Loose Leaf Notes

1. Still on my memoir reading kick, I picked two up at the library this week, written by an unlikely pair, both of whom I have seen up-close and in person: Kurt Vonnegut and Steven Tyler.

2. I’m a fan of science fiction and read most of Vonnegut’s best sellers when I was in my ‘20s.  I saw him speak at Virginia Tech in the ‘90s.  As far as Tyler goes, I have not been an Aerosmith fan (feeling they were heavy metal as opposed to hard rock like Led Zepplin who I was a fan of), but I do appreciate some of their hit songs and love to get an inside history of the music scene that so affected my generation, and, in this case, one that documents it where I grew up: Boston.

3. In 2002, I was in a shop in Hingham, MA, standing a few feet away from Tyler.  He looked directly at me, and I was about to say ‘do you know who you look just like?’ when I talked myself out of believing it could be him. He had only longish hair, no makeup and was dressed in a T-shirt and cut off jeans.  He was with a younger woman and young boy (his wife and son) and was smaller than I thought he would be.  I doubted what I was seeing because I couldn’t understand what Steven Tyler would be doing in Hingham, a small South Shore of Boston town, right next to the 5-mile beach town I grew up in (Hull, MA). But the next day I heard from someone who just saw him too (and got an autograph) that he was living in Marshfield, another small shore town nearby.

4. It was 14 years ago, and he totally checked me out.  I like to say that Steven Tyler looked at me the way a man looks at a woman.

5. In Floyd, sometimes I can ride to town without seeing another car or person and sometimes THIS happens.

6. I played the above video (part of a series that my son Josh and his friend Alice have been making) for my grandson Bryce and he said, “My uncle Josh is like a teenager.”  When I told Josh he took it as a compliment in the same way I did when he was a boy and said to me, “Mom, you’re just like Gidget.”

7. Here’s an excerpt from the write-up on Josh’s latest project, where the video was taken:  “The Baltimore Mobile Community Brick Factory will make hand processed bricks, using local Maryland clay, with historic water-struck methods. Participants and visitors are invited to personalize and inscribe their stories in the handmade bricks. The project opens in Brick Hill at an historic machinist parts factory May 31st- June 10. From there, the factory moves to the Baltimore Museum of Art, opening with a day long field trip tracing Baltimore’s brick making legacy. On June 26th, there will be a public brick firing and celebration, after which the factory will relocate to The Loading Dock until early July. The bricks made during this project will become part of roving public art installations over the course of the next year.”

8. On page 61 in Tyler’s book, Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?, these words jumped out at me:  “In ’69 I saw Zepplin at the Tea Party.” I was there too!

9. New reports have recently revealed that common over the counter drugs for allergies, colds, sleep and indigestion increase the risk of dementia. Read more HERE and HERE. 

10. A trip down nature’s grocery aisles HERE. 

11.  Heard recently: Most conflicts come from people not saying what they mean or not doing what they say.

12. While covering our local high school graduation and checking out the decorated mortar board caps, I saw one half covered with bricks (right), making it look under construction.

13. Another one bites the dust or another brick in the wall?

_______Thirteen Thursday