Loose Leaf Notes

1. Last week my grandson Bryce told me that his 5^th grade class was banned from saying “Big Chungus.” “Why?” I asked him.  “Because we were saying it too much,” he answered.

2. While other people are watching cat videos, I’m watching THIS. 

3. My friend Mara was explaining “pendulum activism” to me at the Floyd Mayfaire.  Mara: You lean in, step out, lean in again.   Me: Mara you don’t lean in. You go in hard.   Chico: The last time I did that I had to get married.

4. At the Floyd Center for the Arts Fiber Art opening, where she had a water flag installation, she said: “After pursuing all legitimate means to stop pipelines from taking homeowners property and putting waterways at risk”, Mara said that the water flag project has been her most effective work.  “What works is people living in trees,” she said.  She introduced the crowd to two tree-sitters and performed a poem.”  Listen HERE.  

5. “Water is a symbol of knowledge in at least one Aboriginal culture. In languages of the Northern Territory, the word ganma means a place where salt water and fresh water meet. It is used as a metaphor for different people coming together to share knowledge and reach mutual understanding” – from ‘If the land is sick, you are sick’: An Aboriginal approach to mental health in times of drought HERE.

6. First, they came for the journalists. We don’t know what happened after that. – Sign seen on Facebook

7. If absolutely everyone believed professional wrestling was real, it would still be fake. Same with Trump. – My Dharmacratic poet friend Will

8. “These are the experiences that mark us and make us just as much as the joyful ones and just as permanently. We don’t look at the people around us who are experiencing life joys and wonders and tell them to move on, do we?  Grief is one of those things like falling in love or having a baby or watching the Wire on HBO.  You don’t get it until you get it, until you do it.  you’ve been touched by something chronic.  Something incurable. it’s not fatal but sometimes it feels like it could be.” – Ted Talk on Grief HERE.

9. A tectonic plate may have peeled apart—and that could shrink the Atlantic Ocean – Something strange is happening off the coast of Portugal, and scientists have now proposed a groundbreaking explanation. If confirmed, the new work would be the first time an oceanic plate has been caught in the act of peeling—and it may mark one of the earliest stages of the Atlantic Ocean shrinking, sending Europe inching toward Canada as predicted by some models of tectonic activity.- More from National Geographic HERE.

10. On Sunday the United Nations released a report saying that up to a million species are at risk of extinction due to shrinking habitat, pollution and climate change. On Monday Secretary of State Mike Pompeo praised the Arctic region — and its rapidly shrinking levels of sea ice — for its economic opportunities and “new opportunities for trade.”

11. THIS made me cry.  It’s my niece, my late brother Jim’s daughter, and her girlfriend (the blonde) who made the video for a film class.  I think they’re engaged.

12. A Winning Love– We are like two sides / of the same coin / Heads or tails / We both win.

13. It ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe, if you don’t know by now. – Bob

__________Thirteen Thursday