Loose Leaf Notes

1. A Winning Love: We are like two sides / of the same coin / Heads or tails / We both win.

2. I asked Joe what song with the word ‘love” in the title comes to his mind first.  He answered, “Love Me Do,” by the Beatles.  Mine was “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” and the answer is “everything.”

3. We mostly read to ourselves, those from the Artemis Journal table at the Taubman Museum for Roanoke Arts Pop! But we met other poets, and for Katherine and I, it was another notch in our Grief and Relief: The Soulful Aging Reading Tour, which lately I’ve been calling the “Still Acting Our Age Tour.” More HERE. 

4. Well, I’ve always called it Round Ball, but whatever the name, it seems to be everyone’s favorite. Two 1/2 hours of non-stop dancing. Here are some Floyd family pictures – More from Donna the Buffalo: Family Picture in Floyd HERE.

5. Thoughts reverberate / Mind is a bell / I look to hold the clapper  / to match my breath with the mantra / Sometimes I play dead / toss and turn the other cheek / where the grass is greener / and the sheep have been counted … More HERE.

6. I posted the poem Insomnia on Facebook and commented that I had read it to Joe in bed and he was asleep by the end of it.

7. It’s understandable that after just finishing the Handmaids Tale series, this installation (Silent Chorus) at the Taubman Museum sent a chill up my spine.

8. “Mostly I write at home so I can read my stuff aloud to my wife who’s reading about Putin’s criminal aggression against Ukraine. If I can make her laugh, when she has him on her mind, then I know it’s good. (Does Vlad know that “poot” is an American child’s word for farting? Does it mean the same in Russian? And why is it the middle syllable of “computer”?) But I digress…  I set aside my memoir, This Strange Persistent Pain In My Lower Back, and I put the poot in Putin and this amused her.”  Garrison Keillor

9. A trial run for a long walk coming soon on an Appalachian Trail near you.

10. Gang or bang?

11. Glaze or gaze?

12. Something you don’t gotta love: The word ‘gas’ is now spelled like this: ‘ga$.’

13. “My Ukrainian friend Peter Ostroushko didn’t live to see this moment of history, but I think of him often, and if you have a few minutes you could Google Pete playing “Heart of the Heartland” on YouTube and think of Russian tanks closing in on that mandolin player, and it will break your heart in two. As for the other stuff, history, culture, politics, economics, you’ll have to ask someone else.” Garrison Keillor

_________Thirteen Thursday