Loose Leaf Notes

1. The above photo reminds me of a poem I wrote in the early ‘90s:   Full moon temptation / at the traffic light / the red light says, “Stop” / but the moonlight says,“Come”/ awakening my natural signals

2. Last night I dreamt that Kelly Ann Conway framed me in a car accident by reversing the facts and making the accident look like my fault when it wasn’t.

3. When the price of our goods go up because we have opted out of global trade agreements, will our citizens be able to afford “access to insurance” rather than actually being covered?

4. Trump’s War with the Press:  If he’d stop making false claims about massive voter fraud and his inauguration size, stop abusing his executive power and acting like a Putin, stop denigrating our values and alienating our world partners maybe the press could stop reporting all this stuff and he’d get along better with them.

5. He’s only been in office a little over a week and already the world is concerned that he could start a new nuclear arms race, a trade war and now a religious war.

6. Last week’s poem:  This morning the moon made me giggle / It glowed like a spotlight in a theater of sky / It appeared like a trick that was pulled from a hat / after being magically sawed in half

7. I recently realized that the Irish have their own version of “the blues.” It features slow airs, uellean pipes, haunting laments and lyrics like THIS. 

8. My comment to a Trump supporter on Facebook: Sometimes you come across like someone who wants to line up all the liberals and shoot them. There is liberalism in conservatives and conservatism in liberals, so good luck with that.

9.  I’m beginning to think that some Trump supporters have Stockholm Syndrome.

10. I don’t consider my thoughts on Facebook or here to be “political,” but more about our freedoms, fairness and our children’s future. I happen to believe that if you don’t follow politics or engage in some way, you might as well say, ‘do whatever you want with me.”

11. “It is like the difference between learning how to ride a bicycle or learning how to put a stick in the spokes.” – My Dharmacratic Poet friend Will on the Trump presidency

12. “I am the youngest of eight siblings. Five of us have died. I share losses, health concerns, and other challenges common to the human condition, especially in these times of war, poverty, environmental devastation, and greed that are quite beyond the most creative imagination. Sometimes it all feels a bit too much to bear. Once a person of periodic deep depressions, a sign of mental suffering in my family that affected each sibling differently, I have matured into someone I never dreamed I would become: an unbridled optimist who sees the glass as always full of something. It may be half full of water, precious in itself, but in the other half there’s a rainbow that could exist only in the vacant space…” – Alice Walker, Preface to Hard Times Require Furious Dancing.

13.  Was Occupy Wall Street a dress rehearsal for the Trump presidency?

___________Thirteen Thursday