Loose Leaf Notes

1.  A tree’s buried roots / are as real as its branches / The poems are the test / and the dreams are the answers – from The Shape of Truth HERE. 

2. Rats can recognize colors and understand left and right, but they can’t put the two together to locate a biscuit left of the blue wall in a maze. They can’t connect the color with going left to find a biscuit. It’s 50/50 whether they go right or left. Children up till six years of age are also like this, except that they’re constantly babbling words. Then around six, they’re able to string different concepts together to say something like, “The biscuit is left of the blue wall”, and understand it.

3. Adults understand it too, but when they are tasked with reciting back words they’re listening too, they lose the ability to make sense of “left of the blue wall,” which suggests that one part of the brain recognizes blue, another recognizes a biscuit, and we have a spatial understanding of what left and what a wall is.  This also explains why when I ask for directions, I want the most simple and direct answer, and if Joe gives me too much explanation or information, it goes in one ear and out the other. More HERE.

4. And Every One Knew Her as Nancy – That’s what I should have been singing after the Dogtown musician who specializes in covering Beatles songs asked for a request.  Considering Nancy Pelosi’s skill in getting the longest Government shutdown in history to come to an end without giving in to Trump’s demands for border wall money, and the fact that I had been singing that line for days, I would have enjoyed singing along with others to Rocky Raccoon and his cast of characters. -More HERE

5. Bryce and Liam learn about Blue Meanies HERE. 

6. Contrary to what former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said on 60 Minutes Sunday night when he announced he may run for president in 2020, which many are saying will split the Democratic ticket and give Trump his best chance to win reelection, Medicare is not “free health care for all” that “the country cannot afford.” With Medicare, the government buys medical insurance in bulk as a single payer and passes on the savings on and, to me, the benefit of that is a no-brainer. Medicare Part A is hospital insurance that comes out of the Social Security taxes I paid over the years and that I will pay a percentage of out of pocket if I use it. Part B, which covers doctor visits, screening and tests, costs me about $145 and comes out of my SS check.  Then there is a supplement plan and Part C for prescription costs that I pay for because Part A and B doesn’t cover everything. From my point of view, we don’t need another billionaire businessman president who doesn’t understand how the majority of us live. The government is not a business and health care should not be either.

7. I’m not surprised that some people jumped to an emotional conclusion after watching the first MAGA hat boy and Native American drummer viral video because, like me, they’ve probably seen video clips of people wearing MAGA hats at Trump’s rallies saying as much hateful nonsense at the Black Israelites who set the stage for that tense confrontation.  I think it was no wonder that people reacted to the video that the fake twitter site posted to divide us, with the title “This MAGA loser gleefully bothering a Native American protester at the Indigenous Peoples March.” And now we learn that actor Jussie Smollett’s attackers, who spewed racist and homophobic slurs, threw bleach in his face and tied a rope around his neck, yelled out “MAGA country during the assault.”

8. The older I get / the less I strive / but the better I pass / the test of time

9. I wasn’t prepared to tell a story, but I had a good one to share that I made fit the month’s theme of “beginnings.”  In the middle of my mystical story of my father shaking holy water bottles from beyond the grave the way Mathew Mcconaughey’s character in Interstellar made a watch fall off a dresser while he was in an alternate dimension, I said to the crowd “it was the beginning of me not being the biggest skeptic in my family.” – More from Joe’s and my 7 minute stories at the Blue Ridge Story Space that I was covering for the local paper HERE.

10. Every time we have frigid weather, Trump makes snide tweets, insinuating that global warming is a hoax, but this is what the scientists  say: High altitude, east-to-west winds known as jet streams rely on the difference between cold Arctic air and warm tropical air to propel them forward. As the air in the Arctic warms, those jet streams slow and prevent normal weather patterns from circulating—floods last longer and droughts become more persistent. One study published in Science Advances last October predicted extreme, deadly weather events could increase by as much as 50 percent by 2100. Scientists have already found climate change contributed to California’s historic, deadly wildfires and powerful, destructive hurricanes…  From The National Geographic

11. The world feels upside down lately, sort of like THIS.

12. Tangled up in Blues at the Chihuly exhibit in St. Pete, Florida HERE.

13. Another way to say That’s all Folks – It’s all over now Baby Blue.

____________Thirteen Thursday