Loose Leaf Notes

1. I like to keep at least one toy in my pocketbook. For some reason it makes me feel prepared.

2. Working my laptop touch pad is like eating noodles with chopsticks. I’d rather use a fork and mouse.

3. I feel like THIS more and more often. It's worth a whole listen.

4. I thought I recognized THAT guy. I used to have a crush on him and heard him sing at the South Shore Music Circus in the 70’s. Here’s a BEFORE and AFTER video of him and THIS one, dedicated to my sister Sherry.

5. It’s a fun idea for a S-C-R-A-B-B-L-E lover like me but I don’t think I’d have to guts to have a tombstone like THIS. More unusual tombstones are HERE.

6. I thought the Drill Baby Drill refrain that the crowd chanted, and Giuliani joined in on at the RNC sounded like a bunch of drunken sailors and was as bad as Bush’s Bring ‘em on.

7. Pulitzer Prize winning author and New York Times columnist Tom Friedman said during an interview with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that chanting Drill Baby Drill refrain at the RNC is like the equivalent of chanting “IBM typewriters … IBM typewriters” at the onset of the computer age. He also said he thought Obama was the only green candidate left. More HERE.

8. My Terry Gross is young, has long straight blonde hair, looks a little like the actress Laura Linney, and doesn’t wear glasses. This Terry Gross – the real one who produces and hosts National Public Radio’s interview talk show “Fresh Air” – is petite to the point of looking like Mary Martin playing the role of Peter Pan. She has short cropped hair, wears glasses, and is in her late 50s. ~ Read about the time I got interviewed by Terry Gross (sort of) HERE.

9. Last week I wondered when saying “God Bless America” by each politician after each speech given became required. Here’s what I found from the Washington Post: The omnipresence of “God bless America” as a political slogan is an entirely recent phenomenon. We know because we’ve run the numbers. Analysis of more than 15,000 public communications by political leaders from Franklin Roosevelt’s election in 1932 — the beginning of the modern presidency — through six years of George W. Bush’s administration revealed that prior to Ronald Reagan taking office in 1981, the phrase had passed a modern president’s lips only once in a major address: Richard Nixon used it to conclude a 1973 speech about Watergate.

10. Ripped from the pages of my journal: Republicans and Democrats are like Fords and Chevys. They’re like the Yankees and the Red Sox. They have an almost irrational need to take sides.

11. How did the left come to refer to liberal and the right conservative? This apparently arose from the use of the terms in the parliaments of foreign countries; the parts of the parliamentary chambers located to the right and left of the presiding officers accordingly representing conservative and liberal elements respectively. More HERE.

12. I never liked the symbol of the donkey for the Democratic Party. The Republican elephant is only a little better. Seems neither party chose their mascot symbols. They got stuck with them after a series of cartoons by Thomas Nast that first appeared in Harper’s Weekly in 1874. More on that HERE.

13. If Republicans are from Mars and Liberals are from Venus, where are Independents from?

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