Abby Epplett, Historian

On a drizzly day in June, I had an adventure in the Massachusetts towns of Foxboro, Easton, and Brockton. My first stop was Patriots Hall of Fame , a shrine to the New England Patriots of the National Football League (NFL) . On a sunnier day back in June 2024, I had gone in the Gillette Stadium Lighthouse next to the museum, but I had never visited the Hall. As a lifelong football viewer who understands the game better than most but is less invested than ardent fans, this museum had been on my list for many years. The Hall combines artifacts from the history of the team with modern (although not always successful) interactives to balance a fanatic love of sports with a STEM curriculum. While not quite edutainment at its finest, this is an ideal way for a New Englander to spend a few hours.

On my birthday in 2024, I took a fun and history-filled trip to several locations in central Worcester County. My first stop was the Major Taylor Museum , which commemorates the life of a record-setting bicyclist who called Worcester his home for many years. Just opened in 2021, this gallery on Main Street shares a building with apartments at a range of price points, called Courthouse Lofts , in the former Worcester County Courthouse. Nearby memorials and architecture add to the experience.

Humans become bewildered when given too much ambiguous information in an illogical order. Unfortunately, this is how the text of The Lord of the Rings operates. Between its myriad of perspectives, thousands of years of in-universe history, multiple languages and cultures, and an entire planet of locations, the material seems muddled even to experienced readers. The overwhelming effect of Tolkien’s Legendarium is part of the experience; the reader does not have to know the entire story to feel immersed in the fantasy world but studying both the constructs of Middle-earth and the real-world history upon which it was based enables the reader to understand the complex motivations of the characters. While I am all for embarking on in-depth research, most readers do not have the time or energy for such study. Additionally, trying to remember all this material takes up a lot of headspace. In user experience research, the amount of stress while using available headspace is known as “c...

This past Saturday — July 6, 2024 — I visited the Carpenter Museum at Rehoboth Antiquarian Society , which included a pair of quick history stops in the area. The museum received its name not from an occupation but a family, as the Carpenters donated towards the construction of the main museum building, which looks like an 18 th century farmhouse.