iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

Watching @rach-anderson.bsky.social being a legend as we launch our new Archives and Historical Research course at @nenature.bsky.social

031

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

My boy! I thought he was going to die again! He didn't again! Now he's back and no longer ill and getting in the way of me working and he smells *terrible*

190

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

Our archive at @nenature.bsky.social has this: a still-palpable vertigo at the expansion of what can be seen and known - geological time, the microscopic world, the surface of the earth, the cosmos - that you find in things like Albany Hancock's drawings of nudibranchs

130

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

From the @nenature.bsky.social collections: geological maps of Northumberland, 1923

050

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

From the @nenature.bsky.social collections: Richard Howse's Catalogue of the Fossils of the Permian System of Northumberland and Durham, previously belonging to the Darlington & Teesdale Naturalists' Field Club, and annotated (with drawings) by an unknown enthusiast

050

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

In the office today. We used to be a country

041

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 18/07/2025

Had a great time at the @litandphil.bsky.social 's celebration of the bicentennial of their incredible library - featuring local telly celeb Alexander Armstrong, jazz from Top Banana, and a special appearance from the ghostly spectre of Mrs Affleck, charlady of the Society in the 19th century

081

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

Going to the Big Meeting tomorrow and a mate sent me this (from Ken & Jean Smith, 'Splendour of the Gala'): what I like about it is that Edwards' second (I think) grandchild would've been two months old that week, and I ate soup with her last night because she's my mam. Mams + trade unions 4 EVA ❤️🌹✊

280

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

Leviathan: Or the Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiasticall and Civil

000

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 21/06/2025

went on a walk up Hedgehope didn't we

040

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 18/06/2025

At Newcastle City Council's #CityofSanctuary Forum to see what NHSN can offer to refugees, asylum seekers and migrants in the NE

030

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 15/06/2025

This is such a brilliant piece of writing about Teesside, deindustrialising landscapes and ecologies, birds, shorelines, oilrigs, that sort of thing

2176

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

Fascinating #NaturesCure event tonight at Great North Museum: Hancock - Julia Heslop and Sam Fisher talking about North Tyneside's peri-urban edgelands, art, community and ecology in their project 'This Was All Fields'

010

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 07/06/2025

Also supplied me with probably the only good epigraph to a book I'll ever come up with. Thanks Edward! Enjoy it down there!

010

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

Get yourself a flatmate who does a massive poo on the floor of an evening and then makes it up to you by laying a dead mouse at the foot of your bed while you're asleep

250

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

I should like to introduce my very good friend and associate The Whitley Large Ox

361

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

These elephants have a very Bewickian twinkle about them (portrait of T.B. himself, by unknown artist, included for comparison)

030

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Unclear whether a whale can correctly be categorised as a quadruped since it's actually a very big fish.* Someone should have told Thomas Bewick this. * @natewolff.bsky.social can u confirm if this is correct plz

280

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

I'm a particularly big fan of the seal

150

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Thomas Bewick's sketches and studies for The General History of Quadrupeds (1790)

1306

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

A marginalium by Thomas Bewick on why herons aren't comfortable around humans, from his copy of the Comte de Buffon’s Natural History of Birds, v.VII (1793)

2316

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

Going through @nenature.bsky.social magazine on our team awayday and stumbled across @noreenmasud.bsky.social. Noreen mate what are you doing in our owl mag

161

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 10/05/2025

well, that was good, and yes I did sweat through my suit jacket

040

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 10/05/2025

Happy birthday! Here's John Brown being a disruptive little nobhead

0161

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

From the @nenature.bsky.social archive: Edward Lear (yes, *that* Edward Lear, 1812-1888)'s illustrations of parrots

052

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

Serious times in the @nenature.bsky.social office as we figure out what to do with all our animal heads

020

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 03/05/2025

Also, from the @nenature.bsky.social archive the other day: a photo of a Great Auk skeleton. No clue as to provenance or which specimen it is.

150

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

I think the sheep tick looks like a friendly little fellow

020

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

From the @nenature.bsky.social archive: a book of micrographs (microscopic photography) by William J. P. Pinkney (1849-1903)

140

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

They've been up there for 6000 years or so and are the very epitome of thriving, moisturised, in their lane, supremely unbothered etc. They did seem quite shy this bank holiday weekend, though - I've got closer in the past, as here:

010

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

went up to see my favourite lads* on Windy Gyle at the weekend *goats

180

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

Such an enormous pleasure to host @oliviasmith.bsky.social and @jennyrichards.bsky.social talking about their project 'Bee-ing Human' at GNM Hancock on Thursday - a fascinating talk, some incredible archival encounters, and a wonderful mix of people in the room newcastlerse.github.io/beeing-human...

032

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

I'm neither Catholic nor particularly Christian (failed Quaker if anything), but the late Pope's encyclical Laudato Si' is one of the most powerful texts I know about ecology, capitalism, and the stewardship of the biosphere: cafod.org.uk/pray/laudato...

0143

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

My favourite thing about our copy of this (apart from the fact we actually have it, which is wonderful) is the endpapers: not just inscriptions, but doodles, penmanship practice and a child's drawing

162

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

We'll also have on show a selection of bee-related stuff from our archives - including the source text for Olivia and Jenny's project, Charles Butler's 1609 text 'The Feminine Monarchie' - the first manual of bees and beekeeping to be published in English

130

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

Gould's book is notable, inter alia, for featuring artworks by the illustrator, author and nonsense poet Edward Lear (1812-1888), who contributed this incredible vision of a great auk swimming with a fish in its mouth:

120

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

And also: John Gould's 1837 'Birds of Europe' (5 vols). Also hand-tinted lithograph, also extremely fancy, only slightly less massive

130

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

Razor Bill, Crested Cormorant, Puffin, Velvet Scoter

130

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

Today in the @nenature.bsky.social archive: Prideaux John Selby (1788-1867), 'Illustrations of British Ornithology, Series Second: Water Birds'. Hand-tinted lithograph, extremely fancy, absolutely massive

1154

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

Would also like to pay my respects to the Patagonian Cavy, the Leſser Otter, the Brasilian Weesel and the Kanguru

020

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

I'm a particular fan of the bit on arctic hares. "does not run faſt: apt to take ſhelter in clefts of rocks: eaſily tamed: full of frolic: fond of honey and carraway comfits: eats its own dung before a ſtorm"

130

Pete Mitchell @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

From the @nenature.bsky.social archive: John Pennant's 'History of Quadrupeds' (1793)

121