Loose Leaf Notes

1. I think we were waiting for our sushi order when I pulled out this spinner to play. I like to keep at least one toy in my pocketbook. For some reason it makes me feel prepared.

2. In THIS earlier Thirteen Thursday Go-Around, I wrote that “toys are my click bait.”

3. When at a loss for what to do, I look at clouds slowly move.

4. Will THIS go viral, she asks?

5. “A study of hundreds of older people found two key brain functions get better from our 50s onwards. They include attending to new information and focusing on what’s important in a given situation. They underlie memory, decision making and self-control, and are even vital in navigation, maths, language and reading. “These results are amazing, and have important consequences for how we should view aging,” says senior investigator Michael Ullman, PhD, a professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Georgetown University and director of its Brain and Language Lab.” More HERE.

6. “Change is a powerful tonic. My Uber driver has a GPS device with a woman’s voice telling him precisely how to take me to JFK to catch a flight. Years ago, the old cabbies Gus and Butch and Spike were proud of their knowledge of the city and now the GPS device opens up the game to newcomers, immigrants, Muhammad and Rafael and Aisha and Eliana. It’s an amazing invention, the inflexion of the woman’s voice is so natural, not robotic. If engineers can develop a device programmed to navigate the streets of New York, then surely they can create a reliable electronic lawyer, and when they do, we’re on the way to reducing the cost of government by 50 or 75 percent. If programmers can’t design a more capable U.S. senator than Ted Cruz, then my name is Kyrsten Sinema.” -Garrison Keillor

7. Committee. Double m, double t, double e, or all of the above?

8. Semantic satiation:  a psychological phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener, who then perceives the speech as repeated meaningless sounds.

9. The Spin Doctor is in.

10. I wish my vertigo would go.

11. The ‘Earth Poetica’ installation turns environmental waste into art – ‘We are suffocating Earth’ says artist Beverly Barkat whose latest work captures the world’s plastic pollution crisis.   A must see HERE.

12. I Plead the 5th: Making a poem / is like looking for an opening / then picking at a splinter / you don’t know how you got / It’s like telling a secret / without naming names / like saving a life / you know is worth living

13. The moon is a bow waiting for an arrow.

____________Thirteen Thursday