Loose Leaf Notes

1. This is my first time reading a memoir that starts with the author telling her story from before she was born.

2. “Though I was reluctant to be born, I was attracted by the music. I had plans.  I was entrusted with carrying voices, songs and stories to grow and release to the world, to be of assistance and inspiration. These were my responsibility.  I am not special. It is this way for everyone.”  – From Crazy Brave by Joy Harjo, Mvskoke/Creek poet

3. I was asked to cover a controversial Confederate flag rally coming through Floyd for the local paper over the weekend.  At first, it was awkward with protesters and supporters mostly on opposite sides of the street, which reminded me of a dance where girls and boys sit across from each other.  But by the end of the day,  I was sitting on the courthouse wall with flag supporters on one side and protesters on the other, meeting neighbors and making new friends.

4. Meme seen on Facebook: Doesn’t it seem like Trump denied climate change, and then the climate was like ‘hold my beer.’

5. Yesterday I tried to wipe off a comma that I didn’t think belonged on a page of my poetry.

6. I recently received this note about my poetry book “Packing a Suitcase for the Afterlife” from Alan Forest, who was head of the counseling department at Radford University when my first book was part of his class curriculum:   “Last evening I allowed the book to open wherever it did and read your poem “Jim and Dan.” It reminded me of your book about your brothers and you coming to my classes and sharing with students your felt-sense experiences of grief and loss. This morning it was “The Suitcase.” You write with such truth and your poems have a grittiness that captures life with such meaning and depth. I plan on reading one poem a day and sitting with it. I want to savor each one as a gift. Thank you for writing with such authenticity and sharing the contents of your “suitcase” with me.”  Check out the book, published by Finishing Line Press HERE.

7. NPR Interviewer Jeffery Brown asked John Ashbery about his poetry: Is it sort of a conversation with yourself going on? Ashbery:  Yes.  Very often, not with — maybe not me with myself, but of two personalities in my head who are arguing and sort of ignoring me at the same time.

8. The display of red books that I came across at the Floyd Library (pictured above) reminded me of when I worked at my friend’s bead/gift shop in Blacksburg in the ’90s and a well-known local eccentric came into the shop with a box full of red items that he wanted to give to me: red books, dishes and yard sale-like items.  I didn’t accept the box because I didn’t know what to do with it.  So he sat out front with it for a while and I felt bad.

9. See Floyd from a painter’s point of view HERE.

10. Flamingos in The Men’s Room: How Zoos and Aquariums Handle Hurricanes HERE.

11. I’m not big on formulas, which is why I never liked algebra or religion.

12. Prunes taste so much better when you call them dried plums.

13. And this explanation from the internet might as well be algebra: “When dried, plums are called prunes, but the prune fruit comes from a different type of plant than plums. Although of the same genus as plums, which makes it a type or variety of plum, prunes have pits that are easier to remove from the flesh unlike all other types of plum.” ________Thirteen Thursday