St. Remedius Radio: “You Can Take The Girl Out of Jersey…”

Introducing Dr. Dominique Russo, St. Remedius’s Most Famous Botanist

(Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?)

Believe you me, she heard it all. The comments about “which offramp did you grow up on?” The queries about favorite brands of pork roll and the best places to go crabbing. The wiseacres asking about her overly loquacious brother and his mute hetero life partner. (They were even more confused when they met her brother and discovered said hetero life partner had even more to say than either of them did.) No matter how obscure or how obvious, Dr. Dominque Russo, the last head of the Botany department at St. Remedius Medical College, heard every joke, snark, jape, and open insult about life in New Jersey, always from people who thought they were the first people on the planet to make the connection. Not that she was bothered by this: her love for her birthplace was honest, sincere, and patriotic, and her move to Dallas to teach at St. Remedius just followed in the tradition of innumerable Jerseyites moving to the Metroplex for their own obscure and often occulted reasons.

As far as Dominique was concerned (always her full name: no rational person called her “Dom” or “Dommy” unless they liked being turned into mince at 50 paces with a sharp twist of the tongue, and few had a sarcasm kink that could hold up under her onslaught), she wouldn’t have ended up in Dallas without her time in the Garden State. Born in Princeton as the second of four children, she discovered the Princeton University Press at a very early age, first stripping its bibliography and later contributing to it herself before becoming a student and later as a postgrad. In the process, she became addicted to surveys of the orchids and carnivorous plants of the Pine Barrens, spending weeks in kayaks to view populations out of the reach of poachers and ATV addicts, and thereby gaining notice of the various phenomena of particular interest to St. Remedius researchers. (Those visiting her office may note the mounted Jersey Devil head over her desk: a cunningly fabricated fake she constructed from taxidermy supply closeouts in her postgrad days, based on firsthand observations.) As happened to so many of her countryfolk, her studies ultimately led her to Dallas, where she stayed until the final disappearance of St. Remedius. Fall, winter and spring were spent at St. Remedius: the summer, though, was dedicated to time at the St. Remedius extension office in the Barrens, mostly involving breeding new hybrids of terrestrial bladderwort for the carnivorous plant trade, naming the hybrids after characters in Madeline Ashby and Saladin Ahmed novels.

In her time as a St. Remedius researcher, she was recognized as much by her strident voice and tremendous head of curly red hair (as she noted, “I earned the name ‘Russo’ fair and square”) as for her papers and syllabi, with that voice traveling out windows and down hallways when she was dressing down students who should have been paying attention. After a time, “getting Russoed” was a badge of shame for students, faculty, and administrators alike, who learned firsthand that she tolerated fools as much as horses, and she never forgot her first attempt at riding at the age of nine. For those who got on her good side, they rapidly learned her absolute addiction to obscure and forgotten recipes, and those whom she really liked knew their special status when she got back from visiting family during holiday breaks with spicy pickles she purchased from a farmer’s market outside Moorestown that, to quote one of her students, “peels the enamel off your teeth in big floppy strips.” As with so many other St. Remedius secrets, the whereabouts of this farmer’s market evades investigators to this day, and some assume that Russo made them herself. If so, the recipe left with her when the school disappeared, with the taste of those pickles invading the dreams of former students and colleagues to this day.

And while you’re at it, the request lines are now open, complete with playlist.

Want to get caught up on the St. Remedius story so far? Check out the main archive. Want more hints as to the history of St. Remedius Medical College? Check out Backstories and Fragments. Want to forget all of that and look at cat pictures from a beast who dreams of his own OnlyFans for his birthday? Check out Mandatory Parker. Questions, concerns, and disgust over generative AI? Check out Contact, Privacy Policy, and AI Policy. And feel free to visit the St. Remedius Medical College Redbubble shop for all of your Mandatory Parker needs.

Botany Department Dr. Dominque Russo Faculty St. Remedius Radio