Loose Leaf Notes

1. I’m reading Patti’s Smith’s new memoir M Train.  I was hooked from the very first line: It’s so hard to write about nothing.

2. After being snowed in for three days, by Sunday I was ready to see the world, and by that I mean more than the mailbox.  See my Snowscape Escapes HERE.

3. It was bound to happen:  A recent obituary ended with the line: “In lieu of flowers, please do not vote for Donald Trump,” the presidential candidate who recently claimed that he could shoot someone in the street and not lose any votes.

4. I also saw a news report on how Donald Trump piñatas are flying off the shelves in Mexico.

5. If the picture above is the Album Cover then this list of 13 things is the liner notes.

6. The picture is of my girlfriends/neighbors and walking partners Katherine Chantal and Jayn Avery who, at one time, were part of Women of the 7th Veil, a poetry improvisation movement troupe that consisted of the three of us. We performed somewhere in the ‘90s at Oddfella’s Cantaina when it was the Teahouse Jam (HERE) and at a ’90s Mountain Rose dance recital in the high school auditorium.

7. Jayn and Katherine were also members of our seven year long Floyd Writer’s Circle and are the ones who I wrote the poem Book Signing, which starts:  One day we’ll all write books / then retire to a tropical island / to live without shoes on our royalties / pick fruit off the trees for breakfast …  More HERE.

8. Lately, I’ve been looking forward to Tuesday nights so I can watch my favorite show on PBS, Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates.   I recently learned that Irish Americans Bill Maher and Bill O’Reilly are distant cousins, that actor Ty Burrell of Modern Family has an African American ancestor and that Maya Rudolph and Keenen Wayans have Southeast Asian roots that neither of them was aware of.

9. I think Scrabble is the “can’t build a better mousetrap” of games.

10. Besides my latest, Snowscape Escapes entry, past blog posts regarding the snow include: Snowblower, Snow White, Snow is for the Birds, There’s no Business like Snow Business, The Snow That Melted Before This Picture Appeared in the Local Paper, Last Floyd Snow Shots in which Norman Rockwell Meets Andrew Wyeth , Cream Pours like Snow Falls and Can you Dig it?

11. THIS is Not a Picture of Joe Cross Country Skiing.

12. A New Yorker built an igloo during the recent snowstorm and listed it on Airbnb for $200 a night.  See it HERE.

13. Moon Accumulation: It rolls across the sky / growing in size / an icy packed shine / in a polar wave of winter / Through a flurry of stars / in a galaxy drift / it plows a far flung / path of orbit.

________Thirteen Thursday