Category: childhood

Saturday’s Wandering Thoughts

I checked out someone’s song offering on their blog this morning. The song was a Gordon Lightfoot tune, “If You Could Read My Mind”. Another person commented, “Another song I would never have bought, but I know all the lyrics off by heart nonetheless.“

I commented and then walked away thinking, Pete is right. I know so many songs that I never bought. Some of course, was through radio osmosis. Born in 1956 in the United States, I grew up as part of a car culture that had music playing on car radios. Small transistor radios invaded, and I had one of those to keep me linked into the emerging genres populating the 1960s airwaves.

Mom played her part. I’ve never bought anything by Dean Martin, Hank Williams, Bobby Darin, Patsy Cline, Rosemary Clooney, Doris Day, Tony Bennett, Barbra Steisand, Glen Campbell, Fats Domino, Chubby Checkers, Frank Sinatra, Tammy Wynette, Johnny Cash, the Platters, Ink Spots, Louis Armstrong, etc., but if you put me on a stage and made me sing one, I could do it.

Sisters’ albums plied the air with offerings from bands and performers like Grand Funk Railroad, Peter, Paul, and Mary, the Foundations, the Lettermen, Bread, Sonny & Cher, the Boxtops, the Fruitgum Company, Dusty Springfield, Petula Clark, Lulu, the Turtles, Freddie and the Dreamers, Herman and the Hermits, and so on.

Girlfriends played their part, seeding my mind with Nancy Sinatra, Gordon Lightfoot, the Monkees and the Archies, the Association, the Beatles, Roberta Flack, Carol King, Neil Diamond, Carly Simon, Frankie Valli, and more. Other friends and relatives shared Kenny Rogers (& the Fifth Edition), Three Dog Night, Stealers Wheel, the Byrds, Harry Nilsson, Ricky Nelson, and then later, Brooks & Dunn, Metallica, Whitesnake, Toto (although I did buy Toto 4), and a whole lotta disco.

Then my wife added more, introducing me to Cat Stevens, Seals and Croft, Al Jarreau, and Johnny Rodriguez.

For me, it was a diet of anything Eric Clapton, Marvin Gaye, or Steve Winwood was involved with, the Rolling Stones, Stevie Wonder, Deep Purple, Steppenwolf, Pink Floyd, the Who, Led Zep, the Kinks, the Zombies, the Animals, Jimi Hendrix, Jethro Tull, Grateful Dead, Frank Zappa, Neil Young, Sam & Dave, the Guess Who, ZZ Top, Mountain, Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Moody Blues, Robert Johnson, the Beach Boys, Canned Heat, Ten Years After, Fleetwood Mac, Albert King, King Crimson, Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, Sly & the Family Stone, Aretha Franklin, Etta James, and Blue Oyster Cult. Later came Boston, van Halen, Reo Speedwagon, Rush, the Eurythmics, Chris Rea, Stevie Ray Vaughn, the Clash, the Sex Pistols, Stone Roses, Status Quo, Men at Work, Midnight Oil, STP, Pearl Jam, Bush, Dire Straits, the Police, Sting, and a whole bunch of others.

There’s a web of songs in my mind, and I only wove a few of the strands.

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Munda’s Theme Music

Mood: dreamnfogbound

A floof’s song pierced my dream. The reckoning of life commenced. Rolling free of my warm, comfy nest, I thrust my self out into the day. Blinds were drawn so I could see.

Fog. A good thick stew of it.

27 degrees F. Ice and frost was slathered over everything visible in existence outside of my window.

This is Monday, January 13, 2025. Yes, it is Monday the 13th. Just like the movie. And TV series. Based on the novel.

Lest my spirits get too high from these devs, I shifted gears and jumped into digital media to see how great the world is faring. After that morale post, I fed the floofs again and gave them treats. Then I turned to here.

Sam Moore passed away this month. Like others, He was part of my life’s tapestry of sound as part of the duo, Sam and Dave. “Soul Man”, recorded and released by them in 1967, was an early favorite song. Another of those tunes with easy lyrics to learn and repeat, with a jaunty, changing rhythm, and mesmerizing vocals flitting between highs and lows, the kind of stuff that inspires attempts to emulate it while pretending to be on a stage, cheered on by an audience of billions. Those memories induced The Neurons to put “Soul Man” into the morning mental music stream (Trademark past due). Very memorable to me from the song was the shout out, “Play it, Steve,” as Steve Cropper played guitar. Cropper was also the guitarist on the later Blues Brothers’s cover, and they repeated that call out, to my delight.

Let’s get positive and do what we can to seize the day. I’ve seized the coffee; now it’s seizing me. Here’s the music. And off we go, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.

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Wezda’s Theme Music

Mood: sunshiny

Man, it’s a gorgeous day outside my windows. My first look was south and west. Blue sky. A few clouds and contrails. Sunshine. Appeared to be a late fall day. A litle deceiving as further gazing brought out frost speckling the bare earth and laying on roofs. Temp was 30 F. High of 51 could be. After looking out that side and inhaling sunshine, I headed for the back windows and a view to the east and south. Still sunny. Woo hoo.

Amazed and amused how the MSM addressed PINO-elect Trump’s Monday comments. These were regarding the possible invasion of other countries. Adding states like Panama, Canada, and Greenland. No doubt he (DJT) loves the attention he gets from saying such garbage. It also distracts from the real business taking place. Like he’s the Wizard of Trump, faking people out, insisting, pay no attention to the man behind the curtains. But a CNN article summarized Trump’s comments as — paraphrasing — different from presidents of both parties in the last few decades. Yeah, NS; you’d need to go back in history for a point where the POTUS was talking about taking land from other countries. I guess they felt a need to make a sober and unbiased statement about it.

Of course, if you’re talking about invading other countries, you know, just for the sake of that other country and, you know, freedom and democracy, or regime change, you don’t need to go so far. And just like true Republicans of the last few decades, they’re eager to look at other countries — say, the UK — and declare how that country needs to be changed while ignoring the shit conditions their policies build at home. Their vision is often shaped by greed, so it’s frequently myopic and narrow. They are very good at Orwell-speak though, and doubletalk, so they can’t be discounted. And, with a third of the country voting them in and a third not voting at all, well, hell, they feel a mandate to do whatever they want has been achieved.

Good news on the social media front. Women can now be called household objects on Meta platforms. I’m sure that will advance the causes of freedom of speech and democracy. Yep, that was snark.

The sunny weather has inspired today’s theme music. Live local, right? So looking out those windows and seeing sunshine, The Neurons adopted a cheerful attitude and put “On the Sunny Side of the Street” into the morning mental music stream (Trademark warming). Mom played versions of the song by several while I was a child. I became familiar with versions by L. Armstrong, T. Dorset, D. Day, and Nat King Cole, among others. I checked out several versions online and stayed with Satchmo on The Ed Sullivan Show. Hope you found it favorable as your day’s theme music. I find it a song that’s amenable to lyric variations. Fer instance, I used to sing, “Life can be so sweet with a cat sitting on your feet.” That was inspired by our cat, who liked to sit on our feet. Strange girl but ever so sweet.

Coffee and I ground out an agreement in the kitchen. Here’s the music, and away we go. Have a good Wezda, Jan 8, 2025. Cheers

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Satrda’s Theme Music

Mood: Sleepsatisfied

It’s the fourth day of the year, Jan 4, 2025. Satrda. 38 degrees F. Cloudy. Blue sky has been banished. The meek, subservient sun does little to warm and light us. We’re prepped for another day of rain with a high of 48 F. But, corresponding with my sister in Plum, PA, it’s not bad. They received a few issues of snow yesterday and then dealt with a snow squall. Monday is forecasted to be a heavy and cold snowy day for her. She’s worrying about patients canceling and travel issues. So, rainy and gloomy will suffice.

Today’s music is “Green Tambourine” by the Lemon Pipers. Came out in 1968. I was twelve. The song became a hit and was rotated on all the regular pop stations heard on transistor radios and car radios. With all that exposure, I remember it well. Don’t know why it’s in my morning mental music stream (Trademark old). I slept heavily last night after feeling pretty gloomy yesterday evening. Didn’t have any cat visitations that I know of. No wind or wife disrupted my Zzzs. No need for visiting the bathroom during the night, and nothing amiss with my foot and ankle broke into my sleep. Only one dream floats around my noggin, and tambourines aren’t featured. The song just rose up as I went about opening blinds on another dull day, feeding cats, and making breakfast and coffee.

I enjoyed this video. Such a black and white throwback, including a sexist commercial for ‘Neet’ hair removal cream. Look how young Dick Clark appears. Check out the clothes and dancing. Trippy.

Coffee and I are doing our daily two-step. Hope your weather and fates are kind to you wherever you are. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Munda’s Theme Music

Mood: Timeflective

G’ mornin’, peeps of the online written word. It’s 2024’s final Monday, December 20, 2024. To celebrate, my other and I will go out for brekkie after she returns from her exercise class. Then we’ll do some groc shopping. Breakfast will be had at Crackin & Stackin in downtown Medford, I think.

It’s 33 F outside. Sunshine and clouds war again. Blue sky wins as the sun prevails. The ground is wet but drying for the moment after a few days of rain on a heavier scale and flooding in other parts of the county. No rain is forecast for the next two days. Today’s high will be 43 F.

I experienced vigorous, positive dreams last night and that’s put me in a solidly upbeat mood. Seeing sunshine reinforced it. Also contributing is that my foot/ankle are happier, and I had a lengthy solid if interesting writing outing yesterday.

Spoke with Mom on the phone last night. Says she’s feelin’ tired. Not surprising. Holidays always sap. Like many, it pushes her out of her comfortable returns. Now at 89, with several major health issues as part of her history, her energy is low, and every day is a new exploration of something in her body contending for attention. Her other, Frank, is doing great, she said. He’ll be 95 next month.

However, one of my younger sisters now has the flu. She is the Trumper who has had COVID three times. Believe she vaccinated before but she reportedly has underlying lung issues. She won’t tell anyone deets so we rumble about what it is. Her husband, a year younger than moi, went through open heart surgery a few years ago and is now dealing with kidney stones.

One of my other younger sister’s boyfriend lost his brother. But 66 years old, the man had a stroke and then a heart attack. Home alone while his wife was away visiting family in another state for the holidays, he was found on the kitchen floor after a day. Rushed to the hospital, he was pronounced dead and was removed from life support. He passed away yesterday morning.

Meanwhile, the boyfriend himself went into the hospital Friday for some scans after he complained about feeling ill and not breathing right. Turns out that he was experiencing congestive heart failure a 56 years old, astonishing us all. He’s 56 and is a regular runner. Those who saw him on Christmas thought he looked healthy and fit. It’s the way of life, I guess.

All that news and subsequent thinking gave permissions to The Neurons to introduce Joni Mitchell into the morning mental music stream (Trademark aging) with “The Circle Game”. A simple song, very poetic.

Coffee downed, here we go, putting another Monday into the books. Have the best you can, right? Don’t know how the next day will change your expectations.

Here’s the music. Cheers

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Sa’day’s Theme Music

Mood: Grrrrumpy

It’s raining again. Alexa notified me at 8 PM (or 2000 hours if you prefer) that it was going to start raining near me, starting around 12 AM and going intermittently until 8 PM. About 1.3 inches of rain was expected.

I was listening to the rain hitting the roof, pinging off the vents, splattering the windows, and asked, “Is it raining now?”

“Rain is expected to start at 9:30 PM.”

“Alexa, feedback. It’s 8 PM and it’s raining now.”

Rainy, gray, it’s warmish again, 50 F with a high of 52 F suggested and a low of 46 F. The gray light slanting in through the windows does nada to brighten my mood. Fog swirls around mountain pines and peaks. Dark and pretty in a tragic “Wuthering Heights” sort of fashion.

A perusal of news headlines has me opimistic for 2025. (Yes, that was snark.) Things like the costs of owning and driving a car are jumping. This was a California story. The average price paid for a new car was over $47K. Now it’s jumped to over $52K. And insurance is climbing as well. Again, it’s California, but what happens in California usually ripples out. And, this is before any PINO Trump tariffs are issued.

Then a jolly story covered how the Alum Rock school district is closing or consolidating schools. Oh, boy, let me quit reading that.

Another story told me eggs, already pricy, are going up because of the bird flu. And a related news article informed me that animals were dying from being infected with the bird flu from eating tainted meat.

Next came a recounting that those anti-vaxxing efforts in Louisana are having an effect. Louisana is seeing cases of the flu climb. Surprised? No. They’re one of two states in a ‘Very High ILI’ category. The other state is…Oregon.

What? My state. WTF? Chasing that down, I learn, gosh, vaccinations for COVID-19, RSV, and the flu are trailing data from last year, which was already trailing data from the year before. So the flu, etc., are up.

Grrrrrreat. Yes, that is sarcasm.

I got out of the news before I turned to the national and international scenes. Mood was cratered enough, thanks.

The Neurons already had music picked out and going in the morning mental music stream (Trademark sagging). “Forty Days and Forty Nights” is a 1956 blues number by Muddy Waters. The Neurons had it in my head solely on the line, “Sun shinin’ all day long, but the rain keep falling down.” Yes, it hasn’t been forty solid days if I judge on empirical evidence; it just feels like it to the wife, me, and others who engage in conversations about the weather. The ground is saturated. Rivers and creeks are up. Flooding is possible. On the possy side, our drought seems over for our part of Oregon. Other parts of the state remain abnormally dry.

Could be worse, I remind myself. We are not snowbound, etc.

The Forty Days version I selected was a Steppenwolf cover. Mom bought me the album, Steppnwolf 7, for Christmas in 1970, when the song and I were both fourteen. It has sentimenal attachments to me, see.

Okay, coffee and I have worked out an arrangement for this morning whereby I’ll brew it and pour it into my mouth and swallow. Seems like I’m doing all the work here, but I benefit from it. I don’t think coffee gets anything except perhaps some emotional satisfaction from helping me through the day. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Sinda’s Wandering Thoughts

My wife and I were in the car when the ‘Charlie Brown dance music’ came on. This is that lively piano- dominated music supported by a bassist and drummer used in so many Charlie Brown specials. When the music plays, all the Charlie Brown characters develop big smiles and happy feet.

I guess I should backtrack to clarify that I’m talking about the music used for Charlie Brown cartoons. Charlie Brown is a round-headed kid who is part of the Peanuts gang. Peanuts was a syndicated comic strip created by Charles Schultz. It features Linus, a precocious Biblical scholar who believes in the Great Pumpkin and always has his security blanket alongside his sister, Lucy, the psychologist who charges $.05 to dispense advice, who is also known to entice C. Brown to kick the football, only to yank it away at the last minute. There’s also Sally, Charlie Brown’s sister. Athletic Peppermint Patty and her friend, Marcie. Pigpen, who generates and attracts dust and dirt. And Schroeder, who plays the piano and admires Beethoven. That’s just the nucleus of the group. There’s also the world-famous Beagle, Snoopy, who sleeps on his back on top of his dog house and pretends to be fly a Sopwith Camel as a WW I flying ace, and Snoopy’s buddy, the bird called Woodstock.

That’s the nut of it. Going back to the music, when it hit us in the car from the vehicle’s stereo, my wife and I laughed and talked about how evocative it was. Energetic, it wants you to immediately move in response to its beat and imitate the Peanuts gang. I thought the jazzy tune was written by a jazz musician but had no idea who it was. Had to look it up when I got home and learned it was Vince Guaraldi.

The song’s correct title is “Linus and Lucy”. First heard by the public in December of 1964. It’s a cool tune, Charlie Brown.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Mood: Nostalgic

Today is Thursday, December 19, 2024. A temptation to change Thursday to Throughsday almost conquered my fingers. ‘Throughsday’ because the week is almost finished. I didn’t change it, as I’m disinclined toward misinformation and confusing people.

In other morning news, a crowd of zombies went through our town. Ha, ha, just kidding. It wasn’t a crowd. Just a couple.

Our weather today looks as if someone delivered elements of fog, clouds, sunshine, and rain. All were tossed together in a big blue bowl. Now they’re up there, waiting to be mixed and blended.

Just after observing and writing all of that, Papi the ginger blade floof, returned with a scouting report. He didn’t need to say anything. Fog had shut down the sunshine, clouds, and blue skies. 46 F out there, it ‘feels like 38’, with a high of 57 dangling over us.

I met with my beer buddies last night. Two new members joined us. She is a retired teacher and physician’s assistant. He is a retired electrical engineer. They have a daughter who works for NASA, and he was a big science fiction fan when he was a kid. Others told him that I sometimes write science fiction. He shifted over to sit by me later in the night and discuss the genre. Lot of fun remembering the novels we had in common which influenced us.

Today’s theme music arrives on the shoulders of a conversation I had with several women last night. They expressed deep disappointment and frustration that more women didn’t turn out to vote in the 2024 election. I didn’t have any insights into that and they couldn’t cite any stats. Young me from several different groups were the dissappointing difference to me. I read interviews with and stories about young black men, for example, who thought Trump would be better for the economy. That still makes me shake my head.

Anyway, after returning home with that conversation in mind, “American Woman” by the Guess Who from 1970 rose into the morning mental music stream (Trademark peeling) today. I always thought the song was about the United States, represented by a woman, seducing countries to be like the United States. The singer was resisting because the United States was a war machine filled with ghettos. The ‘colored lights’ referred to in the song was Hollywood glamor. Remember, the Vietnam War was underway and protests were taking place in the U.S. In light of that backdrop, my interpretation made sense to me. But different interviews with the Guess Who band members painted a different story. The songwriter and vocalist, Burton Cummings, said it was just a comparison of women from the U.S. and Canada.

“What was on my mind was that girls in the States seemed to get older quicker than our girls and that made them, well, dangerous. When I said ‘American woman, stay away from me,’ I really meant ‘Canadian woman, I prefer you.’ It was all a happy accident.”

h/t to Wikipedia.

I became fourteen around the time of the song’s release. It’s uptempo beat, rich bass, unique riffs, lead guitar, lyrics, and vocals all worked for me. Cummings sang it with an angry, contemptuous sneer in my opinion. That spoke to my own burgeoning contempt for how our world and society works. Ah, to be young and idealistic.

Coffee and I have negotiated arrangements and I’m taking advantage of that to warm my throat. Time to light the candle on another day. Here’s the music. Cheers

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A Race Car Dream

I was a young man. And I was at some kind of car race where I was to be a participant. Several emerging factors swirled and fell and rose. Nobody was expecting me. I wasn’t sure what was going on. I then confirmed, gosh, I am in this race.

Employing strange dream logic, the race was sometimes played as a card game with a board track. Other times, it seemed like a slot car setup, but then it was sometimes full-sized race cars. I’d seamlessly skip between those motifs but the dream itself was mostly centered on race control where I’d check the time sheets, find out where I was on the track, and learn my position. The people populating race control were all tall, older, and white. Most seemed British. I never saw any of the cars so I can’t comment on their colors or livery. But I would identify them. Like I told some once that another driver was piloting a Porsche 917 and another was driving a P3 Ferrari. Someone else was wheeling the Silk Cut Jaguar XJ9.

I swapped cars. I don’t know what I was driving but I suddenly announced, grinning, “I’m driving a Ford GT.” This is a car which won LeMans and the world championship in the mid 1960s and helped seduce me as a racing fan when I was nine. I didn’t specify which variant I was driving.

I learned that I’d qualified fourth but some bureaucratic snafu shuffled me to the pack’s tail end. That didn’t bother me; I shrugged it off with a grin. I was confident that I would win, as I’d qualified fourth with minimal effort. Now, recalling, I actually did have one segment where I was in the car, on the track, during the race, passing clusters of other cars. I then left the car, blink, and was back at race control to check my standing. They didn’t know who I was. I was certain I was leading but they dismissed it. I was told that I’d done something incorrectly and my laps hadn’t been counted. I didn’t know I was supposed to do that, I protested, but that wasn’t their issue.

None of that fazed me. Grinning, I told them, “But I have all these chits.” The chits were small red paper rectangles, like the old-time ticket stubs given at movies in decades past. I received them every time I completed a lap. As I told them about the chits, I held up a fistful of them. Expressing astonishment, they counted the chits and announced that I was in the lead.

I met the news with a happy grin and readied myself to keep racing. Dream end.

I enjoyed discovering this footage of the 1966 LeMans race featuring the Ford GTs. Nice to hear the voices of Bruce McLaren, Dan Gurney, Denis Hulme, etc., and see them. Of course, the staged Ford 1-2-3 finish was made famous in the movie Ford vs. Ferrari, where Ken Miles (played by Christian Bale) was first across the finish line but was deemed not to be the winner because another car started further back, so it covered more distance.

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Monday’s Theme Music

Mood: Mundanemondaymoaning

Wind and clouds dominate Ashlandia’s Monday morning, where it’s 38 degrees F. Blue sky and sunshine have worked their way into the scene. At least the rain has stopped. Snow tops ranges and trees located over 3500 feet, offering us some wintry scenery. December 16, 2024, winter solstice is rushing our way.

We went south into higher elevations yesterday. Up there in elevation, down there on the road, the snow accumulaiton over 3,000 feet looked like six to eight inches. This was eight miles from our place, a twelve minute drive. My wife and I agreed, it was nice to visit the snow and admire the beauty of the white dusting the tall pines over the craggy white-topped mountains bathed in sunshine and backlit with blue sky, but leaving that icy scene behind was also nice.

Over in Europe, governments are losing votes of confidence. France already went; now Germany has joined them. Just to lift my spirits (please note the sarcasm), I read a NYTimes opinion piece, “A Mild Defense of Lara Trump”.

Fair enough. But before anyone gets super sniffy about Lara Trump’s fitness for high office, I feel I should remind everyone of Tommy Tuberville.

Honestly. Whether defending white supremacists or blockading hundreds of military promotions for months, the gentleman from Alabama has not exactly covered himself in glory. And when it comes to sycophancy, it’s hard to imagine Ms. Trump would be much more pliant than Mr. Tuberville, who recently declared that it is not Republican senators’ job to vet Mr. Trump’s cabinet picks. So much for “advice and consent.”

But no need to dogpile Mr. Tuberville. When it comes to jelly-spined Trump toadies, he is not alone in the Senate. Josh Hawley? Ron Johnson? Mike Lee? In so many ways, the coin has already been devalued.

Yes, let’s start a cheer *snark*: Lara Trump is not the worse senator in a chamber full of crappy voter decisions. That’ll cheer us up.

The Neurons surprise me by introducing with a poem learned in high school. William Wadsworth, of course, because that’s who I mostly learned in that era. Syliva Plath, Edna St. Vincent Millay, ts elliott, Billy Collins and others came later.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

That’s all I wanted to remember: ‘The world is too much with us, getting and spending’, and ‘for this, for everything, we are out of tune.’

That’s my feeling today. I’m an guitar set aside, gathering dust in a closet. My strings and frets are worn, and I feel out of tune.

Despair not, for Der Neurons immediately introduced a song to the morning mental music stream (Trademark sagging) to address my feelings.

I’m singing this note cause it fits in well with the chords I’m playing.

I can’t pretend there’s any meaning hidden in the things I’m saying.

But I’m in tune.

Right in tune.

Yes, it’s the Who, one of the bands of my youth, coming through with “Getting in Tune” from 1971 and their epic album, Who’s Next? The present is just an echo of the past, isn’t it?

Ah, maybe I just have a case of the Mondays. I offer this Office Space clip for elucidation.

Let’s get on with this. Coffee, stat! Here we go. First, the music. Cheers

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