Loose Leaf Notes

1. Seen somewhere on Facebook-  Halloween costume idea: Quinton Tarantina Turner

2. Sesame Street is to kids what Saturday Night Live is to grownups, and they both are iconic shows that have lasted for more than 40 years.

‪3. Eating at my favorite restaurant on the chef’s day off is like seeing Graham Nash without the rest of the band.

4. The September issue of the AARP magazine pays tribute to the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love, complete with a Peter Max cover.  “…Our mainstream culture took what it needed from the hippies. And what we needed is forever in the nation’s bloodstream, whether you bought into it back then or not. We dress our babies in tie-dye and feed them organic oatmeal while Sgt. Pepper’s plays in the background. So perhaps we should just say thanks for what turned out to be a groovy little bend in the long river of American history.”  – Historian Douglas Brinkley

5. My grandsons are big Beatles fans. Listen to their 2013 performance of Yellow Submarine HERE.

6.  We put on a good show. Maybe we should take it on the road, or at least do a couple of more local readings.  Chelsea Adams and I were featured poets on Sunday at the New River Community College in Dublin, a presentation of the NRCC Library.  In was a coffee house setting.  After our bio-introductions, we read and told background stories to an attentive crowd of about 25+. Chelsea’s husband Bill accompanied her on guitar, adding a foot tapping flair to match the rhythm of her poems.  I showed a slide show of some of my photography, many from stories I’ve covered for The Floyd Press. – More from my book reading/signing with fellow Finishing Line Press poet Chelsea Adams HERE.

7. There You Are:  It’s that time of year. I’m glad I had some zinnia to offer as a pit stop for the monarchs on migration. See them HERE.

8. And now this: “The brain doesn’t just decide what is and important to remember, it actually retains new memories and overwrites old ones. Retaining “big picture” memories is becoming less and less important for us humans with improvements in technology and our access to information.  It’s more useful for us evolutionarily to know how to Google the spelling of a word, or how to install a shower head than it is for us to remember exactly how to do it… “ – More from “Scientists Say That Being Forgetful Is Actually A Sign You Are Unusually Intelligent” HERE.

9. When we knew for certain that she was about to die, she told me the whereabouts of her unpublished poems… From The Poetry of Death by Donald Hall  

10. Stuck in my head: She’s a good girl. Crazy about Elvis …

11. On Monday night Jimmy Kimmel gave the best heartfelt response to the recent Las Vegas massacre and implored Republican lawmakers to pass some common sense control on military style weapons:  “Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, a number of other lawmakers who won’t do anything about this because the NRA has their balls in a money clip, also sent their thoughts and their prayers today, which is good. They should be praying. They should be praying for God to forgive them for letting the gun lobby run this country…”  Listen to his entire monologue HERE.

12. Trying to put life into written words is like trying to pin the tail on the donkey while blindfolded. And sometimes we break the piñata.

13.. Caught in a web / like a Nowhere Man / hanging in a nowhere land / An inchworm / twisting in the breeze / swings in mid-air / like a daredevil trapeze … Read Hanging from a Thread in its entirety HERE.

___________Thirteen Thursday