Loose Leaf Notes

1. Life has gotten so much more complicated now that Facebook has emojis.   I’m pretty sure I have a touch of aspergers syndrome because I don’t understand all their facial expressions.

2. I’m starting to want THIS for Christmas.

3. It’s a gift to have to put my glasses on while sunbathing in the yard so I can watch the hummingbirds when the surprise me.

4. But then I find myself slapping my arms a couple of times before saying, “Oh yeah, this place is bugged.”

5. “Wonk” is “Know” spelled backwards, and it’s a term that indicates that someone knows a subject backwards and forwards. – From my Dharmacratic poet friend Will

6. I’m losing it.  Lately I’ve been looking for things that aren’t lost.

7. The RNC announced that Pence won the VP debate two hours before the debate started. One of Trump’s first tweets said, “Kaine looks like an evil crook out of the Batman movies.” And the first statement that the fact checkers checked as false was when Pence thanked the wrong school for hosting.  It was the least of the falsehoods he put forth, which caused a commentater at the Huffington Post to write “Mike Pence To America: Trump Never Said Those Things He Said.”

8. “Pretty much everyone watching the debate agreed that Mike Pence lied over and over about simple stuff that’s on tape and easily verified. And yet pretty much everyone also agreed that he won the debate. Does anyone see the problem here?” – Mother Jones

9.“There’s a psychic cost for lopping yourself off from the past: it may continue to tug on you without being aware of it.  And lying about it can – for all but the most hardened sociopath – carve a lonely gap between your disguise and who you really are.  The practiced liar also projects her own manipulative, double-dealing façade onto everyone she meets, which makes moving through the world a wary, anxious enterprise.  It’s hard enough to see what’s going on without forcing yourself to look through the wool you’ve pulled over your own eyes.  – Mary Karr from The Art of Memoir

10. Change armory into harmony / Change artillery into art /War into worship / and nuclear into new clear / Change invasion into vision / Conquer into concur / Change bombs into bonds / Change end into mend  – I wrote this in the early ‘90s and published in the New River Free Press and other places.

11. My grandsons are my antidote for the grumpiness I’ve been feeling lately.

12.  THESE photographs of a photographer documenting her bipoloar mother are striking.

13. “I usually enter one of my memoir classes like some kid coming off the beach with a roaring shell to press to everybody’s ear.”  – Mary Karr

_______Thirteen Thursday