“One thing makes us special,” [the bagels] all agreed. ONE THING is who we are.”
    “Be happy with the ONE THING you are,” scolded Great-Plain-Grandbagel.
    But the plain bagel was NOT happy. 
    “It’s boring being just ONE THING,” the plain bagel groaned. “I want to be EVERYTHING!”
                      from The Bagel Who Wanted Everything 
                     written and illustrated by Alan Silberberg
                                                       Viking, 2025
                                        (read on Libby, 7/26/26)

    When it comes to favorite food groups, mine is bread. Oh, that’s not a food group? But there are so many kinds besides white, wheat, and rye. Pumpernickel, sour dough, and cheesy dinner rolls. We have sticky buns dripping with honey, buttery bread sticks, crunchy bread sticks, cinnamon rolls, dal, focaccia, tortillas. Even challah, hard tack, and roti. To name a few. The bread article on Wikipedia lists close to 200, all in alphabetical order. All delicious, I’m sure.
    And bread is the staff of life. Since biblical times, bread has been foundational in both cultivation and gastronomy. Growing grains has been a pivotal act in biblical stories from Joesph’s position of keeper of grains in Pharaoh’s Egypt during the time of intense drought and its resulting famine to the story of Ruth and Naomi who gleaned grain in Boaz’s fields.
    The traditional Jewish blessing before meals thanks God for bringing forth bread from the land. Of course, the human (and animal) labor involved in planting, harvesting, milling, and baking is all assumed, recalling the verse from Genesis, “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your bread.”
    Archeologists have found grinding stones and ovens in ancient dwelling places throughout the world from China to Europe and from Australia to Indonesia and all across the Americas. 
    For all its roundness and for all its twisted history with the pretzel, the story of the bagel is pretty straightforward.
    Medieval monks, especially in Germany, so the legend goes, twisted the ends of dough-ropes to resemble a person at prayer, leaving three resulting “holes” to symbolize the Holy Trinity. Monks made and served these pretzels since the 600s. The word pretzel probably comes from Latin for upper arm, maybe the length of the dough rope.  
    In the 1300s, when antisemitism was at a feverish peak, Poland saw a mass Jewish migration, primarily from Germany.
    In many countries in Europe, especially eastern Europe, but not in Poland, it was against the law for a Jewish person to own or operate a commercial establishment that baked bread. It was a short jump for Jewish bakers to untwist the pretzel, leaving a plain dough ring.
    The modern bagel’s history began in Krakow, Poland. Polish bakers made obwarzanek (Polish for “boil”), a strip of dough rolled into a rope with fastened ends. Boiled first, then baked, the resulting roll was round with a hole in the middle. 
    Because of their roundness, bagels were a symbol of eternity. They melded into a symbol of luck, a protection against evil and so, were provided to guests at weddings, given to women in labor, and to guests at a circumcision. 
    Another legend moves us forward in time. A baker in Austria in the late 1600s paid homage to King Jan Sobieski of Poland who had recently returned from defeating the Turks. The baker called his creation a “beugel,” the German word for stirrup, paying heed to the King’s conquest and love of riding.
    At the turn of the 20th Century, immigrants from Eastern Europe to the US brought their recipes with them. In the 1920s in the Lower East Side of New York where many Jewish people landed, it was easy to buy a bagel from a street vendor with a pushcart. Bakeries flourished next. Bagels were common, but still Jewish.
    If you ask any bagel maker for their secret ingredient, their answer will be “tradition.” Recipes were passed from bubbe to bubbe through many generations, always looking for better techniques, better ingredients, better equipment, and better serving styles. But the basics stayed the same. The key difference between a bagel and a bread roll is the process. Bagels are boiled before they are baked. That’s what gives them their outer crunch and inside denseness. Their “chew.”
    The bagel shop we went to when I was growing up, Bialy's Bagels, has been in the same location in University Heights since 1966. Terry Skolnick, brought his New York bakery experience with him when he moved to Cleveland and opened his shop. He passed it to his daughter and her husband, Ellen and Mark Osolin who, in turn, sold the shop in 1984 to the Gross twins, Rachel and Sarah. The girls grew up on Bialy’s Bagels, but never dreamed that they would come to own the place.
    How Terry Skolnik named his store is a mystery. A bialy is not a bagel. According to allrecipes, bialys are named for Bialystock, Poland, the place where they were first created. 
    A bialy is round like a bagel, but that’s where the similarity stops. Bialys are not boiled before they are baked, so have a fluffy, roll-like texture. They’re made from a ball of dough, not a rope. A depression in the center is filled usually with sautéed onion, but fillings like sesame seeds or poppy seeds are common, too.
    Just like people, bagels have assimilated into mainstream culture. My grandfather would hardly know what to do with a blueberry bagel. Or a cinnamon crunch or honey whole wheat. And who would bake raisins right into the dough? 
    These days, you don’t have to be Jewish to love a bagel!

I’m reading Magnolia Wu Unfolds It All by Chanel Miller (Philomel/Penguin Random House, 2024). When Magnolia becomes fast friends with the daughter of her mother’s friend, the girls gain confidence as they look for owners of lost socks found at Magnolia’s parents’ laundry. Miller blends the sights, sounds, smells and people of NYC, with a touch of serendipity, to encourage curiosity and wonder in her young readers. Recommended for kids in grades 3-5 and anyone who wants a quick, fun, and thoughtful read.
    Be curious! (and break bread with friends)

    “And this is the brain stem,” continued Skylar, pointing to a long skinny part sticking out of the back. It was painted yellow. “Our brain stems make sure that we are always breathing and our hearts are always beating,” Claire explained. “Imagine if you had to remember to do those things.”
                    from Magnificent Makers: Brain Trouble
                                      written by Thane Griffith
                                    illustrated by Reggie Brown
                        Random House Children’s Books, 2020
                       (audiobook accessed on Libby 7/18/26)

    Sometimes when I was still working every day in my “real job” as a librarian, if I was overly busy, extra tired, or living through a period of overwhelm, sometimes it seemed I might have forgotten to load my brain into my head before I left the house. I’d be forgetful and felt disjointed, scattered. 
    Like most people my age, I think about thinking. I wonder how well my memory is working What was this morning’s Wordle? It’s Tuesday?! Again?! Did I forgot something at the grocery store yesterday? Important things like those.
    Remember the TV ad for a brain-enhancing supplement for people? It’s supposed to help us think more clearly and stay focused on the task at hand. “It’s made from jellyfish,” says the voice-over in the ad. 
    But guess what? Jellyfish don’t have brains. 
    Research showed that apoaequorin, the jellyfish protein used in Prevagen, does not benefit the human brain. WebMD reported in a 2025 article that Quincy Bioscience, the company that marketed Prevagen, lost a false-advertising lawsuit in 2024, and had to stop claiming its benefits. 
    What got me curious was not the results of the lawsuit (though it’s too bad about all the people who were hoodwinked by truth-stretching or down-right lies). It was that impossible-sounding sentence “jellyfish don’t have brains.”
    How does that even work?
    In October 2023, the University of Sydney published an article called “Brainless organisms can learn—so what does it mean to think?” exploring that very question. 
    The main function and purpose of a brain is to synthesize new information, to learn. That some animals don’t have a brain led Tom White, Senior Lecturer and Fellow at U of Sydney, to re-think what it means to learn. 
    Learning can be functional or structural and measured by noting changes in behavior. My first degree was in education. I studied three different modes of learning.
    visual: new information learned best when it is seen or read
    auditory: new information is learned best when it is heard
    kinesthetic: new information is learned best through physical activities 
That was then, this is now and learning styles are divided differently, any where from those three to up to 15. Yikes.
    Besides learning styles, learning theories abound from cause/effect or reward/punishment models like Pavlov’s dogs to the digital-age “theory of connectives” where people access new information by tapping into vast knowledge sources across databases, platforms, and human networks. 
    Learning is measured by assessing written tests, observing changes in behavior, noting progress toward proficiency in an area like reading or gymnastics. 
    We use our brains to learn, to wonder, to become proficient in a new skill, but our brains also take care of everything we don’t have to think about like heartbeats, breaths, eye-blinks. Also healing a stubbed toe or a black eye or a head cold. 
    And how about the jellyfish and all the other animals who don’t have a brain? How do they learn? and think? and adapt to new environmental conditions? And how do scientists know that learning has taken place?
    Jellies don’t have a brain, but they do have nerves spread throughout their body. Scientists experimented on a box jellyfish by putting a picture of moving gray bars in front of its nerve clusters and pairing that with a mild shock. After several sessions, the jellyfish began to signal that it wanted to move away from the gray bars as soon as it detected them. In this way, scientists found out that jellyfish can learn to avoid something unpleasant. But they are still studying the how.
    Other animals are also brainless, but not clueless.
    Sand dollars have a nerve ring that functions as their central nervous system. It controls movement and bodily functions including digestion. Sand dollars use a vascular system that circulates seawater through various tubes inside their bodies. They don’t need a heart. They also don’t have a respiratory system. Or eyes.
    Johnsons sea cucumbers don’t have a brain either. Their central nerve ring extends radial nerves and a nerve net within its skin to detect chemicals and touch. You can see a picture here. They are about 12 inches long.
    Nerve nets of corals extend from their mouth to their tentacles and serve the same functions as other brainless creatures.
    Sea stars can’t swim. They spend their time either on the bottom of the ocean or floating or washed up on the beach. Light-sensitive eyespots on the tips of their arms help sea stars find food. The nerve ring in its center (it doesn’t have a head) coordinates essential functions and relays impulses to its arms. Like sand dollars, they absorb nutrients from their water-based circulatory system. They don’t need brains or hearts.
    Here’s something else to ponder. Octopuses have mini brains in each limb in addition to the main brain in their mantle (head). Are nine brains better than one? That’s a question for another day!
I’m reading The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett (Speigel & Grau, 2026). I’m not very far along so here’s the publisher’s statement: “—an epic testament to underestimated women who know that calamity can be the spark of new beginnings. Libby will automatically return my copy before I finish, so my take will come soon. Stay tuned.
                              Be curious! (and use your brain and your heart)

I’m still looking for an agent for my new picture book.
And I signed up for an ekphrastic poetry reading (this time, a new poem inspired by an original and local piece of art.) My three new poems will be judged, and if accepted, I will read for an audience at the YWCA on July 23. I’ll let you know!
See you here next week. Same time, same place!

[Babette] pulled the wool from her eyes.
and with tears streaming down her face,
let out the happiest, silliest, truest giggle.
                                                      from Baa Haa
                                       written by Audrey Perrott
                                       illustrated by Rods Burach
                                              Scholastic, Inc,. 2025

    Who would be brave enough to tickle a gorilla? That was my first thought when I finished reading an article in my local newspaper that described a new study on laughter. Then I heard a news short about the different kinds of laughter and why we laugh. And last Thursday morning a friend of mine mentioned that International Joke Day is July 1 every year. (And I missed it by only one day!)
    The Universe must be telling me something, I thought. So I decided to learn a little about laughter.
    Results from a study of great apes were published at the end of last month in nature.com and show “great apes have been laughing in a recognizable way to modern humans for at least 15 million years.”
    Dr. Chiara De Gregorio, a Research Associate in the Department of Psychology, University of Warwick in England, wondered how human speech developed and studied a prominent common denominator between humans and the other four extant species of great apes, chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans: laughter. 
    The great apes don’t all speak, but we all laugh. Laughter is produced as rhythmic intervals evenly spaced between successive sounds. In all the great ape species, even us. And according to Dr. De Gregorio, the “basic rhythm structure has remained unchanged since our last common ancestor [15-million years ago]. That’s extraordinary.”
    De Gregorio’s colleague, Dr. Adriano Lameria agreed. “…laughter evolution tells us that humans lay on a continuum of vocal control capacities…being honed for 15 million years.” 
    They joined with Marina Davila-Ross to write an article for Nature. By comparing different types of laughter across species and social contexts, they speculate how laughter’s rhythm led to an ability to control vocalizations. In humans, laugh rhythms have become faster through time, and more controlled so, more purposefully variable. 
    They continue by noting that “[l]aughter … is not merely a social signal but an accessible model for understanding the deep evolutionary roots of human vocal communication.” (Speech) The complexity of moving from the spontaneous rhythms of laughter to the controlled, purposeful grunts, words, and phrases that carry meaning, is nothing short of remarkable.
    The best laughter is spontaneous. It often erupts when humans encounter something unexpected. It’s often contagious and uncontrollable. It’s a form of social bonding. People tend to laugh more when we’re in a group than when we are alone. And laughter can work as a signal to let a person know we want to connect with them. We even pretend to laugh with someone to gain their trust, but fake laughter, even when well done, even when we’re unaware we’re doing it, is easy to detect.
    But why do we laugh? It’s been said that laughter is the best medicine, and the Mayo Clinic documents long and short term benefits of laughter including stress relief, pain relief, immune system improvement, increased oxygen to improve organ functions including the brain, and heart. And a good laugh releases endorphins to improve our mood. Here's a great article on laughter’s health benefits.
    Once, when I explained a joke to my brother after he told me didn’t get it, he said “if you have to explain a joke, you probably shouldn’t have told it.” He said it in the nicest way. 
    So what is funny? Real people study humor. Jonathan Beber, the lead researcher in a study on humor, named nine different types. Probably with a straight face, too. Which one(s) tickle your funny bone?
Physical humor (slapstick) involves physicality. Slipping on a banana peel or Mister Magoo, the Three Stooges. Clowns.
Self-deprecating humor is used by stand-up comedians. They make fun of themselves to earn a laugh (or guffaw). Also internet memes.
Surreal humor is weird, silly, absurd. Monty Python.
Improvisational humor is spontaneous. Made up on the spot like “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” 
Wit-Wordplay is twisted language, including puns and Dad jokes.
Topical humor is based on current events. A spin pop-culture, politics, powerful people.  Think “Saturday Night Live.”
Observational humor makes fun of everyday life. “Funniest Home Videos” can overlap with Physical Humor.
Bodily humor is always funny. It’s gross-out jokes at their worst. (best?) Does anyone outgrow these?
Dark humor usually involves finding the funny in a serious situation. Like the character in Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses who says (as he plunges to Earth in a malfunctioning parachute, “We must find the levity in the gravity of the situation.” (Some overlap with Wit-Wordplay)
    So who would be brave enough to tickle a gorilla? My best guess is a smart scientist who knows how to find joy in work that combines important discoveries with serious fun. If that still feels a little too scary, maybe it’s someone whose job is defining types of humor. Try to do that with a straight face!
I’m still reading The Secret War Against Hate by Steven J. Ross (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2026). It’s seriously scary. Knowing our government has been opaque on so many issues dealing with hatred, violence, and organized crime for so long is anything but reassuring. Not sure I’ll finish this one, even though I know how important it is to be as aware as possible.
                               Be curious! (and tell a good joke)