Hey baby, what’s your sign? A few months ago my brothers and I were sitting around talking, when my oldest brother, R, asserted for some reason that we are all Ravenclaws, maybe with the exception of my youngest brother, M, who might be Gryffindor. I was about to argue with R, but I stopped myself […]
Corduroy was one of my favorite books as a kid, but it wasn’t until I started reading it to children as an adult that I realized it has a political message. My first adult realization about Corduroy was that Lisa, the little girl who brings Corduroy home from the department store, is Black. I don’t […]
This week I learned a valuable lesson about planning, remembered why imposter syndrome is a waste of time, and read some Arabic. It’s really important to make a note of local holidays even in your own country. When I went to Sicily two years ago, I had the right idea to check the dates of local […]
It was perhaps not surprising just after the 2016 election to discover that a portion of president-elect trump’s base espoused ideologies of white supremacy. What was surprising to those who were paying attention but perhaps less familiar, was that trump also garnered significant support from Orthodox Jews, particularly Zionists, both in the US and Israel. […]
The end is near. I finally did some actual sightseeing. I took a tour of the opera house that included going up on its roof, went back to Cefalù, and wandered around in search of street art. I also ate out for the first time since I’ve been here, which I figured I needed to […]
Where public health means private responsibility. https://jezebel.com/fda-approves-bigger-better-hpv-vaccine-for-people-up-t-1829602887 Gardasil, the vaccine that protects against the most common strains of the STD HPV, has been approved to cover five more strains in addition to its current 4, and for use in people up to 45 years old. Since HPV can cause cervical cancer (and, less commonly, throat […]
I was able to get more done in the past week than in the past several months combined, thanks to a little thing called childcare. Thanks to a lot of luck and vigilance, I was able to secure regular childcare recently, giving me three days a week entirely to myself. While my kids’ nap schedule […]
The US had an attempted coup on Wednesday. Read More I got irrationally angry today when I read this New Yorker article. It should be obvious by now that I have very strong opinions about history in general and certain topics in particular, one being the Black Death. And so when large publications make claims […]
Happy new year. Read More I got irrationally angry today when I read this New Yorker article. It should be obvious by now that I have very strong opinions about history in general and certain topics in particular, one being the Black Death. And so when large publications make claims about the Black Death that […]
A while back I wrote about my dissertation writing process and its many stages of revisions. Now that I technically have a full draft (albeit one with a bunch of holes and exposed seams), I’ve entered the reading phase. A big part of my editing process is a very simple thing that makes a huge […]
This is almost more of a general PhD update than a dissertation update, but I thought I needed to write something about my work since it’s been a while. My dissertation is extremely close to being done. I feel like I’ve had a full draft of this thing for years, but maybe it’s only been […]
In my circles, the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg is one of those deep losses that aches dully for a long time. Among the women I know, there is a feeling that RBG was one of us, whatever that means. To a certain subset, it means that she was a working mother. Read More
The US had an attempted coup on Wednesday. Read More It probably won’t surprise anyone to learn that coffee sales are down as a result of the pandemic. Like makeup and gasoline, coffee is less in demand when people aren’t leaving their houses, and like the restaurant industry as a whole, coffee shops often rely […]
When your body says: “Why not have both?” Read More Like a lot of people, I was surprised to learn that cupping had made a comeback. But unlike most people, I knew what cupping was before 2016. Read More
