Loose Leaf Notes

1. Why is Labor Day for workers but no one works on Labor Day?” – My seven-year-old grandson Liam

2. I’m either going to a wedding or a hurricane this weekend.

3. Wear Your Love Like Heaven by Donovan and You Wear it Well by Rod Stewart are two of my favorite songs.

4. I know why English women wear hats.  It rains there a lot and a hat keeps you from trying to save any kind of hair-do.

5. Soundbites break skin / What’s not said blares loudly / I watch the burning house / with people inside it / They show engulfed bodies / then move to feel-good fluff / while the warden tries to convince me /  that firefighters are the enemy … Read Prison Break While Watching the Nightly News in its entirety HERE.

6. “The problem isn’t people who voted for Trump. It’s the people who didn’t vote at all.” – John Kerry on the PBS NewsHour

7. My family’s two towers came down just weeks before the twin towers on 9/11.  My brothers Jim and Dan died on July 25 and August 29 respectively.  On the morning of 9/11 I was at home grieving when my niece, Chrissie, called to tell me to turn on the TV.  I remember feeling kind of numb and having a hard time registering what was happening. I remember thinking ‘now the whole country will be in grief.’

8. The pictures here come from Darcy Meeker’s Color Project, an art and science installation, and the Color Photo Booth that Joe and I took part in at Floydfest. Check out her website HERE. 

9. The theme of the 7th annual Floyd Yoga Jam, “Illumination,” was incorporated into the festival’s opening ceremony midday on Friday, August 31.  Facilitated by ceremonialist/herbalist Katherine Chantal it incorporated Acro Yogis in poses, the lighting of lanterns, a guided meditation and written prayers that were put into a prayer drum to be spun throughout the weekend. The sun shone more than the rain fell, but rain (sometimes in torrents) was an integral part of this year’s four-day festival, featuring Yoga, Music, Art and Community on Burnette Farm in Willis. A double rainbow was captured by some photographers on Saturday afternoon. A fiery sunset filled the sky that same evening, and the closing ceremony on Sunday included a bonfire.- More from Rain to Rainbows – The 7th Annual Floyd Yoga Jam HERE.

10. Raining Cats and Dogs?  “The first recorded use of a phrase similar to “raining cats and dogs” was in the 1651 collection of poems Olor Iscanus. British poet Henry Vaughan referred to a roof that was secure against “dogs and cats rained in shower.” One year later, Richard Brome, an English playwright, wrote in his comedy City Witt, “It shall rain dogs and polecats.” In 1738, Jonathan Swift published his “Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation,” a satire on the conversations of the upper classes. One of his characters fears that it will “rain cats and dogs.” Whether Swift coined the phrase or was using a cliché, his satire was likely the beginning of the phrase’s popularity.”

11. I once told Joe that I love him cats and dogs.

12. Recently seen on Facebook: What do you with thirty gallons of water and fifty cans of soup that you bought for bad weather that doesn’t look like it’s coming? Asking for a friend.

13. THIS is my kind of art museum.

_______Thirteen Thursday