Loose Leaf Notes

1. There were robots from France, light shows, an aerial performance by Pink, Taylor Swift swinging her head wildly at the piano, a little Beatlemania and a mass wedding of 34 (gay and straight) couples that followed Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ rap performance Same Love, but maybe my favorite Grammy moment of Sunday night was when Jay Z accepted a Grammy, turned it around and addressed his baby daughter, saying, “Daddy got you a gold sippy cup.

2. For years the Grammy’s ignored the mega-musicians of the 60’s (think Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Cat Stevens, Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, Led Zepplin, The Who and Bob Marley) and didn’t even have a regular rock category until 1980. A few past Grammy outcomes that shocked me and led one reviewer to say “The Grammy’s have had a reputation as an irrelevant pop awards show for 40 years, applauding the Captain and Tennile’s of the world vs the Velvet Undergound’s: In 1967, New Vaudeville’s novelty song Winchester Cathedral won over the Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations and the Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby. In 1978 best new artist nominee Elvis Costello lost to A Taste of Honey (never heard of then or now) and in 1989 Jethro Tull, whose albums I owned and never considered remotely close to heavy metal, won a Grammy for best heavy metal performance over Metallica.

3. Sometimes it seems that the better I feel, the harder I can be knocked down. Was it a remark I took too seriously? Some feedback I didn’t want to hear? Will I stuff my bad feelings in with the rest of my emotional baggage, or will my bad feelings just wear off in time? If I bury them, won’t they take root and sprout up at some other time? Can I just change my mind and not feel them anymore? Where do bad feelings go?  More from Lost: Sense of Humor HERE.

4. Is outasight the opposite of insight?

5. It’s ironic that there is so much racism against people of color and yet many white people practically kill themselves tanning in order to be darker.

6. Read about my friend Dick’s impressions on meeting Martin Luther King HERE. 

7. The difference between privacy and secrecy –  Private: I got terrible grades in high school.  Secret: I forged my degree.  –  A very interesting Jungian take on the difference between the two HERE.

8.  My women’s dialogue circle:  I’m learning to value my sensitivity to the subtle, to address what makes me shake.  Hits me in the gut.  A cue to speak up.  Risk it.  Progress! Emotional bumps that used to take hours to unravel and process can now move along in about 10 minutes.  I go to dialogue for the insight, the laughter and goosebumps.  I go like my life depends on it. More HERE.

9. Beyonce’s Grammy performance was described in the press as racy and naughty, which is was.  It was well executed, but the song lyrics, Drunk in Love, were explicit and her twerking dance was too much like one you might see in a strip club, so I think she (joined by Jay Z) probably shouldn’t have opened the show in prime time at 8:00, but maybe could have been featured later, like after 10:00.

10. Warming myself at the wood stove is like taking a shower as opposed to a bath. I can’t immerse myself all at once in its heat but have to do it bit by bit.

11. Yesterday I was standing in the checkout line at the Harvest Moon behind a man buying Homestead milk.  It was snowing outside and he joked about buying the cliché snowstorm bottle of milk.  After he left I checked out two reusable shopping bags full of cliché food.

12. Pete Seeger (RIP) was chopping wood ten days before he died (Tuesday at the age of 94) and walked with two canes and in solidarity at the Occupy Movement of 2011.  Funny, I googled him and titled a blog post after one of his songs just days before he died. And his name came up in THIS poem written less than a week ago, but then got edited out.  Read my friend Naomi’s wonderful tribute and memories HERE.

13. Old age has been the best time in my life, a reality that no one ever predicted or told me about … One reason for this happiness may be that I am more likely to follow the will of God because I have so much less energy to resist it.  ~ Robert Johnson

____________Thirteen Thursday