Strange, Short Dream
I arrived at home. Not mine, but Mom’s.
It wasn’t one of the places she lived in real life, but I knew it was her house.
No one else was there. The place was messy in many places, totally opposite of anyplace I’ve lived or visited where Mom was in command.
Getting there, I found a narrow bed. White sheets, pink blanket, pillow, but unmade. I decided to sleep a bit.
A long-haired gray and white cat joined me. I talked to it in the way we do with animals, telling the cat, a male, I knew, was very handsome. The cat then *ahem* indicated that it wanted to have sex with me.
Full-blown horror lashed me. I rejected that completely, telling the cat that was sick and disgusting. I added, “You can sleep with me but as a cat, not a sexual partner.”
Unable to sleep after that, I got up and walked around, taking notice of the mess. Part of it on one end was a pond with rocks. Water fed into it but the water was scummy, full of plants and crap. Deciding I would clean it, I went off, found rags, buckets, tools.
My sisters arrived, chattering and laughing, before I could clean it but after a sort pause, I did. In dream fashion, it was miraculously fast and easy.
I showed the others. Everyone was impressed by what I’d done. Two turtles emerged from the pond. My youngest sister exclaimed, “I knew there were turtles in there.”
One turtle puked. Examining that, my sister announced with happiness, “It’s pregnant. I am so happy.”
Mom arrived shortly afterward, the middle-aged person I knew for most of my life. Her hair was blond and she was wearing black slacks with this black and white polka-dotted frilly shirt that she often liked to wear. Smiling and happy, she came in, saying hello to all of us.
Dream end
Thursday’s Theme Music — Little Things
Ashland, southern Oregon. Thursday, August 20, 2026.
Buckle up: supposed to be hot today, 100F. High small puffy clouds dot the blue sky. The sun feels like someone turned it up to eleven. Although it’s only 71, the ‘feels like’ is 85 F.
Spent time this morning on Watch Duty reviewing the state of wildfires in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Nevada, and California. A depressing exercise.
Still waiting for Mom’s house to close. Gina, my sister who now oversee Mom’s finances, was complaining about how much Mom spent on Amazon on lipstick, diapers, clothes, shoe polish, and other things. Gina wanted me to tell Mom about how much money Gina thought Mom is wasting.
I said no. Not doing it. Bought Mom an Amazon gift card instead, to help her with these expenses. Mom doesn’t have much of a life these days, and now you’re pressing to nickel and dime her?
We’re into some deep WTF territory with Trump this week as he went on about flagpoles.
To be fair, his flagpole riff seemed a lot like his grass riff. He does love to declare himself an expert, knowing more than anyone, about many things.
Your Trump Quote of the Day:
Trump did pay $100K for these flagpoles last year. But then the servant of We the People could afford it, as he raked in $3B for his first year in office. 100K/3,000,000K = .003%
Trump is so generous, right? Especially since We the People paid about $100M for Trump’s golfing in 2025.
Trump’s gift of ‘most magnificent’ flagpoles and flags celebrated at the White House
I label the flagpoles another cheap installment of Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL! Trump bloviates about flagpoles as gas prices climb again. Diesel prices have jumped 15 cents to $5.47 per gallon, which adds to the cost of transporting just about everything.
But do please tell us more about the shape of your flagpole, Donald Trump.
People should know Trump is saying these things and quit treating him like he’s stable or a genius. He’s a criminal, head of a criminal enterprise. They need to wake up to that but probably won’t until Trump steals them blind.
All these things — big and little — Trump does stack up into one large mess.
I ended up with “Little Things” by Bush in my morning mental music stream. Released in 1995, it was all about how little things add up to dwarf your sense of self and what is possible.
Sample Lyrics
The river is loaded, I’ve been there today
Took it some questions, she does me again
I’d die in your arms if you were dead too
Here comes a lie, we will always be true
Going up when coming down
Scratch away-way-way-way-way
It’s the little things that kill
Tearin’ at my brain again
Oh, the little things that kill
The little things that kill
Bigger you give, bigger you get
We’re boss at denial but best at forget
The cupboard is empty, we really need food
Summer is winter and you always knew
Going up when coming down
Scratch away-way-way-way-way
It’s the little things that kill
Tearin’ at my brains again
Oh, the little things that kill
Tearin’ at my brains again
Yeah, it’s the little things that kill. Trump — and more importantly, the masterminds behind him, Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 — knows this.
May you surmount the little things with peace and grace today and every day.
Cheers
Facing Truths
It’s getting messy for Trump and the Republicans.
The headline says it all:
‘I’m Not That Informed on National Security,’ Graham Says in South Carolina Debate
That would be Darline Graham, Trump’s choice to replace the GOP senator who died last month. No, not Mitch McConnel, the other one.
Darline Graham is a Trump supporter so it’s no wonder that he chose her; for him, her not being informed on national security is a benefit. He doesn’t know much about national security, either.
Losses are piling up for Trump-backed candidates
“Republican primary voters have now rejected 10 Trump-endorsed candidates for statewide office or Congress this primary season.”
Why are they being rejected? Evidence is still being collected.
I don’t know if the truth is coming out, TBH, the truth being that Trump is self-centered, aging, sick, and incompetent. I think this is more of a FAFO matter that people are voting against Trump: they’re hurting and the future isn’t the rosy scenario that Trump promised and they expected.
Many people seemed to vote for Trump by ignoring his actual record of achievement. They blindly accepted his promises in 2024:
- No new wars
- Prices will come down — fast
- No golfing
- Law and order
- Building the military
- Improving the economy
- Lowering the national debt
- Make America healthy again
Everything Trump’s done since he began his second term has resulted in the opposite of his promises.
- Trump started a war with Iran which reduced military munitions and readiness
- Prices keep going up, now setting new records for how high they’ve reached
- Trump golfs over a quarter of the time he’s been in office
- Political prosecutions and pardons have replaced law and order
- While the unemployment rate remains roughly 4%, the number of employed Americans are declining
- Trump is adding no new jobs
- Measles cases are at a 30 year high
Trump claims we’re in a ‘golden age’ but personal bankruptcies are going up.
Personal bankruptcy filings are soaring in 2026, signaling growing economic distress
“The number of Americans who file for bankruptcy is growing. More than 500,000 people took this step in 2025, nearly 50% more than in 2022. And the numbers have kept on climbing, with a 12% jump in June 2026 from a year earlier as many consumers struggled to pay their bills.”
The bottom line, again is the truth: Trump cares about no one but Trump.
Your Trump Quote of the Day reminder:
Unable to change now, Trump continues with the same con that brought him success, whip-cream claims and empty promises.
Trump’s ‘Golden Age’ Economy Pitch Fizzles With Midterm Voters
“Inside the White House, there’s broad confidence that the administration has a record to run on, one the president will likely be hammering from here to November. But other Republicans, including some people close to the president, are concerned that won’t be enough, especially for candidates running in competitive races. They want him to offer fresh economic plans, such as further tax cuts expanding on last year’s major law that’s central to the GOP economic pitch.”
And yet, with all that’s going bad, Trump thinks it’s going great:
Trump probably wants to be the next POTUS because he’s making so much money off of being in the Oval Office during this term. Besides increasing his wealth by over $3B in 2025, We the People are paying for all of his mistakes. We’re paying for his travel, and we’re paying for his golfing.
Yet, these are only the first manifestations of the many messes Trump has created. By rolling back environmental protections, the impact, via increased pollution, more extreme weather, and more natural disasters, are looming on the horizon.
Likewise, Education, which Trump has gutted, is a ticking timebomb. One of the foundations for US growth in the last century was its strong education system. It wasn’t perfect, and it was uneven, and yet, it offered promise and hope.
The GOP has been actively wrecking it, monetizing it more each year. Trump is accelerating this process, effectively dumbing down America at a time when the challenges we face require more thinking, more knowledge, more education, and more intelligence.
The evidence of Trump’s impact on our education system won’t immediately show. But like all the other mistakes which Trump has made, it’ll soon be as evident as the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and the White House lawn.
The Writing Moment
I finished writing a novel, “A Tribe Called Death”, a few weeks ago. Put it through five drafts. I’m still editing and revising it, trying to prep it for other eyes.
Meanwhile, I began the next book in the series, “Alive and Dead”. I didn’t plan to but I couldn’t help myself. I’m about a third of the way through it, 17K words, 85 pages.
The seed of the third novel planned in the series sprouted yesterday. It’s been sort of swimming in and out of my awareness. Suddenly, as the second novel’s plot sharpened and turned toward its eventual finish (I’m a total organic pantser, you see), the third novel quickened in me. That began with the title: “A Shadow of Life”. I already know the character, as they were part of the first novel.
In the meantime, I’ve been entertaining myself with writing short poems. Fragments, really. I wrote ten yesterday on scones. LOL. Seriously. Posted one or two of them. May post a third today.
So it goes, writing and writing. Got to do other life things in parallel.
I guess that’s what they mean by balance.
PORVEL
I was doing the NYT Spelling Bee today.
My wife and I share it; she begins, getting bingo if available, and finding all the pangrams she can. Today there was only one.
Meanwhile, I like to keep adding words until we reach a ‘genius’ rating. Like, yeah, recalling or recognizing all those words from the seven letters available doesn’t make us a genius. Just a fun activity.
Today’s seven letters were R V O N E L P. V was in the center, which means it must be used. As I was going through the words, I put in PORVEL.
That wasn’t in the word list.
That surprised me; I’m sure PORVEL is a word. It means ‘poor novel’. Seriously.
I checked the net to verify the word, but the searches only came up with Porvel cheese.
We really need better search engines, don’t we?
Wednesday’s Theme Music — Frank Beard
Ashland, southern Oregon. Wednesday, August 19, 2026.
August is moving on slow as molasses for me. I’m okay with that.
The claim is that it’ll be 96 F today. Forecasts yesterday said we’d hit 95 but we were four short of that. It’s 68 outside with high clouds clotting across the blue sky.
Our fingers are crossed that Mom’s house will finally close today. The buyers are using a grant to buy. The involved realtors say that the grant review and approval process has significantly slowed this year. It’s a federal program. A large part of me wonders if the Trump administration with its personnel cutbacks is responsible.
I’m not going to go into news and politics much on this post today. Writing a separate post on them.
I’m dedicating this instead to ZZ Top and Frank Beard. ZZ Top is an American rock band which had a heavy blues influence in its early years. They were a trio: Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill, and Frank Beard. I started listening to them in high school. Saw them in concert a few times. Now only Billy Gibbons, lead vocalist, guitar, and song writer remains as Frank Beard, 77, joined Dusty Hill in that big gig in the otherworld.
I basically divide ZZ Top’s sound into two eras. In their early years was that blues sound. Multiple favorite songs hang with me from that period. For today, I’ll go with “La Grange” and “Jesus Left Chicago”.
The second period moved ZZ Top more into commercial mainstream pop. They became phenomenally successful. My preferred sound from that era was “Sharp Dressed Man”, which my wife and I liked to sing as ‘short, fat man’.
So here we go, into the morning mental music stream. May your day be blessed with happy memories of good music and good times, and optimism for our future.
Cheers
Michael Seidel, writer 