Loose Leaf Notes

_______Shadow Shot Sunday

Honeymoon pink
Spring popped the question
Consummated the engagement
for the promise of fruit

_____Colleen Redman  / Poets United

1. Six days after my laparoscopic surgery, I put on my bra for the first time.

2. Three days later, I wore lipstick.

3. Watching the birds at the feeder has been an everyday part of my recovery.  I cried when I wrote a post about having told my family members in the past that it’s okay to put me in a nursery home if it’s necessary when I’m older as long as I have a window. “The window has been a lifeline to me over the years as I’ve struggled with chronic fatigue.  As a poet that needs regular inner reflection, I use it for perspective and inspiration…  it’s what is happening on the screen into the real world that is the most dramatic, the most constant, but never the same twice, the most precious and meaningful –  the moon through my bedroom window, the stars, the budding of spring blossoms on trees, the resident critters, the clouds…” More HERE.

4. When Joe read that, he said, “You need a window and a porch!”

5. It’s THAT time of year again!

6. Don’t you need a helmet to do THIS?

7. My sister Trish calls the golden finch (like the one pictured here) a “hello bird.” She actually called it a “yellow bird” but her spell check changed it to “hello.”

8. I finally found a feeder that the squirrels can’t raid, but now a gang cowbirds are bogarting it and can empty it in a day.

9. At least they sound nice. Have a listen HERE.

10. Trump marked this year’s Earth Day by bragging about his efforts to cut regulations that protect the earth and public health, which drew headlines like:  Earth Day started as political movement to save the planet from men like Trump,  President Trump Deports Earth Day, Destroy the Earth Day: Under Trump and Pruitt.

11. The 11th annual Empty Bowls Fundraiser, held at the Floyd County High School cafeteria on Sunday April 8, drew an impressive crowd.  A lunch of soups, served in home-made pottery bowls, is the feature of the event. – More HERE.

12. The Moon’s Signature: It starts with a C / followed by an O / U turns to D / and ends up a zero

13. “Carrying 200 pounds of velvet and satin around a stage for ninety minutes – that’s man’s work, let me tell you.”  -Rod Stewart

________Thirteen Thursday

________Wordless Wednesday

-The following first appeared in The Floyd Press on April 12, 2018

The 11th annual Empty Bowls Fundraiser, held at the Floyd County High School cafeteria on Sunday April 8, drew an impressive crowd.  A lunch of soups, served in home-made pottery bowls, is the feature of the event.

Proceeds from ticket sales go to fund New River Community Action Center’s Weekend Backpack Program, which sends nutritious food home with eligible school children.

For the price of a lunch ticket, attendees choose from a wide selection of hand-made and donated bowls that they take home after their lunch.

Attendees take their time picking out just the right bowl.

Cory Potrafka and Ron Sutterer are two of the local potters who made and donated bowls.  In February Portrafka headed up an open studio at Floyd Center for the Arts for those who wanted to make pots for the occasion. The center donated all the materials.

It was Evelyn and Al Campbell’s first time attending Empty Bowls.

By noon, there was a line waiting to get into the cafeteria, where the home-made soups and bread were being served. Beverages and cookies were also on the menu.

Volunteer Joann Verostko serves a young attendee from the soup buffet.

Young Gaby Lefebvre dishes up some minestrone.

A selection of home-made bread rounds out the meal. She worked alongside her mother.

Mary Hartman, Carol Boyd and Donna Shelor (left to right) enjoyed French onion soup, beet soup and a cabbage stew.  Carol Boyd said she comes every year and has a collection of bowls that she marks on the bottom with the yearly dates.

Attendees socialized with laughs and conversation.

Sisters Rachel and Hannah Hylton and their music teacher Scott Perry were some of the musicians that entertained the crowd.

Pat Quesenberry (far right) and her family filled one long table. Quesenberry’s sister and her family come from Maryland every year to attend the event. – Colleen Redman

It starts with a C
followed by an O
U turns to D
and ends up a zero

__________Colleen Redman /Poets United

“Don’t make me yawn, sneeze or deep breathe, other than that I’m fine,” I commented to friends on Facebook six days after my laparoscopic surgery.

I’ve told family members in the past that it’s okay to put me in a nursery home if it’s necessary when I’m older.  When life comes down to getting your basic daily needs met and being as comfortable as possible, I believe I can make my life small enough to accommodate those changes, but only if my room has a window.

The window has been a lifeline to me over the years as I’ve struggled with chronic fatigue.  As a poet that needs regular inner reflection, I use it for perspective and inspiration.  I absolutely need to see the sky, the trees and the birds.  It’s maybe the one thing in life I couldn’t live without.

Although, I love nature, I’ve never thought of myself as a big outdoors person, not like my husband who goes on long hikes in the woods, has sit-spots next to waterfalls and would prefer to do everything outside, eating, yoga etc. I’m more of homebody who likes the comfort of home.  But I’ve spent a lot of time looking out of windows as I read, write and rest.

I watch and follow the news like a hound, but I could live without it.  TV and movie watching can be a fun diversion, but it’s what is happening on the screen into the real world that is the most dramatic, the most constant, but never the same twice, the most precious and meaningful –  the moon through my bedroom window, the stars, the budding of spring blossoms on trees, the resident critters, the clouds.

I had a rude awakening during the first week of recovery realizing that, even though it’s a commonly accepted social norm to visit people when their sick and to offer help, it’s the least time that I want someone to visit.  I felt grateful to have a caring husband for those first rough four days and to see slow improvements that brought the promise of more improvement.

I found solace in watching the birds from the comfort of my chair. The more I watched, the more varieties came. The first days of recovery were painful and depressing and sometimes wondering what the birds were up to helped me want to get out of bed. I made new friends and a had fleeting visits.  And even the bluebird of happiness showed up!

Thanks to Joe for keeping the feeder full, the best one we’ve ever had, gifted to us by potter Joey Sheehan (check him out on Facebook).  We like to watch the squirrels unsuccessfully try to scheme ways to reach it.

We like seeing our yard become a welcoming bird sanctuary.

1. A couple of days after having laparoscopic surgery to remove a 12-centimeter benign cyst on my liver, my grandsons came to visit.  I filled up a balloon with water to show them how big the removed cyst was.  After we looked at, we threw it out a second story window and watched it break open.

2. “Operating rooms are like runways, I wrote in a post called Not the Most Patient Patient. The surgery was scheduled late and then we waited a few hours on top of that to get in the operating room.  With no food and water, I was a mess and later wrote, “Joe and I felt like we were crammed on a plane and stuck on a tarmac for 6 hours waiting for take-off.”

3. The plane metaphor continued during the first days of recovery at home when I discovered the pain was so severe that I had to sleep sitting up in a chair!

4. Joe says my recovery has moved through the infant stage, – crying and needing help with everything, to the adolescence stage – saying ‘I don’t care’ a lot and living on comfort food, like tea and toasted bagels with peanut butter and jelly and gelato.

5. The Poem:  It dangles like a hangnail / that hurts to write / Brushes like a mystery / up against me / Like a thread through a needle / stopped by a knot / It pulls me like a craving / for what I can’t live without

6. I’m sure the above poem is a about how bad a poem wants to be written, but the fact that I was in pain when I wrote it had an influence.

7. I’m not always kind but I’m never mean! – My comment after reading a poem about developing kindness, and my new trademark, I think.

8. Pizzaz or Pizza?

9. “We have everyone here from master naturalists, clubs and organization, yoga practitioners to a neuro-surgeon.” – Check out my story for The Floyd Press on the second annual Floyd Health and Wellness Fair HERE.

10. What was in that oxygen?  The last thing I remember was an oxygen mask on my face. When I came to, I was dreaming that I was part of the team working on my own surgery.  I can’t remember if I actually said “Is Trump still president?” or whether I was telling the story of what actually happened last year after my first colonoscopy. – From Not the  Most Patient Patient.

11. Fox news gives the fox a bad name.

12. Woody Woodpecker’s laugh is now a ringtone. Listen HERE.

13. And it’s not surprising to me that Sinclair, the local TV stations pushing Trump propaganda and requiring their newscasters to read from promo scripts denigrating other news as “fake,” has the word “sin” right in it.

________Thirteen Thursday

-The following first appeared in The Floyd Press on April 12, 2018

The Partnership for Floyd’s second annual Health and Wellness Fair went off without a hitch Saturday, after being rescheduled due to inclement weather.  The parking lot at Floyd County High School was full and the new gym, where the event was held, was a-buzz with activity.

“One of our major goals is to get the health practitioners together, to work together as community,” said fair organizer Jane Cundiff (pictured seated far left), adding that another goal was to introduce the community to local wellness resources.  “We have everyone here from master naturalists, clubs and organization, yoga practitioners to a neuro-surgeon.”

Cundiff, a biology teacher at Radford University, said her students were in attendance and taking notes.  Note takers also attended panel discussions, which were led by practitioners from a variety of health traditions.  They included talks on Lyme Disease and Stress Management.

Information booths included resources on midwifery, martial arts, mindfulness, counseling, voter registration, massage, ear acupuncture, aging and more. 

Attendees participated in free demonstrations and consultations with physicians, herbalists and health instructors. Healthy snacks were also available. – Colleen Redman

Practitioners perform NADA ear acupuncture on interested fair attendees. NADA (National Acupuncture Detoxification Association) is a “not-for-profit training and advocacy organization that encourages community wellness through the use of a standardized auricular acupuncture protocol for behavioral health, including addictions, mental health, and disaster and emotional trauma,” their webpage reads.  A local group runs clinics out of the June Bug Center.

Attendees receiving NADA Acupuncture enjoy the therapy’s relaxing results.

Healthy Floyd, non-profit organization promoting a culture of health in wellness in Floyd County, played an exercise/dance video that they made and that attendees worked out to.

An attendee reacts as a representative of Virginia’s Cooperative Extension reveals the high content of sugar in soft drinks.

A representative from Virginia Kares Home Health Services does a blood sugar test on an attendee.

Citizens Telephone Cooperative’s Videographer Hari Berzins conducted interviews with booth vendors for CCTV Channel 20. Here, she talks with Mary Freday of Preserve Floyd, an environmental citizens group. Preserve Floyd hosted a youth art contest for the fair.

A couple enjoy a guided sound meditation by Kathryn Ashera Rose from Anahata Center for Wellbeing.

An attendee tries out a Bio-Electro-Magnetic-Energy- Regulation (Bermer) chair, which contributes to health by delivering a pulsed therapy that increases circulation.

It dangles like a hangnail
that hurts to write

Brushes like a mystery
up against me

Like a thread through a needle
stopped by a knot

It pulls me like a craving
for what I can’t live without

________Colleen Redman / Poets United

That’s me after trying to send my son a text from UVA Hospital yesterday but having no signal, and after waiting 3 hours in the surgical family waiting room, and then another 3 hours in a pre-op room.  After not eating and drinking all day. Operating rooms are like runways, and Joe and I felt like we were crammed on a plane and stuck on a tarmac for 6 hours waiting for take-off.

I’m amazed at how the medical world is tuned-in and so responsive to physical pain but almost oblivious to the suffering a person like me goes through when I go without food and drink for nearly 24 hours.  Waiting was a sentence, and I would have thought that the doctors would be more aware that a person needs to be strong and in good shape before a surgery (laparoscopic), and not weak and tired and full of stress hormones.

As someone who’s been managing Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for most of my adult life, I am already in a deficit and often have to gear myself up to just go grocery shopping and run errands.   After so many hours of being hungry and waiting, I was suffering from sensory overload, to the point where people’s voices made me jump.  It took so much energy to listen and even more to respond that I was wishing everyone would only say what was necessary.  Small talk drained me. I described it to Joe as if he had just been through a boot camp obstacle course, followed by psychological mind testing games, and all while going without food or water. It hurt.

For a while in the main waiting room, I stretched out as best I could, closed my eyes and drifted, letting the sounds of all the people’s voices float by in random pieces like a sound collage.  That was helpful.  I remembered Norman Cousins book about getting through a heart attack (my issue was far less serious) by staying very still and conserving his energy.

But by the time I was in the pre-op room waiting for the surgical procedure, I had broken down and was crying.  Nurses and doctors from the surgery team came in and out to talk to me, but I honestly couldn’t process most of what they were saying.  Their friendliness was in such contrast to my physical and emotional state that it made me more irritable, (although there was that one funny anesthesiologist who had me cracking a smile). Joe put on a phone recording of birdsong for me. That, and the few slices of navel orange contraband that I sucked the juice out of in the bathroom were lifesavers.

My surgeon came in and put me at ease.  He does liver transplants, so I knew that he was more than capable of removing a large (benign) 12-centimeter cyst on my liver and bunch of medium sized-ones, and that it would be kind of routine for him.   From the moment I met him at our initial appointment, I felt I would be safe in his hands.  I felt seen and understood, and I received more information from him in the first 15 minutes than I got from the several doctors I had seen earlier, after I ended up in the local ER with severe pain on my right side.  One doctor actually mentioned taking my gallbladder out to make room for the large cyst that was pressing on it.

A CT-SCAN was done to rule out appendicitis, and that’s when it was discovered that I have a polycystic liver.  I learned that it has a heredity component, but that many people have them and never have a problem.  The doctors don’t know why mine got so big.

Back in the pre-op waiting room, eight months after that ER visit, there were so many people to meet when I wasn’t up for meeting people and couldn’t think straight when they asked if I had any questions. The only questions I could think of to ask were “how long after surgery util I can I eat” and “when can I take a hot bath (two weeks!)

“I don’t know.  I don’t remember,” I heard myself say a couple of times when I was asked the same typical questions, ‘When’s the last time you ate, drank, went pee?’ What’s your birthdate? What’s your doctor’s name?’ By the time I got into the OR, it was so late that shifts had changed and many in the team were new to me.

What was in that oxygen?  The last thing I remember was an oxygen mask on my face. When I came to, I was dreaming that I was part of the team working on my own surgery.  I can’t remember if I actually said “Is Trump still president?” or whether I was telling the story of what actually happened last year after my first colonoscopy.

My doctor called Joe to let him know it went well.  The post-op nurse called him soon after, asking him to come to my room.  She had asked me if I wanted crackers, and I answered “But my husband has the best snacks.”  He came and I happily ate a leftover omelet, with feta cheese, spinach and olive tapenade, some Brussel sprouts and cheese and pretzels.

About an hour after that, Joe and I were ready to head home (a three hour drive), but we stopped near the University to get a dessert snack.  I was woozy on my feet but walking well enough to buy my own raisin oatmeal cookie to go with the Starbucks tea that Joe got me.   I met a drunk man near our car who thought I was drunk too.

High Five! We were on our way, and were both amazed that we pulled it off, that I still had my gallbladder and that the post-recovery pain was less than we thought it would be.  Less, that is, until the anesthesia and meds wore off and I woke up in the middle of the night loudly vocalizing pain and unable to find a position I could bear.

No more skimping on the meds we thought, but we later learned that painful episode, and a few others like it, were due to the trapped CO2 gas that they fill patients’ abdomens with in order to have room and a view to do laparoscopic surgery.  Oddly, I felt the pain as much on the right side of my neck and shoulder as I did at the wound site.  A little googling explained it as “referred pain.” When the gas irritates the diaphragmatic nerves, that pain is referred upwards through nerve connections, eventually landing in – and aggravating – the shoulder.

So now I’m on the porch listening to real birds and feeling very thankful that all is well.

1. “Sun is blue like water and water is yellow. Clouds are white, so clouds are black.” – 7-year-old Liam drawing a “reverse” picture after seeing the art of M.C. Escher.

2.  Last night I dreamt that I went too far out in a boat with my grandsons on board.  We eventually found land, but it was an unknown, unnamed shady town where we didn’t speak the language.  The whole rest of the dream was about me trying to contact the boys’ dad to let him know we were alive.

3. “We carry our families like anchors, rooting us in storms, making sure we never drift from where and who we are. We carry our families within us the way we carry our breath underwater, keeping us afloat, keeping us alive.” ― Erika Swyler, The Book of Speculation

4. My Asheville potter son Josh is still Building Community in “monumental” ways.  Check out THIS excellent newspaper story on how he’s doing that.

5. “…From day one, Copus explains, the Building Community Project has been free for anyone to participate in… For Copus, everything — the chimney, the jailhouse, the documentary, the brick project — is connected by the guiding principle of community. “The ultimate resolution in my mind is that a child comes and makes a brick, and then that brick becomes part of [the jail’s] property,” he says. “And then, 30 years from now, that child is an adult, and they always have that connection to their hometown…”

6. On the day of Josh’s Chimney Monument dedication, I got the message below in a text.

7. Our bed is the new couch.

8. I recently went to the closest thing Floyd has to a circus and saw a fantastic magician, Lucy Riccardo and a tiny dog play the ukulele. Watch HERE. 

9. The first presentation of Floyd Varieties, included comedy skits, an animal act, an aerial silks acrobat, a female impersonator and a professional magician. The vaudeville-inspired show, which also included a kazoo and a rubber chicken, was organized and emceed by Mim (Audra) Jeppson as a fundraiser for The June Bug Center, where the event was held. – More HERE.

10. The latest optical illusion to sweep the internet isn’t about a dress, a wall or a street. It’s THIS palette of colors. But stare at the center of the image below long enough, and you might not be so sure there are any colors there at all. See HERE.

11. The Unwritten Dream:  I left the dream / to finish the poem / Now the dream has dissolved / like a memory that was stolen / like a lesson that wasn’t learned / like a life returned to dust

12. Sometimes, writing a poem is to enter into a magical place from a specific point in time. It’s like taking a subway ride from Quincy into Boston. It has a route, a speed, and a destination. You can go back the next day and take the same ride, but it won’t be the same. The things you saw out the window one day probably won’t be there the next. –  From What’s Up with Thirteen Thursday, written in 2006

13. In the end, our stories remain longer than we do, so we might as well document them and set the record straight.

___________Thirteen Thursday

_______Wordless Wednesday

-The following first appeared in The Floyd Press on  April 5, 2018.

The first presentation of Floyd Varieties, included comedy skits, an animal act, an aerial silks acrobat, a female impersonator and a professional magician.

The vaudeville-inspired show, which also included a kazoo and a rubber chicken, was organized and emceed by Mim (Audra) Jeppson as a fundraiser for The June Bug Center, where the event was held.

Jeppson, who sells ukuleles in the Meadows of Dan part of the county, has played ukulele in shows from California to the U.K. and has been inspired by the creative performances she has seen.

She put out the word on Facebook about the possibility of presenting a Variety Show in Floyd and was happily surprised by the interested performing artists that came forth.

“It’s a true variety show with something for everyone,” she said, adding that she hopes to build on the first show with future biannual or quarterly shows.

Photos: 1. Amanda from Arete Pole Fitness in Salem gave a dramatic acrobatic performance with silks. Watch a clip HERE. 2. “Helen Brimstone’s” (Dillon Keith) impersonation of Lucy Ricardo brought roars of laughter.  Brimstone lip-synced a tipsy performance from a recording of Lucy as the “Vitameatavegamin” sales girl. Watch a video clip HERE. 3. Floyd Varieties organizer and performer Mim Jeppson performed with her rescue dog Poke’.   “Poke’ is the world’s smallest ukulele player and works for Cheerios,” Jeppson told the audience.  Together, Jeppson and Poke’ performed “You Are My Sunshine.” 4. “Two Fun Moms” performed a circus-like mimed skit with hoops and bubbles.

5.  “Two Fun Moms” performed a circus-like mimed skit with hoops and bubbles. See HERE. 6. Director of The Floyd Theatre Guild, Casey Worley, and Emily Gruver, a podcaster and Theatre Guild member, performed two clownish  comedic routines as the “Dynamic Duo.”  7. Micah Acord, and IT Tech by day, infused a modern take on his blues and ragtime song-and-dance numbers.

8. Professional Magician, Gartrell the Great wowed the crowd making objects appear and disappear.  Gartrell lives in Blacksburg and is finishing a Master’s Degree in Engineering at VA Tech.  9. Floyd Varieties performers take a bow.

________Colleen Redman / Our World Tuesday

_______Shadow Shot Sunday

I left the dream
to finish the poem

Now the dream has dissolved
like a memory that was stolen

like a lesson that wasn’t learned
like a life returned to dust

________Colleen Redman / Poets United

1. I went for most of the day on Easter before I realized it was also April Fool’s, which made the whole day feel like a joke.

2. It all started with the memory of the Easter bonnets that we wore as kids and turned into a walk to Joe’s and my favorite view.  We topped ourselves off with our very own Easter Bonnets and a selfie photo shoot.

3. I’m a fool who loves fooling but can’t keep a straight face while doing it. I prefer to be the fooler rather than the foolee, but I feel a certain pressure trying to come up with some foolproof foolery when mass foolishness is scheduled on one particular day of the year.

4. A hat is the new wig.

5. I just finished working on a story that had the two hardest words to spell in it: ukuleles and varieties. No matter how many times I used them, I had to leave it to my spellcheck to correct.

6. THIS is a clip from that story, Floyd’s first Varieties/Vaudeville Show.

7. Did they have a Neil Young Tribute just so they could write “Tonight’s the Night” on a poster?  Actually, it was called “Heart of Gold” and took place Friday night at Dogtown Roadhouse to benefit SustainFloyd, a local environmental group focused on sustainable local economy. – More HERE.

8. Said to my friend in Spain who just posted photographs of a delectable looking meal spread, “fiesta has the word feast right in it.”

9. Sorrow is a beautiful country / where you meet your destiny / or the love of your life … You have to dig deep / to mine its value / be willing to bear / and wear its shine – More from The Scenic Route HERE.

10. Sorrow carves riverbeds in our soul, deepening us as it flows in and out of our lives. There is something familiar about the rising and falling of loss, how it takes up below the surface of our lives and works on us in some alchemical way.  We are remade in times of grief, broken apart and reassembled. It is hard, painful and unbidden work.  Now one goes in search of loss; rather it finds us and reminds us of the temporary gift we have been given, these few sweet breaths we call life.  –  From The Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller

11. Today I’m grieving the loss of all my tulips, eaten down to a clear cut by deer, and a very intriguing dream I had that I didn’t write down fast enough and so, forgot.

12. I’ll never forget when my little grandson Bryce said “yellow” for the first time instead of his usual “yeyow.” I was kind of heartbroken.

13. Reading the Tea Leaves on April Fools HERE.

___________Thirteen Thursday

-Taken at Bella La Vita Inn  / Our World Tuesday  /  Wordless Wednesday