Welcome to Litsy!

Welp… I‘m not surprised that the first congress was as chaotic as the 119th congress is.

Despite the chaos of the first, almost everyone there (& I fully believe this) was genuine in their concern about building a great country; while our 119th congress…

One thing that really struck me was how prevalent tensions between North & South already were, & how critically the North‘s assent to the South in this time has shaped history up to this day.

I just opened some book mail to discover this atrocity. 😭 I hope it comes off.

#Weekendreads. @rachelsbrittain

Read for my “Death Becomes Us” bookclub with @Eyelit and @thestarlesscasea . We read books about death, all nonfiction so far, stemming from a common interest in Stiff by Mary Roach and The Mummy Congress (⬇️).

Because we‘ve read a lot on the topic, this felt like repetition to me, except for the exhausting details about presidential burials, casket and hearse materials, and grave robbery protective contraptions. A bit dull, unless it‘s a new ⬇️

A day late (and a dollar short) for #weirdwordwednesday — but wanted to share anyway! I just finished the tagged book about the Dutch colony that first settled NYC. This section mentioned some of the Dutch words that were mutated into the English language and are still part of our lexicon 400 years later. As a word nerd, this type of stuff fascinates me!
@CBee

Fascinating account of New Netherland, the Dutch colony on the island of Manhattan that predated the Pilgrims. After the English took control of the colony in 1664, the narrative shifted in favor of the “victor” and much of the Dutch history was lost. This book draws on a research project at the New York State Library that included the translation of thousands of original documents from the 17th century.

Great collection of classic American documents, speeches, poems, etc. George Washington‘s speeches had a lot of big words that didn‘t say a whole lot. I also didn‘t know that it used to be first choice was made President and second choice was made Vice President. Teddy Roosevelt liked long, run-on sentences. The pledge of allegiance didn‘t originally have “under god” in it! President Eisenhower insisted it be added by Congress in 1954.

I found this very interesting. McPherson did an excellent job at providing a good overview of the political, social, economic, and other factors that led to the Civil War. He also did a good job providing a broad overview of the Civil War, as well as the different dynamics working in both the Union and Confederacy. Definitely worth reading.

Let the reading begin! This is my haul of publisher freebies for the Young Hoosier Book Award committee! 📚