Loose Leaf Notes

1. It was the annual Tour de Dirt fundraiser ride for PLENTY! Farm and Food Bank.  Joe, who had a pulled muscle from playing soccer and couldn’t ride this year, was my backseat photographer… See me not get run over at “Sometimes I’m a Newspaper Field Reporter” HERE.

2. After I posted that entry on field reporting at Tour de Dirt, a friend and member of The Partnership for Floyd sent me some pictures that included the above one of me when I was covering the Partnership’s Dodd Creek Trail workday. More HERE.

3. An Autumnal Celebration: Aka Someone threw confetti all over my yard HERE.

4. “My mother used to lay on the floor and pretend to be dead until we cried.” – Jimmy Kimmel

5. I once laid on the floor, not to pretend to be dead to get my kids to cry, but to shock them to stop their fighting.

6. Study Finds That Spanking Kids Actually Worsens Their Behavior- “Physical punishment is increasingly viewed as a form of violence that harms children,” the study read. “The consistency of these findings indicates that physical punishment is harmful to children and that policy remedies are warranted.” This is certainly not the first time we’ve heard this before. In 2018, the American Academy of Pediatrics said that spanking kids can cause aggression, brain changes, substance abuse and suicidal behavior in adulthood. Unfortunately, even still, to this day, spanking is still pretty common. A 2017 UNICEF study found that 250 million children (around 6 in 10) worldwide are victims of physical punishment. – More HERE.

7. The Happy Virus: I caught the happy virus last night / When I was / out singing beneath the stars / It is remarkably contagious / So kiss me.  -Hafiz

8. I was recently reading an article titled “Surprise: The Big Bang isn’t the beginning of the universe anymore,” and got half-way through it before saying to myself, ‘this is over my head.’ Literally.

9. You Don’t Need a Weather Vane to Know Which Way the Wind Blows – Aka The Hood Ornament –  Posted this time nine years ago HERE. 

10. Last week I watched a touching 60 Minutes video on Tony Bennet, who has dementia but comes to life like nothing has changed when he performs HERE.

11. This week it was Luvell Benford, an African American marine vet, martial arts grandmaster, early employee of IBM, neighbor of Timothy Leary and one of the Merry Pranksters who in later life lived in his pick-up truck on a beach in Hawaii and gardened and improved the land wherever he lived. Luvell, who died in 2014, was featured in a PBS documentary done with a cell phone. Watch the trailer HERE. 

12. “I am enjoying being an old man and I wonder why I didn’t get here sooner. There are benefits to being 79 that I would’ve appreciated in my late thirties. I look at the stories on the front page of the paper and I think, “Not My Problem” and the latest NMP is the shortage of goods due to shipping backlogs, freighters lined up for miles waiting to unload, docks piled high with containers, factory production slowed due to lack of parts coming from China, building projects halted, dire situations, workers idle, confusion, dismay — and here we sit, Madame and I, with the opposite problem, too much stuff, need to give it away.” Garrison Keillor

13. A good dress is like a bathrobe.

___________Thirteen Thursday