Loose Leaf Notes

1. There were more or less three Grateful Dead parties for Jerry Garcia’s birthday over the weekend. There were also gully washes all over the county, so we only made it to one.  Leonard Blush and the Camelcals (aka as John McBroom and friends) played some Dead tunes at Dogtown.

2. I found out, because I’m curious and I asked, that Leonard Blush was a local singer celebrity on the old TV show Mayberry R.F.D.  Known as The Masked Singer because of a skin condition, he had a radio show and sang the National Anthem at the opening of the County Insecticide Convention.

3. The noun “love-light” emerged in the 1830s, with its earliest documented use in 1833 according to the Oxford English Dictionary. It signifies the brightness or radiance in someone’s eyes that expresses love or affection. OED’s earliest evidence for love-light is from 1833, in the song She is not Fair by H. Coleridge… But now her looks are coy and cold; To mine they ne’er reply; And yet I cease not to behold, The love-light in her eye…

4. “Joanna Macy, (an American environmental activist, author, and scholar of Buddhism) has passed away. And the world feels, somehow, more alive. Even her death arrived like a teacher: quiet, conscious, without resistance. A final gift from a life that never stopped giving. She moved from hospital to hospice a few weeks ago with clear eyes, as if turning the last page of a beloved book, already knowing the story does not end there. Those of us who called her teacher, those whose lives were rearranged by the Spiral of the Work That Reconnects, feel no rupture today – perhaps, only a widening. She has not vanished. She has become everywhere.” Rukmini Iyer

5. Favorite spoken word poet Andrea Gibson also recently died (8/13/75 – 7/14/25) “Why did no one tell us that to die is to be reincarnated in those we love while they are still alive? …In my back pocket is a love note with every word you wish you’d said. At night I sit ecstatic at the loom weaving forgiveness into our worldly regrets. All day I listen to the radio of your memories. Yes, I know every secret you thought too dark to tell me, and love you more for everything you feared might make me love you less. When you cry I guide your tears toward the garden of kisses I once planted on your cheek, so you know they are all perennials. Forgive me, for not being able to weep with you. One day you will understand. One day you will know why I read the poetry of your grief to those waiting to be born, and they are all the more excited…”

6. This is one of my favorite Gibson poems: Wellness Check: In any moment / on any given day / I can measure / my wellness / by this question: / is my attention on loving / or is my attention on / who isn’t loving me – Andrea Gibson

7. Did this happen on purpose? Is it an example of poetic license? Two rooster vendors side by side. Check out my story on this year’s Floydfest in the Floyd Press HERE. 

8. You can see the exact moment that I lost at Musical Chairs in this Old Church Gallery clip made by my friend Kathleen below.

9. On Monday one of my back teeth broke. Not the one unhealthy one that I was told to expect wouldn’t last, but the one next to it. Soon the bad one, with nothing to hold it in place will likely come out, reminding me of my brothers Jim and Dan who both died a few weeks apart. Jim wasn’t sick but died unexpectedly first. Dan who was sick soon followed.  You can read my book The Jim and Dan Stories HERE.

10. We all turned to strangers to tell them we loved them during the Original Wailers set at Floydfest. We were directed to do so by the lead singer, who gave us such a strong message of love.  Does anyone know how to rotate THIS video?

 

11. “It is less about music being scientific and more about the universe being musical.” -Stephon Alexander

12. Now the light fades out / like the end of a life / and I’m sad even in summer / in bare feet with fireflies / that twinkle like stars / trying to jump their way / back to heaven – Read my poem Lights Out in its entirety HERE. 

13. “It’s not dark yet, but it’s gettin’ there.” Bob Dylan

___________Thirteen Thursday