Loose Leaf Notes

1. How is it that what’s hot and what’s cool is the same thing?

2. I talk in rhyme whenever possible, which is why when my grandson turned eight on Saturday, I couldn’t help captioning all the birthday pictures I took: It’s Great to be Eight!

3. On seeing a herd of cows stampede off during a visit to Riverstone Farm on Saturday: When one runs they all do, just like kids.

4. Bet you can’t not click: Why do all the old statues have such small penises? See HERE. 

5. From my Dharmacratic poet friend Will:  Our English words “anger”, “anguish”, and “anxiety”, come from the same ancient root *angh- which meant “tight, painfully constricted, painful” in the ancestral Proto-Indo-European language. This was also the source for our word “strangle”.

6. Still Will: Loosen up. Relax. The word “lax” comes from the same ancient language, and had the meaning “loose.” Here we have etymological wisdom indicating a possible root cause of our problem with our uptight, overly anxious, anguished, chronic anger, and a suggestion that our entire society might need a big dose of a cultural laxative.

7. Yesterday I found a hornet that was starting a nest inside the grille on our porch, which made me say as I knocked it away, “That’s not going to fly.”

8. I’ve been blogging for just over 10 years, so I feel a bit like a dinosaur (and my blog feels about as big as that). I’ll probably continue to blog until an ice age or climate change pulls the plug and forces me to stop. On the other hand, I continually play with the idea of not writing anymore. I remember my first interview for a story with Ruby Altizer Roberts, a past poet laureate of Virginia who was born in Floyd and grew up in nearby Christiansburg. She was 93 years old at the time, and I asked her if she still wrote poetry. “No. I have my life back,” she answered.  – More from Writer’s Talk HERE.

9. Tuesday was my birthday. I wrote on the Facebook timeline of two friends I share birthdays with, “Here we go again!”

10. The picture to the right is a writer’s perk.  I got it while doing a story for Riverstone Organic Farm.

11. When I first started blogging, it was more popular. It’s sometimes harder to justify now, but it still has the benefit of providing a forum and an incentive to write. It’s been a great venue to repost my published writing and give it a longer shelf-life.  I like the directness and self-sufficiency of not having to submit work or look for publishers. It’s like having my own magazine that I can post to every day, a poem, a photograph, a commentary, a formal or informal piece of writing, and I love that it acts as a writer’s filing cabinet.  I can access everything I’ve written by searching a word or clicking on a category or date.

11. When does fantastic become fanatic?

12. Combining a photo and poetry in a post: Phoetry

13. Meet Virginia’s Poet Laureate HERE.

_______Thirteen Thursday