We Did Get Here First

“Public arguments… about art--about appropriation and offense, usually--have grown stale and repetitive, almost rote.”

-Michelle Goldberg, “The Book That Explains Our Cultural Stagnation,” The New York Times (29 August 2022)

WeDidGetHereFirst (and in more detail), during the winter of 2019.

“Telling Early America’s Whole Story: From torture devices to a Black church, Colonial Williamsburg aims to better align with history”

-Jennifer Schuessler, The New York Times (9 May 2023)

See our article about Williamsburg from 2019 - The real, the surreal & the dirty: Perspectives on Colonial Williamsburg, anachronism, authenticity & pirate zombies

“You hate posh people. You’re like a racist against posh people.

-Jessie from “The Irregulars”

“The most recent elaborations of the feminist argument require the affirmation of difference by and between ever more specific marginalised groups, with the result that the intricately defined standpoint of the individual emerges as the most important aspect of anything that can be said (let alone done) about the condition of human beings. This recourse to personal identity as a means of vindicating any position inevitably runs into the problem of electing which of anyone’s possible identities (gender? sexuality? race? nationality?) ought to be pushed to the fore. As David Simpson has suggested, the possibility that such a fragmented, self-imposed approach will result in any real change--or in anything beyond its own articulation--is close to non-existent:

‘The imperative to situate oneself as ethical even as (or perhaps because) it is usually devoid of critical content and without consequences beyond the moment of utterance.’

In this febrile yet curiously static environment of competing claims on our subjecthood and sympathy, we could all do with bearing in mind Wollstonecraft’s distinction between real and affected sentiment. For her, tolerant curiosity about other people--including those who disagreed with her--was an index of progress…. She didn’t believe that truth was located within the individual.”

-Freya Johnston on Mary Wollstonecraft, “Marks of Inferiority,” London Review of Books (4 February 2021)

“Not all books are good. Not all books are new. From which it follows that not all new books are good, and not all good books are new.”

- London Review Bookshop, https://londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/on-our-shelves (accessed 30 May 2021)



“Zoom is usually not better than nothing.”
-Jill Lepore, “These Four Walls: Living indoors,” The New Yorker (7 September 2020)


“Reclaim curly parsley! It elevates and unifies. If capers are the background music, parsley is the baseline.”

“You may be quite comfortable with the idea of pie, but if you are nervous about pastry that’s another thing. In that case suet pastry is a very good place to start. It has a forgiving nature.”

-Fergus Henderson & Trevor Gulliver, “A Few Notes on Curly Parsley” and “Suet Pastry” from The Book of St. John (London 2019)

“Baked beans make people happy.”
-Hugh Acheson, A New turn in the South (New York 2011)

“The saddest part of any vacation in New Orleans is the inevitable need to go home at some point.”
-Matthew Kronsberg, The Wall Street Journal (4-5 May 2019)

“Every day, try to be hungry and out of breath.”
-George Church on encouraging cell repair to age with comfort and grace, quoted at Adam Gopnick, “Younger Longer,” The New Yorker (20 May 2019) 

“You can’t live without cayenne if you’re cooking historic food.”
-Annie Gray, “Inside Annie Gray’s Kitchen,” www.thegannet.com/things/inside-annie-grays-kitchen/

“I don’t want to waste time supervising essays on Harry Potter by students who have never read Dickens and don’t think they need to.”
-Patricia Duncker, “Memory Slain,” Literary Review (February 2018)

“Historically, British food traditions are the underpinnings of American cuisine…. ”
-Bruce Kraig, Hot Dog: A Global History (London 2009)

“You’re supposed to use everything from the past. If you know where you come from, it’s easier to get where you’re going.”
-Quincy Jones, “In Conversation,” New York magazine (7 February 2018)