July 2013

  • Pulling for Macarons

    Pulling for Macarons

    Every fall, friends of ours in Victoria hold a party where all the adults are put to work transforming thousands of pounds of apples into cider. The apples are sorted and washed then passed through a hand-cranked mill and pulped. The bottles are cleaned and filled with juice. Everyone gets drenched with sweat. Meanwhile, the…

  • New Beginnings

    A historian might envy the cat’s nine lives. Few of us have so many opportunities to begin our work lives anew. To research, write, and publish a single book can take a decade or even more. So I find it very exciting to have arrived at a moment of new beginnings. With my most recent…