Loose Leaf Notes

1. Driving to Roanoke on Thursday to pick up my grandson Liam at preschool, I passed a white statue of Mother Mary in someone’s yard and thought it was a snowman.

2. Later, I took a wrong turn and came upon a Stonehenge and had to explain to Liam what it was and why I was so shocked to see it.

3. I got a ticket in Roanoke a few weeks back for going 37 in a 25 MPH zone.  It wasn’t a school zone and there were not flashing lights. I was amazed I could get a speeding ticket for going so slow.

4. In my world being on time means I’m early.

5. Not being able to go to a friend’s birthday party because you have to prep for a colonoscopy brings a whole new meaning to the term “party pooper.”

6. The crew of Apollo 11 in their 1969 mission to the moon were so startled when they encountered strange music-like radio transmissions coming through their headsets that they didn’t know whether or not to report it to NASA … Almost four decades went by before lost recordings emerged that revealed something unsettling that the three Apollo astronauts had experienced while flying above the far side of the moon: music described by one of the astronauts as “outer space-type music.”  Read more HERE.

7. After recently telling Joe about the late artist Louise Bourgeoise who never threw anything away and turned her whole house into a working studio that is open for tours today, and how that inspired me to think I might not have to clear out my clutter, I was lamenting about it.  “I thought you made peace with your clutter,” Joe said.  “Yeah, but it’s like Bernie or Clinton.  I keep going back and forth.”

8. Time passes slowly / when we play dead vicariously / Like a backfire kick / from a over-watched clock / I mark the minutes / like a mantra / for a countdown / to the future … – More from I Just Wish This Day Was Over HERE.

9. I like the word “inkling.” I like the way it looks, the way it sounds and that, for me, it conjures up an image of writing with an ink pen to explore the links of something mysterious.  Poets get inklings all the time.

10. Best scene as described by Rolling Stone in Patti Smith’s award winning book, Just Kids:  Allen Ginsberg buys Patti a cheese-and-lettuce sandwich at the Automat, because he thinks she’s a pretty boy. When she breaks the news that she’s a girl, she asks, “Well, does this mean I return the sandwich?”
Ginsberg just keeps talking to her about Jack Kerouac while she eats – a gentleman as well as a poet.

11. In Chinese, the word computer translates directly as electric brain. A compass in Icelandic is a “direction shower,” and in Lakota a horse is a “dog of wonder.” According to THIS article, all of those are neologisms that demonstrate the cumulative quality of language, in which we use the known to describe the unknown language grows through metaphor.  Using that kind of metaphorical process is at the heart of Toki Pona, the world’s smallest language that consists of only 123 words.  Hey, even Koko the gorilla has 1,000 gestures to communicate.

12. It freaks me out that Samsung has just confirmed that its “smart TV” sets are listening to customers’ every word, and that the company is warning customers not to speak about personal information while near the TV sets. – Read more HERE.

13. Today’s soundtrack is HERE.

________Thirteen Thursday