Loose Leaf Notes

1. Virginia is for Lovers and Floyd is for Dancers! See HERE.

2. Siri pronounces Oddf3llas (a Floyd’s restaurant) “Oddthreefellas”

3. The first taste of blueberries picked from the garden, the first splashed dunk in the Country Club pool. Meals on the porch. Everyday an outside tea party attended in sundress style. The lawn chairs are moved from the open sun, tucked under pine trees in the shade. The dog looks forlorn, overdressed in fur. Industrious carpenter ants with appetites for our log home, leave telltale piles of wood dust around. Flip flops flap and butterflies flit. I slow down and listen to the symphony of wild. Every buzz, chirp, tweet, and drone tells me what I want to hear, that summer is in full swing.  -From a 2009 post called Marching to a Summer Drummer

4. “Should goodness ever lose / and evil steal the day? / Should happy sing the blues / and peace would fade away / What would you do, what would you say? / How would you act on that blue day? / Stand up for what you believe / Resist the powers that be / Preserve the land, and save the sea / For the children of destiny / the children of you and me…”

5. The above lyrics are from Neil Young’s new video of his new song “Children of Destiny.” Making a statement about the current political climate, Young teamed up with Promise of the Real (the band featuring Willie Nelson’s son Lukas) to release the video for the 4th of July. It includes footage from the Women’s March and features a 56 piece orchestra. Watch it HERE. 

6. Every summer has an iconic experience that epitomizes summer for me. In the past, it’s been a porch concert under the stars, eating a whole community blueberry pie at the Zephyr pond with friends, a circle of Sufi dancing with friends in a field under the full moon, or a moonlight kayak float down the Little River.  This summer’s iconic summer evening already happened and it involved a porch sushi feast, a baby in my lap and a bonfire that smelled of pine.

7. Usually when Joe goes away, I try on clothes and have dance parties. This time I drank beer, ate bacon and watched Roseanne reruns.

8. My first email to him read: The beans are in and skunks are living under the porch.   HERE.

9. This Popular Painkiller Kills Kindness: A new study shows that Acetaminophen, the most common drug ingredient in the United States, can reduce a person’s capacity to empathize with another person’s pain, whether that pain is physical or emotional…. …Acetaminophen is an ingredient in more than 600 different medicines, according to the Consumer Healthcare Products Association. About a quarter of all Americans take acetaminophen every week….” More HERE. 

10. Another bucket list stop for New York:  In Brooklyn there’s a whole interactive library for sketchbooks. The library started with 1,200 and now has 26,000.  They take them on tour and then add them to their permanent collection. Anyone can make one.   See HERE.

11. “Presently the news is a series of constantly crashing cars right outside your window. One after the next, bang, smash, crash. The symphony of shrieking metal is very, very hard to turn away from….You can look at it, but pick your times. Write or make art first, then go and stare into the unswerving gaze of Sauron himself…” – From Ways TO STAY MOTIVATED IN THIS SH*T-SHELLACKED ERA OF EPIC STUPID, a blog post by writer Chuck Wendig at Terrible Minds HERE.

12. Who gives a crap? Look HERE.

13. Working out issues on a group Facebook site, my friend Karl wrote: In most communities, these squabbles would be settled at the bowling alley, let’s all ask ourselves “What would Richie Cunningham Do?”

_________Thirteen Thursday