Loose Leaf Notes

1. Making THIS is not as easy as it looks.

2. What if Dear Abby’s name was Prudence?

3. Ah or Ha?

4. A smile is an instant face-lift.

5. Smiling can trick your brain into happiness — and boost your health. A smile spurs a powerful chemical reaction in the brain that can make you feel happier. Science has shown that the mere act of smiling can lift your mood, lower stress, boost your immune system and possibly even prolong your life. And it doesn’t matter is the smile is real or not.  – More HERE.

6. My nine-year-old grandson Liam said, “that’s pretty good” after I read him THIS poem.

7. What can I say? I feel compelled to dance and compelled to record the occasion. We got the $10 show price at Dogtown. They paid $30 the night before and more than that, I suspect, when she opened for Lee Ann Womack this month… “I do not have a record out yet, so I do not have one for sale,” she said, adding that the record she made with Sadler Vaden (of the Jason Isbell band) is done, but the record label offers haven’t been decided yet. “I’ve spent the last three weeks saying that every night. I don’t have one yet. I’ll tell you that and there you go,” she told the crowd. So, no Christmas presents for you and for you, yet. And it seems that her first record, Puppets with My Heart, is out of stock… More from Hometown Welcome for Morgan Wade HERE.

8. Best line seen on Facebook this week: “Does this shirt make my accent show?” Yes, it was Morgan. She posted a country western shirt selfie.

9. I have no idea / like I know we all die / but don’t know how or when / What will we do till then? – Read The Last Poem I’ll Ever Write in its entirety HERE.

10. I have decided to share my book, The Jim and Dan Stories, chapter by chapter, to have it available online, since it is no longer available in print. The book, which was used in a Radford University grief and loss class for counseling students, is part an account of my brothers last weeks and their deaths a month apart, part memoir of growing up together on the South Shore of Boston in a large Irish Catholic family of 11, and part a chronicle of coping with the first six months of life-altering grief. I’m posting a chapter every Wednesday until the book is done. I added a new side bar category “Jim and Dan Stories” on the blog (to the right) for easy access.

11. Writing a blog reminds me of keeping a journal when my son home-schooled.  It didn’t look like much schoolwork was happening, but when I wrote down what we did at the end of the day, it showed how much cool stuff actually happens in one day.

12. “The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them.”- Stephen King

13. Monster or Mobster?

____________Thirteen Thursday