brendenwrensink.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

I have served on NEH site reviews of state humanities councils. Don’t underestimated their importance and reach—especially in rural/remote areas away from metropolitan centers where cultural institutions, programming, and services are often focused. www.statehumanities.org/action-alert...

submitted 10 hours ago • 1 comment

My parents, who live just south of these border crossings, have been sharing anecdotal observations about less Canadians around town shopping. Good to have some data to back it up. These numbers are huge and will be disastrous for Whatcom County's economy.

submitted 18 hours ago • 0 comments

David Blight (Pres. of the Organization of American Historians @oah.org and Sterling Professor of American History at Yale University) on the president's executive order on history, the Smithsonian, and general attack on the historical profession. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/31/o...

submitted 21 hours ago • 0 comments

The many over the money. Here's a political trend I could get used to.

submitted 22 hours ago • 0 comments

What if the past 3 months have all been an elaborate April Fools prank because, kind of like the once-every-four-years leap day, there's an obscure tradition where once every 300 years or something you do April Fools jokes for the entire year leading up to April 1. It's possible, right?

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

More senseless destruction of public goods that benefit communities in order to pay for more tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. 😡

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

The AHA has released a statement in support of the Smithsonian Institution, the target of the recent EO, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” This order “egregiously misrepresents the work of the Smithsonian Institution” and “completely misconstrues the nature of historical work.” 🗃️

submitted 2 days ago • 11 comments

Made bacon jam to put on burgers tonight. Did it take a long time? Yes. Did it smell the house up? Yes. Will it destroy my stomach? Yes. Was it worth it? YES!

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

My brand of patriotism has me believe America is strong enough to ask hard questions about its history, learn from them, & progress toward attaining founding ideals. Wrestling with our messy past signals strength. An unwillingness to own ALL our past—the affirming & uncomfortable—signals weakness.

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

Madness. Why dismantle an efficient voting system that has no evidence of impactful fraud & makes it easier for people to vote? Because they don't want voting to be easy. They want to reduce the electorate by making it harder to vote. Being anti-voting is a bad look. www.sltrib.com/news/politic...

submitted 7 days ago • 1 comment

Says the billionaire in an attempt to scare seniors into not complaining if their social security checks don’t arrive. This is pure evil. www.newsweek.com/howard-lutni...

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

I’m not asking for the world, just that Nando’s Peri-Peri Chicken open a location here in Utah County. Is that too much to ask? 🥺

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

My 2018 @tamupress.bsky.social book, “Native but Foreign: Indigenous Immigrants and Refugees in the North American Borderlands” is in the database of pirated texts Meta used to train its AI. 😡 So when will FB pay me for illegally profiting off my scholarship. www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

submitted 13 days ago • 0 comments

Empathy is a core attribute that my faith compels me to develop. It’s THE antidote for much of our society’s disfunction. Check out this @kuer.org RadioWest interview w/ @romankrznaric.bsky.social RE his book on empathy. Cartoon from @sltrib.com’s Pat Bagley. radiowest.kuer.org/curiosities/...

submitted 13 days ago • 1 comment

A partial list of the current attempted erasure of diverse historical voices and stories from government websites and facilities. Senseless. Indefensible. Maddening. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/whitewashi...

submitted 14 days ago • 1 comment

Unconscionable. Just so wrong. www.axios.com/local/salt-l...

submitted 16 days ago • 1 comment

Yesterday was my @byureddcenter.bsky.social & BYU 10-year anniversary. It's been unreal--2 rank advancements, 6 books, 72 @writingwestward.bsky.social episodes, 800+ Intermountain Histories stories, misc pubs & conferences, & surrounded by amazing students & supportive colleagues. Here's to 10 more!

submitted 16 days ago • 1 comment

Big lecture today at the Redd Center. Please watch via the live stream (links below). You can message the Redd Center account with questions during the Q&A and I'll try to ask them for you!

submitted 20 days ago • 0 comments

4 days left to apply for our Redd Center funding. Apply! Tell your colleagues! Brenden wants to give you money!

submitted 22 days ago • 0 comments

I told you all that Tejani's book was great!

submitted 28 days ago • 0 comments

Indulging my PacNW roots with an episode on my home state and favorite fruit! APPLES!

submitted 30 days ago • 0 comments

2nd morning in a row seeing a bald eagle flying along the Provo River. Here’s to hoping it’s an omen of America returning to its better principles soon.

submitted 32 days ago • 1 comment

Sirs Bors, Gawain, and Ector would disagree. Tim the Enchanter warned them…just LOOK AT THE BONES!

submitted 32 days ago • 1 comment

Welp. Apparently common decency is a bridge too far, simply too much to expect these days. Keeping up in the news has been this year, but yesterday and today hit especially hard. 😞

submitted 33 days ago • 0 comments

Saw a student on campus today they looked 100% like someone I knew in college over 20 years ago…and then realized it could very well be their kid. 🤯

submitted 35 days ago • 0 comments

Guess I’ll just repost this continually. They claim to be reading the syllabus but are flunking the test. Taking away resources and services from the poorest and most vulnerable among us in order to help the richest among us get even richer is NOT the curriculum.

submitted 36 days ago • 0 comments

The dialog spoken by the Lumon employees in Severance is…off. It’s like they fed the script into google translate, translated it to a different language and then back into English again. Weird vocab that technically works but is never how we would say things. Weird synonyms & syntax.

submitted 39 days ago • 2 comments

My better half, at it again. This time it’s Danzón No. 2 by Arturo Márquez, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso by Camille Saint-Saëns, and Symphonie Fantastique by Hector Berlioz.

submitted 40 days ago • 0 comments

Grateful for these words from my BYU Law colleagues on this matter. Again, it’s wild that I feel the need to assert I’m pro-democracy & anti-autocracy. Doubling baffling that some are casting supporting constitutional separation of powers as a fringe partisan view. www.deseret.com/opinion/2025...

submitted 41 days ago • 0 comments

What are your favorite new (2023-25) books on the North American West? Any discipline, any sub-region, any time period. GO! #AmWest 🗃️📗

submitted 42 days ago • 3 comments

Help me help you! Apply for funding from the Redd Center! Less than a month left to apply for our awards/funding for research and public programming! #funding #amwest

submitted 43 days ago • 0 comments

2 weeks ago something reminded me of an old middle school friend & I thought to FB message them, but got distracted & didn’t. Hadn’t seen/spoken w/ them since the mid-90s. Tonight I heard that they ended their life last week. If you think of someone, reach out. Don’t wait until it’s too late. 😞

submitted 44 days ago • 1 comment

Shouldn’t have to go on the record about this, but here we are. I am pro-democracy, anti-autocracy. Now that I’ve cleared that up, back to [ir]regular programming.

submitted 45 days ago • 0 comments

I can imagine Christ as an exhausted professor exclaiming in frustration, “READ THE SYLLABUS!” Our assignments and the grading rubrics are pretty clear. Some sample readings: - Luke 10:29-37 - Matthew 25:37-45 - Isaiah 3:15 - John 13:34-35 - 1 Corinthians 13:1-8

submitted 49 days ago • 1 comment