My aviation history course next winter is about to be LIT

it’s the 1958 airline sandwich wars for me

unreleased production still from the second Wicked movie

every Tamora Pierce book series

love to announce that I’m obese at a Walgreens so they’ll give me a covid shot (yes yes I know “obese” isn’t a bad word and BMI is bunk I’m an Aubrey Gordon fan etc. it’s just hard to unlearn three decades of diet culture while in line at this walgreens)

My parents got their windows replaced yesterday and my mom kept sending me pictures of Slugger desperately trying to take his usual midmorning sunbeam naps while it was happening.

My parents got their windows replaced yesterday and my mom kept sending me pictures of Slugger desperately trying to take his usual midmorning sunbeam naps while it was happening.

eyebrows, yelling, and combover sounds about right

This got buried in the torrent of Wednesday’s…news…but I’m so jazzed about this piece. Have you ever met a brilliant colleague and realized “I’ve got to tell the world about this! Why isn’t everyone thinking this way about this stuff?” @tierneyspowell.bsky.social is that brilliant colleague

It’s a “three loose hot dogs, cucumber slices, and handfuls of shredded cheese from the bag” kind of night. you know, ~*wake-of-a-galvanizing-news-story girl dinner*~

she’s a girl’s girl

I just finished the list of artifacts for the “virtual museum” my scientific revolution class (in lowercase—they can force the syllabus-of-record course title but I will take away its power by removing the capitals) is “curating” and there are some BANGERS. Watch this space in a couple months!

When I worked at the aerospace museum we had a lot of old guy veteran volunteers. One of them was named Art, and whenever anyone would ask how he was he’d say “I’m vertical and ventilating!” Art also had one of those awooga horns on his walker and would honk it at the women educators, so

I taught historical research methods for the first time in the spring semester and I WISH our current favorite dunk-able article had come out because we’d spend three weeks on it. Am filing it away for next time, even if next time is probably going to be, like, 2028.

The same way folks now sometimes say “unalive” ironically, or use “IRL” or “BRB” in spoken English, it’s sad/fascinating to watch the language we use to talk about science change. Also, I promise that all the airplanes in my book about Trans-Canada Air Lines are the sex they were assigned at birth.

I spoke at an event today for first-year undeclared students and the office gave out these little 3-D printed fidget toys. Did I explain to everyone what an armillary sphere is? Yes. Did I win over any new history majors? Probably not. Do I have six of these in a basket in my office now? Also yes.

Listen, I love what I do. My students are great, and I fully understand that they are full-fledged people with different priorities than me. However, the “I’m going to miss class this week are we doing anything important?” emails have begun.

Also, I read somewhere that he preferred to be called “Aleck” until Mabel put a stop to that nonsense. It was “Alec” from then on. He also really had a bee in his bonnet about the word “airplane” and wrote to the dictionary about it.

I’m writing about this as we speak. Let me cook!

air canada what are you doing jesus christ (broadly speaking i heart unions but i need to stop getting texts from, like, random uncles that say “don’t you research air canada?”)

This is FAR from the most nauseating thing about this, but the European country (at least one of) my great-great grandparents came to North America from doesn’t exist any more.

I’m sure I know a historian of medicine or two or three who might be interested in this—also Halifax is one of my favorite places on the planet.

More #CanCon diminished bands (millennial alternative-pop-punk edition) - Even Simpler Plan - Sum 40 - Marianas Trough - Double Charger - Finger Ten

If you were following along at home, I think I cracked it: We’re going to read a chapter of The Jewel House and the coda “Toward an Ethnography of Early Modern Science” that situates it inside the “classic” Sci Rev historiography. Fun and readable for first year engineers, still gets to the point.

It’s not *my* cat but a couple winters ago a stray gave birth outside my sister’s apartment and she took them in when mom disappeared and it got too cold. They lived in her bathroom until they could get to the vet and then the local rescue. Ringo is orange and John is multi. (There were four.)

ok school starts in 2.5 weeks time to start taking course prep seriously** ** choosing what design schemes to use for my PowerPoints this year and picking the background color for the Blackboard page

With @nulybranch.bsky.social ‘s help we’ve been publishing some bits of creative writing lately. This series has a couple of poems in it!

I literally made the “guiding principles” slide for my new history of science survey for the fall the other day. Still need some tweaking, but I like the bones of it

Introduction to Women’s History

I checked all the reposts and replies and no one said I Go To Extremes. So it’s I Go To Extremes. (Storm Front is my favorite album for pure nostalgia reasons. My mom is a huge Billy Joel fan and listening to the tape of it in the car one of my earliest music memories.)

Update: whenever we video call she asks if I can sing the “Welcome to Duloc” song from Shrek

ahem, it’s Doc Martens actually some of us need the arch support

I said I’d tell you when the police started Becoming Hot. Well, Benjamin Bratt has replaced Chris Noth. So it’s starting. They put Jerry Orbach in a short-sleeved dress shirt to really emphasize the enhottening. Ellen Greene (of Little Shop of Horrors) shoots a child predator in the S06 premiere.

“…you’re not on trial because you didn’t buy the Black Barbie. You’re on trial for murder.” - McCoy to a smug city councillor accused of killing a different city councillor who was openly gay and a champion for same-sex causes, S05E23 Bringing the big guns out for the season finale

S5E22 has a woman with“multiple personality disorder” (their term) as a suspect in the murder of a therapist. It’s…not great. It’s redeemed by these two things: 1. The “alters” (i know, i know) keep diaries on individual floppy discs, which is delightful 2. Lynne Thigpen is the judge in this one

I used to show THE volleyball scene in Top Gun to my aerospace history students. “Who was that for?” I’d ask. “Women” they’d say. “Women would choose to see Top Gun?” I’d push. …men. It’s explicitly for men who desperately wanted the camaraderie of the Navy. The Navy (basically) made Top Gun.

George Drew, Premier of Ontario, Federal Opposition leader, and shithead, mid-late 1940s (it’s not that deep, he was just mean about airplanes and hated nationalized industry and yelled about it a lot) (although without him my research about a nationalized airline would be pretty boring, so)

I’ve had blue hair for ages and I’m used to the comments. But I had two back-to-back today that gave me whiplash: “Your hair color is so perky! It’s, like, perky!” -my dental hygienist “Excuse me ma’am, what side of your family does the Smurf blood come from?” -an old guy at the grocery store

I’m back on my L&O watch-through: “It’s the ‘90s. Everyone’s allowed to be gross and disgusting, not just you.” — Briscoe chastising Logan for making a crack at a quirky lesbian couple conceiving by artificial insemination, S5E15 (30 year old spoilers: the fertility doctor was using his sperm)

Slugger has, once again, been given a Roseanne Roseannadanna haircut last time he came home like this I referred to him as “hey Arnold” and my mom didn’t know who that was and asked “is that the British baby from that cartoon?” so there are many football-head-shaped references

feels like the internet needs to see this anxious elephant I picked up from a local gallery last week

#skystorians it’s crowdsource course-prep time! I’m teaching “The Scientific Revolution” this Fall. I want to start by challenging the very CONCEPT of “scientific revolution.” Everything I’ve ever read on this is definitely too hard for first-years. What should I assign to supplement my lecture?

The ten best words a crafty auntie who learned recently that her niece is obsessed with Shrek can hear in the background of a video call: “No, you can’t take your Shrek hat in the bath.” (She’s had it for two days and won’t let it go) (Don’t worry, I WILL make matching ones for my sister and BIL)

As I added a watermelon electrolyte packet to my half-finished drink from yesterday, which was mostly a Liquid IV from two days prior: “It’s like a Gatorade of Theseus!” And, like, no one at my CrossFit gym got it???? ?

Earlier this year @blairstein.bsky.social put together a series marking the 50th anniversary of the beaver as the official symbol of Canada, which can work in conversation with this piece. Explore the series: niche-canada.org/tag/beavers2... #beavers #colonialism #cdnhist #envhist #animalhistory

as I’ve said…more frequently than I’d like to: airplanes NEED to stop crashing so my research about national air travel cultures stops being relevant

tag yourself I’m “enjog”

The absolute AGONY of spotting one of your students across the grocery store and frantically trying to remember his name before he comes around the corner and notices you.

In 2009 my mom and I were returning from a trip to NYC via LaGuardia. Anne Hathaway sat down next to my mom, did a crossword, and called someone on her cellphone. I saw she was wearing Chanel flip-flops because I was too scared to look at her face. She was going to Montreal to promote Get Smart.