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I’m deep into old words these days — Gold Rush and Victorian-era slang, 19th century dictionaries and troves of etymology treasure. I lost an entire afternoon to Merriam-Webster’s fantastic Time Traveler the other day. It sorts words by the first year they were used in print, whether it’s 1613 (alimony, dungaree) or 2025 (vibe coding).…
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Nineteenth-century fort? Gold Rush ghost town? Historical museum straddling the Platte River in Nebraska? I’m so there. The Platte River is striking, a braided river whose waterways eddy and surge around willow-dotted islands and sandbars some 310 miles, with a tributary — the North Platte River — that takes the river’s entire length to more…
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Reading through hundreds of Oregon Trail diaries at the Merrill J. Mattes Research Library at the National Frontier Trails Museum in Independence, Missouri — as well as online and in published volumes back home — one thing kept hitting me. Nearly every diary entry noted how many miles the journal keeper had traveled that day.…
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Am I obsessed with the Oregon Trail and the California Gold Rush? Yes seems an understatement. Name the California or Oregon trail-related landmark and chances are good I’ve been there. Ghost towns? Yep. Gold mines? Oh, so many. Swales and wagon ruts, tailing wheels, blacksmith shops and more. I’ve panned for gold and sipped sarsaparilla…
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There might be a few people out there who never saw the famous TV show when it aired back in 1974. OK, one person. Maybe two. The “Little House on the Prairie” series is so much a part of pop culture even now that the now-50-year-old series racked up an astonishing 13.3 billion minutes of…
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I’ve long been obsessed with the 19th century’s western frontier, from the breathtakingly hardy (and on occasion foolhardy) pioneers who trekked the Oregon Trail to the Gold Country towns of the California foothills. Take Sutter Creek, for example, a tiny Gold Rush-era town that offers great little restaurants, charming B&Bs, wine tasting rooms and a…
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Book Passage is kicking off its annual Mystery Writers Conference this weekend with a couple of public “in conversation” events, including today’s live-stream with Louise Penny, author of the Armand Gamache series (which my chocoholic spellcheck program keeps changing to “ganache”), and Rhys Bowen, whose staggering 60+ novels include the “Royal Spyness” series and the…
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An avid reader since childhood, I couldn’t resist showcasing my favorite books, shops, libraries and lit-adjacent things to do in magazine form during my time at the Merc. Fortunately, I was working with equally book-obsessed people who were delighted to join in the fun. Bookish explored everything from literary luminaries — such as Alice Walker,…
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Jackie Burrell, Writer 