G. Patrick O'Brien

This is very interesting. Thanks! I'll send you the letter I have from Sewall to Robie informing him he's being appoint JotP. It's kind of interesting because he explains the advantage of being one, which seems to be political during the colonial crisis. Thanks for your help!

Thomas Robie of Marblehead, MA. Appointed by Hutchinson. I'm pretty sure the main reason he wanted this position was because JotP were exempt from militia training? It's unclear to me whether he actually does anything as JotP?? I haven't seen any records of it.

!! Thanks, Keith. I will be following this closely. Yes, there is *nothing* on this position.

Hi! I'd love to hear about what you find. One of the loyalists I study uses his connection to his cousin, MA attorney General, Jonathan Sewall, to get appointed JotP in 1770. Like you, I can find NOTHING about what this means other than reading the manuals!

I've stooped to a new low to fight back: drinking Celsius...

For more than a century, Canadians have seen something of themselves in the sport of hockey. Canada's Game by Andrew C. Holman looks at hockey's ability to reflect Canadian identity.

buff.ly/ZJ7iN2W

DeAdder cartoon Gordie Howe "elbows up"

#CanadaSky🇨🇦

Yeah. I'll never understand (or maybe I do?) how the Christian Right idolizes a guy who sings: "Young ladies, young ladies, I like ’em underage, see. Some say that’s statutory / But I say it’s mandatory / My story ain’t that complex, two forties and a Rolex.” The nation has lost it's collective mind

Credit where credit is du though: the son of a wealthy car dealer masquerading as a country-rock icon lip syncing his way through the snowflake halftime show is pretty on brand marketing for MAGA. Props to Kid Rock and Co.

Bad Bunny’s closing messages during his Super Bowl performance:

“The only thing more powerful than hate is love”
“Together, we are America”

Kid Rock Mocked for Lip Syncing Through MAGA Super Bowl Stunt The country rock star headlined Turning Point USA’s MAGA-fied Super Bowl halftime show.

You mean to tell me it was all a farce? 🫢

www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/kid...

Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again.
#Pinks #ProudBlue

Just wait till this writer finds out there were people who were enslaved AND loyalist!

The wild thing about all these "America 250 Misses the Point" takes is that they're written as if the Bicentennial or Centennial *got* the point. No commemoration really gets the point, that's the point!

Douglas Hildebrand of @ubcpress.bsky.social provides an overview of the UP landscape in Canada for #FeedingTheElephant. "It’s a business that makes absolutely no business sense but is crucial to national conversations on various subjects and in exporting Canadian ideas to the world," he writes.

Don’t Keep a Diary. Embrace the Fragments of Real Life Instead.

The NYT discovers the theory behind reading historical texts: www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/m...

I'm quoted in this in-depth story about how Trump uses history to support his authoritarian agenda and to go after his enemies. As I put it, the "enemies that matter [to Trump] are in the present: us, history professors, journalists." tinyurl.com/32n7948b

This is EXACTLY what I mean. Like I'm replying to all these emails asking the students to think seriously about these "internships." I've talked with some of these kids trying to make these sales, and they are so totally lost. Sold on the idea that "experience" trumps any kind of learning or degree.

I ask, because this semester I have had 10+ emails from students "informing me" that they will miss at least a week of class & all of the finals period so that they can do an "internship" in door-to-door sales.

So the guys knocking on my door: are they all on the same "internship?"

While living in FL, I often forget how the real world works. So, please help me out:

Does anyone else regularly (like 2-3 times a week) have college-age kids (mostly young men with those silly haircuts) knock on their door trying to sell them solar panels, security systems, etc.?

ICE Expands Power of Agents to Arrest People Without Warrants

"Every one with this writ may be a tyrant; if this commission be legal, a tyrant in a legal manner also may control, imprison, or murder any one within the realm."- James Otis on general warrants by the Crown (1761).

WOW. I'm rooting for you.

Also, like Yarmouth is baaaaad, but who on that design team even picked Yarmouth to be another location in NS? Like of all the other logical choices, YARMOUTH?!

Graphic promoting the exhibit, "The Road to Revolution: Massachusetts and the Independence Movement." At the bottom is a 1775 watercolor illustration of two soldiers pointing towards building, with water in the background.

Opening February 11! "The Road to Revolution: Massachusetts and the Independence Movement" exhibit at the Old State House, presented by Revolutionary Spaces and the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Learn more here: revolutionaryspaces.org/explore/exhi...

@foreignadvices.bsky.social Don't they go to Halifax in one version of Assassins Creed and they've got a full on mountain where the citadel should be and no King of Donair? Pity they botched it so badly.

Forget them both: take Newfoundland!

Jonathan Eddy is super fascinating. Massachusetts born resident of Nova Scotia. So is he a New Englander or a Nova Scotian???

From Washington's letter to Canadiens: "The Cause of America, and of Liberty, is the Cause of every virtuous American Citizen [...] Come then, ye generous Citizens, range yourselves under the Standard of general Liberty."

I can't tell if everything has changed 250 years later, or if nothing has...

Re-Enchanting American History | Critical Historical Studies: Vol 12, No 2 Abstract Around the world, citizens and leaders seek to realign collective identities with political boundaries. These aspirations are reshaping the ways we discuss—and divide over—US history. This ar...

1) My contribution to #America250: an analysis of the multiple, competing narratives of American history we have today, and why we are so divided over our past. @revolution250.bsky.social @historians.org @oah.org

If anyone has a line to Bruce, might he be interested in reflecting on all that's going on amid the Rev250 commemorations or his music's influence on American patriotism for an academic and popular audience? Maybe @amylofgren.bsky.social or @leftylofgren.bsky.social could make a connection? THANKS!

Did you tune in for Ken Burns' documentary series "The American Revolution"? Submit a reflective essay for consideration in "Remembering the American Revolution at 250."

Read the full call for papers here: networks.h-net.org/group/announ....

See Vol 1 here: journals.h-net.org/America250/i...

@mcgillqueensup.bsky.social