Shirley Wajda
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stwajda.bsky.social
Shirley Wajda
@stwajda.bsky.social
4.4K followers 1.1K following 4.5K posts
Historian, curator, knitter of the American experience, daughter & granddaughter of immigrants, waiting for Lefty & CLE World Series win. American material & visual culture, museum studies, craftivism, women's history, everyday life. Too many projects.
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Reposted by Shirley Wajda
nicolastenzer.bsky.social
Polish cartoonist Andrzej Rysuje nails it.
November 27, 2025 at 8:59 PM
stwajda.bsky.social
The schnauzer should have won.
November 27, 2025 at 8:01 PM
Reposted by Shirley Wajda
theartnewspaper.bsky.social
The Courtauld has launched an art history teaching fund, following a new report which revealed a sharp decrease in the teaching of the subject to UK teenagers

www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/11/27/c...
November 27, 2025 at 6:31 PM
Reposted by Shirley Wajda
rebeccasolnit.bsky.social
PIECRUST! A MANIFESTO!
I once wrote someone trying to impress a new love some piecrust instructions and thought I'd share them here:
The secret of good pie is: keep your heart warm but your butter cold.
PIECRUST! A MANIFESTO! I once wrote someone trying to impress a new love some piecrust instructions and thought I'd share them here: The secret of good pie is: keep your heart warm but your butter cold. Ounces or grams, all that matters is a one-part-butter-to-three-parts-flour recipe (only a little more butter and a tiny bit less flour than that makes it easier to work and richer, so cheat with all your warm heart, because reality wants to be richer than the rules). About 1.5-2 cups of flour per pie, butter proportionate. Put the butter in the freezer for a while and then grate it, if you can get a grater. Otherwise chop it as small as you can with a knife or knives and mix it into the flour until the largest lump of cold butter is as small as a pea a princess would feel under her seventh mattress down. I always work it by hand. On the one hand, your hands emit warmth, so you better be fast, on the other, what better tool is there? Take some very, very icy ice water--pour about half a cup of water over lots of ice--and pour some of that that chilly, chilly water into a well in that mixture. Don't overwater; it's easier to add water than thicken a gummy piecrust mix. Mix until you have a flaky pastry that will fall apart a little but mostly hang together in balls of piecrust--you don't want it to get sticky. And you don't want to overwork your dough.
November 27, 2025 at 3:55 PM
stwajda.bsky.social
This is so true. So much of the joy of making art is in the process, and in that experience the maker/artist gains wisdom.
kristamharper.bsky.social Krista M. Harper @kristamharper.bsky.social · 11h
Whatever age you are, making art is transformative. I’ve always doodled, but in the past couple of years I have dived into fiber arts and printmaking. Now making is part of my daily routine, like exercise. 1/4
jayispainting.earthskyart.ca JayIsPainting 🍁 @jayispainting.earthskyart.ca · 21h
I'm old.

If you're not, listen to this.

Get a guitar or some drums, or a trumpet. Pick up a brush, a pencil, some clay or a welder.

Just make shit. It doesn't have to be good (eventually it will be) just make music, art or write or whatever.

It's literally never been more important.
November 27, 2025 at 2:45 PM
stwajda.bsky.social
"Better Pies for America" is my campaign slogan.
Newspaper headline reading "Buffalo Meeting May Result In Better Pies for America."
November 27, 2025 at 2:23 PM
Reposted by Shirley Wajda
mlobelart.bsky.social
Pablo Picasso, The Turkey (Le Dindon), 1936 www.moma.org/collection/w...
Image of a turkey
November 27, 2025 at 2:17 AM
Reposted by Shirley Wajda
epsilonsky.bsky.social
Floridians 15:10

"Thou shalt not bear false complexion"
November 27, 2025 at 2:00 AM
Reposted by Shirley Wajda
historyclippings.bsky.social
The Internet Archive just released tens of thousands of seed catalogs, spanning over two centuries!

They are both lovely and interesting. Check them out!

archive.org/details/usda...

🗃️ #c18th #c19th #c20th #illustration
Seed catalogue from 1896. Color illustration of watermellons, corn, onions, radishes, and lettuce. Seed catalogue cover, 1909. Color illustrations of onions.
November 26, 2025 at 8:45 PM
Reposted by Shirley Wajda
londonmikmaq.bsky.social
Wow, these are really cool too www.saltwire.com/atlantic-can...
Tiny Mi'kmaq baskets are big business for Eskasoni man looking to teach his craft
Virick Francis, 54, is planning to open a basket shop in Eskasoni with a space for workshops and lessons in basket weaving for community members
www.saltwire.com
November 27, 2025 at 12:10 AM
Reposted by Shirley Wajda
yocum137.bsky.social
These are going on my Christmas wish spreadsheet.

Aaaaand now we wait to see if they’re approved by the Ways and Means Committee
themerl.bsky.social The Museum of English Rural Life @themerl.bsky.social · 1d
Critics are calling us the world's most rectangular line of homeware. They would be right. Because we put even more large 19th-century livestock portraits on mugs.

Order the most square package of your entire life:
merl-shop.co.uk/shop/livesto...
Mugs and coasters, decorated with portraits of very rectangular 19th century livestock.
November 26, 2025 at 4:12 PM
stwajda.bsky.social
In 1925, President Calvin Coolidge refused an apple #pie for Thanksgiving because its acceptance might signal endorsement of an apple week festival.
Newspaper article entitled "President Declines Gift of Holiday Apple Pie": WASHINGTON, Oct. 27.--(AP)--President and Mrs. COolidge have declined an offer from the Girls' Club of Vermont University of a large apple pie for the White House Thanksgiving dinner. Although no reason was given for declining the pie, apparently it was refused because acceptance might have been taken as an endorsement by the president of the proposed apple week to be held about that time. This might be regarded as a precedent for endorsement of similar movements in other parts of the country. The telegram tendering the pie said it was designed to be a part of the apple week program.
November 26, 2025 at 4:26 PM
Reposted by Shirley Wajda
stwajda.bsky.social
I'm spending the rest of the year drafting the never-ending book manuscript on the history of pie in the US. For all the #pie discourse on this here app, no one has asked what it would be like to be without pie.

Please meet brave & pie-less public servant George Horton, American Consul to Greece.
Black and white photographic, bust-length portrait of a mustachioed man with light hair and eyes. He wears a white collared short with a necktie darker than the coat and vest he also wears. He looks wistfully at a point behind the viewer's left shoulder. He like sees a pie. 1898 Cincinnati Enquirer newspaper article entitled "WITHOUT PIE; For Five Years, Or the Horrible Experience of an American in Greece." The article reads: "George Horton, who was appointed the United States Consul at Athens, Greece, by President Cleveland, and who recently returned to this city, after an absence of five years, has been spending his time eating pie ever since he reached this side of the Atlantic. They don't have pie in Greece, and he has been making up for lost time. 'It is pretty hard to go five years without pie,' said he. 'I used to go to sleep, while in Athens, dreaming of pie, and I didn't have the nightmare either. When the steamer reached the New York harbor, and before I had landed, I saw a large advertisement of a pie company, and then I knew I was home. I could hardly wait until I had landed, such was my desire to get at a piece of American pie. Why don't they have pie in Greece? For the same reason they don't have telephones. They are not up on modern inventions.'"
November 26, 2025 at 4:02 AM
stwajda.bsky.social
I'm spending the rest of the year drafting the never-ending book manuscript on the history of pie in the US. For all the #pie discourse on this here app, no one has asked what it would be like to be without pie.

Please meet brave & pie-less public servant George Horton, American Consul to Greece.
Black and white photographic, bust-length portrait of a mustachioed man with light hair and eyes. He wears a white collared short with a necktie darker than the coat and vest he also wears. He looks wistfully at a point behind the viewer's left shoulder. He like sees a pie. 1898 Cincinnati Enquirer newspaper article entitled "WITHOUT PIE; For Five Years, Or the Horrible Experience of an American in Greece." The article reads: "George Horton, who was appointed the United States Consul at Athens, Greece, by President Cleveland, and who recently returned to this city, after an absence of five years, has been spending his time eating pie ever since he reached this side of the Atlantic. They don't have pie in Greece, and he has been making up for lost time. 'It is pretty hard to go five years without pie,' said he. 'I used to go to sleep, while in Athens, dreaming of pie, and I didn't have the nightmare either. When the steamer reached the New York harbor, and before I had landed, I saw a large advertisement of a pie company, and then I knew I was home. I could hardly wait until I had landed, such was my desire to get at a piece of American pie. Why don't they have pie in Greece? For the same reason they don't have telephones. They are not up on modern inventions.'"
November 26, 2025 at 4:02 AM
Reposted by Shirley Wajda
theonion.com
Study: Average 19th-Century American Spent 93% Of Time Waving At Trains, Boats https://theonion.com/study-average-19th-century-american-spent-93-of-time-waving-at-trains-boats/
Study: Average 19th-Century American Spent 93% Of Time Waving At Trains, Boats
November 25, 2025 at 7:00 PM
Reposted by Shirley Wajda
lauropea.bsky.social
today is the feast of St Catharine of Alexandria, patron of female scholars, so enjoy this painting of her shutting down a senior prof who treated her paper's question time as an opportunity to hold an impromptu paper of his own
painting of a standing crowned and haloed woman shushing an old guy holding forth at her, him and others sitting clearly in an audience
November 25, 2025 at 8:26 AM
Reposted by Shirley Wajda
themerl.bsky.social
Are you a PhD student & interested in using museum collections in your teaching or research?

We're running a *free* doctoral training programme for students at any institution to learn about working with collections.

Find out more:

collections.reading.ac.uk/whats-on/
Two students look at objects in the reading room at The Museum of English Rural Life.
November 25, 2025 at 12:55 PM
Reposted by Shirley Wajda
onestpress.onestnetwork.com
BBC censors a lecture removing author’s remarks on Trump that refer to him a the most openly corrupt American president.
November 25, 2025 at 1:23 PM
Reposted by Shirley Wajda
chicana74.bsky.social
Stop this is too cute 😂
November 23, 2025 at 5:58 PM
Reposted by Shirley Wajda
bcdreyer.social
"Ideally, you go into a story not knowing what you think yet, not having a preconceived idea of what the story’s going to be. If you do, then you’re not truly learning the story. You’re simply looking for examples to support an idea you already have."

[@susanorlean.bsky.social]
November 23, 2025 at 2:51 PM
Reposted by Shirley Wajda
rbtownsend.bsky.social
"While other universities report that the humanities are shrinking, at Berkeley, the opposite is true. The music major is the fastest-growing major on campus. We are finding bigger classrooms because film is exploding. English is back to the numbers we saw 15 years ago. We are hiring" bit.ly/4ohKuOe
"The humanities really are a resource — a confidence for living in our times.” Dean Sara Guyer on the modern utility of humanities degrees
This interview originally appeared on the Division of Arts
bit.ly
November 23, 2025 at 3:38 PM
Reposted by Shirley Wajda
kevinmkruse.bsky.social
I literally recommended this book to someone yesterday. Beautifully written.

@rauchway.bsky.social is the best New Deal historian alive and that’s saying something.
November 22, 2025 at 2:24 PM
Reposted by Shirley Wajda
marisakabas.bsky.social
just as when bamboo is pulled from the ground, nature is healing
November 22, 2025 at 2:27 PM
stwajda.bsky.social
I am officially on vacation for the rest of the year.

Let the visiting, writing, cookie-baking, and pierogi-making commence!
November 22, 2025 at 3:20 PM