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The Blood of Dunbar: The Forgotten Holocaust of the Scottish Covenanters
Most students of American history are familiar with the standard narrative of New England’s early settlers: the Mayflower, the Puritans, and the quest for religious freedom. But there is a darker, hidden foundation stone buried beneath the soil of early Massachusetts. It is a story born of cold rain, political betrayal, and a brutal military disaster […]
“Blood Moon” lunar eclipse across the Americas
Lunar eclipses occur when Earth moves between the sun and the moon and its shadow is cast on to the lunar surface. In Thursday night’s event 96% of the moon will be darkened by the Earth’s shadow at its peak moment. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/aug/27/lunar-eclipse-north-south-america WordPress has gotten really wonky with the “quotation” formatting, so I hope this […]
BOOK LAUNCH ANNOUNCEMENT!
If you open an early American historical ledger, you will witness a quiet, bureaucratic violence. On the yellowed pages of parish registers, military rolls, and census tracts, the names of ordinary people undergo a strange, unsettling metamorphosis. A proud Scottish surname is flattened by an English soldier’s hurried quill. A French-Canadian patronym is chopped and […]
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Category Archives: trips
Home for the holidays (Part 1)
After a series of fairly serious blog posts related to an ongoing complaint against Amazon (which was somewhat, but not entirely, resolved), I thought it was about time to post about a slightly more innocuous topic: Making pottery at the … Continue reading
Usagi and the Bear
Since my daughter was a baby, she’s been obsessed with rabbits (usagi, in Japanese). We first had a stuffed sheep doll for her, but she quickly became enamoured of a musical pink bunny whose cord she could pull to start … Continue reading
On the Pond
This past Sunday, my wife, daughter, and I joined in an outdoor barbecue at a prefectural park originally built for a Japanese emperor. Sounds impressive, I guess…Taisho Tenno wasn’t a particularly long-lived emperor by modern standards, and was in poor … Continue reading
Taking Leave 