Loose Leaf Notes

1. It’s a sure sign of summer if the chair gets up when you do. ~Walter Winchell

2. This summer of record breaking heat followed a spring that brought some of the most extreme weather on record. Climatologist Heidi Cullen writes, “It’s time to face the fact that the weather isn’t what it used to be.” More HERE

3. You know you live in the country when you can drive the entire stretch of a road and not see a single car but see seven rabbits.

4. Every time I get a Tuesday Morning shopping flyer in the mail I think it says Tuesday’s with Morrie, a favorite book by Mitch Albom.

5. I think those orange and white stripped traffic barrels used at work sites look like Cat in the Hat hats.

6. Reading Carl Jung’s memoir, I began to think I was him reincarnated, especially the part about how much he hated algebra: “I didn’t even know what numbers really were. They were not flowers, not animals, not fossils; they were nothing that could be imagined, mere quantities that resulted from counting. To my confusion these quantities were now represented by letters. … a = b seemed to me a downright lie or fraud.”

7. I also smiled knowingly when I read, ‘I hated gymnastics. I could not endure having others tell me how to move.’ Me too, which is why I don’t like dance routines, yoga or any kind of movement class.

8. In dreams, we lead a larger life and awaken to our bigger story. Dreams help us remember who we are, where we come from, and what we are meant to become. Dreams support life by showing us what we need to stay well or to get well, by rehearsing us for the future challenges and by prompting us to create solutions. ~ Robert Moore

9. Floydfest, our area’s annual world music festival, in which more than 12,000 attend 6 miles from my house, is starting today. Meet some of my friends in this WSLS channel 10 video clip about the 10th annual festival and how it effects Floyd HERE.

10. Read Dickens’s Ronaoke Times over-view story on the past 10 years of Floydfest, including how its founding couple first met HERE. And a post about Floydfest’s 10 year birthday party is HERE.

11. Congress hasn’t been able to agree on the debt ceiling deal because Republicans want to cut the deficit but not raise taxes. What they aren’t telling the American people is that Democrats don’t want to raise taxes either. All they are asking for is to repeal the tax cuts made by Bush to billionaires and the oil companies and make tax cuts permanent for the rest of us. The previous tax rate for billionaires worked pretty well under Clinton, back when the budget was balanced and there was a surplus.

12. I think that the Greenhouse situation is a lot like alcoholism. It isn’t one moment or one single drink that does you in. Can there be a single “a-ha moment’ when you realize that civilization has moved from social drinking (of oil and coal) into a substance-dependent, blackout situation? Bruce Sterling

13. When you look at our country, we’ve got this tremendous wind belt in the Midwest. We have an incredibly rich solar area in the U.S. Southwest and the calculations basically tell us that if we put a 100 square mile solar array in sort of the four corners regions of the U.S. Southwest, that would supply all of our electricity needs. And so, what I’m saying is we can actually build it. We can do this. We can fix this, but we need to say it’s as important as getting to the moon. ~ Climatologist Heidi Cullen on Terri Gross

Thirteen Thursday headquarters is HERE.