Loose Leaf Notes

1. God has a Facebook page.  Search “The Good Lord Above.”

2. “We live in cities that throw up skyscrapers and shopping centers and strike big real estate deals but they abandon a part of themselves to marginal settlements on the periphery.   The result of this situation is that great sections of the population are excluded and marginalized: without a job, without options, without a way out. Don’t abandon them.”  – The Pope

3. I had a dream this week that I was watching Trump at a debate podium.  Suddenly, the camera zeroed in on his crotch, and Trump cupped his hand on his crotch in a defiant way.  I was shocked and outraged and was later telling people how wrong it was but couldn’t seem to get the gravity of it across. Then Joe and I were walking on a bridge in Key West at sunset and people there had seen it too and were talking about it with dismay.

4. There have been a few times in my life when I felt like everything I had done in the past was to bring me to the point I’m at now.  I feel that way about opposing the Trump administration.  I’m in for the long haul, resisting the danger of Trump and Bannon’s fact-free vision of apocalyptic war, which he thinks we are already engaged in. Read THIS.

5. A red-flagged house of cards / elaborately flawed / can’t hold the weight / of its own disgrace / won’t stand the test of time – Read the rest of my poem Red Flag HERE.

6. Dabbing is a dance move, originated from the Atlanta hip hop scene a few years ago, that my eight-year-old grandson introduced me to.  I have to admit I was like Paul Ryan on this one and when he showed me the move, I thought he was sneezing or hiding his eyes to cry.  Watch and laugh HERE.

7. THIS is more my kind of dance.

8.  I recently became interested in why husband talks so enthusiastically with his hands and, after some research, I learned that the most popular, viral speakers used an average of about 465 hand gestures, which is nearly twice as many as the least popular speakers used.  People who “talk” with their hands tend to be viewed as warm, agreeable and energetic, while those who are less animated are seen as logical, cold and analytical.

9. One article I found was called “Why Italians Talk with Their Hands and Scandinavians Don’t,” which explained a lot to someone with Swedish ancestry, like me, who sometimes feels that Joe’s gesturing can get out of hand (pun intended). I sometimes find it distracting and worry that I might get hit.

10. Joe and I were both rockers as children and beyond, in perpetual motion, which I have come to believe is not so much a result of self-comfort but a PTSD coping mechanism related to “sink or swim” (as THIS  poem elaborates on).  “Treading water” Joe calls it.

11. I read or heard a rumor once that the hippies that came to Floyd in the ‘70s and ‘80s were trust fund beneficiaries, but the majority of people I knew lived at or below-the-poverty-line.  That was the trade-off we were willing to make to be home raising our kids, pursuing healthy natural lifestyles, living simply (sometimes off the grid) with land stewardship in mind.  – Read the rest of my story, “Hippies are from California” that was first published in Floydiana HERE.

12. These days, parody and reality are too close for comfort.

13. Fear is a feeling, not a fact. – Pamela Teagarden

___________Thirteen Thursday