Loose Leaf Notes

1. My grandson Liam found this caterpillar that was perfectly camouflaged as part of the stick that it was on.

2. Sunset on the magic blue bus HERE.

3. When Liam’s dad was little he talked about driving around in a bus when he got older.  Every night when I would kiss him goodnight I’d say “Sweet dreams about your bus.”

4. Did this guy really just say Yeehaw?

5. When I lost you in Paris / we were both naïve / not to have made a plan / Now there are secrets I’m not in on / And sometimes you don’t say word / I see you but you don’t see me / We still argue over who looked away first … read Objects May Be Closer Than They Appear in its entirety HERE.

6. I went to the Floyd Energy Fest last weekend and listened to a presentation on Climate Change where the speakers talked about us being in the 6th mass extinction, which made me want to know more about the other five.

7. “At least a handful of times in the last 500 million years, 50 to more than 90 percent of all species on Earth have disappeared in a geological blink of the eye. Dinosaurs appeared after one of the biggest mass extinction events on Earth, the Permian-Triassic extinction, which happened about 250 million years ago. The most studied mass extinction, between the Cretaceous and Paleogene periods about 65 million years ago, killed off the dinosaurs and made room for mammals to rapidly diversify and evolve.”

8. “Scientists have narrowed down several of the most likely causes of mass extinction. Flood basalt events (volcano eruptions), asteroid collisions, and sea level falls are the most likely causes of mass extinctions, though several other known events may also contribute.  These include global warming, global cooling, methane eruptions and anoxic events–when the earth’s oceans lose their oxygen…  Today, many scientists think the evidence indicates a sixth mass extinction is under way. The blame for this one, perhaps the fastest in Earth’s history, falls firmly on the shoulders of humans. By the year 2100, human activities such as pollution, land clearing, and overfishing may drive more than half of the world’s marine and land species to extinction.” From the National Geographic

9. “I saw my country in the hungry eyes / Of a million refugees / Between the rocks and the rising tide? As they were tossed across the sea? There was a time when we were them? Just as now they all are we/ Was there an hour when we took them in?? Or was it all some kind of dream? …” – A new Josh Ritter Song 

10. If you’re thinking I’m out in the sticks, here’s the flip side of that –   Read Life in the Rural Fast Lane, my  2005 WVTF radio essay and Floydfest program essay, HERE.

11. I did WVTF Public Radio essays on occasion from 2005 to 2007 when they stopped doing the local recordings. Besides Life in the Rural Fast Lane, other titles were The Best Part of Mowing My Lawn Last Weekend, Country Boy, Born to Blog, Let Me Clue You in about My Father, For Mother’s Day, Homegrown, Is it Summer Yet? HERE.

12. Extinct, extinguish or exit?

13. Lately Joe and I have been saying to each other, “You don’t know anything, Jon Snow.”

_________Thirteen Thursday