Vermont "spring" always seems like a contradiction in terms. While many communities gleefully report the appearance of buds on trees and emerging landscape greenery, central Vermont must patiently wait out the first weeks of April before bearing witness to any similar phenomena. There are, however, some geographically-specific signs of a more uplifting change in seasons, …
Review: Wellness by Nathan Hill (BOTM October 2023)
Did Generation X sell out? This is one of the key questions Nathan Hill explores in his sophomore novel, Wellness. Wellness is a long read into what is a very thorough telling of a story that confronts its own complexity head-on throughout. Spoilers ahead Wellness focuses on the relationship between Jack and Elizabeth, a pair …
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Review: Lisa Jewell’s None of This Is True (BOTM August 2023)
Warning: Spoilers for Lisa Jewell’s novel None of This Is True. . . . . . . . . . . . . . None of This Is True is the latest book by English author Lisa Jewell. Published this year in July, it is a thriller/mystery focused on two main characters, Alix Summer and …
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Unwelcome Overnight Guest
For about a decade, my husband and lived in the southeast, specifically in Miami, FL, while I pursued my PhD, and in Charlotte, NC. And, in the south, air conditioning is a ubiquitous fact of life. Miami weather was generally intolerable, both in temperature and in humidity, most of the year, forcing one to shift …
Pandemic Problems: Moving, Part I
I heard a knock on the door. "Honey, it's bad news." I hesitated for a minute--maybe I could delay the onset of the consequences to come if I remained in ignorance for a moment longer. The desire for certainty, however, quickly took over, and I entered the bedroom, ready, as much as possible, for what …
One Year On: An Ode to Anne
On April 29, 2017 at 6:12 p.m., Anne died. Today, the fall of 2003 feels like a distant memory. I was working at Plimoth Plantation in my first year as a historical interpreter (read: professional pilgrim), and my mother called me to tell me about a litter of kittens the curator of a different museum …
One Female Scholar and Inevitable Sexism
In the Miami area, you never know when the mail is actually going to show up. When I lived in Manchester, New Hampshire, the mail carrier was promptly at the community mailboxes every day at 11:00 am. Here, we were surprised to find that mail delivery, like nearly everything else, does not run on a …
Update: Charlotte’s Recovery
Back in January, I first noticed that Charlotte was having some trouble getting around. This was rather uncharacteristic of my typically acrobatic alpha-cat, so I called the vet. There were a few test results that came back indicating some dehydration, and perhaps a minor infection, but not much more of an immediately obvious problem. …
Paris
Back in January, when the exams were looming large and the pressure was really starting to come to bear, Stephen and I decided to take a trip during Spring Break. I'm usually not much of a fan of traveling at this time of year, in fact. The spring semester, unlike the fall, is not punctuated …
Medievalist in the Making 