Loose Leaf Notes

1. “You’re always in a box, and you’re an escape artist if you do what I do – or if you’re a creative person, period. You build your box and then you escape from it. You build another one and you escape from it. That’s ongoing.  And you may at some point escape enough boxes where you find yourself back around to the first one again and you go, ‘Oh, I didn’t think I had any more to say about these things. Wait, a minute, yes, I do. I’ve got a lot more to say about these things.”’ – Bruce Springsteen

2.  “I do not think much of burning flags or pledging allegiance to them either one. Just let them flap and do their thing.” –  My Dharmacratic poet friend Will

3. Will also said, in regards to Trump, “Just because someone can grab hold of the steering wheel does not mean they can drive the vehicle.”

4. A reader commented:  “After a lifetime of being chauffeured around, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know how to drive at all.”

5. Law and Order is very different than the Rule of Law.  The first one feels authoritarian and imposed, while the other feels more like a collective agreement of self- responsibility.

6. Life is real / But not forever / This day is a gift / One like no other – A morning poem that Joe and I recently co-wrote. See HERE.

7. Praying or Preying? HERE.

8. Some presidents start wars and conflicts and some inherit them. Some engage in military interventions in an effort to stop human genocides. Some for plunder and conquest.

9.  “We, sir, are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights.  But we truly hope, that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us.”   – Brandon Victor Dixon, the actor who portrays Aaron Burr, addressing Mike Pence at the close of a performance of Hamilton

10. THIS made me smile. 

11. Read the poem about how the knife went in but didn’t come out and the pain tracked in a dream after my mother’s death that is carried and passed like a sealed letter of Dear John Complaints that no one has the heart to read HERE.  

12. What would Santa do? 80,000 Reindeer Have Starved To Death In Siberia Because Of Melting Sea Ice:  Add them to the growing list of animals directly threatened by climate change. More HERE.

13. I call the photo above “Deers from my Dears.”  Happy Thanks Giving.

____________Thirteen Thursday