Loose Leaf Notes

1. I went to town on a stake-out for gingerbread houses for a story I’m working on.

2. And then I saw this.

3. When it’s too cold for rain and too warm for snow, ice is the price in Virginia. – from Winter’s Arrival: Breaking the Ice HERE. 

4. I hope there were no Floydian slips on the ice.

5. “I’ll tell you a funny story. You can put it on Loose Leaf,” said my friend Alwyn. “I’m 94, you know.”  Of course, I know that. “I was so proud of being 94,” she continued. “You know I wrote a book about cats?” I knew that too. “I saw a cat when I was out walking, and I bent down to pat it to show that I could at 94. And I fell!” – Read Pride Goeth Before the Fall in its entirety HERE.

6. Last week I posted a poem titled Hibernation 2020 with this stanza in it: With the snap of fingers / comes a ghost dance inventory / where one day bleeds / and the next is saved / From a paint box sun / with paper and pen / words on pages / take names. A poet friend replied with a “h/t,” which I looked up and found out means “hat tip.”

7. Then she posted her answer to my poem with the lines:  The snap of fingers / tells us how many dead / are falling to this ill year, / where every day drowns. / I’m not dying, and I hope. / That’s all I can expect. / There’s no pen, no paper, / no notes on how this ends.

8. A mother’s goodbye. A guaranteed tear jerker from the movie, Life Itself, that we just saw HERE. 

9. Blocked or locked?

10. 2020 has been Grinch. There will be no Christmas Eve neighborhood party this year and we won’t even be seeing my Asheville potter son and his wife. But the grandsons, their dad and step-mom will be with us on Christmas Eve and the Christmas Star, not seen in the sky for 800 years and said to be the one that led the wise men to Jesus, gives me hope.

11. It’s a Good Sign: “You know how sometimes, in order to start fresh, everything first needs to completely fall apart? That’s basically been the energy of this pandemic-laden year, which is finally coming to a close and bringing us from the end of the Age of Pisces to the beginning of the transformative Age of Aquarius when Jupiter, the planet associated with luck and abundance, and Saturn, the planet of authority and hierarchy, will meet in the night sky in a cosmic event known as the Great Conjunction (on winter solstice night), which is set to bring about social, political, and ideological change.”  See a picture I took HERE.

12. An astrological “age” shifts about every 2,150 years, when the Earth’s rotation moves into a new zodiac sign… Although there is no agreed-upon method for how to calculate when an astrological age starts, the general consensus among astrologers is that astrological ages are approximately 2000 years long, and we have been in the age of Pisces for about the past two millennia… Jupiter and Saturn meet every 20 years or so, but the Great Conjunction on Winter Solstice night is significant because the planets will be closer than the two have been in nearly 800 years and will appear in the night sky as one giant star, aka as The Christmas Star. This conjunction is said to usher in a new centuries-long cycle of Jupiter and Saturn meeting in air signs where they have been meeting in earth signs for the past 200 years. Earth signs are associated with the material, like money, physical resources, and external achievements, while air signs are all about the realm of the mind, connecting with others, and advancements in technology…. With the Age of Aquarius unfolding gradually over many centuries, a new societal ethos that slowly moves away from materialism and toward Universalism and new ideologies is upon us. Aquarius is the sign of teamwork. It’s the sign of society, very progressive and humanitarian.  -Information taken from HERE and HERE.  Read about The Age of Pisces HERE. 

13. I saw the original Hair Musical in Boston in 1970. It was unforgettable!

____________Thirteen Thursday