Loose Leaf Notes

1. If I was made of pottery and the sun was my kiln, my glaze would be freckles.

2. Now that I have DSL and my phone line isn’t tied up when I’m on line I’m seeing how many people don’t actually call me.

3. Glancing at a BMG music catalog that had just come in the mail, without my glasses on, I thought the photo on the cover of a young Ozzie Osborne was Demi Moore.

4. I created the above sign through a banner/poster generator found at the Generator Blog by way of Pearl.

5. I participated in my first ever Peace March in Washington D.C. in October of 2002. In protest of the then impending invasion of Iraq, I marched alongside my friend Alwyn who is a Quaker and an environmental activist, well into her 70s. I went to another big DC march in January 2003, where I heard Ron Kovic speak, met Jessica Lange, and recorded my poem, “Dream for President Bush,” for a the cable TV station in the small town I grew up in. More on that here.

6. My favorite blog quote of the week, was found at Ripples from a post titled “Think of a blog as a thought-transmitter.” With a blog, “You don't have to mix paint to put on a cave wall” to get your ideas out, Ripples author, David wrote.

7. My blog friend, Patry from “Simply Wait” has generated an interesting dialogue via her post “On Writers and Ambition,” which delves into the tension between creating art and the work it takes to market it. In my comment to her I said, “At the very least, I don't want my writing to have to COST me money. I think it should at least keep me in printing ink...and you know how much that costs these days.” Patry’s first novel, THE LIAR'S DIARY, will be published by Dutton in March, 2007.

8. My new favorite spring quote, which was sent to me via the Love Link from my sister Sherry, is: And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. –by Anais Nin

9. Speaking of Sherry, the sister that I lived with back in the 70s during our Laverne and Shirley days, here’s a site she would like: Tea Leaves. It’s an online tea leaf reading site, found via Jennifer at Open Book. Sherry and I used to get our tea leaves read every chance we got, back in the day when I lived in Massachusetts.

10. Apparently, some folks think Loose Leaf Notes is a topless or a nudist blog, according to two recent key word searches that brought people here: “A shirtless camping trip” and “Can I sunbathe nude in South Carolina?” I think they got the idea from this post.

11. I seem to know summer through my bare feet. As a girl, I remember how they hurt, walking on our long gravel drive-way. It didn’t occur to me to put shoes on in June. And if I had, how would my feet ever have gotten tough enough to withstand the rest of the summer? So begins “Is It Summer Yet?” one of the 3 essays I recorded at the WVTF radio studio last fall. It’s the last of the group to be aired, slated to be so tomorrow 6:55 and 8:55am. You can hear me reading it here and read it here.

12. The above essay is a blog entry with a new application. It’s mostly about going barefoot and was originally written it in answer to a question Fred posed on Fragments From Floyd, “When do you Know it’s Summer?” Fred is a WVTF radio essayist who’s been at it longer than me. He also writes a column in our local paper, and has a BLOOK.

13. In a recent blog entry in which I was announcing the airing of the radio essay before this one, “Life in the Rural Fast Lane,” I mistakenly called WVTF, WTF! You know what that means; don’t you?

Post Note: You can now visit thursdaythirteen.com and find all things 13 there, thanks to Leanne and her company. My other Thirteens are here.