Category: childhood

Sunday’s Theme Music

We rose to a sky rich with sunshine. It’s Sunday, January 8, 2023. The sunshine is welcome. It’s in the forties here but the cats and wife agree, it feels colder than that. I was out at midnight last night, delivering used kitty litter to a trash can, and paused to check out the night. It smelled like winter to me, if you know what I mean. That sort of element has been missing for this winter except for a few days.

Sunrise finally moved off of 7:40 AM. At last we’ve begun moving toward an earlier sunrise, with the sun sneaking up on us a full minute earlier. Friggin’ rejoice. Sunset is all the way back to 4:56 this evening. By next week, it’ll be setting after 5 PM. I’m looking forward to a longer day. A cougar prowling the town after sunset reduces my willingness to go out there. I don’t think the big cat will attack me, but I really don’t need to test that theory.

Today’s song is by a group called Montrose. The name comes from Ronnie Montrose, the lead guitarist and band founder. Sammy Hagar was the lead singer. The song in the morning mental music stream is “I’ve Got the Fire”. Watching the video and listening, it’s interesting how much Sammy’s voice stayed the same through the decades. Anyway, the song came out in 1974. I didn’t know about it at the time. I entered the military in October of 1974 and the album was released a little later. When in basic, we had little outside contact. This was before the net, personal computers, and cell phones. For people to reach us, they had to contact the squadron office and leave a message. We weren’t permitted to hear radios or watch televisions. Riding in motorized vehicles were off limits until the final week. We had to earn the right to visit the base exchange after several weeks. Funny in retrospect, but we knew little going on outside of our unit. We were allowed to line up and use the pay phone to call home after three or four weeks, if you and your unit were making satisfactory progress.

Anyway, after finishing basic and listening to music again, I discovered the new Montrose album. Montrose was another band that my high school friends didn’t appreciate, except for Scott and Rick. The three of us were considered strange, but we had fun.

The song is in mind today because of ginger cat, Papi. It was pouring rain last night. The wind at one point growled like a large, angry giant, and then slammed the house’s side like it was really pissed off. Of course, Papi doesn’t care about that. Doesn’t care about cougars, either. Just, let me out!

I was going to use an audio only file, but I couldn’t resist this Midnight Special video. “Paper Money” leads off. “I Got the Fire” starts at 4:56 in if you want to cut to it.

I finally did after stern words and ignoring him was ignored. A while later, he banged on the door to get back in. Yeah, he was cold and soaked. I mentioned, “Come in to the heat. We got the fire.” Then I helped him dry off. Meanwhile, The Neurons started several fire songs. I foolishly let my mind wander into the pickets of music I’ve heard in my life, focusing on all the songs that mentioned fire. There are a lot. Somehow, The Neurons dug out this lesser known 1974 song. Voila, it’s our theme music for today.

Stay pos and test neg. I’m off for a cup of coffee, hear what I’m saying. Hope your Sunday trends in a positive way. Cheers

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Saturday’s Theme Music

“Overture! Hit the lights! This is it, the night of nights.” That’s the Bugs Bunny Show theme music. The show was my favorite Saturday morning show for several years. I have not seen it in decades and I don’t know if it’s still broadcast. I suspect it is.

Yes, it’s 2022’s final day. The song is over. Fog in the morning, issue a warning. Rain and fog are again the day’s ruling roosters. The sun tapped in at 7:39 AM, bringing up the light to see the fog. Temperature then was 41 F; it’s now 42 F, with a 50 degree high projected and rain. Sunset is 4:48 PM. Then into New Year’s Eve. We’ll be dining out with friends and then to a local hotel for dancing until Midnight. A local band, who are also friends, will provide the music. We will be masked although a friend reports health authorities find no COVID in our town’s wastewater. There is the flu surging around here, though. Restlessness and the desire to do something is pushing the evening agenda.

The last time we saw the new year in like this was back in 2019, I think. Our companions then were the same as the ones going out with us tonight. They packed it in about an hour before midnight. If you’ve seen one new year, you’ve seen them all, is this gang’s opinion. Sadly, though, the night marks the final night of the restaurant where we’re eating. They’re going out of business after twenty-five years. It’s Thai food and I’ve only eaten there three times since I’ve lived here. Two of those times was on New Year’s Eve.

A Boz Scaggs song called “Breakdown Dead Ahead” is in the morning mental music stream. Do Der Neurons know something that they’re trying to tell me with this 1980 musical choice? They always give me the feeling that they know more than they’re letting on to me. It sometimes feels like they’re deliberately withholding information to make me look or feel inept. I think I’m going to keep an eye on them. I just don’t feel like I can trust them, you know what I’m saying?

Coffee time. (And now The Neurons have substituted coffee time for hammer time and are playing that melody. They’re loony tunes up there in my head.) Stay pos, test negative, and enjoy the holiday as you can. Do you have big plans?

Till next year. Yes, it’s a law that the joke be put out there as often as humanly possible. At least, that’s what The Neurons are telling me. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Moderately hard winds moaned and grumbled through the neighborhood last night. Toward eleven, I was in the kitchen when I heard a noise. It sounded like the heater could be on but it was coming from the wrong direction, or that a faucet was running, but again, no faucets where the sound seemed to be. I walked around to localize the sound only to realize, it’s a hard rain drumming on the roof outside the vaulted ceiling in the great room. It’s so rare that we have heavy rain, I didn’t recognize its sound.

Wind and rain went on throughout the night. Nice to have rain but we need snow. I can’t believe that we’re at the end of 2022 and we still don’t have weather control. The mind reels with unintended consequences which we might be dealing with now if we did have it. Weather control was always one of my favorite science fiction ideas as a child, along with space travel, teleportation, exploring other planets, and ‘time travel’. We have none of that yet. Even flying cars have evaded us. I think it’s because extraterrestrials got in among us and have sabotaged our efforts because they don’t want us advancing, but that’s just me.

Doesn’t feel like winter outside, probably because there’s no snow and ice, not even any on the surrounding mountains. It’s all sunshine and blue sky today. The temperature is 48 F and the grass is as green as late spring. Our high temperature will be just three degrees higher, but still, this is December’s end in the northern lats. Where is the cold stuff of last week? To be fair, this is around our average high. Lows usually touch the lower thirties, though. We wouldn’t mind some of the cyclone bomb snow obliterating a lot of the U.S., although cyclone bomb sounds like a bath thing. If we had that weather control, maybe we could protect others and save ourselves from drought. Instead, we’re dithering with social media.

The sun’s influence arrived with a full blaze at 7:39, just two hours ago. Sun fall will begin about seven hours later from now, if I’m doing the math right, which is very iffy. I haven’t had any coffee.

Hearing that rain last night and thinking about how hard it was falling brought out a Dylan tune called “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”. The song came out in 1963 but I didn’t get familiar with it until after “Tangled Up in Blue” came out in 1975. Dylan wasn’t played much on the AM radio which I listened to in the late sixties and early seventies. It wasn’t until Tangled came out and I was stationed in the Philippines that I went searching for more Dylan and discovered his earlier stuff. I was twenty then, and became engrossed with his lyrics and style, so I bought a few album, listening to them as I painted and drew when I was off duty and not partying or exercising. I deem “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” today’s theme music. Mentioning that, the state up north and east of us is worried about this rain, because it’s going to melt the snow, opening a can of problems with flooding.

It’s Tuesday, December 27, 2022. Go have yourself a ball. I’m going to have coffee. Here’s Dylan’s somber song. Cheers

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Friday’s Theme Music

Salutations to Earth peeps. Friday is storming in across many parts of the States. Wind and snow are shutting down airports and highways even as people hunt for ways to reach home across the land. We, though have a temperate day working out. Temperature sits at 47 F now with mild rain pecking the land. Not much sunshine in evidence as clouds veil it but a high of 52 F is modeled as probable.

Today is December 23, 2022. Seven days until the year’s end. A new one will begin and as they say, the beat goes on. The sun’s visit began in the day’s early morning, 7:37, and will go for another seven hours and six minutes. Huzzah.

My feline boys are enjoying our weather shift. Both went out to stand sentry on the front porch. Papi also did a little patrolling. They’re happy floofs for the mo’.

My wife’s holiday treat preparation lies behind Los Neurons’ song selection. Something about the season brings her to use peppermint in some of her treats. Smelling that, Los Neurons said, “Remember this 1967 song?”

“Incense & Peppermints” by the Strawberry Alarm Clock commenced playing in the mental music stream last night and still rides the brain waves this morning. Do you know this song? “Who cares what games we choose? Little to win but nothing to lose.” Nothing to lose is often heard in ‘Merica. Back against the wall in your mind and pockets empty, despair dwelling in your spirit, why not go for broke? Nothin’ to lose.

Hope you stay positive and test negative and reach the new year, and the new year becomes a new start that ends up meaningful. Here’s the music. Now it’s me to get down with coffee time. Cheers

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Thursday’s Theme Music

“Out in the fog, the fog dancers begin moving. They only appear when it’s foggy. The thicker the fog, the more fog dancers there will be. They want humans to come out, walking in the fog, so the fog dancers can grab them and make them one of their own. If you become a fog dancer, you’ll dance for the rest of your life and never see sunlight again.

“That’s why I don’t go out in the fog.”

I don’t remember this, as I apparently did it on a whim, but my sisters insist that I told them this story when I was about twelve. My three youngest sisters said the fog terrified them for years. They said that I also said that adults know about this and that’s why they don’t go out into the fog. It worked well because Mom would always say, “Oh, I don’t like the fog,” and shiver whenever she looked out and saw fog.

As I said, the sisters claim that I told them this, and I don’t doubt them. Sounds like me. I think of it today because pretty deep fog is out there. Some trees and bushes look like fog dancers.

Remember the movie, The Fog? The sisters said that as soon as they heard of that movie, they remembered my tale.

It’s December 22, 2022. Just three days before the C holiday. And then, boom, the after Christmas shopping rush begins. It’s nutty.

36 F out there today, with timid sunshine squirming through the fog. S’posed to rain today. That’s the weather rumor. 49 F is to be our high before the sun peters out of the valley at 4:42 later today, just seven hours and five minutes after the sun kicked over the eastern mountains.

Got “Rockafeller Skank” by Fatboy Slim from 1988 occupies the morning mental music stream. I know exactly when The Neurons turned it on this morning. I’d raised the blinds, looked out and saw the fog. The Neurons responded to this by opening, “Right about now, the funk soul brother, check it out now, the funk soul brother.” Fog and funk. Sure, makes sense. I think The Neurons are losing it on some days, but I enjoy the song. Not many lyrics and easy to learn. I had a friend a few years after this song was released who always insisted, “That’s not really music.”

Stay positive and test negative.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Sunshine casts its web over the valley. Highlighted by a blue sky, shadow places are hard with white frost under the green pines and naked annuals.

It’s 21 F out but warming, which we’ll do until petering out at 42 F. The sun’s valley march commenced at 7:34 in the morning and though the march is ever going, our view of it will fade away beginning at 4:41, when curvature and action eliminates our view and negates the sun’s effects. Then we’ll endure the cold night and the whole cycle continues tomorrow.

This is Sunday, December 18, 2022. Time to do your next to last Sunday of the month cleaning, shopping, and celebrating. I don’t recognize the next to last Sunday, myself. Disguised as just another day, it slinks past my unwitting senses and drifts into the past.

We attended a Christmas concert yesterday. Friends play in the orchestra so we support them and buy a ticket and attend. It’s a fun time. They have only four concerts a year, not for the seasons, but for holidays of the seasons. Next will be the Spring Concert, though, just to toss a spanner into it.

As the oboe played its note and the others matched it to ensure they’re in tune, I sang the note in the audience, softly under my mask. My wife heard and leaned over with a chuckle. “Getting in tune?” she asked.

Well, of course. The Neurons immediately pulled up the Who rock classic, “Getting in Tune”, from 1971. But they surprised me by shifting to another Who song, “The Song Is Over” off the same album a little later, when we were waiting to see, is this a pause between movements or is the song over? Do we applaud now? Some audience sections had been fooled once. But it was over, so we clapped in appreciation, and The Neurons planted “The Song Is Over” into my mental music stream, where it remained this morning.

That’s impressive staying power because, other music. The Neurons were barraged with the usual Christmas popular favorites, like “Frosty the Snowman” and “Jingle Bells”, and a personal favorite, “March of the Toys”. I was introduced to MotT when I attended a concert as a young boy. Then I later saw Babes in Toyland, which left a staying mark. The Neurons shrugged it off, so here I sit with the Who. Love the opening piano in this song, though. Evocative to me. Then, of course, come the other familiar Who elements of bass, drums, and guitar notes dancing with the vocals.

Stay positive, test negative, and so on. Just got word via text that a third of my Pittsburgh nieces and nephews are sick with flu, along with a sister and her hubby. All adults were vaxxed. Word isn’t known on the children. I wish them all speedy recovers.

“On coffee, on bagel, on oatmeal, and dressing.” Sorry, The Neurons got a little silly there, substituting morning things for Santa’s reindeers as they’re called out by name in Clement’s classic. Here’s the music. Catch you later. Cheers

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Sunday’s Wandering Thought

He remembered when his family ordered things from a catalog when he was a boy. First, there was filling out the form of the item numbers, quantities, and prices. “Get my credit card from my purse,” Mom would order. The 800 number was called, the order placed.

Days of mystery would ensue. When would the order get here? Where is it now? Each day brought the three Ws: watching, waiting, wondering.

Slip forward a few decades. Companies began telling him exactly when his order would arrive. Shipping and tracking advances continued. Soon, he tracked his packages as they left faraway cities and countries and zigzagged a path to his home. He knew exactly when it would arrive. It was immensely satisfying.

Systems matured and processes evolved. Breakdowns from overloaded, overpromising systems became endured. Tracking information is still sent out, but he frequently finds himself as he was when he was a child, watching, waiting, wondering.

He feels like he’s gone full circle.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Do your Saturday dance if you got one. Because, yes, it is Saturday.

It’s also December 10, 2022. If it’s your birthday or anniversary, happiest of them to you. Do your celebration dance. And if you’re having donuts or a special breakfast, do your celebration dance for that. I’m doing my celebration dance in honor of coffee. I got it, I’m drinking it, I’m dancing.

The windstorm ended shortly after dawn at 7:28 this morning. Rain stopped a little before, leaving large puddles across the back patio which greatly displeased Papi, the ginger floof prince. Clouds broke their clinch. Sunshine and blue sky are squinting out, asking, “Is it over?” Snow still dusts and crusts many ridges, tree lines, and peaks above our elevation. No snow down here toward the valley floor, though. We’re happy for the snow where it added to the pack or entertains others. Looking out, the windstorm didn’t take over any trees, fences, houses, roofs, etc. It was a lot of noise and a jolt of tension but it’s done. 37 F outside right now. 48 F is the anticipated high temperature. Sunset comes at 4:39 PM.

Without irony nor surprise, I can tell you that The Neurons picked up on the wind theme for the morning music. I heard them talking in my head, remembering wind songs. There is a chunk of them from the rock era. Some surprise was found when they pulled up Santana and “Song of the Wind”. Released on an album in 1972, I listened to the album pretty extensively. It has more of a jazz infusion that the harder rock or progressive rock that The Neurons usually cheer on, but back when I was sixteen and drawing and painting, I found this comfortable music as accompaniment. Later on, when I was living in the Philippines, I would listen to it and sip wine while I drew or read. So good memories come with this album. There is beautiful guitar work on it, of course, cuz it’s Carlos, but there are also impressive musicans who gravitated to him, and the interesting percussion work often featured in his songs.

Stay positive, test negative, and celebrate what you can. I’m celebrating more coffee. Here’s the song. Hope it helps move your day in the right ways. Cheers

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A Winter Memory Prompted By Writing Prompt #210

The streetlights were on, unmoored, half-seen yellow orbs floating over either side of the street.

Snow smothered dusk’s dimming light. No one else was on the street. Dressed in blue jeans, a shirt, and tennis shoes – which had holes in the soles that he’d mended with pieces of cardboard – he ran, shivering and sniffling, up the street past the warm-looking suburban houses. Most seemed half-buried in snow. Windblown snow stuck to his clothing and hair and stressed his cheeks with icy daggers. Shoving his fingers deep into his tight jeans’ pockets, keeping at least those warm, he licked snot off his nose, lifted his shoulders, and ran, catching slides and racing on.

Exploding into home, he rushed to a heater duct and stood in front of it, dripping, drying, shivering, warming. enjoying the heat. Mom, orchestrating laundry not far away, turned and stared at him, her hands continuing their folding. “Where is your coat?” she asked. Then answered herself, “Don’t tell me you forgot it again.”

When he nodded, yes, her shoulders sagged and she snapped, “Oh my God.” A warm towel was pulled from the dryer, shook out, and handed to him. “Why in God’s name didn’t you go back for it?”

He shrugged. “I was hungry. I wanted to get home.”

She issued a familiar tongue click of disappointment. He felt too stupid to be her son.

He was probably right.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Dawn broke, and now we could see why it was so dark. Last night’s sky was clear. Enriched by unblemished moonshine, spectacular starry mountain vistas were on offer.

Today, clouds have gone come down and fog hugs the ground. Grey is the color of the sky, and sunlight evades our searching eyes.

It’s Tuesday, December 6, 2022. Hear the tick tick of the digital clocks emulating the grandfather clock’s countdown? That’s the sound of the year leaving. Or maybe it’s the sound of the next year hurrying to us. The sun showed up on our spinning planet’s piece called southern Oregon at 7:25 this morning and will toss goodbye over its sunny shoulders at 4:39 PM. It’s 0 C but we’re hopeful of reaching 44 F today. Rain? No, they say. They’re telling us that despite the overcast sky and fog I’m seeing, it’s actually mostly sunny in Ashland. Most be another part of town.

What I notice of my morning rituals is that the summer sun comes in through the large east-facing living room window. By this time of the year, the sun shyly looks in through the southern window around the corner from the living room window and twenty-three feet further up the side of the house. They have come to be known as the summer window and winter window for me.

I awoke with a Led Zeppelin favorite in mind. Coming out in 1971, when I became fifteen years old, Led Zepp’s fourth album had a song on it called “When the Levee Breaks”. Now, I enjoyed that entire album but that song was the one which usually haunted me later. Later reading revealed that it was an old country song, which added a layer of thinking that stimulated greater introspection. Its worrying lyrics and downcast beat seemed firmly rooted in someone’s existence.

Later, I found its beat and tone conducive to walking and thinking. I was then and have always been a person who enjoys walking distances. I’m one to take the long way home when I’m on my feet, climbing up hills to gain a broader perspective. So it was that I was out yesterday, climbing the hills and thinking about my writing in progress when The Neurons rummaged through my youthful memories and began playing it. It stayed in my morning mental music stream today.

When I went off looking for a version to play today, I stumbled upon this version by the Playing for Change project. Incorporating a huge variety of sounds and talented individuals, it’s even more powerful and haunting than the version Zepp gave us. John Paul Jones of Zepp is included among the musicians. Derek Trucks is one of the folks on slide guitar. I hope you listen to the song and that it stirs you as it does me.

Off for coffee. Stay pos and test negative. Here’s the video. Cheers

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