Spruce up your holidays with bourbon

“In Kentucky, there are more barrels of bourbon than people.” I have a framed photo print of a warehouse of bourbon barrels accompanied by this quote in my dining room. According to the website Kentucky for Kentucky (which sells a variety of bourbon-themed goods and apparel), this statement isn’t just an adage people in Kentucky […]

Golden Globes recap

The Hollywood Foreign Press handed out the Golden Globe awards a few nights ago, which means we are officially in the thick of Oscar season. While the Oscar nominations won’t be announced until January 22nd, last night’s Globe awards may tell us something about which films the Academy will favor this year. He’s my breakdown […]

Read, Watch, Listen, Go: New Blog Format

Read. Looking for a beach read for your summer bookshelf? Check out these two suggestions. Truly, Madly, Guilty by Liane Moriarty. Moriarty’s novels are breezy beach reads with substantive female characters. If you liked Big, Little Lies, check out Moriarty’s most recent offering about three couples and the initially ordinary day that changes their collective worlds. […]

Oscar Home Stretch

My Oscar predictions are on the way next week, but for this week I’m breaking down the rest of the Oscar films you still have a chance to see before March 4th. Meryl Streep has no patience for your man-splaining in The Post. Just when we think we’ve explored every facet of the Pentagon Papers […]

Fall 2017 Movies Continued

As we inch closer to awards season (yaaaasssss!), here are some films you might hear more about (and some you won’t). 1. Sean Baker’s The Florida Project seems well-poised to become this movie season’s Moonlight. In a delapidated castle hotel that happens to be in the shadow of the happiest place on earth, William Dafoe […]

Quick Movie Rundown

As we head into movie awards season (it’s my Superbowl and as an added bonus, no one’s at risk of CTE), here’s a quick rundown of some films I hope will be remembered when it’s finally time to hand out gold statuettes (and a couple of others best forgotten). Wonder Woman. “It’s all fun and […]

Ten Books for Your Summer

Summer’s winding down, but there’s still a month left for sun and reading by the pool! If you’re looking for a book to put in your beach bag, here are my 10 recommendations. 10. All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise on an Independent Nation by Rebecca Traister In her most recent book, journalist […]

I’m in a Cornbread State of Mind: The South Pittsburg, TN Cornbread Festival

Every year the small town of South Pittsburg, Tennessee opens its doors to a staggering 25,000 tourists in an all-American celebration of a favorite southern food staple: cornbread. Arguably the south’s cornerstone cuisine, cornbread traces its roots to Native Americans who originally made the dish with maize. The modern incarnation of cornbread takes many forms […]

In Defense of Public Education

As a science enthusiast who also happens to be an occasional practitioner, I get the opportunity to attend a fair amount of talks by scientists. This week I attended a talk for a general audience on upcoming US planetary science missions given by an astrophysicist. In every public-facing, general science talk I’ve been to, it’s […]

Holst’s The Planets at the Nashville Symphony

When Gustav Holst penned his best known orchestral work The Planets in 1913, astronomy was a new and emerging field. So emergent, in fact, that little was known about the planetary bodies at the center of the work – their atmospheres, specific orbital patterns, surfaces, environments – beyond the fact that they existed as spheres […]