Loose Leaf Notes

1. Here I am, a speck dancing near the stage with a giant rubber ducky at Saturday’s Floyd American Fest. Video HERE. Story coming soon…

2. My friend Alan (founder of the Americana Fest) performed an original song called “If God was a Spider and I was a Flea.” So now, whenever I see a spider, I say ‘if God was a spider…’

3. Duck Pond Pondering HERE.

4. Everything wasn’t so ducky a couple of weeks ago when I got a new computer, a new Window 11 operating system, a new Outlook email account and Adobe photoshop.  It’s been very disorientating.

5. Odd duck or lucky duck?

6. According to the Brittanica dictionary ‘that’s ducky’ means very pleasing and delightful but is often used ironically to describe something that is bad or unpleasant.

7. Happiness is what you make it / An easy fix that’s worth it / It’s a promise you can’t keep / that’s closer than you think.

8. Pope Leo recently quoted historian/philosopher Hannah Arendt: “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist.”

9. Find My Phone: I didn’t want to give up my landline because I lose my iPhone so often and can call the number on my landline to find it. Today I found an app on my desktop computer that can find my iPhone by making it beep.

10. I haven’t written poetry in a while. I wish there was a “Find My Poem” app.

11. “Stanford Scientists Successfully Reverse Autism Symptoms in Mice: Researchers at Stanford Medicine studying the neurological basis of autism spectrum disorder have found that excessive activity in a particular brain region may be responsible for driving behaviors commonly linked to the condition. Overactivity in the reticular thalamic nucleus was shown to cause autism-like behaviors in mice. Drugs that reduce this activity reversed the symptoms.” – More HERE. 

12. I’ve been learning about the health benefits of Hydrogen tablets in non-plastic bottled water, mostly promoted via short videos by Dr. Gundry, but rather than learning more, I got lost in looking at Dr. Gundry’s eyeglasses. He wears a different (mostly flamboyant) pair in every video. HERE’S one.

13. Happiness: It’s a lucky bet / A moon and star / that rises and sets / It’s a genie’s wish / with the best intentions / A trade-off or pay-off / A wealth to spread.  Read The Enticement in its entirety HERE.

_____________Thirteen Thursday