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Holly Lake Effect

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HollyLakeEffect

By Lucy Germany

Notes good for the mind? Maybe...

Taking notes is good for the mind. A mental exercise. Or maybe they're nothing but aimless scribbles. Looking back over old notes scrawled on the pages of stained and messy notebooks, which have their own history—lumpish handwriting, scrawled through lines which may or may not have had any import at the time of their birth, names of people you have never met and are clueless as to who they are, you wonder—what if all that energy had been directed to writing a book, or to some other more promising goal? There actually are people in this great land of ours whose notebooks are famous, are actually read as literature. But those are people who had the gift, knew how to use it to produce fame and fortune and had professional agents. Long after they published their thirty-second best-seller somebody discovers in an old trunk or perhaps in a pile of stuff offered for sale in a flea market, their notebooks. It's a little like finding a Jackson Pollock in a pile of discarded junk or something that looked like a diamond in a tray of junk jewelry that turned out to be a diamond. Unfortunately you must be famous first before you taste the sweets of victory clutching an old three-subject, college ruled notebook by O. Henry. Because this could happen it would certainly pay all of us to expand our knowledge of writers and artists as well as how to identify a several carat stone as more than a chunk of glass.

But what about notebooks you ask? Of what value are they—treasure trove of all my most personal and hidden thoughts? Such items as "Ayn Rand was Alan Greenspan's lover" (found in a notebook of mine from two years past). Or: a brief reference to a book that "has every color in the world"— title and author—a mystery. Then a question without an answer: Did Henri Schliemann discover Ilios? Was Ilios Trioy? Did Henri Schliemann discover Troy? Did I spell his name right?

And of course there are recipes—sweet sour turkey wings (don't bother with that one), angel food upside down cake (I feel certain that this was an unintended marriage of two procedures which together spelled disaster), several pages on oysters which are really irrelevant since nobody sells oysters anymore unless they are in a jar and in that case you would be wise to pass.

Note: "You know you're slipping when your emails get shorter." No point expanding on this comment.

"Stillmeadow Inn, Jefferson,TX.' A place I would like to be when I am actually eating catfish at some place more local and cheaper.

Note 2: "Tiores"--a trinket store run by a woman who has written a published book. No further information. If there wasn't a question mark somewhere in this sentence, there should have been.

How to check the credibility of tee-shirt wearers. Polite: "Nice shirt. Good color on you". Curious: "Don't think I've seen one like that before." Serious inquiry: "Have you actually to RamalPuti?"

How do you know when you're welcome somewhere? (this was actually in one of my notebooks) Check the welcome mat. When the word "welcome" faces out you might decide it's best to move on. When the blinds are pulled all the way down in the front windows, it might be time to change your plans.. If you are sure you saw a hand parting a curtain or raising just a sliver of a blind, followed by no further action, you should immediately head back to your vehicle. Don't leave the friendship gift of a recently baked loaf of Italian Pita Bread fresh from your oven, on the doorstep. Some things are just not meant to be. Get over it.

When you have a tree with a weak fork, put a cable between two branches. For this you need a heavy duty bolt cutter.

"Dendrochronology" has something to do with figuring out the age of trees. Maybe they don't want you to know their age. Leave the trees alone.

St. Augustine can go fifty days without water. Too much water causes fungus. I thought St. Augustine spent his time writing about the after life..I didn't know he had a fungus.

Peel potatoes and drop into cold water. Beat egg. Drop in onion".A recipe? There's no way to be sure since it ends there.

If you have difficulty finding the light switch call you opthalmologist. If he is not in, call your lawyer. No explanation for these snippets of wisdom.

Bird trip—be sure to take binoculars.(one of many memoes to assure me that I will be properly equipped for any occasion.)

Notebooks—what treasures they contain. Be sure to hide them in a safe place just before your family members come for their annual visit.