Light, cool rain still fails in Ashlandia, a salve for the spirit, comfort food for the soul.
Saturday’s Theme Music
Mood: rainlifted
Start the coffee. Saturday has landed on us in Ashlandia, where the students are young and the population is old.
A light rain fell this morning. After the smoke cleared to moderate levels last night, I opened windows with dreams of cooling the house. As we slept, the smoke returned. I awoke congested at just before six. Heading to the bathroom to spray saline up my nose and blow it out, my ears captured the ping ping of rain on the exhaust fan hood. Checking it out, I discovered Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah) out on the patio, watching a mild rain descending. Papi was not far away but showed less interest in the rain.
It’s August 3, 2024. 94 days until the 2024 elections. 71 F here at this point, today’s high should stop short of the upper eighties. With this rain has come mouldering gray clouds. Smoke still obscures the mountains. We’re skewing toward moderately unhealthy air from wildfire smoke at the moment.
Today’s music will be “Freedom” by Beyonce. Reading that Vice President Kamala Harris is rolling it out as her campaign’s theme music, The Neurons and I agreed that it would be good theme music for today. I admit that I’m not overly familiar with the song. Released in 2016, I saw her perform it duing the Superbowl halftime show one year. There is no doubt the powerful, energetic song and its lyrics fit the fighting spirit VP Harris needs to win. It’s also a fitting album for a year in which the GOP is cutting back women’s rights and shackling their freedom. Hell, JD Vance even suggested making it a requirement that women have papers for traveling between states.
Freedom! Freedom! I can’t move
Freedom, cut me loose! Yeah
Freedom! Freedom! Where are you?
‘Cause I need freedom, too!
I break chains all by myself
Won’t let my freedom rot in hell
Hey! I’ma keep running
‘Cause a winner don’t quit on themselves
h/t to AZLyrics.com
Stay positive and be strong. Vote Blue in 2024. Coffee has arrived. Here’s the music. Cheers
Friday’s Wandering Thoughts
So, it’s a mini-rant on a subject tapped before. I don’t understand some drivers.
Followed a guy along city streets today. I don’t know if it’s germane but the Santa Cruz truck which he drove sported Oklahoma plates. Rental, student, visitor, new arrival who hasn’t registered their vehicle yet? Couldn’t say.
In the 35 MPH zone, they slipped along at 30-31. Okay, they’re cautious, I thought, Maybe looking for something.
The speed limit plummeted to 25 MPH. They cruised through, pulling away from me.
And that dichotomy is what manufactures my ire: why do they go below the speed limit in one area and above the speed limit in another. That’s so contradictory to me. It’s like, and I don’t know if this is what they think, “I’m just going to establish my own speed limit and adhere to it no matter what the local signs say.” Or maybe it’s something they picked up from their parents. Perhaps it’s an Oklahoma habit.
As I said, I don’t understand some drivers.
Friday’s Theme Music
Mood: Fridastic
The air has cleared for us again. Looking at the models of wind currents, the swirling brings us some smoke from the north, like the Diamond Lake complex. Then the wind shifts and the smoke travels up along the mountain valleys from California’s monstrous Parks fire by Chico. A new wind change, and we have a reprieve for a while, like today, well, like now. Because those shifts can come with the suddenless of a cat snapping its paw out.
It will get hot today. Although it’s just 73 F now, we expect the digits to stop climbing at 99 F. Yesterday was supposed to see 104 F but I’m not certain we got that high at my house. That’s because we did a shopping run down the highway in Medford.
Breakfast bore the fruits of that shopping. A bagel was consumed alongside a fresh juicy, sweet peach, wonderfully plump, ripe cherries, and fat, flavorful blueberries.
It’s First Friday in Ashlandia. The art galleries will be flinging their doors open. Like coffee shops, book stores, and bakeries, we don’t have as many art galleries as we used to. The number of places that fell into the categories of that quartet — coffee shops, book stores, bakeries, and art galleries — was a big pull to Ashlandia for us. As those places fell away, replaced by fancy restaurants and ‘vintage’ clothing stores, and odd things like lavendar shops, the town lost its shine in our eyes. This is life, right?
Manwhile, friends have a project up, 1000museums at one of the art galleries today, so we’ll be pointing our feet to it and then progressing left right left right (cue Homer Simpson and Randy Newman) until we’re there.
Oh and we’re going blackberry picking at a friend’s place tomorrow morning.
As it’s Friday, Friday music is in my head. That’s how The Neurons work. There’s a large collection of songs about Friday. Like “Friday On My Mind”, “Black Friday”, “I Gotta Feeling”, “Friday I’m in Love”, and several songs just called “Friday”. The Neurons planted Blink 182 and “What’s My Name Again” in the morning mental music stream (Trademark next week) though, so that’s the music for the day.
Hope your Friday goes well. Stay pos, be strong, leeean forward, and Vote Blue this year. Coffee and I have reached an agreement and it’s being sipped. Here’s the music. Quite elemental. Cheers
A Wysocki Completed
Another jigsaw puzzle was completed last night. I worked this one alone. Started last Saturday night, I finished Thursday evening. It was fun and easy. I enjoy his stylized simplicity, how he minimally incorporates shadows and textures as lines. It’s such a contrast to my style was I was painting and drawing. Somewhat like my fiction writing, I always focus on the interplay of shadows and uncertainty. It reflects my personal philosophy that most life is part of a large band of gray confusion.
Apologies that my photo isn’t sharper and clearer. Those are pumpkins on a wagon above the hat store on the right, and white chickens in the road.
Many more Wysockis were available at the library of things. I’m passing this one on to a friend because I think he’ll enjoy it, and picking up another.
Thursday’s Wandering Thoughts
I ordered a new knob for my gas range. It’s the third one I’ve had to buy for the GE Profile range. The range is about six years old. Quality, right? Headshake.
Anyway, I’m tracking the knob. They said it shipped. I looked up the details.
After being picked up by the carrier, it arrived at the carrier facility, and then arrived at a carrier facility, and then arrived at a carrier facility. All the carrier facilities are in Arkansas.
It’s like, such strange progress. But then, another part for something else last week left California, south of us, and arrived at Eugene, north of us. Then it went further north to Portland. The day after that, it came back down south to Medford, basically northwest of us, before being delivered.
I suspect the folks behind these shipping processes are the same people who are always shouting, “Do more with less!”
The Wife’s Colors Dream
First, I had this dream about sharing my apple pie with a young woman. As she was eating my crust, my wife came along. I went off to talk to her.
My wife and I ended up in what seemed to be a living room. Other family members were vaguely int the area. But my wife came to me and said, “I want you to look at my colors and tell me what you see.”
And I was all, “Huuuhhh?”
Other than being Caucasian as my wife, this dream wife didn’t look at all like RL wife, even though she’d started out as RL wife. Her hair was darker, heavier, and longer, and she had this pale, long, face with bright red lippy.
Second, she was dressed like a goth.
Third, she was holding up some kind of panel in front of her.
I thought the panel was a mirror at first. Then I saw that it reflected with nothing but swirled with images that reminded me of melting steel. I was trying to answer my wife’s request to tell you what colors I was seeing and describe her clothes, skin, and hair. She unleashed a heavy exasperated sigh at me and said, “Not those colors.”
Then I saw the mirror thingy was changing. Yellows and oranges were emerging, along with lesser spots of apple green and pine green. There was also a stretched out blotch of purple that was so dark, it was almost black.
I described these things to her, and then, somehow, I knew the colors had to do with her health, and told her, “I think you can change these colors. Just think of the color that you want to be, and that’ll happen.”
She was doubtful but almost immediately, a soothing fair blue swept across the mirror.
Dream end.
Weird Ol’ Facebook
As a boomer, I still surf and share to FB. Mostly to keep up with ex-military friends and co-workers, and track my family on the other side of the country. I share things I write, too.
But I mostly, I ‘like’ things on Facebooks, things being ‘posts’, shares, videos, and photos. I share some of these things which I ‘like’. You might be surprised that I support animal charities and causes, especially cats. Cats and I have been together since I was a young toddler.
One of the FB groups I follow is VOKRA, the Vancouver Orphan Kitten Rescue Association. They posted, with photos, the tale of Jinx. They’re trying to get Jinx (or maybe it was Binx) adopted. I ‘liked’ the post about the sweet tabby kitten. It only had eleven shares, so I clicked share, to help spread the story and get Jinx or Binx adopted. That’s what social media is about, isn’t it?
Boom. Facebook told me they’d removed it. It was offensive and contrary to community standards. They even accused me of (gasp!) posting something just to get ‘likes’.
Posting things to get ‘likes’. WTF is the world coming to?
My wife and discussed this with WTF amazement. What does FB think it is if not a vehicle for ‘likes’? More critically, how the actual fuck did this post about a kitten available for adoption violate FB community standards?
I hate to reveal this to Facebook, but if cats and kittens and adoptions are against FB community standards, there are huge swaths of violations going on right now. They’d probably be scandalized to learn how many posts are about cats and kittens. In fact, if FB goes after posts about kittens and cats, they will seriously deplete their membership, posts, and shares. They might as well pull the plug on telling each other ‘happy birthday’ while they’re at it.
Truthtfully, I suspect that some poor Facebook AI bot is just having a bad day and removed a post that shouldn’t have been removed. Maybe their companion AI bot left them or they caught their partner AI bot in a compromising configuration with another bot doing forbidden codes.
I don’t know. I’m just speculating. Hope someone takes that poor AI bot aside and communicates with them over a cup of coffee.
Coffee always helps.
And yes, I will post this to Facebook to get likes. Ironic, isn’t it?
Michael Seidel, writer 