Loose Leaf Notes

This past November, inspired by an idea at Writing from the Hip, I posted excerpts and links to my Top Ten blog posts taken from my first 6 months of blogging. I enjoyed the process of picking out my favorites and re-posting them, especially considering that in the first few months of blogging I didn’t have many readers. Below are 6 excerpts and links that were the runner-ups for the Top Ten list. In March, I’ll be celebrating my year anniversary as a blogger and will post the Top Ten from my second six months then.
The Boston Tea Party Re-visited Here, in the South Shore of Boston, every other person is proudly donned in some sort of Red Sox apparel, forks are called “fawks” and cars are “cahs,” and it’s common to spend over $1,000 a month for a 2 bedroom apartment. Here, navigating a traffic rotary, a circular grassy intersection where all points on the compass meet, is like square dancing in a foreign country where the dances aren’t called but your expected to know the moves, and when former Cambridge resident Ben Affleck gets married, it makes the front page of the Boston Herald. Read more…
I Met Him at the Laundry Mat You’re golden…I’m red delicious…basking in the sun’s September glory…You’re Adam…I’m Eve… My husband, Joe, moved to Floyd in 1987 to be a teacher at the Blue Mountain School, the parent-run cooperative school that my sons went to. We first met in the town laundry mat. He was with a couple of BMS parents tie dying shirts for a school fundraiser, and I was picking apples from a tree out front. The apples were green and discolored with black spots, but I was living on a low income, raising two sons, and I knew they would make good apple crisp. Read more…
Two Head Are Better Than One I found a good IQ test online, which professed to be the most thorough and scientifically accurate IQ test on the Web, developed by PhDs, and previously offered only to corporations, schools, and certified professionals. I had never taken one before and was curious. I know I’m smart enough, but I don’t always come across that way, probably because of my family inheritance of unusual brain wiring (aka known as dyslexia and/or dyscalculia). I surprised myself by getting a fairly high score. For the next day or so, I teased my husband, claiming to be a “genius.” Although it was an obvious exaggeration, being a “genius” was my new explanation or excuse for every thing, as if I had discovered a royal family background. Then…I don’t know what I was thinking…I baited him to take the test, asking, “Don’t you want to see if you’re a genius too?” Read more…
Where I’m From I am from my father’s eyes after he saw the holocaust at Buchenwald and the nape of my mother’s neck where white pearls hung before her thyroid surgery…I am from Hail Mary full of grapes…midnight mass and pennies in the poor box…I’m from the unlucky luck of the Irish…the old sod and Southie before there were gangsters… Read more…
Poetry: A Bubbling Spring One of my most interesting writing assignments was interviewing Ruby Altizer Roberts in the fall of 1999 for Expressions magazine, a Blacksburg art publication that is no longer in existence. In 1950 Ruby was voted the first woman Poet Laureate of Virginia by the General Assembly. She was the only woman to hold the title until Rita Dove was chosen for the honor in 2004. In 1992, Ruby was given the added title of Virginia’s Poet Laureate Emeritus, another first. Born here in Floyd County in 1907, Ruby lived most of her life in the neighboring town of Christiansburg. I can still remember how nervous I was and what I was wearing – khaki pants, a black blazer, and a green printed scarf – on the day she opened the front door of her home in Christiansburg to greet me. Read more…
Ani in the Rain
I wore an assortment of hats, caps, and visors throughout the 4th annual Floyd Fest weekend to keep from being sunburned and from getting WET. We seemed to get all variety of weather over the 3 day world music weekend. The Blue Ridge Parkway, where the festival is held, is notorious for fog, and so, there’s good reason that Floyd Fest is sometimes affectionately called “Fog Fest.” Emerging from her tour bus and onto the timber-framed stage at Sunday evening, Ani DiFranco closed the show with what was said to be her last performance before taking a year off. I heard that she has tendonitis, and with the way she drives her guitar, I’m not surprised. Read more…
Post Note: I have some photos “Christmas Pots by Josh” being featured at Stephanie Davies’ “Photo of the Week” over at “Mystickal Incense.” The first one I took and the second was taken by my son Josh.