Monday, March 01, 2010

We're Bewitched -- By Mary Beth Norton! Friday March 5, 8 PM on NBC

Just received at the Radical News Service: "On Friday, March 5, at 8 PM on the new NBC series 'Who Do You Think You Are', Mary Beth Norton, Mary Donlan Alger Professor of History at Cornell University and author of In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692 (Knopf, 2002) will tell Sarah Jessica Parker of Sex and the City fame about her Salem witch ancestor."

In addition to being a terrific scholar, an all around good person, and a stalwart of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, Mary Beth is also herself descended from a Salem witch! I think she mentions this in the book, but I definitely remember her telling me this when we were out on one of our biannual antiquing treks in western Massachusetts.

The show was taped over a year ago, and will be taped once again in the Radical house, since by the time it is on, this historian will be on a Really Big Broom, flying to London for one of those devastating research trips we have to take every once in a while.

Be sad for me as you imagine the History Police poking me down the airplane chute with a sharp stick.

3 comments:

Historiann said...

I love SJP, but Elizabeth Montgomery is so much cuter. I remember watching the reruns of Bewitched as a child--she was a Dream Mother: youthful, pretty, and always perfectly sensible. (For a witch.)

Thanks for the tip. How did MBN get this gig? I wonder if she taped it last year when she was still at the Huntington?

Anonymous said...

Nothing against Mary Beth, but boy, was this a bad show. "I thought my ancestors were Russian-Jewish and German, but now I find out I have roots in colonial New England, so now I feel like a real American!" Not to mention the fact that the best way to find out about your ancestors is not to get yourself to a library or an archive (or a web site), but ask a professional to do it for you. They'll be glad to!

Viagra Online said...

wow that would have been very interesting to listen to and to watch, I mean seeing Mary Donlan Alger Professor of History at Cornell University telling Sarah Jessica Parker about her Salem witch ancestor does not happen every day!

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