Loose Leaf Notes

Ink traps
and false starts
trip ups
and set backs
no roadblocks
or look ups
no epics
or opus

I’m looking for
a crossword
to fit an empty space
A piece to solve a puzzle
A new clue to follow

I’m looking for new focus
Some good luck
A power-up
A brainstorm to build on
A combination to unlock

I’ m searching for the next step
A sign to point the way
A word play
A game change
A poem to hold my place

________Colleen Redman / Poets and Storytellers United  / dVerse Poets Pub

1. Driving down to Roanoke in the rainy fog this weekend, the Bradford Pear trees in bloom looked like February snow.

2. THIS is what I did in Roanoke.

3. My favorite birdsong is wood thrush and cat bird. Click HERE to hear your favorite birdsong.

4. “I wouldn’t be surprised if poetry—poetry in the broadest sense, in the sense of a world filled with metaphor, rhyme, and recurring patterns, shapes, and designs—is how the world works. The world isn’t logical, it’s a song.” -David Byrne

5. Poetry Séance: Don’t give up the ghost / Just lower the lights / Invite poetry to visit / like a voice from the distance / Wait for the right words to rise…

6. The Pale Blue Dot- By: Carl Sagan – “We succeeded in taking that picture from deep space, and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam…

7. “…Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity — in all this vastness — there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It’s been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

8. LOVE at the Christiansburg Aquatic Center.

9. LOVE mural in downtown Floyd

10. I call this picture “Love at First Stripe.”

11. For a long time when Joe and I first got together I couldn’t say “I love you” because it sounded so perfunctory, but I did say, “I am so loving you.”

12. I love that I got a 7-word bingo on my first Scrabble play this week.  The word was “eclipse,” which reminded me that I saw the solar eclipse in August 2017 while on a boat with my sister and brother-in-law and as we were watching a boat name “Eclipse” went by. It’s also the name of one of my newest poems HERE. 

13. Have you ever noticed that LOVE, SOLVES, EVOLVE, REVOLVE, and RESOLVE are basically variations of the same word, as if there is a grand agreement that love solves and evolves us?

___________Thirteen Thursday

Reading “Eulogy in Self-portrait” at the Roanoke Library at Hollins, a poetry event with keynote speaker and reader Laura-Gray Street — author of Pigment and Fume (Salmon Poetry) and co-editor of The Ecopoetry Anthology (Trinity University Press) and A Literary Field Guide to Southern Appalachia (University of Georgia Press). Hosted by Angela Dribben, VP of Poetry Society of VA, the event was a fellowship of poets that included an open mic.  There were delicious desserts, meaningful words and so much to feel and think about. Thanks to all who participated.

Don’t give up the ghost
Just lower the lights
Invite poetry to visit
like a voice from the distance
Wait for the right words to rise

___________Colleen Redman /Poets and Storytellers United

1. Yeah, that’s about right, the thinking bubble over my head is psychedelic.

2. “Our capacity for what psychoanalyst Adam Phillips has termed “fertile solitude” is absolutely essential not only for our creativity but for the basic fabric of our happiness – without time and space unburdened from external input and social strain, we’d be unable to fully inhabit our interior life, which is the raw material of all art.”  -Mara Popova

3. Forensic probe confirms Chilean poet Pablo Neruda was poisoned to death after the Pinochet coup.

4. Field of dreams or yield for dreams?

5. Walk a mile in my unicorn shoes.

6. The outdoor tables at Zadie’s were repurposed from metal bed frames and doors salvaged from the Old Jail. You can see the bridge made famous by Amazon Prime’s sci-fi dram series, The Peripheral, which was shot partly in Marshall and includes scenes of the star riding across it on a motorbike. You can also see the railroad tracks, the old radiator fence and the French Broad River. – More from Don’t Let it Get Cold.

7. Never odd or even spelled backwards is never odd or even

8. We recently watched the first episode of The Last of Us, which is based on a video game and is about a human zombie fungus, not so different than the real-life zombie ant fungus: Sometimes an ant, marching about its business outdoors, will step on a fungal spore. It sticks to the ant’s body and slips a fungal cell inside. The fungus, called Ophiocordyceps, feeds on the ant from within and multiplies into new cells. The spores attach to the ant and germinate, spreading through the host’s body via long tendrils called mycelia. Cordyceps essentially turns its host into a zombie slave, compelling the ant to climb to the top of the nearest plant and clamp its tiny jaws in a death grip around a leaf or twig.

9. I have a second-cousin named Robert Plant.

10. Lonely or only?

11. Order or hoarder?

12. “The universe is a dream dreamed by a single dreamer where all the characters dream too.” Arthur Schopenhauer

13. And the dream goes on.

_________Thirteen Thursday

I always meet a lot of great people at Zadie’s, the restaurant and bar downstairs from The Old Marshall Jail Hotel in NC that my son refurbished.

There was a really good contingency of Boston natives there on Saturday night.

The accents were flying with the shared stories of growing up on the North and South Shore of “Bawston.”

I snapped this picture of a picture at the Old Jail entrance, taken soon after the building completion in 1905, because the laundry hanging in the front yard and back porch caught my attention. Read more about The Old Marshall Jail and see refurbished version HERE. 

All hands on deck for a busy night. Our son Josh and Joe lend their hands in the kitchen.

You go dishwasher Joe!

The next day I met a girl with unicorn shoes on.

We read a wall of bricks together.

The outdoor tables at Zadies were repurposed from metal bed frames and doors salvaged from the Old Jail. You can see the bridge made famous by Amazon Prime’s sci-fi dram series, The Peripheral, which was shot partly in Marshall and includes scenes of the star riding across it on a motorbike. You can also see the railroad tracks, the old radiator fence and the French Broad River.

Don’t let it get cold. Gotta go!

The last time I took a picture of our weekly Scrabble game, Chris was playing two boards at a time, one with Jayn and one with Mark.

This time, Daphne and Jayn played as a duo team opposite me after Daphne finished her three-way game early.

I kept my lead with Jayn throughout the game, but it was close the whole time. When we finished, I, the scorekeeper, told her how close it was.  She said she was glad she didn’t know because it might have made her more competitive (and take even longer with her plays).  “Who is competitive, Jayn?” I ask because she’s always denied she was competitive and says that she likes to lose.  But, while being competitive can get a bad rap, it can also be motivating, encouraging people to push themselves, expand their capacities and capabilities, and perform at a high level. And that’s the point. Compete with yourself. Play your best game!

1. So, Super Bowl is for football and not bowling?

2. On Super Bowl Sunday, my friend Mara posted pictures of her holding all the best-looking bowls in her house.

3. The pre-game Super Bowl spectacle was a little too North Korea looking for me.

4. The Kansas City Chiefs looked like red tootsie pops.

5. I’ve been bowled over before, but I’ve also been floored, like the time I saw whales on whale watch boat and hit the deck in awe.

6. Noam Chomsky on ChatGPT: It’s “Basically High-Tech Plagiarism” and “a Way of Avoiding Learning.”

7. Hit me with music HERE.

8. All the Better to See You with, My Dear.  Part I is HERE.

9. “Introverts think more. One Harvard study found that introverts’ brains work differently, and have thicker gray matter compared to extroverts. In people who are strongly extroverted, gray matter was consistently thinner. Introverts also showed more activity in the frontal lobes, where analysis and rational thought take place.”

10. 2022 Science article titled THE CALORIE COUNTER: Evolutionary anthropologist Herman Pontzer busts myths about how humans burn calories—and why  “…As the athletes’ ran more and more over weeks or months, their metabolic engines cut back elsewhere to make room for the extra exercise costs. Conversely, if you’re a couch potato, you might still spend almost as many calories daily, leaving more energy for your body to spend on internal processes such as a stress response…” More HERE.

11. While playing Scrabble this week, a friend joked that my game board might be jinxed and cause us to draw bad letters, I innocently said, “don’t be so stuperstitious,” before I realized what cool new take on superstitious the word was.

12. I’m more of a ‘wake up and read the tea leaves’ that a ‘wake up and smell the coffee’ one.

13. I don’t get a kick out of football and basketball is over my head. (I’m 5 foot 1 inch).

___________Thirteen Thursday

________Wordless Wednesday

Floyd loves reggae.

It was the season kick-off for the Sky High Roots Reggae Season with Crucial Fiya at Dogtown. The band did a Bob Marley tribute, along with their own songs.

Yes, we were jammin’

Yes, we sang along.

DJ rubystar was in the house and artist Jesi Lundy projected her art for a layered light show. Watch HERE. 

Friends came together and new friends were made.

Dancers couldn’t get enough of those sweet beats and good Jahlove vibes.  See you next time!

As someone with CFS (a longer hauler from a virus in the late 70s), I understand that immune response and stress are energy expenditures, as is thinking and writing, which I spend a lot of time doing. As someone whose daily total energy expenditure is approximately about 30% less than other adults my age, it’s been important for me to understand the science of energy expenditure, to understand how careful I have to be with what I spend my energy on, how limited my reserves are, how doing what I love can actually give me energy (like dancing), but is something I will have to recover from, balance out later.

AND I live with an (extroverted) athlete who I continue to want to be understood by and who I can’t compare myself to.

The following are excerpts are from a 2022 Science article titled THE CALORIE COUNTER: Evolutionary anthropologist Herman Pontzer busts myths about how humans burn calories—and why. The article outlines new scientific findings that have “shattered consensus views” on energy expenditures, calories and weight. I believe these findings will be meaningful for anyone with compromised energy, for athletes and for people who want to understand more about weight loss and what is meant by the statement “You can’t exercise your way out of being overweight.”

“…As the athletes’ ran more and more over weeks or months, their metabolic engines cut back elsewhere to make room for the extra exercise costs, Pontzer says. Conversely, if you’re a couch potato, you might still spend almost as many calories daily, leaving more energy for your body to spend on internal processes such as a stress response…”

“… Humans have an added energy expense: our big brains, which account for 20% of our energy use per day…  Recent studies show that  orangutans burned one-third of the energy expected for a mammal their size, shattering the consensus view that mammals all have similar metabolic rates when adjusted for body mass. Among great apes, humans are the outlier. When adjusted for body mass, we burn 20% more energy per day than chimps and bonobos, 40% more than gorillas, and 60% more than orangutans…”

… The difference in body fat is just as shocking: Male humans pack on twice as much fat as other male apes and women three times as much as other female apes. He thinks our hefty body fat evolved in tandem with our faster metabolic rate: Fat burns less energy than lean tissue and provides a fuel reserve…”

“…Pontzer traveled to Tanzania to study the energy budgets of the Hadza hunter-gatherers. “Everyone knew the Hadza had exceptionally high energy expenditures because they were so physically active,” he recalls. “Except they didn’t.” Individual Hadza had days of more and less activity, and some burned 10% more or less calories than average. But when adjusted for nonfat body mass, Hadza men and women burned the same amount of energy per day on average as men and women in the United States, as well as those in Europe, Russia, and Japan, he reported in PLOS ONE in 2012. “It’s surprising when you consider the differences in physical activity…”

“…Pontzer’s findings have a discouraging implication for people wanting to lose weight. “You can’t exercise your way out of obesity,” says evolutionary physiologist John Speakman of the Chinese Academy of Sciences…  Already the research is influencing dietary guidelines for nutrition and weight loss. The U.K. National Food Strategy, for example, notes that “you can’t outrun a bad diet.” Pontzer agrees that exercise is essential for good health: The Hadza, who are active and fit into their 70s and 80s, don’t get diabetes and heart disease. And, he adds, “If exercise is tamping down the stress response, that compensation is a good thing.” But he says it’s not fair to mislead dieters: “Exercise prevents you from getting sick, but diet is your best tool for weight management…”

“…Elite athletes can push the limits for several months, as the study of marathoners showed, but can’t sustain it indefinitely, Pontzer says… Meanwhile, Pontzer was laying the groundwork for other surprises… They used the database to do the first comprehensive study of human energy use over the life span.

_________Read the article in its entirety HERE.

1. My husband Joe is my type.

2. Is heaven a gated community?

3. Intimate greetings / on unfolded hearts / Our love is an open book / with its message delivered / at the close of the day / Held at the binding / our sweet sentiments are sealed. – Poem from the ‘90s. 

4. Today I learned that “ruth” is an accepted word in Scrabble that means empathy, as in the opposite of “ruthless.” I played it at my weekly game, then someone added a “t” and made it “truth.

5. Sometimes I get all hung up looking at the little mandalas on the inside lens of my glasses.

6. Sometimes a walk to the mailbox is a social outing for me. I gather kindling sticks into a shopping bag as I walk the long drive-way and run into friends on their way to my mechanic neighbor’s garage who wave or stop to chat.

7. Our eyeballs are like small, round mirrors. Covered by a layer of salty fluid (tears), their surfaces reflect light just like the surface of a pond does. If you look closely into a person’s eye, you’ll see a reflection of the scene in front of the person.

8. “Scientists have recently determined that it takes approximately 400 repetitions to create a new synapse in the brain—unless it is done with play, in which case, it takes between 10 and 20 repetitions!”— the late Dr. Karyn Purvis, Director of Texas Christian University’s Child Development Center

9. I learned that empyreal is a real word / that means the highest part of heaven / and speaks to the quantum reality / that emptiness and matter exist / at the same time… More HERE.

10. Game night antics involved a box of chocolates, chips, dips and drinks and a mad libs card game not for the faint at heart. In other words, not your grandmother’s bridge party. See HERE.

11. Grammys or Grammies? “Grammy” got its name based on the trophy being a small replica gramophone on which old records were played, but it’s also an endearing term for Grandma. This year at The Grammys Harry Styles received his award for Best Album from a Grammy superfan of 78 years.

12. The Last Resort is not a vacation spot. Proof HERE. 

13. “I see badly, I hear badly, and I feel bad, but everything’s fine.” Jeanne Louise Calment: 122 years old

____________Thirteen Thursday