Loose Leaf Notes

1. Joe and I recently watched the movie The Circle, a thriller about a Facebook-type tech giant’s reach into personal privacy.  The next day, I discovered that I’d lost some research after I shut the computer down. I dug around for an hour trying unsuccessfully to find it on my computer.  Finally, I went online to google some questions about it and discovered that google has every search I’ve ever made recorded.  Creepy, but I found the research.

2. Said to Joe after that, “I have good news and bad news…”

3. My Window is a Flat Planet: Clouds spill up / defying gravity / They melt away / Like chances not taken / But some escape / and sail like boats / beyond the view / of my own belief

4. I posted the above poem Sunday on the online poetry community Poets United and was glad that most of the poets got it, commenting:  Thanks for turning the world upside down in a good way; I love the vivid visuals – and, even more, the way the last line of each verse says something much deeper; The flat world ideals and ships sailing over the edge has always captured my imagination; Our belief is sometimes so limited. I’m glad there are things (clouds, for instance) that can sail beyond it.”

5. After watching this year’s Grammy Awards, which felt like a new social movement and involved performances of resistance and powerful statements of love and unity, I posted this on Facebook: The Grammys is the New State of the Union.

6. I’m not a big hip-hop rap fan, and about half way through, I said to Joe, “where’s all the rock and roll?’ But as the show went on I was frequently moved and appreciated the performances. I was especially moved by U2’s performance of Get Out of Your Own Way, another powerful musical commentary that took place on a barge with the Statue of Liberty in the background. See HERE.

7. “Donald Trump is a lighthouse for humanity, showing us where it is dangerously shallow.” – My Dharmacratic poet friend Will

8. Here’s some of what I was researching: “Communication often breaks down because words are used that state opinions or interpretations or feelings or thoughts as ‘facts.’ For example, I was doing a workshop the other day and a discussion of the word ‘respect’ came up and a participant said that “Respect has lost its original meaning, it’s been taken over by government spin doctors and now doesn’t have the same integrity and meaning that it used to have’. I identified that this may be true for him and that the word does not have the same integrity and meaning for him that it used to, but others may have a different understanding of the word and so it is not a fact that respect has lost its original meaning, just that it has for him.  Others in the group did then speak for themselves and expressed different understandings of the word…” Byron Katie

9. ‘Exercise is nature’s medicine’ is one of Hampton’s favorite mottos.  But the Carroll Wellness Center is about even more than that.  On this day, there was a lively pick-up basketball game in the gym, a family was cross-fit-training together, children were playing in the pool, a Body Pump Class was in session and there were smiles on the faces of members in every part of the center.  “If you want to meet people in the community, there’s no better place than here,” Hampton said. – Read the rest of my feature, Carroll Wellness Center Benefits the Community, for last week’s Floyd Press newspaper HERE.

10. Joe and I swore we saw Tom Petty playing guitar on Elton John and Miley Cyrus’s performance of Tiny Dancer at The Grammys.  Check it out HERE. He’s standing behind Miley Cyrus.

11.  I like to stretch out on a sofa like an empty page waiting for poems.

12. I’m a weekend writer because a writer’s work is never done. While my husband’s off to a work-day, helping a neighbor put a roof on his house, I’m at home trying to decide the difference between the word “fathom” and “summon.” While he’s at the golf course driving and putting with buddies, I’m trying to write a poem about memory but not use the word memory in the poem (or at least not more than once). – From Word Nerd, a blog post from 2006 HERE. 

13. “You belong among the wildflowers / You belong in a boat out at sea / Sail away, kill off the hours / You belong somewhere you feel free” – Tom Petty

_______________Thirteen Thursday