Deep Thoughts of a Common Household Mom: learn

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Thursday, August 20, 2026

Culture and Commerce: six days of Alaska

Although we saw loads of natural wonders during our trip, we did not learn very much about the local culture or history. This was not necessarily the fault of the cruise line. It’s possible they offered chances to learn more, but we didn’t notice any. There were a lot of things about the cruise line we didn’t notice right away.

I did learn that Tlingit, an indigenous people group in Southeast Alaska, is pronounced “Klink-it”. The Tlingit people (and other Pacific Northwest people) engage in making totem poles and formline art in a distinctive style.

Formline art on a building wall.
I think this is Eagle.

Probably Raven.

Artist studio/defunct sawmill

As part of our tourist experience at the Alaska Rainforest Sanctuary, we visited an abandoned sawmill converted into an artist’s studio for carving totem poles. The poles are made of one single tree, usually red cedar. It takes about a year to make one. The artist was making this one in honor of his uncle who passed away recently. The uncle was also a totem pole maker.

Totem pole under construction

Chief pole, welcoming us

The explanatory plaque told us the above is a “Chief Pole” of the Tsimshian indigenous people, with arms extended in welcome to all the guests at the Sanctuary.

Three totem poles

The pole on the left is titled “The Woman Pole”, carved in honor of all women.

Haida Eagle, with Common Household
Husband, in Juneau

This one, at the port in Juneau, for all tourists’ pleasure, is titled Haida Eagle. The eagle is second down from the top, below the clan member wearing the top hat. Eagle is one of the clans of the Haida people.

This formline art fish seemed to be the logo for the town of Icy Strait Point, developed by a cruise line, which worked cooperatively with the nearby indigenous town of Hoonah to boost the economy of Hoonah without creating a wholesale tourist invasion of Hoonah.

This totem pole (an eagle, I am guessing) stands guard outside one of the visitor buildings at Icy Strait Point.

The buildings at Icy Strait Point included a small museum. Since 1977 oil has been an integral part of the Alaskan economy.

Alaskan pipeline info
at little museum

From our standpoint, tourism is a major part of Alaskan commerce. I am guessing the town of Ketchikan, population about 8,000, doubles or triples when the cruise ships arrive. And when we went whale watching, there were probably 6 to 8 boats on our section of the water, all watching those whales.

Shipping containers and (on the left) cruise ship
at Juneau.

A small boat from a bygone era
Icy Strait Point

Then there’s the Alaskan seafood industry, which we were happy to partake of frequently, in this seafood feast and also on the cruise boat. The crabs at this feast were HUGE (not sure if they were King Crab or not). Alas, no Old Bay seasoning for this Maryland girl, but they were quite tasty anyway, and less work than the smaller Maryland crabs.

Mussels and shrimp and crabs, oh my!

Part of our excursion in Icy Strait Point included a theater presentation on this small stage. High school students acted out the Raven creation story using impressive artistic masks and capes. (No photos allowed). The Raven is a sort of Greek god-like character, and the creation story involves some trickery.

stage with bear skin

flag of the state of Alaska

The history of white settlers in Alaska, in my dim understanding, was, early on, a battle between Russia and the United States, with the U.S. acquiring Alaska by paying Russia (for land that actually did not really belong to Russia anyway -- remember "Seward's Folly"?) in 1867. Then the gold rush, commercial fishing and mining, followed by finding oil. Alaska was a colony of the US until it became a state in 1959.

During our trip, some place names shouted of colonialism:

Dawes Glacier

Endicott Arm

Mendenhall Glacier

Gastineau Channel

Juneau

Some place names derive from local indigenous culture:

Alaska

Ketchikan

Hoonah

As a Pennsylvanian,I find it important that, according to AI, the city of Juneau was first named Harrisburg (also the name of PA’s capital city), after a gold prospector named Richard Harris, who named the place after himself. Joe Juneau was also a gold prospector from Quebec. Joe complained that not enough stuff was named after him (remind you of anyone?), and convinced the other miners in the new town to rename it after him.

Juneau can only be reached from the Lower 48 by air or water. There are no roads or rails connecting to Juneau from elsewhere in Alaska or the continental US.

Orca

Posts in this series:

Alaska: flora and fauna

Alaska: rocks, fjords, and water

Seattle: West Coast whirlwind

Friday, July 3, 2026

American History - nonfiction suggestions

American history possible reads. In no particular order.

(see the end of the previous post for my friend's fiction suggestions)

Nonfiction

Vision: a Memoir of Blindness and Justice, by

David S. Tatel

352 pages • first pub 2024. Nonfiction. Memoir. Includes reflections on more recent US historical events.

Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard. 339 pages. Published 2011.

- the non-fiction book about President Garfield’s assassination.

Despite the subject, I really enjoyed reading it and learned a lot. It’s very well told. I would sum it up this way: Hubris impedes humanity’s progress, especially the hubris of men seeking power and men who are medical doctors. Still applicable today!

Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America

By Robert B. Reich

461 pages. first pub 2025

nonfiction economics memoir politics

I usually appreciate Reich’s point of view on policy issues, and even more than that, his sincerity on those issues, so I appreciated this book going into it. This memoir adds his personal history, which informs those policy stances. The world is better off because we have Robert Reich in it, and I am better off having read his memoir.

First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country, by Thomas E. Ricks. 416 pages. Published 2020.

An interesting overview of the first four US presidents' relationship to classical (Greek, Roman) thought, and how that relationship contributed to the formation of the Constitution. You'd think it would be a stodgy, slow read, but I found it quite engaging and easy to read. At the end, Ricks put a 10-point list of “what to do now”.

Rebel Cinderella: From Rags to Riches to Radical, the Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes by Adam Hochschild 320 pages • first pub 2020. Biography

The book starts out with a public violation of the Comstock Act, a law originally passed in the 1870s which outlawed the dissemination of contraception or information about contraception.

As our (bad) luck would have it, the Comstock Act is rearing its ugly head in 2024. Pay close attention. The powers that seek to control and oppress are strong.

Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond

284 pages • first pub 2023. The main text is 190 pages; the footnotes take up about 40% of the book.

The premise of this book is that poverty in the US is intentional, caused by policies that most of us approve of; most of us benefit from the existence of poverty. It is, for sure, an uncomfortable thesis.

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, by David Grann. 316 pages • first pub 2017.

An excellent telling of a huge sad injustice in our country. Recommend you read this book. I am told it is much better than the movie.

A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.

464 pages (main text is about 400 pages) • first pub 1990. Pulitzer Prize winner in 1991 in the History category.

This is a historical treatise, meaning that the author examines a primary source, the diary of a midwife in what would become the state of Maine, in the late 1700s-early 1800s. Thatcher Ulrich, the historian, is able to take the terse diary entries and weave them into an interesting history of the time. The historian maintains the variable spellings of the original text, which makes for slower reading, but at least I didn’t have to try to read 18th century handwriting. That said, it’s a dense history. Not for everyone.

Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America

By Heather Cox Richardson

304 pages • first pub 2023

Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor

By Steven Greenhouse

416 pages • first pub 2019

This book gives a really good overview about unions and labor in the US. Not a comprehensive history, but selections from throughout our history, and delving deep enough to get a decent understanding.

Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, by Dahlia Lithwick. Published 2022. 284 pages (text). With endnotes 369 pages. Heartrending accounts of lawyers battling against the cruelties brought to us by the Trump presidency during and after that man and his cronies’ time in the highest office of the land. What was most fascinating to me was how the author involved her son in some of the events.

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, by Ibram X. Kendi, 592 pages • first pub 2016.

A few adjectives for this book: all-encompassing, challenging, necessary, damning, and in the end, hopeful. The author makes his excellent and difficult point repeatedly, but repetition is necessary, because his thesis upends just about every way I have had of thinking about the role of racist ideas in our history. The book examines major figures who spoke and acted on racial justice, diving in to where each famous figure exhibits antiracist and racist thinking. It’s mind-blowing to read about how W.E.B. Du Bois was antiracist at this point, but incorporated racist ideas at another point.

March: (volumes 1, 2 and 3), by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, art by Nate Powell. Graphic books. Volume one is 121 pages. Published 2013, 2015...

An Alternative History of Pittsburgh by Ed Simon, 176 pages. Published 2021.

How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America, by Clint Smith. Published 2021. The text ends at 288 pages. With endnotes 353 pages.

I highly recommend this thoughtful book. The author traveled during 2017-2020 to various places and interviews with fascinating people, to examine the effects slavery in the US still has on our society. The author takes us to New Orleans, Louisiana; Monticello Plantation – Jefferson’s estate in Virginia; The Whitney Plantation, a museum in Louisiana; Angola Prison. Louisiana; Blandford Cemetery, Virginia; Galveston Island, Texas; New York City; Goree Island, Senegal; and an interview of his grandfather and his grandmother.

We Had a Little Real Estate Problem: The Unheralded Story of Native Americans & Comedy by Kliph Nesteroff. 2021. 336 pages.

I am the least likely person to read a book about comedians. However, the author of this book kept me interested. The last few chapters were especially relevant. The text of the book is far less than 336 pages. At the end of the chapters there are many photos, followed by notes and an index.

536 pages of text; including footnotes, index: 698 pages.

A biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, an amazing person. While she grew up in a rich family, it was by no means a happy childhood. She ended up being a spokesperson and activist for peace, human rights, civil rights, and dignity. This book tells her story in an engaging way.

This book is written as a thriller, interweaving the story of the murder of a young girl and the story of Ida B. Wells. A black man becomes the prime suspect in the murder, putting him at risk of being lynched. The book’s focus is partly on how the detective on the case “roped” in the murderer with a complex scheme. The book also tells the story of Ida B. Wells in her actions against lynching of Blacks, extra-judicial murders often accomplished by hanging the victim – the rope. And there are numerous accountings of lynchings, including ones that occurred in Northern states. We must disabuse ourselves of the notion that racism only occurs in the southern United States. The book includes a conversation which I find it hard to forgive Susan B. Anthony for. Perhaps it is good to be reminded that our national heroes are/were not perfect. I read it for a book discussion in an Anti-Racist facebook group. Well worth the read.

Glaude offers us an overview of Baldwin’s evolving outlook on humanity, and Glaude’s own deep insights. I recommend this book.

Read for TOS book club. An astonishing, enlightening, horrifying tale well told. At 622 pages, it is not a quick read. But the tales are so well written, the reading of this book flows easily. It reveals much that I did not know about the history of our country. For the parts that I was already aware of, the way the author tells the stories makes them come alive, in ways that we can feel deeply. I highly recommend this book.

(Personally I think “The Warmth of Other Suns” is a better read than “Caste” but maybe that’s just me.)

A powerful book. It begins with a metaphor. And then another metaphor, followed by a third metaphor. The most workable one for me is the “old house” metaphor. “With an old house, the work is never done, and you don’t expect it to be. America is an old house. … The owner of an old house knows that whatever you are ignoring will never go away. Whatever is lurking will fester whether you choose to look or not. Ignorance is no protect from the consequences of inaction.” I think the book would be stronger with just one metaphor at the start.

I first started reading this in late 2018. It took me 2 years to finish, but finish I did! This book is 900+ pages. It was not until I got near the end that I found out that fully 35% of the book is footnotes and bibliography!

The main points I took from this book are:

a) White supremacy screwed our nation up from the beginning and even though it officially ended, the effects are with us still.

b) It’s the fault of greedy folks and competent lobbyists that we didn’t get universal health care in the 20th century.

c) As I suspected, income inequality is a huge threat to democracy.

d) political polling is bad for us. The internet has made our inequality worse.

The Line Becomes a River, by Francisco Cantu. © 2018. 256 pages. The author served as a border guard from 2008 to 2012. He left to get an advanced degree. While working on his degree, he encountered an undocumented man who had lived in the US for most of his life. The man returned from US to Mexico to attend to his dying mother. When he tried to reenter the US, he was detained for unlawful entry into the US. The author works to help the undocumented man.

Einstein watches fireworks, 2014.

Children/YA lit

Pink and Say By Patricia Polacco. 1994. Picture book (children’s lit).

Angel of Greenwood

By Randi Pink

296 pages • first pub 2021

fiction historical Y.A. lit

I thought this book was excellent. It was proposed for the 9th grade curriculum at a local school district, but rejected by the ultra-conservative school board there. About the Tulsa OK massacre.

Fiction

The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich 455 pages • first pub 2020.

(Pulitzer prize winner) Love the characters and the occasional magical realism of this book. It also taught me about a piece of US history I did not know.

A historical novel, following two parallel stories of a family through history – one branch in “Gold Coast” (Ghana), Africa, the other branch in America. Each chapter is a vignette from a generation. In Homegoing, the stories of each generation are well-told.

2018

Wednesday, October 15, 2025

Down the Rabbit Hole

This month, the Marquis de Chastellux appeared, for the second time in my life, in a book I am reading called Enough is Enuf, on the exciting topic of English orthography. (English orthography is like American immigration law: hopelessly complex and important, but no one has the guts or political capital to come up with a good and lasting reform that everyone will accept.) The resurrection of Monsieur le Marquis brought back to life these thoughts from early 2024:

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

When one of my children was in elementary school, they came home with a vocabulary list. They told me their classmate pronounced the word “determined” DEET - er - mind (long I) . That reminded me of my mother’s story that, because she spent a lot of time reading as a child, she knew lots of words but didn’t know how to pronounce them, a situation which sometimes caused her embarrassment.

I hope my children did not laugh at their classmate. But on that day, DEET-er-mind entered our family’s vocabulary.

The up and coming generation can look up how to pronounce words whenever it wants, thanks to Prof. Internet and Lieut. Youtube. I have been using this feature to quell one source of anxiety in my life: how to pronounce characters’ names.

When reading The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride, it occurred to me that the character’s name “Chona” is probably not pronounced “CHO- nah”, given that she is a person of the early 20th Century whose family speaks Yiddish. I went down a rabbit hole of internet exploration. I concluded that her name is more like “Hannah” with a raspy “H” and short “a” vowels.

Hannah would be pronounced Hona (or Chona), but it is spelled חנה.

The Yiddish male name "Chonah" or "Chunah" is a Yiddish diminutive form of the Hebrew name "Elchanan".

I was a bit perplexed to learn that the author himself pronounces it “CHO-nah” with the “ch” as in “church”.

I discovered that there is something else called La Chona which might be:

a Mexican dance,

a name in Filipino,

a woman who dates drug traffickers.

In the other book I was reading at the time (First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country, by Thomas E. Ricks) , there is a reference to a Frenchman who assists the American revolution - Marquis de Chastellux, a.k.a. Francois-Jean de Beauvoir, Chevalier de Chastellux. (He didn’t become a marquis until later in his life.)

Although I was a French major, I was unsure how to pronounce the name Chastellux. In looking it up I found out that there is an entire Society of the Cincinnati which sponsors lectures, and there was a brilliant lecture by Dr Iris De Rode completely focused on Chastellux, whose name is pronounced something like SHAH-tell-ew, except you have to say “ew” in the French way by kind of pursing your lips. I was delighted to go down this rabbit hole, most especially to hear the accent of the Dutch scholar speaking in English. Charming!

Not the Marquis de Chastellux

Is there any American who did not mispronounce “Hermione” when the Harry Potter series first came out?

I suppose that the best solution to find out how to pronounce characters’ names is to get the audio book. But that’s not always possible.

Words I still can’t remember how to pronounce properly, in the moment:

sycophant

ephemeral

presaged

All three words are extremely relevant these days.

However, I can instruct you on how to properly pronounce “prophecy,” “prophesy,” “prophecies,” “prophesies,” and “prophesying.” I refuse to accept “prophesizing.”

- - - - - - - -

What difficult-to-pronounce character name have you come across in your reading?

Words of wisdom from across the centuries

Thursday, September 19, 2024

A Sinking Feeling

On Sunday the Common Household Husband said to me, “Did you see the sinkhole in our driveway?”

I said, “You mean, the driveway is uneven.” I imagined a small divot in the asphalt – inconsequential. I did not go anywhere on Monday so I thought nothing further of it.

On Tuesday morning I had to go out to fetch something I had left at a friend’s house. I drove out of the driveway and then thought, Wait, did I just drive over a hole?!

I parked on the street and got out of the car to examine the situation. There was a hole about a foot in diameter in the asphalt of our driveway. I tried to look down in, but didn't want to get too close. Maybe it is like a BLACK hole and would suck me in! I could not tell how deep it was, but there was definitely at least several feet of space in there below the asphalt. I feel lucky the car didn't plunge into it when I drove over that portion of the driveway.

I have had no life experiences with sinkholes, other than making fun of when the city bus got stuck in a giant sinkhole in 2019 in Pittsburgh. We shouldn’t have made fun, because that sinkhole formed at the exact spot I and a huge crowd of people had stood on the week before at a political rally. The bus literally took the fall instead of all of us.

I was quite distressed about our sinkhole, and asked around on what I should do. A friend said to call "PA One Call" - an entity that checks on what utilities lie under the ground before any digging occurs. I did that, and the woman there calmed me down a bit, taking down all the info. Then, with disturbing visions of piles of cash poured into the sinkhole, I nervously drove off to fetch the thing I had left behind at the friend’s house.

Our decidedly less dramatic
but still alarming sinkhole.

On the way home I started imagining the neighborhood kids falling into the hole. I decided I should go to Lowe's to buy a traffic cone and some "Danger" tape. But I thought I had better take another look at the sinkhole first. As I arrived home, Andy, the person from our town's Department of Public Works, also arrived. Andy examined the situation and said, "It's definitely the township’s sewer pipe that has collapsed." This is, or was, a 15-inch-diameter pipe that runs under our lawn from one end to the other. Andy showed me on a cool map with all the township’s underground infrastructure. He said the hole was at least 5 feet deep. Yikes! Andy covered it with two orange traffic cones and said the township would be back soon.

Andy takes a photo inside our sinkhole.
I feared for his well-being the whole time.

A friend sent me a link to this timely opinion by Alexandra Petri. A fine piece of satire, sobering up at the end to deliver the true tragedy of that person's evil and heinous behavior.

It didn’t occur to me until later that day that our sinkhole lies directly in the path of the Common Household Husband’s access to the EV charger in the garage. The CHH started calling the sinkhole “the gateway to hell.” And further asked, “Is it a divine punishment?”

In the middle of the night, we woke up. The CHH said to me, “Do you think the house has fallen into the abyss while we were sleeping?” Gee, thanks. Now I will not be able to get back to sleep. I read my book, a chapter about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, definitely not material designed to help me sleep.

There are some things to be thankful for. The house has not slid into the abyss. Yet. As my older brother pointed out, at least it’s not one of those underground coal fires that sometimes occur around here.

My younger brother helpfully said, “You should drop Cheerios down into the hole.” This is a reference to this childhood memory: When we were kids, our parents got us a globe because they were all into education and stuff. It had all the latest countries on it – Yugoslavia, the USSR, East Germany, to name a few. At some point the family globe developed a ½” diameter hole. I think it was in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Of course, we kids thought it was a brilliant idea to put Cheerios into that hole. That was highly educational. It taught us that once a Cheerio went in there, it was dastardly hard to get it out. My father was disgusted with our flippancy toward geographical knowledge.

Eastern Europe in the 1970s, about the era of our
family globe.

On Wednesday, The Director of the town’s Public Works Department Himself and three other Public Works employees showed up at our house. While the workers installed a steel plate over the sinkhole, The Director explained to me that the township needs to entirely replace the pipe running under our yard. This means much of that side of the yard will be dug up, and three of our trees will need to be removed.

THREE TREES! This is devastating. We will be losing two pin oaks and one red maple. They were already mature trees when we moved in about 30 years ago. I wanted them to go on existing forever.

The Director said the township will pay for all of it, and will even plant new trees for us. I wonder how much time we will have to decide on how many and what kind of trees to plant, and where. I have an inkling that trees vastly affect the heating and cooling of the house but I don’t know the particulars.

The Dept of Public Works won’t start doing any work until next week at the earliest. In the meantime, no kids, pets, adults, wildlife, or cars will fall in the hole. We might be able to get some Cheerios in there, but I am not going close enough to find out.

I will never feel the same again when I am standing on the driveway to shovel the snow. There will always be the feeling that the driveway could swallow me up at any moment.

The whole (!) thing reminds me of one of the very best YA novels I have ever read.

Deep Thoughts of a Common Household Mom