Loose Leaf Notes

1. I call the below Wavy Gravy.

2. And below is Nantasket Beach from the Nantasket Beach Resort Penthouse.

3. When I stayed with my sister in Massachusetts we swam in her community pool. One day we went and it was closed, so we went into the community rec room to ask about it. A guy who was happily playing pool told us ‘this pool is open.’

4. So we went to my brother Joey’s pool ten minutes away.

5. At the Temple of Sacred Mirrors visionary art museum in the Hudson Valley NY, where we stopped on our way to Massachusetts, I took this picture and told Joe I liked it, saying “It’s called ‘Window in the Door.’

6. After noting that the Temple was in Willkill near Platterkill, I looked up why there were so many places with kill in their names and discovered that ‘kill’ is a term that comes from the Middle Dutch word “kille,” meaning “riverbed” or “water channel,” and is found in areas with heavy Dutch influence like the Hudson and Delaware Valleys.

7. It was a joyful reunion of first cousins-once-removed that we never knew we had, until DNA results at Ancestry dot com revealed our mutual history. The meet-up was a lively one with several conversations going on at once. Someone joked to the waitress that it was a board meeting, and I imagine we were entertaining to the other diners there on a golf tournament day. We compared notes and resemblances and told WWII stories…  More from Finding Your Roots: The Redman Version HERE.

8. After our stay in Massachusetts and in my hometown of Hull, we headed to D.C. to visit friends and for a Sarah Mclachlan concert. We took I-95, the route that I lost 5 years of my life on when I had to drive it years ago, which was part of the reason I stopped driving non-locally.

9. I laid low and shook a leg / I took a detour and started over /When I hit a nerve in a dizzy spin / I said, “No one will ever / take my car keys away / I’ll gladly turn them in” – Read The Curve Ball in its entirety HERE.

10. Anyone that knows me knows why I posted this picture on Facebook. You can’t get whole belly fried clams in Virginia or anywhere in the South. It got over 100 likes and comments, so far.

11. A-Street Pier, right near where our family home used to be, is the best place to see the sunset.

12. My brother Joey and I where the only ones who followed the instructions for an ugly face shoot at our dinner together in Hull.

13. Standing on the moon / With nothing else to do / A lovely view of heaven / But I’d rather be with you… I just added THIS song to my final playlist. I saw Jerry Garcia play it a few months before he died.

___________Thirteen Thursday