Loose Leaf Notes

1. No, the picture above, taken at the Little River Poetry Festival, is not a poetry prompt or even a prop.  It’s a healing treatment that the festival co-founder, Judith, is demonstrating to the group.  The q-tips were first dipped in Glycothymoline, which Edgar Cayce recommended for reducing mucous and alkalizing the body. Much easier than using a neti pot.

2. “Not Jack Daniels” but Jack and Daniel is the title of THIS picture of the Poetry Festival co-founder Jack and Daniel, the owner of the On the Water, where the festival takes place.

3. My friend Katherine read poems about tea at the festival and gave lots of information about tea.  “I guess that makes you a tea-cher,” one of the poets said.

4. When did a song and dance become a bill of goods?

5. Windrunk Sidewalk: Shipwrecked in Trumpland is an online site that publishes daily poetry, fiction, art, photographs and anything related to what is going on in the country since Trump took office. They recently published my poem, Grave Times, for Day 133 and more recently used The First 100 Days for day  HERE.

6. For at least 100 days / I’ve been drowning in a swamp / a snake oil con of billionaires / burning bridges and rattling sabers / while trying to convince me / the world is flat / I’ve mourned the disregard of facts / of common sense and science / I’ve felt threatened, held hostage and robbed / watching corporate give-aways / environmental protections signed away/ like broken treaties/ like blankets spreading small pox …From The First 100 Days

7. Inside The Museum of Failure in Sweden, you can see unsuccessful products like Crystal Pepsi, Heinz “Green Sauce,” and a bad monopoly-like board game called Trump: The Game.   Check out the story HERE.

8. “It’s early September of 2015 and I’m on the island of Santorini for a literary festival. After the short reading, which takes place outdoors on a patio, the Greek audience asks questions, the first of which is, “What do you think of Donald Trump?” … I answer that I first became aware of Donald Trump in the late 1980s. That was when Alma, a Lithuanian woman I was working for, bought his book The Art of the Deal and decided he was wonderful. Shortly afterward, I saw him on Oprah, and ever since then he’s always been in the background, this ridiculous blowhard, part showman and part cartoon character. I see his presidential bid as just another commercial for himself. It wouldn’t surprise me if he were to name the Hamburglar as his running mate. So I say that on stage and then have to explain who the Hamburglar is …” – From “A Number of Reasons Why I’ve Been Depressed Lately” by David Sedaris

9. Long-dormant bacteria and viruses, trapped in ice and permafrost for centuries, are reviving as Earth’s climate warms. Read more HERE.

10 “…I thought the president-elect’s identity as a despicable human being was something we could all agree on. I mean, he pretty much ran on it. Later in our argument my father shouts, “He’s the best thing that’s happened to this country in years,” and, “It was just locker-room talk.” “I’m in locker rooms five days a week and have never heard anyone carry on like Trump in that video,” I argue. “And if I did, I wouldn’t think, Wow, that guy ought to be my president. I’d think he was a creep and a loser.” Then I add, repeating something I’d heard from someone else, “Besides, he wasn’t in a locker room, he was at work.” – More from David Sedaris

11. “And the fit hits the sham.” – My Dharmacratic friend Will

12. I call the picture of the car salesman putting my license plate on the newer version of my car “Let it Still Be.”

13. If you think that’s weird (photo #1), read about my experience with psychic surgery HERE.

________Thirteen Thursday