Loose Leaf Notes

1. It’s surprising that we don’t live in a city, considering all the events available to us in this one stoplight town.  After Winterfest and the Festival of Trees, we saw a local play with a Christmas theme, went to a Gingerbread Ball and then a German Christmas Cocktail Party.

2. The real reason that Joe and I wore a Santa hats to these holiday events was because we both need haircuts.

3. But I have no excuse for this (photo on the right).

4. “Question Authority” was a popular bumper sticker back in the day.  Mine said, “Question Reality.”

5. The Case Against Reality: “Suppose there’s a blue rectangular icon on the lower right corner of your computer’s desktop — does that mean that the file itself is blue and rectangular and lives in the lower right corner of your computer? Of course not … Those are the only categories available to you, and yet none of them are true about the file itself or anything in the computer.”

6. “… You could not form a true description of the innards of the computer if your entire view of reality was confined to the desktop. And yet the desktop is useful. That blue rectangular icon guides my behavior, and it hides a complex reality that I don’t need to know. That’s the key idea. Evolution has shaped us with perceptions that allow us to survive … that involves hiding from us the stuff we don’t need to know. And that’s pretty much all of reality, whatever reality might be. If you had to spend all that time figuring it out, the tiger would eat you …” More HERE. 

7. It swelled then slipped / like a clean drop of rain / Like a gem of truth / snapped from a necklace / Down my cheek / in undistorted release / A precious pearl / hard earned  – Read my latest poem Crying During Acupuncture in its entirety HERE.

8. The words are there. If I had to explain them, I’d be somebody else.  I would be … a critic.   –Van Morrison

9. New for my library book list or my Christmas wish list:  Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain

10.  LL Bean is the Norman Rockwell of catalogs and Amazon is the new Sears catalog.

11. My Dharmacratic poet friend Will is still at it. He recently posted on Facebook, “Not only does the emperor have no clothes, he’s mooning us!”

12. All I want for Christmas is for an election recall.

13.  I wore my wedding dress to the Gingerbread Ball.

Look for more photos of the Gingerbread Ball in the Christmas issue of The Floyd Press  __________Thirteen Thursday