Loose Leaf Notes

1. Over the weekend Joe and I went to a fun pre-Floydfest party hosted by the festival founders. It was like going to a bachelor party before the wedding (which, in this case, is scheduled for July 27 – 31).

2. A couple of weeks ago I posted about a billboard sign I saw while traveling.  It said “Yummy Buffet,” but I thought it said “Jimmy Buffet.”  “Same thing,” a friend commented.

3. When my Asheville Potter Son Josh was in Cambodia this past winter, he bought a T-shirt that said, “Same Same but Different,” a popular Asian-English phrase, mainly used in Thailand, which is also the name of a  movie that was set in Cambodia.  From what I can gather, it’s a phrase that’s meant to be ambiguous but basically means “similar,” or, as I like to think of it, as people, we are all the same but different.

4. I’ve recently been inspired by the work of Scottish artist/poet Robert Montgomery, who I think of as the Bansky of Poetry because he first gained attention when he started anonymously leaving poetry verses on advertising billboards, stuff like this: “Because you had to give names to everything you found, and make logos for bad ideas, and change your car every two years and wake up early for conference calls, and it turned out to be no progress at all. Just a shadow festival.  Because of that you will have to learn to look at the sky again, you will have to learn to eat food that grows where you live again,  you will have to learn to touch what  you make. ” – More HERE. 

5. One article referred to his work as “vandalizing advertising,” and another called it “democratic literature.”  It’s also been called “brandalism” because of the graffiti versus vandalism debate.  It’s illegal but refreshing to see poetry where advertising usually is. One of his first billboard poems came during the Iraq War protests and starts, “When we are sleeping/ aeroplanes / carry memories / of the horrors / we have given / our silent consent to …”

6. Montgomery’s work reminded me of a spoken word poem I wrote in November, 2002, just before the invasion into Iraq, that includes the lines, “I wish all the billboards across the country read: “Give back the votes your brother stole” and the poets would shout from every street corner, “The emperor wears no clothes!”

7. My son recently announced on Facebook, “We Bought a Jail,” and I thought, ‘At least he didn’t say, “We Bought a Zoo,”’ a movie with Matt Damon.  The jail is an old historic rural county building, like something out of Andy Griffith, that Josh and his partners consider an “adaptive reuse project” that will be up-cycled into a mix of residential, studio, and commercial spaces.

8. My poem Be Hold has been published in The Front Porch Review HERE.  It was written for my friend Mara after her daughter received a life threatening health diagnosis.

9. A lone black-eyed Susan flaunting yellow / The wild west of summer defies law and order / Plantain shoots seeds / as guilty as weeds / Daisies are delivered / White clover spreads like thieves  – More from The  Day the Lawnmower  Died HERE. 

10. “Yes, we do agree on a number of issues, and by the way, on her worst day, Hillary Clinton will be an infinitely better candidate and President than the Republican candidate on his best day.” – Bernie Sanders

11. People seem to forget, but back in 2007, the White House under the Bush Administration “lost” more than five million private emails. The story was barely covered.   More HERE.

12.  The old jail was also a residence of the jailer, which at one time was listed in the census as woman.  According to an article I read, two prisoners in different cells talked to each other by emptying the water out of the toilet and speaking into it. The jailer got onto it and listened to them through another toilet, and damning evidence was gathered this way against the toilet-talking inmates.  A friend of Josh’s recently did an amazing photo shoot at the jail with Josh and his girlfriend.   See HERE. 

13. Favorite quote of the week: “What do you go into a poem for? To see if you can get out!”  Robert Frost

_______Thirteen Thursday