairhistorians.com. Armchair historians is an independent commercial free podcast. If you would like to support the show, you can buy us a cup of coffee through Kofi, or you can become a subscribing member through Patrion. You can find links to both in the episode notes today, you will be listening to part two of my interview with Melanie Hamilton. Melanie is a writer based in Tbilisi, Georgia, not Georgia, the state, but Georgia, the country. I had to Google it in 2018 Melanie chucked it all. She quit her job and moved abroad to pursue her passion, which meets at the cross section of food, culture and history. Melanie, who is a native Texan, her husband and dog child in tow made temporary homes in Catalonia, Valencia, Comunidad, and Andalusia. Before arriving in Tivoli C to find out more about Melanie and her exciting journey, go to savor and jor.com. I'll put a link in the episode notes at saver and your you'll find stories of history, war famine, and the people at the forefront who shaped the world. We know today, you also learn about the food of different regions, including its history and culture. We continue our conversation today with Melanie talking about Ida B Wells. We talk about her passion, project saver and your, and much, much more[inaudible]

Speaker 2: 2:26

In Thailand, gene campaigns and all the investigative journalism that she did throughout the South for a few years, she didn't even stop there. I mean, she eventually moved to Chicago and started a whole other chapter of activism. So, I mean, from start to finish, she went a thousand miles an hour.

Speaker 1: 2:45

I did. Um, and it's surprising that she didn't rise to the top of the historical record.

Speaker 2: 2:52

Absolutely. How was she able to continue doing

Speaker 1: 2:57

She did and yet flying under the radar, you know, did she have, how did she make her money? Did she make really good money as a journalist?

Speaker 2: 3:05

So the free speech in headlight that she ran in Memphis, she continued to run that while she was traveling across the South. And she did do really well for herself. Um, she definitely wasn't struggling in that sense.

Speaker 1: 3:17

Is there anywhere that we can find Ida in pop culture?

Speaker 2: 3:22

To be honest, there really isn't because when I was researching her, I love being able to read everything. I can listen to all the podcasts, watch all the YouTube things, get the documentary. If there's a movie about it, I am going to watch it a million times. And for her, unfortunately, it's really just a lot of articles and there are some YouTube videos too, but in terms of a documentary really kind of breaking down her life, there's nothing that's recent that would be, you know, on Netflix or easily accessible to, to watch, which is really a shame because what a story, right. And it's completely real.

Speaker 1: 4:02

It has all the plot twists. I know that we have only scratched the surface in our conversation about her. There's so much more to know, and there is, you know, information out there. So I encourage people to go look and of course she's written it, was it one book or more than one book?

Speaker 2: 4:18

Oh, she wrote several books,

Speaker 1: 4:21

That's over a book. So you can read about her through her own words too. So, um, and sometimes that's more compelling.

Speaker 2: 4:30

Yeah, absolutely. And my hope is that with this movement, that's going on right now that more people like Ida are brought to the forefront, you know, like Eugene Ballard, for example, who I mentioned earlier first black fighter pilot, hardly any information about him. I mean, he does have a few documentaries about him and stuff, but in general, uh, he's kind of unheard of, and my hope is that people

Speaker 1: 4:55

And our, our educational history books, they should, we should know the name. Like we know the name, you know, George Washington.

Speaker 2: 5:06

And just to kind of piggyback off what you were saying, how you hope that these names are as well known as George Washington, me growing up in Texas, uh, something that, and I also think this is so relevant right now is I hope that they're amplified, you know, to the level of George Washington, but it also makes me reflect on my own education in elementary school and in middle school, high school, and how much I learned about Robert E. Lee and how much I didn't learn about Harriet Tubman and people like her. And that's just a whole, I mean, this just all goes back to education and the subtle and sometimes not so subtle racism there and how people could be educated about these figures from a young age, if they were prioritized people who are the heroes of the story being prioritized, you know, and I hope that I hope that this only continues to gain momentum with, with that. And I'm going to keep writing about it. I'm very, very motivated now to keep finding people like this, who maybe stories aren't as well told and heard and that sort of thing. I feel like I, I can't really do much. I can't really say much. And I feel like I'm, I don't have the right to have as big of an opinion in terms of pain and things like that that are going on. Uh, but what I can do is try to amplify these, these other people in my own way, you know? So I, I feel like that is something that has become really important to me lately. And of course you too, because you found her,

Speaker 1: 6:53

I'm trying, um, you know, I'm always learning and, uh, I'm going to get it wrong. And so I'm trying to be open to the feedback that I get from people of color, uh, from the community, from, you know, whatever source it's brought to my attention. So, and that's, that's really all I can do. Anything else would be, I feel contrived kind of like what you were saying and you know, who am I to have an opinion? I will share one story. I dated a gentleman. Uh, he was a man of color. He lived in Colorado, which was such a weird choice for him out in the seriously, out in the Plains, uh, you know, kind of off the grid, that type of thing. So, um, but I remember we were going on a trip and, you know, the relationship was fairly new and, you know, I, I was still pretty naive and he said, uh, cause we were going, we were going to Utah. And he said, you know, um, I don't know if I should drive your car cause we were using my car and he's like, I dunno if I should drive your car because you know, chances are, we'll get pulled over. And I was like, what are you talking about? Right. Me, you know, white woman of privilege has no concept. And I'm like, what are you talking about? And I will tell you, we got over state lines and we were pulled over like,

Speaker 2: 8:23

Wow.

Speaker 1: 8:25

Yeah. You know, he wasn't shocked. He knew, you know, he, and I was like, Oh my God. And I keep having throughout my life, I have these moments where I have to check my privilege because things like this happen. And, um, it's not just the climate of what's going on, but it's also the, just the story that compelling stories and histories we have of people like Ida who have really, you know, taken a cause and moved it. And yet under the radar, like I said, and I'm, so I'm really grateful that you brought this story to us, to armchair historians. Is there anything else before we move on, because I want to talk a little bit more about what you do and uh, your blog and, um, where people can find you. So is there anything else that we need to know about Ida that maybe we haven't covered?

Speaker 2: 9:19

Yes. Yes. So I'll give you a fast snippet. Uh, and it really is just a snippet because I can only imagine how colorful this chunk of her life was after she'd done all this amazing work. And she was kind of able to settle down, quote unquote. So Ida, after she does all of this investigative journalism, she dedicates pretty much all of her twenties and a big chunk of her thirties too, to what we've been discussing this entire time. But eventually she makes it to Chicago and she tries to kind of not start a new life there, but continue her work in a different way. And she tries to get into politics. And at this point the suffrage movement is just starting and she's really got her work laid out for her. She has all of these new endeavors that she's going after in terms of civil rights and women's rights. And she eventually meets a guy named Ferdinand Barnett Barnett. I believe Ferdinand Barnett, who was a huge humanist at the time, huge supporter of the women's suffrage and black women's suffrage, especially. And he was, I mean, just a great match for her. I mean, he was way, way ahead of his time in terms of what other to this day and age. So she meets verdant. They fall in love, classic, beautiful love story. And she marries him. She doesn't take his last name, uh, which is the li to me, it's the least interesting part of her story, but it's also very interesting because at that time, that was completely unheard of. Even for women who are very progressive and involved in the suffrage movement, I'm not taking a last name, was just men Ted's exploded everywhere. They spontaneously combust with the staff. So she meets him and you may be thinking, okay, this is where she settles down. And they get a little apartment that overlooks the park. Maybe they get a dog or something, but that doesn't happen at all. She continues to fight until she dies. She found, she winds up bounding. Why ends up founding what his words. She why's that founding Chicago's first black kindergarten, uh, the first black suffrage organization and the first black women's club. And she runs for Senate. She does it all. And at this point she's suffering. She's having a lot of kidney problems at this time. It's around 1925 to 27, somewhere around there, she's having a ton of health problems and she is not finished. So she runs for Senate and she loses. But to me that doesn't matter at all because she just paved the way for a lot of other, not just women, but women of color to get involved in politics and to put their hat in the ring with these types of things. Um, and she eventually passed away a few years later in 1930, one of kidney failure. But I mean, she ran for Senate only two or three years before she passed away. So that's just, just you. Like I said earlier, from the beginning, he never stopped. She never gave up. She went a hundred miles an hour pedal to the metal the entire time. And to me what's the most fascinating about her is that you can take any one piece of her story. You can take the train ticket, you can take her being orphaned at 16. You can take her running for Senate starting the first black kindergarten, any one of these things and make an incredible story out of it. And they all come from the same woman person, one person. And to me, that's, what's the most inspiring.

Speaker 1: 13:10

I mean, it's got everything that a great story should have. It's a love story that, Oh, the civil rights, all the things, I mean, she does, it's like my head is spinning. I don't know how she did it. I admire her. I can only try to emulate a fraction of a fraction of one of the things that she ever did in her life. And, um, it's a beautiful story. Wow. Did she travel overseas or am I, I think I'm getting her mixed up with Harriet.

Speaker 2: 13:39

She did eventually show, she went on speaking tours all across the UK and us advocating. I mean, what did she do? She basically,

Speaker 1: 13:51

Yeah, you've covered a lot of territory. We're going to pivot the conversation to talk a little bit more about you and who you are and what you do and where you live and how you pronounce the name of the place that you live. Cause I'm not sure how to do that.

Speaker 2: 14:07

Sure. It sounds great. So I, um, like you mentioned, I'm originally from Texas and a few years ago, uh, two years and some change, my husband and I and our dog Oliver, we moved from Texas and we decided that, you know, we wanted to do the whole, sell everything, move abroad and chase your dreams sort of thing. Thank God it worked because we were really scared. It wouldn't, but it did. And we were in Spain for a while. Uh, so that that's sort of, um, our first home away from home, we lived all over Spain, Barcelona, Granada, Valencia, and a lot of small towns in between and uh, where we live now, which is a town called tiddly C and the Capitol.

Speaker 3: 14:57

Okay. The Tivoli C. Okay.

Speaker 2: 15:02

He had a nice ring to it, but we live in Tbilisi now, which is so far from Spain and so far from Texas and pretty much everywhere else in the world. Uh, so it's in the country of Georgia, which is in the caucuses, um, over underneath Russia. So, you know, I don't know exactly, but I could drive around three and a half hours and be there. So it's about the size of Scotland, which is a really small country. Um, but what led me here is obviously I love history and this place is the same. So the history you have so much Soviet history, that's there more recent, um, more recent history, which I'm very into post-Soviet travel and Russian history as well. It's just fascinating to me. And again, I, I think I tend to gravitate more toward these post Soviet areas because also much like the story that I was telling today, there are so many unsung heroes within, uh, Georgia and Poland Ukraine, all these post Soviet countries when they did not fit the Soviet mold. So to speak during the Soviet era, which only ended, you know, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, their stories were kind of completely thrown away. So that, that was a big motivator is just all the history to learn about hair Soviet and otherwise, because Georgia has millennia of history way before Soviet occupation.

Speaker 3: 16:35

How far back does the history go?

Speaker 2: 16:38

The very first Europeans were found in Georgia. They found the remains that can be traced back millions of years. Yeah. They found a couple who is now recognized as the very first set of Europeans from Africa. But even before the Soviet era, um, you know, Georgia was occupied by the Russian empire. And before that they had a Persian occupation. And before that they had Turkish conflict and they had all of these different conflicts that have been kind of forgotten because of the Soviet era, which is what everyone thinks about because it's the most recent, but Georgian history and Georgian culture especially goes way far beyond that. So the history was, it was a big piece of it because it's so undiscovered and it's not a place like France, where everyone knows about the French revolution. Everyone knows who Napoleon was. Um, the heroes here and the history here and the battles here and, and all of these hardships that are still, uh, wounds are completely unknown outside of this region. So that was a big pull for me. This second thing is the food. This food here is really, and I couldn't believe it when I was looking at all this stuff about Georgian food and food in the caucuses and stuff too, but mainly Georgia and food it's because Georgia, uh, the way that it's situated typically see where I live is right on the silk road. So you have all of this Asian influence from, you know, thousands of years ago, there was a huge Asian influence on their cuisine, but you also have a lot of middle Eastern influence because of the silk trade. And you have a lot of Mediterranean influence because there were tons of Greeks kind of coming and going. And then of course you have loads of Slavic influence just because they're neighbors with Russia. Right. So there's all of these interesting foods. And I mean, I really could preach the gospel of this place forever. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 18:41

I had to hear that. I didn't know anything about it until I started talking to you. So it's going to be amazing. So how long ago did you, you know, check everything and say, that's it we're going to hit the road and

Speaker 2: 18:53

It was the beginning of 2018.

Speaker 1: 18:57

So do you work remotely or how do you, um, how do you pay for your, your lifestyle? Which sounds amazing.

Speaker 2: 19:07

Totally fair question. So I'm a freelance writer and I actually write about food. I'm so passionate about food. I really don't have food and different cultures. So really I'm a travel writer, but within that, I tend to focus more on customs, within cultures, traditions, and practices, things like that. And what makes a culture unique and food? Food is a big thing, big bird. Um, so yeah, obviously that's been really, really difficult in a coronavirus world. I lost a lot of contracts. I had a project with Matador that I was working on. If you know them, I had a project with lonely planet that I was working on, who has since closed two of their main publishing offices, literally planted one of the biggest travel publications out there. Um, so that has just, that has been really, really difficult. Um, and then in my free time, I just work on my blog. That's really kind of my, I call it my passion project. Cause it's where I just share all my food and history stuff that I love.

Speaker 1: 20:14

How about, do you ever think about making a book out of your blog?

Speaker 2: 20:18

I don't want to, that's a huge dream of mine is to be an author, many things I want to write about, Oh, thank you,

Speaker 1: 20:27

Content. I think you could do that right now, but what do I, I'm trying, you know, I'm trying to pivot my business model of what I do and the it's the, um, podcast is something that I've thought about for two years and because I had all this downtime and I lost my I'm freelance writer as well. I lost my contract, my one big contract. And so, so I've been able to, I'm not making any money from the podcast. I'm trying to figure out how to monetize it. If I will. I don't know. I don't really want to put commercials in the podcast. I have been approved for one, um, sponsor, you know, I don't want to pollute my podcast with that though. And so anyways, that's another story, but so one of the things I'm looking at is trying to, I have a walking tour business that obviously is not open. And, um, I'm doing research to try and figure out how to do a virtual option where people can come into town because I live in a tourist town in Colorado, it's a national historic landmark district.

Speaker 2: 21:37

We have over 240

Speaker 1: 21:39

Buildings in the district that are from the 18 hundreds in they're preserved, they're protected. And so this is a great place becoming history tour, ghost tour. Uh, so I'm trying to figure out how to pivot into doing all virtual tours one way or another. And then I don't know, it could end up being a positive thing that I learned how to do that technology. And then I do the tours that are on my, you know, my curated tours that I do right now, here in town. Maybe travel around the world and create other ones. I don't know.

Speaker 2: 22:18

Yeah. I have to say, I think the podcast is amazing. Thank you so jealous. I'm so jealous because I have been wanting to start a podcast for the longest time. You could totally do

Speaker 1: 22:34

Marriage of food and history. Those two things in what you do is brilliant. I love,

Speaker 2: 22:40

Oh wow. Thank you so much because I always wonder, do people really care about both of those things? Like do people who like history care about food and vice versa, so I'm glad that they kind of seem to be interchangeable.

Speaker 1: 22:54

Oh yeah. I definitely, I mean, you have a nice potential niche there. I think

Speaker 2: 23:00

Thank you.

Speaker 1: 23:02

It's really easy. And I'd be happy to share any information that I've learned along the way with you. Um,

Speaker 2: 23:09

Oh, I'd love any tips, but, but it's, so it's so unique and especially with history and stuff like that, I think people are starting to look inward more and backward in history. And so it's a great time to talk about this stuff into, to like you're not only coming to terms with a lot of things, not just you, but collectively as people coming to terms with the last things, but also telling amazing stories, incredible stories that may not be told otherwise.

Speaker 1: 23:39

I know. And you have some really amazing stories that people have not heard of. I will tell you this, everybody and their brother and their sister and their grandparents have started a podcast. But, um, I believe that, um, you know, a lot of them are just kind of like, Hey, what's happening and this what's going on today. I think the ones that are gonna survive are the ones that have this kind of content that people are going to look for, you know, and people are going to want to know about things. And I think that what you do in the, what you write about, which maybe tell us a little bit about that, about your blog and in what you write about and, um, yeah. Your research process, all that stuff.

Speaker 2: 24:26

Sure, sure. So I savor in your is a core about two things. So savor that's the food section and your, that is the history a kind of perspective on things. And when it comes to food, I usually do a ton of research. I mean, I will try all the recipe 5,000 times, realistically, maybe 10 times before, before I put it up and talk about the history of why the recipes important to the culture and where it comes from and what characteristics cause I love eating, right. So I know a lot about the flavors. So I'll talk about the characteristics of the flavor and what makes it special and different from, um, you know, from any other dish out there. Uh, so I, I do put a lot of work into that and I talk to, I try to be sure to, if I'm not learning the recipe from a local, if I'm not learning a family recipe from my local, uh, whether they're Georgian, Italian, Spanish, Mexican, or whatever, uh, that I am asking, going out of my way to talk to people who are Georgian for example, and asking them, what is your favorite thing about this dish? For example, I recently did a big recipe on what's called a[inaudible], which is this it's a national dish of Georgia. I mean, it's a favorite and it's this big cheese boat with a raw aircraft on top. And it's special. It's very, very special and unique to Georgia. Um, and I asked so many friends of mine who were Georgian and their relatives and their relatives, relatives. What makes us this specialty? What does this dish make you think about? Um, do you know the traditional way to make this dish or do you always get it, you know, from a little corner shop? Like what does this dish mean to you? Uh, so I do take the time to go a little bit deeper instead of just putting these are the ingredients that you mix together and now you have delicious food. Um, because food is very special to me. And I think that the stories behind it are what make it the most important and most integral part of the culture and the preservation of the culture. So that's the sacred part. Okay.

Speaker 1: 26:44

So you are a part

Speaker 2: 26:47

And then in terms of your, I just, I love history and unfortunately in travel, writing what I was doing before this whole coronavirus mess, a lot of people don't don't care about history and the publication that I was writing for, which was incredible. And I love them. So I did a little bit of freelance work. Like I told you with Matador and lonely planet, which those projects are on pause right now. But I had one main contract, which was the main source of my income and kind of my first real gig, you know, but unfortunately that part of travel is not why people are traveling nowadays. People are traveling to go somewhere and take a picture and post it and then go home. They're not traveling to learn about the heroes and to learn about the revolutionaries and all of these really important people that made this monument special enough to post on Instagram. Um, so I wasn't able, I haven't really been able to write about that for publication. So I thought I'm going to put this on my blog. And when I find a historical figure that I really like, I'm going to do an entire writeup on them and find their, their whole life story. Um, because I can write about, write about it here because I want to, because it's mine and I can tell their story how I want to, which is just, it's really nice to me. And I think that hopefully if there are other people that like to travel that way, that, that they will see that as a resource when, when they do, when they do travel and think about more than just, um, you know, the red square, for example, in Moscow, when, when people go there, they, they see the pretty buildings and they see st Basil's and all the candy colored domes and all of this stuff. It's gorgeous. It's beautiful. But nobody even realizes that there have been so many like Wars and massive conflicts fought right in this area and all of the mess that went into making that cathedral even come up. I mean, there was so much conspiracy and, uh, people were, I mean, there's this legend that the architects of Saint Basil's cathedral now I'm really started really of bagels cathedral. We're blinded afterward by Ivan the terrible so that they could never reproduce this anywhere else. You could never make something as beautiful, so poetic. Right. Nobody even knows that picture and stuff. I don't know. I really like to bring those sort of little tidbits.

Speaker 1: 29:19

I see what you're talking about. The people, me and my boyfriend love to travel. We travel for the history. That's why we travel, looking for the underbelly of history. Um, and so I think that your followers will be more dedicated because they're looking for that kind of, um, they're smart and you know, you, how long have you been doing this?

Speaker 2: 29:50

Just a little over two years.

Speaker 1: 29:52

So you have two years of content that you have been putting out there for the pure love of it, but you should, you need to look at, I mean, I'm being bossy and telling you what to do, but you need to look at that as you know, something that you could potentially use as a book, you could totally do a podcast. I would totally listen to your podcast

Speaker 2: 30:20

Savor in your,

Speaker 1: 30:21

Is that I love that name. Like you have the podcast, you could have the book, you could do a YouTube station. I interviewed a gentleman named, um, Julien MacDonald. And he, I got, I call him a YouTube celebrity. He's got a YouTube station, he's got 140,000 followers. We started watching him because we were planning a trip to, uh, England. England is, you know, my go to country to the UK and the history goes, you know, so, but what he does is he has the stick and he goes through London and does these tours, he dresses up like, he's in a kind of Victorian look, he's got a bowler hat. He was a provide. And he says, every tourist starts out, which he told me, he regrets doing this. Every door starts out with a pit PIP, tally ho. And he says, I hate that. I did that because now I'll be walking on the street and I'll hear from all directions. People say pit pit DeLeo, and he's embarrassed about it, but he does. And he only, he talks about the characters in history that are interesting to him. He talks to him and, you know, I wait every week for his videos to come out anyways, you have a brilliant product that you've already created. And so, you know, I think you could leverage that. I mean, I don't know how, I don't know what the answer would be, but I totally I'm serious. I totally can see that

Speaker 2: 31:54

So much. I really appreciate that. You know, this is the motivation I needed because I really have been thinking of doing a podcast for the longest time, because I love writing and I love taking photos and all this stuff. Um, but I really love talking to,

Speaker 1: 32:12

And I like talking, so this works for me and I hope that you find a way to do more of it.

Speaker 2: 32:21

Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. And you too. I mean, like I said, obviously I'm a huge fan of the podcast and I just think, um, it, not only is it really important and relevant right now, it's, I mean, I would argue that history is always important, but right now it's especially important. And, uh, I think more and more people are looking for this and they're looking for genuine people to listen to, which is absolutely you, because you can tell that you really care about this. You care about the people that you're talking about, the events and things that you're talking about. Um, you're actually invested in it, you know, um, which is hard

Speaker 1: 33:05

From, with this is that, you know, I'm not a scholar, I'm not, you know, an academic and I I've had the experience where I felt shut out of history by that group, you know, or parts of that group. And I want to be able to talk about history because I love it so much. I don't know how to talk about every part of history, you know, in the right way or whatever. And it's just history for me is a jumping off point. And it's, it's what I want. I want people to come into the stories that we tell and to get excited about them and go and find out more for themselves. We are not Sue and I are not the authority. Me and my other guests are not the authority. We, we prob, you know, some of my other guests, we probably got it wrong, but you know what I do that with the, and you probably do this. If I watch a historical series, I go and I do research and find out, Oh, well, maybe it didn't quite happen yet

Speaker 2: 34:10

And everything. Yes.

Speaker 1: 34:14

Yeah. And I think, you know, that's what this is about. It's about, let's just talk about how excited we are about a story in history,

Speaker 2: 34:22

Worst case scenario. You inspire someone to go dig deeper on it. Right. Exactly. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 34:34

I I'm also, uh, I don't know if you saw my other project that I'm working on, it's called last train, leaving Belgium. It's a documentary as well as a podcast. And it's, uh, hopefully, Hopefully it's going to come out by the end of the year. And it's really, uh, the, the kind of elevator one sentences, uh, it's about children caught in the crossfires of world war II in Belgium. And so I dunno why I'm talking about this, but there was a reason there was going to be a connection, but anyways, uh, so yeah, it is, it's a story of my mother, pretty much in her family and their, um, kind of the historical narrative from world war one to world war II. And, you know, it's a story of Belgium. It's a story of Belgium and the people in Belgium and, you know, their experience in a matter of 25 years being invaded by Germany. Right?

Speaker 2: 35:32

Yeah. I feel like there's so many untold stories there too, because most of the focus is usually on France and Poland. I mean, for people who are just kind of, um, wanting to know more about history and not really go too far into it, I mean, France and Poland, those are like the, the two big places there, um, that are brought up in world war II, which is awful. I mean, there shouldn't be anything discounted about those places, but there's so many stories elsewhere, like Belgium, especially, uh, and it's placed in world war one in world war II, you know, so

Speaker 1: 36:08

I brought it up because what I'm seeing, you know, over the past 10 years, since I've really delved into writing and history and all that, um, and curate, curate exhibits and things like that, but yeah.

Speaker 2: 36:18

Oh, that's amazing.

Speaker 1: 36:20

Battery keeps repeating itself, you know, it really does. And you know, the only thing that I can do about that is to keep bringing the focus back to these stories. And I think that, yeah,

Speaker 2: 36:33

And then people can draw the parallels.

Speaker 1: 36:35

Right. Right. I don't need to. Yeah. I don't need to tell you that this is the parallel, but all's, you have to do is listen to the story and make your own, you know, conclusions. But yeah. History is important. It's always been a big part of who I am. I don't know why, but I've always been drawn to it probably like you. Yeah,

Speaker 2: 36:55

Yeah, absolutely. Same here. I didn't really know why. I mean, it's just, I love having the blog because like I said, it's a place where I can write about the stuff that is more difficult to write about otherwise. And I hope that, like I was saying with the podcast earlier, worst case scenario, you just inspire someone to go look, to go look into it and read more about it. And then maybe they find someone else that they want to learn about or find out about another event that they want to learn about. You know? So I think it's just kind of that history in itself is just a massive rabbit hole, but all of these other little stories, I mean, you can go on and on and on and they just think branch out. I wish that more people, um, all right. My hope that more people continue to, to gravitate toward this and, and make the connection between between back then. And now, now they're very, very much the same.

Speaker 1: 37:53

Totally. I totally agree with that. My daughter, not so much into history, although I think as she's getting older, she's, it's more on her radar than it used to be, but I could never, I could never force feed it to her. She wasn't having anything to do with it. She's she's in her thirties now. So hopefully when I'm dead and gone, she'll be listening to my podcast.

Speaker 2: 38:13

Yes.

Speaker 1: 38:15

That's what that was all about.

Speaker 2: 38:17

Let's see.

Speaker 1: 38:19

Anything else that we haven't covered about what you do, why you do it, uh, that you'd like to talk about?

Speaker 2: 38:28

No, that's pretty much it. I mean food and history, I'm just, I'm so passionate about it. And I, I really, it sounds

Speaker 1: 38:36

So cheesy. Don't vomit guys, but I really just want to share that with other people that is it, passion, people latch onto that passion, whether they're history, lovers or not. It's like Pambula moose. They're a great example. I have to see if I could get one of them on my show, but how they built their business based on their passion. It's such an odd thing. People connect to other people's passion. There's a, um, and I talk about this a lot in the podcast, but so my kind of person that I try to emulate in my interviews is Terry Gross. Uh, she does fresh air. She started that program on public broadcasting. And I just, I remember that I was driving to Florida. I was listening to NPR and Terry Gross comes on and her show that week is about a guy who wrote a book about, put your seatbelt on banana blights. And they add up the lights. And it was like the most benign topic that I had no interest in, but she was able to, she found this guy, she saw something compelling in his story. And it was one of the most interesting interviews ever my life. And it really had to do with both the person who wrote the book and his passion and Terry Gross his passion and wanting to find out more about it. Right. Yeah. It's infectious people together. Yeah. Well, I can't thank you enough for, you know, sticking with it and joining me, we finally got together today. Uh, I've really enjoyed talking to you, Melanie Hamilton. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. And it was such a great time. So there you have it. Melanie Hamilton. I had so much fun talking to her. Sometimes I have to pinch myself. I really love

Speaker 4: 40:49

What I'm doing.

Speaker 1: 40:50

I know more about Melanie, Ida B, Wells and saver. Yeah.

Speaker 4: 40:56

Check the episode notes.

Speaker 1: 40:58

Thanks for joining us. Have a great week.