And suddenly [the ant, the butterfly, and the mouse, and the sparrow and the rabbit] knew why there was enough room under the mushroom for all of them.
    Do you know what happens to a mushroom when it rains? 
    It grows!
                                         from: Mushroom in the Rain
                                           written by Vladimir Suteev
                   translated from the Russian by Mirra Ginsburg
                    illustrated by Jose Aruego and Arianne Dewey
                              Aladdin Books/Simon & Schuster, 1974
                                     accessed on YouTube 9/7/2020

    The last time it rained at my house, I found beautiful, golden mushrooms ringing a wreath around my forsythia. Several things came together when I saw that. I had a memory-flash of pouring over a mushroom guide with my grandson and cautioning him to NEVER, EVER taste one he might find outside! I thought of a friend who was the mushroom expert at our county Poison Control Center. And I just finished a book by Merlin Sheldrake called Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, & Shape our Futures (Random House, 2020).
    Fungi make up their own life-form, separate from the animal, vegetable, bacteria, and protist (all the single-celled life forms not bacteria) categories. It’s true that there is some overlap, confusion, even controversy. While the Five Kingdoms are the accepted standard, some scientists have divided protists further. Some have even suggested Seven Kingdoms. I’ll leave that to them and refocus on fungi.
    Some surprising facts from https://www.sciencekids.co.nz/sciencefacts/food/mushrooms.html 

• Mushrooms get the energy they need to survive without using photosynthesis.
• Modern studies show mushrooms have many medical benefits. (ALWAYS check with your doctor first!)
• One portobello can contain more potassium than a banana. (Good thing. I hate bananas!)
• Mushrooms are about 90% water.
• China produces about half of all cultivated mushrooms.  
• Over 30 species of mushroom produce the chemical reaction, bioluminescence. They glow in the dark. 
• Before synthetic dyes were invented, mushrooms were used for dying many natural fibers. They produce strong, vivid colors.
  
• and from https://earthsky.org/earth/largest-land-organism-honey-fungus: The largest fungus in North America lives in Oregon. It is a honey fungus that measures 3.4 miles across. 

    All mushrooms are fungi, but not all fungi are mushrooms. Mushrooms act like the flower of a plant. They produce the microscopic spores vital to reproduction. The rest of the organism lives in soil or wood and is made of thread-like strands called mycelium. Mycelia draw water and nutrients from the soil to feed the fungus and make chemicals they share with other organisms in the soil. But wait! There’s more! Trees and other plants share information, too. Trees can sabotage unwelcome plants by spreading toxic chemicals through the same mycelial network.
    Most fungi are either sapotrophic (which thrive on dead, organic substances like fallen tree trunks) or mycorrhizal (in symbiosis with living, woody plants). 
    A symbiotic relationship, one where each organism benefits the other, is a win-win. It has been clearly shown since at least 2009, that trees and fungi both fair better when they are in symbiosis with each other. And almost 90% are.
    A May 15, 2019, article in phys.org, https://phys.org/news/2019-05-symbiotic-relationships-trees-microbes-worldwide.html describes a group of Stanford researchers who worked with 200 scientists and discovered Read’s Rule, named after a pioneer in symbiosis research, Sir David Read. Simply put, the rule states “symbiotic relationships obey clear rules and are strongly related to climate, and that climate change is likely to have massive impacts on the symbiotic state of the world’s forests.”
    The researchers and scientists mapped the locations of millions of trees and their symbiotic fungal relationships to determine how climate, soil chemistry, local vegetation, and the particular topography of an area affect how well each symbiotic relationship works. 
    Two types of symbioses help trees, each in its own way:
        arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi help promote growth by improving the ability of trees to take up water and nutrients from the soil and help them grow stronger. 
        ectomycorrhizal fungi are are believed to improve plant health by encouraging a plant’s resistance to stresses such as drought, salinity, heavy metals, and pathogens like the harmful types of fungi.
    What’s in it for the fungi? Since they don’t make their own energy through photosynthesis, fungi depend on their host plants to provide energy producing sugars the fungi need to sustain their own growth.
    Fungi even help control the amount of carbon in our atmosphere.                          Ectomycorrhizal fungi are mostly found in temperate and cold climates. They work in a slow carbon cycle and help pull carbon from the atmosphere. Wood and other organic matter decay slowly. But, as temperatures rise, our temperate and cool-climate trees along with their fungal networks are finding it harder and harder to survive. They are being lost and replaced by their tropical, fast-carbon-cycle cousins. 
    Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi are more dominant in the tropics. They are faster growing and promote fast carbon cycling. They help promote growth by improving a tree’s ability to take up water and nutrients from the soil, but due to higher overall temperatures, droughts, and deforestation tropical rain forests are consuming a third less carbon than they did in the 1990s. 
    These trends are likely to continue. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/04/tropical-forests-losing-their-ability-to-absorb-carbon-study-finds
    As the Wood Wide Web (no kidding, it’s a real thing https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/05/wood-wide-web-underground-network-microbes-connects-trees-mapped-first-time) continues to be a focus of study for mycologists, dendrologists, and regular biologists, we’re all learning how strong connections to our planet and each other are necessary for our collective survival. 
                                   -—stay curious! (and eat mushrooms —        
                      from a trusted market or grocery store only!)  

Even if you have just one tree, it is nice, too. A tree is nice because it has leaves. 
The leaves whisper in the breeze all summer long.
                                                 From: A Tree is Nice
                                         written by Janice May Udry
                                            pictures by Marc Simont
                                                          Harper, 1956
                                       Winner: Caldecott Medal, 1957
                                  accessed on YouTube 8/30/2020

    Girl Scout Day Camp was a feature of many of my growing-up summers. We spent time in the woods learning to Be Prepared, leave Nature better than we found it, and find our way with a compass. I never got the hang of using a compass, but that was okay. Even when I was very young, 8 or 9 maybe, I loved to be in the woods. If I got lost, I’m not sure how long it would take for me to care. Probably till I got hungry or had to go to the bathroom.
    Although we were outside in the park, we were not really forest bathing. 
    I only heard of Forest Bathing recently. When I began my research, I was surprised to find so much interest in something I thought was new.
    The first thing I discovered is Forest Bathing is not so new. The Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries created the term shinrin-yoku in 1982. It translates to “forest bathing” or “absorbing the forest atmosphere.” 
     While physically being present in a forest, or an urban park, or your backyard even, the object is not a literal immersion, but more of a spiritual one. Being fully present to all your senses and staying in the moment, for about 40 minutes will reap benefits.
    And you don’t need hiking gear, jogging shorts, or riding helmets. A leisurely walk on a trail or path, an easy pace, an eye and ear open to sights and sounds seems simple. But, intension is key. Awareness of the moment is vital. Carefully touching tree bark, gently stroking a flower petal, smelling a pine tree or a skunk can be part of the experience. No tasting, though. Unless you’re sure, really positively sure. I still say, no tasting. No berries, no mushrooms, no greenery. The sensation of taste is closely connected to smell. Being aware of that is enough.
    Want to lower your blood pressure, heart rate, and level of the stress hormone, cortisol? Take a walk in the woods. A study cited in a Time Magazine article from May 1, 2018, shows “being in nature can restore our mood, give us back our energy and vitality, and refresh and rejuvenate us.” https://time.com/5259602/japanese-forest-bathing/ 
    You might want a guide. The Association of Nature and Forest Therapy provides a training program in the science of Forest Bathing. A guide encourages the natural connection we humans have with our environment. Several practice in the Cleveland, Ohio, area. https://www.natureandforesttherapy.org/membership/guide-directory#!directory/map 
    Evergreens secrete a chemical, phytoncide, that is associated with improvements in the immune system. Creativity can improve by 50 percent, as shown in a study by David Strayer. The psychological effects of urban walking vs. nature walking show nature walks tend to correlate with improvements in mood.
    To sum it up, “[f]orest therapy is about creating relationships between humans and the more-than-human world, in which the relationship itself becomes a field of healing and a source of joyful well-being.” https://www.natureandforesttherapy.org/about/the-practice-of-forest-therapy  
    Stefano Mancuso, a founder of the Society for Plant Neurobiology, claims that even without neurons and a brain, plants can acquire, process, and integrate information to shape their behavior in a way that could be called intelligent. In his very popular and extremely interesting book, The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohllben discusses the way trees communicate among themselves. Merlin Sheldrake shows us how fungi and our relationships with them are changing our understanding of how life works in his fascinating Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures.
    Maybe they can’t hear with ears, but I thank my cucumber plant each time I take its gifts. I do the same with my tomato plants. The basil, parsley, and chives, too. I heard awhile back that the reason to talk to your plants is to give them an extra dose of carbon dioxide from your out-breath. I’m sure that doesn’t hurt, but I do believe they understand me, on some other level.  
    Without getting overly sentimental, I respect my plants for doing what they do even bound in pots that probably cramp their rooty toes. When I sit quietly behind the forsythia and listen to the bees work in the tiny thyme flowers and notice contrasting scents and colors of marigold and tomato plants, I’m awed. 
    Science proves that feeling awe redirects our concern away from ourselves and toward the greater good.
https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2014-6-november-december/feature/science-awe. The feeling of awe is most often elicited by nature. That’s part of why it's restorative. Feeling awe is energizing and humbling. A feeling of grandeur mixed with insignificance. Wonder and understanding on a very deep level.
    Sometimes you know something is true just because it’s True. The Truths of forest bathing, the sentiency of non-human life forms (including plants and fungi), and the Awesomeness of Nature now have science to help us to quantify them. 
                              -—stay curious! (and hug a tree, literally!)

“Oh, boy! Oh, Boy!
I love ice cream!
Wait! Piggie loves ice cream, too!
Piggie is my best friend. 
Should I share my ice cream with her?
Should I share my 
awesome,
yummy,
sweet,
super,
great,
tasty,
nice, 
cool ice cream?
hmmm…mmm…mmmMMM…”
                              from Should I Share My Ice Cream?
                                        an Elephant and Piggie Book
                              written and illustrated by Mo Willems
                                 Hyperion Books for Children, 2011
                                read on YouTube by AHEV Library
                                               accessed 8/23/2020

    I love ice cream. As much as Mo Willems’s Elephant, I’m sure. Probably as much as anyone. Maybe more.
    Mom always kept ice cream in the freezer at home. Dad loved chocolate. Mom was vanilla, all the way. She liked White House, the kind with the cherries in it. I’m sorry to say, I don’t know my sister’s favorite, or my brother’s. True to my child-self, I mostly cared about my own choices, doused with chocolate syrup when I could get it.
    One day we kids heard a calliope-sounding jingle getting louder and louder. We ran outside. An ice cream truck was cruising our neighborhood, passing by as slowly as possible, right in time for a snack for the very lucky neighborhood kids. 
    But not us. Never us. Our ice cream was in the freezer. 
    Mom kept cones on hand, too. The pointy ones. She’d make us cones and let us eat outside, but it wasn’t the same, at least not for me.
    I’m not sure what thoughts Mom had about kids who ran into the street after a slow-moving vehicle ready to thrust quarters at the white-suited driver. It wasn’t a good look for her, though. Besides, why should we spend our money on an inferior product when a better substitute was right there in our freezer?
    Well, to be like the other kids, Mom. 
    She finally gave in. I decided on a drumstick. I ripped off the paper, which was in itself a novelty, and discovered perfectly shaped ice cream extending past the cone for probably 2 full inches, chocolate-dipped and flat-topped. But, it was frozen custard, not real ice cream. And the cone was soggy. Mom was right again.
    But, whether we bought the ice cream or not, whether we liked it or not so much, the jingle stayed with us for the rest of the day. 
    I can conjure it up, still. “Turkey in the Straw.”
    Who knew the tune had racist overtones? Not me. Not The Good Humor Company, started 100 years ago, right here in Youngstown, Ohio, when Henry Burt created a chocolate coating that would stay on the ice cream. When his young daughter said it was good but too messy to eat, he froze it onto a stick and a new confection was born.
    Since 1920, Good Humor treats have been sold out of everything from tricycles to push carts to trucks.    
    By 1936, Good Humor men went through a rigorous three-day training program. In 1960, the company sold over 85 different products. 
    But times change. The fleet of trucks was sold in 1976, when the company focused on marketing to grocery stores. The trucks went for $1,000 to $3,000 each. Some were bought by ice cream distributers, and some were sold to individuals.
    And the iconic song went with them.
    When the tune was originated early in the 1800s from British and Irish folksongs, it had no racist overtones. That addition came soon after, when it was performed in the United States in minstrel shows. Some songs were sung with the same melody, but highly offensive lyrics, performed in black-face. 
    The short re-cap below is from American Heritage: https://www.americanheritage.com/blackface-sad-history-minstrel-shows itself the reprint of a 1978 article.
    Begun with the creation in 1828, of a character named “Jim Crow,” White performer, Thomas Rice became an American sensation. He blackened his face and reddened his lips to present the caricature that quickly became an ingrained stereotype. 
    More popular in the North than the South, and more popular in cities than rural areas, the song and dance of the minstrel shows actually did allow Black performers to “break into” show business. The problem, though, to be successful, they too had to carry on the charade of the stereotype. What image does Stepin Fetchit conjure for you? I know. Me, too, and I’ve never seen his films. 
    But these shows are part of our history. The songs became popular, lurid and derisive lyrics and all, perpetuating a cruel satire and exploitation. The shows were meant to be light and meaningless entertainment, but were in truth, so much more.
    The entertainment was lively, fresh, and complex. It drew on original music, dance, and one-liners. But the extremely popular shows depended on portraying enslaved people as “happy, dancing, carefree children for whom life was a continual frolic.” The message of the show, that Blacks could only “succeed” in the confines of an enslaved life and cared for by a kind master and mistress was not lost on anyone.
    By the twentieth century, our had country moved on to concerns other than slavery, and the minstrel show faded. Left behind, though, was the stereotype that Black people could not survive in the complex society of urban life.
    And the songs. 
    The racist lyrics were lost to most of us leaving only the calliope jingle on an ice cream truck. Now that has finally changed, too. Good Humor recently engaged RZA to create a new melody for a new time. He did. Here’s about a minute and a half of RZA’s explanation with the new jingle in the background.   https://www.goodhumor.com/us/en/jingle.html 
    Finally, scroll down to find Good Humor’s statement on its commitment to racial equality and racial justice.
                                    -—stay curious! (and eat ice cream)   

…After the Civil Rights came the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Voting Rights Act would become the most effective piece of antiracist legislation ever passed by the Congress of the United States of America.
                          from: Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You
                                              written by Jason Reynolds
                                      Little, Brown and Company, 2020
                                      (Adapted from the National Book
                          Award-winning Stamped From the Beginning 
                                                        by Ibram X. Kendi)

    Suffrage: The word is an old one. It’s from the Old French sofrage “plea, intercession” and comes directly from the medieval Latin suffragium “support, ballot, vote; right of voting; a voting tablet.” https://www.etymonline.com/word/suffrage 
    The word’s first usage as “the political right to vote” is found in the U. S. Constitution, 1787 (same source as above). 
    It is not related to sufferage which is not even a word, even though I want it to mean the noun-form of suffer. 
    Susan B. Anthony was not the only suffragist, then called the diminutive suffragette to belittle and demean those on whose shoulders we all stand, men and women alike. You probably know she was joined by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Angelina and Sarah Grimke, sisters who were outspoken abolitionists. Here are some others you may know.
    Jane Addams won the 1931 Nobel Prize for Peace. 
    Amelia Bloomer wore pants. The word bloomers was coined in her honor. 
    Molly Brown was an actress who survived the Titanic.
    William Jennings Bryan was a newspaperman and orator.
    Julia Ward Howe wrote “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” 
    Alice Paul introduced the Equal Rights Amendment in 1923, right after Woman’s Suffrage was granted.
    Lucy Stone studied Hebrew and Greek in college to find out if passages in the Bible were translated properly. She looked for “evidence” that stated a man’s dominion over a woman. You can find an interesting and long international list at https://www.britannica.com/topic/list-of-suffragists-2058290 
    Lots of Black suffragists were important to women getting the vote, too. I never learned that in school. Besides Sojourner Truth (Isabella Van Wagener), here are a few important women I never heard of.
    Mary Ann Shadd Cary studied law at Howard University. She graduated in 1883, and became one of the first black female lawyers in the country. 
    Marry Church Terrell attended Oberlin College as a young woman where she became one of the first African American women to earn a college degree.
    Nannie Helen Burroughs worked with Marry Church Terrell to found the National Association of Colored Women.
    Ida B. Wells-Barnett, born into slavery, became a journalist who spoke out against lynching.
    Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, one of the first popularizers of African American protest poetry, she focused on issues of slavery, gender, and racial discrimination.    
    While many of these passionate women and men did not live to see the passage of the 19th Amendment, one who did was Carrie Chapman Catt. Ahead of the vote, she swung through Nashville encouraging support for Women’s Suffrage. 
    The Amendment had been approved by the Senate (25-4) and now went to a divided House of Representatives. When the final vote was taken, a Representative from Tennessee, Harry T. Burn, surprised everyone by voting “aye.” When asked what moved him to change his position, he said he received a letter from his mother. Dear Son, it read, …don’t forget to be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt put the ‘rat’ in ratification. She signed it, Your Mother. Representative Burns went on to add, “I know that a mother’s advice is always safest for her boy to follow, and my mother wanted me to vote for ratification.”
    Exactly one hundred years ago today, August 18, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment. Finally, women could vote legally in all elections throughout the United States.
    Mom told me Gram marched for women’s suffrage. My great-grandma arrived in Baltimore in 1906, with her with bundle of belongings from the Old Country and my three-year-old grandmother in tow. Gram joined her husband who she married in Belarus, but she was nothing if not independent. 
    By the time I came on the scene decades later, Gram’s demonstrating days were behind her. I felt determined and proud, though, as I imagined my own young face superimposed on hers. 
    Gram knew her mind. She knew what was right. She tied up her oxfords and marched for the freedom and responsibility that propelled her decision to cross an ocean. 
                                             -—stay curious! (and vote) 

A note on my post on the Post Office (7/28/2020): I hope I did not mislead anyone to think Louis DeJoy is a good guy. His is not. The post office is a public service and its employees are civil servants. They have a civic mandate central to American business, society, and civic culture. The USPS is a vital part of our government, ensuring communication free from censorship, timely delivery of medicine and medical supplies, and dependable shipments of everything from frivolous wants to significant necessities.

I was feeling a little overwhelmed this past week and decided to take the day off.
​Please look for me here next week.
In the meantime, take care of yourselves and each other.
                                       -—stay curious! (and breathe deeply)

    The legendary Lincoln is known as Honest Abe, a humble man of the people who rose from a log cabin to the White House.
                                       …
    Lincoln may have seemed like a common man, but he wasn’t. … By the time he ran for president he was a wealthy man, earning a large income from his law practice and his many investments. … [And n]o one who knew him well ever called him Abe to his face. They addressed him as Lincoln or Mr. Lincoln.
                                   from:  Lincoln: a Photobiography
                                        written by Russell Freedman
                                    HMH Books/Clarion Books, 1987
                                        1988 Newbery Medal Winner
                             e-book accessed on Libby 7/28/2020

    Before the Civil War, our country had divided itself into political parties based on ideology, but on March 20, 1854, a group of vocal anti-slavery Whig Party members (Abraham Lincoln was a Whig) met in Wisconsin to break away and form a new party. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854, proposed to dissolve the terms of the Missouri Compromise and permit existing and new territories to decide for themselves whether or not to allow ownership of enslaved people. Because these Whigs opposed institutional slavery, their faction disintegrated and gave birth to the Republican Party. Their anti-slavery stance aligned with Lincoln’s values. He joined that new Republican Party.
    Membership grew quickly in the Northern states. 
    By 1860, most of the Southern slave-holding states publicly threatened secession if a Republican won the presidency. Abraham Lincoln was elected in November, 1860, and South Carolina announced its secession from the United States just six weeks later. A few months after that, on April 12, 1861, Lincoln ordered Union troops to resupply Fort Sumter, a Union fort in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard and his shore batteries opened fire on Fort Sumter to prevent the resupply. The Civil War had begun. 
    The war cost more lives than any other war we have fought, before or since. According to battlefields.org,  the complicated work of compiling casualties includes counting those who gave their very lives in battle and those whose lives were lost to disease, starvation, capture, or becoming missing in action. The number also includes the wounded, some of whom died of their wounds. The unfathomable number is estimated at 620,000 soldiers, a full 2% of the population at the time. 
    Lincoln knew that fighting the Civil War was the only way to preserve our whole nation. He was ever mindful, though, of the human lives lost and damaged by the War. At Gettysburg he implored us to remember those who had given their “last full measure of devotion” to preserving this great country. At the end of the War, he urged the nation to “bind up our wounds” and move forward together. Lincoln took this war to heart, maybe more than most.
    When John Wilkes Booth took aim and shot his gun shouting “Sic semper tyrannis! (Ever thus to tyrants!) The South is avenged,” Lincoln joined those who gave their “last full measure of devotion.”
    We are at another divisive crossroads. We are living in a time of great moral crisis, economic crisis, and health crisis which are all having the collective effect of making us despised and denigrated on the world stage.
    And so the Lincoln Project was formed.
    Prominent and wealthy Republicans have gotten together to form a group who claims they will stop at nothing to defeat Trump in the 2020 Presidential Election. See who they are at https://www.lincolnproject.us   (click the menu and choose “Our Team.”)
    In a New York Times op-ed published December 17, 2019, the Lincoln Project announced itself. You can read it here: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/17/opinion/lincoln-project.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytopinion 
    Or, in case you didn’t use the link, here’s the gist of it. The Founding members of the Lincoln Project call out Trump’s “crimes, corruption, and corrosive nature.” The Project’s effort “transcends partisanship . . . and asks all Americans to [restore] . . . leadership, governance, and respect for the rules of law.”
    In his Gettysburg Address, four months after the pivotal battle, Lincoln “stood on that fateful field and said, ‘It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”
    That “unfinished” but “nobly advanced” work is the inspiration for the Lincoln Project. Lincoln “understood the necessity of not just saving the Union but also of knitting it back together spiritually as well as politically.” 
    Those in the Lincoln Project are “dedicated to defeating Trump and Trumpism at the ballot box . . .” and imply that they favor down-ballot Democratic candidates, too.
    Although they are still Republicans and hold Republican ideas such as pro-business, pro-state’s rights, pro-small government, they understand the severe damage Trump is doing to our country and are trying to make him (and it) stop. They have produced and aired several ads promoting their ideas and their rationale for their important work. In case you haven’t seen them, yet, go to their website. They are all posted there.
    Once more from the Lincoln Project, “Electing Democrats who support the Constitution over Republicans who do not is a worthy effort.”
    I, for one, heartily agree.
                                             -—stay curious! (and vote)    

“Oh,” said Toad. “That makes a very good letter.”
Then Frog and Toad went out to the front porch to wait for the mail.
They sat there feeling happy together.
                       from “The Letter” in Frog and Toad are Friends
                                   written and illustrated by Arnold Lobel
                                                        Harper & Row, 1970
YouTube: https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-dcola-015&hsimp=yhs-015&hspart=dcola&p=frog+and+toad+are+friends+the+letter+read+aloud#id=4&vid=3708b37f727b3b36a1706828517f6ede&action=view 
                                                               scroll to 13:28
                                                      accessed 7/27/2020

    My dad was a philatelist, a stamp collector, and a serious one at that.
    Back in the day when we sent a letter to someone, after we licked the envelope to seal it, we licked the back of a stamp to activate the adhesive, then stuck it onto the envelope. 
    When we got mail with stamps on it, my dad clipped the stamp off the envelope and set it aside. When he had enough, maybe a dozen or two, he’d set up a bowl of warm water and carefully put the stamps in to soak off the glue. They’d stay there for a while, over night sometimes, then he’d gently take them out with a pair of tweezers, being ever mindful of the delicate perforations around the edges, and lay each stamp backside up on old newspapers to dry. Another layer of newspapers and a heavy book sat on them to keep them flat. When the stamps were dry and flat, he’d sort them into tiny glassine envelopes, made from translucent paper. They came in several small sizes. When he was ready, he’d use his tweezers to carefully pull the stamp he wanted from the the tiny envelope and attach it to an album page with special paper hinges. 
    He traded with his friends to collect stamps from the world over, then showed us all the countries on a world map.     
    Since the Post Office has been in the news lately, I thought I delve into its history a little and try to understand where the current financial controversy stands and whether the mail is safe.
    The Post Office is an old institution. In 1775, Benjamin Franklin was appointed the first Postmaster General by the Continental Congress. The first postage stamps were issued in 1847. To streamline sorting, ZIP Codes were established in 1963. In 1992, we stopped licking. Self-adhesive stamps became available nationwide. 
    On July 1, 1863, it cost 3 cents to mail a letter. The cost increased a few cents every few years until now, 157 years later, it costs 55 cents to stay in touch. I admit, I call more than I write. What can be better than a FaceTime call with my kids and grandkids? But who doesn't like to get a letter, a real one, delivered right to your house?
    Until recently, the Post Office had very little competition. Now, you can use United Parcel Service (UPS) or Federal Express (FedEx) to mail packages and envelopes. Neither is affiliated with the United States Postal Service (USPS), a government agency under authorization of the Congress of the United States. 
    More and more people are getting their news online through a reputable outlet or not. Magazines and journals have gone online to save the cost of postage. Catalogs are also online, for the same reason.
    The USPS is different from other government entities. The USPS is expected to pay its own way. Its mandate does not require solvency, though, and costs of doing business are far outpacing the 55-cent cost of a first class stamp. The necessity of staying competitive in the package delivery arena is also hard on the bottom line.
    Less mail means less money. In 2006, the post office handled 213 billion pieces of mail. A decade later only 149 billion pieces were mailed. In 2017, 28 percent of revenue came from packages. And online retailers are moving toward carrying and delivering packages themselves or using new companies like Uber or drones and delivery robots. Or something that hasn’t been thought of yet.
    According to the 2017 USPS annual report, postal workers used 230,000 trucks and other vehicles to deliver mail to 157 million addresses and post office boxes in the United States, including Puerto Rico, the American Virgin Islands, and the other territories and possessions.
    Five hundred thousand employees deliver the mail and manage 35,000 post offices and contractor-run retail shops, each with its own overhead.
    We all receive mail six days a week, 52 weeks a year (with a few days off for holidays).
    So what about mail-in voting? It is a good idea that needs a good plan. 
    We need to trust our letter carriers, the post office workers, and the Postmaster General to assure that those wishing to vote by mail can do so easily, safely, and securely. In every precinct of every state. 
    We do. According to a 2020 Pew Research Center survey, the USPS is the most liked government agency with a 91% approval rating.   
    Let’s look at the Primary election in Wisconsin last April. The state was unprepared to deliver and receive over 1,000,000 ballots. People filled them in wrong, they forgot to sign. They mailed them back late. Wisconsin did not have the experience to deal with huge volumes of mailed-in ballots. The local authorities didn’t have the infrastructure in place to handle it. And the citizens did not have clear instructions.
    That can happen on a national scale if we are not prepared.
    Mail fraud is rare. Ballot tampering is rare. Voter fraud is rare.
    The government of the United States needs to help the states and precincts develop and prepare the structure needed to insure that every single citizen is able to vote. States need to guide their citizens in the correct way to complete the ballot and emphasize the necessity of sending it back in time.
    It is our right to vote. It is our obligation.
    Our very democracy depends on it.
                   --stay curious! (and surprise someone with a letter)

Since I have discovered that the most exquisite words in the world are on labels you will find in a bathroom, I carried the kittens into the bathroom and looked around until I found them beautiful names. Fluoride and Laxative went to live with people who answered the Free Kittens, Hurry! ad…Then Margaret’s mother said, “All right, Margaret, you an have a kitten ...” And that was good, because at least Mascara would be living with someone Polka knew.
                                                          from: Clementine
                                           written by Sara Pennypacker
                                              illustrated by Marla Frazee
                                  originally published by Hyperion, 2006
                             Disney Book Group/Disney Hyperion, 2013
 e-book accessed on Libby from www.Libraryvisit.org 7/20/2020

    When I was about 14, my parents let me adopt the cat that belonged to the family I babysat for. He came with a name, Princey, and his kids were allowed to visit him whenever they wanted to.
    I’ve had other pets since then. We named a stray cat after Tristan Jones, a brave adventurer who circumnavigated the world in a sailboat. Some of our cats came with names. Blue had blue eyes. I found Tippy, his white tippy tail wrapped around his white tippy toes, sitting in our driveway. When I called “Tippy!” he came right over. I don’t know if that was his name from before, but it’s been his ever since. We spent some time looking for the people Tippy lived with before, but no one claimed him. Tippy got to live with us.
    We named a turtle someone left on our doorstep Blossom, after a pet turtle in a children’s book, one of the Ramona titles by Beverly Cleary, I think. Daffodil was a goldfish we got in the spring when the daffodils were blooming. Phoebe was a parakeet who sounded like her name.
    Names are important. Following tradition, our daughters are named for their ancestors. We wished our daughters the qualities we saw in those they were named for: strength of character; courage of convictions; wisdom; a generous spirit.    
    Place names are important, too. Those names can change. Some changes reflect local politics, Burma to Myanmar and Bombay to Mumbai, for example. Some had been mispronounced and now “corrected,” like Peking to Beijing.
    Lots of American city names are attempts to copy Native pronunciation. Cuyahoga County in Ohio, where I grew up, for instance, or the Mississippi. The Native pronunciations were difficult for English speakers, though, so even an attempt to preserve a culture through its names was misguided. 
    In another misguided attempt at veneration, cities named their sports teams to show admiration of Native American strength, cunning, and bravery that we newcomers to their land encountered. Kansas City, Washington D. C., Cleveland, and Atlanta chose those kinds of team names. 
    In the enlightened, chaotic, and ironic year 2020, even though we don’t always see clearly, lots of us have by now recognized the hurt we inadvertently caused through our own ignorance and insensibility. It’s not too late to remove those hurtful names. Team franchises have smart and creative people on their staffs. They will come up with strong, intimidating, and meaningful new names that fans will rally around. 
    And what about college and high school teams? I hope they’ll be next.
    My mom used to tell me “sticks and stones will break your bones, but names will never hurt you.” She said it when I complained to her that my feelings were hurt because someone called me “fatty,” or some other derogatory name. She was not condoning name-calling. She wanted me to know that I didn’t have to believe those mean words. That was not easy and it DID hurt. It still kinda does.
    Strong, brave, and patriotic should be qualifications for naming rights on our military bases. Smart generals who taught soldiers, sailors, and airmen the best ways to protect American citizens should be honored. A quick Google search on military bases showed me that 10 bases are named for Confederate leaders, in no particular order, I think. https://www.military.com/undertheradar/2018/10/03/ten-army-bases-named-after-confederate-officers.html 
1    Fort Benning (Georgia, 1918)
Benning believed the only way to prevent the abolition of slavery was secession.
2    Fort Bragg (North Carolina, 1918)
Bragg was considered one of the worst tacticians in either Army, US or Confederate. 
3    Fort Hood (Texas, 1942)
Hood called slavery the secret motor that kept up the momentum of the war. 
4    Fort Lee (Virginia, 1942)
Although most historians agree that Lee was less enthusiastic about fighting to preserve slavery than most of the other generals, he *did* step up to take command of the Confederacy. 
5    Fort Polk (Louisiana, 1941)
A slave owner before the war, Polk, second cousin to U. S. President James Polk, (1845 - 1849) was killed during the Battle of Atlanta (1864).
6    Fort Gordon (Georgia, 1941)
Gordon suggested Yankee soldiers didn't oppose slavery but only fought to preserve the Union.
7    Fort Picket (Virginia, 1941)
General Picket graduated last in his class at West Point. His widow was a founder of the "Lost Cause" movement that worked to obscure slavery's role in the war.
8    Fort Hill (Virginia, 1941)
Hill was promoted to lieutenant general after Stonewall Jackson was killed at the Battle of Chancellorsville.
9    Fort Rucker (Alabama, 1942)
Colonel Rucker is the only officer below the rank of General to have a base named after him. He lost an arm in the war, but became better known for being an industrialist who helped build Alabama’s substantial coal and steel industries.
10    Camp Beauregard (Louisiana, 1917)
Beauregard resigned his position as superintendent at West Point to join the Confederate Army. Too late, (1873) he spoke out loudly in a speech supporting racial cooperation and equal rights.  
    Notice, these bases were built and named during WWI or WWII, long after the Colonel and Generals were dead. The “Lost Cause,” was a movement begun shortly after the Confederacy surrendered. It romanticized the War, defended the motivations of the Confederacy, and obscured the reason for fighting in the first place, to preserve slavery.
    The movement still has traction, mostly in Southern states. Its adherents support the Confederate flag, monuments to Confederate officers and infantry, and names on military  facilities, all under the (contrived) protection of their First Amendment Right to free speech. 
    The “Lost Cause” and the people who support it, including Donald Trump, support the traitorous idea that the flag of a defeated Army should fly over the United States, and defeated warriors who fought bravely, albeit, for the wrong reasons, should be honored with monuments and military installations.
    Maybe William Shakespeare said it best in Romeo and Juliet Act II, scene ii:
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
by any other name would smell as sweet;
    Our teams will play just as well, our soldiers will be well-trained, our country will begin to heal when we all find and acknowledge the reality that is our shared, pluralistic, complicated history.
                                          --stay curious! (and honor truth)   

They fished
and they fished
all across the sea,
And down in the depths a mile.
They fished among all the fish in the sea,
For the fish with the deep sea smile.
                                 from The Fish With a Deep Sea Smile
                                               by Margaret Wise Brown
                                              illustrated by Henry Fisher
                                    e-edition Parragon Books Ltd., 2015
                                        www.libraryvisit.org (7/12/2020) 
   
    Human beings have universal emotions. We all feel sad, angry, frightened, happy, grouchy, pensive. Different cultures show these emotions differently. But smiles are universal. We all smile when we are happy. Even monkeys grin to express friendliness. https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/cheerful-chimps-are-animals-really-happy-when-they-smile#:~:text=The%20great%20apes%20go%20a%20step%20further%3A%20Their,and%20pleasurable%20situations%2C%20such%20as%20during%20sexual%20intercourse.     
    Depending on the circumstances, though, not all smiles reflect happiness or joy. Smiles convey nervousness, a need to please, submission, amusement, attraction and according to modern psychology, much more. 
    Duchenne de Boulogne (1806-1875), was a French physician and neurologist who introduced studies on electrical stimulation of muscles. He used the results of his experiments as a tool to learn about human anatomy in living people. He mapped all the human facial muscles.
    In one of Duchenne’s most famous experiments, he tested the facial muscles of a man who could not feel pain. Duchenne stimulated the man’s muscles to make him smile then photographed his many expressions. The man’s smiles never looked happy. But when Duchenne told the same man a funny joke, his mouth smiled broadly in reaction as expected, but he also involuntarily contracted the muscles around his eyes. That was the smile Duchenne was looking for, one of pure enjoyment. 
    A genuine smile, one that conveys happiness, friendliness, joy, one that is sincere, is called a Duchenne smile. https://practicalpie.com/duchenne-smile/. 
    Controversy surrounds whether or not you can fake a Duchenne smile. While our mouth muscles are pretty easy to voluntarily manipulate, it’s really difficult to work the ones that produce “crows-feet.” So, some say no. But a study from 2012 showed some participants could actually manipulate all the muscles needed to produce a Duchenne smile. Good actors can do it. You can, too. Train yourself in this skill by thinking up happy memories. The orbicularis oculi muscles, the ones at the corners of our eyes, are tied to the part of our brain where we process emotions. So, some say you can fake a Duchenne. I’m in that camp.
    The first gummy ear-to-ear grin that lights up the precious face of a two-month old baby is a great example of a Duchenne smile. I remember my babies’ first smiles. Huge, gummy grins they were, that took up at least half their little faces. I worked hard for those grins and was immensely rewarded. Scientists believe babies are born with the ability to smile. Even blind babies smile. Actually, I’m smiling at my baby-memory. Not a Duchenne smile, more wistful, Mona Lisa-ish. Maybe you are, too. 
    Smiles are the spontaneous expression of joy. And smiles are contagious.
    By now we all (I hope) are covering our mouths and noses with masks. Made of cloth or synthetic polymer fibers, decorated or plain, they trap germs. They protect us when we breathe in and protect everyone else when we breathe out. They are most assuredly necessary.
    But we lose an important piece of non-verbal communication: the smile. 
    Not all smiles are Duchenne smiles, of course. A researcher at The University of California-San Francisco identified 19 different kinds of smiles and divided them into two categories, polite/social smiles, and sincere/felt smiles. The polite smiles use many fewer muscles than the sincere smiles.
    Sincere smiles affect our moods. Even if we “fake it till we make it,” our belief that a genuine smile improves our outlook, well-being, and even health, proves correct. Our bodies are more relaxed when we smile. That contributes to good health and a strong immune system. https://www.laughteronlineuniversity.com/fascinating-facts-about-smiling/ 
    About the only place I go anymore is the grocery store. The other day, I was shopping with a list as fast and carefully as I could. When it was my turn to check out, I felt myself smile. Why did I do that? Habit? The store clerk I was acknowledging couldn’t tell I was smiling. I think it was a spontaneous reaction, the expression of joy I felt greeting another human being. Face to face. I bet she smiled back.
    Polite smiles probably don’t show up behind our masks. We need to practice Duchenne smiles. We’ll feel better and people will notice. Then they’ll smile, too. That’s the kind of contagion I can live with.
                                     -—stay curious! (and keep smiling)