“What’s wrong with us?” Nancy asked Bree when they were back at the clubhouse. “Everybody else is making money.”
    Bree was sprawled on the beanbag chair. “We just have to figure out what we’re great at that nobody else is.”
                           from Nancy Clancy Seeks a Fortune
                                         written by Jane O’Connor
                             illustrations by Robin Preiss Glasser
                                        Harper/HarperCollins, 2016

    Although Daddy surprised us kids one time with a Perry Como 45 record and a brand-new hi-fi to spin it on, he was not what anyone would reasonably call spontaneous. He was thoughtful and considerate, which is not always the opposite of spontaneity.  
    That is to say, what happened next was not typical “Daddy behavior.” He came home from work one day in September, 1960, and piled us all into the car to try out a new restaurant. He must have told Mom or she would have been in the middle of serving a home-cooked meal as he pulled in at 6:00. 
    It was not only Daddy’s new idea about dinner, it was a whole new concept in eating. Fast Food. McDonald’s, it was. After the Golden Arches were added, but before Ronald made his marketing appearance. So off we all went for the 30 minute drive.
    There was only one hitch. Mom didn’t like ketchup. Her burger had to be special-ordered which took longer. The point was fast, and Mom’s burger was not fast. “But it’s fresh,” she never failed to mention. And maybe it was.
    Okay, two hitches. Daddy liked to keep his car clean. We did not eat in his car. Indoor seating was not a wide-spread McDonald’s “thing” until 1968, so we ate at a picnic table in front of the building.
    The first drive-thru was added in 1975. When a decline in sales (prompted by an Army rule stating that soldiers had to stay in their cars or on base while wearing fatigues) an enterprising franchisee designed a sliding drive-up window. The idea caught on fast. A drive-thru in the Oklahoma City restaurant netted a 40% increase in sales.
    Between the popularity of two-car families and people spending more time in their cars, the fast food business grew, well, fast. 
    To the detriment of our health, we Americans are the #1 consumers of fast food in the world at an average of 18 meals per month. According to All About Burgers, “[t]he average American consumes about 3 burgers per week. McDonald’s serves around 75 million burgers daily, which accounts for a significant portion of the 50 billion burgers eaten each year in America.”
    Now backtrack to 1954. Ray Kroc, a milkshake machine salesman, approached the McDonald’s brothers, who were running a successful BBQ joint in California. He brought his Multimixer and a full load of energy, and sold them not only the Multimixer, but himself, as well.
    Kroc became their franchise agent in 1955 and opened his own McDonald’s, the first one east of the Mississippi River, in 1955, too. 
    In 1961, the McDonald brothers sold their company to Kroc for $2.7 million. 
    Ray kept the name, but focused on uniformity and streamlined the menu. He standardized all procedures for every task from product (McDonald’s only uses Russet Burbank potatoes from Idaho for their fries, everywhere in the world) to prepping, cooking, serving, and cleaning up.
    When he died in 1984, Ray Kroc left his $500 million fortune to his wife, Joan. By the time of her own death in 2003, she had grown the fortune to $3 billion. 
    And she was a philanthropist’s philanthropist. 
    Over $200 million went to NPR who set up the Joan B. Kroc Legacy Society to manage the largest bequest in public radio history.
    The Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies located on the campus of the University of Notre Dame, supports about 400 colleges and universities around the world that offer peace study programs of one kind or another. From its website “[p]eace studies [is a recognized discipline which] has a literature (books and journals), an active base of scholars, an established curriculum, and a pedagogical tradition that includes classroom teaching, experiential learning, internships, and international study…Kroc Institute faculty are experts in a variety of disciplines and can speak engagingly on diverse topics related to conflict, violence and strategic peacebuilding efforts.”
    The Salvation Army was Joan’s largest beneficiary, almost half of her fortune. In 2023, twenty years after her death, “26 grand, state-of-the-art Kroc centers have opened” throughout the US and our territories. AP News reports “1.2 million people belong to Kroc fitness centers, and over 3 million people annually are served through a wide variety of other programs, including job training, theatrical performances, and afterschool care.”
    While the McDonald’s Corporation does not continue to support Joan’s philanthropic agencies directly, and Franchisees are not obliged to contribute to them, either, Joan’s legacy includes not only the funds she donated, but her example of “giving big” as a lesson to all of us.
    The McDonald's Corporation supports Animal Welfare, Climate Action, Eliminating Deforestation, Providing Sustainable Packaging, and “reducing by 90%” the amount of “conventional virgin plastic” in their Happy Meal toys. (info from McDonald’s Corporation website here and here.)
    All that “giving back” makes me feel good about McDonald’s Corporation’s leadership role in causes I also believe in. But I still won’t buy their food. Well, maybe a milkshake now and then.
​
I just finished reading When Tomorrow Burns by Tae Keller (Random House Books for Young Readers/Random House Children’s Books, 2026), a story of three friends who found a book of prophecies. Told in alternating points of view, including a tree, the friends grow apart, make bad decisions, and live with the consequences that ultimately bring new understanding of themselves and reconnection to each other. Recommended.
                          -—Be curious! (and give yourself a break
                                               today. You deserve it!)

They’ll make a route from here to there
with careful planning everywhere.
The team will build it, load by load:
A SUPERHIGHWAY, MEGA ROAD!
              Construction Site: Road Crew, Coming Through! 
                               written by Sherri Duskey Rinker 
                                           illustrated by AG Ford
                                           Chronicle Books, 2021

    On Tuesday, October 24, 2017, my husband and I started out on a 5,825 mile trip to the Southwest US. We were gone 19 days. (I’m counting the last day because we arrived back home at 8:21 pm.)
    We started out with a full tank, a load of curiosity, and an empty journal, and headed for Route 66, the best way to discover the nebulous “West.”
    After meeting old friends for breakfast in St. Louis, our first stop was the Gateway Arch, conveniently located on the Mother Road, herself.. We worked our way from there to the Rte 66 museum housed in a new library in Lebanon, Missouri. We found dinner in Stroud, Oklahoma, at Tammy’s Roadside Roundup Cafe. 
    Across the Texas panhandle to Amarillo then Sante Fe., New Mexico. Except for the Georgia O’Keefe museum, everything was cotton and cattle. 
    Oil rigs next to silos and a 10-mile wide wind farm that included at least 100 windmills. Then Taos. We visited an Earthship community in Tres Piedras, NM. It’s a self-contained community that generates its own electricity, water, food, and companionship. Click the link to see Earth and her Earthlings enjoying each other.
    Cottonwood after cottonwood after cottonwood tree glowed gold at the bottom of Rio Grande del Norte, a gorge just a little smaller than the Grand Canyon.
    Viewed ancient petroglyphs in Petrified Forest National Park.
    Speechless with the wonder of beauty at Grand Canyon. 
    Flagstaff and Sedona with their breathtaking views of mountains at 7,000 feet of elevation.
    At the Phoenix Botanical Garden we learned that both Gila and gilded woodpeckers carve holes in saguaro cacti 15 to 25 feet high for their nests. The nest holes don’t hurt the cacti. The plants ooze out a liquid resin that hardens to protect themselves while providing a firm base for the nests. 
    Cacti mature at about 40 feet and don’t start growing arms till they’re at least 50 years old.
    We crossed the Carefree Highway on our way to the Hoover Dam and Lake Meade, then found Rte 93, the Joshua Tree Parkway. The trees are ubiquitous along the roadsides for miles.
    A switchback road took us to Oatman, AZ and back to Rte 66. Oatman was a mining town: copper and silver, mostly. Now it’s famous for its burros. The ones roaming the streets today are descendants of the working burros that pulled miner’s equipment. They eat hay you can buy from the general store. One dollar for a lunchbag sized package. The town holds a naming contest each Spring when new babies are born,. (They all looked alike to me!)
    Stayed in Boulder City, NV, just outside Las Vegas. Walked around the town and saw lots of statues commemorating Hoover Dam. 
    Finally, 3,373 miles from home, we arrived at Zion National Park. Walked several easy trails before heading to Bryce Canyon. 
    At 7,777 feet, we woke up near Bryce Canyon to 39 degrees and frost. By the time we saw the Hoodoos, the weather was warm and sunny.
    We took the loooong way to Moab, Utah, and had to stop for two cows in the road.
    Arches National Park might be the most beautiful place on Earth. 
    Every bend of the road delivered an astonishing view. 
    Zion. All in Utah. 
    November 9. After traveling 4006 miles, we turned toward home. 
    Mesa Verde’s Cliff Dwelling tours closed for the season the day before we arrived, so we  explored the area where the Ancestral Puebloans lived before they moved into the cliffs, and viewed the cliff dwellings with binoculars across a canyon. A good reason to return.
    Lots of snow as we crossed the Continental Divide in Colorado.
    After a night at the  Wigwam Motel, incredibly shaped like a cement wigwam, (not much room to move around and the bathroom mirror was on a slant to accommodate the inside wall), our home called a little louder.
    We blew past the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kansas, the Oz Museum in Wamego, Kansas, and Harry S. Truman’s Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri.
    Whew! Home, 19 days and 5,825 miles later.
    Legislation for building public highways was first introduced in Congress in 1916, but it wasn’t until 1925 that road construction finally began. In summer of 1926, the road received its official numerical designation. The planners intended U.S. 66 to move southwest to connect Chicago to Los Angeles, “a principle east-west artery.” The road would connect main streets of rural communities to urban communities providing much needed “access to a major national thoroughfare.”
    The road was used by farmers to transport grain and produce to the big cities, and by 1930 truck traffic rivaled the rails. Called the Mother Road by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath (1939 novel, made into a film in 1940), the name stuck. Over 200,000 people migrated from Oklahoma to California during the Dust Bowl years (1933 to 1939) earning Route 66 its symbol as the “road to opportunity.”
    Young Army captain, Dwight D. Eisenhower, saw the need for improved roads as the world ramped up to World War II. Between 1941 and 1945 the US government invested about $70 billion to build new military training bases out West, primarily around LA and San Diego, and move soldiers there.
    After the War, store owners, motel managers, and gas station attendants rose to the challenge of meeting the needs of growing numbers of travelers and people re-locating from the cold winters of the North to the “barbecue culture” of California. And in 1946, Nat King Cole released “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66,” written by former pianist with Tommy Dorsey and ex-Marine captain, after he moved from Harrisburg, PA to California, Bobby Troup.
    Under Eisenhower’s direction, the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 provided the finances needed to pay for our Interstate Highway System.
    By 1970, nearly all of Rte 66 was bypassed by modern four-lanes, and by 1984, the final section was bypassed by I-40 at Williams, Arizona. (See National Historic Route 66 Federation for more history of our Mother Road.) 
    Although we were not on Rte 66 our entire trip, lots of the road passed under our tires. 
    What a beautiful country!
I just finished reading Whale Eyes: a Memoir About Seeing and Being Seen written by James Robinson with illustrations by Brian Rea (Penguin Workshop/Penguin Random House, 2025). It’s the fascinating story of a boy whose distorted vision turned him into a documentary filmmaker. His inspirational journey was guided by his mother and his own determination, grit, and curiosity about how the world really works. Recommended.
                          --Stay Curious! (and travel by armchair
                                   till the price of gas goes down)

Good morning!
I'm a new poll worker and heading out to work! so no blog post today.
Please vote. Primaries are important, too!
​See you next week.

John Coltrane…wrote music
which, in his hands,
became swirling, leaping, tumbling 
sheets of sound.
That’s what he called it.
                              from John Coltrane’s Giant Steps
                      written and illustrated by Chris Raschka
                      Atheneum/Richard Jackson Books, 2002

    My oldest grandson is studying music, learning to excel on his instruments (percussion includes a lot of different instruments), learning different aspects and genres of music, and learning to manage his time as well as whatever else we all learned as we moved toward independence.
    He and the rest of his class are all working toward their college degrees in music. Music majors can specialize in performance, composition, music theory, the music industry, music technology, music education, music history, and music therapy. 
    Last weekend his four-piece jazz combo played outdoors in Columbus. They’re not professional yet, though to my untrained ear they sure sounded like it.
    I used to think jazz was an either love it or hate it music style. That is, when I tried to listen. My musical experience taught me to be an active listener. I tried to anticipate where the melody was going and how it would get there. I looked for patterns in the rhythms. I even studied a little music theory.
    But none of that prepared me for jazz. Jazz is improvisational. Jazz sings its own melodies and builds its own rhythms.
    The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival began on April 23 and continues through May 3, 2026. It’s huge, and that’s probably an understatement. You can find out about this year’s festival here. Click the menu bar to find the musical lineup, view local crafts for sale, learn about New Orleans’s culture, and visit the Food Heritage Stage to watch some of New Orleans best chefs demonstrate how they prepare their cuisine.
    From the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation's website, I learned that the Jazz Fest began in 1970. According to their mission, the foundation “promotes, preserves, perpetuates, and encourages the music, culture, and heritage of communities in Louisiana through festivals, programs, and other cultural, educational, civic, and economic activities. 
    It’s grown in scope, importance, and funding during its first 55 years. The foundation is supported by grants, donations, and events (all listed on the link).
    The word jazz is a slang term from the 1860s and and referred to pep or energy. Unlike classical music, pop, show tunes, or contemporary, jazz depends on improvisation. A jazz standard, typically a familiar tune, is interpreted through solos, a call and response pattern, and a band’s particular style. Solos are generally made up “on the spot.” The piece becomes something new. Every time it’s played and heard. 
    A good jazz band plays well together, anticipates where the lead musician is going, and follows the direction of each soloist. 
    In the early part of the last century, New Orleans had one of the most diverse populations in the South. Jazz was born of a blend of African, French, Caribbean, Italian, German, Mexican, Native American, and English music traditions and styles. It evolved and developed spontaneously by blending the syncopated rhythms of ragtime with the soulfulness of spirituals and the blues.
    Jazz is uniquely American. It’s individual, continually changing, and always spontaneous, even when it’s rehearsed.
    The most common subgeneres of jazz include Bebop, Latin, Fusion, Cool, and Swing. Beginning in the 1930s and 40s, the combination of percussion, brass, saxophones and her incredible voice made Ella Fitzgerald’s Swing easy to listen to and hard to sit still for.  
    Fitzgerald bridged into Bebop that grew from Swing. Its complex harmonies and rhythms begged for improvisation. Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and Ella were Bebop masters. 
    Latin jazz came into its own in the 1950s and remains popular. Fusion jazz emerged in the 1960s alongside rock-n-roll in all its variety. Fusion jazz pushes the  boundaries of everything new. 
    It’s Cool jazz, though, that music researchers are discovering is jazz with health benefits. 
    According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, listening to music can lower anxiety and blood pressure, ease pain, and improve sleep quality, mood, mental alertness, and memory. 
    Music has structure. Our brains compute the relationships between notes to make sense of the chords, rhythms, and melodies. Research from the National Library of Medicine (part of the National Institutes of Health, NIH) has shown that, among other genres, instrumental jazz is easier to interpret, especially without the layer of lyrical language, so is more soothing to listeners,.
    A study done by the New Orleans Musicians Assistance Foundation (part of The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival) says Cool jazz’s “innovative riffs, cool tones, and complex rhythms can bring natural relief for mind & body.” Listening to jazz, the article continues,  improves our focus, creativity, and even our immunity. “Listening to jazz for 30 minutes boosts immunoglobulin A (lgA), preventing [viral and bacterial] infection.”
    So for my health (and enjoyment) I’ll kick off my shoes, pour my favorite beverage, find a comfortable seat and wait for the smooth, cool sounds of a piano, saxophone, or violin to accompany the songbirds in my backyard. Join me?

I’m reading a young middle grade novel, Appleblossom the Possum by Holly Goldberg Sloan and illustrated by Mary Rosen (Rocky Road Books/Penguin Young Readers Group, 2015). Geared for readers in about 3rd through 5th or 6th grade, it’s the story of a baby possum, trained up with her twelve siblings in the ways of the world by their mama. Appleblossom is more curious than careful, though. When she falls down the chimney of a house full of humans, she puts her acting skills and accidental friendship with the girl of the house to great use in a warm and funny read. 

      On a sticky and sunny Sunday in the summer of 1969, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland did something rivers should never do.
                                KABOOM!
    No one was surprised, surprisingly. It’s burned before, people said. It’ll burn again.
    Which was true. Since 1886, it happened thirteen times. In 1912, five people lost their lives. And the 1952 fire caused over a million dollars in damage.
                       from The Day the River Caught Fire
                                written by Barry Wittenstein
                                 illustrated by Jessie Hartland
                            Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster
                            Books for Young Readers, 2023

    I disagree with Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, when he alludes to humans’ need for a little magic to make the world right. We don’t need magic. We need information. We need encouragement. And we need determination. That combination makes magic.
    When William Shakespeare was born (April 23, 1564) the Thames River was so polluted that you could smell its stink for miles. In 1969, the Cuyahoga River was so polluted that it caught fire and became part of a movement. The 1969 fire was not the Cuyahoga’s first fire. It was not even the worst one. (See quote above)    
    After the fire was put out, Clevelanders went back to work or home or school, 
    But in the wake of the monumental impact of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (Houghton/Mifflin, 1962), a quiet movement had begun.
    “[T]he times, they were a-changin’.” 
    Time Magazine published an article about the fire in March, 1970. In December, 1970, the Cuyahoga River fire was highlighted in a cover story in National Geographic titled “Our Ecological Crisis.” 
    When Senator Gaylord Nelson from Wisconsin visited Santa Barbara, California, in 1969, a massive oil spill had just ravaged the coast. Attention to the harm being done to our environment became his priority. 
    On April 22, 1970, under the leadership of Senator Nelson and his aide Denis Hayes, an environmental activist, the United States celebrated our first Earth Day. “An estimated 20 million Americans took to the streets, parks, and auditoriums to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment in massive coast-to-coast rallies. (earthday365).
    On December 2, 1970, Congress established the Environmental Protection Agency to strengthen the Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1948. 
    First passed in 1972, The Clean Water Act has been amended several times. Through tighter restrictions, our water (and air) have become cleaner.
    In 2019, fish caught in the Cuyahoga River were deemed “fit to eat,” but after rollbacks in the first Trump administration, on August 25, 2020, the river caught fire again. Storm drains allowed sewage, toxins, and fertilizer to flow into the river during heavy rains. The 2020 fire started when a fuel tanker spilled its flaming contents into the river after a traffic accident. 
    An article in GreatLakesNow.com (2/13/24) reports that it depends on who you ask and what their standards are to determine if the fish you catch are safe or not.
    Until Lee Zeldin was confirmed as the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on January 20, 2025, many stabilizing measures had been working.
    We need our governmental leaders to make and enforce laws and standards that protect us and the environment.
    We need environmental scientists, climatologists, and geneticists. They ask questions they think they know answers to, just to discover if they actually could be wrong. After all, it’s really effective to learn from our mistakes. Scientists have shown us that we continue to make many, and many dangerous mistakes. They show us that we human beings have had a profound affect on our environment, especially in the days and years since the Industrial Revolution.
    It is hard to convince people of that profound affect.
    Denial has taken hold especially in the time of Trump. The concept of denial is well-understood, well-documented, and much written about. We can be in denial about our own mortality or that of a loved one. We can be in denial about how the hot-fudge sundae we ate last night really affects our weight-control efforts. We can be in denial about a drinking or drug habit. According to psychological research, the enormity of the problem does not allow our brains to process its reality. 
    Here’s how the thinking goes: “It’s only one straw. The ocean is vast. My one straw won’t matter in the whole scheme of things. And I'm tossing it in the trash.” But somewhere down deep, we know the fallacy of this kind of thinking. It’s the cumulative effect that matters. 
    The fact of climate change is easy to deny. It is just too big to wrap our heads around. And millions of people are climate change deniers.
    Try to imagine, though, that our Earth will suffocate/drown/blow away or burn up if we don’t acknowledge climate change and start working diligently toward solutions. Together.
    So what is the solution? Just like any huge problem or project, we must break it into smaller, more achievable goals. We need to tell our government officials that we are concerned about our planet. We need to make collective decisions that will benefit all of humanity and all of our shared earth. We all need to be involved on whatever level we can be.
    With so much chaos, it’s difficult to focus on one enormous problem for an extended period of time. So much is so necessary.
    Mother Nature is nothing if not fair. She responds harshly to abuse, but is abundantly forgiving when we treat her with love and generosity.
    Let’s take one day off from worrying about wars, ICE detentions, and mass shootings. Let’s promise Mother Nature for just one day that we’ll be more cautious, more care-full, and more grateful for her gifts.
​    Happy Earth Day!

I’m reading Inheriting Edith by Zoe Fishman (William Morrow, 2016). Maggie’s former employer (she cleaned the house) died unexpectedly and left Maggie her house and everything in it including her 82-year-old mother. This one’s full of laughs, heartaches, and a two-year old. Recommended.
                      Be curious! (and plant a tree, or hug one)

And just trying to move the cabbage wears you out. So you take a long snooze.
And dream about sharing your cabbage with others.
                       from The Cabbage Seed’s Colossal Secret
                                    written by Karen M. Greenwald
                                          pictures by Alejandra Ruiz
                                     Tilbury House Publishers, 2026

    I love flowers and veggies and nurturing them in my small garden, even though I’m not very good at helping them grow. Their ground is a mixture of good garden soil mixed with home grown compost. Their water is drawn from our hand-pump-accessed well. 
    I talk to them and keep them company on a chair nearby. Sometimes we all listen to music or a story played on my Libby app.
    But mostly, they’re on their own. To enjoy the sunshine, weather, and pollinators. I’m on the lookout for the bad bugs and chase those away as best I can.
    If we’re all lucky, they will thrive throughout the whole growing season. Sometimes I even collect seeds with the intention of sewing them the following spring. Sometimes, I even do.
    This afternoon I caught a short blurb on the radio about a local seed library in Kirtland, Ohio, near Cleveland. Since it began 2-1/2 years ago, the Native Seed Libraries of the Holden Arboretum and the Cleveland Botanical Garden has been helping holdenfg.org (Holden Forest and Garden, HF&G) live its mission to “[connect] people with the wonder, beauty, and value of trees and plants, to inspire action for healthy communities.” 
    This year, their Seed Bank opened to the public in several locations throughout the greater Cleveland area. on January 19. Three free packets of native seeds are available per visitor to “community members, gardeners, and educators.” I’ll post hours on FaceBook and whether seeds are still available when I can reach someone (They’re closed on Mondays).
    “Native plants play a critical role in supporting pollinators, restoring habitat, and strengthening our region’s ecosystems,” says Kim Lessman, Seed Bank Manager at HF&G. “By making locally sourced native seeds freely available, the Native Seed Library empowers residents to be active participants in conservation, right in their own backyards.”
    Several branches of the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County are pick-up sites for free seed packets from the Ohio State University (OSU) Extension of Mahoning County. Packets include carrot, lettuce, or sunflower seeds with instructions. Here's the flyer.
    You can find local seed banks with a Google search, just make sure you check the site carefully. Most are outlets for Cannabis.
    And buried deep in the permafrost on Spitsbergen, a Norwegian island in the Norwegian Sea about halfway between Norway and the North Pole is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. It was expressly chosen for its remote location, far from war and terror as well as natural disasters. 
    It was opened by the Norwegian government in February, 2008 to preserve seeds from around the world to protect biodiversity in areas that may experience devastation of one kind or another. 
    From Norway’s government site,“[t]he vault hold the seeds of many tens of thousands of varieties of essential food crops such as beans, wheat and rice. These seed samples are duplicates of seed sample stores in national, regional and international gene banks.” 
    The Vault holds 642 million seeds, and has the capacity to reach 2.5 billion. Grains make up 69% of the holdings, 9% are legumes. The rest are a “wide variety of fruits, vegetables, herbs, and other plants [i]ncluding hallucinogenic plants such as cannabis and opium. 
    Seeds are usually tiny. Some are just small, but so many seeds (in their containers) need about 31 x 88-1/2 feet (9.5 x 27 meters) of space arranged in a rectangle divided into three long halls. See photos of the interior and the exterior.
    In February, 2026, the facility accepted its 69th deposit since opening on February 26, 2008. It now holds olive seeds for the first time, and accepted a total of 8,880 seed samples from 12 countries. Two of them, Guatemala and Niger, are first-time depositors. 
    The purpose of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is to safeguard duplicates of seed samples from as many countries as possible to ensure the world’s future food supply. It backs up the over 1,700 world-wide gene banks which are vulnerable to natural disasters, war, and poor management and or lack of funding.
    Securing crop diversity allows researchers, plant breeders, and farmers to adapt agricultural practices to the climate crisis and reduce environmental deterioration making sure we can feed ourselves adequately. 
    They develop new and more resilient crop varieties that are nutritious, tasty, and environmentally sustainable.   
    From Karen Greenwald's author’s note in today's quoted book, I learned that she based her story of the colossal cabbage on a real 9-year-old girl whose real 40-pound cabbage fed a soup kitchen’s 275 hungry people, inspired a whole town, and launched Katie’s Krops, an organization that nurtures, trains, and supports young Gardners nationwide. Here's a link to Katie’s Krops FaceBook page.

I’m still reading The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. I borrowed a copy from a friend, but needed to return it to her at my halfway mark. The reserve list from the library is thousands strong, which tells us a lot about the book. The main character is so well-drawn that I’m sure I’d recognize her if we could meet. Her friends, neighbors, authors, and others she writes to are just as real to me. It’s amazing how much we can learn about ourselves and others through fictional letters!
                    -—Be curious! (and remember to thank a farmer)

Let’s make music
Let’s have fun.
It’s music time
for everyone.
                                        from Let’s Make Music
                                  written by Alexandra Penfold
                                illustrated by Suzanne Kaufman
                        Random House Children’s Books, 2024

    Before I retired, we children’s librarians all had several trainings on language development and the process of learning to read. They were based on cutting-edge research analyzed by professionals at the American Library Association and brought to staff librarians across the US. 
    “What is the most important activity parents can do with their babies to help them learn to read?” That was my interview question for a new position at the Library    .
     Sing was my spontaneous but logical answer. I hadn’t thought of it before, but it made instant sense to me and I guess the administration, too. I got the job. 
    I was to be the liaison between the library and the community: parents, caregivers, and preschool teachers. I would share the research and demonstrate how children from birth to age 5 acquire language and the ability to read.
    ALA dubbed their program “All Children Ready To Read.” Our library renamed it “Baby Brilliant.” 
    I’ve always loved the sound and music of language and loved sharing that with young parents, preschool teachers, and little kids.
    Singing has words (real ones and nonsense, made up ones), playful or complicated rhymes, steady or complicated rhythms, and an endless variety of melody, all aspects of language children need to be familiar with before they can sound out words and attach meanings to them.
    But music and especially singing is so much more than its various parts. It is inextricably linked to our emotions and moods. 
    An aspect of music I wondered about for a long time was the seeming contradiction between the melodies of most “break-up” songs and their lyrics. Broken-hearted lovers sing songs in up-beat major keys. Why?
    Various sources I studied explained how the quick, happy-sounding tunes that convey sad lyrics help listeners feel less alone in their grief, more connected to others going through similar circumstances. Experiments have shown that the happy-sounding music overrides the sad story, so lots of times as we sing along, toe-tap, or head-bop we actually begin to feel better, less alone. 
    Some examples to remember or look up on Spotify or Pandora include Elvis’s “Return to Sender,” or Neil Sedaka’s “Breaking Up is Hard To Do,” or Gary Lewis and the Playboys singing “This Diamond Ring.”  
    Nostalgia and catharsis are two important feelings brought up by break-up songs. Our longing for the past and using music to help us relive some of our most difficult times can lead to a release emotions that have been building up. 
    Singing is even more effective than just listening. From the first note we sing, a chemical symphony begins within our brain. 
    OperaNorth, an organization from the UK, lists several reasons why singing is good for us.

• Singing releases endorphins, serotonin, and dopamine, chemicals that boost our mood and make us feel good about ourselves.
• Singing requires us to breathe, helps us increase our lung capacity, and engage the muscles around our ribcage.
• Breathing properly and with more awareness is good for releasing anxiety and helps transition us to a state of rest and relaxation.
• Singing can help improve mental alertness, memory and concentration. Singers focus on multiple aspects of music at once, engaging many areas of the brain simultaneously. 
• Music is a powerful tool used to spark memories during dementia care, often long after other forms of communication have become more difficult.
• Singing with other people helps build connections and feelings of togetherness. 
• Singing in a group can boost our confidence and fire up our self-esteem. 
• Good posture is a key factor in hitting the high notes. We naturally stand taller when we sing.

    Val Bastien in VoiceYourselfSinging (10/5/24) says, “Beyond the chemicals, singing allows for profound emotional release.” 
    My dad had a wonderful tenor voice. He liked all kinds of music, with words and without. I loved to listen to him sing. 
    Mom’s voice was strong, but not so much “on key.” She wanted to sing in tune, but must not have been able to hear music that way, so she couldn’t reproduce it. That didn’t matter to me, though. 
    She taught our Girl Scout troop lots of songs. There must be some trigger in some (or maybe even most) people that allows them to hear pitches in tune, in standard intervals, regardless the tones actually demonstrated. We girls always sang in tune, even though Mom couldn’t really teach us the “right” notes. I’m a little bit fascinated by this phenomenon but haven’t found a helpful explanation, yet.
    Singing (mostly in tune) helps me perk myself up when I’m driving home from a long-ish trip. I crank up the volume and sing along. I know lots of oldies.
    It must be the endorphins and serotonin and dopamine. 
    
I just started reading The Correspondent by Virginia Evans (Crown, 2025). According to Anne Patchett’s blurb on the back cover, “Virginia Evans shows how one woman changes at a point when change had seemed impossible.” I expect it to be emotional, internal, and thought-provoking. I hope I’m right. I’ll let you know.
                              Be curious! (and belt out your favorite song,
                                         with reckless abandon, and friends)

Mr. Putter practiced his story.
.   .   .
He turned the pages.
He read with gusto.
“Gusto makes everything more exciting,”
Mr. Putter told Tabby.
                   from Mr. Putter & Tabby Turn the Page
                                     written by Cynthia Rylant
                                 illustrated by Arthur Howard
                              Houghton Mifflin Horcourt, 2014

    Unlike Mr. Putter, even when my cat (Yofi, not Tabby) is as close as my lap, I read silently., only sometimes with gusto.
    I read books on my easy-to-hold phone. There’s more room on my lap for Yofi that way. The phone is easy to see, too. With its tiny backlit screen, little pages, and large font, I turn the pages fast, even though I’m a pretty slow reader. 
    I read on my reading chair in the living room, I read in the car (when someone else is driving), and I read in bed. I can read while I wait till my dental hygienist is ready to clean my teeth, and when I’m enjoying a beautiful spring day on my back porch. E-books are in short, portable.
    I also read physical books. Especially when there are pictures: photos in biographies and histories, or illustrations in picture books and those for younger (and older) kids. There’s something comforting about holding a book and turning the actual pages. If I need a light, the lamp shines softly over my right shoulder. It’s easier on my eyes, too.
    So, I wondered which format is better, if one indeed is. 
    Turns out, even though it doesn’t feel active to my couch-potato self, reading a physical book is an active endeavor. For my brain, though, not my body.
    Our brains process information differently when we read physical books and when we read digital books. According to Kerry Benson in a 2020 article in BrainFacts.org, we focus our attention on a non-moving object when we read a physical book. She likens reading print material to a kind of meditation. We become immersed in what we are reading. 
    Anne Mangen, a literacy professor in Norway and Lauren Singer Trakhman of the University of Maryland agree that digital reading is better for scanning headlines or getting to the main idea of a subject. If retention, comprehension, and attention to details is the object, though, stick to a physical book.
    Mangen continues, “[digital] reading impairs comprehension particularly for longer, more complex texts…digital media trains our brains to process information more rapidly and less thoroughly.
     An early study for the marketing research company Millward Brown gave participants connected to brain scanning equipment advertisements on a screen and ads on a printed card. When they analyzed their data, they found that print materials were more likely to activate the medial prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain that helps us identify with others. Also how we rate ourselves on a self-esteem scale, our evaluation of our own personality traits, and how we process our emotions.
    It’s why we identify with the main character in a story we are reading. Is she like me? What would I do in a similar situation? When we identify with the characters, we are building empathy in ourselves.
    A YouTube from the BBC World Service, “Why reading isn’t ‘natural,’” states that “to build a reading brain network, we co-opt parts of the brain involved in vision and auditory processing, and language and attention and affect (how we observe emotion).” All four lobes of our brains are engaged when we read a physical book. 
    Reading print activates our brains so that letters are associated with sounds and meanings. And according to Lisa Cron in Story Genius (Ten Speed Press, 2016), “[i]t’s actually the biological lure,…a chemical reaction [that’s] triggered by the intense curiosity that an effective story always instantly generates.”
    How about education and teaching kids to read and how well kids read and what they like to read. Wait. Do they even like to read? My grandkids and their friends do, but that’s a very small and select sample.
    As reported by The Guardian, the Department of Education’s most recent survey released in June, 2025. It shows that comprehension among 13-year-olds is lower now than before COVID. It’s easy to blame the pandemic for all our ills, and few studies have been done comparing physical reading and digital reading. The Guardian continues that a “soon-to-be published groundbreaking study” by neuroscientists at Columbia University shows “a clear advantage to reading a text on paper, rather than on a screen…”
    Dartmouth professor Donna Coch notes that reading for comprehension needs to be automatic. Consciously de-coding words, and trying to glean the meaning of a word from those around it, use up the brain’s bandwidth that a “better reader” will use to compare and synthesize what they’re reading. And it’s harder to do on a screen.
    Reading on a devise is passive scrolling. When we scroll, we use our working memory which can hold about seven items at a time. If some of those seven are helping us remember which buttons to click, we’re not invested as deeply in what we are reading as we are when we hold a book and physically turn its pages.  
    We tend to skim as we scroll. We not only don’t engage our whole brain, we are easily distracted by the ease of switching to an online dictionary and are just a click away from relieving boredom by tapping to open Solitaire or some other game or internet site. Incoming messages and other alerts are also distractions.
    Back to YouTube and the BBC, “[t]the power of deep reading is really fundamental to our humanity…And that process of changing the minds and hearts of individuals changes society and allows us to build bigger, more beautiful futures.”
    Even after all this research, that I mostly did online, I know I will continue to read on my phone. It’s too convenient. The light stuff, though, the stories I don’t need to remember or report on or talk about. 
I’m reading, well actually listening to (a subject for another day) Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale (narrated by Polly Stone, Macmillan Audio, 2025. Originally published by St. Martin’s Press, 2015). It’s a coming of age story set in France during WWII, my first Kristin Hannah. The characters feel very real and the setting is interesting. The plot is easy to follow and engaging. Recommended.
                     Be curious! (And read, or listen to a book)

She, Judy Moody, would make her own list. Her very own kick-the-bucket list of all the stuff she wanted to do before she . . .went to fourth grade!
                       from Judy Moody and the Bucket List
                                    written by Megan McDonald
                                illustrated by Peter H. Reynolds
                                         Candlewick Press, 2016
                                  (accessed on Libby 3/20/26)
    Mom used to tell me “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Intending to do a thing is not going to make it happen. Neither is wishing. Neither is wanting, no matter how badly. Neither is making a list, even when most of it gets crossed off, checked off, or struck through. She taught me the importance of follow through.
    In order for an intention to come to fruition, I needed to turn it into a goal. It needed to be stated clearly. It needed a time frame. It needed to be achievable. It needed to have a way to measure success on the way to completion. 
    SMART is a handy goal-making acronym.
    To make a SMART goal make sure it is         
Specific: what exactly will reaching your goal look like?
Measurable: uses a form of numerics (lose/gain X # of pounds, say)
Achievable: it may require gaining some new skills, but this step needs to
            be something you know you can really, truly do.
Realistic: it must be able to exist in the world we really, truly live in. It
.            must be do-able.
Time-bound: it needs a deadline. For real. 
    For more detail, click this page from Boston University. 
    Having a goal is not the same as having the motivation to reach it, though.
    Usually, for me anyway, the hardest part of reaching a goal is taking the first step. That’s where motivation comes in.
    According to VeryWellMind.com, motivation is the driving force behind our actions. It’s the “why,” the reason we do what we do. Motivation is what gets us to act in ways that help us reach our goals. 
    Psychologists like to describe two different categories of motivation.
    Extrinsic motivation helps us get started. They’re tangible rewards, stickers or chocolate or time at the library. I’ve been scheduling time to write with a friend of mine for at least an hour and a half per week for the last about five years. I depend on that promise to her to motivate me to sit down and work. 
    Intrinsic motivation is the habit I’ve formed by continually making that conscious choice. I keep “showing up” because I like to feel productive, I like to figure out what I’m thinking, and I like to keep my promise to my writing partner. Also, with enough practice and persistence, I might produce something someone thinks is worthy of publishing. 
    I learned long ago that an hour and a half once a week is not enough to reach my goal of becoming a published author.
    James Clear is a motivational speaker and writer. He has a best selling book and writes a newsletter called 3-2-1. He says staying motivated comes down to creating and working a 3-step system. 
    Step 1 has to be so easy that you can’t say no. Clear’s writing routine starts with a glass of water. Easy-peasy.
    Step 2 needs to help you move toward the end goal, literally. Physical movement puts you on the path (so to speak) toward your goal. I put on my writing sweater, pour my coffee, and open my computer.
    Step 3 involves doing the same steps (1 and 2) consistently. Every single time. It sets up a reminder and puts your goal in the conscious part of your brain. 
    Put another way, three elements are needed to get motivated and stay motivated..                
    Activation is the first step. Whether it’s signing up for a course or walking into a Weight Watcher’s meeting, the first step, contrary to James Clear’s formula, is hard. 
    Persistence is pushing through even when the weather is bad, the homework is hard, or I don’t want the birthday cake I ate to show up on the scale. Persistence is also hard.
    Intensity is the amount of focus, strength of desire, and energy (physical, emotional, and mental) we put toward reaching our goal. 
    If any one of those three is missing, we risk not meeting our goal.
    A tip I heard last weekend came from a guest teacher in a writing class I’m taking. She said to keep herself from getting discouraged, when an agent or editor passed on her work, she decided to count her rejections. Without calling it that, she used the SMART formula.
    She will collect 100 rejections by the end of the year. Wow! The whole framework of rejections flipped from something that blew the wind out of her sails to a trajectory that, step by step, moved her closer to her goal.
    I liked the idea so much that I decided to try it for myself. I also will collect 100 rejections by the end of the year. That means I have to submit my work to agents that might like it enough to want to represent me. Specific. Measurable. Achievable. Realistic. Time-bound.
    So far I have one rejection (It was very polite) and four active submissions. 
    Maybe it won’t take 99 more to find representation. I’ll update you all periodically.

I’m reading A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka by Lev Golinkin (Anchor/Knopf Doubleday Publishing group, 2014), an accessible and compelling memoir that begins at the end of the Cold War. Lev is nine-years-old when he crosses the Soviet border with his family in 1989. His is a story of escape and survival as he learns the power of hatred in his search for belonging. Recommended.
                                      --Be curious! (and focused)

On Saturday 
he ate through
one piece of chocolate cake, one ice-cream cone one pickle,
one slice of Swiss cheese, one slice of salami, one lollipop, one piece of cherry pie,
one sausage, one cupcake, and one slice of watermelon.
That night he had a stomachache!
                            from The Very Hungry Caterpillar
                          written and illustrated by Eric Carle
                                         Philomel Books/Penguin
                         Young Readers Group, 1969 and 1987
           accessed on Libby (read by the author) 3/15/26
   
    Mom taught us that breakfast was the most important meal of the day. She was a big believer in the power of milk, too. We always had a glass of milk for breakfast. Sometimes it went with cereal (hot or cold). Sometimes we had it with toast. And a glass of milk by itself still counted as breakfast.
    I did not like milk. I still don’t.
    Mom was a good baker, too, and we almost always had cookies, cake, or pie in the pantry. If getting down that glass in the morning was problematic, Mom was okay if we chased it with a piece of cake or a couple of cookies. 
    The Dairy Council would approve, but we all know now that good nutrition is a big picture item. Each peach, pepper, and pot of pasta works together.
    Nutrition is science. At its most basic level, nutrition is the study of available nutrients in the food we eat and how our bodies process them so we can function.
    Research shows that proper nutrition reduces the risk for developing diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. Good nutrition aides our bodies’ recovery process after an illness, surgery, or injury. Ongoing studies are being conducted by experts to explore what influence nutrition may have on our mental health. 
    Every five years since 1980, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services update and release the Dietary Guidelines For Americans.
    The Guidelines provide recommendations to help us make healthy food choices. It’s also used by local public and federally funded health programs. They influences and impact school meals, Meals on Wheels, military and veteran food services as well as the supplemental food programs WIC (Women Infants and Children), and SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program).
    Say what you will about the Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and his (scary) stance on vaccines, including firing and replacing its 17-member advisory committee, his (short-sighted) funding-cuts to research, including the termination of contracts to develop vaccines using mRNA technology, and his (dangerous) support of raw, in other words, unpasteurized, milk, he has used his brand, MAHA (Make America Healthy Again), “to wage war on ultra-processed foods, pressure companies to phase out artificial food dyes, criticize fluoride in drinking water and push to ban junk food from the program that subsidizes grocery store runs for low-income Americans.” (PBS Newshour, 1/2/26)
    One of his first promises included his interest in how new foods come to market. Kennedy’s stance on removing or at least reducing foods containing GRAS (Generally Regarded As Safe), as defined by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), is maybe the only place where we agree. 
    Directly from FDA.gov, “any substance that is intentionally added to food…is subject to premarket review and approval by FDA, UNLESS (emphasis is mine) the substance is generally recognized, among qualified experts, as having been adequately shown to be safe under the conditions of its intended use, OR UNLESS (emphasis is mine) the use of the substance is otherwise excepted from the definition of a food                 additive.”
    So, GRAS should be a term we trust. Expert scientists have looked for, tested, and deemed our food supply safe. 
    But is it really? That’s what Kennedy, Jr. is looking into. He claims foods, especially those labeled as “Ultra-Processed,” are enjoying a loophole in the GRAS regulations. You can find the address (web and street) that accepts public comments on its FAQs page.
    According to John Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, “Ultra-processed foods have one or more ingredients that wouldn’t be found in a kitchen, like chemical-based preservatives, emulsifiers like hydrogenated oils, sweeteners like high fructose corn syrup, and artificial colors and flavors. [They] undergo processing techniques like pre-frying, molding, extrusion, fractioning, and other chemical alterations that leave the final products bearing almost no resemblance to the original ingredients.”
    UPFs (Ultra Processed Foods) are ubiquitous. 
    According to Julia Wolfson, PhD and associate professor in International Health, “[UPFs dominate our food systems…[M]ost of the foods and beverages lining the shelves are ultra-processed.”
    Nova, an interesting study from Brazil done in the late 2000s, classifies food into four categories. It’s used all over the world to determine a food’s nutrient content and its potential influence on “the risk of obesity and other diet-related diseases.”
    Nova’s four categories include

• Unprocessed/minimally processed (fruit, vegetables, milk, fish)
• Processed culinary ingredients (salt, sugar, olive oil, butter)
• Processed foods (jam, pickles, canned fruit)
• Ultra-processed (energy drinks, instant oatmeal, sliced bread, hot dogs)

    UPFs undergo processing techniques that render the final products so different from the original, that they bear almost no resemblance. Wolfson says, [t]he processes and ingredients make these foods hyperpalatable, …designed to be exceptionally appealing to the human palate—and can be addictive. [The particular] combination of … sugar, fat, and salt … stimulate the brain’s reward system, making it hard to stop eating them.”
    But some UPFs like prepackaged whole grain bread, yogurt, soy milk, and baked beans can be part of a healthy diet while others are junk food.
    Read the labels. Balance is the key.
    When RFK, Jr. called out Starbucks and Dunkin’ a couple of weeks ago for their high-sugar coffee drinks, he was calling attention to his campaign against UPFs, especially those with added sugar. He claims he doesn’t want to ban these (and other) unhealthy drinks and foods, but wants to call the public’s attention to what we are consuming.
    We can all make better decisions when we have facts to consider and alternatives to choose from.  
    I drink my coffee black. No added sugar, but no milk (skim or otherwise) either.
                           -—Be curious! (and eat more carrots)

I’m reading King and the Fireflies, by Karen Callender (Scholastic Press, 2020), a coming of age story about a 12-year-old boy who is looking for his place in a world after his older brother died when he experienced a heart-attack during a soccer match. 2021 Coretta Scott King Honor and winner of the 2020 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. Recommended.