“…When the words appeared, everyone said they were a miracle. But nobody pointed out that the web itself is a miracle.”
    “What’s miraculous about a spider’s web?” said Mrs. Arable. “I don’t see why you say a web is a miracle—it’s just a web.”
    “Ever try to spin one?” asked Dr. Dorian.
                                             from Charlotte’s Web
                                              written by E. B. White
                                        illustrated by Garth Williams
                                        Harper and Brothers, 1952

    E. B. White, genius that he was, gave a unique personality and a load of wisdom to a spider when he created Charlotte and her story, Charlotte’s Web.
    My own spider story started when my husband called on his way to meeting his friends for their morning coffee.
    “I’m calling so you don’t get scared,” he said when I picked up the phone. I wasn’t really scared, but a little more than curious.
    “What’s up?” I asked, hoping I sounded more casual than I felt.
    “There’s a big spider on the bedspread and I didn’t want you to be scared when you went in to make the bed. It’s black. and hairy.”
    Well, that information did not help me feel less anxious. So. Do I just leave it there and hope that it stays where it is until he gets home and “deals with it”? It was a very cold morning. We are both of the same mind about killing bugs and such. It is the last resort. But I knew if he took the spider outside, it would freeze to death. If I left it alone, it might crawl under the covers and … !
    So I decided to at least have a look. I’m not really afraid of spiders. We have the occasional daddy long-legs come for a visit. They keep to the basement and we leave each other alone. I don’t want to risk injuring one of those delicate long legs. They’re probably a lot sturdier than they look, but still. I see little spiders in corners sometimes, but this one was where we sleep. So I had a dilemma, a small one to be sure, so I went to have a look.
    The spider on the bedspread was the opposite of big. It was much tinier than the nail on my pinkie finger, not counting its scrunched up legs. But it wasn’t thin. It looked, well, sturdy. Second, it wasn’t moving. Was it dead? or just sleeping? Since it wasn’t moving, I wasn’t about to startle it. So I went back to my coffee and my book and hoped for the best. 
    When my daughter called to check in on her way to work, I told her about the spider. “Why don’t you put a bowl over it and label it DO NOT REMOVE. SPIDER INSIDE”? she suggested.
    That was a genius idea so I right away got a custard cup. The tiny spider might get lost in a bowl. I trapped it tight and since the cup was clear, I had no need for the sign.
    Back to my book, again. And my coffee. 
    When my husband got home, I told him of my bright idea that was really my daughter’s bright idea. He found the little guy/girl? right away and put it safely in the garage. 
    I was left with a few questions and a blog idea.
    I did not see the movie Arachnophobia even though IMdB lists it as horror/comedy. I don’t like horror films, I’m sure we don’t share the same kind of humor, and I’m sure it’s very unfair to spiders.
    True, some spiders are poisonous, but according to The Burke Museum in Washington State, an affiliate of the Smithsonian, the introduction to its spider myths page claims, “[only] a few people have died from spider venom, but I know of no species anywhere on earth capable of causing death in humans in much more than 5% of cases, even if untreated.” Well, 5% is a very small amount, but still, it’s not nothing. 
    Encyclopedia Britannica provides an overview of nine dangerous spiders. Since spider venom is designed to incapacitate small animals, though, only about 30 of the more than 43,000 different species can be deadly to humans. 
    Sy Montgomery, in her book The Tarantula Scientist, (photographs by Nic Bishop and published by Houghton Mifflin, 2004), tells us that “[i]n fact, not one single person has ever died as a result of a tarantula bite.
    She tells us spiders smell with their feet. Their blood is clear. They can regrow their legs. Spiders have eight eyes but don’t see well. Most spiders live only a season or two. Tarantulas can live for 30 years and have been around since the dinosaurs, more than 150 million years. But even as much as scientists know about spiders in general and tarantulas in particular, they still have many unanswered questions. Most of what they do know involves dangerous spiders and what to do if you encounter one.
    According the Ohio Department of National Resources (ODNR), only two groups of spiders living in Ohio are dangerous to humans, black widows and brown recluse spiders. Neither of these is aggressive and both would rather stay away from people. But their bite, if it should happen, requires medical attention.
    House Beautiful recommends ways to deter spiders from entering your home. Spiders don’t like strong, pungent smells. You can dilute peppermint oil in some water and spray it around the perimeters of windows and doors. If you have a sunny window, try a potted peppermint plant.
    You can spray a solution of half water and half vinegar in nooks and crannies. It works the same way; the strong oder keeps spiders at bay.
    Cinnamon sticks or a lit cinnamon-scented candle might do the trick. Or try a potpourri of citrus peels in a small dish on a bookcase or shelf. Scatter horse chestnuts around, if their strong scent is not unpleasant to you.
    Daddy long-legs spiders, the ones that visit my basement now and then, really are harmless. So are those common house spider. We all just live and let live.

I’m reading The Tarantula Scientist by Sy Montgomery (see above) for research on the main character for a children’s novel I’m planning. She has a pet tarantula named Tula.
             -—Be curious! (and careful raking up the leaf-litter)

But, if his popcorn string is missing
        .    .    . 
he’ll ask you for some popcorn
and chances are
when you give him the popcorn,
he’ll want you to take him to the movies.
                       from If You Take A Mouse to the Movies
                               written by Laura Joffe Numeroff
                                          illustrated by Felicia Bond
                       Laura Geringer Book/HarperCollins, 2000

    My brother and I would sometimes go to the movies on a Saturday afternoon. It was well before 1968, when the Motion Picture Association put their Rating System in place. It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Fantastic Voyage, and the Pink Panther come to mind. I don’t remember having many restrictions on what we were allowed to see. We watched a James Bond film, too, maybe Goldfinger. The folks probably should have paid a little more attention to that one.
    We were allowed to buy candy, but we had to use our allowance money for that. I liked Goobers and Sugar Daddy and Boston Baked Beans and those Necco Wafers, especially the chocolate ones. I don’t remember what my brother got. 
    We were not allowed to buy popcorn, though. It had something to do with a bad experience my dad had when he was young and bought popcorn at the movies. I think it involved a creepy-crawly. 
    But, I buy popcorn now. Almost every time I go. 
    I don’t mind going by myself, although going with a friend is nice. Especially if we can talk about it after. I saw Barbie by myself, then I went again with a couple of friends and had an interesting discussion. I don’t usually pay for a movie more than once, but Into the Woods was another one that I saw twice. Since then, I have borrowed it from the Library several times, too. I love how the storylines all come together. And I’m always amazed at the quality of the singing voices of each of the characters, especially the kids.
    The new movie I want to see is Wonka. When my husband asked me why, I right away said how much I like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (with Johnny Depp). I like the Gene Wilder one, too, but Depp’s version feels more like Roald Dahl. 
    Last Wednesday (12/13/23), the Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, announced the 2023 list of movies selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
    To be included in the Registry, a film must be at least 10 years old. It must provide cultural, historic and/or aesthetic importance. These movies help define our society, display our values, and give us a common frame of reference. You can find a chronological list of this year’s selections here.
    The Library of Congress (LOC) calls this year’s list eclectic. It includes The Little Mermaid, the film version of Stephen King’s Carrie, Twelve Years a Slave, and the 1950 version of “Cyrano de Bergerac,” which won a Best Actor Oscar for José Ferrer, the first Hispanic actor to do so.
    Turner Classic Movies aired a special on Thursday, December 14, to screen some of the 2023 selections. Dr. Hayden joined Ben Mankiewicz, TCM’s host, and Jacqueline Stewart, chair of the National Film Preservation Board, to discuss the films. 
    Titles are selected by the NFPB and nominations from the public. If you want to participate, fill out the form at www.loc.gov/film. The deadline is August 15, 2024. Decisions are usually announced the following December. You are allowed to recommend up to 50 titles per year through their online nomination form. 
    You will probably want to consult a list of titles not already archived And here’s a list of those that have. The first list is in chronological order beginning with the 1890 film, Monkeyshines #1. The second list is in reverse chronological order beginning with last week’s announcement and ending in 1989 (the first year the LOC made its selections) with The Wizard of Oz. 
    I printed the 2023 list. I bought a fresh ten-pack of microwave Skinnypop popcorn. Now I’ll look over the list with my husband and decide which movies we want to cuddle up with as the cold weather finally settles in.

I’m reading Dream Town: Shaker Heights and the Quest for Racial Equity by Laura Meckler (Henry Holt and Company, 2023). I feel a connection to the book since my grandparents lived in Shaker for a long time when I was growing up. I remember some of the places and the names in the book. I didn’t know how progressive a town Shaker Heights was and wonder if my grandparents did. If nonfiction is what you like, if you have a connection to Cleveland (or Shaker Heights) or are interested in the history of race relations, this one’s for you.

             -—Be curious! (and cuddle up with your cat and a
                                                        good movie)            

“The chicken—you dressed the chicken?” asked Mrs. Rogers.
She lifted the lid.
There lay the chicken. And he was just as dressed as he could be [in a darling little green coverall and tiny booties to match].
from Amelia Bedelia
written by Peggy Parish
pictures by Fritz Siebel
Harper & Row, 1963
    Puns, idioms, and slapstick, that’s my kind of humor. 
    I’m sure you’re not surprised to find out that I keep a list of idiomatic phrases and that I titled it “Where Did They Come From” and it’s arranged in alphabetical order so I can quickly find what I’m looking for. I’ll share some of that list, but first a little about Peggy Parish (7/14/27-11/19/88), the creator of Amelia Bedelia, herself.  
    Although she’s best know for her twelve books staring Amelia Bedelia, Peggy published 40 books beginning with My Golden Book of Manners (1961). Her teaching career began in New York at the Dalton School in Manhattan where she taught for 15 years. Her creativity flourished as she was inspired by her third-grade students. She wrote mysteries, arts and crafts books, and other works of fiction.
    From an un-cited Wikipedia article, “[t]he author's word-play, and Amelia Bedelia's fundamental goodness and childlike simplicity appeal to youngsters who are beginning to see and enjoy more than one meaning in a word or a phrase.” 
    I will add adult appeal to that description.
    Early in my career, my supervisor and I decided to take Amelia on the road in an original play that combined the funniest and most outrageous elements in many of Ms. Parish’s books. We set a high bar for Summer Reading experiences for kids and their grown-ups (and the performers). One of the highlights of my career was bringing Amelia Bedelia to life as she (I) ran over a tablecloth with an iron and dusted (not undusted) the furniture with dusting powder. And  yes, I even dressed a chicken.
    But those literalisms are based on puns. Idioms are a whole different kettle of fish.
    All languages have funny phrases. I’ll concentrate on English, and American English at that. Some came into our language based on meanings that are racist, misogynistic, or otherwise cruel. Some origins are Biblical. Some create a funny mental image. And we use them at the drop of a hat.
    I discovered McGraw-Hill’s Dictionary of American Idioms. The introductory info is wildly interesting (to me). Here’s the link. Another handy source is The Phrase Finder. Instead of scrolling through a compendium of phrases, this one lets you click on the first letter. 
    I’ll break the ice with this phrase. It means to bend a social convention or begin a discussion. It is an old naval term. When a ship was the only way to transport goods, it could forge a path for others to follow. The phrase was first recorded by Sir Thomas North in his 1579 translation of Plutarch's Lives of the noble Grecians and Romanes. It’s meaning changed through time. Language is a living entity, after all.
    That’s pretty innocuous, but my girls were shy. If someone spoke to either of them, they tended to hide behind my skirts, literally. “Cat’s got your tongue?” a grown-up might ask with a snicker. And while it is not substantiated according to The Phrase Finder, the phrase could be another nautical term. This one referring to the whip used mercilessly on underlings for a variety of missteps. The threat of the “cat-o-nine-tails” would make any sailor leery of speaking out. 
    But not my girls. They were just dyed-in-the-wool shy. When wool is dyed before it is spun into thread, the color goes deep. It actually becomes part of the material. Wool dyed after spinning is not as colorfast. Their shyness was built in. But not anymore! They speak up and my grandkids do, too.
    Getting down to brass tacks, that is, discussing the nuts and bolts, or discovering what is really important may have been a reference to actual flat-headed tacks used in the furniture industry to affix upholstery to the frame of a chair or sofa. The old fabric had to be removed, down to the brass tacks, before it could be replaced. My grandfather was a haberdasher; he made hats. It’s said that cloth for hats was measured between two brass tacks on a board to provide a more accurate measurement than by judging an arm’s length. 
    Contrasting that exact measurement is the rule of thumb, or approximation. The origin of this one is controversial, to say the least. It’s first seen in print in a published sermon by James Durham, printed in Heaven Upon Earth, 1658. He said, “many profest Christians are like to foolish builders, who build by guess, and by rule of thumb and not by Square and Rule.”             In 1782, Judge Sir Francis Buller is said to have sent down a ruling saying a man was allowed to beat his wife with a stick provided it was no thicker than his thumb. A satirical cartoon referred the judge as “Judge Thumb.” That meaning stuck, even though the ruling was never confirmed as true, and the feminist interpretation holds fast. 
    Many people want to call a spade a spade, name something exactly how it is. Some people attribute the phrase to Aristophanes (d. 388 BCE) or Plutarch (d. 120 CE). Charles Dickens (1812-1870) and Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) used it. But so did Erasmus (1469 -1536) the Dutch playwright. When Nicholas Udall translated Erasmus in 1542, the phrase entered the English language. Erasmus’s spade and Udall’s translation described a garden tool. It wasn’t until the late 1920s, during the Harlem Renaissance, that the phrase referred to Black people. By 1936 the 4th edition of H. L. Mencken’s The American Language identified the phrase as derogatory. And by 1989, Robert L. Chapman confirmed its offensiveness in his Thesaurus of American Slang. 
    But if the picture of having an iron stomach or the vision of pigs flying or rain falling like cats and dogs strike your funny bone, by all means, spice up your language with them.


I’m reading Tom Lake by Ann Patchett (HarperCollins, 2023). The story takes place during COVID when the main character’s three grown children come back home. As Lara tells them the story of when she was involved with a famous actor, they each examine their own lives and their relationships with her. 
                               -—Be curious! (and take time to laugh)


FB: As Salman Rushdie’s character in The Satanic Verses (Viking, 1988) noted as he plummeted to earth in a parachute that failed to open, “a little levity [is needed] in the gravity of the situation,” here’s a little levity in the gravity of our own times. Although Mr. Rushdie’s puns on levity and gravity make his work much funnier than mine, I hope you find a smile or chuckle here, all the same. 

    After every A-plus report card, every “100% Perfect!” sticker on every quiz, Grandad was the first one waiting with a high five. Nobody believed in Izzy more than Grandad.
                     from Izzy Newton and the S.M.A.R.T. Squad

written by Valerie Tripp
illustrated by Geneva Bowers


    
    When my grandkids were young but old enough to talk, I said to both my girls, “I’m not sure how to say this nicely, but I think the kids are smarter than you were.” The girls and I had a good laugh. My girls were (and still are) smart. They’re good at so many things, but not all the same things. And my grandkids, just like yours, are really, really smart!
    Scientists have discovered what most grandparents, parents, pediatricians, and preschool teachers already know. We are all smart in many different ways. The literature classifies intelligence into anywhere from four to twelve categories, depending on the source consulted.
    Most linguists, neurologists, psychologists, and other sciency types agree with the standard eight, first described by Howard Gardner, a psychologist and Professor at Harvard University's Graduate School of Education, in his 1983 book, Frames of Mind. In 1999, he included existential intelligence in his Intelligence Reframed.
    From a blog he posted earlier this year, Mr. Gardner says “…there are various forms of intelligence…each deserves to be assessed separately and in an “intelligence-fair” way. Strength—or weakness!—in one form of intelligence does not predict strength—or weakness—in other intellectual realms.”
    Dr. Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligence suggests that instead of a single measurement of intelligence, people possess and display distinct types of intelligences. They include (in no particular hierarchy):

• Spacial: the ability to visualize the world in three dimensions
• Naturalist: the ability to understand living things and make sense of nature
• Musical: the ability to discern sounds, their pitch, tone, rhythm, and timbre (unique quality)
• Bodily-kinesthetic: the ability to coordinate your mind with your body (to know where you are in space
• Linguistic: the ability to find the right words to express what you mean
• Intra-personal: the ability to understand yourself, what you feel, and what you want (and need)
• Inter-personal: the ability to sense other peoples’ feelings and motives (empathy)
• Logical-mathematical: the ability to quantify objects, ideas, and relationships and make                    hypotheses to prove them
• Existential: the ability to think deeply and reflectively and to design abstract theories

    Dr. Gardner draws a distinction between domains and intelligences. Domains, he says,  “consist of the set of knowledge, procedures, [and] insights that constitute a subject taught in school (or covered in a textbook or an online course)” while Intelligences “are the mind/brain toolkit on which learners can draw.” In other words, each person’s intelligences work together to allow a learner to accesses information in the different domains.     
    Gardner’s (and others’) descriptions of intelligences pertain only to humans. 
    What about trees who use pheromones and mycorrhizae networks, (the fungus that grows on tree roots in symbiotic relationships) to communicate? Does that mean trees are intelligent? Are the fungal growths also? Suzanne Simard, the University of British Columbia ecologist, says they are. Her work influenced Peter Wohlleben’s 2016 nonfiction bestseller The Hidden Life of Trees. She  found that “trees are social beings [who] exchange nutrients, help one another and communicate about insect pests and other environmental threats.”
    And what of bees who dance? Do they communicate to some internal music like ballerinas?
    And birdsong and whalesong, and ants? And all beings whose behavior we call “instinctual”? Could teaching and learning that we have not identified or quantified be taking place? Maybe another form of intelligence?
    And since so many of Mother Earth’s creatures are social beings, what purpose does intelligence serve but to communicate? As Dr. Gardner reminds us, both intra-personal and inter-personal.
    So I continue to wonder: Are beings who are adept in more ways and styles of communication more intelligent than a genius in only one area? We quantify intelligence, but for what purpose?
    And where does Wisdom fit? What of common sense? Isn’t that a form of wisdom, too?
    According to the National Institutes of Health, “both [wisdom and intelligence] are considered to increase with age, and both provide for life-long acquisition of knowledge.”
    From a site called Happy Human, “Wisdom manifests as the ability to apply knowledge gained through experience and achieve better life outcomes. Knowledge is information, such as facts and processes (how to do things), that is continuously acquired throughout one’s lifetime.” 
    So there is an important difference between wisdom and intelligence. Both can lead to more (and more useful) knowledge and both are important to be a “happy human.”
    I may have raised more questions than answers. I sure have given myself lots to think about!
Heather Cox Richardson’s new book Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America (Viking/Penguin Random House 2023), explains as only she can, how America got to the brink of authoritarianism and how we can claw our way back. Her writing is clear. Her explanations are easy to understand without oversimplifying. Her positivity and optimism are apparent. Highly recommended. Also, look up her blog, “Letter from and American.” She started it in 2017, in response to the news of the day.
—Be curious! (and happy)
FB: Lots going on in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, for the COP 28 Climate Summit. Not much of that news is good. Seems like we have to look hard to find good news. Keep looking.