Loose Leaf Notes

1. My chickens brag loudly when they lay eggs, and so do I when I collect them. “Good girls! Good girls! Good girls! I shout for each one.

2. Trying to get good pictures of the hens is like photographing babies. They don’t answer to ‘say cheese,’ but crazy antics and weird sounds will usually get their attention.

3. Speaking of bragging, my post Dear Dread was featured at the Elder Story Place on Roni Bennett’s blog, Time Goes By, HERE.

4. Quote seen on Facebook: If cats could talk, I bet they wouldn’t.

5. Now I know how Hunter Thompson felt,” I said to Joe, referring to the Rolling Stones gonzo journalist who worked while under the influence. Always on the lookout for an impromptu story or photos for the local paper, this photo-op news scoop was lost on me because I was rendered silly. ~ More from Wining and Dining at Villa Appalaccia HERE.

6. Writing: I don’t know where it comes from or what makes it start. Sometimes I start receiving dictation while I’m working on something else. It’s like watching a TV show and the newscaster breaks in with a message. I grab a pen and write it down. I don’t have to know what it means. It’s not the time to fuss about where it will be used or to complain about the lack of wages it will earn. I know who my boss is. I do my grunt work. Write it all down on anything I can find. Some writing starts in a notebook and ends on the side of a popcorn box scribbled in a dark theater.

7. My handwriting really is chicken scratch.

8. My post “From First Holy Communion to Community Croning” was featured at the Elder Storytelling Place in 2007: The joke was that I didn’t want to be croned. I wanted a crown and I got one. After the ceremony and during the feasting I spotted a shiny gold paper crown next to a platter of food on the dining room table. As I was filling my plate with one spoonful of everything, I thought to myself, “I would love to have that crown.” Later, as someone placed it on my head, I was told that it was made for me by the children of the house earlier in the day. I guess the word had gotten out that I wanted to be crowned instead of croned because I was finding it easier to think of myself as a Queen than a Crone. More HERE.

9. A true story told on Facebook yesterday by my friend Eydie, who works at the Harvest Moon Health Food Store: A customer approaches me with a bottle of nail polish (a lovely shade of sparkling pink) and asks “Would this be good on a chicken?”

10. Carrying the weight of the world: Check out THIS guy who has the world tattooed on his back and is inking in countries as he visits them.

11. Back in the day when we were raising our kids together, the sign down the driveway of my neighbor’s community farm used to read Slow: Children at Play. Now it says Slow: Old Dogs.

12. I like to let my life be informed by the natural world, and recently I began to think of the stages of life like fruit. As women, don’t we bud, bloom, ripen, and eventually dry up. Isn’t that the nature of life? I wondered and then realized, No! A fruit only dries up if it hangs uneaten on the vine. Life, like fruit, should be used, which I think is what’s meant by “giving back.” I think staying juicy means to let ourselves be consumed by what we were made to do. When we do that, our efforts will eventually come to fruition. Our ripening can be enjoyed by all around us and, hopefully the sweetness of that will be long remembered.  Now that’s a juicy idea that appeals to me as I head into 60’s.

13. There is an actual a chicken scratch font. See HERE.

_____________Thirteen Thursday