Loose Leaf Notes

1. You don’t need to rub two sticks together to start a fire at Floydfest. There were fired-up performances, fire dancers, fireworks and the ritual performance lighting of an 18 foot wooden phoenix at this year’s 14th festival, rightly named Fire on the Mountain.  See some photos HERE.

2. You know it’s Floydfest weekend when you drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway and pass a man in kilt walking with hiking poles and a miniature terrier.

3. Another weird scene was the below group of people who plopped down in the middle of the main festival walkway to eat.  I call it “Why Don’t We Do it in the Road?”

4. For someone like me, going to a festival and then discovering that your camera lens is messed up and causing all your pictures to be ruined is kind of like being geared up to make love but then finding out  you have no condom or other protection.

5. Researchers have discovered kissing helps you choose the right mate and helps you live longer.  We spend about two weeks of our lifetime doing it. But, according to new research, fewer than half the world’s cultures kiss in a romantic way and some actually think it is gross. –  More on kissing HERE.

6. In other weird news: A Washington man involved in a two-hour standoff with police tried to hold them off with a banjo.  See it HERE.

7. At first I was concerned that far right conservatives would view the self-identified socialist and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders the way the left feels about Donald Trump, but then I realized that most people from left to middle right and everything in between think Donald Trump as president is a farce.

8.  In 1992, I was a delegate for presidential contender Jerry Brown, the progressive candidate at the time who started a citizen’s movement, We the People, after he lost the primary.  I believe in everything Sanders stands for – ending corporations as people under Citizens United, single-payer health care insurance for all, making college affordable, equal pay for women, protecting the environment, creating policies to address climate change and more – but I’ve seen progressives surge and then fall more than once or twice.  Remember Howard Dean?  At least Sanders has said that he won’t run against the primary winner if he doesn’t win it, like Nadar did in what many believe was a move that cost Gore the election.

9. Times have changed: A further look at a library announcement for a celebration of Potter’s birthday revealed that the birthday was not for Peter Cottontail’s author Beatrice Potter, but for Harry.

10. I like to call my Asheville potter son a potter not named Harry.

11. My blogger friend Ron recently posted a list of 13 “Near Miss Desserts” that caused me to truly LOL and included banana spit, punk in pie, pee can pie, ala mold, Hot Sludge Sunday and more. See more HERE. 

12. Last week while blogging about Floydfest, I typed the word Floydrest by mistake, which at that point, after four days of festing, was wishful thinking, I guess.

13. I’m trying to sleep but the moon has other plans / I follow its bouncing ball orbit / like reading subtitles in a foreign film / It says: Wake up and write this all down / before you lose such good reception / I’m a nightshift stenographer hired by the muse / to take down the moon’s business.

_________Thirteen Thursday