…he conducted meetings. Lots and lots and lots of meetings, many in the middle of the night.
                       from Starring the Boss Baby as Himself!
                          written and illustrated by Marla Frazee
                                           Beach Lane Books, 2010

    Surprise! Millennials have surpassed Baby Boomers as a demographic in the United States. Surprise again! It’s old news. 
    The Boomer Generation peaked in 1999 and held that position for two decades.
    According to Pew Research, “Millennials, whom we define as ages 23 to 38 in 2019, numbered 72.1 million, and Boomers (ages 55 to 73) numbered 71.6 million.” 
    Before that, though, the 1960s came and went. In 1964, Jack Weinberg famously advised us Boomers not to trust anyone over 30. By 1984, Abbie Hoffman wondered whether people under 30 could be trusted. UPI (United Press International) archives. 
    Hoffman and Weinberg were both part of the Silent Generation (named for not speaking up against Joseph McCarthy’s communist scare and not protesting America’s involvement in the Vietnam War). Hoffman, aged 47 in 1984, claimed, “it may be the other way around.” As part of the Silent Generation, Hoffman meant the GenXers were not committed to social change. Boomers, he claimed, rebelled against hypocrisy. But GenXers rebelled because “the system” was getting in the way of their social interactions and job performances. 
    It’s dangerous and unfair to paint whole generations with a broad brush, but here it is.
        Silent Generation: inactive members of society
        Boomers: active and motivated change-makers
        GenXers: “me” driven, success-oriented
        Millennials: motivated by finding meaning, purpose, and making a social impact 
    My husband and I are Boomers. Our kids are GenXers. They came of age (mostly) amid the AIDS epidemic, MTV, and Sesame Street. They mostly were too young to vote for (or against) Ronald Reagan, but were affected by his Reaganomics policies. 
    Heavily involved in their children’s lives, the term “helicopter parent” was coined in 1969, and applied to us Boomers as we were busy raising our GenXers.
    In 2025, Boomers are between 61-79 years old. Millennials are between the ages 29-44. And the demographic gap is widening. The latest US Census statistics I could find are from 2023. Just two years ago, the Census revealed 65.5 million Baby Boomers and 72.7 million Millennials (USA Today).
    The reasons why the balance shifted are many. People move. Lots of people still want to come here for work. Most of those immigrants are Millennials, it’s their age. More Baby Boomers are reaching the end of their lives. It’s their age, too.
    I like to look for similarities among the many humans I meet, and we humans are wired to look for meaning in our lives. Social scientists use their tools: focus groups, surveys, and experiments, to discover what large groups have in common.
    You can find lists and lists of generational characteristics. They are all common traits. They speak of the middle of the spectrum, not of the many people who slink toward the edges. They all overgeneralize. Here goes:
    After WWII, the American economy soared. 
    Baby Boomers experienced the Vietnam War (and lots of us fought in it and protested it), assassinations of JFK, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and John Lennon, Woodstock (and all that that involved), and the Beatles (and all that that involved, too. John Glen orbited Earth and Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. Women’s health care leaped forward when Roe v. Wade was decided. 
    Boomers value loyalty, hard work, and saving money for the future. As a group, they show respect for authority, but not blind obedience. They believe a “good job” requires a college education. They prefer personal contact over email, ZOOM, and texts.
    Boomers believe in “prosperity through hard, honest work,” in other words, the American Dream is still possible. This optimism fuels their drive for success. We like to feel useful and productive.
    Like the Boomers, Millennials also lived through communal trauma and joy. They remember 9/11 and life before the internet. They remember when music came over the radio in real time. Their phones were attached to the wall, and one phone number per household was the norm.
    Millennials grew up with technology. They were not born into it like GenZers. They adapt to new tech easier than GenXers and especially us Boomers. But being fluent in both digital media and analog, boundaries can be a challenge as Millennials straddle the divide between the two.    
    Millennials value their community and work to help it survive. They want to find meaning in their work, achieve self-satisfaction, and experience the feeling that their work is making a difference in the world. not just giving them financial rewards. 
    They value the importance of protecting the environment, human rights, and creativity and look for careers that align with their values, including their company’s ethics.
    Even though they are the most well-educated generation in US history, many carry lots of student debt. They entered the workforce after the Great Recession, and COVID hit millennials hard. They are less likely to own their own home than their parents at the same age. They are less able to save money.     
    Success is redefined for many Millennials. Their American Dream is the ability to experience life as they live it, more than the financial rewards of a nine-to-five.  
    No matter our age, we’re all looking for happiness. Most people are kind and want to be productive, any way that productivity is defined. We want to love and be loved, no matter how that love is expressed. Even though their advice is not always appreciated at the time it’s given, most people want the next generation to thrive, and the one after that, and the one after that, too.

One more week of Jon Meacham’s Soul of America (Random House, 2018). I’m getting very close to the end. Even when he’s talking about the American Revolution, the New Deal, or Civil Rights, he reveals similarities with today. Even though I would not call him optimistic, he is realistic, energizing, and encouraging. Read this one. It’s important.
                    Be curious! (and march for your beliefs)

“I wish I could keep everything we say today.”
“Oh, I keep it all! I stick it here in my head.”
                                      from  Robinson’s New Thing
                              written and illustrated by Julia Mills
                  Clarion Books/HarperCollins Publishers, 2025

    When I was still working as a Children’s Librarian, one year, our Summer Reading Program emphasized the importance of exercise, the outdoor kind. It was a Summer Olympics year, and we had programs on bicycle safety, line dancing, and how to identify treasures you might find on a hiking trip or at the beach. 
    We had relay races and dance lessons, and chose books like Play Ball, Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parish and newly illustrated by Wallace Tripp (HarperCollins, 1996) and Miss Nelson Has a Field Day by James Marshall (Houghton Mifflin, 1985).
    I decided to take a different tack and encouraged the kids to not only exercise their bodies, but also to exercise their brains. Reading, I reminded them, is a prime example of a brain exercise. A little more on that in a few minutes.
    Last week, I was driving with my 12-year-old grandson when I pointed out a beautiful flowering shrub. I corrected myself when I called it a hydrangea. In reality, it was a hibiscus. When I told him I have a problem remembering which is which, he told me a joke he had made up on the spot. I don’t remember the gist of it, but the punchline was “a biscuit.” 
    “Oh, I get it,” I told him. “A biscuit is round, and the hibiscus flower is round. They sound alike.” Now that we have a shared visual, we’ll both remember which is which. As a bonus, whenever I see a hibiscus, especially the red one blooming in a pot on my back porch, I’ll think of him! It’s a mnemonic device times two!
    Mnemonic devices are powerful memory tools. They work by associating what we want to remember with something we already know. Scientists classify the devices by how they work.
    Sometimes I organize my (short) grocery list in alphabetical order, or make up a word with their first letters (acrostics and acronyms). Sometimes I put the items in order according to where they are in the store, as if I were really there (method of loci). I can divide the (longer) list into categories: produce, cans, dairy, for example (chunking) with an alphabetical sub-list of each. 
    Association doesn’t work as well for me with a grocery list, neither does using a rhyme or making up lyrics to a familiar song. But those are also convenient. Does your new neighbor always smell good? Oh! Her name is Rose. Or my grandson’s biscuit joke that helps me remember the name of a flower (association).
    One of my granddaughters can sing Pi’s first 100 digits. My sister’s American history teacher put the presidents in chronological order to the tune of “Rock-a-bye Baby.” Even though “The Presidents” stops at Kennedy, both are examples of songs and rhyme. I can’t do the Pi song, but I haven’t tried to learn it. I can still sing the presidents up to Grover Cleveland, though.
    Scientific work is ongoing. It examines how we form, store, and recall our memories. All five of our senses work together to synthesize new information to create them.
    While mnemonic devices work as memory aids by connecting what we already know with material we are learning about, they are less effective for helping us understand deeply “the why of a thing.”
    We can use HOMES to remember the names of the five great lakes. We can even devise a mnemonic device to remember which one is deepest or which is cleanest, but why these comparisons are important, or how they work together, or even if they do, is beyond the scope of a mnemonic device. 
    Using mnemonic devices might help counteract the Google effect. Yes, that’s a thing. Simply stated, we tend to not remember an answer or fact or a confirmation that we look up online. Research points to our confidence in being able to “just Google it” again, so our brains don’t need to retain it.
    Also known as digital amnesia, the authors of an article in The Decision Lab tell us current research suggests the Google effect is resulting in “decreased attention spans, increased anxiety, lower performance on cognitive tasks, and diminishing social skills.”
    On the other side of the Google coin, using technology is the way we humans are moving into the future. That we have found ways to store very complex information and retrieve it is a mark of our intelligence. Also from The Digital Lab’s article, “knowing how and where to access the information is often more important than knowing the small pieces of information themselves.”
    It’s becoming a new behavior pattern. If we know the correct questions and know where to find specific answers, we free up space in our working memory and “reduce mental strain on this limited system.”
    Circling back to validate my summer reading advice, Jennifer Duffy from National University has written in her graduate school dissertation, “Words—-spoken and written—-are the building blocks by which a child’s mind grows. Reading is not only essential to a child’s verbal and cognitive development, but it also teaches the child to listen, develop new language, and communicate.” She continues, “books open a child’s imagination into discovering his or her world.”
    That was evident to me when I heard my grandson’s biscuit joke.
    Maybe I'm not getting forgetful after all. Even though I don’t have as much on the tip of my tongue anymore, maybe I’m holding too many factoids in my working memory.

I’m reading The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels by Jon Meacham (Random House, 2018). Even though Meacham published it at the beginning of Trump’s first term, Meacham's words feel extremely current. From the publisher, [h]e assures us, “‘The good news is that we have come through such darkness before’—-as time and again, Lincoln’s better angels have found a way to prevail.” Encouraging and readable.
              -—Be curious! (and just Google it when you need to)

Lubna gave Amir the shoe box with Pebble and the pen.
“What do I do if Pebble misses you?” asked Amir.
“Draw the smile back on,” said Lubna.
And what do I do if I miss you?”
“Tell Pebble all about it,” Lubna said.
Amir nodded and held the shoe box tight.
                                           from Lubna and Pebble
                                       written by Wendy Meddour
                                        illustrated by Daniel Egnéus
                             Dial Books for Young Readers, 2019

    The older I get, the more I understand my mom as a truly moral person. She taught me not to judge anyone before I walked a mile in their shoes. She was wise, too, wise enough to explain that lofty and difficult concept to my very young self in a way I could understand. 
    That, I think, is the foundation of empathy. From Greater Good Magazine, a publication of UC-Berkeley, “empathy is the ability to sense other people’s emotions, coupled with the ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling.”
    Though there is a genetic component to empathy, our capacity can be enhanced or diminished, depending on our childhood experiences and relationships. Infants sense their caregivers’ emotions and often mirror them. Remember those big, gummy grins? 
    Helen Riess, director of the Empathy and Relational Science Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, developed a training approach based on research and the neurobiology and physiology of empathy to enhance doctor-patient relationships. 
    She saw a decline in that relationship, especially since she noticed an uptick in her own patients’ reporting of feeling unheard, unseen, and even dismissed during their own medical appointments. She knew that we humans are hard-wired for empathy. She thought that if empathy was on the wane, there must be a way to enhance it. She’s devoted her career to finding ways to help us learn how to get back our empathy.
    Through her own research and experiments, she discovered some useful tips, for doctors, and the rest of us, too.. They conveniently spell out the word EMPATHY.
1. Eye contact releases oxytocin, the bonding hormone. By meeting someone’s gaze, human bonds are formed and enhanced. One way to make this a conscious effort is to note the eye color of the person you’re talking with (without staring at them, of course!).
2. Motor mimicry usually occurs on an unconscious level. But if you’re trying to teach someone to be more empathetic, or become more empathetic yourself, pay attention to how you react when you’re in conversation with someone.
3. Notice if your postures match. Are you both sitting? standing? looking alert? 
4. Affect. Can you name the emotion someone is feeling by “reading” their body language?
5. More is “said” with our Tone of Voice than our actual words, 85% more according to Riess. Listeners need to “tune in” to their conversations.
6. Hear the whole person, what’s being said, and what isn’t. Ask questions.
7. Your response is the personal inventory you ask yourself to determine how it’s going and how or if to continue the conversation, relationship, or meeting.
    Empathy in children and adults is also developed by reading, especially fiction. According to Lisa Cron in Story Genius (Ten Speed Press, 2016), “[s]tories instill meaning directly into our belief system the same way experience does—not by telling us what is right, but allowing us to feel it ourselves.” She quotes from Daniel Gilbert, a Harvard psychology professor, “[i]ndeed, feelings don’t just matter, they are what mattering means.”
    Of course, like life itself, empathy is a balancing act. Becoming too immersed in others can be a detriment to ourselves. 
    Empathy is different from caring, compassion, or kindness. All are important for a healthy society to work for everyone. But we can understand, sympathize, and help others without becoming overwhelmed by empathy. Doing for and with others, not only thinking about their plight, matters most to a sustainable community. 
    Like Mom also taught me, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
    Turning our empathy into intention and action is good for us, good for our family members, and good for our communities.

In 13Ways to Say Goodbye by Kate Fussner (HarperCollins/Children’s Books/HarperCollins Publishers, 2025), Nina learns to forge her own identity as she grieves the loss of her older sister. It’s a novel in verse, full of emotion without being sappy. Recommended.
                                    Be curious! (and sew kindness)

Indivisible means unbreakable--
our country cannot be split into separate parts.
No matter how much we might disagree about some things, we all agree on one thing: we are strongest when we work together and help each other out. 
               from I pledge allegiance: the Pledge of Allegiance:
                                                   with commentary
                 written by Bill Martin, Jr. and Michael Sampson
                                      illustrated by Chris Raschka
                                          Candlewick Press,  2002
I pledge allegiance
to the flag of the
United States of America
and to the republic
for which it stands,
one nation under God,
indivisible, with liberty
and justice for all.
       --Frances Bellamy, 1892

    I learned to say “The Pledge” when I was in kindergarten. We all stood next to our tables, put our right hands over our hearts, and recited words we didn’t completely understand. But we did it together, and did it together again and again until we graduated high school. By then, most of us did understand it, mostly.
    Mr. Bellamy published his poem in 1892 in The Youth’s Companion, a Boston-based children’s magazine. Reprinted on thousands of leaflets and sent to schools all over the country in time for the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in the Americas, Bellamy’s words were recited by twelve million children as one voice to celebrate that anniversary (Chamber of Commerce.org).
    After several edits making the Pledge exclusively American, it was officially adopted by Congress on June 22, 1942, and formally included in the U.S. Flag Code. 
    Arguing that adding the words “under God” after “one nation” would give students a deeper sense of patriotism, in 1954, Congress passed a law to add the phrase. As you can imagine, it was met with controversy. Several lawsuits were argued in various courts for various reasons. In 2010, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that reciting the pledge did not violate students’ rights because students are permitted to choose not to participate.
    Until very recently, I believed the United States, under the leadership of reasonable lawmakers and judges, was moving, albeit slowly, toward becoming a more empathetic nation. 
    Now I believe differently.
    Not that Americans are not empathetic. I believe most of us are. I believe most of us want to help our neighbors, in the most general sense of that word. 
    I believe most of us are troubled by the cruelty, callousness, and carelessness we are seeing from this current government at the highest level. And the cowardice, fear, and selfishness of those who we elected to represent us.
    The question I most often ask myself is What can I do? The real answer might be “not much,” but to not even try to make a difference just feels wrong.
    We can make calls, send emails, or even write letters to our local, state, and national elected officials. We can show up to demonstrate. We can support the causes and people of like mind who are denouncing the cruelty we feel is engulfing us. 
    We can do the best we can to turn our own fear, anger, and grief into action.
Here are some sources that might be helpful.
    5 Calls app is easy to download onto your smartphone. 
        https://5calls.org 
    Click here to contact Federal, State, and Local elected officials.
        https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials/ 
Positive reinforcement is as important as a complaint, suggestion, or any other negative comment. 
    According to USA Today, more than 5,000,000 (five million) people attended the “No Kings” protest on June 14, 2025. Over 200 organizations sponsored more than 2,100 rallies in all 50 states.
    The next general protest will be held on July 17th. Called “No Kings,” “Good Trouble Lives On,” or “Anti-Trump,” depending on where you look, sponsors are, among many others, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 50501, MoveOn.org, Good Trouble Lives On, and Indivisible. 
    You can find a location near you by typing “July 17, 2025” into Google or any other search engine.
                                Be curious! (and keep showing up)

Shark whined, pathetic.
“Let me gooooo!
I promise to be goooooood!”

But they could never trust 
his hard and sharkly heart.
                                          from Shark at Sister Tea
                                         written by Barbara Joosse
                                        illustrated by Sergio Ruzzier
 Annie Schwartz Books/Random House Children’s Books, 2025

    This summer celebrates the 50th anniversary of Jaws! I didn’t see the movie 50 years ago, and I just found out that I missed the actual anniversary, too. It was last week (June 20).         
    The first film Steven Spielberg released, The Sugarland Express (1974), was a critical success but bombed at the box office. Jaws was already in production. It could have been made in a tank in Hollywood, or even in a protected lake somewhere, but being young (only 25 years old at the time of filming) and inexperienced (Jaws was only his second movie), he knew if he did that, it wouldn’t have looked the same.
    Jaws was filmed on location on Martha’s Vineyard from May to October 1974. It was the first major movie to be filmed on the ocean, which caused its own set of problems.
     Early on, the producers thought they’d be able to train a real great white. When they quickly realized how foolish (and dangerous) that idea was, three full-sized pneumatically powered “prop” sharks were built.
    And into the Atlantic they all went: actors, two identical (just in case) 42-foot models of the Orca, and the three model sharks, a "full-body" with its belly missing and two “platform” sharks, one showing a view of the left side and another of the right. The pneumatic hoses that made them move were hidden.
    Problems and “fixes” of the mechanical sharks ran the film way over budget and pushed the time to film it back, too. 
    The foam used for sharkskin took on water, even though it was marketed as non-absorbent. The pneumatic hoses were not made for use in salt water.
    Also, shooting at sea meant working around stray sailboats that drifted into the frame. 
    But all these delays made more time to refine the script. Often, the writers were only one day ahead of the shoot. Richard Dreyfuss famously said, "We started filming without a script, without a cast, and without a shark.” 
    Despite all this, or maybe because of it, Jaws changed American cinema. It introduced the idea of a “summer blockbuster,” a high-budget film released during the summer to maximize viewership and the box office returns that went with it. Rocky (1976) and Star Wars (1977) used the same marketing strategies.
    Blockbusters played well to audiences. Suspenseful storytelling and innovative use of music kept audiences engaged and influenced a new way to produce thrillers and horror films.
    Peter Benchley’s book and Spielberg’s movie are fiction. But how about real sharks that live in the ocean? Do they really swim close to shore?
    The simple answer is yes. Professionals and an increasing number of amateurs are using drones to document just how close and how often sharks and humans share the shore. The answer is very close and very often. 
    But far from being alarming, Chris Lowe, professor of marine biology and director of the Shark Lab at California State University, assures us, “when there are a lot of people and sharks in shallow water together, most of the time nothing happens.”
    Sensationalized stories and stereotyping have turned sharks into fearsome, dangerous, indiscriminate killers. In reality, according to the World Wildlife Federation (WWF), “sharks are a critical part of the marine environment and must be protected.” 
    With over 400 different species, sharks come in all sizes, from the 8-inch deepwater dogfish to the 40-foot-long whale shark. Here are a few more facts about sharks from WWF.
    Humans are not natural prey for sharks. They most often are mistaken for something of a similar size, like a dolphin or seal.
    Sharks are hunted illegally and especially for their fins to make soup. They grow slowly and bear few young. Many species are in sharp decline, including hammerheads, blue sharks, mako sharks, and nurse sharks.
    Shark attacks are extremely rare. You are more likely to be struck by lightning than attacked by a shark.
    I haven’t been to Martha’s Vineyard, where Jaws was shot, but my husband and I stayed a few days on nearby Nantucket about 25 years ago. It’s a beautiful and historic island, the setting for Herman Melville’s Mody Dick. We were there in October, after tourist season, when the weather was a little chillier and the prices were a little more reasonable. We visited a whaling museum and several shops and restaurants. We walked around the island at night to see so many, many stars. More than I ever thought could light up the sky. 
    We did not venture near the beach.
    “Jaws" was inducted into the National Film Registry in 2001. I’m waiting for the copy I reserved at my library.

When a shark unexpectedly visits a tea party, two sisters bravely hurl him back to the sea where he belongs. Full of sisterhood devotion, bravery, tension, and tenderness, Shark at Sister Tea (attributed above) is a picture book that deserves a look. 
                                        Be curious! (and keep cool)