Loose Leaf Notes

1. My poem “Predator Politics” was published a few weeks ago at Wine Drunk Sidewalk: Shipwrecked in Trumpland HERE, a week before that my poem Nightly News Prison Break was published on the same site.

2. Last week on election day, I saw a man with a hat that read “Deplorable,” which made me want to say, “Well, if you’re deplorable, I must be human scum.”

3. Writing letters and mailing them is like trying to buy linoleum or making a call from a phone booth.

4. How come all the latest in flooring is faux wood, stone or brick?  When we grew up in the ‘60s, fake wood and brick paneling was the trendy before it was thought to be tacky.

5. Sometimes the best advice is ‘don’t give advice.’

6. “Going from Obama to trump is like going from an I phone to two soup cans and a string!” – My friend Bob

7. An art installation or model runway? HERE.

8. When art leaves us speechless HERE. 

9. It’s easy to deny / my part of the plastic mass / as large as the state of Texas / floating in the Pacific / Grounded by gravity / my space debris collects / like extra pounds to carry / like refugees hidden from view… Read The Attic Crawlspace in its entirety HERE.

10. It was part birthday party, part house concert and part book signing. It was a small gathering of friends at my friend Alwyn’s Blacksburg home to celebrate her 93rd birthday.  Amid the chocolate cherry cake, pumpkin pie, cherry garcia ice cream and her cat Cloudy, who wanted to get in the act, was a gift that Alwyn gave to each of us: the new expanded edition of her poetry collection, Remembering Their Names… More HERE.

11. A week before my friend Alwyn’s 93 birthday, we spoke on the phone. She has a hard time hearing over the phone, so when I asked her what she wanted for her birthday, she answered, “A new pair of ears!” On the day of her party, I brought her, a cat lover and author of Never Love a Feral Cat, cat ears, which she wore for the entire birthday celebration.

12. The cab driver who drove me to the hospital took me on a long route that cost more money than the amount that was stated over the phone.  Feeling guilty, after I told him my brother was “taking a turn for the worst,” he gave some of it back to me.  When I arrived, Dan was in the middle of what we surmised was a “life review.”  He appeared lucid to an internal process, as though he were having a conversation.  He was full of expression (confusion and distaste, consideration and then enlightenment) and appeared to see things, sometimes reaching out to touch what we could not see.  That night, I typed the words we had all dreaded, “For those of you who don’t already know, we lost our precious Dan today.” The Sister Group ended. – From Chapter 4 of The Jim and Dan Stories, the book I wrote after my brothers died a month apart in 2001, which is out of print now, and which I’ve been posting here weekly to make it available online.

13. “I’ve never been good at endings. I don’t know how to write them. I just go, ‘Thanks, goodnight. The show’s over, for no good reason!’” – artist Laurie Anderson

___________Thirteen Thursday