Loose Leaf Notes

1. At a birthday party over the weekend I had some beet pie.

2. I know a woman named Heather who changed her name to Winter. “Well you’ve got two seasons covered. You only need two more names,” I told her.

3. It’s too late for Woodstock / but not for that leopard-skin pillbox-hat / the one Bob Dylan made fun of / and Jackie O passed over for pink / It’s too late for a star on Hollywood Boulevard / to walk the red carpet / or become a Jungian psychologist / It’s probably too late to hike the Camino / but not to see the cherry blossoms / in Washington D.C. / It’s too late to wear a bikini … Read the rest of this newly re-written poem HERE.

4. A comment from a reader on the poem above said, “You had me at Woodstock!”

5. Even better than sporting a leopard-skin pill-box hat is leopard ears.  Cat ears have been a theme this Halloween and one of my favorite forms of self expressive-style. – From my Halloween post, aka ‘Is That Caveman Wearing My Skirt?’ HERE.

6. “Well, you look so pretty in it / Honey, can I jump on it sometime? / Yes, I just wanna see / If it’s really that expensive kind / You know it balances on your head / Just like a mattress balances / On a bottle of wine / Your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat…” – So said a Nobel Prize winner of literature

7. According to a new study, people with both high and low intelligence are prejudiced—the difference is just who they are prejudiced against: “People dislike people who are different from them.  Derogating people with different worldviews can help people maintain the validity of their own world view. Researchers found that people of low cognitive ability are prejudiced against groups that people didn’t choose to be part of, such as ethnic or LGBT groups. And, according to research, the smarter subjects in their study were likely to be prejudiced against groups considered conventional or conservative—groups perceived to have “high choice” in their associations.”

8. Funny how my eye goes right to headlines like these: “Perfectly Good Dildo Thrown onto Field Gets The Boot From NFL Referee” and “NBA Star Metta World Peace Claims Ghosts Touched Him Inappropriately”

9. See a new take on pumpkin carving HERE.

10. Sign seen on Facebook: “Remember Sunday to set the clock back one hour, and then on Tuesday not to set the country back 50 years.”

11. The best news of the week is that my friend Mara’s daughter Kyla got the new heart she needed. Also, my friend Jayn’s daughter Amy just had a long awaited baby, a girl named Pearl, which makes Amy “Mother of Pearl.”

12. Recent studies report that the words you choose to use can literally change your brain: “Angry words send alarm messages through the brain, and they partially shut down the logic-and-reasoning centers located in the frontal lobes … When we use words filled with positivity, like “love” and “peace”, we can alter how our brain functions by increasing cognitive reasoning and strengthening areas in our frontal lobes …” More HERE.

13. I hope Bob Dylan sings Leopard skin pill box Hat when I see him in Roanoke on Saturday.

_________Thirteen Thursday