Rachel Ernst
LightNews LightNews
banner
rachelernst.myatproto.social
Rachel Ernst
@rachelernst.myatproto.social
2.1K followers 400 following 2K posts
Teacher and librarian
Tea lover
she/her
Posts Replies Media Videos
rachelernst.myatproto.social
Every single one is hilarious and chaotic. The run-up to her daughter's engagement and marriage was like something out of Real Housewives. But this? THIS? The story of her new son-in-law's um...not arm?
Excerpt from Maria Kroll's letters from Liselotte on page 84. Fontainebleau 25 October 1698 My daughter's journey is progressing happily. I had a letter from her today which she wrote in Chalons. It will be a hard day for her today, because this is where she officially leaves the King's house and becomes a wife in earnest. She and her husband are to sleep together tonight. That will seem very peculiar to her. Although my daughter finds her Duke attractive, she says she is feeling very apprehensive at his coming to collect her; she says she's so beside herself with fear about the night that she is all of a tremble and hardly knows what she is saying. She may not be all that wrong, one hears such strange reports of our son-in-law. Apparently once, when he was taking a bath, the man who was washing him said, 'Would His Grace move his arm so that I can wash His Grace?' It turned out that it wasn't his arm that was in the way at all, but, by your leave, quite a different thing. I am incredibly impatient to hear how the first night passed.
November 28, 2025 at 8:13 PM
rachelernst.myatproto.social
Absolutely screaming.
She's fancasting the next Hallmark Christmas movie in her head and also being like "I'm a brick house! LOL"
Excerpt from Maria Kroll's book on the letters of Liselotte from page 80. St. Cloud 18 August 1697 It must have seemed like a dream, eating at the same table as the great Tsar. It sounds just like a romance to me and to make it quite perfect he should have fallen in love with the Electress of Brandenburg. I hope that the dancing amused you a little. If I had danced with the ambassador, It would have been a very funny sight. I look like a pagoda with clothes on. With my thick hips, belly and behind (by your leave, by your leave); my broad shoulders, large face and double-chin I am so exactly like a pagoda that I have to laugh whenever I happen to pass a looking-glass.
November 28, 2025 at 3:36 PM
rachelernst.myatproto.social
Opened to a random page and got this gem about the Tsar. World-class poster energy.
Excerpt from page 79-80 of Maria Kroll's translated letters of Liselotte: St. Cloud - 27 June 1697 Entertaining the Tsar seems to be a very expensive pleasure, for the Elector of Brandenburg, a hundred thousand thalers for presents alone is strong stuff. Blowing one's nose with one's hand must be the height of fashion in Moscow if the Tsar himself goes in for it. It must save handkerchiefs. Thank you for the Tsar's portrait. It served for two evenings' conversation and divertissement. The gentleman is not ugly, but he should have his scaramouche-moustache taken off. He would be much handsomer then.
November 28, 2025 at 3:13 PM
rachelernst.myatproto.social
It's officially the holiday season now!
Screenshot (literally, I took a picture of my TV) of a scene from the 1940s movie Miracle on 34th Street. Edward Gwinn plays Kris Kringle and dressed in a Santa Claus costume he's saying, "Oh! You don't believe that, do you?" Next shot from the scene shows a young Natalie Woods as Susan "Suzy" Walker. She's in a darling outfit with the biggest kid smirk on her face.
November 28, 2025 at 2:31 AM
rachelernst.myatproto.social
Hooray! I get to use this!
The amazing Céline Dion in a white t-shirt with a black leather jacket slung over her shoulders is sitting down taking a phone call during a telethon. Her hair is slicked back and she has dark eyeshadow and eyeliner with a slightly distressed or concerned look. In yellow text below it says, "je téléphone a la police".
November 23, 2025 at 11:54 PM
rachelernst.myatproto.social
The way I just gasped at this. As someone who taught US history in elementary school at the start of my career, this is so shockingly bad.
This whole documentary would not meet the basic requirements of Grade 4 or 5 US history curriculum in any state, even the "red" ones!
Excerpt from Grade 4 Social Studies standard from the state of Tennessee. One column has the standard code (4.01, 4.02) and the second column has the Content Standard documented as follows: 4.01: Analyze the impact of conflicts between colonists and American Indian nations brought on by the intrusion of colonization. 4.02: Describe the contributions of Benjamin Franklin during this era, including the development of the Albany Plan of Union and the "Join or Die" political cartoon. 4.03: Analyze the causes and consequences of the French and Indian War, and recognize Fort Loudoun's role in it. 4.04: Evaluate how political and economic ideas and interests brought about the American Revolution including: resistance to imperial policy (Proclamation of 1763), the Stamp Act of 1765, the Townshend Acts 1767, Tea Act of 1773, "Taxation without Representation", Intolerable Coercive Acts 1774, The role of Patrick Henry. 4.05: Explain the different forms of protests colonists used to promote change in British policies, including the Boston Tea Party, tarring and feathering, letter writing and boycotts. 4.06: Determine the historical and present-day significance of the Declaration of Independence, including the roles of Thomas Jefferson and John Hancock.
November 23, 2025 at 2:05 AM
rachelernst.myatproto.social
Now I've had a few hours to ponder (obsess) on this. My dream cast to start:
Kermit: Daniel Craig
Janice: Toni Colette
Miss Piggy: Jamie Lee Curtis
Scooter: Michael Shannon
Fozzie Bear: Don Johnson
Animal: Frank Oz

Please excuse my hastily cut/paste visual because f* AI.
Pictures of each Muppet listed with the corresponding actor.
November 18, 2025 at 6:47 PM
rachelernst.myatproto.social
Hear me out: Christopher Plummer's character
Still from the 2011 Muppet Movie of the puppet Uncle Deadly. He is a light blue, reptilian looking creature wearing a bespoke suit. He has an uncanny resemblance to the actor Christopher Plummer (RIP).
November 18, 2025 at 2:03 PM
rachelernst.myatproto.social
It drives me crazy that people act like phonics will fix everything. Phonics in English is a joke. I've spent the last 20 years trying to teach kids from all language backgrounds to read in English. There needs to be a robust use of strategies to help *all* readers. Here's a great example:
Submorpheme: a spelling pattern that carries meaning. Gl = light, shine glow: a soft, steady light gloss: a shiny or polished surface glaze: a shiny coating or surface glint: a quick flash of light glare: a strong, bright, often blinding light glass: a clear material that lets light pass through glisten: to shine with reflected light glimmer: a faint, flickering light glitter: tiny bits that sparkle with light gleam: a brief or faint shine
November 12, 2025 at 5:25 PM
rachelernst.myatproto.social
I was reminded again how brilliant @msmarlah.bsky.social is this morning. I was frantically taking notes because just about everything was a behavior-shifting quote!
If you're a school leader, get Marla Hunter Hooper in to speak to you and your staff!
Notes from Marla's SEL for educators session: Wellness is a leadership strategy, not a luxury. It's modeling nervous system regulation for students and staff. Your nervous system speaks before you do. What energy do you want to communicate today? Emotional regulation is an internal thermostat. It's learning how to return, not stay in one space the whole time. Name it to tame it. Name the emotion you're feeling. Make emotional safety contagious. Use rhythm to recalibrate, bring people back to their body. Micro-rituals matter.
November 6, 2025 at 5:14 PM
rachelernst.myatproto.social
As seen in my neighborhood 🥰
Stone steps up to a front door have carved pumpkins lit by candles placed inside. One of the pumpkins has a 6 7 carved into it.
November 5, 2025 at 12:30 AM
rachelernst.myatproto.social
À music journalist friend of mine got invited to tea at the Van Dykes' home in LA this year and it was such an amazing experience all of us friends are still buzzing with excitement by association!
He and his wife have such a thoughtful set up where he can spend meaningful time with fans.
Actor Dick Van Dyke, age 99, is sitting at a table in a black "Step in Time" t-shirt talking to a young woman with long red hair. He's telling her a story and she's got a joyful expression on her face of "Oh really?"
November 4, 2025 at 1:04 PM
rachelernst.myatproto.social
I find it hard to imagine that we would be having this conversation at all were Platner anything other than a fit middle-aged white guy who dresses like a stock photo of a “real man.” Our culture is built to eternally forgive men, generally, and white men of means, especially, for their mistakes. Every single time, they were young and immature and it would be a shame to hold them accountable for anything they did wrong. The rest of us just need to be strong-armed into the forgiving and forgetting portion of the program. That is how you get to the place I found myself this week, reading apologia for a hateful symbol pretending to be sound, hard-nosed political analysis. Now, I know for a fact that the working class in this country looks more like a Latino woman who cleans houses than it looks like Platner, a former defense contractor turned oyster farmer with some leftist political beliefs. Once, at a meeting with tenant organizers in the center of white American poverty in Appalachia, a young white guy showed up to a meeting with his Stars and Bars tattoo on display. The poor white rural women and working-class Black women who run those meetings took this guy to task. They told him (colorfully) to get himself together. And the next week they all protested their landlord together. Their coalition-building wasn’t the kind of kumbaya that Platner apologists are talking about, where a room full of people were expected to swallow their outrage to preserve one man’s feelings. There was accountability. There was education. And there was meaningful action. There was not a college degree or a political donor among them, and yet, somehow, actual poor people figured out how to handle racist iconography without scapegoating minorities or making excuses for a white man’s mistakes. You don’t fly the ironic flag of historical hate to get a rise out of people. You don’t wear the cool tattoo for over a decade that maybe, kind of, possibly, probably looks like something horrible and hateful. It is a remarkably low bar to clear. And a white working-class aesthetic is not nearly enough to clear it. Real working-class politics does not assume the worst of working-class people’s impulses. It does not launder their concerns for political points. It certainly does not argue, directly or indirectly, that a little racism is a good thing for reaching them. Poor people can be self-determined. They prove it every day, mostly by surviving while being poor in a country that is mean and nasty and hostile to them. There is a rich history of multiracial, cross-class organizing in this country, even in the South, where so many people pretend racism is just too strident for working-class politics to thrive. If that history exists and if that culture still thrives in the poorest corners of our country, why do so many people feel the need to work so hard to redeem a man who had a Nazi tattoo? That’s a question for Democrats.
October 29, 2025 at 2:23 PM
rachelernst.myatproto.social
Repost with Alt Text
Two part post from user "The Formula Mom" In the coming days, SNAP and WIC benefits will run out. When it does, breastfeeding activists will push the narrative that breastfeeding is free. But the lowest-income workers are hourly workers, and hourly workers do not get paid pump breaks. If you're hourly, pumping = lost wages. If you're pumping for 40 minutes a day (2, 20 minute pumps) and making $15 an hour at 40 hours a week, that's $200 a month in lost wages. $2400 a year to breastfeed. WIC covers formula for free. 50% of infants born in the US each year are eligible for WIC. If our government wants to improve breastfeeding rates, it needs to make policy changes. The current system (lack of paid leave, lack of paid pump breaks) actively disincentivizes lower income families from breastfeeding. So what we're not going to do, as families face a crisis, is blame women for using formula when breastfeeding isn't financially viable.
October 26, 2025 at 1:28 PM
rachelernst.myatproto.social
Oh no!
The worst I did was hopping on a train in London Euston with a similar set up. I thought I was boarding the overground for a 5 minute ride. I had actually gotten on the express to Birmingham, first stop, a town I had never heard of, was an hour away on a fast train.
Map of Northwest London and outer area into Buckinghamshire. Bottom right has a little dot labeled "me" and two centimetres to the left is labelled "where I wanted to go". In the top left corner right outside of Milton Keynes is a red marker that says "Where I ended up". It's about 40 miles (64 km) away from my original destination.
October 23, 2025 at 10:41 PM
rachelernst.myatproto.social
Since the original post got blocked for me, here's the screenshot:
Post from Maggie McNeill on bluesky "People refuse to understand that the only effect of this law would have been to make priests criminals. The sanctity of the confessional is protected by a sacred oath, is a promise to God, which in the minds of priests trumps man's laws. It doesn't matter if YOUR belief system holds that..."
October 23, 2025 at 6:44 PM
rachelernst.myatproto.social
Principal, Assistant principal, IB coordinator
The coach of the KC Chiefs, Travis Kelce, and Patrick Mahomes. From left to right they are wearing (1) a very normal grey suit with red tie, (2) a newsboy cap in brown with a shirt that looks like a bad motel wallpaper, and (3) a barbie-esque italian table cloth vest with pink tie
October 7, 2025 at 2:31 PM
rachelernst.myatproto.social
Migrated to the blacksky servers with ease thanks to these great tutorials!
Non-Black people they've got handles for us so no weirdness there!
Get better moderation and a better product. Also make sure to support the blacksky team at opencollective.com/blacksky
New handle on the blacksky server: @rachelernst.myatproto.social The myatproto.social handle is for non-Black users.
October 4, 2025 at 2:10 AM
rachelernst.myatproto.social
Also this subtraction strategy. Why oh why did people make it seem like you couldn't have a negative number...for a subtraction problem????
Subtraction problem of 327-118 set up with the traditional algorithm. Underneath, it is solved like this: 300-100 = 200 20-10 = 10 7-8 = -1 200 + 10 - 1 = 209 pages
September 30, 2025 at 5:05 PM
rachelernst.myatproto.social
Literally changed my life. I could have been using this for multiplication, division, ratios, fractions, etc.
Ratio table with boxes and apples. First box: 1/12 Second box: 2/24 Third box: 3/36 Fourth box: 10/120 Fifth box: 13/156
September 30, 2025 at 4:51 PM
rachelernst.myatproto.social
C'mon do something meme customized with "C'mon do relaxation" and shows a cup of oolong tea with the Chinese name 東方美人
September 20, 2025 at 10:17 PM
rachelernst.myatproto.social
First time I went to Crystal Palace it was cloudy/rainy and very atmospheric. I was walking along a path and saw something out of my peripheral vision and jumped. It was this:
Photo of part of the Crystal Palace Victorian era dinosaur and extinct animal sculpture park. There is a big pond in the background and the ground slopes up towards the walkway. The photo was taken in the fall (when I was there) and so all the leaves are different shades of green, yellow and brown. The ground is deep brown with brown leaves over it. There are three sculptures of extinct mammals. The stone sculptures are about the size of ponies, two standing, one sitting. The yellow stone has aged and there's green lichen and moss on the sculptures so that they blend into the foliage quite effectively, especially with the reflections of the pond in the background.
September 16, 2025 at 8:38 PM
rachelernst.myatproto.social
Related:
Screenshot from Twitter account "Buzzing Pop" "No One Mourns the Wicked" by Ariana Grande and Wicked Movie Cast saw a 50% surge in streams on Spotify yesterday. Includes picture of Ariana Grande dressed as Glinda the Good, her character in the movie Wicked as well as the Spotify logo. The tweet was sent on September 11 2025.
September 12, 2025 at 5:44 PM
rachelernst.myatproto.social
Same! This little game is like a ton of my special interests in one: organization, budgeting for fun, book inventory, book recommendations, pretending I live in a quaint European seaside town...
My current Autumn set up.
Screenshot of the mobile bookmobile from the game Tiny Bookshop. It is a little trailer currently painted eggplant purple with mint green trim with a green and orange striped awning. It is covered in a bunch of kitsch including two hanging plants, a buoy, a lamp sconce and an old time doorbell with an actual bell, two window boxes full of flowers, decorative fish nets, a string of seashells and a string of fairy lights. The roof is dark green with two solar panels on it and there is a weather vane that says books. Around the trailer is a cat; a big floofy dog on a dog bed; a small plant that is growing; a small table that has a coffee machine, a tip jar and a framed photo; an illuminated pumpkin, and a guest book. This is one of the least chaotic settings I have. On market days, I have one of those giant inflatable people that flail around.
September 10, 2025 at 3:36 PM
rachelernst.myatproto.social
Found this living in Amsterdam. Everyone wants the dream of living in a canal house, but no one wants the terrifyingly steep stairs, wonky floors or weirdly angled beams that cut rooms in half.
Even then my renovated 1920's place had a pitch so steep in the lounge, my ikea bookcase couldn't stand!
Photo from a current canal house listing showing steps from the front door. The steps are not only incredibly narrow and steep, they curve seven steps up at a near impossible angle, meaning you'd have to press yourself against the wall to make the turn.
August 29, 2025 at 6:52 PM