Loose Leaf Notes

1. This is the garden party where I shouted Mary Poppin, as in asking my friend Mary (3rd from right) to pop her head into the frame.

2. I spent Friday evening with this stand-up crowd (wait for it).

3. Another stand-up standing room only, standing ovation sing-along.

4. VA 9th District Candidate Karen Baker is the best chance we have had for unseating the Congressman in our district, Morgan Griffith, who’s been in Congress since 2010. Griffith was one of the Republicans who would not certify Biden’s election win and who praised Trump for his exchange with Putin in Helsinki when he sided with Putin over our own U.S. officials.

5. We lost a local icon, an artist, activist, musician/songwriter, theater performer and educator last week. Elizabeth McCommon brought copies of my book The Jim and Dan Stories to her book club. She came to a poetry reading I read at, and I saw two of her original play performances.  Once, way back in the day when I worked at a Blacksburg shop, she came in and mentioned that she was working on a song titled ‘Where Has All the Foreskin Gone.’ Years later when I asked her if she ever finished it, she didn’t remember anything about it.  Read her obituary HERE. 

6. A friend recently asked if I want to join a political online group supporting Kamala Harris for president. I said, I’m not much of a zoomer, just a boomer.

7. What are the chances of hanging out with a 7-year-old named Pearl while I’m playing Scrabble with her grandmother and Pearl gets cold so I give her a T-shirt to put on that I have in my bag and the T-shirt has the word Pearl on it?

8. I had a dream that I was organizing two scrabble games in two different room with too many people and I had to make the Scrabble letters from scratch from clay or dough.

9. HERE is a song I wrote for Pearl when she was born, sung by her mother Amy.

10. Here is the basket that carried the coleslaw I made to take to the Sunday garden party and then forgot to put it out. We’re still eating it.

11. Jerry Garcia – August 1, 1942 – August 9, 1995 – When Jerry Garcia stood on the moon / alone and blue / at the Atlanta Omni in 1995 / his guitar defied gravity / his voice waved goodbye / I took the ride / in stunned silence / and saw what he saw / We watched our planet rolling by / We heard the children cry / and I knew he wouldn’t come back down – Read The Last Time I Saw Jerry in its entirety HERE. 

12. Can you believe I found the actual show and the actual song on the actual date that I heard it. It’s not the best rendition because Jerry is struggling. He died four months later.

13. “Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art. ” Elenore Roosevelt

_______Thirteen Thursday