Quick and dirty*

*neither quick nor dirty

ISSUE NO. 11 // THINGS THAT SOUND DIRTY… BUT AREN’T

When I was a kid, my grandmother showed me memorabilia from a recent vacation she’d taken. I tried desperately to keep a straight face while pouring through postcards from Intercourse, Pennsylvania as my aunt mercilessly giggled behind me.

I used up all of my restraint that day and am since powerless to show any maturity when I encounter that particular word used in an old-timey way. Back in 2018, when reading about James Madison (and the failed Non-Intercourse Act) I doodled my very first reference in what would grow to quite a collection of things I find funny that actually aren’t funny at all.

I’m excited to share it with you.

PS If you blush easily, are a child, and/or are already mumbling “well, I never” under your very disappointed breath, feel free to skip this post.

Here’s part of my collection… in no particular order

From Coolidge by Amity Sheaes

Yeah. That tracks.

From John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, A Private Life, by Paul C. Nagel

Biden gaffe (aka “Joe Bomb”), from Joe Biden: The Life, The Run, and What Matters Now by Evan Osnos

George Washington cautioned that one should “Be courteous with all, but intimate with few.”

Zachary Taylor: Soldier, Planter, Statesman of the Old Southwest, by K. Jack Bauer

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, by Edmund Morris

(I had a few issues with this book. Perhaps I’ll share in a future post. Have you read it? What did you think?)

The Cabinet has the most entries in my collection.

The doodles below were inspired by Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky’s book The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution. An excellent read and fascinating look at how Washington set things up for himself and his successors.

Washington’s aid was tickled about all the constant intercourse.

(I made myself laugh when I learned this. I had an amazing doodle queued up in my head because I knew Adams was married abroad… but it was the wrong Adams. John Quincy Adams married in England, and one assumes partook in some foreign intercourse. He was too young to participate in this particular political conundrum though.)

Want more Washington?

Take a peek inside my sketchbook. Or, you know, read The Cabinet for yourself.

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