Shirley Wajda

A more apt description of the Mar-a-Lago administration has never been written.

The moon going from full moon to a red moon and starting to go back to a normal full moon, then my camera battery door fell off.

Here's my first edit on the March 3rd Lunar Eclipse. 15 moon shots, 1 foreground. Taken over a 3 hourish period.

In 2026, colleges must teach students that this is not the end of the world. We must teach hope. Current undergraduates can barely remember a time before the threats of climate change and authoritarianism loomed to catastrophic scale. Since 2010, the future depicted in TV, books, and games has been dystopian or apocalyptic, so for our current students the end of the world feels more familiar and realistic than a future with hope. Now we are asking them to choose majors and life paths when the desirability, indeed the very existence, of whole sectors of employment are in question, due to the overwhelming promises of LLMs and machine learning. As young people hear daily that vocation after vocation may vanish into automation’s maw, and that democracy, liberty, land, sea, and sky are all in jeopardy, despair is growing. Despair is very emotionally tempting. It means freedom from the responsibility to shape the future. This is a terrifying turning point, but many generations before us have faced such turning points, and met them. We can offer our students perspective. Only a few dozen institutions on Earth are more than 900 years old, and the vast majority are universities. The university system is not a house of straw to buckle in this storm: We are the rocks that have sheltered the knowledge, hope, and truth through tumults which have toppled kingdoms while classrooms endured. We can endure this, and be a guiding light through it, but only by recentering, by teaching citizens, not workers; power, not PowerPoint; aspiration, not apocalypse. Despair is how we lose. The classroom is where we battle it. All other battles flow from here. Ada Palmer is an associate professor of history at the University of Chicago.

This, from Ada Palmer as part of The Chronicle's survey of 11 scholars on the future of higher ed, is what I needed to end the week.

“If [wealthy, powerful people] can get us to accept that the future’s already settled, AI is already here, the end is already here, then we will create that for them. My most daring idea is to refuse.” — @tressiemcphd.bsky.social

These assholes delenda est.

The academic and publishing landscapes have changed a lot since we started this magazine. We've stuck to the same principles we started with:

History is for everyone.

Every way of doing history is worthwhile.

Historians should be paid for their work.

Color photographic image of pies and an apple. Text reads: "Shaker Pie/Pi Day Saturday March 14th Canterbury Shaker Village in Hubbard Gallery 1:30-3PM Free / Join for a slice of pie & informal talk on pie in Shaker and American history"

If you are anywhere near Canterbury, NH, please join us on Pi(e) Day, 3/14/2026, for some food history and a slice of pie! (I promise also to talk about the food scientist who "proved" pie is good for everyone by feeding custard pie to lab rats.)

Congratulations!!!

ChatGPT said a Harlan Ellison story I asked about never was written by Ellison, and I had the story open in the book in front of me. I'll consult Britannica before AI.

BREAKING: As I was first to report earlier, Trump has nominated Bradford Wilson, who does not meet the statutory requirements—which include that the nominee be nonpartisan and professionally qualified—to be the next Archivist of the United States.

lastcampaign.substack.com/p/breaking-t...

What the National Park Service Has Flagged Thus Far. It's Much Worse Than I Thought. Note: This is a long post.

I spent hours looking through hundreds of files of materials that have been flagged for review by National Park Service sites around the country. Here is just a small sample of what I found. #NationalParks 🗃️ open.substack.com/pub/kevinmle...

Americans urged to leave Middle East, but many airports are closed and embassy staff is reduced The State Department ordered the mandatory departure of non-emergency personnel and family members in six countries after the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia was struck by two Iranian drones.

It’s so American to be like you should return home via your bootstraps

Woodstock (Vermont) Journal newspaper, September 5, 1820. Featured here are two advertisements appearing together. The top ad features an image of a small house with the text: "For Sale, THE large White House situated on the Water Queechee River, a few rods west of the Court House in Woodstock, formerly owned by Mrs. Olives, and occupied by Maj. Levi Mower. August 28, 1820. WILLIS HALL." The ad below: "Caution. 'THE large white House," advertised for sale by Willis Hall, never was his property, and never will be until he shall have purchased and paid for it; altho he has a vendue deed, which he obtained in a secret rascally manner, when an agent for the owner. BENJAMIN F. MOWER, Agent for the owners. N.B. Any person wishing to purchase a piece of woodland a short distance from the Court-House, can obtain a title from Luke Landphire, with no other incumbrance thereon but another man's land lying on top of it-which will be equaily [sic] as valid as a title from Willis Hall to 'the large white House,' in my opinion. BENJAMIN F. MOWER. Woodstock, Sept. 4, 1820.

"Secret rascally manner" in Woodstock, Vermont, 1820: Totally want to know the story here.

An 1889 local history: "This proceeding on the part of Mower drew out a bitter retort from Hall, followed up with affidavits and much swearing on both sides."

As the laid off Middle East News Editor, I concur. Management eliminated the positions of every single staff correspondent and bureau chief in the Middle East.

Dun dun!

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."

-Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953

Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez: “Today more than ever, it is essential to remember that one can be against a hateful regime as is the case with the Iranian regime…and at the same time be against an unjustified, dangerous military intervention outside of international law.”

With the exception of the Kirk banner, these banners seem to embrace a 1950s high school-level US history textbook take.

The King is mad

what a crazy night for sam altman to be like "yeah we got that dept of war deal, and there's no moral concerns here"

This is an unjust, illegal war. It violates our treaties and our laws. Presidential impunity must end.

BREAKING: Adolescent teenage boys have taken over the Pentagon.

A strapless ballgown consisting of a long white many layered net skirt topped with a pale blue tightly ruched strapless bodice. The top of the décolletage has an asymmetrical spray of pink silk flowers drifting to one side

A close up of the pale blue ruched bodice of the 1950s strapless ballgown by Ceil Chapman that shows the arrangement of the pink silk flowers along the neckline

All the colours of tentative spring time, pale and with a wash of blue, the hyper glam of Ceil Chapman deployed in a strapless ballgown. The skirt is a fluff of layers and the bodice wraps the torso tight with a spray of flowers peeping. Sold via #1stdibs, 1950s #FashionHistory 🗃️🪡

I marvel at your menus! I hope you're de-stressing.

Congratulations!

The Sword And the Sandwich This is a newsletter about the dismal state of American politics, the far right, and .... sandwiches. Plus literature, whimsy, culture, and absolutely everything else you could imagine, brought to you...

I cannot recommend @swordsjew.bsky.social's Notable Sandwiches blogue series highly enough TBH. LOLs, literature and lunch. Five stars. buttondown.com/theswordandt...

Everything is offal.

I'm seeing "Farage and Greens" in the Trending list and thinking "Forage and Greens." Which could be a great dish description at a vegetarian restaurant. And which means I need more coffee. Happy Friday, one and all!

This just popped into my timeline and is so apt a simile that I’m jealous that I didn’t think of it.

Modernist 79th Street dry cleaners featured in film 'Ali' and Chance the Rapper's video set to close The closing creates an uncertain future for one of Chicago's most unique modernist sites — an absolute showstopper of a building with its original sign, neither of which are under city landmark protec...

My architecture column today. "Pride Cleaners closing creates an uncertain future for one of Chicago’s most unique modernist sites — an absolute showstopper of a building with its original sign, neither of which are under city landmark protection."