Loose Leaf Notes

1. Best line of last week was by Morning Joe  Scarborough who was describing Sarah Palin’s nonsensical endorsement of Donald Trump: “Was that more White Rabbit or Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds?”

2. Best Bucket List Find:  An all blue city in Morocco.  It was settled by Jewish refugees in 1930 who painted everything blue to match the sky so they would be reminded to think of God.  See it to believe it HERE. 

3. I can’t decide if writing poetry is like describing a cloud as it is floating away or threading a needle without my glasses on.

4. With the grandsons here, the poetry of the weekend was boxing gloved boys jumping on the trampoline, science potions at the kitchen table, making books about fire walls and rainbow portals, using a vice and hand saw to make homemade wooden guns, telling zombie stories in the camper and eating snacks of celery, crackers and cheese.

5. After they held an audience member hostage and did Hamlet backwards, the actors of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) said they were going to Disneyland.  – Watch a few clips from the Floyd Community Theatre Guild’s Sunday performance HERE.

6. This is how Floyd is described in Only Your State’s 11 Small Towns in Virginia Where Everyone Knows Your Name: Floyd is a haven for music lovers. Homemade meals, porch-pickin’, and handmade crafts are just some of the wonderful features of this friendly town. Be sure to stop by on the weekend for the Floyd County Store’s Friday Night Jamboree. This is where all the fun and boot-stomping happens.

7. Last week my husband, Joe, met Liz Murray, the author of Breaking Night, a memoir about growing up in poverty with drug addicted parents and the author’s journey from homelessness to graduating from Harvard.  Murray, who once ate toothpaste and lip balm to stave off hunger as a child, was the keynote speaker at a Radford University McGlothlin Celebration of Teaching that Joe was invited to.  She made quite an impression, and I’m currently finding it hard to put her book down.

8. Since writing her best-seller, Murray has given motivational speeches alongside people like Tony Blair, Mikhail Gorbachev and the Dalai Lama.  At one speaking engagement she shared the billing with Stephen Covey – whose book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, she had once shoplifted.  She says,  “I know it seems like self-help cheesy, but I didn’t get the best advice from adults growing up, so when I discovered the self-help section I was, like, wait there are all these people who will just give you advice? So I stole the books and I read them. And then I ended up at the Stephen Covey event and I’m like: ‘Oh you’re the guy who wrote that book. I owe you 20 bucks, man.'”

9. Is there something wrong with me because I like taking pictures of flowers more than I like just looking at them?  THESE made my day on Monday.

10. I’m also slightly anti-social and border on being disagreeable, which is often seen as a negative, but then I read this:  “The irony is that a personality disposition normally seen as antisocial — disagreeableness — may actually be linked to ‘pro-social’ behavior,’” writes Psychology Today‘s Kenneth Worthy. “This connection seems to arise from a willingness to sacrifice one’s popularity a bit to act in a moral and just way toward other people, animals or the environment at large. Popularity, in the end, may be more a sign of social graces and perhaps a desire to fit in than any kind of moral superiority.”  – More from Angry Rebels are More Compassionate Than Nice People HERE.

11.  “I had decided I would do one of two things when she died. I would buy a little cabin in the woods, and go inside with all my books and shut the door. Or I would unlock all the doors—we had always kept them locked; Molly liked that sense of safety—and see who I could meet in the world. And that’s what I did. I haven’t locked the door for five years. I have wonderful new friends. And I have more time to be by myself. It was a very steadfast, loving relationship, but often there is a dominant partner, and I was very quiet for 40 years, just happy doing my work. I’m different now.  – Poet Mary Oliver on losing her life partner of 40 years.

12. We have a bird in our yard that sings for hours on end and seemingly goes through the top 40 of every bird song I’ve ever heard before, which causes me to say, “It must be a mockingbird.” Listen HERE.

13. I’d rather watch a “How to open a wine bottle with a shoe” video over a cute cat one any day.

_________Thirteen Thursday