“The first American flag was raised in 1777,” I say. “During the siege of Fort Stanwix on the Mohawk River Valley, in New York.”
    “Ah,” says Grandpa Tad. “Fort Stanwix.”
    “The soldiers cut up their white shirts to make the stripes, and the red petticoats of their wives. They got the blue from a captain’s coat.”
    “Whoa, now. I thought the first flag was made by Miss Betsy Ross.”
    “There’s no historical evidence for that,” I say. “That is a made-up story. Like George Washington and his cherry tree. Also not true.”
    “You don’t say. How’d you get to know all this?”
    “I read a lot. And Mrs. Dooley at the library, she helps me figure things out.”
                      from: The True History of Lyndie B. Hawkins
                                                        by Gail Shepherd
                 Kathy Dawson Books/Penguin Random House, 2019
   
    When I was little, my gram made a nightgown pattern from newspaper for me. I laid on the floor and she traced around me on the sheets she had taped together. My nightgown had  little flowers all over it and a ruffle at the wrists and around the bottom. It was soft. I loved that nightgown. 
    In 9th grade all us girls studied Home Economics, cooking and sewing. I really enjoyed sewing, even though I wasn’t too good at it. My dad took me to buy fabric at JoAnn’s, but his favorite color was brown. We compromised. We bought brown fabric with little flowers all over it. I only got a B on my apron.
    Not to be discouraged, I saved up my babysitting money and bought a sewing machine from Sears. I bought some McCall’s patterns, printed on newsprint, and sewed some of my own clothes. I made an orange caftan (combination of gingham and terrycloth, can you imagine?!) when those were popular in the 1970s. I sewed some clothes for my girls when they were young. They wouldn’t wear anything I made after about age 3 or 4, though.
    My favorite projects were the quilts I sewed for my grandkids on that same sewing machine. All the quilts were ready (but the last one) for each child’s arrival. I adapted published patterns, and only needed math help on the one I sorta designed myself. I learned to hand appliqué, a technique I’m glad I did, but don’t have a strong desire to do lots more of. I appliquéd lots of little sheep on that last quilt. Each sheep had two tiny ears and four even tinier legs, and a wee, tiny tail.
    If Betsy Ross sewed the first American flag, which she did or did not, depending who you read, she hand appliquéd all 13 stars on a field of blue. Some claim she told George Washington it would take less material if the stars were 5-pointed instead of 6. For proof, she folded up a piece of paper and one snip later, she unfolded a little star. You can try it here. I did and it works!
    Reeves Weatherill, the descendant of one of Betsy Ross’s friends, Samuel Weatherill, presented the little paper star at a luncheon of the Philadelphia Flag Day Association in 1963. It was signed by Clarissa Claypoole Wilson, Betsy Ross’s daughter. Clarissa, so the story goes, had given the little paper pattern to Reeves’s own ancestor, Samuel Weatherill. Now after all those years, this important scrap is part of our history.
    The earliest American flags had no particular guidelines about the arrangement of the stars and stripes. Each state in the new Union was represented by a five-pointed star and each stripe represented one of the original thirteen colonies.
    On June 14, 1777, the Continental Congress passed the first Flag Act: “Resolved: That the flag of the United States be made of thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new Constellation.” https://www.si.edu/spotlight/flag-day/flag-facts We still celebrate Flag Day each year on June 14.
    An Executive Order of June 24, 1912, established the rows of stars on the background of blue. When Alaska was admitted to the Union on January 3, 1959, a 49-star flag went into production the following July 4. President Eisenhower proclaimed the stars to be in seven rows of seven. Dozens of 49-star flags are still available, even though they were only made for one year.
    In preparation for the admittance of Hawaii, a high school teacher in Lancaster, Ohio, gave his students an assignment: design an American flag to accommodate 50 states. It was a math problem for Bob Heft. He successfully arranged the 50 stars in nine horizontal rows alternating six and five stars in each row. He kept the 13 stripes. Bob earned a B- due to “lack of originality.” He wrote to his congressman who convinced the government to adopt his design from over 1,000 that were submitted. His teacher changed his grade to A.
    Hawaii achieved statehood on August, 21, 1959, and the 50-star flag went into production on July 4, 1960.
    At the time of his death in 2009, Bob is thought to have designed a 51-star flag, too. Let’s hear it for Puerto Rico! and Guam!
                        --stay curious (and stand up for your ideals!)

    “And in the end,” said Jack, “I still had the succulent strawberry, but. . .” The boy sighed. “You’re allergic to strawberries.”
He waited for her to yawn.
“So the guard ate it,” he concluded.    
The princes laughed and clapped her hands in delight.
“A story!” she exclaimed. “And an adventure story at that! What a fine gift.”
                                   from: Clever Jack Takes the Cake
                                   by: Candace Fleming
                                   illustrated by: G. Brian Karas
                                   Schwartz & Wade Books, 2010
    Today would have been my father’s 99th birthday. Here are some things he loved, in no particular order:

• His family (family always came first)
• His home
• Chocolate anything, especially
  • chocolate covered raisins
  • Hostess cupcakes
• Coffee, strong with one spoon of sugar and just a very, very, tiny bit of milk
  • Once I used an eyedropper to get it right.
• Well-done hamburgers
• Collecting stamps
  • and pennies
• A good joke or even a not-so-good one, even when it was on him
  • Once, on his birthday, our good neighbor and good friend “Uncle” Frank brought over a birthday cake, complete with candles. Daddy blew out the candles and began to saw into the cake (chocolate, he presumed). Even the sharp replacement knife didn’t work on the Styrofoam cake that “Aunt” Daisy decorated so beautifully. Daddy laughed about that cake for years. It would have been decades if he had lived that long.
• John Kennedy
• Portulaca 
• A green lawn with no weeds, neatly edged at the driveway and sidewalk
• Brown
• Red Skelton
• Ed Sullivan
• Fedoras (until President Kennedy whooshed them out of fashion)
• Good manners
• Bing Crosby
• Spam
• The Smothers Brothers
• Camel cigarettes, no filters
• Predictability

    Daddy valued honesty and an honest day’s work. He wore a shirt and tie with his suit coat. His shirts were always short-sleeved, though. He didn’t like to be hot.    
He came home right after work the same time every day. 
    My dad was great at spelling and great at math. I remember my brother racing him with columns of addition. Dad won. When my mother told me to look up a difficult word in the dictionary, I just asked my dad how to spell it. He was always right.
    He taught all three of us kids how to play chess and tap out Morse Code. 
    Daddy could recite anyone’s phone number by heart. My sister and brother and I all shared that talent until cell phones and caller ID made it irrelevant.
    He had a great sense of humor and a great temper. He was fun-loving and disciplined. He was meticulous in his work and neat in his habits.
    He expected us kids to be polite, well-groomed and hard-workers. I think we three did just fine making him proud.
    Daddy may not have been the best, but he tried his best. He may not have been able to give us everything he wanted to, but we never lacked for any material thing. I’m sure he loved us all, even when we disappointed him. 
My dad loved to laugh. I hope he was happy.
    Happy Birthday, Daddy. 
    *Happy Father’s Day, Dady!*
            --stay curious! (and take good care of your memories)

 . .Why can’t we unwind the cocoons after the moths come out?
                                       . . .
    The moth gets out by making a hole in the cocoon, right? To make a hole . . .it spits out this chemical that dissolves the silk and makes a hole. And the hole goes through all the layers of silk, see? So instead of one nice long thread, you’d end up with a million tiny short pieces that you couldn’t sew with. Silk farmers never let the moths come out—that would ruin everything. Get it?
                                          from The Mulberry Project
                                                      by Linda Sue Park
                                                    Clarion Books, 2005
    In ancient days, from around 200 BCE until the sixteenth century CE, travelers and merchants carried goods and ideas (and even some good ideas!) from Shanghai across northern China to the Middle East and eastern Europe. They brought luxury items, most notably silk, and spices and took home wool, gold and silver. They traveled in caravans, rarely going the whole distance, but finding trading partners along the way. 
    In 2013, President Xi Jinping announced that the Silk Road would be reborn as the Belt and Road Initiative. In what some see as a massive move to gain world trade dominance in goods ranging from cotton to petroleum products, China is planning to invest something in the neighborhood of a trillion dollars. So far, sixty-eight countries have signed on. Since 2013, China has loaned about forty billion dollars a year to developing countries. *According to an article in Reuters (6/13/21), the number of countries signed on to the initiative is now over 100.*
    “The deals are construction contracts, typically for large-scale infrastructure projects, such as air and sea ports, road networks, energy and petrochemical development, power plants, agriculture, mining, manufacturing, and real estate, and even a digital silk road with fiber optic cables and telecommunication facilities, and satellite links.” https://www.bloombergquint.com/global-economics/trumps-principled-realism-versus-chinas-belt-and-road-initiative#gs.QcfnwPc 
    But Pakistan, Djibouti, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Maldives, Mongolia, Montenegro, Sri Lanka, and Tajikistan all owe vast amounts of money to China to repay their loans. If a debtor country cannot make timely payment of principal and interest, China will take over ownership of the project.. 
    Whether a new railroad project through Vietnam, a nuclear power plant in Egypt, or pipe-line projects in Malaysia, country after country is building up debt to China. https://thediplomat.com/2018/07/why-the-civil-nuclear-trap-is-part-and-parcel-of-the-belt-and-road-strategy/ 
    So, how does all of this affect us? China and the United States have a long history of trade partnership. “Made in China” is stamped or sewn onto everything from dog food to dishes to doll clothes. 
    The Trans Pacific Partnership was a regional trade agreement involving the U.S. and 11 other Asian-Pacific countries. Together they comprised 40 percent of the world's economic output. The TPP’s purpose was to update and expand rules for trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific. Our previous administration (Obama/Biden) made sure the US would be at the center of regional rules development. It would have supported the economic development of our allies and reaffirmed our commitment to the area. Now the TPP continues without the United States.
    According to the Brookings Institution, the decision by the current administration (Trump/Pence) to recognize the Belt and Road Initiative in the new US-China trade agreement compounds uncertainty in Asia and raises further questions about US economic and strategic goals for the region. https://www.brookings.edu/research/chinas-one-belt-one-road-initiative-a-view-from-the-united-states/ 
    And now we’re in a trade war with China. Our administration has imposed tariff after tariff on goods received from China. Solar panels and airplane parts are more expensive for manufacturers. The price of washing machines and flat-panel TVs have gone up for the rest of us.
    Like it or not, our world is made of sovereign nations, each looking out for themselves. We owe it to our grandchildren to be good neighbors, looking out for each other, too. 
    Please vote your conscience on November 6. 
                                         —-stay curious! (and informed)    

Just
smile
at me
one
time
on your way past my desk.
                                          from: “Dear Ms. Back Row:”
                                                        in Love Letters
                                              written by Arnold Adoff
                                             illustrated by Lisa Desimini
                                                         Scholastic, 1997
                                                         accessed online: 
                No Water River spotlight on Arnold Adoff (6/8/21)

It was the
best soup ever…
and we can 
grow it again
next year
                                      from: Growing Vegetable Soup
                               written and illustrated by Lois Ehlert
                                   Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987

“Do you want to be my friend?”
“Yes!” said a mouse 
with a small gray 
tail. “I will be your friend.”
And the two ran off to a big tree,
and just in time.
                                      from: Will You Be My Friend?
                               written and illustrated by Eric Carle
                                                           Crowell, 1971

    I don’t remember the time before I could read. I don’t remember learning how to read, either. I have other memories from when I was very young: the time a fly slipped down my throat when I was riding my tricycle; the times my sister and I dressed up our baby brother and took him for walks in our toy baby buggy; the times my gram sat me on her lap on the bouncy, green metal porch chair and sang to me. She did not have a good singing voice, but it didn’t matter. She might have only known one English song, “When It’s Springtime in the Rockies.” I didn’t know what the Rockies were, but that didn’t matter either.
    I grew up in a house with lots of books. Magazines, too. The newspaper came every afternoon. But I don’t remember being read to. I must have figured out how to do it along the way to Kindergarten. What I mean is I don’t think I lost that memory of learning to read. The process must have been more organic than methodic.
    My parents had a small library that included Cheaper by the Dozen, Around the World in Eighty Days, Gulliver’s Travels and lots of volumes of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. 
    Mom took me to our public library. Most of the time, I checked out books from the Children’s Fiction section. I read Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s Magic, Charlotte’s Web, Curious George Rides a Bike. Lots of what would become classics.
    But I don’t remember a favorite author. I didn’t go out of my way to find another book by someone whose work I liked. I don’t know why I didn’t pay attention to the authors’ names until I was much older. 
    I have favorite authors now. My girls have favorites, and so do my grandkids. 
    As a children’s librarian I studied picture book authors and illustrators and those who are talented enough to create the words and the art. Some authors and illustrators stand out for their style or their prolific body of work or their wisdom, humor, and ability to speak to young children where they are. The best combine many of those elements.
    The world of children’s literature lost four giants last month (May, 2021). They were all geniuses in their field.
    Arnold Adoff (7/16/35 - 5/7/21) crossed the color line when he taught seventh grade social studies in a classroom full of kids with diverse backgrounds. He realized their textbooks reflected racist views and they didn’t have access to books and magazines that accurately described their environment. In an article for Something About the Author Adoff explained, “I began writing for kids because I wanted to effect a change in American society.” He continued, “I write for children because the child in me is still very much alive.” He is best known for his picture book Black is Brown is Tan and an anthology he edited, I Am the Darker Brother: An Anthology of Modern Poems by Negro Americans, published by Macmillan in 1968. In 1988 he received the National Council of Teachers of English Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children, in recognition of his body of work. Since 2016, Kent State University has awarded The Arnold Adoff Poetry Award “to highlight the power of poetry, encourage publishers to publish works of poetry from a variety of perspectives, commend poets for various student populations, and encourage the reading of poetry.” KSU Arnold Adoff Poetry Award  
    Lois Ehlert (11/9/34 - 5/25/21) is known for the bright colors she used in her paper collages. She created the art for Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. Here’s a list of Lois Ehlert's books. She wrote and illustrated Color Zoo which won her a Caldecott Honor and my favorite, Feathers for Lunch. The kids loved Growing a Rainbow and Growing Vegetable Soup when I used them in Storytime.
    Eric Carle (6/25/29 - 5/23/21) published The Very Hungry Caterpillar in 1969. It’s been translated into 66 languages and has sold over 50 million copies. He illustrated over 70 books. Most have become best selling classics. He wrote most of them, but only illustrated Brown Bear, Brown BearWhat Do You See? That came from a collaboration with Bill Martin, Jr. On his website Eric Carle says, “I believe that children are naturally creative and eager to learn. I want to show them that learning is really both fascinating and fun.”
    Carole Calladine (? - 5/9/21) passed away this past Mother’s Day. She was a devoted wife, mother, and grandmother. I learned everything I know that is useful about the craft of writing from Carole. She was my friend, mentor, and source of inspiration. She left behind many fiction and nonfiction picture book manuscripts and manuscripts of two young adult novels. She will always be my role model.
    A couple of months ago, I decided to give myself a blog vacation. As this is my sixth blog-aversary, I thought it an auspicious time. I will continue my blog each Tuesday morning with re-posts of my favorite pieces. I’ll pop back live if something piques my curiosity and interest enough that it jumps off my perpetual list and on to these pages.
                                         -—stay curious! (and stay tuned!)

…We circle the fresh dirt mounds, with sweet-smelling petals of rose, lilac, and jasmine swirling to the ground. Thousands of hands sprinkle thousands of spring blossoms. The graves become a bed of petals and tears.
                                          from: A Day for Remerberin’
                                             written by Leah Henderson
                                             illustrated by Floyd Cooper
                             Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2021
    This past weekend marked the 100th anniversary of my town’s first Memorial Day Celebration. We were not the first town to mark the occasion. Besides Charleston, South Carolina, over 20 different cities claim that distinction.
    I always thought (was this part of my formal education!?) that Memorial Day commemorates the soldiers who died in Flanders Field amongst the poppies. The field is in the medieval County of Flanders spanning southern Belgium and north-west France and served as a major battlefield on the Western Front during WWI. Memorial Day gradually expanded to include the dead of all American wars, I always thought.
    In my own town, veterans distribute red, silk poppies as a remembrance to those who gave their lives to protect our freedom during that war. Click the link and scroll down to see a couple of beautiful photos of Belgian poppies. 
    But long before the end of WWI on November 11, 1918, the club house of a racecourse in Charleston, SC was converted into a prison for captured Union soldiers during the Civil War. Less than a month after the Confederacy surrendered in 1865, twenty-eight newly freed men living in Charleston, were joined by regiments from Massachusetts and a few white Charlestonians. They spent ten days digging fresh graves and reburying the “Martyrs of the Race Course” who died during their captivity. To give them a respectful resting place, each fallen Union soldier was placed in an individual plot and marked with a headstone. (info from Leah Henderson’s book, quoted above)
    When the burying was finished, the people sang hymns, delivered and listened to speeches, and decorated the new graves with flowers.
    In May, 1868, General John A. Logan issued a decree that May 30 should become a day set aside to commemorate the over 650,000 lives lost in the Civil War. He chose May 30 because “it was a rare day that didn’t fall on the anniversary of a Civil War battle.” Also, flowers across the country would be in bloom. https://www.history.com/news/8-things-you-may-not-know-about-memorial-day 
    It was two years earlier, though, on May 5, 1866, tiny Waterloo, New York closed every store, shop, and place of business and held a ceremony for those who had fought in the Civil War. Year after year the people in Waterloo remembered their heroes. One hundred years later, President Lyndon Johnson declared Waterloo, NY to be the Birthplace of Memorial Day. 
    The Uniform Monday Holiday Act of 1968 moved most National holidays to Mondays, and in 1971, Decoration Day’s name was changed to Memorial Day, and it also was moved to a Monday, the last Monday in May.
    The Civil War ended on April 9, 1865, when General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Confederate troops to the Union's Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House. Although we had skirmishes with Mexico and other Latin American countries after the Civil War ended, the United States did not engage in major warfare until 1917, when President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war against Germany. 
    During the second year of WWI, soldiers started noticing the blazing red fields of poppies and began writing home about them. 
    The day after his friend was killed in battle, a Canadian doctor, John McCrae, wrote his famous poem “In Flanders Fields” to describe the field of makeshift graves blooming with wild poppies.
    Here’s the first stanza of Flanders Fields
             In Flanders fields the poppies blow
            Between the crosses, row on row,
                    That mark our place; and in the sky
                    The larks, still bravely singing, fly
            Scarce heard amid the guns below.
    Sadly, the United States has fought many wars since the War to End All Wars. Under President Joe Biden’s direction, we are slowly untangling ourselves from our longest war. Many young adults today can’t even remember when we were not at war. 
    On a field trip to Washington DC in May, 1996, a group of school children was asked why they think there is a holiday on Memorial Day. “It’s the day the pools open!” they responded. That same month a Gallup poll discovered that only 28% of Americans knew the meaning of Memorial Day.
    Clearly, this was a problem. 
    The idea for a National Moment of Remembrance was born of the concern and sorrow of many people coming together. On December 28, 2000, Congress passed the National Moment of Remembrance Act. It is an informal, voluntary, annual event held each Memorial Day at precisely 3:00 pm local time. Its purpose is to allow everyone 60 seconds of silence to remember, honor, and celebrate those brave men and women who died to protect our freedoms. 
                              -—stay curious! (and hug your memories)