A few years ago my friend Michaele, who is getting her PhD at William and Mary (I am not jealous, I swear), sent me a wonderfully silly souvenir package from Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, including, believe it or not, Monticello Hand Sanitizer. It was such a ridiculously non-historic souvenir that it became a bit famous, in fact one of my coworkers from the Archives protested that she wanted her own ludicrous historical souvenir, and so when I was in Virginia last summer Michaele helped me locate yet another goodie, a Jefferson Memorial nail file.
However, recently I received another souvenir from Michaele that I think, once again, takes top honors in the bizarre historic souvenir gift contest -The Authentic Civil War Era Lip Salve (it actually says this on the tube) Johnny Reb Natural Beeswax Lip Balm in "Mint Julep." I am not kidding. It even has a little picture of a soldier in a gray uniform standing in front of the Confederate flag.
Michaele and I have talked in the past about the problem of the glorification of the Confederacy throughout historical monuments in the south, and now I have my own little piece of odd Confederate memorabilia. And yes, I am using it. While working on a dissertation about Civil Rights no less. The world is a very strange place.
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