Loose Leaf Notes

1. We are getting smart faster than we are getting wise, says Fred at Fragments from Floyd.  He was referring to the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident and the fact that a former Japan ambassador recently warned that reactor #4 is vulnerable to collapse, which would create “a global catastrophe like we have never before experienced that would affect us all for centuries,” the ambassador said.

2. A little birdie told me: Have you been wondering?  A list of what Obama has done since he’s been in office is posted HERE.

3. Speaking of Floyd, a local family (who I photographed sledding in December) was recently on the Anderson Cooper Show.  Cooper was doing a show on creative ways to downsize and this featured family lives in a tiny house.  It’s so small that Cooper pointed out that the stage they were sitting on at the show was bigger than the square footage of their house. See HERE.

4. The mother’s name is Hari and she taught at the Blue Mountain School, the independent school that my sons went to.  Hari has a Tiny House blog where she writes about her family’s adventures and shares insights and tips on getting out of debt, downsizing, living frugally and sustainably.

5. I have to admit I think it’s strange that I stop at grocery stores to look for brussel sprouts the way others might stop for ice cream.

6. Maybe even more than brussel sprouts, I like information, which is how I end up perched at the computer so long.

7. I recently had the urge to search for the words to a favorite old Donovan song:   Color in sky prussian blue / Scarlet fleece changes hue / Crimson ball sinks from view / Wear your love like heaven. (Isn’t it cool that all those lyrics you couldn’t quite figure out back in the day when you sang along can be googled now?)

8. I’ve been enthralled with the wood thrush’s song coming from the wooded part of our property, which always reminds me Hans Christian Anderson’s fairytale The Nightingale, a story I recently re-read, aloud to Joe.  I like that the nightingale is part of the wood thrush family and that it’s also has been associated with poets and poetry over the years.

9. “A poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why.” Percy Shelley

10. Martin Scorsese on creating art:  “Your job is to make your audience care about your obsessions.”

11. “It’s not something you can do when you push a button. You sit down, and if you’re lucky enough, the planets have aligned to the point where that the anger and craft you’ve learned combines with whatever that mysterious X factor is that allows you to scoop some of it up.”  ~ Bruce Springsteen on translating his politics into his songwriting.

12. I love to photograph the golden finch but the wood thrush is my nightingale in shining amour.

13. I became a poet for the poetic license.  I also thought about being a cab driver.

Thirteen Thursday