Loose Leaf Notes

1. Who ever thought at my age that I’d be researching the Top Ten Mortal Kombat fighters (with my grandson)?

2. My son Josh had a birthday last week, which made me think of this nursery rhyme that I wrote for  him when he was  little boy:  Joshua Johnny loved him mommy more than apricots and honey. He gave her a hug and he gave her a kiss. He loved her more than licorice.

3. The funniest thing I heard at the Floyd Replenish Festival, a new faith-based festival I covered for the local paper over the weekend was when musician JJ Weeks asked the crowd, “Are you hot, or is it just me because I’m fat?”  The music at the festival was excellent, by the way.  The setting was replenishing and the founders (who my son Josh went to school with) were welcoming.  I wish them all the best success.  Story and photos coming soon.

4. In spite of my Yankee bluntness and my Irish gift of the gab, I’m a shy person. But I believe the universe sets us up to heal weakness that keep us from being whole, which is what makes a shy person like me take up the open mic, interview people (aka ask nosy questions) for a stories, or stand out when no one else is to snap pictures of strangers, or maybe of produce in the grocery store. More from “Public Speaking Phobia to Open Mic Town Crier” HERE.

5. I’m not religious in a traditional way, but I’d much rather hear people sing about their devotion to Jesus than sing about wanting someone’s booty.

6. But as someone who was raised Catholic in the north, I found myself asking, when did Jesus become more popular than God?”

7. Quantum Physics suggests that we are collectively co-creating reality.  Now, another experiment has just shown that “reality doesn’t exist if you are not looking at it.” – More HERE. 

8. Along the Parkway in flip flops, lured to pull over by wildflowers, I hope I didn’t get any ticks on me, trudging through the grass to capture these beauties.  More HERE. 

9. Found on an old scrap of paper that was buried on my desk: The bad news is the clear cut.  The good news is that now I have a view of sunset.

10. I was thinking this same thing:  “The event of the Emanuel Nine, for some reason, is focused on the symbol of the Confederate battle flag. It’s an important symbol, it is a very strong symbol, but the fact still remains that though this young man worshiped that symbol, he carried out his dastardly act with a gun.” – Representative Jim Clyburn of South Carolina

11. From my Dharmacratic friend Will:  “I think we should embrace our true heritage and our gray and blue checkered past by erecting a monument to the unknown civil war deserter. This would honor all of the men of all regions who found that their sympathies lay with their wives, and so they continued to lie there along with those sympathies, get the hay crop in, put up wood for winter, fix the roof and any other manly doings that needed doing around the homestead instead of going off to fight some rich man’s lost cause, and maybe never coming back to the wife and kids at all. Perhaps we could make this something of a theme and tourist attraction. It would bring attention to the fact that all of the south did not favor succession, with Floyd voting against breaking away from the Union by a 60-40 majority, and then gaining a regional reputation as a refuge for deserters of all sorts.” – Read the Curious Case of Floyd County HERE. 

12. Some shadows are bigger than life like truth is stranger than fiction.

13. I read books slowly, either because I don’t like them or because I like them too much and don’t want them to end.

______Thirteen Thursday