Loose Leaf Notes

1. Time feels shorter because at my age it really is, and solitude is like sugar, something I can’t get enough of because it’s an easy rut and more of it isn’t necessarily what I really need.

2. The best compliment comment of the week came with my shadow shot photography at the art galleries in D.C. when a reader wrote, “You made your own art in addition to viewing what was on display!”  See  HERE.

3. I’ve always believed that if you have a good thought about somebody, such as ‘you look nice today,’ or ‘you did a good job,’ the compliment that comes through you actually belongs to the other person and to hold it back is a little like stealing.

4. After having new carpet installed in the living room and bedroom and then getting new furniture in the kitchen, which involved the emptying of drawers sorting through clutter and living out of boxes for few weeks, Joe finally sat at the new, impressive kitchen table and said, “I feel like a king.”  “I feel like Cinderella,” I answered, referring to the all the work the changes took.

5. From my Dharmacratic poet friend Will: Our words “satisfied”, and “sad” are actually closely connected, both coming from more ancient words meaning “enough”, or to have had one’s fill of something. The word “saturate” is also from the same roots. The end of summer and beginning of fall brings this thought to my mind. Another dark, cool, rainy day here in the Blue Ridge and everything is going to seed, storing the lessons and energy of the past season in preparation for next; letting go and falling to Earth. The excesses of summer’s bounty are rotting on the ground. It has been plenty. Enough! now. I feel sadisfied.

6. New word used on Facebook by my friend Pat Woodruff: Cluckle, the sound a flock of turkeys makes.

7. Andrew Wyeth was home-schooled. So was Ansel Adams, Robert Frost, C.S. Lewis, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Frank Lloyd Wright, Whoopie Goldberg, Alan Alda, several presidents and more.

8.  “Mom, school is like being in the army. They make you stand in lines.”  – My son Dylan upon starting public school in the 5th grade after homeschooling and going to Blue Mountain School.

9. When it comes to life I don’t do a lot of homework but I pay attention in class.

10. While picking apples on the Parkway with our grandsons, the rolling mountain countryside had us so enchanted that we all started talking with an Irish brogue.  Listen HERE.

11. THIS so puts the wind in my sails.

12. Message to Summer: Close the Door on Your Way Out HERE.

13. I want a poem I can live happily ever after with even if we fight, a poem that will talk to me but one that won’t say what it thinks I want to hear.

___________Thirteen Thursday