Any thoughts, #BookHistory people?

That sinking feeling, when you realize that the 24pp pdf article you just started to print is going to spit out about one page every hour for the next twenty four hours.

🗃️

I want Medium Cheddar so much! For the love of all that’s good, someone in Arizona go adopt this Big Cheese, stat! 🧡🧀

Although it was a calamitous year politically, 2025 was a good year for me personally. My years-long clinical depression suddenly lifted; I returned to scholarship in earnest; I taught some amazing students; and I had many adventures with Tulip. I hope I can keep it up . . .

Wishing you lap cats and a strong WiFi connection for 2026!

I read a lot of great books in 2025, but these four were probably the most edifying and inspiring. I want to give a special shout out to Ed Bell's meticulously researched volume, which covers significantly more ground than its title would suggest. It deserves to be much better known. On to 2026! 🗃️

🗃️

Sleep tight, Skeetlings. Let’s try again tomorrow.

Marsupial manuscripts! 🗃️ 🦘

I got out some grocery bags to go shopping, turned my back, and . . . well, I guess I’ll just go shopping later!

The best (and possibly only good) thing about Voyager is the relationship between The Doctor and Seven of Nine. Forget the Muppets’ Pigs in Space; this is Pygmalian in Space, and I’m just so here for it. Bob Picardo and Jeri Ryan are magnificent in their roles! 🖖

Both for research, but also as a treat, I bought a first edition of George Henry Moore’s Notes on the History of Slavery in Massachusetts (1866). The title page embossment reveals that it was sold at C S Griggs & Co’s Chicago bookstore probably between 1866 and 1868, when the shop burned down 🗃️

Saw this and thought of you, @onslies.bsky.social! Maybe you have some crocheting friends who can whip one up for you?

TL cleanse from my luminescent pets 💡🐈🐕‍🦺

🗃️

I spent the evening reading the minutes of the Senate Subcommittee on Parks, Recreation, and Renewable Resources as they discussed the establishment of the Boston African American National Historic Site in August 1980. It's not often that I get to nerd out on Congressional testimony. Good stuff! 🗃️

I hope all my NYC friends are snug and safe! ❄️❄️❄️❄️

I’ve often read *about* Carl Bridenbaugh’s 1962 @historians.org Presidential Address, ‘The Great Mutation,’ but I had never read the text itself. This morning I did, and I think it may be the most pompous, offensive, cringe-inducing thing I’ve ever laid eyes on in an academic journal. Yeesh 🗃️

It's little-remembered, but abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison had an older brother, James, who was an absolute hell raiser: he was violent, alcoholic, often impoverished, and just as often jailed, as he bounced around the Atlantic World as a mariner. I read his memoir today, and it's SO dark! 🗃️

Sleep tight, BlueSky. Let’s try again tomorrow.

MELIA is spending her second Christmas at the shelter. Lets end 2025 with a bang! By finding her a forever adult only home with no dogs. Cats are ok. Shes an amazing, smart, beautiful dog. Please adopt her Town of Hempstead Animal Shelter (516) 785-5220 3320 Beltagh Avenue , Unit Wantagh, NY 11793

It’s 75 degrees and cloudless here in Columbia today, and this goofy girl just cooled off by rolling around in a manure-filled puddle. Ho, Ho, Ho! 🙄

Muppet Christmas Carol ✅ A wee edible ✅ Festive pets ✅ Happy Leon

I think this means that it’s time for bed. Let’s try again tomorrow.

I'm not saying that there's anything to nominative determinism, but in 1802, defendants tried at the February term of Boston's Municipal Court included Elisha Sly, Nancy Wiley, and Jedidiah Dodge 🤔 🗃️

Oh look! It's a 'Trump Class' Destroyer 🙄

The research is the point. The reading is the point. The indecipherable handwriting is the point. The marginalia is the point. The weird quirks of penmanship are the point. The finding of the thing you didn’t even know you were looking for is the point

I absolutely love archive.org, and I'm grateful for everything they do, but their PDF/As are almost completely unusable. Acrobat and Chrome have petit mal seizures when I scroll from page to page and sometimes won't load at all. Is there any way to compress or fix these so they scroll smoothly?

I’m so sad to learn that James Ransone has passed away. His performance as Ziggy Sobotka on Season 2 of The Wire was for the ages. RIP. youtu.be/nN7JWfQp4rY

Visited a regional branch of the National Archives, and the mss I wanted to look at were in a filing cabinet for which no one could find the key. They called a locksmith on the spot, who drilled out the cylinder to get them to me. Archivists are the best! 🗃️

When I was dissertating, there was a bag checker at Widener Library who used to give me encouraging notes from time to time, and I just found a few tucked in the back of a book. I was grateful for them then, and I am just as much today, when they offered an unlooked-for boost. Thanks, Linda! 🙏🏻🗃️

Hi #skystorians, might anyone with access be willing to share a pdf of Nicole Breault's "Contests of Authority: Policing, Jurisdiction, and Violence in Occupied Boston, 1768–1770," New England Quarterly 98.3 (2025): 381-406? My campus subscribes but has an embargo on new articles. Thanks so much! 🗃️

The only good thing at the South Carolina Statehouse right now is Tulip, who is looking uncommonly dignified. *about two minutes after I took this picture, she snatched a bag of bird seed from a passerby’s hand, tore it open, and inhaled its contents before I could do anything about it 🙄

I saw the first 10 minutes of Burns' American Revolution & had to quit. I'm not a TV watcher, & I found the constant visual movement, violin music, gunshots, soundbites, talking heads, slowly panned title pages, and pastel landscapes exhausting. It's not history, imho, just historical tinsel. Pass.

We see that you are eating Lasagne. We too enjoy Lasagne.

You absolutely will not read a better academic thread on BlueSky this week. This sort of thing is what makes having an account here worthwhile 🗃️

I am absolutely smitten by my kitten right now. She’s a really good cat 🧡

😍😍😍😍😍

I finally got around to reading Sharon Salinger and Nina Dayton’s Robert Love’s Warnings, and it’s absolutely fantastic: a fine-grained urban social history that never loses sight of the bigger picture or the largest questions about identity, mobility, poverty, and belonging 🗃️

Here’s my portly caramel cream cat to bless your timeline. You’re welcome. 🧡🤍🐈

A brief but very important message from Tulip 🔊

I’m celebrating Jane Austen’s birthday by taking naps, eating candy, and watching Star Trek.

Last week I started working in earnest in the Alijah Adlow Collection @bpl.boston.gov Special Collections. It's a vast and largely underexploited resource for Boston's C18 and early C19 African American history. Here's Salem Poor's wife being charged with theft in 1793 🗃️ @dlgenealogist.bsky.social

I am SO happy to be home!

I got to pet in transit cats at PHIL!!!! Stevie (L) Dolly (R) That’s the silver lining to my day.

This is very sad news. Nelson was an absolute giant in the field of American legal history, especially for those who work on eighteenth and nineteenth century Massachusetts 🗃️

Well, I’ve been at the airport for nine hours now, and it looks like I might just get out of here, if not all the way home.

So, Logan doesn’t have therapy dogs. This really needs to change. I would very much like to hug a dog about now 🐕‍🦺

Yeah. This is . . . not great.