Loose Leaf Notes

1. Over the weekend, Joe went camping with a group of inner city kids, and I went to the Taubman Museum to see an immersion art installation. That says a lot about us.

2. The Taubman show exhibit I saw was the work of Caledonia Curry, aka Swoon, a street artist and contemporary of Banksy.

3. Up in smoke?

4. The other thing we did this past weekend is tour the site of the Tuggles Gap mountain wildfire which was deemed a state of emergency by the governor and that was about 2 miles from our house.  We ran into a local forester who explained that the fire was no longer a danger. It had been contained by controlled back burning after digging a fire line road around the fire so as to not give it anything to catch on to. Thanks to the teams from several counties and other states, they didn’t lose any structures.

5. I finally understood the term ‘fight fire with fire.’

6. Magic or miracles? Fairy tales or bibles?

7. The past is an alibi. The future is booked. The present is constant and destiny is the destination.

8. Every rule is excused by some exception and nothing happens without a little friction.

9. “Robert Thurman said that, if we truly understood interdependence, we’d be more afraid of hating than dying. Because hatred travels further than the scope of an individual life. It runs through us like a shock-wave, and if we vibrate along with it, we become it and add our life-force to all kinds of suffering, for generations to come. The vibration of hatred doesn’t care whether you think you’re the oppressor or the oppressed. “Justice” means nothing to it. Once you’re caught in its tremor, you become part of what divides people, blocks empathy, steals hope. This is why the Buddha said we have to make our minds like broken bells, not resonating with the madness around us…” Paul Weinfield

10. “…These days, I’ve really been living in my home. Day after day, I experience all the comforts of home, and more and more, I feel the need to go out less and less. Sometimes even a walk down our long driveway to get the mail can be put off for another day… In a world that tends to define identity by what we do, I’m paring down to my essence. There’s nothing to distract me from the work of being me, allowing the changes, reviewing the sweet nostalgias and exploring the impact of how past traumas have shaped me. It’s work that feels like a luxury… More HERE. 

11.  You said, “Bye honey / I love you” three times / But couldn’t manage / to hang up the phone / “It’s okay / Just pretend I’m sitting / in the chair by the window / You can forget I’m here / and take a nap” – Excerpt from I Put You on Speaker Phone Listen below.

12.  I recorded the Oh Hellos doing Hello My Old Heart at Floydfest 2015 HERE.

13. It’s for you.  

________ Thirteen Thursday