On Saturday he ate through 
1 piece of chocolate cake
1 ice cream cone
1 pickle
1 slice of Swiss cheese
1 slice of salami
1 lollipop
1 piece of cherry pie
1 sausage
1 cupcake
1 slice of watermelon
                                from The Very Hungry Caterpillar
                              written and illustrated by Eric Carle
                                    World Publishing Company, 1969
           (accessed on YouTube 3/27/23, read by the author)

    It is fair to say that even though I’ve read about hunger in the United States and elsewhere, even though I educated myself (a little) about food deserts in my own community and try to spread the word about food waste, I’ve never experienced hunger. I am grateful, extremely grateful for that. Even though our quote today is from a classic, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, it is fair to say that the caterpillar was not really hungry either.
    People have been hungry in the United States since our beginning as a colonial possession of Great Britain. Whether hard-scrabble Puritans learning to be farmers, or hearty pioneers looking to eke out a living on the prairie while learning about the Native population whose land the pioneers believed was their own, or city-dwellers displaced by gentrification and freeways, hunger has been part of the American landscape.
    Beginning in the 1930s, hundreds of thousands of real Americans, like John Steinbeck’s fictional Joad family in The Grapes of Wrath, moved west to look for work. While their poor farming practices over the course of years depleted the soil, a years-long severe drought exacerbated the problem and resulted in the Dust Bowl. Acres and acres of farmland were devastated. Families were in financial ruin.
    In an attempt to give people, especially farmers, a leg up during the Great Depression (1929-1939) and the Dust Bowl (~1930-1940) Congress passed the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 as part of the New Deal. 
    It included crop insurance, training to support sustainable farming practices, and money for people who needed to buy healthy food for their families.
       The farm bill, as it is usually referred to, is tweaked and renewed every five or so years. Price controls that allowed farmers to earn a living wage were a major part of the first farm bill. In 1938, the Soil Conservation Act was renewed. According to History of the United States Farm Bill “[f]armers were compensated for planting soil-supporting crops like soybeans and reducing production of crops that contributed to soil erosion.”  
    Since 1973, the farm bill has included re-authorization of funding for food assistance programs. In 1977, Congress changed eligibility requirements, and in 2008, Food Stamps were renamed the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP. Less than 2% of our Federal budget is allocated for SNAP and according to the latest statistics from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 12% of our population benefits from SNAP. That’s about 1 in every 8 Americans.    
    Through the years farm bills have addressed climate change, conservation, and energy use. Discussions of the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 are already underway for the 2023 bill.
    Besides crop insurance allotments, subsidies for specific crops (grown or not grown), conservation issues, and the amount a farmer can borrow, Congress is discussing nutrition benefits (SNAP, WIC, and the school lunch program).
    Also part of the bill are rural development, foreign trade, energy, forestry, and research. 
    In the 2023 discussion, Nutrition programs will again account for about 85% of the farm bill. Eligibility depends on the amount of money people in the household earn (or don’t), how many people live in the home, if anyone is disabled … The form is long, but if the past is a predictor of the future, SNAP will provide on average, $6.00/per day per person. That’s not much, especially when healthy food is more expensive and harder to find in some urban neighborhoods and in rural areas, too.
    The question the farm bill committee members must address and answer is how to meet the needs of so many varied constituents. Because the Nutrition portion is such a large percentage of the total package, and because it is used by people who can’t afford food, especially nutritious food in their times of difficulty, it has become the object of debate, sometimes intense debate. 
    The farm bill was passed to ensure a safe and abundant food supply, to help feed the hungry, invigorate rural communities, and help farmers take care of the environment as they provide food, feed, fuel, and fiber to the United States and the world. 
    If you want more details, here's a great article from the Farm Bureau.
    Hearings on the 2023 farm bill have already begun.
    It’s a tricky balance to be sure, especially in this time of deep partisan divides, to create policy that is fair to hungry babies, folks trying to save their family farms, and the taxpayers funding it all. 
    You can write or call members of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry and members of the  House Committee on Agriculture.

Elizabeth Berg did not disappoint with her book Earth's the Right Place for Love (Random House, 2023). I learned Arthur Truluv’s backstory and in the reading, learned something about how to be kind. Just like we all thought, it’s a combination of how we are and our reactions to everything (good and bad and challenging) we experience. Thank you Ms. Berg!
                                        -—be curious! (and generous)

The baker, meanwhile, beams with pride
Congratulates a groom and bride.
    Then pats an antling on the head
    And goes to check her gingerbread.
                                                        from Tiny Baker
                                              written by Hayley Barrett 
                                                 illustrated by Alison Jay
                                                 Barefoot Books, 2020
                                       (accessed on YouTube 3/20/23)

    Several summers ago I noticed an infestation of aphids devouring my yarrow. After a quick Google search, I learned that ladybugs would feast on them. At the time, a mail-order gardening supply store was located nearby. I had been there several times to purchase tomato plants, perennials, and potting soil. When I found out they sold ladybugs in sacks, I was there in a quick minute.
    I could hardly wait to get back to my garden to save my yarrow, now in full bloom. I hopped out of the car holding high hopes for the squiggly contents in the tiny canvas bag, alive with hungry ladybugs. I undid the knotted string and welcomed my new garden helpers.
    To my horror and great disappointment, those beautiful little bugs immediately spread both sets of their wings, turned up their tiny noses, and followed their antennae straight to my neighbor’s garden! 
    My yarrow suffered. I apologized to them, but the damage was done. I don’t remember what grew in their spot the next summer. 
    And now as the calendar turns its hopeful page to spring, I’m again on the lookout for garden destroyers. For the most part, I’m a live and let live kinda gal. I do what I can to encourage pollinators. I (okay, my husband) put out a birdfeeder, a beehouse, even a house for the chickadees. Last summer I planted milkweed and the little, pointy sprouts are pushing through the cold soil, hopeful for Monarchs.
    According to The Old Farmer’s Almanac about 90% of our backyard insects are either helpful or harmless. We only need to worry about the other 10%.
    I started wondering  about the difference between bugs and insects. 
    Since scientists recognize both terms, the difference comes down to those basic biology classifications: kingdom, phylum, class, and order. Both insects and true bugs fall into class Insecta, but true bugs fall into order Hemiptera. So, all insects are bugs, but not all bugs are insects.
    Most of what I call bugs are really insects: ladybugs, grasshoppers, and mosquitoes, to name a few. All insects have six segmented legs and exoskeletons. They have two antennae, and bodies segmented into a head, a thorax, and an abdomen.
    True bugs, on the other hand, belong to the subset of insects called Hemiptera. While also mostly benign, they include stinkbugs, bedbugs, cicadas, and aphids.
    Worldwide, about 75,000 different bugs are classified as Hemiptera. These true bugs have a straw-shaped mouth, or stylet, they use to mostly sap juice from plants or occasionally blood from animals. They also have long, segmented antennae. Their wings are tough and dark where they meet their bodies and are thin and translucent at the ends. 
    You can find the major difference between insects and true bugs by studying their mouths. A bug’s stylet is fixed in place. So even though a mosquito sucks our blood, it uses its proboscis while feeding then retracts it when it’s finished. 
    Even though I (and probably many others) call most little creepy-crawlies bugs, millipedes, centipedes, and spiders also find their way to my garden. Along with scorpions and ticks, they are classified as arachnids because they have eight legs. To distinguish them further, you need to study how their feet and legs are arranged. 
    Arachnids are named for the Greek goddess, Arachne. A common version of the myth introduces Arachne as an extraordinary weaver with the hubris to claim she is more skilled and has more artistry than Athena, herself. Of course, Athena could not leave that boast unchallenged. Athena wove a four-paneled tapestry depicting the arrogance of humans. Arachne’s weaving showed how the gods' cruelty afflicted humans. Even though Arachne’s weaving was judged superior, Athena cursed her. She turned Arachne into a spider and forced her to weave for all eternity.    
    Around 1750, Carolus Linnaeus devised a system to organize life on earth. He first separated plants from animals. That worked pretty well, at least until 1959, when Robert Whittaker added three new categories including algae, mosses, and fungi and many of their relations. When modern scientists considered the molecular structure of living things, five categories became too general. 
    Seems like the more we learn about ourselves and our Earthmates, the blurrier the separation lines become.
    And since we’re getting a little scientific, we need to mention computers. The first computer bug was a real bug. A moth to be specific. On September 9, 1947, Grace Hopper, a former US Navy Rear Admiral and computer scientist, discovered why an error kept occurring on the Mark II machine she and her team were working on. An actual moth with a 2-inch wingspan flew into the workings of the machine and got stuck. Grace extracted the critter, taped it into the log book, and identified it as a computer bug. I guess you could say her term has gone viral. 
    From computers to compost, we find bugs, insects, and arachnids everywhere. Some are prey, a few are predators, but most just like to hang out and smell the roses. Oh, no! Aphids love roses! 
                                                         -—stay curious!
    
I’m reading another book by Kate Quinn, The Rose Code (HarperCollins, 2021). It’s also historical fiction and tells of three young women recruited to work at Bletchley Park as code-breakers. Quinn’s use of language helps her readers feel like we’re in scene with these strong women. Her characters feel so real, I think, because Quinn shows off her thorough research by writing plausible relationships, and situations in a setting that feels like a character in its own right.
      Bletchley Park, the WWII top-secret facility housed in an English country mansion close to the center of England is now a museum. 

    “What are you doing here,” Waffle said sneering.
    “I’m sleuthing,” Croissant said. And you’re interfering. What do you know about smells that are vicious? 
    “Nothing,” said Waffle. “My house smells delicious.
                               from The Case of the Stinky Stench
                                                  written by Josh Funk
                                       illustrated by Brendan Kearney
                                                Union Square Kids, 2017

     The musty smell of an old house always ratchets me back to my grandparents’ house. They didn’t have many toys, but kept a big box of wooden blocks, the kind with letters and numbers on them, in the back of the coat closet. We’d visit on Sunday afternoons and after dinner and conversation around the dining room table, we kids would be excused to our own devises. 
    Sometimes we’d play hide and seek. This was the real deal in a three-story house with two sets of stairs and a toilet in the attic. Sometimes Babba would chase us through her garden, laid out with 2 x 4s dividing the rows and a tall peach tree standing sentry off to one side. 
    I don’t remember individual scents throughout the house. I’m sure the peach tree smelled like a delicious summer day. I love the smell of ripe peaches, but that smell leaves me where I am.
    When we pulled out the blocks, though, the scent was strong. Not unpleasant, but a unique smell like old books mixed with Grandpy’s cherry pipe tobacco and a little musty around the edges. 
    The sense of smell is tightly connected to our emotions. I’ll say why, but first a small diversion, to compare.
    When we hear, sound waves vibrate the tiny bones in our middle ears. They in turn stimulate tiny hairs connected to the auditory nerve where electrical impulses are identified as a particular sound. We identify a guitar or thunder or a cat looking for affection.
    Light enters our eyes and travels to our brain through the optic nerve. Our brain interprets the lightwaves as electrical impulses and translates them for us. We know which baby is ours before she even makes a sound. We know which coat is ours before we need to touch it to make sure.
    But the sense of smell works differently. When the olfactory receptors in our noses are stimulated, they send smell information signals to the rest of our brain through olfactory nerves in our noses. Olfactory nerve fibers travel to the olfactory bulb, an area in the upper part of our nose. 
    And here’s the difference. The olfactory bulb is part of the limbic system, the part of our brain that deals with emotion and memory. 
    So while a photo of Babba in her garden or in her house or even in mine evokes strong memories, a musty old smell sends me right back to her front hall where we played. 
    “Young Girl” by the Union Gap and “Sittin’ On the Dock of the Bay” by Otis Redding make me feel nostalgic for that warm, spring day when my boyfriend put the top down and drove me to Lake Milton where his family had a small weekend house. His mom made Spanish rice, something my mom never made. 
    Those memories are like scenes that I watch. 
    But a familiar smell brings all the emotions with it.

    The Museum Ulm in southern Germany is offering “olfactory tourism.”  It is becoming “a thing” as other museums work with perfumers to create scents depicted in their paintings on exhibit. At Mauritshuis in The Hague, Rembrandt’s painting “Unconscious Patient (Allegory of Smell)” the scent of smelling salts that Rembrandt included in his painting was carefully recreated by perfumers from the International Flavors and Fragrances Institute (IFF). They researched the availability of particular spices, flowers, and other aromatics to ensure their created scent is authentic to the 1600s when Rembrandt was working. 
    Last year (2022) the Louvre began olfactory tours that paired scent with its still life collection. Inspired by Jan Brueghel’s paintings of “The Five Senses,” the Museo del Prado opened its own scent exhibit.
    By adding the dimension of an overlooked sensory detail like scent, museum experiences may become more memorable. 
    Hotels have been using “scentscapes” for years. Hired professionals create an exclusive scent that’s used in their shampoos and body washes and sprayed throughout the lobbies, spas, and even rooms. 
    Many years ago when I was selling my house, my realtor suggested I bake chocolate chip cookies before my open house, of course allowing plenty of time to clean up. 
    I don’t remember if that worked. The house was on the market for a pretty long time! And now, while my house sometimes smells like chicken soup or bread, the scent of chocolate chip cookies always conjures up a feeling that change is in the air!
                                   -—stay curious! (and breathe deep)

I’m re-reading an older title by Elizabeth Berg, The Story of Arthur Truluv. I love the characters. I’m laughing and crying my way to the end. I think part of the reason they are so alive to me is that Lucille is a baker and the book evokes the smell of lots baked goods. I’ll miss those characters when I close the covers, but good news! Two other books, A Night of Miracles and The Confession Club, feature the same characters. And surprise! Here comes a prequel, Earth’s the Right Place for Love will be released on March 21, 2023. My copy’s on reserve at the library.

Groundhog grinned with relief. He was a natural. Meteorology was as easy as carrot cake with sprinkles on top. 
from Groundhog Gets it Wrong
                                                written by Jess Townes
                                               illustrated by Nicole Miles
                                 Dial Books for Young Readers, 2023

    My daffodils are budding. When I wake up now, it’s almost light outside. We’ve had mild weather for two days in a row now, but I still haven’t seen a robin. But, guess what? Most American robins don’t even migrate. So where are they? They tend to “flock up” and keep a pretty low profile. They change their eating habits from munching earthworms and insects to dining on berries and fruit when they can find them. And since males are not defending their territory yet, they stay quiet.
    They’re still here, but go unnoticed. So according to the robins, it’s not Spring yet.
    Last month, February 2, to be exact, Punxsutawney Phil ran back into his burrow in fear of his own shadow. He predicted six more weeks of winter. If you count six weeks past February 2, you get to March 16. Every year. So according to the groundhog, it’s not Spring yet, either, even if he hadn’t seen his shadow.
    Even though Earth travels in an elliptical orbit around the sun, it’s the 23.5 degree tilt from vertical and the position of the sun in relation to the equator that causes the seasons, not the physical distance between Earth and the sun.
    At the Vernal Equinox, (from Latin Spring and Equal night) we experience about the same number of daylight hours as darkness. This year, the Vernal Equinox will occur on Monday March 20, at 5:24 PM in America’s Eastern Time Zone. Days will grow longer until Summer Solstice, June 21, 2023, when darkness slowly returns. So according to the calendar, it’s still not Spring. Astronomers and calendar manufacturers have standardized the first day of Spring as March 20, but, really, it fluctuates with the equinox.
    For meteorologists and climatologists Meteorological Spring lasts from March 1 through May 31 every year is. Astronomical seasons (the regular ones we mark on our calendars) are based on the position of Earth in relation to the sun. Meteorological seasons are based on the annual temperature cycle.
    According to the American Meteorological Society, a meteorologist “is someone with specialized education who uses scientific principles to explain, understand, observe, or forecast the earth's atmospheric phenomena and…how the atmosphere affects the earth and life on the planet. They study weather patterns, collect and analyze data, and present short term predictions. 
    Climatologists take the long view. They look for patterns of change. They study data to determine causes for climate change, how plants and animals, including humans, adapt, and what measures we need to implement to ensure (or at least prolong) our sustainability. 
    Phenology combines meteorology with climatology. It is the study of how changing seasons impact living things and their environment. Phenology studies how dandelions and lilacs bloom exactly when bees wake up to gather their nectar and spread their pollen. Cherry trees set their fruit in time for birds to eat and spread their seeds. Acorns ripen just as squirrels are ready to cache them before winter sets in. 
    Farmers and home gardeners need to know when plants and insects develop, hatch, and disperse. It helps them determine when to apply fertilizers and pesticides, and choose proper planting times to avoid frosts, both at the beginning and at the end of the growing season. 
    The United States National Phenology Network (USA-NPN) was established in 2007, “in part to assemble long-term phenology datasets for a broad array of species across the United States.” Scads of information are available on their site. 
    Here’s an example from its Status of Spring page. Based on data collected from all over the US, and considering first leaf bud to the first emergence of crocuses, the USA-NPN has determined that “Spring has indeed arrived several days to weeks earlier than average (based on the period of 1991-2020) in much of the Southeast, lower Midwest, and mid-Atlantic, while much of southern California and Arizona are days to over a week late.” You can see an up-to-date map of both first leaf emergence and first bloom if you click on the link and then click on either map.  
    Here’s an interesting activity you might want to try with kids and curious adults. Use the directions at US Department of Land Management to make your own phenology wheel. Draw a circle divided into quarters. Label each section for a season. Find a tree or flower or bush you can return to year after year. Draw a smaller circle in the center of your large circle and draw your tree or bush or flower in that small circle. Now observe. Over the course of a year, draw and label leaf bud, animal and insect visitors, and weather conditions. If you scroll down past the example, you’ll find lots of data suggestions as well as a blank seasonal wheel and one that is divided by months.
    On the practical side, you can anticipate when your hay fever will start acting up so you can stock up on kleenexes or make sure you have plenty of handkerchiefs ready.
    I’ve had my eye out for our groundhog, but so far I haven’t seen it. Meanwhile, I’ve been watching the birdfeeder. The chickadees are back. Their house is hung. I hope they move in again this year.

I’m almost finished with Invisible Child by Andrea Elliot. The narrative follows eight years in the life of a young girl growing up in extreme poverty in New York City during in Michael Bloomberg’s tenure as mayor and continuing with Bill De Blasio’s. The story is by turns heart wenching, inspiring, and startling. And true. Recommend!
                                  -—be curious! (and keep looking up)