“Now that everyone has found everybody, would anyone like to buy anything?” asks the sales lady.
    The five little monkeys and mama buy dresses, pants, hats, shorts, backpacks, and sunglasses, and then they head for the car.
                            from Five Little Monkeys Go Shopping
                        written and illustrated by Eileen Christelow
                                                 Clarion Books, 2007

    I don’t like to shop. Really. I’m not saying that to take the moral high ground, or because I have everything I want or need, or even because I’m not intrigued by new things. I like the smell, the feel, the look of a crisp, new designer bag, shiny bauble, and better mousetrap as much as anyone, but I’m okay with the same old, same old, too. 
    If I have to shop, I’d rather find my “new” treasure at a re-sale shop, whether it’s a higher-end consignment store or a flea-market. Of course, part of what draws me to those places is knowing I’m helping to keep a few items out of the landfill. Part of it also, is the thrill of the hunt and success at discovering the perfect “whatever.”
    Last week I decided to shop for “new” lunch plates. I decided my perfectly serviceable luncheon-ware was sub-par for the group of women I’m hosting next month, so I headed to the indoor flea market to refresh my cupboard. My daughter calls my “new” wares “shabby-chic,” and I’m very OK with that.  
    And while most of us bundle-up this time of year and travel to physical buildings to sift through bins, racks, and shelves to find the perfect gift, discover the coolest new gadget, or marvel at the newest fashion, more and more shopping is taking place online. 
    Jeff Bezos started Amazon as an online book store in 1994. He worked from his garage in Washington state, filling orders, packing boxes, and taking them to the post office himself. His advertising was word of mouth and in just his first two months, Amazon did business in all 50 states and over 45 countries. Amazon's sales were $20,000 per week. 
    In 1997, Barnes & Noble sued Bezos for claiming Amazon was the world’s largest book store. BN said it was not a store at all due to its online format. The suit was settled out of court and two years later Bezos was named Time Magazine’s person of the year for his success in popularizing online shopping. Bezos kept on selling and expanding his wares. On May 15, 2019, an article in Forbes magazine announced Amazon had surpassed Walmart as the world’s largest retailer.
    Many people have heard me say that if you can’t find what you’re looking for on Amazon, you probably don’t need it. Even though I try to avoid Amazon for a variety of reasons, for me, at least, that is a true statement.
    With Black Friday still ahead of us, I started wondering why people like to shop, new OR used. Here’s some of what I found out.
    Whether shopping online or in person, buying stuff gives most people a sense of control. We have vast arrays of items to choose from. We have cash (or credit/debit) at our disposal. By turning our hard-earned “power of the purse” into physical objects to express our individuality, creativity, or practicality, we can choose to follow the crowd, look for the newest trend or strike out with a style all our own. Shopping can be a heady experience.
    Shopping online is convenient. Supply chain issues aside, next-day delivery fulfills our predisposition for instant gratification. (Who even thinks of the people who fill those orders, many times at low pay, long hours, and poor working conditions?)
    And watching the mail feeds our need to feel special. It’s exciting, the anticipation. 
    Opening the package when it arrives is like a private birthday party.
    All this is NOT to say shopping is bad, or wrong, or even wasteful (time and money, here). It’s overconsumption that’s the problem. 
    Our society was built on consumerism. Even bartering goods for services involves the goods. New is sometimes necessary. New creates jobs and keeps people all along the supply chain working. 
    It is a common misperception that the name “Black Friday” was coined because it was the first time in the year that retail markets moved from being “in the red,” (operating at a loss) to being “in the black,” (turning a profit). Not so. 
    Holiday shopping frenzies aside, the term Black Friday was first used to describe a financial crisis. On September 24, 1869, the US gold market crashed sending the stock market into free-fall. Prior to that particular Friday, two corrupt financiers worked together to buy as much gold as they could to drive up the price as high as it would go. Their plan was to sell the gold at a high profit and crash the market. The conspiracy was uncovered on that dark Friday in September. The stock market did go into free-fall and bankrupted investors from Wall Street barons to farmers. A Black Friday indeed.
    Today, retail is relatively healthy. According to a Gallop Poll published last month, even though most people are reluctant to say they will spend more this year, Gallop predicts the average American will spend $932.00 on gifts in 2022, the highest amount since 2006.
    New or used, online or in person, long-thought-out or last-minute surprise, shopping for yourself or for another special someone, it’s exhilarating to find the perfect gift. It can even be an unmatched set of luncheon ware to share with a small group of new friends.
                                 -—be curious! (and have fun shopping)    

Every night, a crowd gathered to listen to the magical melodies coming from the bear and the strange thing. 
                                         from The Bear and the Piano
                            written and illustrated by David Litchfield
                     Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016

    I’m not sure I’d call the family I grew up in a musical family. Mom played clarinet in high school, then went back to it when I was a grown up. Dad played banjo. He did not wear arm bands or a visor, but he loved a good barbershop quartet. And he could sing, too. His clear tenor voice was not flamboyant, but he carried a heck of a tune. My brother sings like him. I’m lucky to have received Dad’s musicality instead of Mom’s. Her singing voice came from her dad, too, and she could not carry a tune in a bucket, as they say. Grandpa, well let’s just say he was great at being the audience! 
    My grandma played piano. She could sing, but she didn’t sing for me. That was the domain of Gram, my great-grandma. She wasn’t always in tune, but she made up for it with her enthusiasm.
    My sister showed talent on her violin. I’m a little sad that she gave it up before she got to high school. My brother is also talented. He played viola with the Cleveland Philharmonic Orchestra. Not quite the world-famous Cleveland Symphony, but still. I just found out he didn’t enjoy playing, and he doesn’t play now, either. I’m a little sad about that, too.
    I don’t know why I didn’t try the violin, but when I said I wanted to learn to play the piano, it only took a nano-second for Grandma and Grandpa to have a new spinet set up in our living room. And I found out that Grandma could play, really well. She could sing, too. 
    All this singing and playing got me thinking about how we learn to sing. Why some of us sing in tune, and some of don’t. I remember Mom telling one of our music teachers that she wished she could sing in tune. She said she heard the tones in her mind’s ear, but when she sang, it didn’t sound the same in her real ear. The teacher told her to listen, really listen, and practice. That didn’t seem like it would work, and in fact, Mom didn’t try it. 
    But she taught me to sing, in tune. Mom was my Girl Scout leader. She knew lots and lots of songs and sang them for us. We somehow knew how the melodies were supposed to sound, and even got the harmonies right when we sang in rounds. I’ve done a little research on how children learn to sing. I found lots of material, but the experts are silent about out of tune teachers teaching kids to sing in tune. It happens, though. It happened to me. 
    And so, back to my piano. I liked to play. I don’t have talent, but I had the will to practice. Or maybe I was stubborn. I played adaptations of show tunes for some of my lesson pieces. Sometimes Dad would pull out his banjo and we’d all sing. A violin or two might join in. “On the Street Where You Live” was a favorite. I don’t know what show it’s from or who sang it, but we had fun with it. Dad could even do harmony.
    When I knew for sure I would never be a pianist like Vladimir Horowitz, or Van Cliburn, or Liberace, I put my playing aside. The piano sat waiting and when I moved out, my piano came with me.   
    I haven’t taken lessons again, but every once in a while I get out my finger exercises and an old book or two and plunk around for a little while. 
    My older daughter played flute and piccolo in high school. My younger daughter played oboe, but I think she liked the band kids better than the band instruments. All my grandkids play music. The viola and flute are getting more musical. Drums, saxophone, and piano amaze me.
    My grandsons are musicians. All three of them. I love to hear them play my old piano, but even they couldn’t make it sound like it should. This year, my husband had my piano tuned for my birthday. When the tuner came, I asked if I could watch. 
    What a fascinating hour and a half! First, he opened up the top, then he removed the wooden piece that holds the music stand. I have seen the inside of my piano before, so I wasn’t surprised. But all those little pieces! All those precise connections! I have a new appreciation.
    Besides skill, expertise, and a good ear, piano tuners have loads of patience. Pianos have 88 keys. The keys you play with your right hand have three strings each. Each time you strike a key, a little mallet hits all three strings at once. Each one is tuned precisely so all three are on the same pitch. Then he double-checks by playing chords and octaves. These days he uses a computer program loaded on a tablet instead of the tuning forks I was expecting him to pull out of his bag, but his ear is clearly his most important tool. 
    The keys below middle C are also attached to little mallets. They strike only one string. Each string is tightly coiled and each is gradually thicker as you move toward the lower and lower sounds. That tuning process was faster, but still precise. 
    So maybe I’m wrong. Maybe we were a musical family. Maybe we still are!
                         Be curious! (and keep a song in your heart)

Here comes Pete the Cat.
He has a bat and ball.
.    .    .
“Batter up!” says the Umpire.
Pete goes up to bat.


The pitcher throws the ball.
Pete swings the bat.


He misses the ball.
Strike one!
                                        from Pete the Cat, Play Ball!
                              written and illustrated by James Dean
                                                           Harper, 2013
    My first daughter was born during the World Series, when I still loved the sound of the cracking bat, the pop flies, and even all that spitting!  Everything changed the first time my mom came over to meet my new baby. Which game was on? I don’t remember. I don’t remember which inning she interrupted, the score, or even which teams were playing, but it was the World Series. 
    (First game. The Cincinnati Reds played The Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park. Boston won, 6-0, but lost the Series three wins to Cincinnati’s four. Thanks Google.)
    My tiny infant was in her own bedroom sound asleep, but my mom was appalled to find me watching baseball. I was not attending to my company, her. She came by herself and this was the only time I remember my mom calling herself company, ever. I turned off the game and never went back to baseball or any sport, really.
    And of course I never held it against my mom!
    But what about baseball? America’s favorite pastime just closed the books on another season. Although I loved to watch the players and learn from the announcers, I never had a firm grasp on most of the rules. And I wondered about the difference between referees and umpires. For example, what’s the difference between a no-hitter and a perfect game? Turns out there are two kinds of perfect games. One has to do with the umpire. The other the pitcher.
    First of all, there’s not much difference between a referee and an umpire. Referees are used in football, tennis, and soccer, while umpires are baseball officials. Referees enforce the rules of the game and make sure players are following them. They must make quick, accurate decisions and remain impartial. Umpires enforce the rules of the game and make sure players follow them. They need to make quick and accurate decisions and remain impartial. See what I mean?
    Then I wondered, since game 2 was called a perfect game, did that mean the same as a no-hitter? Well, the answer is sometimes. According to BaseballReference.com  “a game is a perfect game if it is a no-hitter in which no runner is allowed to reach base, whether by hit, base-on-balls, hit-by-pitch or error.” That has to do with the quality of the pitcher. 
    But a game is also called perfect if the Home Plate umpire calls every pitch correctly. That’s really hard to do, especially with today’s technology that defines the strike zone (that an umpire can only see in his mind’s eye), the many angled cameras, and the availability of replays. Top all that with balls flying in both directions at around 100 mph. The accuracy of the calls has everything to do with the umpire.
    So, we’ll consider the umpire. Pat Hoberg called all 129 pitches correctly in Game 2 of this year’s World Series. It is the only perfect game in the Umpire Scorecards database which dates back to 2015. Hoberg is rated the most accurate umpire in Major League Baseball. He’s been a professional umpire since 2009, when he moved up from the Arizona Rookie League. He’s been working in the Majors since 2015.
    Most umpires complete a five-week course of study at umpire school where they learn the rules, mechanics, signals and officiating philosophy. They study on the field and in classrooms. After this training, the best are chosen for the minor leagues and can work their way up to the majors. Some umpires volunteer their services, some get paid a per-game fee, and some are on salary. In 2022, the salary for a MLB umpire with plenty of experience ranges from $110,000 to $432,800. 
    A passion for the game, the persistence to learn and apply all the rules, an affinity for all the people from the players to the hot-dog sellers and the fans in the stadium and at home, will go a long way toward making an umpire worth his pay.  
    That’s really kind of a life lesson. Passion, persistence, and practice go a long way to success in any worthwhile endeavor. That and 20/20 vision! the literal kind and the figurative kind.
    Life really isn’t fair. But it’s usually not so foul, either. Babies are born, Mom’s come over, seasons turn. A season with a perfect game is achievable, but coping with the curveballs Life throws us is usually the best way to learn about ourselves and each other.
                                                           -—be curious!
     (and follow the rules, with good judgement and compassion)

Good morning!
    I'm taking the day off to enjoy our beautiful autumn weather.
    Early voting is ongoing in many states. Election Day is one week from today. Please vote as if our world depends on it!
                                              Be curious! (and engaged) 

It takes but one gust of wind
and all at once--
everything
is yellow
and red
and orange
all over
all around
right in the middle of Fall.
                                          from In the Middle of Fall
                                            written by Kevin Henkes
                                       illustrated by Laura Dronzek
              Greenwillow Books / HarperCollinsPublishers, 2017 

    This morning as I type, a leafstorm cascades outside my kitchen window. I plan an afternoon walk to the library. The sun is bright, the wind is calm, the air is dry. A perfect Indian Summer day. Wait, what? Is it still acceptable to call this weather that? 
    Turns out, not really. Since November, 2020, when the American Meteorological Society renamed this unseasonably warm weather Second Summer, that has become its most accepted name. 
    No one knows the real origin of the term Indian Summer. Some say it is an Algonquin term supporting a belief that the “great spirit” Cautantowwit, a southwestern god, gifted the People with a warm wind from his court. Some say it originated in New England when Indigenous people gathered their harvest and prepared for Winter.    
    Another explanation says this short time in late October or early November was named Indian Summer because when the cold took hold, European settlers took a respite from Indian attacks. When the inevitable warm spell returned, Native People, sometimes violently, reminded the settlers that before they arrived, Indigenous People lived on the land. 
    According to The Old Farmer's Almanac, timing is crucial. A true Second Summer falls between the parentheses of very cool days, even a hard frost, and the first snowfall. And even more precisely, between November 11 and November 20 in any given year. 
    Cultures evolve by naming and re-naming.
    During this unseasonably warm Second Summer day in Northeastern Ohio, I’ll take my own short respite to take advantage of another gorgeous day.

          -—be curious! (and celebrate Autumn, in all its beauty!)

   “Are you a lost toy, too?” asked a teddy bear.
    “Um…yes,” lied Pinocchio. His wooden nose began to itch.
    “I have no family,” said the teddy bear.
    “Nor do I,” lied Pinocchio. His itchy nose began to grow.
                                       from The Story of Pinocchio
                                        written by Carlo Collodi, 1883
                                               retold by Katie Daynes
                                                Usborne Books, 2005 
                                     Illustrated by Mauro Evangelista
                                      accessed on YouTube 10/16/22
                                                    read by Mr. Moon

    When my older daughter was an inquisitive four-year-old, she had a very scary nightmare about Pinocchio. He was in her bedroom terrorizing her. Was she afraid because he was a puppet that turned into a real boy? Or that he caused so much trouble by being naughty? It could have been that his nose grew each time he told a lie. I never learned why my daughter was scared. But she was terribly afraid. 
    When I convinced her to tell me why she was so upset, she told me about her nightmare. I offered Pinocchio my hand. My daughter held onto my other hand and we walked to the bottom of the stairs. She opened the front door and I told Pinocchio it was time for him to go home. When my daughter agreed that he had indeed left, she closed the door behind him. Pinocchio never came back. 
    I don’t know what inspired me to calm her down that way, but I’m very grateful it worked.
    My daughter insisted she always told me the truth. About everything. While I’m sure that’s not exactly accurate, she may have believed she was telling me the truth. Experts tell us that we all lie. Everyone of us. Lies help us connect our wishes of who we are and who we long to be, with who we really are. 
    Sometimes we are protecting someone’s dignity or our own when we lie. Some people lie for financial gain or they lie to gain power. Most people know when they lie, but about 7% of us don’t know why we do it. 
    According to Pamela Meyer in her 2011 TED talk, How to Spot a Liar, lying is a co-operative act. We will believe what a person tells us, whether or not they told a lie, because we are willing to believe them.
    Children begin to lie when they learn to use language. They test the parameters of how far they can influence and manipulate their environment. When a seven or eight-year-old tells their parent a lie and doesn’t “get caught,” they learn that parents can’t read their minds and that parents believe what they are told. And it sets them up for becoming willing believers, too.
    But we are not children. We’re living in a time when our very Democracy is in peril. It is election season again, and political ads are never like news. As a matter of fact, candidates in political ads are allowed to lie. It’s in the Constitution, in the First Amendment. The one that protects free speech. This protection is an essential concept in American Democracy. We can express our ideas and, unless we are promoting something unlawful, the government cannot prohibit that speech. Duke University explains it this way on their YouTube channel: “If speech is political in nature, no matter how outrageous and offensive it might be, it may still be protected by the First Amendment.” 
    Ads, by their very nature, are made to get our attention. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulates what can be said in a commercial advertisement. That protects us as consumers from false claims made by drug companies, toy companies, car manufacturers and anyone else trying to sell us something. 
    While the FTC oversees commercial speech, and while there’s some overlap when it comes to advertising on the internet, it’s the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that regulates our First Amendment right to free speech.
    Part of the First Amendment says the government cannot force us to say something against our will. But politicians say what they want us to believe. Often, we are willing believers. We believe their ads, especially when derogatory comments fly back and forth from opponents.
    Courts have allowed candidates to say what they want on federally regulated broadcast channels. The broadcasters are not allowed to reject an ad, even if it is blatantly false. And while they must disclose who is paying for the ad, some superPACs are named purposefully to deceive. Some disclosures go by so fast that they are unreadable or unable to be understood. 
    Cable channels can and do sometimes reject ads. So do digital advertising platforms like Facebook and Twitter. 
    When an idea rings true, it’s often said to be “on the nose.” The American Heritage Idioms Dictionary says “on the nose” comes from boxing. When a punch landed accurately, it landed on the opponent’s nose.
    Journalists have a “nose for news,” the instinctive sense for what makes a big story. They can sniff out a story that is interesting to lots of people. The phrase is said to come from the radio newsroom where a technician would lay their finger alongside their nose to indicate when the newscaster should begin to speak.
    Since we can’t believe everything (anything?) we hear, we need to stay informed by reading and listening to reliable, non-partisan sources, journalists who have a “nose for news” and give us stories that are right “on the nose.” 
    My daughter’s nightmare aside, wouldn’t life be easier if politicians (and journalists for that matter) had noses like Pinocchio’s? 
                                     be curious! (and a little skeptical) 

    “Come with me,” said the fox. He led the dog to his creepy house.
    The fox turned on his oven. “You would be good with carrots and onions,” he muttered.
    “Who are carrots and onions?” the dog asked.
                                  .    .    .
    Soon he could hear [his lady] calling, “Baked Potato, Baked Potato.” 
                                  .    .    .
    He jumped into her arms and she showered him with kisses. “My little Baked Potato,” she cooed, squeezing him tight. “I might have known you’d like walks in the rain. You’re just like me.”
                                           from I’m a Baked Potato!
                                                   by Elise Primavera
                                          illustrated by Juana Medina
                                                  Chronicle Kids, 2019
                                     accessed on YouTube, 10/10/22

    Whenever someone hurt my feelings with a thoughtless remark about my new curly hairdo, or my Bobby socks, or the way I did (or tried to do) gymnastics, my mom would remind me that “sticks and stones could break my bones, but names could never hurt me.” She thought she was helping me understand that kids could be mean, but I could be resilient. She was only half right. Kids could be very mean. But I was not that resilient.
    Sticks and stones, like bricks and bombs really can break bones, and other body parts and even communities and even whole societies. And, it turns out, names can do just as much harm. Maybe even more.
    As my daughter recently reminded me, the strongest muscle in anyone’s body is their tongue. It has the power to hurt and also has the power to heal. Words are that important.
    How we name things is important, too. Derogatory nicknames are hurtful. Their original meanings, the stereotypes, are even ingrained into our language. Well-meaning people say them without a thought to their origin. 
    Take “grandfather clause.” It is a legal phrase that means a person or entity can keep old rules in place even when a new rule is made. For example, old power plants are grandfathered when they don’t have to meet new standards. A retail establishment is grandfathered when new zoning laws are put in place that don’t allow retail stores where the store stands. 
    The phrase comes from a particular set of 19th century laws that suppressed voting. Seven Southern states enacted statutes between 1895 and 1910 to specifically suppress the Black vote. These laws stated that men whose grandfathers had voted before the end of the Civil War and their descendants were exempt from taking literacy tests and paying poll taxes. 
    The Fifteenth Amendment “guaranteed the right to vote regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Since was passed in 1870, most Black men were effectively excluded. Their grandfathers were most likely enslaved. White men, regardless of their education or financial status, were allowed to vote without a literacy test or poll tax. Their grandfathers most likely were not enslaved. These statutes were not found unconstitutional until 1915.
    Now just a drop of history. The Fourteenth Amendment (passed in 1869) defined citizenship. The first part of the Amendment, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside” resulted in confusion. Since most Native Americans were living under tribal laws and subject to those laws, the Amendment was interpreted to exclude them from citizenship and excluded them from the voting rights guaranteed by the Fifteenth Amendment, too. It was not until 1924 that Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act, giving  Native Americans citizenship and guaranteeing their voting rights. 
    American History is rife with conflict. Built on the idealism of plurality, diversity, and inclusion, we struggle to accept the application of its truth. We all learned the couplet that describes America’s founding: In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Columbus called what he found the New World. He named the people he found Indians. In fact, groups of people had been sharing and vying for the land for thousands of years. 
    Last year, 2021, President Biden made Indigenous Peoples Day a Federal Holiday. The second Monday of October each year, what some people still call Columbus Day, is becoming more celebrated for the importance of our shared history.
    Indigenous Peoples Day began in 1977 at an international conference on discrimination sponsored by the United Nations. In 1990, at the same conference, Scott Stevens, director of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Program at Syracuse University, said “Indigenous Peoples Day is about resilience of what past cultures have endured as much as it is about honoring heritage.” 
    Gradually, we newcomers are beginning to realize that Indigenous People, while sharing their Native land, do not share one culture. Gradually, states and cities are recognizing the struggles and contributions made by Native people. Gradually we are accepting their differences and similarities.
    In his 2021 address, President Biden said, “It is a measure of our greatness as a nation that we do not seek to bury [the] shameful episodes of our past –- that we face them honestly, we bring them to the light, and we do all we can to address them.” 
    While we acknowledge Columbus’s adventurous spirit, his tenacity, and his excitement, while we can be grateful for our luck at surviving in this new (for most of us) place, we need to temper our acknowledgement and gratitude with humility, respect, and honor for those who were here first.
                                     -—be curious! (and speak kindness)   

    “…Working in a beauty shop takes years and years of practice.”
    “Yeah, only I already know that,” I said.
    “Years and years and years,” said Daddy.
    I did a huffy breath at him. “I already know that, I told you,” I said again.
    After that, I leaned back in my seat. And I thinked about the years and years of practice.
    Finally, I did a big sigh.
    I would have to get started right away.
                         from Junie B. Jones Is a Beauty Shop Guy
                                             written by Barbara Park
                                         illustrated by Denise Brunkus
                    Random House Books for Young Readers, 1998
                                           accessed on Libby 9/29/22

    Mom combed my hair every morning and tied it up in one long braid that reached below my waist. I was not a tall child, but still. Putting in the braid was the easy part. All I had to do was sit still and I’ve always been pretty good at that. It was much harder to sit still when Mom was taking my braid out. In those olden days, coated rubber bands had not yet been invented. I know she didn’t mean to yank out all those single strands of hair. They couldn’t help but get caught. 
    When I was about six and a half, my mom and I decided we would ask our neighbor to cut my hair. I was ready to say goodbye to the ouchies.
    Mrs. Osika helped me up to her twirly chair. I faced myself in a big mirror, but I didn’t really want to look. “Ready?” she asked before she whacked off my long braid with her big scissors. I probably nodded. After, a rubber band held each end, and I kept that braid in my bottom dresser drawer for many, many years. 
    I wish I could have donated it to a child who needed a wig. (See Locks of Love, if you’re interested.) My older granddaughter did that a couple of years ago. She donated the 12 inch minimum and looked really cute with her new not-too-short style. Mrs. Osika, on the other hand, permed what was left of my hair. The kids at school laughed at me after they got over their shock and called me Curly for a couple of weeks. I was embarrassed, but lived to tell the tale.
    Hair has been important throughout history. Beginning with the Bible story of Samson, long, uncut hair symbolized not only physical strength, but strength of character. Many modern cultures, from the Sikhs to much of Native American culture, still prohibit cutting one’s hair. Whether described as gift from Gd or a sign of community identity, hair is viewed as sacred.
    Styles have varied throughout the ages. Ancient Greek sculptures depict gods with long hair, a symbol of their power. In the Middle Ages, long hair was a symbol of wealth. From the Germanic Goths to the Gaelic Irish, people prided themselves in their long hair. Shorter hair often identified a person as lower class. 
    By the late 1500s, syphilis had been raging throughout Europe for several years. Since long, thick hair was a status symbol for men and the disease could cause hair loss, many who recovered chose to don a wig. In time, wigs became status symbols of their own. Even today, British judges wear wigs as a sign of formality and to continue a tradition.
    Portraits of classical musicians are often depicted in long hair, or wigs. Think of Scarlatti (1600s Italy), Mozart (1700s Austria), and Beethoven (late 1700s to early 1800 Germany). While Beethoven is not shown in a wig, he let his hair grow long. MerriamWebster.com defines a “long hair” as an impractical intellectual, a person of artistic gifts or interests, especially a lover of classical music, or a counter-cultural, non-violent person. 
    When I was in high school, boys’ hair had to be above their shirt collars. Girls had no such restrictions, but when the dress code became more relaxed, both boys and girls let their hair grow. As an outward expression of a growing counter-culture and encouraged by the musicians of my day from The Beatles to Bob Marley and Willie Nelson to Jimi Hendrix, long hairs were not tied to a specific genre. They introduced an era. An important counter-culture, a movement had started. During those explosive days of the Vietnam War, growing political strife, and violent street riots, the most courageous of us worked for change brought by “good trouble.” 
    When the rock-musical Hair opened on Broadway in 1968, it played along side among others, Fiddler on the Roof. With its emphasis on “Tradition!” Fiddler can be seen as the opposite of Hair, where the focus is on change. But really, both stories are showing their audiences, us, that while change is necessary, it is the way the world works, it is often painful. 
    The painful nature of change is most clearly seen in today’s Iran. Since 1979, when the Guidance Patrol was established after the revolution that deposed the Shah, women have been forced to cover their hair with a hijab. Commonly called the morality police, these officers are charged with enforcing the religious moral code of extreme Islam. 
    The world watched when a 22-year-old woman was arrested for wearing her head scarf too loosely. The world protested when she died in custody. Protests continue. 
    While laws and definitions of morality can hold a society together, the strong-armed dominance of a minority over a like-minded majority can encourage, maybe even incite revolution.
                            -—be curious! (and embrace good change)

Cody loved all animals, big and small. But she had a special, tender place in her heart for ants. They were so serious! They worked so hard!
from Cody and the Fountain of Happiness
                                                  by Tricia Springstubb
                                            illustrated by Eliza Wheeler
                                                Candlewick Press, 2015

    One day, several years ago, I went to the small park near my house and sat at the base of a favorite tree to think and wonder. My thoughts must have wandered into existential territory as I watched an ant crawl onto a fallen leaf. What universal plan would I upset if I moved the leaf with the ant on it? Would it survive in a new environment? Would it know where it was? How to get food? Would my ant recognize anyone in its new environment?
    I decided it was time to go home.
    But I continued thinking about how much influence any of us has over our surroundings. Well, we can keep our footprints small by avoiding plastic and understanding that when we throw something away, it just gets put somewhere else. We can consume less and re-use more. We can be informed voters. 
    How all beings are connected and how everything in our complicated world is necessary, to a greater or lesser extent, gnaws at my imagination and taps for my attention.
    I know about worms and how they aerate soil and how their droppings are excellent natural fertilizer. But what about those ants? Like worms, lots of them live under the ground. Are they also useful, like worms are?
    The study of ants is called myrmecology. It is well known that ants, like bees live in intricate social systems. A colony can have several fertile females (queens), but it behooves their social order to have fewer rather than more. Worker ants, like worker bees, are all female. They tend the young, forage for food, and defend the colony. Male ants mate with the queen, then, their usefulness complete, they die. The queens continue to lay eggs.
    Ants have lived on earth for over 80 million years. They escaped the great extinction that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. A new study reported by CNN  last week, estimates about 20 quadrillion individual ants are living on our earth at any moment in time. I can’t imagine a number that large, but it must be around a gajillion. Maybe 20,000 trillion is easier to understand, but for me, that’s still about a gajillion. Even entomologists were surprised at the huge number of ants. Etymologists may have been surprised, too, but for very different reasons.
    Scientists examined 489 studies that spanned every continent on earth and discovered that ants are found all over the world, but are more prevalent in the tropics than in colder regions.             
    Ants are beneficial for all the reasons you already know. They turn and aerate the soil as efficiently as earthworms, ensuring plant roots get the air and water they need. Ants often take seeds into their tunnels for food, and some seeds inevitably sprout, encouraging plant dispersion. Ants serve as both predators and prey. Many ants feed on termites. Some like the juicy honeydew aphids produce. And ants are food for other insects, birds, and carnivorous plants like pitcher plants.
    Eating insects, entomophagy, is uncommon here in the US and in most parts of the West, but it is estimated that two billion of the eight billion people on earth are entomophagists, insect eaters. People in Asia, Africa, and Latin America depend on insects for an important protein source. Beetles, caterpillars, bees, wasps, and ants are an important part of their diet. Some of the most popular types of edible ants are leaf-cutting, weaver, honey, and black ants. 
    Larvae and adult ants are prepared by roasting, frying, and boiling. They are common ingredients in recipes and as a condiment. While their nutritional value varies depending on species, metamorphical stage, and preparation methods, ants are high in protein, fiber, vitamins, and minerals. Their low environmental impact combined with their high protein value make ants a viable component to finding a solution for world hunger. 
    More human studies are needed to determine exact nutritional values, but in general, ants, with only a few exceptions, are safe to eat and are environmentally friendly.
    Besides their ecological and nutritional benefits, ants are useful to networking engineers who study their social systems to create their own more efficient and sophisticated networking systems. 
    Then there’s the industriousness of ants. They’ve been a model for good behavior in story and song from Aesop’s “Grasshopper and the Ant” to Frank Sinatra’s “High Hopes.”
    I don’t know what happened to the ant I displaced that day so many years ago. I like to think that it had the symbolic effect of proving resilience, adaptability, and perseverance. 
                                       
                                          -—be curious! (and industrious)    

    “Come along, Paddington. We’ll take you home, and you can have a nice, hot bath. Then you can tell me all about South America. I’m sure you must have had lots of wonderful adventures.”
    “I have,” said Paddington earnestly. “Lots. Things are always happening to me. I’m that sort of bear.”
                                      from A Bear Called Paddington
                                              written by Michael Bond
                                       illustrations by Peggy Fortnum
                                                 Houghton Mifflin, 1958

    We all have our favorite childhood toys. Some feel more real than others. I named my favorite doll Rosebud. Her face was beautiful—-rosy cheeks, a perpetual smile, and blue eyes that closed when she lay down. She wore a filmy pink dress that came down to her pudgy knees. She wore undies, too. I shaped her hair into a handle, perfect for hauling her around.
    Rosebud always agreed or disagreed with me by nodding or shaking her head, and after many years of togetherness, she started showing her age. Her head was getting pretty loose on her neck. The fiber of her body was starting to let go of her plastic head. 
    When it became clear that Rosebud’s life (head) was literally hanging by a thread, my grandmother came to the rescue. She told me she knew someone at a doll hospital who could fix Rosebud up good as new, and I trusted Rosebud to my grandmother’s care. 
    Two weeks went by and Rosebud was still at the hospital. I asked and asked for her. Finally, I think my grandmother gave up hoping I’d forget about her and she returned Rosebud, not good as new, but same as she was. The hospital couldn’t help after all.
    Part of me wanted to keep Rosebud, but I knew deep down that I had outlived her. I found an old shoe box and carefully tucked Rosebud in with tissue paper and covered her up. I got my brother to dig a hole in the backyard where we buried our fish and turtles. We gave Rosebud a few moments of silence and then we moved on.
    Another of our favorites were The Halsam Toy Company’s American Plastic Bricks, the forerunner to LEGO’s. (Here's a fascinating history of the company.) My brother and I had scads and of them stored in empty five-pound Chock-Full-a-Nuts coffee cans. We spent hours and hours building houses, factories, and castles with them.
    Toys are really tools for children. They teach, foster imaginative and creative play, and encourage social interactions with friends, siblings, and grown-ups. The Strong Museum in Rochester, New York, is the location of the National Toy Hall of Fame. It “houses the world’s largest and most comprehensive collection of historical materials related to play.” 
    Margaret Woodbury Strong was born into a wealthy family. She collected all sorts of items in a little bag she carried as her parents showed her the world. She “played with dolls in a Japanese teahouse, rode an elephant in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and toured the waterfronts of Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Canton.” (from: Museum of Play) 
    By the 1960s, when Margaret was in her late 60s, she had collected over 27,000 items and organized them into over 50 categories. Most were related to children’s play.
    She added two wings to her home to accommodate her staggering (and growing) collection. She thought of this part of her home as a museum and in 1968, she received a provisional charter from New York for the “Margaret Woodbury Strong Museum of Fascination.” She had willed her collections and most of her money to fund and maintain the museum. Thirteen years after her death a year later (1969), the Strong Museum was opened to the public in downtown Rochester, New York.
    The Strong serves a global audience on site, on-line, and through its International Center for the History of Electronic Games, the National Toy Hall of Fame, the World Video Game Hall of Fame, the Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play, the Woodbury School, and the American Journal of Play. 
    The National Toy Hall of Fame is gathering experts to evaluate this year’s new inductees. You can join me in voting for this year’s Player’s Choice award. View all the nominees here.  Find the ballot and vote here,  but do it today! Voting closes at midnight tomorrow, September 21. Winners will be revealed Thursday, November 10, 2022.
    If your favorite toy is not part of the collection yet, you can nominate a toy to be considered for the November 2023 induction. Here are the selection criteria and nomination form.
                                              -—be curious! (and play!)