13: Give it a Whirl or a Mardi Gras Twirl
1. I went to cover an Author’s Talk at the library for a book titled The Black Belt. When I told Joe where I was going, he thought I was going to a martial arts event.
2. The term Black Belt is used the same way as the Bible Belt. It refers to concentrations of where Black people live. More at Floyd Times HERE.
3. So, I looked up Black Belt on Amazon to see if the book was for sale there, but all that came up (before I added the author’s name) was black belts for men to hold their pants up.
4. Yes, I went to a Mardi Gras party at Dogtown on Friday.
5. Writing Roulette: I spin the alphabet wheel / hoping to land the right letters / the ones I can add to the others I have / for a winning combination
6. If I’m lucky I’ll score a whole verse / in an unbeatable streak of right words / for the pay-off prize preferred by poets / the rave reviews of critics
7. I love how whirl rhymes with twirl.
8. One of these things is not like the other. I actually went out like that.
9. It looks like Joe and my friend Shirleyann are trying to hold me down to keep me from scaring children.
10. Sometimes I shake the camera on purpose.
11. Give it a whirl at Floydfest HERE.
12. “When did putting a lampshade on your head become a universal symbol of drunkenness? Probably in the 1910s or 1920s. While it’s impossible to pinpoint the first instance of a man donning a lampshade at a party, the image most likely came out of vaudeville and was popularized in early silent films. In The Adventurer(1917), Charlie Chaplin plays a rich yachtsman who, pursued by the police, puts a lampshade over his head and stands still as the cops pass by. While that example is more about disguise than inebriation, the lampshade on the head had become a drunk gag by 1928, when the Baltimore Evening Sun ran a satirical piece called “The Life of the Party”: “It is usually customary for the life of the party about the middle of the evening to put a lampshade on his head and give an impersonation of [Scottish soprano] Mary Garden, after which he tells a joke that is not meant for mixed company.” A history of tipsy tomfoolery, Slate
13. “I don’t think the robots are taking over. I think the men who play with toys have taken over. And if we don’t take the toys out of their hands, we’re fools.” – Ray Bradbury, author of science fiction
__________Thirteen Thursday
February 25th, 2026 5:34 pm
#8: I could see me doing that. Those both feel the same, and the color is so close… In a room with low light, it would be easy to pair them wrong.
#13: Yeah, very prescient. Just substitute in AI, and you’d think he wrote that today.
February 26th, 2026 9:03 am
I kind of thought the same thing as Joe, but when I saw the picture and the title “Give it a whirl” I knew it was something else – you give us such nice history lessons, along with a fun photo shoot of your FUN, & a Thought provoking TT/ Blog – 13 really is telltale one!
PS I laughed when I saw 8!
February 26th, 2026 9:49 am
The TT is a practice and like a journal entry of each week to document and tie up loose ends. A compilation that I never know where it will go when I begin, which usually starts with a photo I took. I’ve been doing it for almost 20 years now with over 1,000 entries. https://looseleafnotes.com/category/thirteen-thursdays/
February 26th, 2026 6:10 pm
I love #13.