Shari Della Penna
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"Small acts of kindness can change and humanise our world."
   Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks 1948-2020
   ​Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, 1991-2020
                         Author, Advocate, Advisor

I Have a Dream, Too

8/28/2018

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   “But can you really and truly tell what sort of a dream it’s going to be simply by listening to it?” Sophie asked.
   “I can,” the BFG said, not looking up.
   “But how? Is it by the way it hums and buzzes?”    
   “You is less or more right,” the BFG said. “Every dream in the world is making a different sort of buzzy-hum music. And these grand swashboggling ears of mine is able to read that music.”
             from The BFG
             by Roald Dahl
             illustrated by Quentin Blake
             Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1982

       In June, 2016, I wrote this:
They say dreams help us work out problems and troubles. Trouble is, for me at least, I often don’t remember my dreams, so I just have to trust that my dreaming self is taking care of things for me.
      When I wrote that, the movie BFG was about to hit the theaters. I read the book, which I had somehow missed when my kids were growing up. I missed it when I studied and read lots and lots of children’s literature. I missed it until 2016. The BFG is about a giant who is the vehicle our dreams use to find us when we’re asleep.
      Dreams are funny things.
      We all have them, whether we remember them or not. That fact has been documented and studied and discussed. Dreams can be bad or good. Horrifying or inspiring. Expressions of our our most dreaded fears or of our wildest wishes.
     August 28 (today) is the 55th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. He delivered it in front of the Lincoln Memorial before 200,000 people at a peaceful civil rights demonstration. (It was 1963. Math’s not my best specialty, so I figured it out for you, too.)
      MLK’s dream was the good kind. The best kind. He envisioned a country where prejudice and hatred disappeared into the dust of history.  He spoke about the necessity for change and America’s potential for hope in that change. 
      Kinda like our Founding Fathers when they wrote the Constitution. High hopes were the order of that day, too, despite half the population being ignored and another half being taken for granted. (I counted black and brown and red women twice, but they deserve it!) Jefferson, Madison and the rest were on the right track. We were headed in the right direction for a long time. Now, I think, we’re not.
      Our country’s best dreams will come true with a good plan, good people to carry it out, and our trust in the forces of good that we can’t see. That’s another part of my 2016 self. I still wore my rose-colored glasses.            
      Here’s my dream now. I dream of a time when my granddaughters and my grandsons will grow into responsible adults who are able to rise to their potentials. Grown-ups thoughtful enough to move our great country back onto the path where we define our collective goals:
    to be able to trust the news of the day
    to ensure our children are safe at school 
    to live in a world where we breathe clean air and drink clean water
    to grow and harvest clean food
    to protect trees and whales and butterflies
    to be able to trust each other                                                                                       and act on those goals. Volunteer for a congressman. Support an environmental organization. Demonstrate or write letters promoting sensible gun laws.
      Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream. I think it was more of a vision, but he called it a dream. I’m sure he did not need the BFG to deliver it to him. He thought up that great dream all by himself. 
      We might need to depend on the BFG to deliver our dreams, but we can make them come true all by ourselves, too.
​      If we all dream together.

                                                                  -—stay curious!

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Outliers and Flat Out Liars

8/21/2018

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    “Do you still remember asking me a while back why we came to America?” [Mom] asked.
    I noddded.
    “This is why,” she said.
                    . . .                             
    Slowly, my parents started telling me about something that happened in China a long time ago called the Cultural Revolution. . . My parents said that during the Cultural Revolution, my grandparents were locked up and shipped away. It didn’t matter whether they actually did anything wrong. 
    “That’s why we left, so that something like that wouldn’t happen to you,” my dad said. America may not be perfect, but she’s free.
                                                              from: Front Desk
                                                           written by Kelly Yang
                                    Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic, 2018

    Who really tells the truth? Who really *knows* the truth? Who’s afraid to tell the truth? In this day and age of information overload, it’s hard to even find unbiased truth, unbiased facts, unbiased anything! But still we try.
    When security clearances are getting revoked, people who used to be trusted with facts and truth, are not trusted so much anymore. 
    Or maybe they are more trusted than ever, by different people, though.
    Have you ever heard of “lie bumps”? If you tell a lie, irritating bumps will form on your tongue. I just looked it up on Google here: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/320275.php There really is such a thing, although they are no longer thought to be caused by telling lies. 
    But Mom believed they were. She put great store in honesty and truth telling. And “lie bumps.”
    My mom was the opposite of a saver. She didn’t throw things away indiscriminately, but she did not like clutter. Opposite of my dad and a source of frustration for them both, I think.
    But Mom collected fifty-cent pieces. From 1916 to 1947, an image of Lady Liberty moving toward a rising sun was engraved on the coins. Then in 1948, Benjamin Franklin face was struck onto them. And in 1964, after his assassination, John F. Kennedy got a fifty-cent piece of his own.
    Mom was proud of her collection. She saved all the half-dollars she got as change and we three kids added to her collection. She’d trade us for quarters. I don’t know how many she had, but I know it was a lot: some Lady Liberties, some Franklins, and lots of Kennedys. Then one day she told us her collection went missing. She believed it was stolen. But who would do such a thing?
    She asked each of us kids if we knew where her collection was. She even said she wouldn’t punish us, but just wanted them back. I don’t know about my sister or brother, but I know I did not take them. I did not know where they were.
    I did not get “lie bumps,” either. At least not that time.    
    When we closed up her house, I was still looking for those half-dollars. Where they went remains a mystery.
    Maybe someone told her the truth and she didn’t share the info with us. Maybe she never found out, either.
    I know some people must still tell the truth, especially when it really matters. Even though some people say the truth isn't true. Okay I only heard one person say that.
    But really. . .
    Who cares how many people attended the 2016 inauguration? Pictures are worth thousands of words. 
    Who cares whether the EPA believes in climate change? Scientists document their facts with photos of the melting ice-cap. 
    Who cares if thousands of dead people voted in Ohio? Data proves no such thing occurred. http://www.vindy.com/news/2018/aug/18/no-ohio-voters-in-special-election-over-/ 
    Well, I care.
    I hope you do, too.

                                                  -—stay curious! (and involved!)






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Are You Sirius?

8/14/2018

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“There’s the hunter and the crab and the Big Dipper. 
It looks like a big spoon.
We will see all of them at the show. 
I can hardly wait.
           from: Fancy Nancy Sees Stars
           by Jane O’Connor
           illustrations by Robin Preiss Glasser
           HarperCollins, 2008

    I just found out that almost anyone can locate Sirius, the Dog Star. Use Orion’s belt and move your eyes southwest quite a ways until you find the brightest star in the whole sky. Since it is only Sunday afternoon, I have two tries to let you know I found it. 
    In late summer, like now, Sirius appears in the east just before sunrise. According to the Astronomical Applications Department at the U. S. Naval Observatory in Washington, DC., I should be able to find it at 5:39 on Monday morning. If I get out there before I post this Tuesday, 5:35 will do the trick.  The cats start crying for breakfast around 5:00 or 5:30, but I’ll set my clock just in case.  (You can find star-rise and star-set times for your favorite stars and favorite cities here: www.aa.usno.navy.mil)
    The forty days between July 3 and August 11 are called dog days. Not because dogs are thirstiest then or because they lay around more. Not even because they are friendlier, nastier or licky-er. Actually, this time in late summer doesn’t really have anything to do with dogs, just the Dog Star, Sirius, in the constellation Canis Major. It rises just before the sun, this time of year and it's really bright.
    I remember learning about constellations in school. We looked at drawings of the night sky, really just a navy-blue background. Various sized white dots were scattered all over. Dotted lines connected some dots to some other dots which was supposed to make a picture of something. A dog, a bear, a person holding a set of measuring scales, a lion, a bull, even a set of twins. I never found any of those. Part of the problem, I figure, is the difficulty of drawing an imaginary curved line. The rest of the problem involved interference with city lights. All the dots in the picture were not showing up in the real sky. 
    But I can find Orion’s belt. Anyone can. Just find three brightish stars close together, right above my back door, 
    When we had our boat, we sailed to Put-in-Bay on Lake Erie. The sky was chock full of stars. I had never seen so many. I’m glad I did not have to navigate by them. There are just so many! 
    Some years later, we traveled to Nantucket. It was one of my favorite trips. We went in October and most of the tourist attractions were closed for the season. We got a great rate at a bed and breakfast, plenty of room to move around, and the whaling museum stayed open. The sun set early and I discovered a new definition for stargazing. Which is more a gazillion or a bazillion? That’s about how many stars we could see. Now, there were too many stars to make out the constellations! How did the ancient Greeks and Egyptians and Chinese do it?
    And we have the Parker Solar Probe on its way to the sun, our own life-giving, time-measuring, energy-producing star. See pictures of the launch here: https://www.space.com/41460-nasa-parker-solar-probe-launch-photos.html 
    And we might get a whole new branch of the military to watch over it. I hope we don’t need yet another wall to turn the Pentagon into a Hexagon. But that's a topic for another day!
                                                                  -—stay curious!


I just finished Ann Tyler’s new book Clock Dance. It is one woman’s story about families: what makes them work and what makes them not as we witness her changing definition of “self.” 
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When It's Time to Let Go

8/7/2018

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“—and the whale music. They’re in tune. It’s a true symphony, that’s what it is. It connects to the soul of the fish and all them scallops and shrimps and lobster, and even cod . . .” …It’s a dance, nature in perfect harmony! Think about it!
                                                from: A Possibility of Whales
                                                               by Karen Rivers
                                               Algonquin Young Readers, 2018

    A baby orca was born on July 24, 2018, and lived for about a half hour. A mother orca is pregnant for 13-16 months. The baby stays with her for at least 2 years. This baby was the first to be born to its pod in three years.
    According to researchers, a mother will carry her stillborn calf for a day or so before letting go. But this baby’s mother (as of yesterday) is still carrying it through the ocean depths. It’s been almost two weeks.            
    The pod in the San Juan Islands of Washington State has been labeled endangered since 1999, and critically endangered since 2005. There are 75 individuals. The dire circumstances for these orcas rest on the dwindling population of Chinook salmon, their primary food source. Tahlequa, the devoted mother, has brought the plight of these orcas international attention.
    I think one of Life’s most important lessons is learning how to let go. Of stuff, ideas, pets, parents, family, friends. 
    It is not an easy lesson. Tahlequa’s grief is a stark reminder.
    When I was eleven, my best friend died of viral pneumonia. One day she went home from school, and two days later, …
    Since then, I have said goodbye to my great-grandmother, grandparents, parents, relatives, and many good friends. And plans and pets and playthings. It's always sad, sometimes excruciatingly sad.
    So how do we deal with the profound sadness and deep feeling of loss that is grief? 
    Alfred Lord Tennyson told us that “’tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” I believe that, so I know that living in seclusion or isolation from others is not an answer. 
    Maybe the real lesson is *not* that Life Hurts or that Sadness is Inevitable, but that because each of us *has* experienced hurt and loss and sadness, we can show real empathy and kindness to each other, human or not. 
    Still working on Connections: my word of the year, 2018. (See 1/2/18 New Year, New Word, if you want!)

You can see video of Tahlequa on YouTube here: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQujl1mBw80

You can find out more information about the whales of the San Juan Islands of Puget Sound here: 
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/will-we-now-commit-to-saving-the-northwests-orcas-a-task-force-meets-tuesday/ 
and here:

https://www.plantbasednews.org/post/grieving-mother-orca-refuses-to-let-dead-baby-go-after-10-days
​
An excellent autobiography of a marine biologist is Listening to Whales by Alexandra Morton.

                                                                   —stay curious!


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         I'm a children's writer and poet intent on observing the world and nurturing those I find in my small space .

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