Loose Leaf Notes

1. “This is a wonderful day. I’ve never seen this one before.” Maya Angelou

2. This is the time of year when the leaves leave. The wind sings them down / Like a flight of dying monarchs / They drum to the ground / In a color guard parade.

3. A Pun: Please “Leave” the Light On” HERE. 

4. Check out THIS Stick library at the dog park.

5. What a dog sees as a stick, I see as kindling.

6. Say what you will, but Taylor Swift knows how to write a song. Her new expanded version of her song All To Well, performed on Saturday Night Live, is a refreshing and touching artistic accomplishment after a year of songs like WAP and Eat It. Watch HERE.

7. Facebook isn’t all bad: I lost my favorite winter hat – it’s purple and covers my ears – at the Veterans Day Parade that I was covering for the Floyd Press on Sunday.  I discovered it was gone when I went out in the next morning to take pictures of leaves lit by the sun and so, posted on our Floyd Facebook Group asking if anyone found my hat. I immediately heard from a woman who said, “I just saw a purple knit hat on the sidewalk next to the Skyline Bank parking lot on Main St.” I hopped in my car, rode to town and got my hat back!

8. Our House is on Fire: “The last Good War was won by boys who rushed to sign up, after seeing newsreels of sunken battleships in Hawaii. My hero Bob Altman was 16 and lied about his age to get into the Army Air Force and pilot a B-17 bomber in the Pacific. The children marching in Glasgow are capable of heroism, but they’ve put their faith in the conscience of politicians, not a good bet. One of the two major American political parties is in denial that global warming exists because it is devoted to an illiterate leader. That party appears likely to take over Congress in 2022 and two years later No. 45 may well become No. 47. If he does, we may have a constitutional convention at which the presidency is made a lifetime term. Meanwhile, we have a Supreme Court with a solid majority of Ayn Rand justices who deny that the state has the right to govern individual behavior. Gun control will be dead, conservation will be an individual responsibility. I don’t see that bunch leading the country toward clean energy. So we’ll go on enduring wildfires and horrific hurricanes and drought and the melting of the arctic ice cap and nothing will change. We’re living in a tunnel and a train is approaching. Mr. Bezos and Mr. Musk can move to the moon but the rest of us are earthlings.” – Garrison Keillor.

9. Can you believe we met a guy from Bristol named Ezekiel who went to school with our Floyd friend Ezekiel and who was wearing a Morgan Wade T-shirt! More HERE. 

10. Our bodies are like maps / on dog-eared pages / marked by old haunts / across sun freckled flesh / Stretched with furrowed plots / down travel-logged paths / where bones bend like branches / under the weight of fruitful days… Read You Are Here in its entirety HERE. 

11. I have a TEAPOET blog category with titles like Tea for Three, A Tea Tease, A Hip Sip, That’s My Cup of Tea, Parlez at the Parlor, Cream Pours Like Snow Falls and more HERE.

12. And a whole chapbook for serving up savory haiku and sips of poetic brew HERE.

13. THIS unique natural Christmas tree in Iceland is something to see.

____________Thirteen Thursday