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.

I, Amber Brown, realize it is never going to be easy to get my friend to care about time.
                             from It’s Justin Time, Amber Brown
                                        written by Paula Danzinger
                                           illustrated by Tony Ross
                                           G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2001

    Here’s the truth. Daylight Savings Time moves an extra hour of daylight to the end of the day.
    And here’s the whole truth. We pay for that hour of daylight with the loss of one whole hour. At 2:00 a.m. March 8, we all rolled the hands of our clocks around one full turn to make them say 3:00. a.m. March 8 was a 23-hour day. 
    Personally, I moved the hands of my clock at 9:30 p.m., before I called the day over.
    I like daylight as much as anyone, but what happened to that hour? Does anyone really know? Does anybody even care?
    Well, the way I see it, that hour is in limbo until the first Sunday in November when we all move the clock hands counter-clock-wise and re-place that limbo hour to create a 25-hour day.
    Representative Vern Buchanan of Florida introduced The Sunshine Protection Act of 2021 (HB 69) on January 4 of that year. Fifteen cosponsors from ten different states and both political parties signed on. The Act would make DST permanent, so we’d all stay sprung forward. No more time changing in the fall. 
    On March 9, 2021, Sen. Marco Rubio introduced another version, S.623. It passed the Senate on March 16, 2022 and has been languishing in the House of Representatives ever since.
    Introducing permanent DST is nothing new. 
    Benjamin Franklin sent a letter to the editor of the Journal of Paris in 1784 suggesting Parisians move their clocks ahead one hour in the dark days of winter while they slept to better enjoy the short daylight hours more fully. He proposed the money saved in buying candles would be enormous. Nothing came of his suggestion; most people think it was said in jest.
    Congress has been debating the idea since adopting the Standard Time Act of March 1918. It set summer DST from March 31, 1918, to October 27. The idea was unpopular, especially with farmers. More daylight at the end of the day meant more darkness in the early morning hours when they did their milking and other morning chores. 
    After WWI, Woodrow Wilson abolished the law, leaving the option to continue fooling around with Time up to individual localities.
    Then in 1942, Franklin Roosevelt established year-round DST. He called it “War Time Hours.” It lasted until the last Sunday in September, 1945. 
    From then until 1966, it was up to the various states or cities to follow DST or not and establish their own start and end dates. As you can imagine, that led to a complicated patchwork of chronology. Imagine truckers, shippers, and railway engineers delivering goods across many states. Or the arrangements you’d need to make to phone friends and loved-ones who live far away.
    In 1966, the transportation industry asked for federal legislation to sort out the mess and in 1967, the Uniform Time Act became the law of the land. Various dates have been in use since 1967 and for now, at least, clocks spring ahead one hour at 2:00 a.m. on the second Sunday in March (and will fall back one hour at 2:00 a.m. on the first Sunday in November, 11/1/26). The Department of Transportation was charged with enforcing the law. 
    States were allowed to exempt themselves. Hawai’i and parts of Arizona do not observe DST. Neither do the US territories of American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, or the US Virgin Islands.
    Turns out DST is more than an inconvenience.  
    According to The Sleep Foundation, even though the effects of DST subside gradually after a few weeks, the move has been linked to a “greater risk of mood disturbance, suicide, and being involved in traffic accidents. 
    Studies reported by timeanddate.com have also linked the time change to increased car accidents and workplace injuries  

• A Swedish study found that the risk of having a heart attack increases in the first three weekdays after switching to DST in the spring.
• Tiredness induced by the clock change is thought to be the main cause for the increase in traffic accidents on the Monday following the start of DST.
• On Mondays after the start of DST there were more workplace injuries, and the injuries were of greater severity compared to other Mondays.
• The start of DST has also been linked to miscarriages for in vitro fertilization patients.

    I used the same source to discover that losing an hour can trigger mental illness including bipolar disorder and seasonal affective disorder (SAD) also known as winter depression. 
And

• A Danish study found an 11% increase in depression cases after the time change. The cases dissipated gradually after 10 weeks.
• An Australian study found that male suicide rates increased on the days after the spring and fall DST shift.

    Those in favor of DST/ST argue that more natural light in the evening encourages a less sedentary lifestyle. 
    They also say the nighttime crime rate diminishes. We enjoy a 7% decrease in robberies.
    Pedestrian fatalities decrease by 13% in the dawn and dusk hours. 
    I wonder, could these decreases be attributed to more daylight in general? After all, the hours of daylight will continue to increase until the Summer Solstice, Sunday, June 21, 2026.
    I don’t plan to move to Hawai’i, (or Arizona or any of the US territories, for that matter) but I would like to stop trying to fool Father Time.

I’m reading Damnation Spring by Ash Davidson (Scribner, 2021). When loggers in California clash with environmentalists who want to save the redwoods, a woman inadvertently starts a conflict with her husband’s and his coworkers’ livelihood 
                    -—stay curious! (and enjoy an evening walk)     

Soon they had all the hay,
all the straw, all the string,
all the stuffing, all the horse hair, 
and all the man hair they could carry.

They took it all back 
to build their nest.

                                              from The Best Nest
                         written and illustrated by P. D. Eastman
                            Random House/Beginner Books, 1968
                                     (accessed on Hoopla 3/2/26)

    Last week, I saw two robins. My husband saw one also. A bluebird landed on the wire outside my kitchen window at the end of January. I took its picture. I used to think robins all went south to avoid the cold weather. I had no idea about bluebirds.
    So of course I looked it up, hoping against hope these early sightings were not yet another ominous sign of Climate Catastrophe. 
    Turns out that while it’s still crucial to avoid single-use plastic whenever you can, reduce as much as you can those consumable everythings to cut down items for the landfill, and eat as low as you can as often as you can on the food chain (more plants, less animals) some robins stay in Ohio (and other northern states) all year round. Bluebirds, too.
    Robins are typically not seed-eaters. Whenever they can, robins eat earthworms. In winter, though, they switch to juniper, holly, serviceberries, and any other berry they can find, crabapples, and other fruit, even seeds and crushed peanuts. Same for the bluebirds who decide to stay. 
    So robins might not be the harbinger of Spring after all. But like my friends who return from Florida, South Carolina, and Arizona in April and May, it feels comfortable and right that they’re here.
    We all saw (or at least heard about) Punxsutawney Phil, or Buckeye Chuck, or even Benny the Bass tell us to expect six more weeks of winter. That puts us in the middle of March. 
    The Spring Equinox will occur on March 20, this year at 10:46 am. It is the day when the amount of daylight equals the amount of darkness. and the astronomical start of Spring in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s almost now. But…
    For those of us who can’t wait that long, we can celebrate the meteorological beginning of Spring on March 1 each year. (I know It’s a few days late, but we’re celebrating Spring, after all!) Meteorologists like to divide the calendar into equal segments based on typical temperatures. That makes it easier to calculate statistics. And much less cumbersome to talk about. 
    Any way you look at it, Spring and Daylight Savings Time (yes, *that* again) are intertwined. 
    This coming Saturday night (3/7), set your clocks ahead one hour before you turn in for the day. We will wake up Sunday morning to a magically disappeared hour. It evaporated while most of us were sleeping. So we wouldn’t notice? 
    On January 3, 2025, Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL) introduced The Sunshine Protection Act of 2025. It was referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and there it sits. It would make daylight savings time the new, Permanent Standard Time. 
    It’s been sitting in committee for over a year. No discussion, no debate, no votes.
    Perhaps the legislators have more important issues on their plates?
    And so, while I’m partial to bluebirds for political reasons, ;-) it’s pretty exciting to watch the bright red breast of a robin as it pulls up a wiggly worm in the green, green grass of home.

I’m reading Asterwood by Jacquelyn Stolos (RandomHouse Children’s Books/Delacorte Press, 2025). Written for 5th - 8th graders, the main character, Madelyn, discovers a wild and magical world through the woods behind her house. With the help of her new friends, she works to save this world and discover its secrets, while uncovering some pretty fantastic secrets of her own.
  
                  --Be curious! (and watch for signs of Spring)