Loose Leaf Notes

1. That title above is a joke. The real title should be “The ‘It’s 30 Degrees Outside’ AT Trial Run.”

2. My friend Katherine and I are planning a poetry book reading tour in the new year. We were going to call it “The Death Card Tour” but figured we should work up to that. Now we’re thinking it could be “The Acting Our Age” Tour.

3. If we were the Indigo Girls, Katherine would be Emily and I’d be Amy.

4. “I will be retired one day….my last breath will be the clue.” -Katherine

5. “Lately I’ve been thinking of death as like moving to a retirement home.” Colleen

6. The sky is turning / Feels like the glass might break / Like something’s changing / Tearing down the barricade…  Drew Holcomb, the musician I discovered from listening to Clay Blevins perform at Buffalo Brewery on Saturday. -More HERE.

7. “We now live in a fast-moving, fully lit world where night still happens, but is optional to experience. Our 24/7 culture has phased out the night. In fact, we treat the night like failed daylight. Yet slowness and silence – the different rhythm of the night – are a necessary correction to the day… Night and dark are good for us. As the nights lengthen, it’s time to reopen the dreaming space. Have you ever spent an evening without electric light?”  More HERE. 

8. Depth Psychologists: We dig and hit pay dirt / A vein that shines when polished / that runs through the gray of granite / A soul’s inheritance / Awakened subconscious

9. “It’s important to pay attention to our bodies. We usually try to ignore cues because we live in a culture where success means conquering bodily and emotional experiences instead of listening to them – but the feelings never really go away, no matter how we try to cover them. If we were cold, we would spend the whole interview wishing to be somewhere else.” Tara Brach, meditation teacher/author

10. Floyd’s own –  Morgan Wade’s album reckless was listed as best Country Americana album of 2021 by Rolling Stone magazine: Wade’s brand of twangy, rangy, ringing rock used to attract labels like “alt-country.” But mainstream Nashville moved to scoop the singer up not long after she released Reckless — Wade inked a major-label deal with Arista earlier this year. Wade is so deft at conjuring the head-over-heels feeling of plunging into a relationship and the subsequent heartbreak that she sometimes seems to be pinpointing the exact moment where one blurs into the other. “Wilder Days,” sturdy and driving, has become the most popular track on Reckless, but stay for the follow-up, “Matches and Metaphors,” which is full of blunt, bleary-eyed come-ons and exquisite failures of communication. “I’m not gonna tell you how I feel,” Wade decides at one point. “It’s overrated, but damn, it’s real.” —E.L.

11. I’m a little math dyslexic, aka having dyscalculia, and the news about Morgan, born and raised here in Floyd County, was so unbelievable that I had to question it with: #1 is the best right, even though it’s the last listed, like a countdown?  And yes, it’s true. Morgan’s album is the best.

12. A friend asked me to come out dancing Wednesday night. I said, “It’s a long shot, but I’ll give it a shot.

13. It was unlikely I would find any Christmas ornaments that would meet my homemade country style standard in the dollar store, but as a thrift shopper, I know that good finds can be gotten anywhere, and I had some time to kill.  So, I went in to browse and was soon stopped in my tracks.  The row of boxed glass ornaments that caught my eye wasn’t anything special, except for the fact that my image was broadcast repeatedly in them, like a row of department store TV’s all playing the same movie. I ended up getting a Santa hat, but only because it was purple. –Blog post from 2013 

______________Thirteen Thursday