“In the places I go there are things that I see
“That I never could spell if I stopped with the Z.
“I’m telling you this ’cause you’re one of my friends.
“My alphabet starts where your alphabet ends.”
                                                      From: On Beyond Zebra
                                                                    by Dr. Seuss
                                                            Random House, 1955
 
        This morning, the 90th annual National Spelling Bee begins with a written preliminary competition. Hopeful students from all over the country have gathered in Washington, D. C. today, to vie for the $40,000 prize from Scripps and an engraved trophy, a $2,500 savings bond and a complete reference library from Merriam Webster, $400 worth of reference works and a 3-year subscription to Encyclopedia Britannica on-line. And of course, the recognition. The student’s school also gets a plaque and prizes are awarded to the finalists. An amazingly big deal!
       Scripps made the bee tougher after ties in 2014 and 2015. Now the last two spellers need to get through three times as many words as in years past. But, another set of co-champions was crowned in 2016.
       Oral and written competitions go many, many rounds. Elimination is usually swift at the start.  The final round will be broadcast on ESPN. Here’s how to watch the whole match, beginning tomorrow with the oral competition:
            The ESPN app will carry all preliminary rounds live on May 31,                 from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., with a break from 12:15 to 1:15 p.m. 
            Live coverage of the finals will begin June 1 at 10 a.m. on                        ESPN2, ESPNU (Play Along Version) and the ESPN app. 
            The competition will conclude on ESPN, ESPNU and                              WatchESPN at 8:30 p.m.
NOTE: all times are Eastern Time.
 
       Schools participate on the local level. My grandson was chosen to compete two years in a row, but didn’t make it to Washington. My daughter, his mom, also did not go to Washington. I didn’t qualify for my school’s event, but I like to sing the Jiminy Cricket song E-N-C-Y-C-L-O-P-E-D-I-A.
       My dad was an excellent speller. He attributes his skill to his high school study of Latin. He liked to trace many English words to their Latin roots. Great dinner table conversations started this way.  We all learned how to spell antidisestablishmentarianism. We knew what it meant, too. At 28 letters, my parents told us it was the longest English word.  Then in 1964, Mary Poppins came out with supercalifragilisticexpialidocious at 34 letters. It was added to the OED in 1986.    
       Pneumono­ultra­microscopic­silico­volcano­coniosis (45 letters) though, is recognized as the longest word, according to The National Puzzlers' League at the opening session of their 103rd semi-annual meeting in 1939. So even though they may have the best intentions, parents can sometimes be wrong. 
       Lots of parents are supporting lots of kids in their enthusiastic and optimistic participation at the National Spelling Bee. Also, parents are Little League coaches, Boy and Girl Scouts leaders, and Summer Reading Library Challenge encouragers.
       Lots of parents are just good general life lesson deliverers. So as Dr. Seuss said at the end of On Beyond Zebra (see quote above),
                    “There's no limit to how much you'll know,
                     depending how far beyond zebra you go.”
 
                                                                                                                                                       --stay curious!
 

Why ladies and gentlemen, youngsters and oldsters
Your heads will quite likely spin right off your shouldsters.
So hurry! Step lively! Quick, ladies and gents!
And quick get in to your seats in my Tent-of-all-Tents!
                                                      from If I Ran the Circus
                                                                    by Dr. Seuss
                                                            Random House, 1956
 
       It’s Sunday afternoon as I’m putting my thoughts down, and I wonder, How can I feel nostalgic for something I’ve never experienced? The last Barnum and Bailey/Ringling Brothers Circus will stream live at 7:00 this evening from New York City. 
       The circus used to come to my town every spring. Not Ringling/Barnum and Bailey, but still. My kids went on school field trips or maybe with their Scout Troops. Discount tickets were made available at local grocery stores and in the newspaper. But I never went. I don’t know why.
       Kenneth Feld, CEO, cited the decreasing ticket sales and the increasing costs of presenting the show as influencing his difficult decision to close after over 140 years. Losing the elephants had something to do with the declining sales.
       According to CNN
           For years, the elephants have been in the spotlight and their          dance routines featured prominently in the shows.
       But due to mounting criticism from animal rights groups, the              Ringling Bros. phased out the elephant acts entirely. http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/14/entertainment/ringling-circus-closing/
                                    .    .    .   
       Tuesday morning, early, finds me finishing up my thoughts. I click back to the circus website: www.ringling.com to see if I can share that live stream with you. Through the magic of technology I find the entire show saved for all eternity. It’s not like being there I’m sure (even though I’ve never been there), but The Greatest Show on Earth lives on.
       I’m watching the lion and tiger act. At first, I wonder is this what lions are meant to do? should tigers do the bidding of their trainer, sitting and jumping on command? But they look like they enjoy performing. They look well-cared for. The trainer calls each one by name and assures the audience that he loves those lions and tigers. He and his family have bred 15 generations of big cats. They’re tame. They’re loving. They’re pets, really. So is that okay? We have to decide that for ourselves.        
       And how about the clowns? the acrobats? the tight rope walkers? Where will they work? Will lion taming skills transfer to the education field? or maybe a sword swallower could transfer those knife skills to a five-star restaurant? Could the ringmaster become a marketing executive?
       Or maybe a job in a different circus? Circus Maximus. not a circus! Cirque de Soleil. not really a circus, either. UniverSoul Circus and Big Apple Circus are still around, but in the Washington, D. C. area and New York City, respectively. So. . .new careers for some who have only known circus life for six generations.
       Clowns hold the Meaning of Life. They show us when to laugh at ourselves and when to cry, when to lighten the mood with a joke and when to be still, when to climb out of a car with our friends and when to keep driving down that Highway of Life.
       We’ll always have clowns. Now we’ll have to look harder to see them.
                                                                   --stay curious!
 

         Mr. Daniels had rules for everything. Some were just regular rules, like Indoor Voices. But some were what he called Non-Negotiable. That meant No exceptions ever no matter what till the end of time.
                                            from Cody and the Rules of Life
                                                          by Tricia Springstubb
                                                    illustrated by Eliza Wheeler
                                                        Candlewick Press, 2017
   
       I keep a wooden yardstick in my kitchen closet. It’s handy for pulling cat toys out from under the couch, reaching those stringy webbies that stick in the corners of the ceiling, and measuring grandkids against the doorframe.
       Maybe that’s what it means to measure something. . . to see how well it measures up, or not. Measuring up when I was small often meant following rules.
       Some rules I remember from grade school include the dont’s:

• Dont’t run
• Don’t talk when someone else is talking
• Don’t put your hands on anyone else

       I also remember some do’s:

• Put trash in the wastebasket
• Raise your hand if you have a question
• Say “please” and “thank you” when appropriate

 
       Rules helped life run smoothly. I knew what was allowed and was not allowed. If I broke a rule I had consequences. Rules helped me learn to respect my classmates, my teacher, and myself.
       These days, lots of people clearly are not measuring up. Just read the newspaper or listen to TV news. We’d all benefit from some basic and useful rules.
The do’s:

• Be kinder than you have to be
• Take turns
• Imagine yourself in someone else’s shoes
• Tell the truth

And the don’ts:

• Don’t say bad words
• Don’t hurt each other
• Don’t take anything without asking
• Don't tell secrets

 
       Rulers make rules. More complicated rules can be added to this list. But it all comes down to the most basic and maybe most important rule of all: Do not do to someone what you would not want someone to do to you. At first reading, this might sound negative. Look a little closer though to find the genius.
       Doing to (or for) others what I want for myself puts me front and center: a comparison between my own likes and everyone else’s.
       I chose to quote a much older passage. The emphasis is on the other person: making others feel comfortable, helping others reach their potential, giving others the benefit of the doubt.
       I am not a rule-maker. I can only measure up to my own yardstick, letting my heart discover what is right, then finding enough courage to do it.
                                                                   --stay curious!
 
 

     During the night while Bear slept, the hat fell out of the tree. In the morning Bear found the hat on his doorstep.
     “So the moon got me a hat, too!” exclaimed Bear.
     He tried it on and it fit perfectly.
                                                  from: Happy Birthday, Moon
                                       written and illustrated by Frank Asch
                                                      Simon and Schuster, 1982
​
       Even though we all know the Kentucky Derby is mainly about the horses, I’m thinking about the hats.
       I have a friend who dresses up with her family members in their finest hats and watch the race together. Even though they watch the race in Wisconsin, no less excitement is involved.
       My grandfather was a tailor. He brought his cap-making skills with him from the Old Country and opened a haberdashery. He made caps and sold them. He sold ties: neckties and bowties, and Adam Hats. He may have made the ties. They hung on a twirly rack that always got me in trouble. I loved to spin that thing and watch the ties fly out to horizontal while still attached at one end. Then my grandma would catch me up and distract me with miniature red-plastic Adam Hats to play with instead.
       My grandmother, among her other talents, could knit and crochet practically anything. My mom learned from the best. Consequently, my hats were not frilly. They had nothing to do with style or show-off decoration. My hats were the keep-your-head-warm kind. Close fitted with earflaps knitted right in and knitted strings for under-the-chin tying. My hats finished off with a tassel on top and matching mittens.
       Mom made my favorite hat (and matching mittens) with a skein of yarn that gradually changed from royal blue to deep violet and ruby red, bright orange, sunny yellow, then back again to orange, red, violet, and blue. And the hat and mittens came out looking like a rainbow. The kids asked where I got such a hat. I’d raise my chin a little and say, “My mom made it for me.” I smiled when I said it.
       Although I tried knitting, my results always came out lumpy. I finally gave up. My own kids had store-bought hats and mittens, some knitted (by machine in another country?) some cloth, not made by me or my grandpa.
       So back to the race. The first Kentucky Derby was held in 1875. It is always on the first Saturday in May. That first race imposed a strict dress code, including a hat (for men and women) in order to attract high society to the race and assure the public of the high moral standard. In 2017, it’s all about the hats.
       In case you’re wondering, Always Dreaming won this year’s race in 2 minutes and 3.59 seconds. I’m still trying to learn why the race is called a Derby. Something about a hat?
                                                                   --stay curious!

       “Frog, why do you keep looking out of the window?” asked Toad.
       “Because now I am waiting for the mail,” said Frog.
       “But there will not be any,” said Toad.
       “Oh, yes there will,” said Frog, “because I have sent you a letter.”
                                  .    .      .          
       Then Frog and Toad went out onto the front porch to wait for the mail.
       They sat there, feeling happy together.
                                            from: Frog and Toad are Friends
                                                                 by Arnold Lobel
                                                            Harper & Row, 1970
                                                          
       My dad was a philatelist, a stamp collector. I love that fancy word. He kept lots of organized piles of stamps and envelopes and bowls of water with stamps soaking in them on the dining room table and the side table in the dining room, on the kitchen counter, pretty much any flat surface, pretty much during my whole childhood.
       When I wrote my first letter, the stamp cost five cents. Of course, my parents encouraged me. It was their nickel, I’m sure, that bought my first stamp.
       I had a wonderful first grade teacher, Mrs. Zimmerman. Since I started school in January, in a school system that accommodated my November birthday, she knew I had already had a semester of first grade when I entered her class the following September. She knew I could spell c-a-t and my math skills were on par with other first graders. She let me be her helper in a way that made me feel important and not so special that the other kids felt jealous. How did she do that?
       I sometimes visited her after school when I was in second grade. And then she moved away. Somewhere far. She told me she was still going to teach children how to read and count and play nicely with each other. We could write letters, she told me. Another new experience for me from Mrs. Zimmerman.
       She wrote her address on a piece of paper and tasked me with the first letter. I could tell her all about third grade. What I liked to do, how my piano lessons were going, where I rode my bike. She assured me she would write back.
       I don’t remember what I said in that first letter, but we exchanged plenty of letters during my third grade. I printed her address in my best hand on the front of an envelope and folded my letter to fit. In those days we licked the gluey stamp-back to get it to stick to the envelope. I did not mind the minty-ish taste.
       Then I must have gotten too busy. The letters I wrote got shorter and farther apart. Until they stopped altogether. Mrs. Zimmerman might still be alive in Mt. Vernon, Ohio, or maybe she moved again or maybe not. Her influence lives on, though.
       This feels like a great time to write letters to my grandkids. Even though stamps have lost their minty-ish glue and even though they cost almost ten times what they did when I was a kid, there’s nothing like receiving a letter in the mail with a real stamp. 
 
                                                                   --stay curious!