Last night I went to a Community Building workshop on affordable housing here in Lincoln. To be clear, I personally have affordable, well-maintained housing. My landlord is cool. He fixes stuff. But apparently that’s not so true in the Near South Neighborhood. Probably other neighborhoods too.

I heard about code violations, landlord retaliation, rising housing costs, and mold aplenty. So very much mold. Everyone in that room knew about the problem, but was looking for a solution. That’s where Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows comes into play.

That was the first comprehensive book I read about systems thinking. In a nutshell it says what we all know to be true: one things affects another, which affects another in a big, messy cycle. In this case, housing structures are designed and built decades ago. Funding is raised for building and construction, but all houses need repair eventually. The landlords who own the units do not always have funding for costly repairs, like extensive mold damage or updated plumbing. Some just plain don’t seem to care. I could go on. It’s just turtles all the way down.

Thinking in Systems talks about how to bring some order to the chaos. I read this book many moons ago, but it was one of the things that inspired me to make this Affordable Housing Map that shows what it takes to tackle the problem statewide. View it on a desktop. Maybe a tablet. It’s too big to see on a smartphone.

The map is one way to visualize a system, but that gets paired with root cause analysis to dig deep and make sure efforts are addressing the right problem. Finding new and different ways to bring people together to share ideas, innovate and collaborate are good tools too , among others.

All in all, it turns out I like to think in systems. Who knew? I’m a systems nerd! Give this book a read if you want to find out what it takes to solve the big, messy problems of the world.

Several years ago, I heard my dad scream in the middle of the night. It was such a foreign sound I thought it was leftover from the dream that had woken me up in the first place. I froze on high alert, listening. Nothing. I had nothing in my memory to compare the sound against, so it was easy to quietly dismiss the scream as a dream.

Months later, my dad and I were watching a movie about missing and murdered indigenous women and I found out my aunt had been murdered long before my life was even a possibility. He said the only time he ever screamed was that night when he woke up and saw her face next to his bed. The scream was real, and I did nothing. I didn’t know what to do with that information. I wanted to know more, but nobody ever speaks her name. The pain is still too great. There are probably others I don’t know about who were lost.

So I read Unbroken: My Fight for Survival, Hope, and Justice for Indigenous Women and Girls by Angela Sterritt, a Native journalist who grew up on the streets of Vancouver, Canada. I’ve read a lot on this topic. The book is part memoir and part investigative journalism as Sterritt blends together her own story of survival with the stories of those who were lost along the Highway of Tears in British Columbia. This is a stretch of highway where more than 40 Indigenous went missing or were found murdered. I thought it would be hard to read, but it wasn’t. Each story is filled with an equal amount of love and heartache. As I read, I wondered about my aunt’s story.

Sterritt tells these stories because “She could have been me”. I share the book because this problem is bigger than Canada. My aunt was found in Seattle. In the state of Washington alone, in a single year, over 5,000 Indigenous women and girls went missing. In smaller numbers, similar stories can be found in Alaska and other parts of the nation. As Sterritt shared her experience of walking the same streets as these lost women, I realized that I probably walked on the same street where my aunt lost her life. I’ve been to that area in Seattle several times, often at night. The statistics were mind-boggling. The stories struck me to the core.

As I read deeper, I remembered my mom telling me that I shouldn’t wear my beaded earrings, even though I love making them. They make me feel good. She wouldn’t say why, but she was disturbingly adamant that I shouldn’t wear them. At the time, I interpreted this as disrespecting a heritage that wasn’t her own. I wore them secretly in rebellious Native pride. Now I realize I was missing vital information. My aunt was murdered by a serial killer targeting Native women in Seattle. On the wrong streets, those earrings make me a target. I still make and wear my beaded earrings proudly, but when the shadows come out at night, I hide my heritage in a jewelry box in my purse. 5,000 women in a year. She could have been me.

I used to lay awake at night wondering if I would wake up in the dead of night and see her face. Would I recognize her? Did she spill over from a nightmare my dad was having? Would I share the same dream? I wondered if the desecration of murder was so powerful it could scream through the generations. 

All I know is that this book was a journey for Sterritt. It was a journey for me. The stories of these women deserve to be told. Sterritt lived a hard life, but she emerged Unbroken. She seeks justice for the women who were lost along the Highway of Tears. She uncovers unbelievable acts of racism and unfounded hatred for Indigenous people. She shows how law enforcement ignored the problem and more went missing. She refuses to allow the media or the public to turn a blind eye to difficult topics. She lived on the wrong end of justice for long enough to show she speaks the truth.

Most of all, she shows how Indigenous women can survive and thrive in life. This book may be hard for some to read, but knowledge is power. Now I know what my earrings really mean. It’s not fair or just, but I have the power to make myself a little bit safer. It did help in a gas station parking lot late one night. That night, I was white. The world should know that statistically, the world is more dangerous to Native women. Read and learn the root causes of these terrifying numbers, especially if you have a Native population. Help keep that population alive.

STERRITT, ANGELA. Unbroken: My Fight for Survival, Hope, and Justice for Indigenous Women and Girls. GREYSTONE BOOKS, 2024.

A lot of you know that I’m not from Nebraska. I was born near Milwaukee, WI and lived there until I went to college in Minnesota. Over the years I’ve visited a lot of places too. Everywhere I go, I talk  to people and get a feel for the place. I was in Tokyo, Japan most recently, so I’ll use that as an example. As I walked the streets of this foreign land, I had to remember that most people in the city were just home. Bear in mind that I don’t speak Japanese very well, but you can still tell who’s happy where they are, and who is crawling out of their skin waiting for a chance to leave.

That’s what For the Love of Cities: revisited by Peter Kageyama is all about. What does it take to make people fall in love with their city? Why do people choose some cities over others? Whenever I visit a new place, I can instinctively tell whether or not I could live there. I never really considered any actual criteria for the decision until I read this book. I just knew. Now I see greenery, coffee shops, places to relax and connect with people, clean streets, and plenty of shops and art embedded into the fiber of the community. I learned how to really look at a city.

My academic days still make me refer to authors by their last name. But this book makes people feel like family. So I’ll call him Peter. I don’t think he’ll mind, and I’ll also never meet him to find out. Peter digs into how cities come to be, and the many variables that force change over time. I also watched the author talk Peter did with Heritage Village. It’s free on YouTube if you want to check it out. That video adds visuals to his stories about how history shaped cities like Chicago, Detroit and many others. Sometimes dark parts of history like racial segregation and hate shape city lines that must be repaired over time for the city to adapt and thrive in the future.

When I visit other cities I usually dress to blend in. Just another Midwesterner in a t-shirt and leggings. In Japan I didn’t even try. Pretty sure I was the only curly-headed Native American in the whole country, so I wore bright colors or coffee t-shirts and capris everyday. My body type was never going to fit into such a petite country anyway. Even though their waffles are surprisingly good. I digress. Japan was awesome.

If you didn’t factor in the language barrier and distance from everything and everyone I know, I would actually live there. I walked the streets in my deeply American sandals and pondered how cities draw people in to live and work in a new land. What drew me to Lincoln, NE? What made me stay? The people? The place? The job? A little bit of all the above? I have new answers now.

Read this book if you want to look at your city differently. It’s a book full of stories and observations about little things that blend into the background of the place you’ve lived for years. When you’re done, take a walk around your city. Town. Wherever you call home. Try it with any town. Ask yourself why people choose this place? Why do people stay? If people are leaving, what could change to turn the tides? Peter will help you explore old places with fresh eyes. Just give it a try.

Shakespeare has a robot now. She’s yellow, humanoid and kind of sassy as she introduces each scene in this revamped Romeo and Juliet.

Did I mention she actually walks around the page and talks to Shakespeare on occasion? I wish I could say you will open Living Popup’s magical book and she just appears like a Star Wars-esque hologram on the page, but we’re just not there yet. This book is Augmented Reality (AR) Enabled, which means you download an app on your phone, point your camera at illustrations in the book, and the scene unfolds on your screen.

I had so much fun with this book at the ALA conference that I got a little giddy and bought it on the spot. I’m a big kid now, but Living Popups actually made me like Shakespeare. If I had had this version as a teenager, my eyes wouldn’t have glazed over while being forced to analyze every turn of phrase back in the day. But fear not! The original Shakespearean text remains untouched, just formatted more like a modern movie script than the version with tiny font that was inflicted upon me. I’m replacing my obligatory Shakespeare collection with the AR version immediately.

The AR illustrations appear at the start of every act and scene. We all know the themes, character development, and lessons learned from Shakespeare are timeless. The robot is another fun way to bridge the gap from the old, unfamiliar language to the new world. Unlike my Shakespeare professor in college who seemed determined to make me memorize passages, the AR robot jumps in to explain the setting, little parts of history, and important plot points in a way that actually makes sense. And doesn’t make me want to take a nap.

It was also fun to see a robot have a conversation with Shakespeare to ask him what in the world he was thinking, writing a play about two dying teenagers. I paraphrase, but you get the idea. Robot gets real. If you want to make Shakespeare interesting, but still stay true to the original text, the robot can help. It’s better than sitting down and watching the Leo DiCaprio movie again. Though that is an undeniable classic. I own the soundtrack. It couldn’t hurt to do both? I digress.

Living Popups makes a little quartet of robot-ified Shakespeare books, some Boxcar Children books, Animal Farm, Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and a growing collection of books for Elementary to Middle school students. The AR scenes are actually good, with voice acting and everything.

Give Living Popups a try if you want to see the future of books.

This Christmas I hunted around for Native American stories for my niece and nephew. They are finally old enough to start asking questions about their culture and the color of grandpa’s skin. My dad is from the Band River Band of Chippewa at the very tip of Wisconsin. My brother and I are half Native, which makes my niece and nephew a quarter Native. We all tan pretty well.

To help the kids learn their heritage, I am reviewing Ancestor Approved: Intertribal Stories for Kids, edited by Cynthia Leitich Smith. Not surprisingly, I learned a lot from this collection of poems and short stories as well. In hindsight, I probably won’t give it to the kids until they are in middle school or at a higher reading level, but it was still a good read.

Many of the stories centered on Indian kids learning their culture through powwow celebrations and everyday life on the reservation, or elsewhere in the world. My brother and I didn’t grow up on the reservation like our dad did, but the stories still felt familiar and well-worn. I’ve been to many a powwow in my lifetime, but my niece and nephew have never seen one in person. Now they can learn the good, bad and ugly of Indian life from the safety of this book.

While some stories pass down traditional fancy dancing and our native languages, one of my favorite stories was told from the perspective of a reservation dog observing people in all their flawed and wonderful glory. If you’ve never heard of a reservation dog, nearly ever rez has got one. That dog that cannot and will not be owned by a single person. Rez dogs are cared for by and cares for all the people on the rez. Sort of like a library cat.

Even though some of these stories represent specific tribes, when you stack them all side-by-side, the similarities are unmistakable. Every language has a word for family, belonging, fear, loss, identity, and all those very human things. Having explored stories from around the world, all of our Ancestors must have all been talking to each other for a lifetime.

If you want to peer into the lives of dozens of Native cultures, try Ancestor Approved. Our history comes to life through story. These stories are real and refuse to be whitewashed.