Loose Leaf Notes

1. Only in the country: Some estate homes have lions at either side of the entrance. Here at our humble home, we currently have two hanging deer that Joe just hunted.

2. On Saturday we woke up and asked Siri, “What are the names of Santa’s reindeer?”

3. Then we looked up the Glass-Steagall Act that was passed after the Great Depression’s run on banks and prohibited commercial banks from the investment banking business and which we learned about from watching the HBO series The Newsroom. The Glass-Steagall Act was repealed in 1999 by legislation that was co-sponsored by three Republicans and signed into law by President Clinton, setting the stage for the banking crisis and bailouts of 2008.

4. The Newsroom (which I checked out of the library) isn’t the only show I love and learn from. I’m a huge fan of the PBS show Finding Your Roots, whose host and producer, Henry Louis Gates (the famed Harvard professor of African studies) discovered through genetic analysis and genealogy research that he was more white (Irish) than black, and that the further you go back the more researchers are finding how related we all really are. The series revealed that 35% of black men in the U.S. wouldn’t be able to trace their male DNA back to Africa, but to a white man who impregnated their female ancestor during slavery. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are distantly related and so are Kevin Bacon and his wife Kyra Sedgwick. Sally Fields shares a common Mayflower ancestor with two of my friends here in Floyd. Ken Burns discovered that a Southern ancestor kept slaves and that he is also a descendent of Abraham Lincoln. Some of Tina Fey’s and David Sedaris’s Greek ancestors were slaughtered in a battle with Turks, but they both also had Turkish DNA. – Check out the profiles and amazing stories revealed at the Discover Your Roots website HERE. 

5. After I read Joe my story on my version of living a successful, happy life, which I was asked to write for a local book, and which included the line: “If everyone gets a deck of 52 cards of energy a day, I only get 30 on my best days, and I have to use them wisely” is one way I’ve described living with CFS,” Joe responded, “You lived the hand that was dealt you and you lived it with fun.” Later he took me out to celebrate the story’s completion.

6. If you google-image the word portal, you might get THIS. 

7. On Friday we heard the best ever rendition of Rudolph. It was performed by our six-year-old grandson Bryce, who had sung it the night before at PTA program. It was his performance (front and center in the photo above) that made us want to learn the reindeer names.

8. It’s been a season of firsts: Not only did I wait 30 years before finally getting to see The Nutcracker, the day after that, I watched my first cakewalk. See HERE.

9. Lately, every time I type “Dogtown,” Roadhouse, I end up typing “Doghouse” and then just get the feeling that it doesn’t look right.

10. My sister Kathy is very creative. I told her she should charge people admission to see her tree (on the left) this year.

11. Just so you know: I blog a bit of everything I go to and if it’s newsworthy I might submit it to the local paper.

12. Blogging is like taking a matchbook souvenir from each of the places I’ve been and putting them in the scrapbook journal of my life.

13. Read about how blogging cured me of shopping HERE.

________Thirteen Thursday