This article originally appeared in the Worlds Fare Blog

 My presentation on the history of rum (with a focus on how it helped lead to the American Revolution and then went on to cause trouble in Australia before pretty much spanning the globe) has been picked up by the Illinois Humanities Council’s “Road Scholars” program. Under this program, qualified non-profits gain access to a wide range of top speakers at a subsidized rate.

As part of promoting the Road Scholars program, the IHC had very talented artist Clare Rosean design posters for each of the topics being offered this year. The poster above is the one she created for my “Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rum” presentation. Clare did an amazing job on all the posters, really capturing the feel of the varied topics. If you’re interested, you can see more of the posters, and learn more about the Road Scholars program, on the IHC site.http://www.prairie.org/roadscholars

Organizations that don’t participate in the Road Scholars program are still free to hire speakers in the program without going through the IHC, it’s just that they’ll have to pay the speaker fees. However, if you are an organization that participates in the IHC program (or qualifies and would like to sign up), know that these speakers are wonderful and fascinating (meeting them is a big part of the joy of being in the program). So I can recommend the program as a whole. The lovely, enthusiastic, and dedicated people at the IHC do a great job.