Loose Leaf Notes

1. I’m a nerd who spends hours taking and cropping pictures of frost on the window.  See some HERE.

2. My only practice these days is having no practice, which is the hardest practice and never ends up being about nothing.

3. I think it’s funny when I covet my grandson’s toys, like the above light-up gloves.

4. A friend posted the New York Times interview with Donald Trump on Facebook and another friend said, I have nothing but time and I still don’t want to read it.  It’s not going to change my day week, or year, to which I responded, “Oh, that’s how I feel about sports.”

5. “At an appointment I found a lovely poem by my friend Colleen,” a friend posted on Facebook with a picture of my poem that appeared in a Poems in the Waiting Room (based in the U.K.)  pamphlet.  I responded, “Wow, I knew the poem was accepted for this project, but I didn’t think I or anyone I knew would ever see it!’

6. Now my dreams / are like shopping lists / that repeat without plots / and my poems / are like actors in bad roles / Pens skip with cold ink / The scale lies about my weight/ The moon hangs from a branch / like strange winter fruit … Read my poem Things That Don’t Work in its entirety HERE. 

7. I really liked hearing that a study has found that people with messy desks tend to be more creative.  Check out desks of creative people, Einstein, Steve Jobs, and Al Gore at “Do You Really Need to De-clutter Your Desk HERE.

8. OMG I LOVE THIS painting

9. Lately I’ve been working for the wood stove.  It feels like a full time job.  I haven’t got paid but at least it’s seasonal and the perks (staying warm and alive) are pretty good.

10. Meryl Streep’s recent Golden Globes speech called out Donald Trump for his behavior mocking and humiliating others, saying, “When it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it gives permission for other people to do the same thing.”  I respect Streep and the social significance of the roles she’s chosen to play.  I liked her description as actors as empaths, saying,”An actor’s only job is to enter the lives of people who are different from us, and let you feel what that feels like…”

11. After her speech the old argument about whether celebrities should use their platform to talk about real issues resurfaced on Facebook, to which my friend Jackie responded, “If you can’t see that Trump is a celebrity turned politician, I can’t talk to you.”

12. Yesterday I posted on Facebook, “no tweeting while driving or while running the country,” and my Dharmacratic poet friend Will commented back, “No tweeting while driving the country into the ground.”

13. Tell them that they have no responsibility / To follow someone blindly based solely on a title. / Teach them to practice discernment. / Tell them authority and respect / Must be earned and are not inherently deserved. / Teach them that there are good people and bad people / From every background, ethnicity and belief system, / That they must align themselves with kindness, / That there is no more time for divisiveness. / You tell them / that just because something is legal, / That doesn’t mean it’s right… -Read the rest of the poem “What to Tell the Children” by Rachel Kann, November, 2016 HERE.

_______Thirteen Thursday