Jan Bono’s Blog

Back in 2006, years before I began writing a blog, I took my first tour adventure to check out the sights, sounds, smells, even tastes of New England in the fall. It was my first autumn “after leaving the institution,” and since I’d taught both US History and American...

The first piano built in the United States was completed 250 years ago, in 1763. The Boston Gazette reported on September 18 that creator John Harris called the instrument a spinet. I own a spinet piano. I don’t actually play the piano, but I have one anyway. I bought...

So guess who was Al Gore’s roommate at Harvard? Yep, I’m talking about the amazing Tommy Lee Jones. He played defensive guard on Harvard’s undefeated football team in 1968 and graduated from the Ivy League school with a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1969. Tommy Lee...

With the start to the new season still a few weeks away, I’m waxing nostalgic about “the good old days” of the television classics. I’m definitely a TV Baby, raised on the premier invention of the 1950s. So here’s a trivia question for you: What television show, the...

While I took plenty of the “normal” tourist-type photos in and of Nashville, I also recorded things that just caught my attention for one reason or another. Things I might use later in a book. Things that sometimes make me shake my head and worry about my sanity....

Two years ago, I wrote a “fan email” to Nashville mystery writer Kay Elam. I had read a guest blog she’d written defining cozy mysteries on another writer’s website, and I wanted to thank her for enlightening me. Until then, I’d had no idea what a “cozy mystery” was,...