Loose Leaf Notes

1. Well… My friend Erika described Trump as an archetype, America’s Shadow. I responded that I sometimes see our story as myth, and we are all on the hero’s journey where there is always going to be monster giants around the corner, as well as magical amulets and potions with good power to be gifted with. I like to remember the growing with the dying, like our gardens and what natures teaches us, and that they exist at the same time.

2. I had hoped to post on Facebook Wednesday morning: Marked safe from a Trump presidency. Instead I wrote poem, After the Election 2024.

3. The bombs are silent / They blow up inside my body / They burn down my trust / in what makes sense / drop destruction on my faith / in honest reality

4. I look for a place to hide / and worry about the people I love / One friend bought can goods / Another thought of suicide

5. My hands shake / as I call in sick / as I pray for a savior / and wonder how to live  / in a bomb shelter

6. Will the smoke clear / before the next violation / before another detonation / on what is fair and good?

7. Could have been honey. Instead we got stung.

8. I wrote in my journal: ‘Will there be birds? Can we go where there’s flowers?’ when, strangely for November, a group of various birds, camouflaged with the gray/brown background, landed on the tree outside my window and started to plaintively call.

9. My husband Joe Klein’s new therapy practice Be Well Now’s mission is to promote well-being in Floyd and other communities of Appalachia by providing psychotherapy, professional development workshops and restorative retreats that foster connection and belonging.  Check out the webpage HERE.

10. “Truth and love have been smacked down, so many more times in history before today. Truth, because it’s often inconvenient, and love because it is vulnerable.  But truth is like gravity, and carbon, and the sun behind an eclipse: it’s still there. And love stays alive if you tend it like a flame. If you feel crushed by unkindness today, it’s a time for grieving, reaching out to loved ones, noticing one bright color somewhere in the day. Remembering what there is to love. Starting with the immediate, the place and people we can tend ourselves, and make safe. We can’t save everything all at once, but it’s still worth saving something. Because there are so many of us to do it.  And we are all still here today, exactly as we were yesterday. Like gravity, and carbon, and the sun behind an eclipse.” Barbara Kingsolver

11. Floyd was abuzz with activity during Floyd Americana Fest, an annual grassroots festival that celebrates local music, art and community. See HERE.

12. “The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything and everything we can save is worth saving.” Rebecca Solnit

13. “Trump’s reckless venality is a reason for hope. Trump has the soul of a fascist but the mind of a disordered child. He will likely be surrounded by terrible but incompetent people. All of them can be beaten: in court, in Congress, in statehouses around the nation, and in the public arena. America is a federal republic, and the states—at least those in the union that will still care about democracy—have ways to protect their citizens from a rogue president. Nothing is inevitable, and democracy will not fall overnight…” Tom Nichols, The Atlantic

__________Thirteen Thursday