Loose Leaf Notes

1. Does a Finch get its name because it’s a little more than an inch in size?

2. I’m a minimalist at heart. As a writer, I like to practice the conservation of language, to distill thoughts down into a potency of meaning. On the other hand, maybe I write mostly short poems because I’m lazy.

3. Over the weekend I took pictures for the local paper of the new locally-themed rooms at the expanded Hotel Floyd opening, went to the Chantilly Farm screening of the romantic comedy Geographically Desirable, which was filmed partly in Floyd, and covered Virginia’s Blue Ridge Music Festival’s weekend program (3 classical music concerts). By the third concert I said to a friend, “My camera batteries are all charged up but I can’t say the same about myself.”

4. But the music healed and energized me. Up close and personal, inspired and infused and with historic backgrounds given, it’s not your grandmother’s classical music. And I think of Maestro David Wiley as the Alvin Lee (rock star) of conducting. Listen to a clip from the Gala Concert performance of Primavera Portena by Astor Piazzolla, described by Wiley as “danger, passion, intrigue and romance all wrapped up in a tango.”

5. I was asked by one of the Floyd co-producers of Geographically Desirable if I wanted to be an extra in the movie but told her I didn’t have the stamina for all that waiting around. She said, “Yeah, movie time makes Floyd time seem fast.” Watch a video clip of the Jamboree dance scene being filmed below.

6. Any time anyone asks, “What time is it?” I answer 4:30 because of THIS favorite Van Morrison song in which Van and his friends in a cloud of mist watch all the pretty schoolgirls go by at 4:30. Wait for it …

7. Lately when I go on my blog and scroll down, I see THIS and think it’s someone’s bald head.

8. My recent Facebook Status Update that got more than 30 comments: I just saw my first coyote. The chickens were squawking in distress and I happened to be in the yard and saw it by their fence. It was full grown and looked confused and surprised to see me. First I thought it was a baby deer, then a dog, but not, so maybe a fox, but too big. Then it hit me. I put the chickens behind the 10 foot garden fence and went and googled coyote. Sure enough, that’s what it was. We’ve lived here for over 20 years and I don’t think we’ve had them until lately.

9. The word “conversation” gives me the idea that language should be poetic, considering the word verse in the word.

10. Verse comes from the Latin versus: a turn of the plow, a furrow, a line of writing.

11. A grilled cheese sandwich comes into play in Geographically Desirable. On the movie website they have a page full of cast and crew member’s best grilled cheese recipes. See HERE.

12. Joe came home yesterday and said, “I just saw a baby blue heron,” and I’m thinking robin’s egg blue and going OMG, I didn’t known those existed, when he says, “No, not a “baby blue heron” but a “baby” blue heron.

13. “Talk is different than writing. Good talk in some ways is better and more precious than any writing. That it goes off “into thin air,” leaving a few memories that eventually are reduced to thin air also, in no way detracts from its value. I have been lucky to have a few friends with whom my conversation seems never to resume but merely to continue.” ~ Wendell Berry

___________Thirteen Thursday