Abby Epplett, Historian

Every year, The Trustees of Reservations hosts winter holiday celebrations called Winterlights, where several properties are brightly lit for visitors to walk through a night. This past December, I visited the Winterlights at Stevens-Coolidge House & Gardens in North Andover, MA. This ninety-one acre (0.37 km sq) estate was once the summer home of Helen Granger Stevens Coolidge , which she shared with her well-connected diplomat husband, John Gardner Coolidge .

Although I am a highly creative person, I have never been good at coming up with titles. Possibly my only other weakness is my ability to be succinct. “The Introduction Song” combines both of these weaknesses as a nearly eight-minute piece to introduce personalities of the Shire and the culture surrounding them. The animatic to come out in many weeks will further show the landscape and various styles of architecture in the area. When creating the basic concept of an introduction song, also known as an opening number, I drew from musicals of the Western canon, considered how this song might be characterized relative to others, constructed leitmotifs to be heard throughout the musical, and referred to other passages in The Lord of the Rings along with one reference outside of Tolkien’s work. I hope I have successfully adapted the opening scene of the epic by weaving together a complex piece made up of catchy showtunes containing lyrics that respected the original text.

In early November 2024, I took a trip to Hudson, MA, which I had last visited in April . I made a few quick history stops mostly involving the Assabet River Nature Trail, which was created in 1995, along with Assabet River Rail Trail (ARRT) . Plenty of public art was installed along the trail, while other fun sights included a caboose and interesting architecture.

In early November 2024, I visited Bigelow Hollow State Park in Union, CT , a tiny town of 785 people located in The Last Green Valley , a national heritage corridor. Much like Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor and Essex National Heritage Area , both of which appear frequently on this blog, The Last Green Valley is a member of the Alliance of National Heritage Areas (ANHA) , which preserves ecological and historical sites across the United States. The Connecticut area is unique for having the only dark nighttime skies on the East Coast between Boston, MA and Washington, DC, since eighty-four percent of the land is farms and forests. Bigelow Hollow makes up 516 acres (2.09 sq km) of those rural lands.

I had such a great time visiting Major Taylor Museum in Worcester, MA and walking in nearby Marlborough that I took another birthday trip a few days later. I had heard about WaterFire Providence from friends and colleagues for many years, including watching a talk about WaterFire presented by its founder Barnaby Evans during Historic New England Summit 2022 .

The third installment to my miniseries on the psychology of major characters in The Lord of the Rings will focus on Samwise Gamgee, later called Sam Gardner, who is considered the deuteragonist or secondary main character in the text. Unlike Bilbo and Frodo Baggins who enjoyed an enormous amount of privilege as part of the wealthy, educated elite, Sam and his family were among the lowest in the social hierarchy. Because of this disparity in status, Sam’s apparent psychological conditions were treated differently by the community than those of Bilbo and Frodo. While the Bagginses were explicitly called “mad” and “queer” for their behavior, attitudes towards Sam were less harsh. Mocking the Bagginses may have been the one way the ‘rustic’ hobbits could have an advantage over their ‘betters’, while Sam seemed to be considered another one of the villagers despite his differences.

After visiting the Major Taylor Museum on my birthday trip, I took a pair of walks in nearby Marlborough, MA. Lake Williams Boardwalk completed a recreational trail with a floating walkway, while The Grove Conservation Land was a forested area beside Fort Meadow Reservoir, which borders both Marlborough and Hudson. This was a relaxing way to spend a warm and sunny day.

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.

For the second installment to my miniseries connecting psychology with history and The Lord of the Rings , I turn my focus to Frodo Baggins. As the protagonist and in-universe editor of Tolkien’s most famous work, along with one of his most polarizing characters, Frodo’s enigmatic writing style not only brought ambiguity to his unreliable narration but also indicated severe and untreated mental illness. While a diagnosis of PTSD has been applied to the character, I have not seen a more in-depth psychological profile. I wanted to present a comprehensive picture of what I think Frodo was experiencing based on my research of medieval folklore, 19 th through early 20 th century medicine, and modern diagnostic tools.

I am a longtime listener to the podcast Lingthusiasm recorded by linguists Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne . I had first learned about this podcast while watching “Tom’s Language Files” , a miniseries created by educational YouTuber Tom Scott . The title of the podcast is a portmanteau of “linguistics” and “enthusiasm”, and its tagline is “A podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics”. For me, it is nice to experience a show so focused in its purpose and habitual in releasing new episodes, as a new thirty-minute conversation comes out every third Thursday of the month. Gretchen and Lauren provide straightforward explanations of complex concepts in a way that makes the listener feel intelligent and never overwhelmed. Besides singing them praises, I will discuss several of their over one hundred episodes that I found most interesting.