Laura H

To be fair, you did experience and have to recover from a pretty serious injury in that time!

Good morning! Yes, this is he

The arthritis in my left thumb is attempting to derail all of my plans to be productive at work this week, despite giving it four days of rest. I just want so badly to work without my body fighting back.

Too often I get the feeling that many people of the general public view pre-19th century "Industrial" technology as something akin to a fictional Flintstones-esque landscape of crude tools and improbable uses of teeth.
Way too many people are surprised that Georgians had taps and dies or lathes.

I am feeling so tired from work that ideally, I'd just like to curl up in bed with a book. BUT. I have obligations to attend choir rehearsal. So now I'm trying to tell myself I'll enjoy it when I get there, but by golly, a good 2/3 of my brain just isnt buying it.

Literally anytime I have felt down in the last few days, I just watch some clips of women celebrating women at the Olympics and while it can't fix things, it sure as hell gives me hope for the future.

Still thinking two days later about comebacks at the man who asked my coworker how often she breaks a nail (and spoke over another coworker to do do), which I'm sure he wouldn't have bothered any of the men with.

Sometimes my superpower is my boss asking if I know about a random historic document that I haven't laid eyes on in years, and 10 min later, I've found it and printed a copy with citation.

Gasped when I saw that one party said the other was "simply unfactual" and "ignoring the evidence provided" and then proceeded to make a list of the topics their opponent had avoided with a footnote for every single word.

Love doing research and coming across a beef between 2 historians from 20 years ago, playing out in passive aggressive reviews and rebuttals. "Your criticisms are baseless and your assertions unsupported" are the historian version of slapping someone with a glove after they insulted your ladylove.

Going through my knits stash to do some handwashing (a previous moth infestation has made me eternally paranoid about keeping things clean) and it's always nice to see how my work has changed over the course of almost 15 years of knitting. Definitely a lace girlie, but thinking I need more cables.

If Bad Bunny can cover the history of Puerto Rico, colonialism, transatlantic slavery, hemispheric consciousness, as well as contemporary life and politics in under 14 minutes, you can do your 15- or 20-minute conference presentation with time to spare.

My toes are so cold and I think when one's toes are this cold for this long, one should be allowed to go home and climb into bed with a heating pad.

Feeling some strong workplace anxiety and imposter syndrome today. Would much rather be at home watching the Olympics.

A hand holds up a nice new hardback copy of "Mistress: A History of Women and Their Country Houses" by Anthony Fletcher and Ruth Larsen.

My library hold came in! Excited to do some reading on the Anglo side of the Anglo-American Atlantic world again.
Really glad there's been some fascinating books in the last few years focusing on women's active roles shaping the landscapes of the elite.
#WomensHistory

I keep thinking about what DHS is asking of Minneapolis and all of us. Stay quietly in your homes while we break down your neighbor’s door and drag her out crying. Walk away when you see us chasing a child down the street. Say nothing, look away.

What an evil thing to ask for.

Watching the weather forecast predict a foot or more of snow on the weekend of the conference I've been prepping for for the last 3 months is Not Great.

I've sent off what I hope is a kindly enough worded email and am crossing my fingers that corrections are made, or an errata issued.
I hate having to tell people they've made an error, but also it's kinda really important to me and I dont think I'm overreacting by wanting to be fairly represented.

I worked really hard on it (and all the other prep for this conference) since it's my first time presenting to 300 people in our big annual event. I turned it in early! Triple checked it!
And someone messed up including my material correctly.

When pre-conference material is sent out and not only is my speaker portrait wrong, all of my photos and diagrams for the pamphlet is missing 🫠

Just found I have a few yards of white muslin in my stash, so I should be able to start working on one of my petticoats sooner than expected! I might make another one in linen later, but my first petti was in cotton before and it had a really good body to it, so no need to reinvent the wheel.

Things suck so I am making an effort to post about creative endeavors I'm undertaking. Not ignoring things going on, but I do think I need to make space to record some positive stuff or I will simply run mad.

Weird to be commemorating the 250th anniversary of the Am Rev while living under a government that has a) sent armed troops to occupy cities perceived to be too rebellious, b) rendered largely irrelevant the representative branch of government, and c) claimed imperial right to rule other countries.

It feels really hard to work in public history, especially when museum leadership wants us to focus 2026 on celebrating the 250th, when it feels absurd to celebrate anything about the state of our country right now.

This piece is a reminder of the dichotomy between the beauty of historical objects and the hardships of real people. It embodies how I want to use historical objects as a gateway to draw attention back to people who have been marginalized, their work and presence erased, especially BIPOC.

A silver reproduction of a Kissing Otters pendant from the 17th/18th century.

A late 18th cent Kissing Otters pendant from Canada, currently held by the Albany Institute of History and Art.

I'm a big nerd for historic jewelry (either repro or closely inspired by) and this is a really cool piece, gifted from my husband and made by a friend from work.
It's a Kissing Otters pendant, which has its roots in the North American colonial fur trade between Native Americans and Europeans.

scrooge boopin' a little muppet mouse on the nose while souls text reads "MEESES CHEESED"

i had to drop what i was doing to make this