“You love words?” asked the duckling. “Why?”
    “Why?” repeated the wombats.
    “Because words are …
        “ESSENTIAL!”
        “MAGNIFICENT!”
        “TRANSFORMATIVE!”
    And with those wonderful words zinging through the air, the wombats waddled off.
from The Wombats Go Wild for Words
written by Beth Ferry
illustrated by Lori Nichols
Random House Children’s Books, 2025


    Since I first heard someone talking about 6 7, not actually saying it to me or anyone else, I wondered how we can say something, anything, really, without it carrying meaning? Isn’t the purpose of communication to relate ideas or explain a concept or entertain each other and ourselves with words and expressed thoughts?
    According to Merriam-Webster.com, communication is “the act or process of using words, sounds, signs, or behavior to express or exchange information or to express thoughts, feelings, etc., to another person.”
    So the answer is yes. We communicate to make meaning.
    But maybe not.
    Trying to get an explanation of 6 7 from a gen alpha kid (born between about 2010 and 2020) is the ultimate definition of brain rot (Oxford’s 2024 Word of the Year). The kids insist 6 7 has no meaning. If I ask, “If it doesn’t mean anything, why waste time using it?” or  for that matter, “Why waste energy on using the accompanying hand motions?” the best clarification I can get is an eye-roll. No kidding.
    I hope you’re laughing. I am!
    And that’s the purpose of the phrase. It unites and identifies a generation. It’s their inside joke. 
    We all have our own slang. Some words even enter the language and become legitimate. 
    The 1950s gave us cool cats, think James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, then move forward to the 60s update, far out. Or a 1970s opposite of cool and far out, bummer. The 1980s gave us radical and bodacious and their opposites, gnarly and grody. 
    Dope and da bomb were “cool” in the 90s and why did kids in the 2000s say something was sick if they meant it was cool?
    Legit was being used for cool in the 2010s and talking about a person’s coolness as their rizz (short for charisma and the Oxford Word of the Year, 2023) in the 2020s. Taylor Swift and Tom Hanks. They’re cool. 
    So we are, back in the present. 
    It’s probably cool to interject 6 7 into a conversation to get a laugh, to divert attention from the current conversation, or to focus attention on yourself for a moment. That is if you’re say around 8 to 13-ish (years old)! It’s a “thing” for tweenagers. 
    My older daughter teaches middle school. Her days are full of 6 7s. My granddaughters (13 and 15) don’t use it, well the 13 year old does, but with an accompanying eye-roll.
My youngest grandson is 12. So my younger daughter gets her ears full of it, too. 
    Theories abound trying to explain the origin of the phrase. American rapper Skrilla used 6 7 in a song called “Doot Doot (6 7).” It’s a nonsense phrase that some people have connected to 67th street in Philadelphia, Skrilla’s hometown. LaMelo Ball, the professional basketball player is 6’7” tall. The phrase started showing up in video edits of other players. 
    Can anything happen in the US without it becoming an advertising tool? On November 6th and 7th, Pizza Hut sold chicken wings for 67 cents each and McDonald’s (in the United Arab Emirates) gave away free chicken nuggets from 6 to 7 pm. And Domino’s sold a one-topping pizza for $6.70 with the promo code 6 7 (take-outs only).
    Have you ever heard the phrase “being at sixes and sevens”and wondered what it means? It is old and comes from Geoffrey Chaucer, specifically in a line from his long poem, Troilus and Cressida published in about 1374. 
    Lat nat this wrechched wo thyn herte gnawe, But manly set the world on sexe and seuene. Or in modern English: Let not this wretched woe gnaw at your heart. But manly set the world on six and seven. 
    I don’t know about you, but the translation is not very helpful.
    One explanation comes from a pair of dice. The French numbers cinque and sice morphed into six and seven. At least as far as WordOriginStories is concerned. I’m not sure about morphing five and six into six and seven, but the article’s author continues. The highest numbers on the dice were five and six, but mistranslated and mispronounced until the phrase came to mean betting on the highest numbers was risky and careless. By 1785, risky and careless became “at odds, in confusion.” So maybe 6 7 has never meant anything! 
    Next time you’re with a group of kids of the right age, throw in a 6 7 during a conversation. In response you’ll either get an eye-roll or a guffaw. Try turning your palms toward the ceiling and alternating them up and down as you say it. 
    I’ll try it this Thanksgiving. I’m lucky enough to have almost my whole family (immediate) together. I’ll probably get eye-rolls, but I’m looking for guffaws.


I’m reading The Magic Kingdom by Russell Banks (A Borzoi Book/Alfred A. Knopf, 2022). Set in modern Florida, the narrator claims to have found a collection of reel-to-reel tapes made by a property speculator in the 1970s. The bulk of the story is the transcription of these 50-year-old tapes. As we learn more and more about the person who made them, we’re asked to think about truth and secrets, the difference between a crime and a sin, and one society’s definition of Utopia. Recommended.
Be curious! (and have some fun, especially with language and kids)


FB: When the news, or the weather, or watching the sun start to set at 5:00, is getting you down, try counting to 67. 

“Mayday! Mayday!”
The Goliath is fighting gale force winds. It’s hauling tons of iron and it’s taking on water.
                                             from Big Ship Rescue!
                               written and illustrated by Chris Gall
                                      Norton Young Readers, 2022

    I’ve never really been a true “water person.” When I close my eyes and imagine my favorite place, it’s almost never a beach or an ocean isle or a river bank. So it’s still a little odd to think of myself as a sailor (in the loosest definition of the word) on the Great Lakes aboard our own 27’ sailboat with my husband riding the waves on Lake Erie. 
    We traveled across the lake to Canada many times, in the days before we needed to bring passports. We cruised from Ashtabula to Perry’s Monument on Put-in-Bay and Kelly’s Island to see the glacial grooves. We docked often in Fairport Harbor and Geneva and enjoyed many a lakeside dinner.
    Although the Great Lakes are often thought of as one unit, each lake has its own characteristics and personality. Together they cover more than 94,000 square miles and supply drinking water for more than 40 million people in the United States and Canada.
    Lake Erie is the shallowest lake. With its depth ranging from 62 to 210 feet, it freezes over in the winter, but warms quickly in the spring. 
    Lake Ontario is home to the National Museum of the Great Lakes. It is the smallest Great Lake. The Iroquoian word means both great lake and beautiful water. It's the most famous Great Lake because of  its baseball connection. It was September, 1914, and Babe Ruth was 19 years old, playing his first professional game. He hit his first home run ball right into the lake. It (or what’s left of it) is probably still at the bottom of the lake.
   It was Lake Huron that Samuel de Champlain set his eyes on to became the first European to see the Great Lakes. It was the early 1600s, and Champlain was exploring for France. He reported back about the customs of the native people. 
    Lake Michigan is the only Great Lake that lies completely within the borders of the United States. The sand dunes located on the east shore of Lake Michigan are the largest freshwater dune system in the world.
    Lake Superior is the largest Great Lake in both volume and depth. It holds about 10% of the world's fresh surface water. The Ojibwa name for Lake Superior is Gitchi-Gumee which translates to “Great Sea.”
    But Lake Superior’s biggest claim to fame is its setting for Gordon Lightfoot’s song and recording of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." The ship was carrying processed iron ore pellets from Superior, Wisconsin to Zug Island, in Detroit, about 750 miles. The trip was expected to take about 11 hours. 
    Many events and circumstances can alter intentions, and many did. When Captain Ernest M. McSorley of the Edmund Fitzgerald set sail on November 9, 1975 with Captain Bernie Cooper in his ship, the Arthur M. Anderson, traveling the same route, decided to alter their course to avoid an approaching storm. But conditions continued to worsen and the storm continued to grow. At its height, the storm produced hurricane force winds and gusts of up to 100 miles per hour. The waves crashed unceasingly. Both captains recorded 12-15 footers. Before she sank, it’s estimated that the waves reached between 25 and 35 feet high. 
    The first mate of the Anderson watched the Fitzgerald until the radar went out. The captains lost radio communication with each other before the Edmund Fitzgerald went down for the last time. Ironically, Captain McSorley’s last words to Captain Cooper were “We are holding our own.”
    Gordon Lightfoot was inspired by the story he saw in Newsweek’s November 24, 1975 article. His song, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” has been called the greatest ballad ever written. As Lightfoot changed his lyrics to reflect new research, crew members were exonerated, manufacturers were absolved, and the “ultimate cause” remains elusive. 
    In an interview with author John U. Bacon, Tina Sawyer asks why this tragedy matters. His answer is both revealing and instructive. “For once,” Bacon says, “we did learn…Forecasting improved, communication with the captains improved and frankly,…common sense improved. It’s been a great legacy, a positive one.”
    He continues in the same interview, “…the families are proud of…the fact that incredibly from 1875 to 1975…there were 6,000 commercial shipwrecks on the Great Lakes. And that is the conservative estimate. That’s one per week every week for a century…Since November 10th, 1975, there’s been zero. And the families know that it’s because the Edmund Fitzgerald got so much attention that the industry finally woke up.”
    Many times when disaster strikes, the cause in not a pinpoint, but a cluster of unfortunate decisions made, details left unattended, and weather conditions unpredictable. And while our human nature prods us to find cause and rectify errors, sometimes the variables are too many, the blame is too widespread, and the tragedy is just that, a tragedy. 

No book review this week, but you might want to take a look at The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald by John U. Bacon (Liveright, October 7, 2025). It’s #1 on Amazon’s best seller list in U.S. State and Local History.
    
               Be curious! (and prepared for the unexpected)

…at last he came to a hill which was quite covered with cats. 
    Cats here, cats there, cats and kittens everywhere. 
    Hundreds of cats, 
    Thousands of cats, 
    Millions and billions and trillions of cats.
                             written and illustrated by Wanda Gág
                                         G.P. Putnam's Sons, [1956]
                           first published by Coward-MCann, 1928
                            recipient of the Newbery Honor, 1929 
                                   entered the public domain, 2024

    Many of us have too much stuff. That became apparent to me when I Googled “decluttering.” I found pages and pages of articles and lists and how-tos describing different methods of getting the job done. 
    An interesting “rabbit hole,” for sure. You can try the 12-12-12 rule, the 20/20/20 rule, or the 50% rule. You can find the 135 decluttering method, the 4 C’s of decluttering, the 4 bin (or box) method. You can learn how to figure out what clothes to get rid of, how declutter a house in one day, and the psychological root of clutter. 
    You can discover what you should not do when you declutter, especially important if you’re a beginning declutterer.
    No matter how much or little clutter we accumulate, part of our tendency to acquire stuff comes from a “scarcity mindset.” WebMD defines it as an obsession with what is lacking and the inability to focus on anything else. 
    An abundance mindset, the writers continue, allows us to see opportunities and possibilities. 
    If we come from a place of scarcity, we are fearful. There won’t be enough jobs, money, food, affection, freedom, time. You get it.
    If we come from a place of abundance, though, we know there is plenty of everything. We are more generous, more willing to help one another, and more able to see long-term outcomes and consequences of our decisions and actions.
    I was first introduced to these mindsets through Robin Wall Kimmerer’s classic Braiding Sweetgrass (Milkweed Editions, 2013). In it she shows how she lives in reciprocity with the natural world. 
    In her essay “The Serviceberry: An Economy of Abundance,” she says, “Gratitude creates a sense of abundance, the knowing that you have what you need. In that climate of sufficiency, our hunger for more abates and we take only what we need, in respect for the generosity of the giver.”
    When our first response is gratitude, the natural follow-up is reciprocity, the desire to give a gift in return. 
    What gift can I give a plant? you might ask yourself. Or a tree? 
    Ms. Kimmerer suggests a direct response. “We can clear away weeds giving our plants more room to grow. We can provide water, especially when rain is not plentiful. Cover against the cold, or a donation to a local land trust so more land can be used for habitat. Or “making art that invites others into the web of reciprocity.”
    When we accept Earth’s bounty as our gifts, we change our relationship to Earth and the gifts we receive. According to Ms. Kimmerer, the power of “gift thinking” is this: We’re “likely to take much better care of the gift hat than the commodity hat, because it is knit of relationships.” When we are in relationship with our family, our neighbors, our friends, our Earth, we feel gratitude. 
    How we think and feel translates to how we behave. We become gentler, kinder, more generous, even, some say, more creative. 
    But our economies have monetized everything from wild berries to our National parks. In our for-profit, money-based economy we need to pay workers, owners, creators for their energy, time, creativity, so they in turn can pay for their own necessities, luxuries, and gifts they give to others. 
    I’m not saying we should, or even could, move our society toward a gift economy. But when we pluck the tomatoes from the vines we nurtured in our gardens and snip the parsley growing bravely next to them, when we trim the rose bush, pull weeds, and speak to our houseplants, we can be mindful of the work they are constantly doing for us and feel gratitude for that work.
    When we choose our produce at the local grocery store, we can think of the growers, harvesters, shippers, shelf-stockers, and clerks who serve our needs. And feel gratitude, there, too.
    I can’t begin to guess what was in Wanda Gág’s mind when she published Millions of Cats in 1928. (see the quote at the top) But her society was much the way ours is now. In 1928, we were coming to the end of the First Gilded Age. Railroad tycoons, industrialists, and politicians amassed great fortunes, while the wages of the vast majority of our population stagnated. 
    As a side note, all those hundreds and trillions of cats fought each other until only one skinny cat was left. When asked why the other cats didn’t kill her, she replied, “When you asked who was the prettiest, I didn’t say anything. So nobody bothered about me.” The old man and the old woman took good care of the kitten until she was a “very pretty cat after all.” 
    Turns out one cat was enough. And there was plenty of love for all of them.
    Mark Twain coined the term in the title of his 1873 novel, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, to describe how the shiny surface of society looked beautiful, but the reality hiding beneath the gilt was made of a hard-working and hurting population.
    F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was a commercial flop after he published it in 1925. It did not gain popularity until the 1940s when it was sent to soldiers fighting in WWII. Now it appears on high school reading lists and is considered one of our “great American novels.” If you haven’t read it in a while, you might want to read it again, if only to see and compare it with where we are now.
    It remains to be seen whether we as a society will turn to each other in fear or in gratitude.

I’m reading Across So Many Seas by Ruth Behar (Nancy Paulsen Books, 2024). Behar was awarded a 2025 Newbery honor and the 2025 Sydney Taylor Book Award honor. In a saga spanning the years from Spain’s 1492 expulsion of Jews during the Inquisition to 2023 Miami, readers learn the history of one family’s journey from “standing on the shoulders of ancestors” to a momentous discovery made during a heritage trip back to Spain.
                                      Be curious! (and grateful)