This week, I maybe learned something new, or maybe I relearned something I already knew. Who knows? Welcome to academia. Read More Oh hey, I got to look at a manuscript this week! And I asked my advisor some embarrassing questions about Latin. Read More There wasn’t a whole lot of actual research this week, […]

Lately I’ve been telling myself that if I could just set aside a big chunk of time – I always arbitrarily think of it as 4 hours – I would be able to focus and get over the hurdle of the chapter I’m trying to write. Even though I know that this is part of […]

We’re in a semantic age, when battles are fought over the words we use to refer to people or experiences, and lines are drawn through vocabulary. In a non-political arena, I’m having a similar fight over the specific words historians use. How important are these distinctions, really? Read More

I started this week off with a visit to a class on plague. Most of my work time was spent compiling manuscripts into an appendix that no one will ever read. And I’m taking out my mounting anxiety by sewing a coat. Read More

As a progressive in 2020, you’d have to be willfully ignorant to think that there are no problems with Thanksgiving. But unlike, say, the former Columbus Day, this holiday isn’t just a day off. For a lot of Americans, myself included, this day has been one of the most important yearly events of family gathering […]

I started writing this one almost two years ago, but put it in the digital drawer because I thought it was kind of obvious. But as more people in my life have come up against the same problems with paralyzing anxiety or decision fatigue, I’m realizing this is actually worth saying. Read More

Do you ever get a taste in your mind? Like you just imagine a flavor that you’ve never had before and you wonder whether you can make it happen? That’s how pretty much all of my cooking projects come together. Call it my particular form of synesthesia. Read More

Pregnancy, like any major life event, has a steep learning curve. You can’t really prepare, because you don’t know how things are going to be for you, but at the same time, you can learn about the range of things you can expect and know what resources are available once you run into trouble. Read […]

http://groundedparents.com/2018/08/01/how-breast-became-best/  This “Robin reads the internet” comes courtesy of a colleague of mine whose MO is promoting science with a slavish religiosity, which in my opinion leads to making loud arguments about complex social issues at the expense of those who are actually affected by them. The “breast is best” debate is his latest shout […]

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 I find … problematic … […]

At the end of high school, I became really interested in JM Barrie’s classic story of Peter Pan. This made a lot of sense at the time – I was on the cusp of adulthood. But as I contemplate giving birth to two boys, I’m revisiting the story from a new perspective. Read More For […]

I love making pie, and I really do think it’s easy. Dessert pies are nice, but in my opinion, savory pies are where it’s at. I started making savory pies many years ago when I became obsessed with spinach pie. I don’t mean spanakopita, which is a particular, and, IMHO not the best, kind of […]

As far as I’m concerned, there are two ways to make vegetable soups. Read More Cheese and yogurt waiting to be stirred. Enchiladas are a labor of love, so I keep coming up with lazy methods for getting the same flavors and textures. Read More

Haven’t you heard? The universal translators are coming. Maybe it’s Google Translate, maybe it’s a competitor. But one way or another, learning a foreign language is going to be obsolete, and we’ll finally overcome the curse of the tower of Babel. Finally, people will no longer be separated by our silly arbitrary differences, because we’ll […]