Loose Leaf Notes

1. I ran into my friend Triona at the Farmers Market on Saturday.  She, like me, is a roving reporter.  She loves to document and knows a good story when she sees one (she took the picture to the left with her iPad).  I think journalism is in her future.  HERE is the story I did on her for The Floyd Press.

2. “In journalism, we’re told beginnings are all we have, and the worst beginnings are endings too. They’re where people stop reading. And you don’t just begin once. Every sentence, it seems, must be some kind of beginning, leading to the next, arresting the gaze, which on the internet strays so easily. So they say…”  – From Beginning, a first entry of a blog penned by my daughter-in-law-to-be, Emily, about the project she, my son and three other partners have taken on to refurbish an old county jail in Marshall, NC, for mixed use.  She is researching and documenting the stories of the jail’s colorful history.

3. She goes on… “This story is life. There are no good guys. There are no bad guys. Everyone is both. This blog, about the historic jail my fiancee and I bought with three partners, will often traverse the territory of supposed good guys and bad guys, lawmen and criminals. But if these stories stand for anything, they stand for ambiguity, for the complexity of life, for the richness of experience that drives us to seek and exalt the stories of others.  This page is a chronicle of research I’m conducting and stories I hear as I seek to create a small multimedia exhibit for the building as we renovate it. It’s not a history. It’s not an authoritative account. It’s not without bias and complication. It’s an exploration, and it has begun. I hope you’ll come along. Read more HERE.

4. THIS is what the summer’s all about.

5. I’ve been to the local Great Oaks Pool more this year than any other year I can remember. At this rate, I’m going to need more bathing suits.

6. “The language that my grandfather was forbidden to speak is composed primarily of verbs, ways to describe the vital beingness of the world. Both nouns and verbs come in two forms, the animate and the inanimate. You hear a blue jay with a different verb than you hear an airplane, distinguishing that which possesses the quality of life from that which is merely an object. Birds, bugs, and berries are spoken of with the same respectful grammar as humans are, as if we were all members of the same family. Because we are.” –  Robin Wall of the Potawatomi Nation, Speaking of Nature –  Orion magazine

7. I think the wood thrush is the Lao Tzu of birdsong. I’ve been listening to their evening sermons to counter the Nightly News.

8. So we had our first bear intrusion into our corn patch and the corn isn’t even near ripe yet. Joe made sure the electric fence was working and he set up a radio to play all night to deter the critter.   When he told me he put it on Rush Limbaugh (thinking talk radio would be the best alternative to real people voices), I said, “Oh, no, I don’t even want him in our airwaves.”  “Yeah, I hope his negativity doesn’t hurt our vegetables,” he replied.

9. Throwing summer some shade is a good thing, right?  See HERE.

10. What used to stop me in my tracks / and threaten to sink me with its impact / now slips away discreetly at night / like Arctic icebergs breaking off / in someone else’s proverbial backyard / While true-north poets forget their lines / and oar-less boats turn with the tides / parts of me drift away… Read the rest of my poem Losing Ground HERE. 

11. Here are some headlines that I recently posted in my These Headlines are Real Google Them series on Facebook: Scaramucci Deletes Tweets At Odds With Trump, Then Says He’s Being Transparent / The NRA’s Terrible Idea To Solve Domestic Violence: Arming Victims / Question now is will the GOP be able to normalize treason / Good for the rich, bad for the poor: Trump’s healthcare plan is a lot like his tax plan.

12. The secret to The Neck Adjustment is bubble wrap. See HERE.

13. We put up a motion-activated camera to see what was eating in our corn and THIS is the wildlife we caught.

_______Thirteen Thursday