Frida’s Theme Music

Ashlandia remains in a stable weather pattern for today, June 27, 2025, Frida in our reality. Like yesterday, our highs will encroach on the mid 80s while we enjoy 62 F at the mo.

Ashlandia’s current problem are aggressive deer. This has been an off and on thing and doesn’t usually get as much press as other animals, like cougars and bears. The cougars haven’t been in the news much. The bears have just bee Yogi-ing trash cans. The deer, with new fawns being born, have declared war on dogs and people coming too close. Some of them are bold and forthright, imitating Gandalf in Lord of the Rings, insisting, “You shall not pass.” The dog-walking people, dog leashed, respond to the deer, “But I live there.” It’s a challenge. A city committee studied the issue in 2008 but no effective solutions were found. With four aggressive does finding the NextDoor spotlight in different city areas, it’s recycled into our awareness. That cycle itself is a product of drought; the deer were out of the area when we were parched and conserving water for more than a decade. Now that we’re water rich with thick greenery, the deer are enticed back into the area. Humans (with leashed dogs) and deer are getting acquainted anew.

A pause for silent reflection for Bill Moyer, journalist, press secretary, writer, 1934-2025. Watching him and reading his commentary and essays informed me and shaped my thinking.

Thinking that I wanted to break my current dark cycle, I asked The Neurons to please come up with some chill music for the morning mental music stream. They delivered Carlos Santana with Michelle Branch from 2002 and the “Game of Love”. Wikipedia provided some background to the song that I didn’t know.

The song had originally been recorded with New Radicals frontman Gregg Alexander, but album producer Clive Davis felt a female voice would maximize the song’s appeal and a recording of Santana performing “The Game of Love” with Tina Turner as vocalist was completed. When Turner declined to participate in making a video for the track, Davis recruited Macy Gray to record a replacement vocal. When Davis was not satisfied with that version, Michelle Branch was asked to record the song,^{[2][better source needed]} with Branch’s rhythm guitar playing also added to the track. Branch said, “It was the first time for me to sing somebody else’s song. Usually I’m like: ‘Oh I want it this way’ and I’m in charge…I didn’t meet [Carlos Santana at the recording session], I didn’t know what was going on…It felt to me like wow it seems like there’s so much at stake, I’m going to go in there and just sing my heart out and just cross my fingers.”^[3]

Coffee is arriving at my major internal waypoints. Time to rock up again. Hope you have a great one. Cheers