Loose Leaf Notes

1. “I’m pretty much an open book with a few pages torn out.” So read a comment I left on someone’s blog entry that was inspired by the recent Sunday Scribblings prompt, “I have a secret.”
2. HERE’S what my sister and I do when we’re on vacation. We go to the hairdresser, NOT!
3. My feet knew the paths to all my friend’s houses. There were back yard shortcuts to all the best places. Braving the sticker burrs and overgrown fields, we foraged for wild food because our appetites were fierce in summer. We put sugar on everything back then, the mashed up wild blackberries, and the sour rhubarb-like fruit that we called bamboo. I even knew which flowers tasted good (purple crown vetch), but I didn’t tell anyone that I ate flowers. ~ From “Is it Summer Yet?” a past WVTF public radio essay about summer as remembered by my feet. More HERE.
4. I haven’t lived in my hometown of Hull for 35 years and I haven’t lived in Massachusetts for 27 years. Being a peninsula that is six miles long and less than one mile wide in most places, growing up here was like growing up on a small island. Whenever I come home it’s as if the place glows, like a shiny scene from a favorite dream that I realize is real.
5. My mother’s cat, which she got through a local humane society group, has the same name that my dog at home has: Jazzy.
6. Before I left Virginia for Hull, my husband did auricular therapy on me. It’s a form of acupuncture which, in this case, involves the taping of seeds in various places in my ear. When my sister Sherry saw me at our brother Joey’s cookout last Saturday, she thought I had an outbreak of blackheads in my ears.
7. One auricular website says this about the therapy: Auricular acupuncture was developed by the ancient Chinese and was also used by Northern Plains tribes using porcupine quills. It consists of stimulating designated points on the skin by the insertion of needles at specific points related to internal body functions. Energy or Qi (pronounced CHI) moves throughout the body and can become blocked, too week, or stagnant. Auricular acupuncture balances this energy. Physically, auricular acupuncture relaxes and reduces stress, decreases pain, increases energy and immunity, and normalizes sleep. Mentally and emotionally, it helps you feel clear, alert, calm and focused. Auricular acupuncture is specifically used in stress management, relaxation and chemical dependency treatment.
8. Before I left Virginia, I sent Paul Newman this email: I’ve been using Newman’s Own salad dressing for years and have recently been disappointed in the change from glass to plastic containers. It’s been determined that heated-up plastic can leech cancer causing agents. How long do some people’s dressing last? Does it sit out on picnic tables in the summer heat? Why even take the chance? Your products are good and shouldn’t be lowered to plastic containers. You wouldn’t see imported olive oil in plastic and there’s a reason. Bring back the glass!
9. As far as Scooter Libby being busted out of jail because President Bush doesn’t agree with the rulings determined by judges that he appointed, I say this: Even Paris Hilton served her jail term.
10. On the sixth day of my fun filled vacation, at my sister Sherry and Nelson’s house in Marshfield, I was sitting out in the yard under a sun umbrella, drinking tea and reading a book when Nelson came out. “I have big plans for today,” I announced. “Oh,” he asked, wanting to know what I had in mind. “I’m doing it right now,” I told him. My big plans were having no plans.
11. Nelson and Sherry and I took a tour of Southie, the part of Boston where my Irish relatives first settled. We rode past the bar where “Good Will Hunting” was filmed and the little corner store used in “The Departed.” I took a picture of a TV on the sidewalk and got a free tour of the fort on Castle Island in trade for a late 1800’s photograph I have of family members in front of a big cannon at the fort. ~ More on this in a future post.
12. “I’ll get that to you by the end of the summer,” I told the tour guide as we left, which since then has been the line I’ve been using for just about everything.
13. Last night my family and I attended the 6th annual Jim Redman Memorial Cookout at the Blue Hill Observatory in Milton, Massachusetts. After my brother Jim, a weather enthusiast and BHO volunteer, died in 2001, the observatory erected a dedication flag with Jim’s name on a plaque in honor of him. There are now plans to build a new facility on the site using LEED (The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) green building standards, the same standards that the Hotel Floyd is using back home in Virginia. “It makes sense that the weather community does its part to curb global warming and be a model for others,” I said to one of the staff members who agreed with me.
Post Notes: Thanks to Nelson for his photo shop lesson, which allowed me to insert the 13 on my notebook. And thanks to Christine at Chicken Scratch and Bonnie at Bonnie’s Books for including me in her list for a Rockin Girl blog award. Thirteen Thursday headquarters is HERE. My other Thirteens are HERE.