Month: July 2025

Sunda’s Theme Music

Sorry that I’m late with posting. Hope all were still able to carry on.

Today is Sunda, July 6, 2025. Temp right now, at 6:30 PM, is 94 F. Sunshine floods the valley and clouds have are absent, giving us an endless blue vision.

Slept the day away after requesting wife drive me to ER at 2:20 AM. Spent three hours there. Paralyzing and mounting abdominal plague began haunting me at 10:30 PM. Despite a pain killer, some antacids, and a couple glasses of water, it kept ratcheting up, and nausea began a background chorus. So, with deep and persistent mutterings about intercourse and life, we went to our local ER. The pain began in my back against my spine but soon became a traveller, going all over my upper abdominal area. I joked that an alien was in there trying to break out. BP was way up, temperature was normal. A couple rounds of morphine were IV’d into me. Blood was drawn. EKG was completed: looked great. Everything came back normal. With kidneys working, a CT scan was done: all normal among my organs. They finally said: looks like gas.

WHAT? WHAAAT? WHAAATTT?

Oh, wait. There might be something going on with your gall bladder. A follow-up course was established to investigate it.

The doctor said, avoid fatty foods and fried foods, and hydrate. Still moaning and groaning with pain and ab tenderness, my wife transported me home. I went in and violently puked for a couple minutes. With the tv on for company and a hot compress on my abs, I played with sleep. Pain subsided enough for a few hours and sleep was brokered. At 9:30, I consumed painkillers and anti-nausea meds they’d sent home with me. I returned to the idea of sleeping and fitfully did a Z dance for the next few hours before finally getting pain free at noonish. A bowl of buckwheat mash with blueberries and a couple chucks of papaya were cautiously consumed. Deep sleep came in for a four hour shift. And, BTW, my wife did a great job of taking care of me, as she always does

After being morphine’d while I was at ER, The Neurons ordered a dose of “King of Pain” by The Police for the early morning mental music stream. I laughed at the little skunks and their humor but the 1983 hit song is today’s theme music.

It’s been a no-coffee day. Dinner was a sweet potatoe with steamed veggies. Triple digits are playing for the area tomorrow. Time will tell with what comes next. Cheers

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Sunda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

Southwest Nebraska medical center announces plans to close, blames uncertainty over funding

The uncertainty over federal Medicaid funding appears to have claimed its first victim in Nebraska.

Community Hospital in McCook announced Wednesday that it will close Curtis Medical Center in Curtis, winding down its services over the next several months.

“Unfortunately, the current financial environment, driven by anticipated federal budget cuts to Medicaid, has made it impossible for us to continue operating all of our services, many of which have faced significant financial challenges for years,” Troy Bruntz, President and CEO of Community Hospital, said in a news release.

The budget reconciliation bill that the House of Representatives voted to approve on Thursday contains several provisions that experts say will slash Medicaid, which rural hospitals are more dependent on than their urban counterpart

Read the rest…

Mauna Loa Observatory captured the reality of climate change. The US plans to shut it down

The greenhouse effect was discovered more than 150 years ago and the first scientific paper linking carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere with climate change was published in 1896.

But it wasn’t until the 1950s that scientists could definitively detect the effect of human activities on the Earth’s atmosphere.

In 1956, United States scientist Charles Keeling chose Hawaii’s Mauna Loa volcano for the site of a new atmospheric measuring station. It was ideal, located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and at high altitude away from the confounding influence of population centres.

Data collected by Mauna Loa from 1958 onward let us clearly see the evidence of climate change for the first time. The station samples the air and measures global CO₂ levels. Charles Keeling and his successors used this data to produce the famous Keeling curve – a graph showing carbon dioxide levels increasing year after year.

But this precious record is in peril. US President Donald Trump has decided to defund the observatory recording the data, as well as the widespread US greenhouse gas monitoring network and other climate measuring sites.

Read the rest…

The Dilemma of the Fourth of July
As we finish out this holiday weekend, it’s a good moment to reflect on how the Fourth of July is a complicated holiday for many of those living in the United States. At Native News Online, author Mark Charles looks at the contradictions in the experience of July 4th for many Native communities.

“The other day I was eating dinner with my wife in a restaurant located in Gallup, New Mexico, a border town to the Navajo reservation. Gallup was recently named “Most Patriotic Small Town” in a nationwide contest. Soon after sitting down I noticed that we were seated at a table directly facing a framed poster of the Declaration of Independence.

The irony almost made me laugh.

When our server, who was also Native, came to the table, I asked if I could show him something. I then stood up and pointed out that 30 lines below the famous quote “All men are created equal” the Declaration of Independence refers to Natives as “merciless Indian savages.”

The irony was that the restaurant was filled with Native Americans customers and employees and there in plain sight, a poster hanging on the wall was literally calling all of us “savages.”

Read more…

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Satyrda’s Wandering Thoughts

Not too long ago, I learned more about sudoriferous or sudoriparous glands. These are basically our sweat glands, if you’re human. My reading instructed me about the apocrine sweat glands, and eccrine sweat glands. I never gave sweat glands much thought before, but this was related to something I was writing, in a really thin tangenital way. I don’t want to get all pedantic about it because most of your probably already learned these things that I’m just coming upon, but all sweat is not the same. I kind of guessed that from the smell and feel of sweat in my armpits and groin area versus everywhere else there where sweat glands reside. Also, check out how tiny these sweat glands are on this photo of a fingerprint. Pretty amazing, right?

Human sweat gland pores on the ridges of a finger pad

In an aside, it’s good to have the net available to provide this info. I ding the net for not being perfect but it really can be helpful.

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Floofments

Floofments (floofinition) – Garments or articles of clothing used when engaging with animals. Origins: First known use, late 20th century, United States (South Carolina).

In Use: “Whenever something had to be done with Rolex (named for the way he watched) like administering medicine, giving Rollie a bath or clipping nails was pursued, Sue and Andi first donned well-worn floofments — essentially heavily used older clothing no longer worn in public and thick gloves — to protect their bodies.”

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Satyrda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

I had a FAFO post up about the Texas flash flood disaster and the Trump National Weather Service cuts. But I felt uncomfortable with it and trashed it. First, it seemed too Trumpian to tonelessly crow about others’ bad situation. That’s something that I genuinely detest in Trump and many of his supporters. These are humans suffering, and I feel for them and their pain.

I also don’t believe that pointing out FAFO moments like the National Weather Service changes Trump thoughtlessly executed will help the national political discourse. FAFO incidents must be learning moments for the MAGAs, but they need to do it from their sphere. We’ve already witnessed them coming back with strong denial or whataboutisms when confronted with facts. So, they either learn it on their own, or don’t. Pointing it out isn’t a catalyst to helping them learn. It will just close their minds to people pointing it out to them.

That’s a broad generalization, of course. I don’t know how many MAGAs it applies to. I’ve read interviews where MAGAs have professed to learning from their Trump-supporting ways. I know some have learned; I believe more will learn. I hope more will learn.

But I’m going to try to avoid shoving their face in it when the FAFO shit hits the fan.

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Satyrda’s Theme Music

Couple things happening now. This being Satyrda, July 5, 2025, we’re over halfway through 2025. You feelin’ better about your life, our world, and the direction of your nation? Secondly, we’re now ‘closer’ to 2050 than to 2000.

Summer continues here in Ashlandia. We topped out at 80 F at my place yesterday. After an overnight low of 52 F, we’re supposed to traverse the mid 80s today. Blue paints the sky here and sunshine is methodically rising over the trees and mountains, bringing light and heat.

After a bout of interesting and uplifting dreams, I rolled into the day feelin’ pretty good. Then I perused the news and life slapped my face. Heatwave in Europe is unabated, with wildfires in Spain, Greece, Turkey. Flash flooding struck Texas and we’re following that story to see what happened to who and how many. Not helping matters, more rain is expected in the flooded areas. MAGA is gleeful about building a new concentration camp, Alligator Alcatraz, in Florida, using FEMA funds. You know, FEMA: Federal Emergency Management Assistance. Trump has turned that into a tool to imprison others instead of helping Americans. Meanwhile, tropical depressions off the U.S. east coast could develop into a hurricane. And the giant Madre fire still burns in Southern California.

But personal moods sometimes plays by its own sheet music so my mind is up. I gotta take advantage of it because you don’t know when something will strike down the mood.

Today’s song is “Higher Love” by Steve Winwood. It’s a personal favorite from my middle adult years. Released in 1986, when I was 30, the song spoke to me. Today I’m 69, and Der Neurons thought it was a good fit for the morning mental music stream. I really enjoy this flashback video and Letterman’s humor. Hope you find it entertaining. As a bonus, “Gimme Some Lovin'” is also performed.

Here we go, into the day. Let it swallow me and become something. I’m going to try to make it a strong one. Hope yours goes well. Cheer

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Frida’s Wandering Thoughts

The parade is over. The fireworks await us tonight. Cloud cover has passed away so viewing shouldn’t be a problem. The arguments over whether they’re entertaining and patriotic or an environmental hazard and an ordeal for animals continues.

2025’s Ashland Independence Day parade was remarkable for its thin festivities and shortness. Didn’t even go an hour this year even though four bands entertained us with march and show music. The are the same four bands heard every year. Indivisible had a “No Kings” display and vocalized that, encouraging us to join. La Clinica was barely there. Climate awareness scuffled past, as did Peace Corps members who knew their legacy was being defunded and dismissed.

Applause was muted; many participants seemed tired, trudging, not marching, forcing dull smiles out as they remembered to toss a feeble smile. Some performers, like the elderly female dancers, were still into it, zinging us with smiles and waving with happiness, but they were the rarity. Mayors from Medford, Phoenix, Talent, and Ashland all drove by, along with other minor local government functionaries. The cars, an Austin Healey 3000, two Jag E types, and a Bugatti GTC, brought comments, along with the vintage and antique cars that gassed us with exhaust fumes out of the 1940s.

The weather stayed cool but the sunshine was hot, a crisply contradictary way of being, which felt perfectly symbolic for this national holiday in 2025.

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