By the time I was in a history PhD program as a middle-aged woman, I knew I had the chops to do the academics. Writing and teaching were central to my work, and I had published general articles and literary short fiction that had…
May 14, 2013. The end of my first year in a history Ph.D. program. I did my undergraduate years in a gloriously “traditional” manner. Eighteen, freshman year, assigned to a dorm with a roommate–luckily we fell into the lifelong friends category. We had another…
– Do not by a house that’s been empty for more than three months: mice, dried-out pipes, cracked washers, tree roots, maple seedlings, burrowing bugs, and nesting birds. Nature is resilient. It’s the stability of our human society that’s an illusion, human structures that teeter on the…
In 2011, I was teaching an “adult transition to college class” for a special program at a community college. If you want to see a true and pure slice of America–America in all its glory of conglomeration, weirdness, exuberance, achievement, and commotion–visit a community college. The word “community” actually…