Music therapy musicianship: a call for change
The following is offered as a manifesto: a bold assertion of our unique musicianship. We – music therapists – are different from performers and educators.
Think before you tan: why sun awareness matters
Sun Awareness Week (11-17 May 2026) is the British Association of Dermatologists’ (BAD) annual week-long campaign dedicated to raising awareness of the public health risk of sun exposure, from traditional tanning to sunbed use.
Why recovery after a hip fracture is about more than bones
For many older adults, a hip fracture arrives without warning, suddenly changing the course of daily life.
Pen to Paper with Peter Mancall
Writing a volume for the Oxford History of the United States is an exercise in both synthesis and ambition. The series has long set the standard for American historical writing, and to join it is to enter a multigenerational conversation about how the story of the nation’s past should be told.
Pen to paper with Jonathan Parshall
Jon Parshall has spent his career asking big questions about how wars are remembered, argued over, and ultimately understood.
What matters most for children in their family relationships?
Navigating the vast number of opinions about what matters most for children’s healthy development can be a daunting and seemingly endless task.
Tearing apart a book
For several years, I taught a course on the history of publishing.
Sit thee down, sorrow!
It is easier, following Shakespeare, to tell sorrow to sit down than to discover where the word sorrow came from.
The Kissinger Tapes
When one reads thousands of pages of transcripts of Henry Kissinger’s phone conversations from his time in the Nixon and Ford administrations, as I did, one gets a pretty good sense of his personality, temperament, and character.
Hogs, hedges, hedgehogs, and BA’s
About a year ago (to be exact, on February 19, 2025), I discussed the origin of some obscure idioms, the hardest of which was to go the whole hog, though a hog on ice also makes one wonder.
Unabridged: some thoughts on a new book about dictionaries and words
Unabridged refers to the title of Webster’s great dictionary. The author of the book, published by Grove Atlantic Monthly Press (New York) in October 2025, is Stefan Fatsis.
An etymological hamburger
My thanks are to Keith Ritchie, who in his comment on the previous post noted that in Scotland, trousers are still called breeches. Unintentionally, today’s word also begins with the letter b, as the italicized part of the title indicates, but it has nothing to do with clothes.
Implicit negation is easy to miss
One of the odder bits of language use is the phenomenon of overnegation, or misnegation.
Endless trouble with breeches
The trouble begins with the pronunciation of the word breeches. Why does breeches (seemingly so, in the US) often rhyme with riches, rather than reaches?
Americana: enter hillbilly. Moby Dick follows
This is a continuation of the previous post, devoted to all kinds of country bumpkins. Hillbilly looks like the most uninspiring word to discuss: it is so obviously made up of hill + billy.
Hobnobbing with a hillbilly
It is unimaginable how many denigrating names people have invented for our breadwinners and shepherds! Those names were, I assume, coined by city dwellers who did not want to soil their hands with earth and manure.
