Loose Leaf Notes

1. Joe’s Appalachian Trail name became “Overflow Joe,” largely due to his enthusiastic personality, but he also frequently packed away food for later, which led to another version of the name: Leftoverflow Joe.

2. Funny how the word “gas” is in “gastroenterology.”

3. AT trail or AT trial?

4. I recently went on a low Fodmat (fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides and polyols) diet because of a gastrointestinal issue, and think I might the only person on this diet more upset about not being able to eat onions than I am about giving up ice cream.

5. I’m also upset that there is no best rock category at the Grammys anymore other than a backstage award, which always seems to be the Foo Fighters.

6. “The American Psychiatric Association recently updated its bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. For the first time, this highly consequential guide categorized grief as a disorder when it is “prolonged” beyond one year. One year? If grief is the corollary to love, if grief is love, why set expectations on its pace or texture? Why pathologize love?” – More HERE. 

7. I agreed to go steady / but then didn’t know how to say / ‘I like you but not like that’ / I want to be friends with poetry / I want to find the right one / But some poetry is already spoken for / and sometimes poetry breaks up with me – Read The Break-up in its entirety HERE.

8. I’m an open book with some pages tore out.

9. “But it’s all right now, in fact, it’s a gas.” Rolling Stones

10. Will Smith’s Slap Is a Trauma Response – What we witnessed Will Smith do in assaulting Chris Rock during the Academy Awards ceremony was a trauma response. While I am in no way condoning violence, this is a very public and important opportunity for us to understand what a trauma response can look like. When this happens, the person experiencing this re-activation is split-second processing (on a subconscious or unconscious level) the current event through the filter of that past trauma. This means that that person is, for all meaningful purposes, experiencing things as if they are right back in that previous circumstance of trauma. As a result, they are reacting (taking action)—emotionally, physically, and/or verbally—from that place of trauma. Those past traumas can be diverse and range from: Witnessing a parent being physically or verbally abused during your childhood. You, yourself, experiencing physical, sexual, or verbal abuse in your childhood or adulthood… etc. More HERE. 

11. “It is Lent, when we contemplate God’s great goodness to us and our own unworthiness. The Republicans contemplate the unworthiness of the Democrats, and we contemplate theirs. I have plenty of my own unworthiness to consider but when my wife puts her arms around me I think I must not be all bad. The other day she looked at me and said, “Your hair is trying to do something it really shouldn’t try to do” and that’s about as harsh as she gets.” Garrison Keillor

12. “Our musicians wear body armor instead of tuxedos. They sing to the wounded. In hospitals.” -Zelensky’s Grammy speech via zoom

13. Consider this:  Everything we do is creating a record whether on paper or not.  Are we happy with the story we’re making?  Will we like how it ends?  Will we go back and make the corrections to get the story we really want?

___________Thirteen Thursday