Loose Leaf Notes

1. I got quoted on Facebook on a reader’s page: Trump is now saying that inflation is not a big deal and that the biggest concern among Americans is “people coming in from mental institutions.” I think he doesn’t know what the term “asylum seeker” means.

2. YOU DON’T HAVE TO GO THROUGH THE WARDROBE FOR A SNEAK PEEK OF NARNIA – You can immerse yourself in the magical fantasy world of Narnia at the June Bug Center’s black box theater…  I read the C.S. Lewis classic The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and all the Narnia books out loud to my sons when they were little, and we actually have a lamppost that looks like the one where Lucy met Tumnus the fawn in our yard, purposely bought and placed there to infuse our property with a bit of magic. – More from last week’s New River Theatre Guild performance HERE. More performances are set for this week at The June Bug Center

3. That’s Aslan and Peter in the first picture. I don’t remember what they’re looking at.

4. I Have No Enemies / Except for the dang squirrel / who drives away the finches / steals from the cardinals / and blocks the titmouses / I’m watching the robber / the same time our (supposed) leader / steals our country before our eyes… Read the entirety of my poem I Have No Enemies HERE. 

5. Is Trump’s latest grift to enrich himself with cryptocurrency (after trashing it in 2019) making America Great when unregulated crypto assets can facilitate unlawful behavior. Who needs money laundering? Who wants to buy an election? Trump did so by promising the billionaires big tax cuts, and they all gave him millions and were front and center at his inauguration. But I bet Billionaire Mark Cuban wasn’t there. Cuban says about Trump and Melania’s meme coins, “I’m a crypto fan. This is not crypto any more than Bernie Madoff was just buying and selling shares of stock…” Read my commentary Making America Great? (which the Facebook meme above excerpt came from) in its entirety HERE.

6. My sister Sherry just commented on Trump’s first week in office, “I now use emojis more than ever because I’m speechless.”

7. This is me blowing my friend Sudha, who is in California, a kiss, taken by a mutual friend.

8. “America’s love affair with confident stupidity has reached awful new heights” -Alternet Headline

9. The word “ice” is in “police.”

10. Put a “Do Not Disturb” sign / over the forest / Hang an “Out of Order” sign / on the White House door / Proceed with caution / Yield to your conscience / Handle the whole world / with care

11. The above poem, written for the New Year 2004 when George W. Bush was in office. It was a featured “Poem of the Day” at Poets Against the War online that same year.

12. “…Is death one of those adventures from which I can’t emerge as myself? The sister whose hand I am clutching in a picture is dead. I wonder every day whether she still exists… A person whom one has loved seems altogether too significant a thing to simply vanish altogether from the world. A person whom one loves is a world, just as one knows oneself to be a world. How can worlds like these simply cease altogether? But if my sister does exist, then what is she, and what makes that thing that she now is identical with the beautiful girl laughing at her little sister on that forgotten day? Can she remember that summer’s day while I cannot?  Rebecca Goldstein considers the perplexity of personal identity, The Marginalian

13. “What you see reflects your thinking, and your thinking but reflects the choice of what you want to see.” Course in Miracles

_______Thirteen Thursday