Loose Leaf Notes

1. I was running late for an appointment and texted to say, Sorry I’m running late. I was out in the garden squishing the Japanese Beetles that were on my green beans.

2. Colleen to Joe who uses ChatGPT while I still google: Why don’t you ask ChatGPT if this is a good day to go to the movies. Should we go to the movies?

3. We went, and we saw The Odyssey, the fantastical epic story composed by the poet Homer over 2,000 years ago that “offers a profound post-war commentary that explores the heavy human costs of the Trojan War, focusing on trauma, displacement, and the difficult transition from soldier to civilian.” – Via Movie files

4. Where’s Waldo of Floydfest? So often when I take photos at Floydfest and then upload them onto my computer, I notice people I know in the crowds that I didn’t know were there when I snapped the shot. Yeah, so I know that unicorn.

5. Life in the Rural Fast Lane was a WVTF radio essay I read on the Public Radio in 2005 that began like this: I live in a one stoplight town. I get my honey from the woman who works the front desk at the Community Action Center and my fresh eggs from the Gralla-Shwartz family. Some of the egg shells are actually light green and the cartons have feathers and pieces of hay in them. I also grow a lot of my own food and my husband stocks the freezer with wild venison. Last year my potato crop was so prolific that I’m still eating them in now, in April. My water is from a well. It’s pure and tastes good. I can’t hear any traffic. Because I have no visible neighbors, I can weed my garden topless or sunbathe naked on a lounge chair – one of my top criteria for Paradise.

6. After posting that essay on this blog in 2005, a friend humorously asked where the accompanying photo was (in reference to the line where I say that because I have no visible neighbors, I can garden topless if I want to).

7. Later it appeared in the program for an early Floydfest. The graphic artist’s rendering that went with the piece also zeroed in on that line, causing me to be affectionately nicknamed “the naked gardening lady” by some at the festival that year.

9. Homer was the Shakespeare of his time.

10. This is the way we roll… away the dew -More HERE.

11. Said to be composed 750 and 650 B.C., Homer composed The Odyssey orally as part of a long-standing tradition of bardic poetry rather than writing it down. Oral poems were performed at festivals and changed and added to over time like old time lyrics. Eventually The Odyssey was transcribed into written Greek text, likely around the 8th or 7th century BCE, when the Greek alphabet was adopted.

12. Do you know any of these Waldos?

13. The Life in the Rural Fast Lane picture HERE.

__________Thirteen Thursday