Shari Della Penna

t’s a Super, Blood, Wolf Moon

1/15/2019

It was Kitten’s first full moon.
When she saw it, she thought,
There’s a little bowl of milk in the sky.
And she wanted it.
So she chased it--
Down the sidewalk,
   through the garden,
       past the field,
           and by the pond.
But Kitten never seemed to get closer.
Poor Kitten!
from Kitten’s First Full Moon
written and illustrated by Kevin Henkes
HarperCollins/Greenwillow, 2004
Caldecott Award Winner

Total Lunar eclipses are not that rare. They’re visible from a particular place on Earth every year or two. I haven’t seen one yet. It’s hard for me to stay up late enough.
   Maybe this Sunday night (January 20) will be the night. I’ll set my alarm clock in case I accidentally fall asleep. The eclipse will begin at 10:33 p.m. Totality starts at 11:41 and will last until 12:43. The last partial phase will last until 1:50 a.m. on Monday morning. I probably won’t stay up for that! (Those times work in the Eastern United States. If you will be somewhere else, check here: https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/ and type in your location.)
   This will be a super moon. Its orbit will bring it closest to Earth making it appear very large.
   It will also be a blood moon. It will appear reddish as the Earth’s shadow comes between the sun and the full moon.
   And it will be a wolf moon, the first full moon in January. (Each month has its own full-moon name. https://www.farmersalmanac.com/full-moon-names
   Lunar lore and lunar legends abound from the scary (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is probably the most famous) to the sublime (Cerridwen is the Celtic keeper of the Cauldron of Knowledge and Inspiration).
   A lunar calendar is the timekeeping method of choice for many traditions including Judaism and some Asian cultures.
   The twelve months in the Jewish calendar are 29 or 30 days long. They each begin at the new moon. To correct to the 365/366 solar calendar, so holidays come at the right time of the year, an extra month is added according to a complicated formula. That’s why holidays are sometimes early or late. (Easter follows the lunar cycle.)
   Chinese New Year will be ushered in on February 5th this year, the Year of the Pig. Henry Ford, Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Hilary Clinton are (were) all Pigs.
   According to https://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/chinese-zodiac/pig.htm, Pigs are diligent, compassionate, and generous. They are goal-setters and goal keepers. They have a great sense of responsibility to finish what they are engaged in.
   You can find your Chinese Zodiac sign by looking at the graphic on the placemat at your favorite Chinese restaurant. According to that, my husband (Dog) and I (Dragon) are not particularly compatible. We sometimes bring out the worst in each other. But after over 34 years, that’s bound to happen! Sometimes.
   Now the problem is what to do for the hour of totality Sunday night/Monday morning. Thoughtful introspection comes to mind, but I’ll be tired and I’m a little realistic. I’ll start out thinking about the Cauldron of Knowledge and Inspiration. And see how long it takes before all that thinking and watching leads me back to bed.
-—stay curious! (and rested)

I’m almost finished with The Clock Maker’s Daughter by Kate Morton. It is part historical fiction, part mystery, and part ghost story. I like it a lot, but it’s slow going for me. More next week.

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Bully, Bully

1/8/2019

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. . . Calvin is quiet. I ask him why. He says he is thinking.
About Matt Drinker.
   I say, “And Lance too? After what he did? Knocking
away the charcoal can?”
   Calvin says, “No, not so much that. I can defend myself.
I have a voice. But what Matt Drinker did to his dog, that’s
different. It is disturbing.”
   Tell you what. Disturbing is a word that goes way inside.
Close to my bones.
   from The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle
   by Leslie Connor
      Katherine Tegen Books/ HarperCollinsPublishers, 2018
   I had a bike when I was young, like most of the kids in the neighborhood. It was not new, and I spent several hours de-rusting the chrome handlebars. I painted the fenders bright yellow. My mom helped me cover the seat with red and yellow flowered contact paper. Streamers flowed from the handlebars. It was a Cadillac.
    I liked to ride my bicycle around the neighborhood. I rode to the swimming pool, the school playground, and sometimes I did errands for my mom. We had a Lawson’s nearby. Most of the time I walked there, but sometimes I rode. I had a basket. I never rode home with milk, though. It came in glass jugs.
   A young bully lived around the corner from me. We were the same age, but he was small with a big mouth. Maybe he liked picking on the other kids or maybe it was just something he did. His name was Sammy. Maybe he got nicer when he grew up. I kinda doubt it, though.
   On a beautiful summer day, I was riding around my block. My street ran a little down hill. If I rode from the top of my street toward my house, I could go pretty fast. I had just made the turn when Sammy came plowing out from the other direction. And wham. He crashed into me and I went down. My head cracked against a tree before I hit the sidewalk.
   Of course I cried. I was eight.
   Of course he mocked me for falling and crying. He was a bully.
   Not only did I get a bloody knee, I chipped my front tooth when my head hit the tree.
   To say my folks were upset is like saying Hurricane Irma was a shower. I’m not sure I have a word for how they were. Angry doesn’t get close. My dad was still at work, but the second he got home, my mom and dad marched me over to Sammy’s house. Let’s just say I did not want to go. At. All.
   They rang the doorbell and a barrel-shaped man answered. He was wearing a sleeveless undershirt and long pants. He was holding his belt. His apron-clad wife was stirring something at the stove.
   And there was Sammy. Under the kitchen table. Crying. Oh my. I never saw such a thing.
   My irate dad yelled something unflattering about the way Sammy was being raised. My mom sized up the situation in a heartbeat and asked Sammy’s parents to pay the dentist bill, which I’m pretty sure they did.
   The dentist reassured my parents and me. I did not lose my tooth.
  And I learned something that day.
   Even bullies cry.
   And I’m pretty sure bullies don’t like themselves. How can they?
   A couple of things motivate a bully. It is a heady experience for a bully when he (she) can boss people around and knock them down. Even, maybe especially, if the people getting bossed are vulnerable and weak.
   Also, it’s hard for a bully to admit he (she) has done something wrong, or made a mistake, or used poor judgement.
   Bullies need henchmen, too. Bullies surround themselves with people who can be cowed.
   Is it really easier to dig in and shout louder and louder, “It’s not my fault”? or make up lies about 3,000 plus bad, scary, dangerous people trying to attack us? So we need a wall?
   Telling the truth is hard, sometimes. Being kind doesn’t have to be.
   What people need, vulnerable and otherwise, is to be protected from bullies.
I’m kinda done being afraid. At least about that.
Stay curious! (and courageous)

BTW: I really liked Night of Miracles by Elizabeth Berg. I’m glad she gave us some more time with Lucille. I also enjoyed meeting the new arrivals to her town, Mason MO. The Story of Arthur Truluv was my favorite of the two, but Ms. Berg is a genius at showing us the importance of friendships and how even a small, kind act can change someone’s world.

I’m reading The Clockmaker’s Daughter by Kate Morton. I’m about halfway through and recommend it, so far!

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FOCUS: My 2019 Word of the Year

1/1/2019

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“I can hold up the cup
And the milk and the cake!
I can hold up these books!
And the fish on a rake!
I can hold the toy ship
And a little toy man!
And look! With my tail
I can hold a red fan!
I can fan with the fan
As I hop on the ball!
But that is not all.
Oh, no. That is not all. . . .”
from The Cat in the Hat
written and illustrated by Dr. Seuss
Random House, 1957

I used to think multi-tasking was the way to go. I tried to be like the Cat, holding onto many diverse objects and many diverse ideas until, like the Cat, it all came crashing down. And we have to assume that the Cat felt focused. After all, look how much he was doing!
   Then I read about how multi-tasking is just wishful thinking and that new brain research proves no one can do more than one thing at a time, and do them all well. What our brains really do is switch tasks, nanosecond by nanosecond. We hardly notice our production of tasks is actually slowed down. Some say up to 40%!
   According to VeryWellMind.com and other articles, (I Googled “multitasking”) what we are really doing is shifting our attention, our focus, from one task to the next and the next and then maybe back again. This nano-second switching makes it difficult to tune out distractions and causes us to lose focus. It can even cause mental blocks that slow us down and cause mistakes.
   Generally, our brains can handle two automatic jobs at a time, like walking and chewing gum. But a third element can create a disaster. Here’s my example. I used a flip-phone for a really long time. The day after I bought my first smart phone, I ran into an old friend at the library. We chatted, and chatted, and . . . well, time got away from me. I glanced at my watch (yes, I wear a watch and do not depend on my phone to tell me the time) and noticed it was 10:00. I was supposed to be at a meeting at 10:00, and I was still at the library without my car. I walked there, but needed to drive to my meeting.
   On the way home, I remembered that I could text with my new phone. (I could also text with my flip-phone, but it was cumbersome to tap each number enough times to get to each correct letter to spell out words.) So I turned on my phone as I was coming out of a curve, crossing a not-busy road on my way home. I may have also been chewing gum. I know I didn’t trip, but I think looking out for cars and then looking down into my new phone, made me a little dizzy. I had planned to text one of the others to say I’d be late.
   I lost my balance.
   I went down.
   So. There I was with a scraped knee, scraped elbow, broken (completely, I found out later) one-day-old phone and wounded pride. But I laughed. After all, even I could see, it *was* pretty funny!
   And I got to my meeting. And I was only 45 minutes late.
   I admit it may not have been my epic failure at multitasking that made me late to my meeting and broke my phone and scraped my appendages. I had lost track of time, which made me want to hurry. I admit that.
   But here’s the thing. I had lost my focus. I don’t like to admit how often that happens. It takes a massive amount of concentration sometimes, for me to stay on task. I tend to move from one thing to another, often. Sometimes it takes two days to fold laundry or empty the dishwasher. Not because the job is so big, but because a phone call distracts me or I notice it is time to make dinner or I remember I need to mail a letter. I forget about the task I had started until, well, until I remember.
   So this year’s word of the year is FOCUS. It will involve some degree of planning, since I’m not very practiced at that. It will involve list-making, which I’m pretty good at. And probably most of all it will involve discipline.
   Here’s to arranging my priorities, finishing what I begin, and the focus I need to do one thing at a time. One day at a time.
   All the best to everyone in 2019! And as always, thanks for listening!
-—stay curious! (and focused!)

I just started reading Night of Miracles by Elizabeth Berg. It picks up where her last book (The Story of Arthur Truluv) left us. So far, I love it. More next time.

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Promises, Promises

12/25/2018

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“What’s a promise?” Baby Bear asked as they sat in the sun, drying off.
   “A promise is when you say you will do something,” answered Mother Bear,” and then do your very best to do it.”
   “But what if you don’t do it?” asked Baby Bear.
   “Then it becomes a broken promise.”
   “Can you fix it?” asked Baby Bear.
“Not easily,” said his mother. “That’s why it’s so important to keep it.”
from I Promise
   written and illustrated by David McPhail
     Little, Brown and Company, 2017

One time, long ago, I made a promise I could not keep. I had no business making the promise in the first place. Life happened, and I had to break the promise. It is one of my regrets.
   It was a well-intentioned promise to my children.
I’ve since tried to teach them the importance of keeping their word. Of doing what they say they will do, the importance of carrying through. Honesty is a value I hold high. I strive for kindness. I try to keep my temper in check. But no one is perfect, and sometimes (many times) I fall short of the ideals I hold myself to.
   My family was a family of immigrants. My gram and both grandmas, and both grandpas fled the countries of their birth. They traveled for many, many days in deplorable conditions. I don’t know what kind of documentation they needed or how they got it. They entered the United States through Ellis Island and Baltimore at a time when a flood of immigrants from all over Europe and eastern Europe were seeking safe places to live and opportunities to provide for their families.
The world is big and bad things can happen, even to good people.
   My grandparents lived the American Dream. They came to this country partly to ensure safety for themselves and their families and partly for the opportunity to provide food, clothing, and shelter.
   Lucky for me, they found all of that. And more. They found friendship in the communities where they settled. Most new friends were people fleeing from the same countries for the same reasons, looking for the same things. They learned English, figured out how to buy groceries, and build businesses.
   They left the horrors of their past behind. At least, they never spoke of them to me. When I asked my grandpa to teach me some Russian words, he said, “nyet,” claiming that was the only word he remembered. Gram told me the same thing. She wondered why I even wanted to know.
   And now in this wonderful land of opportunity and safe haven, immigrants fleeing from horrors I dread to imagine are being questioned about their honesty. Questioned about their need for asylum after traveling for weeks. A young father and his daughter detained for too long, babies (and older kids, too) kept away from their parents or sent to live hundreds of miles away without being able to communicate with each other. Fear of the known compounded by fear of the unknown, what they left and what they will find.
   Maybe Dionne Warwick sang it best, “What the world needs now is love, sweet love.”
   Maybe it was Emma Lazarus. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
   Sometimes someone makes a promise that should not have been made. Sometimes unintended consequences and bad outcomes are the result. Sometimes that feeds fear and foments hatred. Sometimes in our overzealous need to keep ourselves safe, someone promises a wall when what we really need is a bridge.
-—stay curious! (and make thoughtful promises)

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Bottles, Bags, and Straws! Oh My!

12/18/2018

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   Pushing the bags aside, Ixchel gathered branches and sticks. Some of the sticks were long and some were short. She carried the sticks and branches home, then tied them together.
   “What are you doing?” A neighbor asked.
   “Making a loom,” Ixchel answered.
   Her mother smiled. “But, Ixchel,” she said, “we don’t have any extra thread.”
   “I know, Mama,” she answered. “I won’t take any.”
     from Rainbow Weaver (Tejedora del Arcoiris)
  story by Linda Elovitz Marshall
illustrations by Elisa Chavarri
(written in Spanish and English and translated by Eida de la Vaga)
Children’s Book Press/Lee & Low Books, 2016

Bags, and Bottles, and Straws! Oh My!
I like to play a game when I go to the grocery store. I try to get what I need without buying plastic. Today I thought I’d win, but no such luck. I mostly stayed in the produce department, except for a couple of canned goods and eggs, so I thought I had it made. Can you believe it? The cauliflower is now cut up into florets and packaged in plastic. My other choice was an organic head. Both were the same price, and the organic head of cauliflower was wrapped in plastic. I caved to convenience and bought the bagged florets.
   Milk used to come in bottles. We paid a deposit on them when we bought milk, then got credit when we returned the (unbroken) bottles. They went through a strerilization process and were refilled and sold again. I think it’s called a closed system. Pop (soda) worked the same way.
   Peanut butter, mayonnaise, shampoo…all packaged and sold in glass bottles or jars. So when plastic containers hit the market in the 1970s and 80s, we broke and cleaned up a lot less, but filled up trashcans and landfills a lot faster.
   And what about water bottles? Water has been purchased in single-serving bottles since the mid-1950s, but really became popular in the 1990s. Plastic bottles take about 400 years to decompose naturally. I found an interesting and disturbing article in a recent Forbes Magazine. https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2017/07/26/million-plastic-bottles-minute-91-not-recycled/#7b5db818292c
Some highlights:

Globally, humans buy one million plastic bottles per minute. The US share works out to about 200 billion per year.

91% of all plastic is not recycled, even though it is easy to do so. (think side of the road, trashcans)
By 2050, the world’s oceans will contain more plastic by weight than fish; and it takes a lot of plastic to weigh as much as a fish. (In 2050, my grandkids will be younger than I am now.)
The energy equivalent of nearly 17 million barrels of oil are required to produce PET, the plastic used for single-use bottles. https://phys.org/news/2009-03-energy-bottle.html#jCp

And what about those single-use plastic grocery bags? Worldwide, a trillion single-use plastic bags are used each year, nearly 2 million each minute.
The amount of energy required to make 12 plastic shopping bags could drive a car for a mile. http://www.earthpolicy.org/images/uploads/press_room/Plastic_Bags.pdf
But the news is not all bad.
Here’s good news from earth-policy.org

At least 16 African countries have announced bans on certain types of plastic bags.
Many European countries tax plastic bags or ban free distribution.
Over 150 U.S. cities and counties ban or require fees for plastic bags, including Washington DC.
But, the plastics industry has spent millions of dollars to challenge plastic bag ordinances.

As recently as this past weekend, Chile announced it will ban the commercial use of plastic bags.
   But I can not leave the subject without mentioning plastic straws. I first became aware there even was a problem with straws only a couple of years ago. A friend of mine spoke up in a restaurant and asked *not* to be brought a straw. How odd, I thought. Then I started really thinking and looking and learning.
   According to the National Park Service, 500 million plastic straws are used every day in the US. That’s enough to circle the Earth twice! Every day! (But, really, they mostly end up in the ocean.)
   So what do we do?
Here are a few thoughts:
   Try one new way to reduce the amount of plastic in your life.
       Use reusable grocery bags.
       Stop buying bottled water. Or buy less.
       Bring your own coffee mug to the coffee shop.
       Ask for no straws. It only feels awkward the first few times,
    really.
       Shop in bulk when you can, to avoid extra packaging.
       Buy clothes at a consignment shop or a thrift store. People get
rid of some really good stuff.
Consider shopping at Mayan Hands, the organization from
   Guatemala I spoke of in the quote at the beginning of this post.
  https://www.mayanhands.org/collections/recycled-and-eco-friendly
Spread the word. We really are suffocating Mother Nature. No
    one can breathe through plastic.

-—stay curious! (and reduce, reuse, repair [that one’s mine!],
and recycle!
I just finished reading Unsheltered, by Barbara Kingsolver. It is about two families living in the same place 200 years apart. I felt like I was looking through a lens to the future when I was in the 1800, and then, I felt like the past was super-imposed on the now when I came back to the present time. Besides all that, it was Barbara Kingsolver at her best. Enjoy!

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Who’s Afraid of the Dark?

12/11/2018

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You might be afraid of the dark, but the dark is not afraid of you. That’s why the dark is always close by.

The dark peeks around the corner and waits behind the door, and you can see the dark up in the sky almost every night, gazing down at you as you gaze up at the stars.
from The Dark
written by Lemony Snicket
illustrated by Jon Klassen
Little Brown and Company, 2013

This time of year, the dark really is all around. Here in northern Ohio, daylight hours are short. This week only a little over 9 hours, and on the wane as we approach the Winter Solstice on December 21.
   Not too surprising, then, that festivals and feasts around this time of year revolve around light. Christmas lights immediately come to mind. Neighborhoods and public places are ablaze, some with restraint, and some with reckless abandon. A few streets away from me, a whole block of neighbors have their displays set to a radio station. You can tune in as you drive by, your heater on and windows closed. Each house is an extravagantly lit. Stars balance on rooftops, reindeer prance across lawns, and glass icicles drip from eaves and dormers. City police post temporary signs warning drivers not to stop. It would create a traffic jam on the small side street.
   My Chanukah menorah holds eight candles all in a row (plus one that serves to light each of the others, sharing and increasing the glow). I light one on the first night of the holiday and one more each night until the whole cheerful row lights up the room. Once in a while one curious cat or another gets too close and singes a whisker or two. That doesn’t happen very often, though.
   No one I know has shared their Kwanzaa celebration with me. I learned a little about it when I was working. I know the candles in the Kinara symbolize different principles of a good life including creativity, unity, and faith. Kwanzaa is a cultural, not religious, holiday. It begins the day after Christmas and ends on January 1.
   The Scandinavian Feast of Juul is a preChristian holiday in honor of Thor, god of the sun. A log was lit, the fire a symbol of warmth and the certainty that the sun would return. Yule logs are probably a carryover.
   Then there’s the whole contrast of light and darkness. Remember when you could tell the good guys from the bad guys in the old westerns? Their hats gave them away. Hollywood color-coded their motives and our fears.
   Maybe it's not the dark we are really afraid of. Maybe we really have a more general fear of the unknown, what we can’t see or understand.
   Lazlo, the main character in today’s quote, was not afraid of the dark. He went head-on to meet it on its own terms and discovered it wasn’t so scary after all. He is courageous, not foolhardy. Brave, with a drop of skepticism. Practical, with a touch of wonder.
   Like a good journalist or detective or public investigator, he lights up dark corners with knowledge, facts, and experience. He carries a flashlight into the dark.
   What he discovers will not be scary.
-—stay curious! (and unafraid)

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It’s All About Potential

12/4/2018

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“We want Julius to grow up to as extraordinary as you. So we must tell him constantly how beautiful he is and how much we love him.”
. . .
   “We want Julius to grow up to be as clever as you. So we must sing to him his numbers and letters whenever possible.”
from Julius, Baby of the World
written and illustrated by Kevin Henkes
Greenwillow Books, 1990

   Back when I was having my babies, the world seemed simpler. Most tiny clothes for newborns were yellow or green. Why would you outfit a nursery in pink only to discover nine months later, that it should have been done up in blue? Now it’s okay for boys to have pink and girls to have blue, sorta. Anyway we’re moving in that direction, I think. But all those years ago, it was pretty chancy to buy blue or pink before the baby arrived.
   Then sonograms became routine and took the guesswork out of many aspects of pregnancy. But really, maybe we’ll get back to how our society may (or may not) have discovered a sliding gender scale another time.
   Right now, I’m trying to sort out my feelings about He Jiankui’s bombshell announcement that he successfully helped make the first gene-edited baby.
   I learned about DNA in high school. Francis Crick and James Watson based their discovery of the double helix on work done by Rosalind Franklin, one of their colleagues whose x-ray images revealed the shape of the helix. And in 1962, Crick and Watson along with Maurice Wilkins won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering how DNA transfers information from cell to cell. And what of Rosalind Franklin and her work? Well, she was a woman in a man’s world in the 1950s.
   In 1990, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Department of Energy joined with the international community to identify the estimated 30,000 genes in human DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) and to figure out the sequences of their chemical bases. They wanted a map of the complete set of DNA in the human body. This concerted, public effort was the Human Genome Project.
   In April 2003, researchers celebrated their successful completion, under budget and more than two years ahead of schedule. According to the NIH, the information is used to treat, cure, or even prevent diseases and afflictions. Genes for as many as 1,800 diseases have been discovered so far. https://report.nih.gov/nihfactsheets/ViewFactSheet.aspx?csid=45
   Last Tuesday, the day before it began, (11/27/18) He Jiankui revealed the results of his experiment to the organizers of The Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing.
   One girl in a set of twin girls, He said, were born last month with the ability to resist possible future infection with HIV, the AIDS virus. To me, just identifying, locating, and working on something so impossibly small and delicate is beyond amazing.
The announcement from China of a genetically modified baby rocked, shocked, stupefied, stunned, and astonished the medical and scientific communities.
   The purpose of the Summit was to discuss everything from the physiological and scientific workings of genes to the ethics and morality of what it means to be human.
   While on the surface He's experiment might seem like a good idea, a step forward in the eradication of a deadly disease, what is still unknown is what happens to that gene and the ones communicating with it during its lifespan? No one knows. For now, I’m content to take control of my health through exercise and nutritious food (when I can identify it as such). And trust the scientists will figure out the ethics. I’m pretty ecstatic that they all were mostly horrified.
   The first time I saw each of my baby daughters, I looked into their eyes for a long moment. I wished them happiness, good health, and the determination to reach their potentials. I also did not want them to be fat, but that wish started way before they were born.
   Just as Julius’s parents nurture him to help him reach his best self, Mother Nature is also at work in determining how we all turn out. I know that. AIDS is a deadly disease, I know that, too. In a contest of wills, though, human against Nature, it is usually (maybe even necessarily) Mother Nature that wins.
-—stay curious! (and lean in)

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Hail Caesar. . .Salad!

11/27/2018

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But Peter, who was very naughty, ran straight away to Mr. McGregor’s garden, and squeezed under the gate!
First he ate some lettuces and some French beans; and then he ate some radishes;
from The Tale of Peter Rabbit
written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter
Originally published by Frederick Warne, 1902

One of my favorite foods is salad, the more veggies the better. I like all kinds of lettuce, too, except radicchio. And who even heard of arugula until a few years ago?
   Like Mr. McGregor, Farmer Brown (Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type), and Mr. McGreeley (Muncha, Muncha, Muncha), I put out some vegetables in the spring. My garden is the “instant” variety. I don’t start from seeds. I don’t grow very much either, not enough to share with friends and neighbors, and certainly not enough to sell. When I run out of my small crop, I like to buy local when I can.
   I compost during the year, and enrich my garden soil with transformed kitchen scraps. Although I’m sure I am not increasing my yield, I feel good about the ultimate recycling project. Just trim carrot tops and peel potatoes into a small snap-lidded bucket. Add onion skins, parsley stems, peanut shells, whatever, and empty it once in a while into the bin near the back door. Mother Nature waves her magic wand and after some sun and warm weather, voila: nutrient-rich soil!
   Corporate Farming usually comes with a load of negative connotations. And the largest corporate farm in the world is not even a farm, it is a pharmaceutical company. Farm . . . Pharm, hmmm… Bayer bought Monsanto last April (2018) for $66 billion. (Part of the deal included a combined sell-off of $9 billion worth of assets to preserve competition.) Generally, even if a big corporate farm is owned by a family, the view from the top can get skewed by the bottom line. Big Corporate Farms need to make lots of money to sustain themselves.
   Farms owned by companies, because of their great size and vast wealth, hold great sway in the market place and in politics. They “influence agricultural education, research, and public policy through funding initiatives and lobbying efforts.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_farming
   Family Farming, sustainable agriculture, and the local food movement are seen in a much better light. I like to believe that most family farms look to the long view. After all, it takes a whole season to get from kernel to ear. And from seedling to stalk. Several years to get from pit to peach, orange, or pecan. And generations to grow a business.
   The success or failure of a farm be it large or small, owned by a gigantic corporation or by a family who chose to incorporate as a small business, depends on uncontrollable variables.
   Who knows what the weather will bring? Even though day by day predictions are getting eerily accurate, we’re talking about a whole growing season, months and months. Local and global prices fluctuate. I don’t know what that depends on. Consumer demand is drummed up or down by marketing and convenience.
   And here we are, back to the lettuces growing in rows and rows, soaking up sun and sucking up nutrients and, well, other stuff. According to the scientists at Purdue University, active e. coli bacteria can thrive in soil around plants. Once it attaches to the plant, say Romaine lettuce, it can live there for about 40 days. So the solution to food-borne e. coli transmitted to people eating contaminated lettuce (or any other veggie) seems simple: a little patience. Wait at least 40 days before harvesting your Romaine. It sounds simple, but that long row of lettuce might not have been planted at the same time. And what about the stray dog, or cows and pigs meandering into a corn or lettuce field? And what about the machine (or person) picking the crop? What was the last thing those wheels (hands) rolled through?
   Growing food is a tricky business. I choose to thank farmers, not blame them. (We’ll save those massive corporate farms for another time.) As of yesterday, the only leafy greens at my grocery store were spinach, kale, and leaf lettuce.
   So, while the Caesar salad, may be a delicious memory for now, I’m adding kale and spinach to my red leaf lettuce. For me it’s the tomatoes, cukes, and yellow peppers that make the salad anyway.
-—stay curious (and try something new!)

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A Drop in the Bucket

11/20/2018

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I am Princes Gie Gie.
My Kingdom . . .
the African sky, so wide and so close.
I can almost touch the sharp edges of the stars.
I can tame the wild dogs with my song.
I can make the tall grass sway when I dance.
I can make the wind play hide-and-seek.
But I cannot make the water come closer.
I cannot make the water run clearer.
No matter what I command.
from The Water Princess
written by Susan Verde
illustrated by Peter H. Reynolds
G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2016

I turn on the tap and water comes out. Every time. Hot and cold. I shower, water my plants, give some to my cats, wash my dishes and clothes, make coffee, brush my teeth, steam my vegetables—whenever I want to.
   Last week I was lucky enough to hear Sivan Ya’ari, founder and CEO of Innovation: Africa, tell about her work. Life is full of serendipity. Or like some say, surprising co-incidence. That’s how Sivan explains it, anyway.
   When she was looking for her first job, someone suggested talking “to that man over there.” He was looking for someone to work for him, but he told Sivan her English was not good enough. She asked about French, because she lived in France for most of her growing-up years. She had come back to Israel, where she was born, to volunteer in the Army.
   She was talking to the owner of Jordache jeans and French turned out to be just fine. He sent her to Madagascar to oversee quality control for jeans being shipped to the United States.
   That’s how Sivan got to Africa and found poverty. African poverty. The people, children especially, were in poor health. They had no shoes, no food, no medicine. Sivan investigated. She quickly found out that there was no electricity in the small, remote villages. No refrigeration to keep medicine fresh.
   Solar energy was being developed in Israel as soon as the country was born. Harnessing the energy of the sun seemed a practical solution to the tension surrounding oil in that part of the world. By 1953, the five-year-old country was producing solar water heaters. By the early 1990s, 90% of homes were using them, saving millions of barrels of oil every year. And the solar panels Israel is producing now are efficient and affordable.
   Sivan asked why the children were not going to school. The nurse at the medical center told her they were too weak. They were sick. Medicine was not available.
   So Sivan went home, raised a little money for a solar panel and installed it on the medical center for lights and refrigeration. Now medicine was available. But still, the children were not in school. They had to spend too much time looking for water. And the water they found was not clean, or plentiful. Since Sivan made electricity available, she wanted to build a pump house, powered with a couple more solar panels, to bring up the water lying under the feet of every thirsty African person.
   It is extraordinary to see people discover running water for the first time.
   Sivan’s non-profit works with the governments of many African countries to discover which villages need the most help. That is where Innovation: Africa goes.
   Local people do the building and the work to keep the water and electricity flowing, everything from maintaining the building and the grid to changing the lightbulbs. And the children go to school.
   Israeli technology provides drip irrigation to grow more crops with less water.
   People in the villages are healthier, more educated, and financially independent. Sivan says she has learned three things.
       Sometimes good is not good enough.
       It doesn’t take much to help people. Only recognizing a problem
and looking for a solution.
       The cause of a problem can be its solution. In remote villages in
      Africa, the sun is now working for the people instead
      of causing drought.
You can find more information about Innovation: Africa and Sivan’s TEDx talk here: https://www.innoafrica.org/team.html
-—stay curious! (and grateful)

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Aww. . . Shoot!

11/13/2018

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Not all the Americans had rifles—although a good many did—and of the ones who had rifles not one in a thousand shot as sweet as Byam’s. But they were all, almost to a man, accustomed to living with a gun and their weapons were staggeringly more accurate than those of the British. In fact many of the British soldiers thought there was something unnatural about it, some strange and savage thing that allowed Americans to hit so well.
from: The Rifle
by Gary Paulsen
Harcourt Inc., 1995

   Gary Paulsen’s account (in the quote above) of the normalcy of gun ownership goes back to the Revolutionary War. Americans have owned guns before that war and since then. My concern is not about gun ownership, per se. It is not about one interpretation of the Second Amendment to our Constitution or another. My concern is more about keeping all of us, including children, maybe especially children, safe.
   Before the 1970s, mass shootings were rare. We can all recall many of those that have taken place since. Looking over reports of these crimes, those ending in suicide and those ending in capture of the gunman, (not always one person, and certainly not always a man, young or old) it seems to me that we *can’t* just say the person with the gun is a wackadoodle or nutcase or any other derogatory word for a mentally unwell person that comes to mind. After all, who could pull a trigger with the intention of killing someone (or many someones) but someone who is thinking and acting irrationally?
   My concern is also not about whether a shooter is rehabilitatable or not. That is most definitely a subject for another time. My concern is more about prevention than anything else. And like most important issues, the answers are both simple and complex.
   Accidents happen. Once I stepped on a pin I was using to sew a dress for my daughter. I ended up in the ER for a tetanus shot to stop a small infection creeping up my leg in a most ugly and painful way. Kids fall out of trees they climb and break limbs (the tree's and their own). A car moves into your blind spot and suddenly sirens and insurance companies are involved.
   A kid finds a gun on the top shelf of a closet and is curious. Bang! No one knew it was loaded. His friend is dead.
   Accidents by their very definition are unplanned. Sometimes even unavoidable.
   Some states have taken that matter into their own hands.Twenty-seven states and DC have Child Access Prevention laws. CAP laws take a variety of forms. You can find a description here: https://lawcenter.giffords.org/gun-laws/policy-areas/child-consumer-safety/child-access-prevention/
Sometimes the shooting is intentional. Some states have taken up that matter, too.

Nineteen states and Washington, DC, require background checks for at least some private gun sales.
Twelve states and Washington, DC have laws that require gun-buyers to apply for permits or licenses.
Some states require would-be handgun-buyers to pass safety training.
A study conducted in 2015 found that 75% of Americans (and nearly 60% of gun-owners) support licensing laws. Almost everyone wants broad background checks.

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/03/22/what-works-to-reduce-gun-deaths
   But we need to do more. Right now we have a patchwork of state laws that sometimes reciprocate from one state to another, and sometimes do not. Seems to me that federal law(s) would be more efficient, less confusing, and more enforceable than requiring the states to continue going it alone.
   Sometimes shootings are motivated by fear and hate, or by fear or hate. Sometimes there seems to be no reason but a person’s tenuous hold on reality. Maybe the fuel is the unsettling feeling of not knowing what is real or true or factual. Maybe the fuel is violence in the media. Maybe it is unfocused anger. There are thousands (maybe millions) of maybes.
   We can not allow mass murder, especially when it is driven by fear and hate and a tenuous grip on what is real, to become our new national normal.
   I have joined Everytown for Gun Safety. In my small way, I’m working for peace and sanity. You can join, too. https://everytown.org

—stay curious (and involved!)

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"Live life as the work of art you are."
Abraham Joshua Heschl (1907-1972)
Rabbi, Humanitarian, Peace Activist

t’s a Super, Blood, Wolf Moon

Bully, Bully

FOCUS: My 2019 Word of the Year

Promises, Promises

Bottles, Bags, and Straws! Oh My!

Who’s Afraid of the Dark?

It’s All About Potential

Hail Caesar. . .Salad!

A Drop in the Bucket

Aww. . . Shoot!

I'm a children's writer and poet intent on observing the world and nurturing those I find in my small space .

Archives

"Live life as the work of art you are."Abraham Joshua Heschl (1907-1972)Rabbi, Humanitarian, Peace Activist​

I'm a children's writer and poet intent on observing the world and nurturing those I find in my small space .

Archives

"Live life as the work of art you are."
Abraham Joshua Heschl (1907-1972)
Rabbi, Humanitarian, Peace Activist