Loose Leaf Notes

1. Is it B or 13?

2. Silence or quiet?

3. Quiet means lowering the volume but silence is turning it off.

4. I hear the planets spin / and the weight of a complaining needle / scratching in the background / like an exasperated breath / across creation’s restless conscience – Read Quiet in its entirety HERE.

5. I call the picture to the right “Abducted on the Way to Area 51.”

6. My grandson made a Trump finger puppet (below).

7. “This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean, yet you come to us young people for hope. How dare you. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are at the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you.” How dare you continue to look away and come here saying you are doing enough,” Thunberg added. “You say you hear us and understand the urgency, but no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that. Because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil. And that I refuse to believe.” – Greta Thunberg at the UN Climate Session

8. “Children have a real understanding of only that which they invent themselves.” – Piaget

9. The evening sun streamed down onto the Hahn Garden at Virginia Tech as seven poets read among the marigolds and mums.  Sharing silence with a heron, gravity, gourds, Indian cooking, the American landscape in the 1800’s and dealing with cancer and loss were just some of the topics poetically shared. – More from my poetry readings at VA Tech Hahn Garden HERE. 

10. Silent and listen are the same word with the letters are mixed around.

11. “We’re serving tomorrow up today at the all you can eat deluxe café.” – My Dharmacratic poet friend Will

12. Read about Joe’s and my latest Apple Anniversary where we came upon a swarm of migrating monarch butterflies HERE.

13. When we sat on a giant LOVE sign after Joe’s mountain bike ride, followed by apple picking last weekend, I asked him what song with the word ‘love” in the title comes to his mind first.  He answered, “Love Me Do,” by the Beatles.  Mine was “What’s Love Got to Do with It?”  I think the answer is “everything.” – More HERE.

________Thirteen Thursday