Katherine Miller's Blog, page 2

The Making of Margaret Hyde

My forebears gaze at me, neatly arrayed in the sepia tones of 1936. In the center sits the patriarch, my great-grandfather, Francis Hyde. His eyes appear to regard me from under a fez-like hat, but I know he sees nothing. He has been blind for many years. His hands rest on his thighs, encircling the much smaller hands of his two youngest grandsons, both in short pants. To his left is five-year-old Frederick. To his right is my uncle John, barely three and clutching Big Brown, the stuffed dog...

My Year in Reading (2018 Edition)

It could be seen as a sad commentary on my life that my last post on this blog was over a year ago and all about my favorite 2017 books. However, I prefer to frame my dereliction as a testament to how busy I’ve been. I have moved across the country, finished writing one book and started another, traveled a bit, and knit far more than I ever would have predicted when I started on that hobby a year ago.

My reading took me in both familiar and new directions this year. I continue with my lifelon...

Favorite Books! (2017 Edition)

We’re getting close to the end of the year, so it’s time to consider my favorite reads of 2017. In addition to assorted reading for research (I’m now a bit of an expert on Chicago history and contraception and abortion in the 19th century) I finished 45 novels this year. I started probably at least a dozen more, but I’ve decided to move past the need to finish what I start, no matter how glowing the reviews in the New York Times and elsewhere. It’s noteworthy that only six of the 45 novels I...

Contraception, Abortion, and the Rhymes of History

On October 6, the Trump administration rolled back a key facet of the Affordable Care Act that required employers to include free birth control as part of their health plans. The changed rule will allow employers to opt out of contraceptive coverage if they have a “sincerely held” moral or religious objection.

[image error]In the wake of this announcement, there has been predictable rhetoric among policymakers, pundits, and political activists. Should religious and moral positions allow an organization to...

Diving Down the Rabbit Hole

When Alice went down the rabbit hole, she found a wonderland of bizarre characters and strange goings-on she had never dreamed of experiencing. At one point, she talks to the Cheshire Cat for navigational assistance.

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Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?

The Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.

Alice: I don’t much care where.

The Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go.

Alice: …So long as I get somewhere.

The Ch...

Stigma and the (un)deserving sick

I had lung cancer.

And every time I talk about my cancer, I find myself explaining that the carcinoid cancer I experienced is a very rare lung cancer, one that strikes at random, one that has no known risk factors. In other words, a lung cancer that is not associated with smoking. Occasionally, people ask me if I smoke. Sometimes I just say no; sometimes I explain that I smoked some in high school and college but quit almost thirty years before my carcinoid tum[image error]or was discovered. This is what...

Thirty Five Years of Conferences

In May of 1982, I was a twenty-three year old master’s student attending my first academic conference. Held at the Park Plaza Hotel in Boston, it was the annual convention of the International Communication Association and I was the fourth (maybe fifth? maybe sixth?) author on a paper about “the process of studying process in organizational communication.” In a move to “give the grad students some experience,” the lead author of the paper asked me to do a small portion of the presentation. I...

The Japanese Surrender – In Lincoln, Nebraska

8:00 p.m. Thursday, August 13, 1945. Lincoln, Nebraska.

Marj took advantage of the brief quiet from the teletype machines and looked around the tiny United Press bureau office. The desks were cluttered with carbon papers, empty Coke bottles, dirty coffee cups, cigarette butts. Editors and reporters [image error]throughout the Lincoln Journal building were sleepy, their nerves on edge. Was it only a week ago that the Enola Gay dropped Little Boy on Hiroshima? So much had happened since then on the other si...

Reflections on Professing

I’m not making a clean break. I’m still advising a few graduate students. I’m still editing a major journal. I’ll still attend conferences. I hope to be invited to campuses to speak about my work to students, faculty, and community members.

But I turned in my final set of grades. I received my final university paycheck. My business card now lists my profession as “writer,” and my Twitter profile notes that I am a “recovering academic.”

[image error]So when I saw the opinion piece in last Sunday’s New York...

The Assertive Woman

A couple weeks ago, my sister and I spent some time nosing through the stacks of a great used bookstore. In the children’s section, she found some lovely early edition Winnie the Pooh books and I picked up Cherry Ames: Country Doctor’s Nurse. On the back cover, Cherry speaks in a cartoon bubble to her readers: “Girls! How would you like a nursing career? I can tell you that the excitement, romance and adventure make my career thrilling, and make my books thrilling, too.” The other books in th...