“You love words?” asked the duckling. “Why?”
    “Why?” repeated the wombats.
    “Because words are …
        “ESSENTIAL!”
        “MAGNIFICENT!”
        “TRANSFORMATIVE!”
    And with those wonderful words zinging through the air, the wombats waddled off.
from The Wombats Go Wild for Words
written by Beth Ferry
illustrated by Lori Nichols
Random House Children’s Books, 2025


    Since I first heard someone talking about 6 7, not actually saying it to me or anyone else, I wondered how we can say something, anything, really, without it carrying meaning? Isn’t the purpose of communication to relate ideas or explain a concept or entertain each other and ourselves with words and expressed thoughts?
    According to Merriam-Webster.com, communication is “the act or process of using words, sounds, signs, or behavior to express or exchange information or to express thoughts, feelings, etc., to another person.”
    So the answer is yes. We communicate to make meaning.
    But maybe not.
    Trying to get an explanation of 6 7 from a gen alpha kid (born between about 2010 and 2020) is the ultimate definition of brain rot (Oxford’s 2024 Word of the Year). The kids insist 6 7 has no meaning. If I ask, “If it doesn’t mean anything, why waste time using it?” or  for that matter, “Why waste energy on using the accompanying hand motions?” the best clarification I can get is an eye-roll. No kidding.
    I hope you’re laughing. I am!
    And that’s the purpose of the phrase. It unites and identifies a generation. It’s their inside joke. 
    We all have our own slang. Some words even enter the language and become legitimate. 
    The 1950s gave us cool cats, think James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, then move forward to the 60s update, far out. Or a 1970s opposite of cool and far out, bummer. The 1980s gave us radical and bodacious and their opposites, gnarly and grody. 
    Dope and da bomb were “cool” in the 90s and why did kids in the 2000s say something was sick if they meant it was cool?
    Legit was being used for cool in the 2010s and talking about a person’s coolness as their rizz (short for charisma and the Oxford Word of the Year, 2023) in the 2020s. Taylor Swift and Tom Hanks. They’re cool. 
    So we are, back in the present. 
    It’s probably cool to interject 6 7 into a conversation to get a laugh, to divert attention from the current conversation, or to focus attention on yourself for a moment. That is if you’re say around 8 to 13-ish (years old)! It’s a “thing” for tweenagers. 
    My older daughter teaches middle school. Her days are full of 6 7s. My granddaughters (13 and 15) don’t use it, well the 13 year old does, but with an accompanying eye-roll.
My youngest grandson is 12. So my younger daughter gets her ears full of it, too. 
    Theories abound trying to explain the origin of the phrase. American rapper Skrilla used 6 7 in a song called “Doot Doot (6 7).” It’s a nonsense phrase that some people have connected to 67th street in Philadelphia, Skrilla’s hometown. LaMelo Ball, the professional basketball player is 6’7” tall. The phrase started showing up in video edits of other players. 
    Can anything happen in the US without it becoming an advertising tool? On November 6th and 7th, Pizza Hut sold chicken wings for 67 cents each and McDonald’s (in the United Arab Emirates) gave away free chicken nuggets from 6 to 7 pm. And Domino’s sold a one-topping pizza for $6.70 with the promo code 6 7 (take-outs only).
    Have you ever heard the phrase “being at sixes and sevens”and wondered what it means? It is old and comes from Geoffrey Chaucer, specifically in a line from his long poem, Troilus and Cressida published in about 1374. 
    Lat nat this wrechched wo thyn herte gnawe, But manly set the world on sexe and seuene. Or in modern English: Let not this wretched woe gnaw at your heart. But manly set the world on six and seven. 
    I don’t know about you, but the translation is not very helpful.
    One explanation comes from a pair of dice. The French numbers cinque and sice morphed into six and seven. At least as far as WordOriginStories is concerned. I’m not sure about morphing five and six into six and seven, but the article’s author continues. The highest numbers on the dice were five and six, but mistranslated and mispronounced until the phrase came to mean betting on the highest numbers was risky and careless. By 1785, risky and careless became “at odds, in confusion.” So maybe 6 7 has never meant anything! 
    Next time you’re with a group of kids of the right age, throw in a 6 7 during a conversation. In response you’ll either get an eye-roll or a guffaw. Try turning your palms toward the ceiling and alternating them up and down as you say it. 
    I’ll try it this Thanksgiving. I’m lucky enough to have almost my whole family (immediate) together. I’ll probably get eye-rolls, but I’m looking for guffaws.


I’m reading The Magic Kingdom by Russell Banks (A Borzoi Book/Alfred A. Knopf, 2022). Set in modern Florida, the narrator claims to have found a collection of reel-to-reel tapes made by a property speculator in the 1970s. The bulk of the story is the transcription of these 50-year-old tapes. As we learn more and more about the person who made them, we’re asked to think about truth and secrets, the difference between a crime and a sin, and one society’s definition of Utopia. Recommended.
Be curious! (and have some fun, especially with language and kids)


FB: When the news, or the weather, or watching the sun start to set at 5:00, is getting you down, try counting to 67. 

“Mayday! Mayday!”
The Goliath is fighting gale force winds. It’s hauling tons of iron and it’s taking on water.
                                             from Big Ship Rescue!
                               written and illustrated by Chris Gall
                                      Norton Young Readers, 2022

    I’ve never really been a true “water person.” When I close my eyes and imagine my favorite place, it’s almost never a beach or an ocean isle or a river bank. So it’s still a little odd to think of myself as a sailor (in the loosest definition of the word) on the Great Lakes aboard our own 27’ sailboat with my husband riding the waves on Lake Erie. 
    We traveled across the lake to Canada many times, in the days before we needed to bring passports. We cruised from Ashtabula to Perry’s Monument on Put-in-Bay and Kelly’s Island to see the glacial grooves. We docked often in Fairport Harbor and Geneva and enjoyed many a lakeside dinner.
    Although the Great Lakes are often thought of as one unit, each lake has its own characteristics and personality. Together they cover more than 94,000 square miles and supply drinking water for more than 40 million people in the United States and Canada.
    Lake Erie is the shallowest lake. With its depth ranging from 62 to 210 feet, it freezes over in the winter, but warms quickly in the spring. 
    Lake Ontario is home to the National Museum of the Great Lakes. It is the smallest Great Lake. The Iroquoian word means both great lake and beautiful water. It's the most famous Great Lake because of  its baseball connection. It was September, 1914, and Babe Ruth was 19 years old, playing his first professional game. He hit his first home run ball right into the lake. It (or what’s left of it) is probably still at the bottom of the lake.
   It was Lake Huron that Samuel de Champlain set his eyes on to became the first European to see the Great Lakes. It was the early 1600s, and Champlain was exploring for France. He reported back about the customs of the native people. 
    Lake Michigan is the only Great Lake that lies completely within the borders of the United States. The sand dunes located on the east shore of Lake Michigan are the largest freshwater dune system in the world.
    Lake Superior is the largest Great Lake in both volume and depth. It holds about 10% of the world's fresh surface water. The Ojibwa name for Lake Superior is Gitchi-Gumee which translates to “Great Sea.”
    But Lake Superior’s biggest claim to fame is its setting for Gordon Lightfoot’s song and recording of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." The ship was carrying processed iron ore pellets from Superior, Wisconsin to Zug Island, in Detroit, about 750 miles. The trip was expected to take about 11 hours. 
    Many events and circumstances can alter intentions, and many did. When Captain Ernest M. McSorley of the Edmund Fitzgerald set sail on November 9, 1975 with Captain Bernie Cooper in his ship, the Arthur M. Anderson, traveling the same route, decided to alter their course to avoid an approaching storm. But conditions continued to worsen and the storm continued to grow. At its height, the storm produced hurricane force winds and gusts of up to 100 miles per hour. The waves crashed unceasingly. Both captains recorded 12-15 footers. Before she sank, it’s estimated that the waves reached between 25 and 35 feet high. 
    The first mate of the Anderson watched the Fitzgerald until the radar went out. The captains lost radio communication with each other before the Edmund Fitzgerald went down for the last time. Ironically, Captain McSorley’s last words to Captain Cooper were “We are holding our own.”
    Gordon Lightfoot was inspired by the story he saw in Newsweek’s November 24, 1975 article. His song, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” has been called the greatest ballad ever written. As Lightfoot changed his lyrics to reflect new research, crew members were exonerated, manufacturers were absolved, and the “ultimate cause” remains elusive. 
    In an interview with author John U. Bacon, Tina Sawyer asks why this tragedy matters. His answer is both revealing and instructive. “For once,” Bacon says, “we did learn…Forecasting improved, communication with the captains improved and frankly,…common sense improved. It’s been a great legacy, a positive one.”
    He continues in the same interview, “…the families are proud of…the fact that incredibly from 1875 to 1975…there were 6,000 commercial shipwrecks on the Great Lakes. And that is the conservative estimate. That’s one per week every week for a century…Since November 10th, 1975, there’s been zero. And the families know that it’s because the Edmund Fitzgerald got so much attention that the industry finally woke up.”
    Many times when disaster strikes, the cause in not a pinpoint, but a cluster of unfortunate decisions made, details left unattended, and weather conditions unpredictable. And while our human nature prods us to find cause and rectify errors, sometimes the variables are too many, the blame is too widespread, and the tragedy is just that, a tragedy. 

No book review this week, but you might want to take a look at The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald by John U. Bacon (Liveright, October 7, 2025). It’s #1 on Amazon’s best seller list in U.S. State and Local History.
    
               Be curious! (and prepared for the unexpected)

…at last he came to a hill which was quite covered with cats. 
    Cats here, cats there, cats and kittens everywhere. 
    Hundreds of cats, 
    Thousands of cats, 
    Millions and billions and trillions of cats.
                             written and illustrated by Wanda Gág
                                         G.P. Putnam's Sons, [1956]
                           first published by Coward-MCann, 1928
                            recipient of the Newbery Honor, 1929 
                                   entered the public domain, 2024

    Many of us have too much stuff. That became apparent to me when I Googled “decluttering.” I found pages and pages of articles and lists and how-tos describing different methods of getting the job done. 
    An interesting “rabbit hole,” for sure. You can try the 12-12-12 rule, the 20/20/20 rule, or the 50% rule. You can find the 135 decluttering method, the 4 C’s of decluttering, the 4 bin (or box) method. You can learn how to figure out what clothes to get rid of, how declutter a house in one day, and the psychological root of clutter. 
    You can discover what you should not do when you declutter, especially important if you’re a beginning declutterer.
    No matter how much or little clutter we accumulate, part of our tendency to acquire stuff comes from a “scarcity mindset.” WebMD defines it as an obsession with what is lacking and the inability to focus on anything else. 
    An abundance mindset, the writers continue, allows us to see opportunities and possibilities. 
    If we come from a place of scarcity, we are fearful. There won’t be enough jobs, money, food, affection, freedom, time. You get it.
    If we come from a place of abundance, though, we know there is plenty of everything. We are more generous, more willing to help one another, and more able to see long-term outcomes and consequences of our decisions and actions.
    I was first introduced to these mindsets through Robin Wall Kimmerer’s classic Braiding Sweetgrass (Milkweed Editions, 2013). In it she shows how she lives in reciprocity with the natural world. 
    In her essay “The Serviceberry: An Economy of Abundance,” she says, “Gratitude creates a sense of abundance, the knowing that you have what you need. In that climate of sufficiency, our hunger for more abates and we take only what we need, in respect for the generosity of the giver.”
    When our first response is gratitude, the natural follow-up is reciprocity, the desire to give a gift in return. 
    What gift can I give a plant? you might ask yourself. Or a tree? 
    Ms. Kimmerer suggests a direct response. “We can clear away weeds giving our plants more room to grow. We can provide water, especially when rain is not plentiful. Cover against the cold, or a donation to a local land trust so more land can be used for habitat. Or “making art that invites others into the web of reciprocity.”
    When we accept Earth’s bounty as our gifts, we change our relationship to Earth and the gifts we receive. According to Ms. Kimmerer, the power of “gift thinking” is this: We’re “likely to take much better care of the gift hat than the commodity hat, because it is knit of relationships.” When we are in relationship with our family, our neighbors, our friends, our Earth, we feel gratitude. 
    How we think and feel translates to how we behave. We become gentler, kinder, more generous, even, some say, more creative. 
    But our economies have monetized everything from wild berries to our National parks. In our for-profit, money-based economy we need to pay workers, owners, creators for their energy, time, creativity, so they in turn can pay for their own necessities, luxuries, and gifts they give to others. 
    I’m not saying we should, or even could, move our society toward a gift economy. But when we pluck the tomatoes from the vines we nurtured in our gardens and snip the parsley growing bravely next to them, when we trim the rose bush, pull weeds, and speak to our houseplants, we can be mindful of the work they are constantly doing for us and feel gratitude for that work.
    When we choose our produce at the local grocery store, we can think of the growers, harvesters, shippers, shelf-stockers, and clerks who serve our needs. And feel gratitude, there, too.
    I can’t begin to guess what was in Wanda Gág’s mind when she published Millions of Cats in 1928. (see the quote at the top) But her society was much the way ours is now. In 1928, we were coming to the end of the First Gilded Age. Railroad tycoons, industrialists, and politicians amassed great fortunes, while the wages of the vast majority of our population stagnated. 
    As a side note, all those hundreds and trillions of cats fought each other until only one skinny cat was left. When asked why the other cats didn’t kill her, she replied, “When you asked who was the prettiest, I didn’t say anything. So nobody bothered about me.” The old man and the old woman took good care of the kitten until she was a “very pretty cat after all.” 
    Turns out one cat was enough. And there was plenty of love for all of them.
    Mark Twain coined the term in the title of his 1873 novel, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, to describe how the shiny surface of society looked beautiful, but the reality hiding beneath the gilt was made of a hard-working and hurting population.
    F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was a commercial flop after he published it in 1925. It did not gain popularity until the 1940s when it was sent to soldiers fighting in WWII. Now it appears on high school reading lists and is considered one of our “great American novels.” If you haven’t read it in a while, you might want to read it again, if only to see and compare it with where we are now.
    It remains to be seen whether we as a society will turn to each other in fear or in gratitude.

I’m reading Across So Many Seas by Ruth Behar (Nancy Paulsen Books, 2024). Behar was awarded a 2025 Newbery honor and the 2025 Sydney Taylor Book Award honor. In a saga spanning the years from Spain’s 1492 expulsion of Jews during the Inquisition to 2023 Miami, readers learn the history of one family’s journey from “standing on the shoulders of ancestors” to a momentous discovery made during a heritage trip back to Spain.
                                      Be curious! (and grateful)

I spent another wild and wonderful week and weekend with writing conferences and grandkids.

I have lots of ideas, but little writing time.

​I’m thinking about music, architecture, and elephants’ relationships with bees. So, stay tuned!

I’m reading (actually listening to) The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles (Atria Books, 2021). Since I’m only about 1/3 in, here’s a blurb from the publisher. “Based on the true story of the American Library in Paris, The Paris Library explores the geography of resentment, the consequences of terrible choices made, and how extraordinary heroism can be found in the quietest of places.” Since I tend to shy away from “Holocaust Literature,” I’m a little worried that I might be headed in that direction, but since it was recommended by a friend who I trust, I’m going to keep reading/listening.​

It was a gloomy world of mountains and crevasses and caves, and wherever [Marina] looked there were mounds of grey, dead coral topped with a blanket of living purple, yellow, blue, and red coral bushes and feathery pale anemones.
             from The Coral Kingdom: Mermaids Rock, book I
                                        written by Linda Chapman
                                      illustrated by Mirelle Ortega
                                          Little Tiger Press, 2020

     If you were to ask me to name my favorite place, I might answer a quiet forest full of old-growth trees, or Sand Dune Arch in Arches National Park, or most probably I will freely admit that my favorite place is my green reading chair in my living room at home.
    Beaches are wonder-filled places, too, but as much as I enjoy a seascape (with waves or without, with seabirds or without, cloudy sky or clear), beach scenes of wrack lines, abandoned docks, and colorful regattas, and especially underwater photographs of unusual sea life and coral formations, I don’t consider myself a water-person. 
    I’m good with dry land, thanks.
    About 71/% of our Earth’s surface is covered with water, and 96.5% of that water sloshes in the oceans. The world’s coral reefs live and die in a belt around the middle of the globe from about 35° N Lat to 35° S Lat. 
    The most common corals are hard corals. Also know as stony coral, they create a rigid skeleton of calcium carbonate in its crystal form, aragonite. As many as hundreds of thousands or as few as a scant several hundred individual polyps cement themselves together with the secretions that form their skeletons.
    Although fixed in one place and sometimes mistaken for rocks, scientifically, corals are animals. They are related to jellyfish and anemones. And they have a symbiotic relationship with a microscopic one-celled algae. They live in the cells of the outer layer of a polyp’s body and using photosynthesis, provide organic matter for themselves and their hosts. 
    Essentially, each polyp is a mouth with tentacles. It flutters its tentacles to create waves which trap zooplankton, bacterioplankton, and other tiny food sources to complete its diet.
    Corals build their reefs in shallow and deep water. When shallow enough to allow light to enter, the coral that depend on their symbiotic relationship with zooxanthellae, those one-celled microscopic algae, can thrive. Even the few types of coral that do not build reefs, live there.
    Coral that build their reefs in deeper water, where sunlight cannot reach, must filter out the remains of sea life (animal and vegetable) that drips through the ocean water. 
    Corals have lived on Earth for 450 million years, two hundred million years before dinosaurs arrived. Corals been exceptional thrivers, until lately.
    We have become concerned about them only lately because the same factors threatening the rest of the world are at play in the ocean, too.
    And healthy reefs are crucial to the health of our planet.
    Towns and cities depend on tourism dollars generated by diving tours, fishing trips and the associated hotels and restaurants and businesses. When people experience the environment, they are more likely to want to protect it. 
    Coral reefs protect shorelines, homes, and lives by absorbing the huge impact of pounding waves during storms.
    Many new medicines are being developed from discoveries found in coral reefs and the plants and other animals that live there. Possible treatments for asthma, arthritis, cancer, viral and bacterial infections and heart disease depend on healthy coral reefs.
    The ocean readily absorbs carbon dioxide and 90% of reflected heat generated by greenhouse gasses. Its unnatural and unbridled increase is the primary cause of the ocean’s acidification and the resulting harm caused to corals, shellfish, and plankton. 
    When corals are stressed, they expel their symbiotic algae and turn white. The individual polyps become mostly clear exposing their white skeletons. Bleached coral is not dead, but it is not healthy. It’s more susceptible to disease. It’s harder for them to reproduce and it’s harder for them to grow more skeletal material.
    Pollution from a variety of sources like coastal development, agriculture runoff, and sewage treatment promote rapid growth of algae that compete with coral. Excess sediment smothers it.
    Fishing in coral reefs benefits communities around the world. But over-fishing is unsustainable. Scientists are encouraging people to incorporate indigenous and local knowledge about local species and fishing practices. 
    Dead corals change the reef. The resulting change creates habitat loss for the marine life that depends on them for food and shelter and the people who depend on them for their livelihoods, too.
    Enter Elvira Alvarado, a 70-year-old marine biologist who turned from cancer research with sharks to saving the endangered coral reefs in Colombia. 
    Most corals are broadcast spawners. They spawn once a year, usually about a week after the full moon, but they are also tuned to many other environmental cues. During one precious week, Alvarado set collection tubes on the reef, dove down, and collected eggs and sperm. 
    In a make-shift laboratory, she and her team mixed the eggs and sperm and watched for the raspberry-shaped eggs to hatch into planulae, the free-floating young. In the wild, they move around until they encounter something hard, whether rock or dead coral. There they land. And there they stay.
    Alvarado and her team waited.
    After about seven months, the young coral that Alvarado and her team collected, grew large enough to be transplanted to existing reefs. There they will stay. And there they will grow.
    Now, three sites, each with a team of scientists, are continuing to work to save the reefs. 
    Elvira Alvarado is realistic. She says the trick is to regenerate the coral quicker than they die. But she’s hopeful, too. She’s built a legacy. “Even when I can no longer do this work,” she says, “others will continue it.”

I’m reading The Mayfair Bookshop by Eliza Knight (HarperCollins/William Morrow, 2022). Lucy St. Clair and her mom are both enthralled with Nancy Mitford’s writing. When Lucy gets an assignment that takes her to Mitford’s favorite bookshop in London, she discovers surprising connections she has with her favorite author. Recommended, but not necessarily at the top of your list.
                                      Be curious! (and experiment)

In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too. I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.
                             from: The Diary of a Young Girl
                                        written by Anne Frank
                               Doubleday/Bantam Books, 1967
                                          first published in 1947
                                           first US edition, 1952
    
    Today is not the first time some of you are seeing this, but it’s what I’ve been thinking about for a long time.
    In October 2018, when I originally posted this piece, the first Trump regime was finding its footing. Children were being torn from their families in his “zero-tolerance” policy to stem immigration. He called Robert Muller’s investigations into the 2016 election a “witch hunt.” That fueled the Me Too movement. He nominated Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court. And mid-term elections were one week away.
    In 2021, when I reposted it, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were in office. The world was still in the grips of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Biden signed a $1.9 trillion relief package into law, which worked its way to the people who needed it most. 
    The Capitol Riot/Insurrection was in our rear-view mirror working its way through the Judicial System. Key portions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were working their way through Congress. Biden brought the United States back into the Paris Climate Accord and the World Health Organization.
    The relative calm lasted for four short years.
    Then 2024 melted into 2025 and DOGE and USAID and DEI. The Department of Education was shuttered. Money allocated to fund university and hospital research projects was not dispersed.
    The lives of the most vulnerable in our society are being threatened.
    This is what I saw when I checked the status of the Department of Health and Human Services: https://www.hhs.gov/ (I tried to copy/paste the message but only got this link. Open it to see our government using partisan politics to push its own “message.” Your taxes and mine are paying for it.)
    People are being swooped up first and questions about their citizenship status are asked later (usually). 
    And now this feels important enough to re-post yet again:

    One of the most famous Holocaust poems of all time, "First They Came for the Jews," was written by a Lutheran pastor and theologian, Martin Niemöller (1892–1984).
    After recanting his support for Hitler and Nazism, Niemöller was arrested and confined to the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1938 to 1945. He narrowly avoided execution and was liberated by the Allies. He stayed in Germany and worked as a clergyman, pacifist, and anti-war activist. In his 1946 book, Niemöller talked publicly of Germany’s guilt for what Germany had done to the Jews. He was one of the first Germans to do so.
    Niemöller’s poem is especially relevant. 

                   First, They Came For The Jews
                            by Martin Niemöller
First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was
       not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out
       because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out
       because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for
      me.

    I found the text of the poem and information about Niemöller on this page on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum site. (accessed on October 29, 2018, verified October 19, 2021, February 18, 2025, and October 13, 2025)

Here is a modern adaptation:
When they came for the Jews and the blacks, I turned away
When they came for the writers and the thinkers and the radicals and
       the protestors, I turned away
When they came for the gays, and the minorities, and the utopians, and
       the dancers, I turned away
And when they came for me, I turned around and around, and there
       was nobody left...
(published in Hue and Cry, 1991)

You can find some other adaptations here:
http://webweaversworld.blogspot.com/2006/10/first-they-came-for-jews-variations-on.html (verified October 13, 2025)
    
    I never thought that shooting and killing people praying in a synagogue . . . because they were Jewish could *really* happen. But, in 2018, three days before my original post, it did. In the city next door to mine. 
    And while violence in general is declining, hate crimes are becoming more prevalent, especially when victims identify with the LGBTQ+ community, or identify as a member of a minority group. Religious hatred is not abating. I’m beginning to believe that antisemitism will never go away. 
    In 2025, I’m struggling with how to turn my anger, fear, pessimism, and grief into action.
    Here’s my version of Neimöller’s poem:

When he fired FAA executives, I was unaware. 
Then 67 people were killed in an airline crash. And three more in a
    helicopter.
When he canceled DEI, I was unaffected.
I looked away from my horror and disgust.
When he shuttered USAID and fired most of the personnel, 
    I called my Senators and Representative.
When he gave Department of Treasury access to the Musk-ovite, 
    I spoke out to my friends.
When he threatened to de-fund the Department of Education, 
    I cried.
When Amy Walter echoed Simon Rosenberg’s plea to write and call government officials, 
    I did.
When I do all these things, maybe nothing will change.
    But maybe something will.
        
    Today, eight months later, we are planning for the second “No Kings Day.” We have the right to gather and rally for our beliefs. Our Constitution guarantees our right to peaceful assembly.             
    Here is the text of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution: 
        Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
     religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the
     freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people
     peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a
     redress of grievances.
For explanation and annotations go here. 
    The key word in all this is peacefully. 
    In Youngstown, Ohio, No Kings Day will be held at 3:00 pm in front of the Mahoning County Courthouse. For other locations click here and type in your zip code.
I'm reading John Lewis: a Life by David Greenberg. Jon Meacham calls it "comprehensive and compelling," I call it fascinating, enlightening, and extremely readable. Rising out of poverty in rural Alabama to a seat in the United States Congress from 1987 until his death in 2020, Mr. Lewis is a model of how to cause "good trouble." Recommended

                  -—Be curious! (and involved, safe, and peaceful)   

The next morning Arthur was very surprised when he saw Francine.
“They’re my movie star glasses,” said Francine.
“But there isn’t any glass in them,” said Arthur.
“It doesn’t matter. They help me concentrate and make me look beautiful,” said Francine.
                                             from Arthur’s Eyes
                       written and illustrated by Marc Brown
                                                        1st rev. ed.
                                                Little, Brown, 2011

    Remember Roy G. Biv? It’s a handy mnemonic to help us remember the colors in the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Most of us have favorite colors, but it turns out blue is the most favorite of all. Maybe because large swaths of sky are blue and the vastness of the ocean is blue. Blue tends to evoke calm. 
    And even though we associate blue light with our screens, according to aao.org (American Academy of Ophthalmology), most of our exposure to blue light comes from nature. “[Our screens are] no more damaging than blue light from the sun,” says Dr. Rahul Khurana, spokesman for the AAO. He also assures us “there is no scientific evidence that blue light from digital devices causes damage to your eye.”
    Exposure to ultraviolet light, though, can damage our eyes. Ultraviolet wavelengths are much shorter and so move faster. So fast, in fact that they are invisible to humans.
    Blue light is part of the visible spectrum. Even though exposure to blue light will (probably) not damage our eyes, it is blue light that can wreak havoc with our circadian rhythms. Our body’s temperature and hormone levels are tuned to a cycle. When our bodies are working as they are supposed to, even without a clock, even in a dark space, those functions occur regularly on an approximate 24-hour, internally regulated cycle. Most humans are on a diurnal cycle, awake in the daytime and asleep at night. This is our circadian rhythm, affected by the release of melatonin, triggered by the blue light of the sun and screens.
    That’s why its a good idea to shut off the screens as part of our bedtime routines. Too much blue light at the end of the day might make it hard to fall asleep.
   More screen time is turning into more indoor time for most of us. 
   Here are a few statistics from  from the blog of the Ann & Robert Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago’s survey of 859 parents with children under 13 conducted in June, 2025:
    81% of kids have their own device
    59% of kids began using screens by the age of three
    Even though the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends no more than one hour of screen time per day for children 2-5 years old, surveyed parents say kids are tuned in for an average of three hours/day. 
    So much screen time is bound to affect us. One of the most common is the increased prevalence of digital eyestrain.
    I was not surprised to learn that over 70% of Americans experience associated symptoms of digital eyestrain. Doctors at Spindel Eye Associates in southern New Hampshire say “…up to 80% of people who use computers regularly experience some form of digital eye strain.”
    The condition affects kids learning on screens and playing on them. Adults and teens, too. Our small, way-too-convenient hand-helds, (read: phones, and tablets) are frequently most to blame. 
    And the more we use screens, the more we experience their effects. And screens are part of our lives. They are here to stay.
    So, if it’s not the blue light emissions, which it’s not, what is causing all this discomfort, anxiety, and even depression?
    Partly it’s lack of exercise. The more we use our screens for information, communication, and entertainment, the less time we leave ourselves for moving around. Exercise, especially in nature combats feelings of isolation, lethargy, and depression.
    Partly it’s the act of focusing on near, close-at-hand objects.
    But mostly, according to Rupa Wong, an ophthalmologist and professor at the Burns School of Medicine at the University of Hawaii, our tears are responsible for most of the clarity of our vision. Simply said, when we look at screens, we blink less. When we blink less, our eyes tend to get dry, which causes blurred vision, dry and itchy eyes, and headaches. 
    Blinking is a reflex. Since we don’t control how often we blink, Dr. Wong has some simple solutions we can try.
    You can keep artificial tears (not eyedrops) handy. Warm compresses over your eyes at the start or end of your day will moisturize the oil glands on your eyelids.
    Or, you could try the 20/20/20 rule. For every 20 minutes of screen time, take a 20-second break and look 20 feet away. Where you look is not as important as focusing on the distance. Grass, clouds, and sky are good. So are your bird feeder, blooming flowers in your garden, and squirrels frisking about gathering acorns. 


I’m reading Tom Lake by Ann Patchett (Harper/HarperCollins, 2023). Like most of her work, Ms. Patchett delves into family relationships and how they survive time’s passing. This story shows the Nelson family in their cherry orchard during the pandemic. Two time periods blur as Lara recounts her life with a famous movie star and how she met their father. We see their three grown daughters at the brink of their own adulthoods as they each find truth and meaning in their mother’s recollections. Each time I open the book, I enter the world of Tom Lake, the small, rural area of the UP, Michigan. Recommended!

                         Be curious! (and spend time in nature)

You can still vote for the fattest bear, but today’s the last day. Voting is open from noon to 9pm EST. The crown will be awarded after voting closes.
Check explore.org 
I’ve been too busy watching bears catch salmon in Alaska, to write and post this past week.
Too busy listening to birds calling each to other,
too busy crunching into crispy apples,
too busy playing with my cat.
     Sorry, not sorry!
I just started reading Tom Lake by Ann Patchett (HarperCollins, 2023). More next time.
                                    --Be curious! (and grateful)
See you next week!

People come in many shapes.
What shape are you?
                                                 from People Shapes
                                       written by Heidi E. Y. Stemple
                                         illustrated by Teresa Bellón
        Little Simon/Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, 2021

    I was not the fattest child in my elementary school. Not even the fattest in my room. I was the fattest child in my family, though. My mom’s mom was a large lady. My dad’s mom was round and soft.
    Even though I’d like to be thin, I don’t usually do anything about it. But no matter, now. Like Popeye says, I am what I am.
    Not so, the hibernators. They need their fat. They work all summer growing it. And we love them for it.
    Groundhogs spend their summers fattening themselves on our lawns and gardens so they can spend their winters hibernating in the cozy dens under our homes. We even celebrate the day they wake up to predict the weather for the next six weeks. 
    Bats hibernate, too. 
    Brumation is a lethargic state that many reptiles assume in late autumn. It’s not true hibernation, though. During this state, they often wake up to drink water, then return to their brumating state. They can survive many months without food.
    Similar to hibernation in purpose, that is, to conserve energy, estivation is kind of the opposite of hibernation. This state allows an animal to escape the affects of extreme heat and humidity. Toads, Eastern Box turtles, and some salamanders estivate. The animals are not in a deep sleep, though, and can quickly, if necessary, reverse their situation in as little as ten minutes.
    Even though we don’t see them unless the sun shines or it’s an abnormally warm, winter day, most squirrels don’t hibernate. They live on the acorns they’ve gathered and other tidbits they stash. They stay cozied up in their nests, awake.
    Torpor describes a state of being where an animal’s metabolism slows to accommodate unfavorable living conditions. Different organisms react differently to light and weather, even us humans. Even though our metabolism does not decrease in the winter, many of us are less active, spend more time indoors, and the shorter days mean less vitamin D which may affect fat metabolism and storage.
    In winter, most invertebrates enter a state called diapause, their response to adverse environmental conditions. Instead of the metabolic slowdown experienced by mammals when they hibernate, diapause actually pauses an insect’s physiology. They stop growing and developing until external conditions improve, usually in the spring.
    But how about those bears? Right now the bears in Katmai Brooks Camp in Alaska are feeding on salmon, fattening themselves up in readiness for their big sleep.  
    You can watch them on the webcam here.  
    “Fat bears are successful bears,” notes explore.org in a press release. Fat Bear Week is a way for environmental agencies to help people understand the importance of conservation, explore.org explains.
    Fat Bear Week started in 2014 when Park Ranger Mike Fitz noticed a fan’s comparison of the same bear on explore.org's webcam. The fan’s post showed the same bear in June and September. Fitz wanted to share his amazement at the bear’s transformation with the public. And he wanted to show the public the “vibrant” ecosystem they share with the sockeye salmon.
    He decided to hold a one-day event on September 30 of that year. Pictures were posted on FaceBook, and participants voted with “likes.”
    The next year and ever since then, Fat Bear Week takes place in early Fall. 
    This year, due to an extraordinary salmon run, “surpassing anything seen in recent memory,” according to Matt Johnson, Katmai National Park’s interpretation manager, the bears are well-nourished and ready for the vote. 
    NPR as well as other news outlets announced that the bracket for Fat Bear Week 2025 will be revealed on September 22, and voting begins on the 23. That’s today! (At noon, EST)
    It’s a single-elimination tournament that runs through September 30, when the new champion will be announced.
    Click here to meet the bears, view the rules, and vote. Discover more information about Brook River in Katmai National Park, too.
    Last year (2024) over one million votes were cast from one hundred countries. 
    Some of us live to eat, others eat to live. For some of us finding the balance between the two is hard.
    Not so, though for a bear.


I just finished The Metamorphosis of Bunny Baxter by Barbara Carroll Roberts (Margaret Ferguson Books/Holiday House, 2025). Bunny, a seventh grade bug-loving girl must start over in a new school without friends. Ms. Roberts shows her readers how Bunny rises to all her challenges and while not entirely dislodging the giant chip on her shoulder, begins to understand her quirky place in a quirky Middle-Grade world.
                                   -—Be curious! (and eat wisely)

Hickory Dickory Dock,
the mouse ran up the clock,
the clock struck one,
it’s time for fun!
Hickory Dickory Dock.
                                   from Hickory Dickory Dock
                         written and illustrated by Keith Baker
                                             Clarion Books, 2007

    Keith Baker took some liberties with the original nursery rhyme to update it for the 21st century. He added more animals and playful rhymes to create a sing-along story I loved to use in story time.
    I wondered if it is as innocuous as it seems. The history and references of lots of nursery rhymes have been lost through time.
    Could the “farmer’s wife” in “Three Blind Mice” really have been Mary Tudor, daughter of King Henry VIII? She was also known as “Bloody Mary.” She showed no mercy for her opponents and, unlike her father who broke away from the Catholic Church to start the Protestant Reformation, Mary was a strict Catholic. One theory suggests the mice were really Protestant loyalists who plotted against the murderous Queen. 
    She is probably also the subject of “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary.” Those silver bells and cockleshells are both instruments of torture. She may be filling her garden with Protestant martyrs.
    “Jack and Jill” might also refer to political roots. In the 1600’s, King Charles tried to impose tax reform on his subjects. Jack’s broken crown could be a symbol of the king’s powerlessness, and the defeat of Parliament shown by “Jill … tumbling after.”
    A couple of theories describe Old London Bridge, a real structure that spanned the Thames. It might describe the bridge’s disrepair after the Great Fire of London (1666). Or the reference could be to the much earlier Viking’s destruction of the bridge in an attack by Olaf II of Norway in 1014. 
    The misogyny  of “Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater” who “kept his wife in a pumpkin shell” and the child abuse referred to in “There Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe,” vie with “Ring Around the Rosie” with its reference to the Great Plague of 1665, which killed almost one quarter of London’s population. All three are gruesome. 
    Even Hickory Dickory Dock has a controversial origin. The Cambric dialect spoken in the Early Middle Ages, 476 CE (Common Era) to 1000 CE, the numbers 8, 9, and 10 are written Hevera, Devera, and Dick. Could the name come from those numbers and refer to the Exeter Cathedral where the famous Exeter Astronomical Clock was housed in the 1400’s? The gilded clock, legend holds, has a round hole carved into it for the cathedral cat so it could do the holy work of keeping the clock free of mice. 
    When the words are sung, they fall into a catchy melody that helps young children learn numbers, rhyme, and the rhythm of language itself.
    Maybe the rest of the rhymes are just that, too, ways of teaching language to our children?
    Brain science has shown that hearing rhymes, music, and lots of rich language is crucial to language acquisition. In a paper written by The National Library of Medicine, part of the National Institutes of Health, studies confirm that “[n]eural and behavioral research show[s] … exposure to language in the first year of life influences the brain’s neural circuitry even before infants speak their first words.
    Exposure to one’s native language is crucial to the development of fluency. While not completely mastered until about age 8, even a 10-month-old baby’s babbling can be identified as one language or another.
    The author explains that language learning is most efficient and effective in social situations. That is, face-to-face rather than learning from a screen. 
    Science is showing us that language learning is complex and multi-modal. Learning takes place best when an infant’s and young child’s attention is focused on items and events in the natural world: the faces, actions, and voices of other people.” And especially during play.
    So, why do these seemingly innocuous rhymes have such dark undertones? The best answer I can think of takes play, social interaction, and language learning into account.
    Here’s what I mean. My older daughter stayed home from school one day when she was not feeling well. She was old enough to watch soap operas, but when I got home from work, she told me about a segment of Sesame Street she watched. It was Burt singing a song about the letter B, put to the tune of John Lennon’s “Let it Be.” It took till she became a teen, to get the grown-up humor. So much of Sesame Street was like that, incorporating a little something for the grown-ups. The best movies do that too. So do the best picture books.
    An engaged adult will magically project her enthusiasm to the child, reinforcing language learning and social bonds.
    Hickory Hickory Dock is fun to say and fun to sing.
    London Bridge isn’t really falling down, but it is fun to fall down and get up again.
    Jack Spratt and his wife worked together to accomplish a goal.
    What about those three blind mice? or Wee Willie Winkie? Well, what child doesn’t love to run around?
    The music, the rhymes, and action keep our children learning language while they play, while the adults can speculate about alternative theories that may or may not explain the origin of the rhymes. 
    What about Old Mother Hubbard and Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater? Well, child abuse and misogyny have no place in our modern society. 

I’m reading Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows by Balli Kaur Jaswal (William Morrow/HarperCollins Publishers, 2017). It’s the story of Nikki, a young twenty-something who takes a job teaching English as a Second Language and the mostly older widows who have their own ideas about what they want to learn. It’s an intergenerational story, a story of family dynamics, husbands and wives, friendships, and a murder mystery that moves the plot to a surprising conclusion. Recommended.
                            -—Be curious! (and take time play)