Loose Leaf Notes

1. It was so cold Sunday night that when Joe and I went to watch a movie in our bedroom, I said, “I’m going undercover,” as in blankets and comforters.

2. We watched Blackkklansman, which was based on a true story about the first African-American police officer/detective at the Colorado Springs Police Department who went undercover in the late ‘70s to expose the KKK.  It was hard to watch but the ending that tied it to today made it worth it.

3. It was also frigid the night we watched the blood moon lunar eclipse, and we never could get the telescope to work.

4. I’m about to buy local eggs from a woman whose last name is Hatcher.

5. How to Read a 300 Page Poetry Collection:  It starts out with so much potential / I flip to the ones I like / I start at the back / and work my way to the middle / then lose my place / and wander in circles / like poring through clothes / at the Goodwill Thrift Shop / and trying on the same ones twice

6. “It’s a life savor.” – Ron commenting on THIS poem

7. “Fishing. Writing songs is like fishing. You sit in the boat and you wait. It’s true you have to know the best spot, time of day, what bait to use, the difference between a nibble and a strike, and most important, how to get the damn thing in the boat. Talent is essential, craft is crucial, but for me it’s mostly down to waiting and luck. And in my line of work, luck is not random. It’s definite and discerning. It’s invisible, but it’s there. It’s mysterious and also obvious. I don’t understand how inspiration works and I don’t want to. Don’t mess with grace and divinity. You can write songs with hard work, sharp pencils, and a rhyming dictionary, but without luck they won’t swing. No luck means no fish.” – Loudon Wainwright III, from his memoir, Liner Notes

8. We had one board, two Official Scrabble Dictionaries and three free look-ups.  “Do you want the new or older one,” he asked one of the players who wanted to look up a word, “the one with the dirty words in it or the cleaned up one?” He had the 3rd edition that had swear words in it, and I had the 4th edition, in which even the word “fart” was struck from the content….More from The Zany Game in Which I Won’t Name Names HERE

9. As promised in press releases, Floyd’s 2nd annual Martin Luther King Jr. commemoration was a beautiful community celebration that brought together an outpouring of support and participation from local businesses, organizations, churches, restaurants and individuals and highlighted the Interracial Community Building in Floyd… The honoring of King included song, prayer, remembrances, a fellowship meal and a keynote address from Reverend Dr. Edward Burton, a retired pastor of a Roanoke church who lived through the civil rights era and met Dr. Martin Luther King Jr… More from There are No Second-Class Citizens: Floyd Celebrates Martin Luther King HERE.

10. “You know, no matter how different we appear phenotypically, under the skin we’re 99.99 percent the same… The lesson of “Finding Your Roots” – we’re all immigrants. Black people came here – not willingly, of course. They came in slave ships. But they came from someplace else. Even the Native Americans came from someplace else about 16,000 years ago.  So everybody who showed up on this continent is from someplace else. And under the skin, we are almost identical genetically. And that is the strongest argument for brotherhood, sisterhood and the unity of the human species. And I make it every week over and over with “Finding Your Roots.” – Henry Louis Gates Jr. on Fresh Air –  Finding Your Roots is my all-time favorite PBS TV show. Every week I learn so much and the stories choke me up every time. You can watch it online too.

11. The people sat waiting / Out on their blankets in the garden / But God said nothing / So someone asked him “I beg your pardon /I’m not quite clear about what you just spoke / What that a parable, or a very subtle joke?”… Are you kidding me?! I just saw the Crash Test Dummies who were on a 25th anniversary tour of the album I listened to all through the ‘90s, God Shuffled His Feet.  See HERE.

12. My Facebook status update last week:  I’m just as excited about Balast Point Beer coming to Floydfest as I am about Kacey Musgraves. Also, I’ve been singing Box of Rain to myself for about a week now.

13. What are you a nerd about? That is likely your gift that you bring to the world.

__________Thirteen Thursday