Patrick A. Lewis

This week on my 📱, an archaeologist and presenter on BBC historic farm recreation shows delves into the lost world of making, doing, and knowing that our industrialized world has lost. There are the histories written down and the histories that only our working hands remember how to tell

This week in my 🎧, Succession meets Millennial rejection of the expectations of our promising childhoods in a world full of disasters, crumbling blue chip industries, and (in this case) a bit of magic. Could take or leave the latter, but the narrator is a gem
Witty and deceptive throughout.

This week in my 📚, Hudson retired back home from a career at UGA and would occasionally pop in for lunch at KHS. Read this one with Sally in anticipation of bringing a future trip to Etowah alive. #skystorians

This week in my 🎧, a relaxing detour into millennial craft culture, disconnecting from the world with a DIY cabin in the woods. #skystorians

This week on my 📱, I was jealous when my wife got the advance copy of this from my favorite horror writer. This didn’t haunt me like The Only Good Indians, but it’s still a stunning reflection on American history wrapped in terror. #skystorians

This week in my 🎧, truly an epic. 48 hrs of listening time invested. Interesting comparison with Musashi, a Japanese-authored samurai novel of the mid-century, which I think I preferred as a cultural window. But this was good fun. #skystorians

This week in my 📚, reading the advance copy of what has to be another Pulitzer winner. Interviewing him on stage with the @filsonhistorical.bsky.social in June. Make sure you’re there! #skystorians

This week in my 🎧, what an incredible book. The dystopian projection of our for-profit prison system and toxic media climate of the reality tv/social media age into the near future. This one will stay with me for a long time. Particularly well acted by the audio cast, too. #skystorians

One-fourth of federal staff fired at Civil War site that housed Black Union soldiers in KY “It is our No. 1 tourism asset in Jessamine County. It’s our most visited spot,” said a longtime Camp Nelson volunteer.

You will be hard pressed to find a better NPS staff than the one at Camp Nelson in Kentucky. There is no better place to learn about the military service of Black Union soldiers. 🗃️ www.kentucky.com/news/state/k...

This week in my 🎧, what an amazing book. US historians have a bad habit of following European history up to 1789, but 1848 shaped so much of American life in the late 19th c. Broad, exhaustive, and at times really witty. #skystorians

This week on my 📱, grieving for Alexander at the end of The Persian Boy, it took me a year to return to Renault’s trilogy. The intrigues of the διάδοχοι never hit the heights of the previous books, but neither did the successors. What were they without Alexander? At least Ptolemy got the last word.

This week in my 🎧, gender and class shape the words we use, and when language moves from the breath to the page, it is in peril of being constrained, excised, and obscured. A great story for this age of misinformation about a previous one. #skystorians

This week in my 📚, the exceptional photos and great short essays here help follow up an incredible visit with the author, where I got to handle and examine most of these pieces, ate good Western Kentucky bacon, played with old dogs, and dodged floods #skystorians

This week in my 🎧, I don’t know, I just thought rereading a friend’s book about gender fluidity, freedom, and fulfillment in the Jazz age being crushed in the 30s, 40s, and 50s with devastating personal consequences seemed relevant, somehow #skystorians

This week on my 📱, a classic @filsonhistorical.bsky.social publication that sets the mood for finishing up a long-term project of mine.

Here it is, y’all. I grew up just off post, going to Ft. Campbell for school and athletic events and knowing military kids who jumped between my school and this one year to year. Now they can’t even learn that the 101st was deployed to Little Rock to support Central HS

This week in my 🎧, driving back to Louisville through a flooded Eastern Kentucky with a short meditation on land and our connection to it. If you can get the edition with Barbara Kingsolver’s 2020 intro, do so. She adds immensely to the message and makes this book’s enduring value clear #skystorians

This week in my 🎧, an approachable and informative account of an era that is fundamental to understanding American revolutionary political thought. All the hopes and fears of the founders looked back to this era as we do to them. Great read #skystorians

This week in my 📚, I didn’t expect the supernatural elements or to be as moved by this little book as I was. Comforting in the best ways. #skystorians

This week in my 📚, “we’re just folks who live around here” stand against tyranny. Appalachian folktale rooted in the failure of the Great Society, but broadly applicable in many places and times, even now. #skystorians

This week on my 📱, an interesting if maybe incomplete look into the hardscrabble world of the 1770s-80s NC mountains. Carving a living out of a hardwood valley, though curiously untouched by the backcountry civil war raging all around them. #skystorians

This week in my 🎧, medieval Welsh tales with roots that go much deeper. Like hearing bootleg recordings of the band that inspired the Silmarillion. #skystorians

This week in my 🎧, the perfect read for this week of administrative harassment from the new team in DC. It can happen here. Also, Kentucky might as well be a supporting actor in this plot, and I feel like we need to talk about that. #skystorians

This week in my 🎧, timed it so I could listen while driving thru Cahokia. My fav book of ‘24, listening this time. Noir mystery set in a 1920s where Tribal sovereignty was never extinguished. Good research, can see the fingerprints of Charles Hudson’s books in the world building. #skystorians

This is the place to be at, now that you’re here!

This week on my 📱, glad to have a good new history of the war in the South, but while it was helpful in resetting my mental narrative about the lowcountry and piedmont, the backcountry could have stood some more attention, especially after 1781. But that’s the Kentuckian in me speaking. #skystorians

This week in my 🎧, sci-fi and philosophy blend in this meditative book that makes us reflect on our relationship to the natural and tech worlds. Good grounding for current events. #skystorians

This week in my 🎧, feminist retellings of myth are one of my favorite genres. Atalanta is a deep cut, and I thoroughly enjoyed this one as I spent the weekend in the basement woodshop. Loved the ruthless depiction of Artemis. #skystorians

This week in my 🎧, waited for the audio & glad I did. This is poetry, in a cadence and diction that needs a good, Native narrator. A story like this, that blends time, space, & the spirit world seamlessly through moments of unspeakable trauma needs to be heard. Magnificent. Humbling. #skystorians

This week in my 🎧, spent a lot of snow shoveling time with this one. Gives global perspective to minutely described events on the ground, especially here in Onontio’s backcountry. Wow. Worth the 🕰️ investment. #skystorians