Loose Leaf Notes

Last night the moon looked like a Mona Lisa smile with Venus as the unblinking part of a wink.

1. A California mayor says piped in recorded birdsong has lowered crime in his city.

2. A crow goes sledding HERE. You have to see it to believe it.

3. Seen on Facebook next to a picture of Gingrich:  Family Values – Using daughters from your first wife to convince everyone that your second wife is lying about your third wife.

4. His name makes me think of the Grinch of rich. My friend Alwyn says he looks like Caesar and we should beware of his aspirations for empire.

5. Speaking of Rome, my dharmacratic friend Will recently posted on Facebook: “Romantic love is just the bait the soul covers its hook with.”  When someone questioned his post in a comment he replied:  “I’m a barbarian who is suspicious of anything connected with Rome.”

6. Last night the moon looked like a Mona Lisa smile with Venus as the unblinking part of a wink.

7. I have a painting I bought directly from an artist named Shelton Miles when I lived in Texas. He signed all his painting SMiles.

8. The picture above is of my son Josh (right) and his friend Kamal putting on a play at Blue Mountain School back in the day.   It’s part of a series of photos I’ve been scanning for the school’s upcoming 30^th year anniversary.

9. My grandson Bryce used to cry when the butter on his bagel melted.  His 15 month old brother Liam cries when we pop corn on the stovetop.  (It makes a lot of noise and sometimes the cover pops off).

10. “Take the money we’re no longer spending at war, use half of it to pay down our debt, and use the rest to do some nation-building right here at home.”  ~ Quote from Obama’s State of the Union speech last night. More quotes HERE.

11. I had a dream about the copperhead I killed in the fall.  In the dream it morphed into a Native American woman in buckskin who, after appearing, disappeared into the log walls of my home. I remember thinking I didn’t have to or want to kill her but would have to learn how to live cautiously with her. In the dream I made everyone put shoes on.  The next morning when I woke up, I looked at the floor before putting my feet down.

12. It’s so hard to be in the present, rather than worrying about the future or trying to recreate something pleasant from the past, which is the reason I wrote THIS poem

13. Quote seen on Facebook: worrying is like praying for what you don’t want.

~ More playing 13 Thursday HERE.

The blue afternoon sky was like a NASCAR race track full of white smoky trails.    By evening there were lots of comments on Facebook reporting everything from the aura borealis to chemtrails. My neighbor called at sunset and told me to go look because there was a strange glowing triangle hanging low. I caught a glimpse through my lens (between the trees) before the color drenched shapes faded, dusk descended and the mystery was wiped away.

Another highlight of the Ketch and Critter show at the Floyd Country Store last weekend was the deep dish home-made apple pie that I had during intermission. It was so good, heated and served with vanilla ice cream that I stopped to get another slice to-go when I was in town on Sunday dropping off my weekend houseguest to her foster-care family. The pie wasn’t the only thing I found I was interested in. There was a game of Scrabble going on in the booth near the checkout counter, and it brought back a hunger for the game. I haven’t played in awhile and would have invited myself to sit down, since they had only two words on the board, but I had a car full of groceries.

Thanks to Mike and Eileen for posing for this shot. I promised Mike that I wouldn’t put it on youtube.

I try not to put demands on the day

or dictate my thoughts

I don’t want the first thing I remember

to be the last thing I worried about last night

I make a choice to wake up

or fall back to sleep

Fragmented dreams

offer no depth of meaning

to fill the surrounding silence

I look out the window

remember the poetry of a gray day

I think about my favorite box of Yorkshire Gold tea

and how it is almost empty

_______________________

~ Colleen Redman 1/22/12

Note: The above title is borrowed from a question posed by poet David Whyte and is the title of a poem he wrote.   More dVerse poetry HERE.

There’s still time to see the 7th Annual Youth & Student Art Exhibit at the Jacksonville Center for the Arts. The show, which showcases the talent and creativity of the youth in the Floyd community, is up until January 28.  Blue Mountain and Floyd County Schools are well represented. Winter hours at the center are Monday – Friday 10 a.m. – 3 p.m. and Saturday 11 a.m. – 4 p.m.

1. Last time I cried: Monday night while listening to Smokey Robinson sing (Abraham Martin John and Bobby) about the assassination of so many of our treasured leaders at the White House Celebration of the Civil Rights movement, aired on PBS for Martin Luther King Day.

2. On the same night I laughed uncontrollably watching an 80 year old woman punk a young man at an airport with an offer to get together in flight for a “high mile” club rendezvous. It was one of the candid camera like pranks on Betty White’s new show “Off Their Rockers.” You should have seen the look on the guy’s face.

3. Speaking of guys, a few new country names I discovered while reading the local obituaries are Venston, Bitley, Histon, Ezess and Worth.

4. The old mountain names are fascinating to me, like today’s hippie names, they seem completely made up.  Woman’s names I’ve recently come across are Fressie, Villie Arnilla, Ezma, Drema and Treecie.

5. After hearing about the youtube clips of S*it Girls Say, I discovered some on S*it No One Says, which I liked even better with lines like Twilight deserves an Oscar, My bazooka gum still has flavor, I miss my dial-up, I just have too much money and The Beatles suck.

6. Of course the Beatles don’t suck and neither did the five-star music duo performance we saw at the Floyd Country Store Sunday night.  Ketch Secor and Critter Fuqua are old-time revivalists from Virginia and two of the founding members of the famed Old Crow Medicine Show. They play what I think of as “contemporary traditional” music (I know, it’s an oxymoron). The also have a knack for comedy. They premiered a nearly finished song about hillbilly robots, called Hillybillybot, and they spun some really good yarns. HERE they are doing the band’s signature song that has gone gold.

7. Because I got a front row seat at the concert I was able to capture THIS, my son’s girlfriend volunteer to go on stage and do a slow polka with champion flat-footer Rick Sutphin.

8. THIS banjo player from the Hackensaw Boys (far right in picture four with blue shirt) stayed at my house with my son and others from Asheville who came to hear the show.

9. Only in Floyd can you be out helping a friend with disabilities collect litter and run into a neighbor who jumps out of her car, pulls out her banjo and plays you a song in the middle of the road. See the picture HERE.

20. HERE is the beach version of 13 Thursday’s Front Row Seats.

11. On two occasions in my life I’ve come across completely naked people having sex, once on the beach and once at a summer solstice gathering.

12. At least I have never come across a dead body like my blog friend Naomi at Here in the Hills.

13. What would you want a front row seat to?

Thirteen Thursday

What can I say? They’re hippie, hick, old-time, hobo troubadour and a little punk all at once.  They’ve played their Appalachian fiddle tunes, folk songs and jug band blues at the Grand Ole Opry, on Austin City Limits, Late Night with Conan and Prairie Home Companion. They opened for Dolly Parton, were personally invited by Doc Watson to do Merlefest and their song Wagon Wheel recently went gold.

I’m talking about Old Crow Medicine Show, the old-time revivalist string band whose founding members (two of them) played a sold-out show at The Floyd Country Sunday night.  Ketch Secor and Critter Fuqua first began playing together in Harrisonburg Virginia when they were 7^th grade.  The show, which included ballads and reels, comedy and storytelling, heart and soul songwriting on relevant topics and flat-footing on stage was part of a limited celebration reunion tour, since founding member Critter Fuqua had recently rejoined the band.   I can’t remember when I’d been so entertained and so inspired by the revelation of “contemporary traditional” music making.  ~ Story coming in The Floyd Press this week.

The following year review was done by excerpting the first line or two in one post of each month from last year. You can click on the name of the month for a full accounting.

January:  Stuffy nose.  New purple robe. Warm weather repose.  I’m planted on the porch like a seed craving sun with my weekend writings, a juxtaposition between the very real possibility of uranium mining in Virginia and sustainability through local food movement in Floyd.

February: A dialogue circle is a microcosm of the larger circles of family, community and world.  In circle, we each bring a piece to the woven living art of conversation.  But is it the right piece? Is it true? How does my piece affect others?

March: I’m the kind of person who likes carrot cake more than chocolate and Motown more than rap.

 April: In my bright turquoise crocs that someone left at Joe’s sister’s beach house and my dirty green gardening shorts, I walked with my weekend houseguest down our long gravel driveway singing “in your Easter bonnet with all the frills upon it,” stopping first to pull down a branch of an apple tree and sniffing the rose scented blossom.

May: Here at our Getaway in the Outer Banks of North Carolina mailboxes are shaped like whales and dolphins and oversized crabs, mermaids, and flip flops are stapled to the sides of houses.

 June: My husband Joe’s workaholic nature has taken a toll. He’s promised to change his ways and I think the fact that he bought an adjustable lounge chair and a blow-up bed over the Memorial Day weekend is a good start.

 July:  The Moon gets top billing / in a black tie night / In a star studded ballroom / it shines a high note of light

August: These days I have to chase the sun further out into the yard to warm myself in the morning. There is barely a petal of purple left on my butterfly bush and my bare feet are covered with socks. I can’t tell the difference between cricket and grasshopper song, but I wonder when did they drown out the birdsong and what sound will I hear after they are silenced.

 September:  When I woke up Sunday morning after going out dancing two nights in a row and saw the wrist band around my wrist, I thought for a split second that maybe I’d been in the hospital.

October: Sometimes I get nostalgic for my pink suede bell bottom pants and the maroon Indian print bag with the mirrors on it / or the gypsy scarf that I wore as a shawl and sold at a yard sale in Texas because we had to stuff everything we owned into one U-haul trailer when we moved to Virginia in 1985.

November: This year’s Thanksgiving season began with the traditional ‘over the river and through the woods’ drive to Zephyr Farm (1 mile) where my son Josh, my husband and I had turkey with all the fixins, including my friend Jayn’s award winning mock mince meat pie that I wait for all year long.

December: Walking on the rows of our garden like an astronaut looking for life on the moon, I discover a few volunteer kale plants that have survived the morning frost.  I transplant them into the cold frame, pick a batch of remay-covered Swiss chard and harvest what’s left of the parsnips with a shovel, soaking and scrubbing their long muddy tubers in water.

Red and Ready.

Mighty Shakey played at the UBAN dance benefit to Keep the Ban on Uranium mining in VA at Dogtown/Sun Music Hall in Floyd. Watch a Shadow Shot Sunday video HERE  a blues number  HERE and Michael and Kari Kovick singing Michael’s new song about clean water HERE.

~ The following appeared in The Floyd Press on January 5, 2012.

Laurelsong Cook Staengl communed with nature by painting it.   Her large-as-life vibrant acrylic and watercolor paintings of marine life, wildlife and people “call forth the energies of healing and spirit,” said the artist, who passed away at her home on Winter Solstice Eve, December 21, 2011.

Laurelsong began painting before she could walk.  Her mother was an abstract expressionist and portrait artist from Manhattan during the Soho art scene of the early 60’s.  Her father was a theater producer and director who produced Sam Shepherd’s first plays in the Bowery of New York.

Growing up in Manhattan, Laurelsong participated in her mother’s art classes at an early age.  She lived in England as a teenager and studied watercolor, mechanical drawing, Chinese watercolors and life drawing at Laney College in Oakland, California.

In search of a healthy place to raise and school her two children, Laurelsong relocated to Floyd from California after receiving a tip from a New Yorker with ties to Floyd.  She arrived more than 20 years ago and quickly became active in Floyd’s independent Blue Mountain School as a parent and board member. She taught art and made jewelry.  Trained in several healing art traditions, Laurelsong was able to integrate her body work practice into her art.   “I believe that art can heal our bodies and minds.  Looking at art can touch our souls and color can vibrate us to a peaceful state,” she wrote in an artist’s bio.

Laurelsong’s husband Luke Staengl is a Blue Mountain School co-founder.  Although he and Laurelsong had known each other for many years, they reconnected on the dance floor at Floydfest when Laurelsong was visiting from Hawaii, where she lived for several years.   It was in Hawaii that her painting fully took off.   Inspired by the ocean, she painted on the beach, hoping that her seascapes would stir people to take better care of the ocean and its inhabitants.

Laurelsong and Luke were married on the Winter Solstice six years ago.  Re-grounded back in the mountains and supported to paint full-time, Laurelsong’s art blossomed further and she began adding wildlife, farm scenes and portraits to her body of work.   

During the six years of their marriage she and Luke traveled all over the world, including to the Middle East, India, Vietnam, Guatemala and Puerto Rico. Most of their trips were related to Luke’s business, PESCO-BEAM Environmental Solutions, an international company based in Roanoke that supplies environmental equipment and systems for recycling everything from acetone to xylene and motor oil.

During their travels the couple rode on camels and visited a Roman coliseum and other archeological sites, such Petra, an ancient city in Jordan carved into rock. Laurelsong painted throughout their travels and enjoyed supporting indigenous people by purchasing local artifacts and goods, Luke recalled.

Described by her daughter, Onyia Cook Pemberton, as “the most compassionate person I know,” Laurelsong had always been interested in living in community with others.   Together, she and Luke founded Anahata, an intentional Floyd community focused on renewable energy and permaculture. Anahata’s non-profit Anahata Education Center was formed in 2007 to provide ecologically focused service, learning, teaching, and research and development opportunities.

In early 2010 Laurelsong opened the StarSong gallery at the Station in downtown Floyd, where she exhibited and sold her original works and reproductions and could often be seen working on a new painting.

“People love her work. They’re especially drawn to the dolphins and manatees,” said Deborah Carrino, a local artist who does custom design tile painting for showrooms across the country.  Carrino began staffing the StarSong gallery on Friday afternoons after Laurelsong’s diagnosis of ovarian cancer in the summer of 2011.  The gallery will remain open through the month of January on Friday afternoons, Saturdays and by appointment so that art lovers, collectors and friends can view and purchase Laurelsong’s art, Carrino said.

During Laurelsong’s illness, her daughter, Onyia, left her young twins in the care of their father on a couple of occasions and traveled from her home in Portland, Oregon, to be with her mother and help with her care.  Laurelsong’s son, Orion Ridella, moved into the family home in Floyd and became one of his mother’s primary caregivers, along with Luke and members of the Anahata community.  Laurelsong was also cared for by hospice and members of the larger community, who signed up to take overnight care giving shifts.

It was appropriate that Laurelsong was on the receiving end of so much care after giving so much to others over the years, Luke remarked about her last months.   “Her entire being was focused towards helping and healing others – and expressing her love for the world and its beings through her art,” he said.    ~ Colleen Redman

 Note:  The StarSong Gallery will remain open through the month of January on Friday afternoons from 3 to 8, Saturdays during the day and by appointment.  Laurelsong’s artwork can also be viewed at her website: geocities.com/laurelsong2/.   The majority of photos above were taken at the gallery and include a photo of Deborah and Luke.   The last photo is of Laurelsong, pictured with her work at her Cafe del Sol art opening  in 2007.

1. THIS is what happens when you give thousands of kids thousands of stickers.

2. Interesting that as the globe is literally heating up and the people on it are heating up too, protesting injustices here and worldwide.

3. If tingle is a quieter version of jingle, is tangle less mangled than jangle?

4. I like to lie about my age by a year to give it some buffering time.

5. With neuroscience, we can confirm what our ancestors took for granted—that letting babies get distressed is a practice that can damage children and their relational capacities in many ways for the long term. We know now that leaving babies to cry is a good way to make a less intelligent, less healthy but more anxious, uncooperative and alienated person who can pass the same or worse traits on to the next generation. More at Dangers of Crying it Out, Psychology Today HERE.

6. It had to happen sooner or later. While googling where I live, Floyd Virginia, I came across a blog by a woman named Virginia Floyd.

7. I’ve loved fat since I was a little girl and a friend asked me what I had for supper and I answered “fat.” Turns out “Fat is Where It’s At.”  See why HERE.

8. Love makes the world go round. It revolves, evolves and resolves to solve (which is basically a statement using all the same word with the letters moved around).

9. Best use of the word EVOLVE HERE.

10. When I was growing up a flip was a popular hairstyle, bump was a dance, fink was the word for geek and neat was what came before cool.

11. Flip also meant giving someone lip.

12. Today’s soundtrack HERE.

13. The year 2011 in 2 ½ minutes HERE.

The Thirteen Thursday Hub is HERE.

Wordless Wednesday

The moon smokes clouds

by the sun’s stricken match

Stars rush like sparks

from her moody bowl of ash

Some say the sun is vain

to admire its own reflection

at the moon’s nightstand table

for so long

________________________

~ More dVerse poets sharing HERE.

She complimented me on how I looked, told me I was stubborn and didn’t receive help well. She asked if I was hard of hearing.  Her voice was weak.  It was after midnight and my processing time was slow.

She told me not to stand too close or talk too fast, asked me to wash her toothbrushes and explained how to pour just the right amount of maple syrup for her meds, making sure I scraped the side of the spoon on the glass container so it wouldn’t drip and aimed any broken pills away from her mouth so the jagged edges didn’t hurt as they went down.

I apologized when, while trying to comb out the mat of hair on the back of her head, I accidentally bumped her sensitive skin.  The following week when Joe and I returned for our overnight shift, I made sure that my nails were clipped.

I reminded her of her generosity.  She had forgotten that when we first met she taught me to make hoop earrings that I sold at my friend’s bead shop. Later, she offered to do body work on me. She knew I had issues with chronic fatigue.   I think she called it “angel work.”  I never made the time.   I wasn’t sure I believed it, or maybe I felt I didn’t have the money to pay her if she needed it.

She asked me to look for her dog Dobbins, but I couldn’t find him.  He wasn’t in the laundry room where she thought he would be. Later that night, as I was drifting off to sleep on a mat on the floor next to her bed, I could hear the nearby tapping of Dobbins’ tail on the hardwood floor.

In the morning I wasn’t able to say goodbye because she was sleeping when I left. The week before that when I told her goodbye, she said, “I won’t blame you if you never come back.”   “It’s a privilege to be here. I’ll be back.”  I answered and then made a joke about the strong bond that’s formed after you sleep with someone.  She laughed and I kissed her.

She was dying but still held out hope for healing.  I felt clumsy, like a bull in her butterfly presence.  I liked to remember how excited she was when she stopped me in town before she got sick and invited me into her new art gallery and how beautiful she looked at her summer solstice wedding six years before.

At her memorial celebration last night, there was laughter, storytelling, dancing and singing.  It was odd to see the sunroom she died in filled with friends around a table of homemade desserts. I was standing on the porch with a group of woman talking about her and feeling that she was listening when I realized that Dobbins was standing beside me, tapping his tail against the side of my leg.

Shadow Shot Sunday

~ The following was published in The Floyd Press on January 5, 2012.

It’s been nearly a year since a group of Pittsylvania County residents traveled to Floyd County to give a power point presentation, alerting local residents about Virginia Uranium Inc.’s intent to mine and mill uranium in Virginia for use in the production of nuclear power. A reported 119 million pounds of uranium – worth as much as $10 billion is at stake for the company, which consists of Virginia investors, Canadian partners and land owners of the property in Pittsylvania County where the mining site is proposed.

Concerned about the radioactive waste associated with uranium mining and its risk to drinking water, human health, farmland, property values and tourism, a group of Floyd citizens formed UBAN, a grassroots organization named for the goal of keeping a 30 year statewide ban on uranium mining in place.

Throughout the year UBAN members have partnered with other Virginia groups to educate people on the issue. Members have staffed educational booths at festivals, hosted benefits, collected petition signatures, attended local and regional meetings and voiced their concerns to their representatives.

“Other countries are pulling away from nuclear power,” said UBAN member Anne Armistead. Since the nuclear power plant disaster in Japan the price of uranium in the global market has fallen, she reports. “Studies have shown that solar is already cheaper than nuclear.”

Armistead’s fear is that if the ban is lifted and uranium mining is allowed, it will ruin Virginia’s economy. “How many companies will leave if this happens? Who’s going to want to relocate here other than another dirty mining company?” she asked. “Clean water is our biggest asset to future jobs. Even the perception of such a dirty industry around dairy farms will have a negative effect.”

“Property values near the proposed site have already gone down,” said UBAN member Michael Kovick. Kovick recently contacted his insurance agent to ask about coverage for water contamination. There is none, he was told.

UBAN member Cheri Chalfant pointed out that Pittsylvania County is only 50 miles as the crow flies from Floyd. “We need to reach out to every person we know in this state. They need to let their delegates know that our water is more important than uranium.” She noted that full scale uranium mining has never been done in the east where floods and hurricanes would make the spread of toxic materials more likely.

Uranium mining and milling has been known to increase birth defects and cancer, particularly in those who live near the mines. The mining industry’s safety record in the past has not been good, Armistead said. “Church Rock in New Mexico is the biggest radioactive release disaster in this country. It was worse than Three Mile Island, but you don’t hear much about it.” A waste water storage system in Church Rock failed and radioactive water was released in 1979.

The National Academy of Science recently released its highly anticipated 22-month review on uranium mining. The report did not make any recommendations on the ban but pointed to “steep hurdles” that mining prospectors would have to overcome. It also highlighted the difficulty of storing radioactive waste for thousands of years, considering Virginia’s climate, geology and population.

UBAN members agree that, because the problem of permanent storage of the radioactive waste has not been solved, uranium mining can not be considered safe even if it is heavily regulated. “When they dredge up this low grade ore it will take 2,000 pounds to get 4 pounds of yellowcake. That leaves 1,996 pounds of toxic waste on the ground,” Kovick explained. “Some of it is released as particles into the air and it’s processed with water. That toxic water has to be stored. Everyone’s asking can you mine safely, but the real question is ‘how are you going to store the radioactive waste for 100,000 years?’ There is no way. Every facility breaks down in 50 years or so and is vulnerable to storms.”

UBAN members are unanimously concerned that Virginia Uranium, Inc., a well-financed and politically connected company that currently employs 14 lobbyists, will drown out the public voice and push for a General Assembly vote on lifting the ban before it can be thoroughly reviewed. Another concern is that if the ban is lifted land throughout the Appalachian Mountain chain, where uranium deposits are believed to be, will be open to mining.

Kovick refers to the rush to mine and mill uranium in Virginia as “irresponsible and irrational.” “On the one hand they are pushing this by talking about putting regulations in place. On the other hand they have lobbyists in D.C. trying to shut down any regulations that are here to protect the public right now. They’re speaking out of both sides of their mouth.”

A by-donation “Keep the Ban” benefit dance concert is planned for Thursday, January 12 at 7:30 p.m. at Dogtown Roadhouse. Along with the scheduled music entertainment, Mighty Shakey and the RockuPyers, organizers plan to host an information table and have a guest speaker. They hope to inspire others to attend a Keep the Ban Lobby Day, hosted by the conservation community in Richmond on January 23rd. Mary Rafferty, a Sierra Club organizer and UBAN resource from Richmond, says the event will involve a morning workshop on lobbying, followed by a trip to the capitol to meet with legislators.

“This is our one chance. If people take one day out of their life to do this one thing and we make enough of a showing, we can have an impact and stop this.” Kovick urged.    ~ Colleen Redman

Post notes: UBAN members Michael Kovick, Anne Armistead and Cheri Chalfant are pictured at a meet-up at the upcoming benefit dance concert venue, Dogtown Roadhouse. Read the article I wrote for Natural Awakenings magazine on how the “Risks Outweigh the Benefits” HERE and a more recent excellent commentary in the Roanoke Times HERE. More information can be found at keeptheban.org.