“I don’t understand it,” said Father. “Leopold’s birthday should be here, and it’s not.”
    Mother agreed. “The calendars can’t be wrong. They’re official.”
                         from Leopold’s Long Awaited Birthday
                                      written by Dawn Desjardins
                                     illustrated by C. E. Locander
                            Artistic Ventures Publications, 2008
   
    February 28th is a very special date every year. It’s the date I became a grandma! Of course we celebrate my grandson’s birthday, too, because he’s also very special. But if he had waited one more day… then again he was not born in a leap year.
    I’ve written about the Atomic Clock, the Doomsday Clock, Daylight Savings Time, Time Zones, and Circadian Rhythms. I surprised myself when I realized I haven’t tackled Leap Year, until now.
    I started wondering. When did it start? Who figured out we needed it? Do all calendars have leap years? I rolled up my sleeves, so to speak, to find out.
    Yesterday, National Public Radio (NPR) broadcast Rachel Treisman’s story from its affiliate in Oregon. She explained Leap Year and had me at the first sentence: “Nearly every four years, the Gregorian calendar—-which is used in the majority of countries around the world—gets an extra day: February 29.”
    Wait! What? NEARLY every four years? So I kept reading.
    Even though most people know that a year has 365-1/4 days, leap year is just a little more complicated than adding up those 1/4s every year till we have 4 and add one day. 
    Alexander Boxer wrote a whole book about how different civilizations used each other’s explanations to create different calendars, some more successful than others to come up with “[a] great undertaking of trying to understand time.”            
    At first, it was enough to know when the longest and shortest days were. Planting crops, harvesting them, and predicting weather patterns depended on that information.
    Julius Caesar introduced a calendar in 45 BCE, based on an Egyptian idea. Caesar added an extra day every year, over-estimating the solar year by about 11 minutes. By the 16th century holidays were out of whack. Easter wasn’t in the Spring anymore. Passover was, but I’m jumping ahead.
    Pope Gregory XIII presented the world with his fix: the Gregorian Calendar. He added a day in years that were divisible by four, unless it is also divisible by 100, except when the year is also divisible by 400! Yikes! Accordingly, 1900 was not a leap year, but 2000 was, and 2024 is.    
    Here’s a chart.
    Astronomers have since determined our Earth orbits the sun every 365.242190 days, so our year is just a tiny bit less than 365-1/4 days. We leap every fourth year, usually. There is still a margin of error of about 27 seconds per year. But one day in 3,236 years does not make my list of things to worry about.
    When Pope Gregory XIII created his calendar, he added two months and divided the year into 12 instead of the original ten. We’re still using his calendar.
    Most names come from ancient Greek or Latin. Some are named after gods, January for Janus, and March for Mars. July is named for Julius Caesar and fittingly August is for his successor, Augustus. Some, September through December are archaic forms of ordinal numbers.    
    The number of days per month reflects their importance to the Ancients. Note July and August have the most days and February, named for a month-long purification ceremony that took place at that time of the year, has the least.
    Since February was the shortest month, that’s where the leap day landed. 
    A week is 23% of a lunar cycle. Seven is an awkward amount of days, but has been a standard for almost 4000 years. Its use is traced back to a 2300 BCE decree of King Sargon I of Akkad. It was a spiritually important number for the king and his people. With their naked eyes, they observed seven celestial bodies: the Sun, the Moon, and five planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn).    
    The Gregorian calendar is not the only calendar used in modern times. The Hebrew calendar, the Islamic calendar, and the Chinese calendar are all based on the lunar cycles and begin each of their twelve months with a new moon.  
    Each month of the Hebrew calendar is 29 or 30 days long. To compensate for the shorter year, a leap month is added seven times during a 19-year cycle. This adjustment ensures the holidays fall during the same season each year. They are later or earlier compared to the Gregorian calendar depending on when in the 19-year cycle a leap month is added.
    Like the Hebrew calendar, the traditional Islamic calendar uses 29- and 30-day months. Without the use of mathematical mechanisms like leap days and leap months to synchronize the lunar calendar with the solar one, Muslim holidays occur earlier and earlier in each solar year. But a month is as long as a month is. Holidays occur in their appropriate month, no matter what the season. 
    Chinese New Year begins on the first new moon after the Winter Solstice. Like the Hebrew and Islamic calendars, the traditional Chinese calendar uses a twelve-month cycle of 29- or 30-day months and compensates by adding a whole month when needed to keep the months in their traditional seasons. 
    Other cultures use their own calendars, too. Bahá’ís, Ethiopians, Hindis, Persians, and Buddhists all have calendars. You can discover how they all work by clicking these links. 
    So, 2024 is Leap Year. We all have twenty-four extra hours. How will you celebrate Thursday’s precious gift?


I’m reading The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic Press, 2020). It’s the prequel to The Hunger Games. The stage is set for the 10th annual Games and tensions and emotions are high. Collins creates a seamless transition to what have become Young Adult classics. If you pick this one up, set aside plenty of time. It’s hard to put down.
                                         -—Be curious! (and mindful)

You’ll be sorta surprised what there is to be found
When you go beyond zebra and start poking around.
                                             from On Beyond Zebra
            written and illustrated by Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel)
                                                  Random House, 1955

    My older daughter is a special education teacher whose class is made of non-verbal students. They communicate in various ways. Some have adaptive devices on which they can point to or press a picture of their needs and wants. In Circle Time, they use basic weather pictures to tell each other what the day is like. She is also teaching them some basic words in American Sign Language.
    Nationsonline.org defines language as “a set of words and sounds used in a structured way and is communicated between people through speaking, writing, and gestures.”
    In 2011, Lera Boroditsky told us in Scientific American “[e]ach language provides its own cognitive toolkit and encapsulates the knowledge and worldview developed over thousands of years within a culture.
    I wondered what she has been doing lately and found a couple of TED talks. 
    You can find her most recent (11 minute) lecture called “How Language Shapes the Way We Think” here. This is my synopsis:
    The world’s people use about 7,000 different languages to communicate. They are all made of sounds, words, and structure.  
    Boroditsky poses the question I first came across in a linguistics class many years ago when I was an undergraduate English major. “Do speakers of different languages think differently?” or rephrased, “Does language shape thought?”
    Turns out the answer is complicated. Charlemagne famously said, “To have a a second language is to have a second soul.” About 700 years later, Shakespeare claimed “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Charlemagne likened language to our very souls. But Shakespeare, is he being ironic or profound? Since it’s Shakespeare, probably both.
    Boroditsky uses scientific research to show examples of how language affects our thinking in many different ways. 
    Some languages do not have words for right and left. Their spacial relationships are noted in cardinal directions: north; south; east; and west; and their subtleties. For example, I park my car to the north of my husband’s in our garage. She has discovered that people with these “orienting languages” (my term) have a keen sense of where they are in space. 
    When I was in first grade and learning directionality, my teacher, Mrs. Zimmerman, told us that when we look out the large row of windows in our classroom we are facing north. I was excited to tell my mom what we learned. I told her that when we look out the big living room window, we are facing north. Too bad! Mom wanted this house specifically because it faced south, and the snow would melt off our driveway before it melted off the driveways across the street. My sense of direction has not improved much since then.
    Languages also treat time differently. Like English, some languages embed tenses into their verbs, like walk and walked, or run and ran. (New English speakers tend to overgeneralize our irregular verbs, but that’s a subject for a different day.)
    When we want to show time-lapse pictures, we tend to lay them out in the same direction that our writing takes. English goes from left to right, Hebrew from right to left. But what of the people Boroditsky studied in Australia who use directionality? She discovered that it depended on which way they were facing. Their pictures were arranged from east to west, just like the path of the sun. Always.
    People who are oriented with comparative directions, left and right, she notes, are egocentric. First, next, and last flows in a different direction depending on which way a person faces in their own personal space, in English, from left to right. The Australian tribal members have a more worldly view, east to west. Is one better than another? I think not, but don’t ask the developers of GoogleMaps or WAZE.
    Color words differ in different languages, too. Where American English speakers have one word to encompass all hues of blue, for example, Russian has a word for light blue and a different word for dark blue. We can say blue to refer to everything from powder blue to midnight blue. It’s all blue. Boroditsky studied brain scans of Russian speakers and found their brain activity showed surprise when a subject was shown light blue then dark blue. They noticed something had changed. The brains of English speakers took the color difference in stride, so to speak. Do we perceive colors differently? Probably not, but we think about our perceptions differently.
    And then there's gender. A lot of languages have grammatical gender. Nouns take either a masculine or a feminine verb, noted by its suffix, usually. These gender assignments seem arbitrary. The word for tree in French, l’arbre, is masculine. Speakers will talk about a tree being strong and sturdy. In Latin, though, the word for tree, arbor, is feminine and tends to be described as graceful, and lithe-limbed.
    In gendered languages, all nouns are assigned a gender, with all the baggage that entails and implies. (See the above examples about the description of a tree.) Maybe I’ll come back to this another day.
    It turns out then, the question of the connection between thought and language is not really just one question. It’s many different questions. The message of On Beyond Zebra may be that the letters we use to represent the sounds we make can help us communicate in more ways than we can imagine. And by learning something new, we can learn to think differently.

I finished The Eyes and The Impossible, this year’s Newbery winner by Dave Eggers and illustrated by Shawn Harris (Alfred A. Knopf, 2023), It's an animal tale full of adventure, interesting relationships, and wisdom. Only every once in a while do I read a book and wish for an audience. This would be so much fun to read to a 4th or 5th grader, or a whole class!
              -—Be curious! (and choose your words thoughtfully)

In the background [Farmer Brown] heard the cows busy at work.
        Click!  Clack!  MOO!
        Click!  Clack!  MOO!
        Clickity!  Clack!  MOO!
                       from Click Clack Moo: Cows That Type
                                        written by Doreen Cronin 
                                        illustrated by Betsy Lewin
                                          Simon & Schuster, 2000
    Like most kids in the 1960s, I learned cursive writing in 3rd grade. We used thick, blue pencils with no erasers and 8-1/2 x 11 newsprint paper, turned on its side. We practiced, over and over and over, staying between the two blue lines, centering our letters on the red line between. It was the same paper we used when we learned to print, but now our letters connected to each other. They were slanty. By the end of the year, our writing flowed, mostly.
    But at first, it was a painstaking ordeal. All those rows of little i-s and t-s that needed to be dotted and crossed. And the capital Q-s that looked like the number 2, and the loopy capital L and getting the diagonal to go straight on the capital X. And our teachers graded us in penmanship.
    Then, in 2010, a group of governors and school officials from around the country decided that with keyboards replacing pens and pencils and laptops taking the place of paper, there was not as much need for children to learn to let their letters flow fluidly and legibly to the end of each line. 
    The Common Core State Standards set the well, standard, for proficiency in English/Language Arts and Mathematics. The focus on CCSS was to unify what teachers taught in Kindergarten through Grade 12. Since CCSS did not mention cursive writing specifically as necessary, it mostly fell by the wayside. 
    But cursive writing has always been part of our culture and heritage.    
    On October 25, 1774, Timothy Matlack, a clerk in the Pennsylvania State House was tasked with penning the Declaration of Independence, in cursive. He did it in one day.
    It is the hand the assistant clerk for the Pennsylvania General Assembly, Jacob Shallus, whose cursive hand we view when we read the original Constitution (or its facsimile). It took him 40 hours to create an accurate transcription of the draft he was given. He received $30.00 for his work. 
    And while it is true historical documents like the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution (and the Bill of Rights) are handwritten in cursive, advanced technology can transcribe these documents and make them accessible to students who never learned how to write (and of course, read) cursive. 
    But by 2016, 14 states again required students to learn cursive and currently it is required in 21 states.
    The next question is, Besides being able to sign our names and read the signatures of others, do we really still need cursive? Maybe not. 
    Wait. Not so fast!
    A January 26, 2024, article in Frontiers in Psychology quotes ScienceNews.org “there is a fundamental difference in brain organization for handwriting as opposed to typing.” Previous research has shown that handwriting improves spelling accuracy, memory recall, and conceptual understanding. This new study shows us why that is so.
    While wearing a cap fitted out with electrodes, study subjects both typed and handwrote in cursive. The scientists compared their brain activity and discovered that cursive handwriting and, to a lesser extent, typewriting not only showed the expected activity in motor areas of their brains, but also other areas associated with memory. They extrapolate that these differences in brain connectivity enhance memory formation and encoding. We learn better when we use cursive.
    The benefits of cursive writing are many. Development of hand-eye coordination for one. The brain circuitry we build when learning a new skill remains a lasting part of our brain’s geography. Brain scans taken during handwriting show “activation of massive regions of the brain involved in thinking, language, and working memory.” (PsychologyToday.com) 
    While writing on a keyboard like I’m doing now uses muscle memory, according to pens.com “[h]andwriting is a complex, cognitive process that involves neuro-sensory experiences and fine motor skills.” With all facets working together, a writing experience includes: feeling the paper against our pens; applying the correct amount pressure to make the ink flow; and engaging in the thought process to form the words and sentences.
    It cannot be argued that typing is more efficient and easier to read than handwriting. A real-life conclusion may be then, that writing notes on a lecture or text is better for learning new material and reinforcing that which is already learned, and typewriting a report is more practical. 
    Like our fingerprints, our voices, and our gait, we each have a unique way of forming our letters. Handwriting is personal. My husband’s handwriting is almost as familiar to me as my own. 
    I can see my dad’s handwriting in my mind’s eye. I recognize my mom’s handwriting in her recipes I’ve saved. I have recipes in my grandmother’s, and my mother-in-law’s hands, too.. They have become precious to me.
    Graphologists discover personality traits by observing the way people form their letters. They claim the ability to pinpoint over 5,000 personality traits by considering how much pressure we use, how big our letters are, how they are spaced, where we cross our ts and dot our is, if we write uphill or down, how we slant our letters, and how legible our writing is. 
    Forensic handwriting analysis is science based. Both are used to authenticate documents and signatures and “get a read” on a potential suspect in money-laundering and other forgery schemes. 
    Whether or not you put stock in someone’s ability to learn about you through the marks you make on a page, by taking a deeper dive into the subject you might discover something new about yourself. The library has several books on graphology and the Internet is full of articles and quizzes. I’m sure some are more reliable than others. Choose wisely!
    I wonder if I practice traits I like and change my handwriting accordingly, a personality change would follow. I have seen accounts that say it can. Hmmm. 
    On second thought, I think I’m just fine the way I am!

I’m reading First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston (Pamela Dorman Books/Penguin Publishing Group, 2024). It’s a fast-paced thriller with an unreliable, but likable main character. When she’s “rescued” from legal trouble by her secretive new employer, Evie must stay hidden in plain sight as she carries out his dangerous and shady assignments.
                     -—Be curious! (and write a letter to a friend) 

Cats here, cats there,
cats and kittens everywhere
    Hundreds of cats
    Thousands of cats
Millions and billions and trillions of cats
from Millions of Cats
written and illustrated by Wanda Gág
Puffin Books, 1956


    Friday morning, our 20-year-old cat, Frances, took her last breath. Toward the end of December, I noticed that she was “a little off.” Our vet saw her the first week of January and after his exam, he gave us a nebulous description of what might be going wrong: Ocular Systemic Anomaly. While I understood the words and had an idea of how they went together, he continued. Something he noticed behind her left eye was probably affecting many other parts of her body. Without further tests and maybe surgery he couldn’t give us an accurate diagnosis. My husband and I looked at each other.
    It took no time at all for us to analyze the situation. Frances was 20 years old. 
    She did not appear to be in pain. We did not want to subject her to the painful process of surgical recovery.
    At home, she was herself, doing her Frances things. Together, we watched birds at the feeder and squirrels in the yard. She liked to be “on camera” when I zoomed into one meeting or another. She liked to use the keyboard, but only typed capital Qs and sometimes an a or an s. She liked her cat food and my grandson’s honey-mustard salad dressing, popcorn, pasta sauce, cooked chicken, and tuna fish, but not salmon. She didn’t play very much any more, but she liked to sit close. She napped in her favorite places.
    It’s odd sometimes to see the universe align. Last week, I was asked to tell a little something about my mom in honor of the anniversary of her death. I remembered a story that seemed appropriate and when I finished it, it felt appropriate to share here, too.
    Let’s just say that my mom, like all humans, was complicated. I remember her when she was the age I am now. That feels odd, but she always told me “You’re only as old as you feel.” She taught me much more than mere aphorisms, and I knew I could do better. Here’s where my mind went next.
    Like most kids, my brother and sister and I wanted a pet. Mom said “no fur.” So we tried to be content with goldfish and red-eared sliders, those tiny turtles that came with a round plastic dish and a built-in, spiral ramp leading up to a tiny plastic palm tree. 
    But we were dissatisfied. You can’t play with a fish and those turtles didn’t last long enough to play with either, really.
    “No fur” was her answer until I got a babysitting job. When the family got a kitten, I enjoyed my job even more than I thought I could, but the dad found out he was allergic to the cat. The family was in a quandary, but they decided to keep the dad. Princey would have to find a new home.
    At first Mom said “no fur,” but when she realized what would happen if we didn’t step up, she softened.
    “Princey will always be your cat,” I told young Brett. “He’s only going to live at our house. You can visit him whenever you want.”
    That lasted for a little while, until baseball and school took up more of his time. And he knew Princey had a good home.
    By the time Princey came to the end of his life, I was in high school. I asked for another cat. Cricket was aloof. After all, she was a show cat with ribbons. Mom and Dad adopted Cricket when I went off to college and Mom was never without a cat again.
    So what made her go from “no fur” to sharing her life with cat after cat? I’m not sure, but I remembered a story she told me about her own growing up.
    My grandmother was loving, but not in a huggy, kissy way. She must have always been kinda like that. When Grandma wanted to teach my mom and uncle to be responsible, Blackie, a black Lab, came into their lives. Mom said Grandpa loved that dog.
    Blackie lived with them for many years, until WWII broke out. Mom was a young woman by then. Uncle Bob, was grown, too. But Blackie was still a big part of their lives.    One day, when Mom, Uncle Bob, and Grandpa were all off to work, Grandma decided to sign up Blackie for his own military service. 
    No one saw Blackie again.
    Grandma probably thought she was doing a good thing, patriotism and all that goes with it including dogs, apparently, you know. And I believe people do the best they can with what they have.
    But I understand now, that the resentment and betrayal Mom must have felt toward her mother did not allow her to attach her own feelings to a pet again. 
    Until Princey. She knew he had a “forever home” with us.
    I like to think, that when Mom allowed Princey to come into all of our lives, she began to understand that holding onto those feelings of betrayal and resentment was destructive. 
    As I watched her with Princey, I learned that the more love you give away, the more you get to keep.
    Thanks, Mom, for all your complicated love.


I wondered what does a dog actually do in the service? and do dogs still serve? The quick answer is they perform many different jobs and yes, there’s currently a shortage. Dogs also serve veterans. Here's the rest of the answer from the American Kennel Club.
—Be curious! (and  love your pets and each other)


I just started reading The Descendants by Kaui Hart Hemmings (Random House, 2007). I saw the movie years ago on TV. It’s a story of family dynamics and relationships and like real life, it’s complicated. The book is readable and engrossing. I’m looking forward to getting back to it!


FB: As I write this on Sunday, Feb 4, it’s been 14 years since my mom passed away. I’m feeling a little un-moored, since we just lost our last cat, too. Connecting with all of you, though, feels right. Thank you.