Loose Leaf Notes

1. Her name was Lola.

2. I call these “the generals.”

3. Sunsets are a whole category of my recent vacation pictures.

4. Along with restaurants.

5. This meal did end in leftovers.

6. “Look at the rocket!’ the little boy said.

7. You’ve heard of walking on eggshells? Well walking on seashells at Sea Shell Island is a feat for the feet. See HERE.

8. One of the highlights of our Florida trip was stopping in Gainesville on the way home to visit our friend Anita, a past Floydian and co-founder of the Blue Mountain School.

9. We attended a mind-bending, inspiring and humorous talk by bestselling author and spiritual teacher Mickey Singer at the Temple of the Universe in Alachua.  Mickey is author of The Surrender Experiment and The Untethered Soul, the subject of an interview on Oprah (HERE).  He’s been giving talks at the Temple three times a week since the ‘70s.

10. At the end of the talk Singer took questions. I asked if he was using the words God and Consciousness interchangeably. He said, “yes.” I then commented that I had a hard time using the word “God” because of the commonly used pronoun “He” and the fact that “he” is often portrayed as a man in the sky who rewards and punishes.

11. Mickey responded with a joke about today’s gender pronoun controversy that caused a break-out of laughter, “I’m not going to call God They or Them,” he joked.

12. Joe and I wore the right hats for the Butterfly Rainforest at the Museum of Natural History in Gainesville. The butterflies liked our flower-colored hats enough to land on them. They liked Joe’s lavender colored shirt too. See HERE.

13. Seeing the flamingos was the impetus of our trip, and they didn’t disappoint.

_____Thirteen Thursday

Joe and I wore the right hats for the Butterfly Rainforest at the Museum of Natural History in Gainesville.

The butterflies  liked our flower-colored hats enough to land on them. They liked Joe’s lavender colored shirt too.

Butterflies weren’t the only thing flying around.

There were exotic birds flitting about and providing a background soundtrack.

The lush landscape of the living exhibit included lots of tropical trees, colorful flowering plants and waterfalls.

The common blue morpho was the most prevalent  species, the largest and the best butterfly photo-op.

Butterflies, flamingos, seashells and the ocean are a few of my very favorite things that we saw plenty of on this trip.

We almost missed this group of roosting butterflies camouflaged on a tree.

In Gainsville, we’re staying with our dear friend from the old Floyd days, Anita, who has been showing us around the city, which some call the Asheville of the South.

We had dinner at a Hari Krishna temple, where a woman came up to me and whispered in my ear. I thought she was going to say, ‘we don’t allow photography in the temple,’ but she said, ‘we don’t allow shoes,’ so I took them off.

And here is Anita and me in one of the many Gainsville thrift shops we toured and where we had a good laugh trying to get out of this chair.

I held it up like an academy award Oscar. See HERE. 

Joe and I kayaked out to Shell Island in Marco Island, Florida

We felt like winners when Joe pulled out this prize from the gulf bay.

We had to put it back because it was occupied, but there were plenty of shells that were empty.

I felt like we were hauling away a hoard of loot. My feet are still sore from walking on shells.

Shells were once used for money in some Native American tribes.

Back on land, or should I say sand, I made a young friend who was into shells as much as I was.

Still winning, we caught another sweet sunset, a perfect end to a perfect day. – More on our Naples/Marco Island vacation HERE.

We spin the world
in our own image
where beliefs are contagious
and reality is consensus

We tilt its meaning
in our own direction
We see what we want to see

Tangled together
we face each other
until we unlearn the teachings
and the shortcuts to living
until we forge our own way

_______Colleen Redman /Poets and Storytellers United  / dVerse Poets Pub

1. Joe and I are part of the Naples beach parade with our matching hats.

2. The bathrooms at the restaurant we ate at last night were marked Gulls and Buoys for Girls and Boys.

3. A crevice of crescent over the ocean slowly filled with light like an hourglass each night.

4. On Madera Beach we met the artist of the above sand memorial. He created the sand tribute for a local friend who recently died of cancer.

5. It survived the tides.

6. With a poet and a psychotherapist on vacation together we are assured to have some Close Encounters of the Wise Kind.

7. Back in the day when I drove junk cars I was hoping one of my sons would become a car mechanic so I would have an in-house mechanic to fix my old cars. It didn’t turn out that way but I did end up with an in-house professional counselor by way of my husband who has helped me work on myself.

8. Seeing Flamingos was a bucket list experience..

9. Colleen to Joe: What’s that guy up to? He has a pretty big yoga mat.

10. Then Joe takes a turn.

11. On Marco Island the beach parade went on.

12. In Madera Beach I told Joe that the flamingos and the heated pool were saving my life, or at least adding a few years to it.

13. Add bike riding and rooftop dining to that.

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Joey Klein took his time
to make me his valentine
He drew a heart
and said, “That’s a start
Now we’ll never be apart”

We’ve been transported. Actually, Joe drove 9 hours straight to get us to our first stop in Florida, Ichetucknee Springs, just north of Gainsville where we camped for a couple of days, kayaked and swam in the natural turquoise spring pools.

We were almost up the creek without a paddle. Joe noticed at the last minute before we left home that the paddles were nearly left behind.

Driving south is an act of strip tease. My jacket came off in Georgia. By the time we passed the Florida state sign I had lost my socks and boots. The sun flashed through the trees along the highway like a psychedelic trip when I closed my eyes.

I love flamingos.

They were the impetus of the trip. We saw them at the Sunken Gardens in St. Pete.

They are more coral than pink. I couldn’t get over how their long legs looked like they were clipped together like the two parts of our kayak paddles.

We meandered through the 4 acres of tropical plants in the gardens.

There were lush flowers, tropical birds, cascading waterfalls and koi fish.

I hadn’t had a bath in the two days we were camping, so by the time we arrived at our hotel room at our next stop in Madera Beach, I hit the pool first thing.

The day ended with a walk on the beach and sushi.  Today we are headed further south. I imagine I’ll lose more clothes!

1. Taylor Swift is the musician’s version of Meryl Streep when it comes to getting awards and the young version of Joni Mitchell when it comes to boyfriends.

2. I’ve resisted all these years, but for the first time ever, I tried to sign in for a magazine subscription because I wanted to read an article about Joni Mitchell at the Atlantic, but it cost $79.99 a year, so all I got is the headline: What Joni Mitchell Proved at the Grammys -In performing an instant-classic awards-show set, she affirmed her timelessness—and her influence on a new generation of artists.

3. Joni’s album Blue was the soundtrack of my life in the ‘70s.

4. And Tracy Chapman self-titled album was the soundtrack of my life in the late 80s.  I get goosebumps watching Tracy and Luke Combs’ Fast Car Grammy duet. Tracy’s self-titled album, which Fast Car was on, won six Grammy Award nominations in 1989, including one for Album of the Year, three of which she won. She also won Best New Artist, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for the song “Fast Car,” and Best Contemporary Folk Album.    More recently she scored a country number one with a solo composition, and to win the Country Music Association Award for Song of the Year, when Luke Combs covered “Fast Car”.

5. I played a lot of Billy Joel in the late ‘70s and early ‘80’s, and it was good to see him perform at the Grammys with a new song and realize that he can still write a great song after 17 years. Over the years, Joel has been nominated for 23 Grammy awards and won six times. Listen to his new song HERE.

6. I’ve never been to the Grammys but I get to be one, in another word, a nana.

7. When references expire and culture sours / you don’t teach an old dog new tricks / You keep a lifeline up your sleeve / Pray not to trip and fall over / When strippers win Grammys / And rappers praise their crotches / You wonder what it will be like/ to be put out to pasture… Read When You Come Full Circle in its entirety HERE.

8. Musical Chairs – taken in the music garden at Villa Appalaccia Winery after a wedding HERE. 

9. Today, I found myself flipping through the book’s pages and wondering, ‘what would have happened if Bob had agreed to cut his hair?’ Maybe this book wouldn’t exist. Maybe I wouldn’t be here.” -Read about my friend Bob Grubel’s book signing and reading of I Always Dreamed of Flying. HERE.

10. Winter Music Score – Empty sheet of snow / Unwritten winter notes? Footprints wait to play

11. “We live in a world divided by so much. And maybe music can’t solve everything, but let us all agree, music must remain the common ground upon which we all stand, together in peace and harmony. Because music has always been one of humanity’s greatest connectors… These musicians of Palestinian, Israeli, and Arab descent are here playing together. Now is the time for us, for humanity, to play together and to come together with empathy and with love.” Harvey Mason Jr., CEO of the Recording Academy at the 2024 Grammys

12. On Joni: “When you write a song at 23 years old and then you sing it again at the Grammy Awards at 80, and that song proclaims “I’ve looked at life from both sides now,” it makes it seem like you’re not only a great songwriter but someone who planned and built a song that could accomplish this exact feat, that was indeed meant to be sang from both sides of life, with each side’s meaning reflecting and refracting the other, like two mirrors passing a beam back and forth.” Will Stenberg, writer/musician

13. “Somethings lost and somethings gained in living every day.” Joni

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Bob Grubel, a musician and author of I Always Dreamed of Flying, is the reason I live in Floyd VA. I was living in Texas as a transplant from Massachusetts when Bob answered a letter I had written to Blue Mountain School, after seeing it listed in a Waldorf School directory. He, one of the early founders of the BMS, included a CERC Newsletter (later renamed A Museletter) in his return letter, which gave me a look into the tight knit homesteading community of alter-natives living in Floyd’s rural mountain countryside.

So, we came across country, sight unseen. Bob was one of the first people we met when my then-husband and two young sons arrived in Floyd in 1985. I remember that he greeted me with a welcoming hug, which gave me an idea of how Floyd living was going to be.

After some 38 years of friendship with Bob, I read his new book and enjoyed the references to the early Floyd back-to-the land community, of which I was a part, and to Boston in the late ‘60s where we crossed paths without knowing it. It’s a generational story told by one of my peers, whose life took different, yet familiar turns.

Random luck or guided destiny? Some of Bob’s songs came in dreams. His story is told in conjunction with songs and his development as a songwriter and musician (guitar and piano) who has produced dozens of locally recorded records and now enjoys regular airplay on Pandora.

Bob was a high school valedictorian disillusioned with the system, and a Quaker college student who excelled at basketball but refused to cut his hair and got cut from the team, which set the stage for creating music. He dropped out for a rock band, to travel cross country and to learn country living skills in a couple of intentional communities before landing in Floyd and co-founding the Zephyr Community with his family and others.

Recently, I attended Bob’s book signing and reading at our local library. He held our attention with stories that included lessons taken from a Boston voice coach who worked with Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, Aretha Franklin and Steven Tyler, a large touring bus than Aerosmith borrowed, hitchhiking trips, and a big Jamaica Plains house the rock band rented that used to be a nursing home and was still inhabited by aged residents who had nowhere to go. Fast and unlikely friendships were formed.

The library reading opened with Bob leading the audience in one of his chants. He sang a few of his songs acapella and told their backstories. He spoke about being reunited with his old rock band friends after finding each other on social media, and talked about how basketball is like playing music with others because it involves trust and team work.

Today, I found myself flipping through the book’s pages and wondering, ‘what would have happened if he had agreed to cut his hair?’ Maybe this book wouldn’t exist. Maybe I wouldn’t be here in Floyd.

–I Always Dreamed of Flying – A Songwriter’s Autobiography is available locally in Floyd and on Amazon.

I. Moon Drowning

Swallowed whole
in one gulp
by a wave of clouds
the moon was engulfed

II. Magic Trick

Behind a curtain of fog
the moon’s half cup
flipped face-down
by sun-up

__________Colleen Redman / Poets and Storytellers United

1. My husband juggles two phones and two laptops. “Next thing will be two wives,” I joked. “Three is ideal for juggling,” he answered. “Not an option,” I say.

2. I’m a nerd who spends hours taking and cropping pictures of frost on the window.  See more HERE.

3. I’ve always felt that the world of reflections was more interesting than the literal world, in the same way that physical reality seems to be the watered-down version of imagination. Since I was a little girl, I’ve been fascinated with shadows and reflections. I would gaze at mirror images of trees and clouds in a still pond and wonder which world was real. Why is it that we consider physical matter to be more real than shadows, reflections, or dreams?

4. Both sides now HERE.

5. Reality is a quantum leap / The future is a spectrum / where entropy meets possibility / the other side of the same.  Read Quantum Leap in its entirety HERE.

6. What’s it All About Alfie used to be my theme song. Now it’s Too Late to Stop Now (From Into the Mystic) by Van Morrison.

7. I used to buy cars where the seats go back all the way in case I was homeless and had to live and sleep in my car. Now I travel with a bathing suit in the back in case I stay at a hotel that has a pool. That’s progress.

8. These days my interest is in being more than doing.

9. Some of us will have second childhoods / Our car keys will be taken away / We’ll eat too much sugar / and walk around in one slipper / I’ve written this poem before / I’ve written this poem before / But I can’t remember the end – Read Second Hand Chance HERE.

10. It’s hopeful to note that we’ve gained about an hour of sunlight since the shortest day of the year, Solstice December 21.

11. Oh My My Oh Hell Yes – We put on our party dresses and tie-dye shirts.  It was the 38th anniversary show with The Kind at the Parkway Brewing Company in Salem. Everyone smiles and sings along to loved songs. It’s symbiotic reunion every time. More HERE.

12. I don’t believe / everything I’ve heard / I tinker and linger / I keep my word. -Read A Poet’s Word in its entirety HERE.

13. “When you’re writing, you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know. The whole language of writing for me is finding out what you don’t want to know, what you don’t want to find out. But something forces you to anyway.” James Baldwin

________Thirteen Thursday

We put on our party dresses and tie-dye shirts.  It was the 38th anniversary show with The Kind at the Parkway Brewing Company in Salem. For years the band played closer to home at The Pine Tavern  for Halloween and Anniversaries, but the Pine was sold and is no longer a restaurant bar and music venue.

The band of friends, which formed in 1986, play mostly Grateful Dead but throw in an occasional surprise cover like the one above.

Joe and I started dancing to The Kind in 1988 when they played regularly at South Main Cafe in Blacksburg. We learned last night that the youngest bandmate, Stuart (pictured left) was born in 1988.

Over the years, the band has amassed a DEADicated following. Floyd Countians were well represented at the show. There are three in the picture above and many more not pictured. Mostly you find us on the dance floor.

My friend Becky said they should call their anniversary shows  Family Reunions, and that sentiment fit when I ran into my old friend Eia who I hadn’t seen in years.

We see the same Kind faces on stage and on the floor over and over, year after year. The band raises the energy and we raise it on the dance floor. Everyone smiles and sings along to loved songs. It’s symbiotic reunion every time.

Every thing goes better with a Get Bent IPA.  Shout Out to our Floyd friends at the Fat Bean food truck who we can count on to make a memorable meal every time.  They never miss!

It’s all our kind of a romantic date. HERE is the past story of the band’s 25 anniversary (at the Pine, of course) that was published in The Floyd Press. And HERE is a post on one of the last epic Halloween at the Pine with the Kind. Put “The Kind” in the category search bar on the right for more.