Keep Comments Open!

I was going to react to something a commenter on William Hogeland's post about Hamilton said regarding the perception that Alexander Hamilton was more "relatable" than the other founders. I think Hogeland was right to push back on this statement. Jefferson has been the most relatable for generations, in spite of Sally Hemings. I think the new interest in Hamilton is 1000% due to the genius of Lin-Manuel Miranda. Ron Chernow's biography is apparently the source of Miranda's excitement over Hamilton, just as it is probably the source of most of the bad history in the narrative. But of course the musical reached an order of magnitude more people than Chernow's book. Unfortunately, I was unable to comment because that is a privilege reserved for paid subscribers.

I wonder if it makes sense for me to unsubscribe from substacks that limit comments to paid "members" of the community. At the very least, my immediate reaction of extreme annoyance and a desire to unsubscribe is probably a good indication to me that I should never limit comments -- at the very least not on posts that unpaid subscribers can see!

In any case, I'm about to take a week away from screens and go on a family vacation. When I return, the first full week of June, I'll be using some of these observations to develop my own substack practice. I'll begin posting on note-making, historical primary sources, open education, my own research, and a blog covering random topics. One of the things I might do in the blog is occasionally react to other things I'm reading in substack and elsewhere. Way back in the beginning of “weblogging”, the medium was imagined as both a place to write original content and a place to curate, comment on, and develop relationships with other bloggers. So we'll see how that goes, this summer.

See you soon! --Dan