“January“ by Charles Simic.

Love to see Yinka Shonibare's Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle in Greenwich.

I‘m in London and the new year just hit as I’m eating prawn cocktail crisps and watching the fireworks. A positive start!

2025 recapped

Child’s first hand drum from his auntie and uncle; in Mi’gmaq “pepgwijeta'q“ is to sound like a drum, and the word for a drummer and a male partridge is the same.

Yesterday I saw this incredible trompe l'oeil painted in 1771 by Jean-Étienne Liotard, a painter I love but whose work I too rarely encounter.

Yesterday I saw this incredible trompe l'oeil painted in 1771 by Jean-Étienne Liotard, a painter I love but whose work I too rarely encounter.

The British Academy International Fellowship scheme opens 15 January (final deadline 11 March). If you are an international early career researcher interested in applying through the Centre for American Studies or Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence, please get in touch asap.

The Frick on a cold December day in NYC, thinking of Frank O’Hara poems and The Polish Rider. Pretty close to perfect.

A piece co-written by my Uncle Terry, chief of our community, on Indigenous-led partnerships in renewable energy at Pabineau First Nation.

Book submissions for the George E. Haggerty Prize in LGBTQ+ Studies in 18th-Century Scholarship are now open—Jan 15 deadline. If you published a peer reviewed book in 2024 or 25, please submit! $500 cash prize. RT’s appreciated 🙏🏼 asecs.org/resources/ol...

I was today years old when I learned that James Edward Austen-Leigh, Jane Austen's nephew & memoirist, was a practitioner of cut-paper silhouettes! (Attn: @catrionamac.bsky.social !) Here's one Austen-Leigh created as an illustration for his aunt's Sense and Sensibility. This is Barton Cottage:

A plaque in Glasgow for the first Canadian prime minister, John A. Macdonald, born in this parish; below his name, someone has written “Architect of a genocide. Nice one, Glesga city council.”

A pair of Eastern Woodlands mittens, possibly Huron-Wendat; I think they are mid-eighteenth century. Made of deer, moose hair, and porcupine quills with, as far as I know, no trade materials in their construction. Amazing patterns, and they would’ve once had a cozy fur trim on the cuffs.

Incredible patterns on this 18th-century Innu or Naskapi painted hunting coat; it was worn on caribou hunts and the patterns honour Papakassik, master of the caribou.

Incredible patterns on this 18th-century Innu or Naskapi painted hunting coat; it was worn on caribou hunts and the patterns honour Papakassik, master of the caribou.

Wow: Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention (named for Holocaust survivor Raphael Lemkin, who coined term "genocide") calls Clinton's remarks "genocide denial." "Young people in the US are not stupid or gullible. They simply reject genocide – something the Secretary might consider doing as well."

It’s not labelled as such but this porcupine quillwork and birchbark miniature canoe I’ve just come across in Scotland is definitely Mi’gmaq and made for the tourist trade in the 19th century.

Getting festive in Iceland with a Yule lad.

RIP the great Martin Parr

Landmark British photographer Martin Parr dies aged 73

Love the neighbours’ sign: “Presidents are temporary, Wu-Tang is Forever.”

As a friend just said to me, when New York gets it right, it really gets it right.

Chuckling to myself that there is a beer in this tiny Manhattan beer bar called Pliny the Elder

As a friend just said to me, when New York gets it right, it really gets it right.

Tomorrow marks two years since the Israeli military killed beloved Palestinian professor, writer, and activist Refaat Alareer in an airstrike on his sister’s home.

If only the NYC Penn Station I am going to be walking through twice today looked even remotely like this now.

They’re killing people as a twitter joke. It’s depraved. Can’t let yourself lose the capacity to be appalled and disgusted and outraged by this.

The Louvre heist got all the fanfare so I missed this Oakland museum theft a few days later, which included a number of precious Native baskets and other items.

Sometimes elders will simply tell you about the scent of your great grandmother’s favourite topical medicine and it’s somehow beautiful and life affirming.

A large effigy figuring made by a Cochiti Pueblo artist around 1880. It is a satirical depiction of a white settler arriving in the Southwest, and was purchased by a collector seeking "authentic" Indigenous art who was unknowingly purchasing a caricature of themselves.

A large effigy figuring made by a Cochiti Pueblo artist around 1880. It is a satirical depiction of a white settler arriving in the Southwest, and was purchased by a collector seeking "authentic" Indigenous art who was unknowingly purchasing a caricature of themselves.

Great culture can save lives. Literally. Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard

Paintings by Anishinaabe artist Rhonda Snow honouring the endangered Ojibwe Spirit Horses that run in this field at Mādahòkì Farm.

Free Palestine lit??? Free Palestine lit. 🇵🇸 🍉 📚 ✨

Very cool that this Native-owned farm has a herd of endangered Ojibwe Spirit Horses, which once roamed across Turtle Island and were precious to Indigenous communities but were nearly wiped out by colonisers by the 1970s. They are notably kind horses.

Very cool that this Native-owned farm has a herd of endangered Ojibwe Spirit Horses, which once roamed across Turtle Island and were precious to Indigenous communities but were nearly wiped out by colonisers by the 1970s. They are notably kind horses.

‘In an echo of the hippos’ swamp, the Strand was so deep in mud in 1315 that Edward II signed an ordinance to pave it, though the work needed to be redone in 1353.’ Ysenda Maxtone Graham on a biography of the London street. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Since 1978, the world has observed the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People every November 29th.

Excellent Mi’gmaq language flash card.

Excellent Mi’gmaq language flash card.

Visiting family and found the tiniest Mi’gmaw basket in my brother’s house, still made of ash and sweetgrass like the big ones.

Visiting family and found the tiniest Mi’gmaw basket in my brother’s house, still made of ash and sweetgrass like the big ones.

Latest @winnipegfreepress.com column www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/colu...

A judge has permanently blocked Trump's destruction of the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Really good news for libraries (and those like me, who love them! www.ala.org/news/2025/11...

Job Alert! DH postdoc at Edinburgh - Post-Doctoral Research Fellow to work on the AHRC-funded project "Voices in Slavery’s Archive: Law, Place and Testimony in British Guiana", which will build a digital archive out of the recorded words of enslaved people. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPN147/p...

An Iñupiaq cribbage board made and painted by Wilbur Willuk in 1958 out of a whale's tooth.

Omar El Akkad's One Day, Everyone will have Always Been Against This has won the National Book Award. This is a deserving, necessary win. His words need to be on all of our minds and in all of our hearts. "When it mattered, who sided with justice and who sided with power?"

‘Around a quarter of all clothing manufactured is never sold, and the rates of return within the refund window can be as high as 50 per cent. Most of this unwanted stock is buried or burned.’ @brettchristophers.bsky.social on why we can’t get rid of our waste. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...