Saturday’s Theme Music – The Words
Ashland, Oregon – Saturday, March 14, 2026. It’s a rainy almost spring day in Ashland as clouds reduce the sunlight and precipitation intermittently falls. Our temperature is 48 F and the temperature will skip up to 52. Maybe.
I don’t have much to say today. I’m still mostly in a wait and see attitude about what’s next, mostly with pent breath. What will crack first? How long will the attacks on Iran last and will it turn to a ground invasion?
Or will Trump attack another country in the interim?
Meanwhile, we’re still waiting to see what the Epstein files really say about Trump and we’re still waiting for justice for the victims.
It might be a long wait. Trump himself is amazingly indifferent to facts, ignorant to history, and delusional about his abilities. I can pull up examples but really, if you doubt that now, you’re probably a Trump thinker.
Trump thinkers are not deep. Although dated from October of 2016, this post encapsulates it.
In point of this, Trump campaigned on no new wars but here he is at the start of his second year of his second term, bombing Iran. And guess what? Trump voters are mostly still with him, according to polls.
Mexico didn’t pay for the wall. Trump never introduced a replacement for ACA. He’s always golfing and now he’s making lots of money for himself as leader of the free world. He’s spending money on war, putting his name on places, and adorning the White House with gold while shredding education, research, and the social safety net.
Prices are rising for food and gas. Trump cut taxes for the wealthiest of the wealthy and makes life harder to in rural areas of the United States. But that’s his base.
And they still haven’t learned who he is.
For music, I’m hearing “Baby Can I Hold You” in the morning mental music stream. This is a 1992 Tracy Chapman song that’s all about how difficult people find it to say, “I’m sorry” or “I love you”. But The Neurons put the song into my morning mental music stream because of the line, “Years gone by and still words don’t come easily.”
That’s how it sometimes is for me. I awaken from dreams and writing efforts and circle around my moods, thoughts, and emotions, unsure of my balance and direction.
But basically, I’m thinking, sorry but I still don’t understand you, Trump voters. Yes, I know it was about feeling overlooked and neglected by the ‘elites’. But how does this repeated pattern of being lied to and broken promises play into your thinking? How does this war play into your thinking and acceptance of him?
The jaded among us reply, no, it wasn’t about war and prices. It was about bigotry, sexism, and hate. It’s all about being male and white and Christian posturing.
As Trump once ‘joked’, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK? It’s, like, incredible.”
He knows his base way better than I do.
Hope you find peace and grace on this day, and it carries you forward into a better future.
Cheers
Navigating Some Changes: A Dream
It started weird.
In my mid-twenties, I’d been somewhere, had a few drinks, went home. At home was an old girlfriend, visiting someone else, staying the night. Morning broke with sunshine through windows. I realized she was leaving and wanted to get up to say good-bye.
I could not move.
Paralyzed isn’t quite the word. I had no control. My limbs were flopping, weak, uncoordinated.
How did this happen? I kept asking myself. I didn’t much the night before, struggling to remember what I’d eaten, concluding, not much. I suspected someone had spiked my drink.
Thinking over the previous night, my memory pulled up a hypothetical scene where a man dropped something into my dream. I couldn’t guess his motivation and speculated he thought my drink belonged to someone else.
Then, damn – I’m late for work.
In the military again, I scrambled to find a clean uniform and shit, shower, shave.
Rushing out of the house, I headed for a train station and realized, I’m in Germany and I don’t know where I’m going. Nor did I speak the language.
There were long lines and a byzantine system of turns and steps. Putting together clues from what I saw others do, but screwing up, I sometimes got scolded – in German. I studied landmarks for more evidence about where I was, where I was going, then made it to work.
I was just a little late. Eventually I explained to the commander that I thought someone else had spiked my drink. He eagerly agreed, recapping my symptoms and then explaining the same thing happened to him the night before. That greatly relieved me, knowing someone else had gone this. I sensed that he felt the same.
I need to go somewhere else, they told me. Out in the system again, I tried putting pieces together to get to the right place and ended up going too far. Figuring that out, I backtracked until I found the right station. I realized we were sometimes going through people’s personal lands. They were very particular about what was permitted but sometimes changed it. For example, one old, white hair man opened up a door as a shortcut, apparently on a whim. An elderly gray-haired female chastised us when we considered using part of her walk as a shortcut.
Then it was time to go home. I had to figure out where to go, what to do, but fewer people were available. I had to figure it out on my own.
Dream end.
Friday’s Theme Music – Wasted
Ashland, Oregon — Friday, March 13, 2026. Ah, Friday the 13th.
I’m surprised that this is considered a day of bad luck. One, because our ancestors thought Friday was a scary day, the scariest of the week.
What? As someone who worked and partied, I always thought Friday was a good day. It was frequently regulated to a quasi half-day. How is that a bad thing?
The ’13’ part comes from the number being perceived as imperfect. “Ancient Romans and later European traditions also treated 13 as a break in the natural order, contrasting it with the “complete” number 12 (months, zodiac signs, apostles).”
Well, that’s kind of funny and arbitrary. The months are divided into different lengths — 28 (or maybe 29), 30, and 31 days. That seems imperfect. But there’s a ‘perfect’ set of twelve of them.
Yet, we only have two each of limbs, eyes, ears, legs. Just one mouth. Guess we’re not perfect or we’d have twelve of each.
It’s all so silly. That’s why I trust my lucky underwear, my lucky pen, and three beeps on the microwave. They’re proven to bring good fortune. I’d loan you my underwear but it’s just my bad luck that they need washed.
Today finds us cloudy but pleasantly warmish and coolish outside, with sun and blue sky playing peek-a-boo with the clouds. 46 F now, a high in the mid 60s is anticipated.
Quiet continues on the Mom front, and the news shows war, violence, chaos. Thanks, Mr. Trump. It feels like it was an unlucky day when you were elected — both times.
Today’s music is “Wasted on the Way”. The Neurons slipped the Crosby, Stills, Nash song into the morning mental music stream when I was thinking about how Trump wastes the world.
Lives are being wasted by Trump’s hate, biases, indifference. Opportunities wasted by his greed and ego. He’s creating a wasted world, ignoring warnings about climate change, starting wars that destabilize the diplomatic order, breaking agreements which fracture the business world, raising havoc and prices.
Then he tells us it’s all going great.
The biggest question on my mind for the peace president, unifier, and founder of the Board of Peace is, when will Trump stop the bombing and killing that he started, so that others can begin picking up the pieces and putting things back together?
I hope this day isn’t a waste for you. May peace and grace find and keep you.
Cheers
Three Beeps
I nuked something this morning in the microwave. When it announced, “Done”, with five beeps, I responded by pressing the cancel button three times.
Thinking back with a smile, I remembered how I developed that habit. Those ‘three beeps’ are supposed to be for good luck. I first did it in the 1980s when we lived on Okinawa when we bought our first microwave. I started to nuke something but canceled it, inadvertently pressing the button three times.
Later, I had a good day. When I remembered that the next morning, I thought, I’m going to keep doing this, because maybe those three beeps brought me luck.
It’s all fiction. I did hit the cancel button three times today and smiled, wondering if it would bring me good luck, and then I made up the rest.
It’s Tuesday
Coffee smells landed. I breathed it in.
The barista greeted me from the counter, “Hey, Michael.”
“Hi, Natalie.” I slid my payment over as she wrote up my order.
“How’s it going?” she asked.
An espresso machine hissed. I shrugged. “It’s Tuesday, isn’t it.”
She nodded. Natalie loves shouting with a big, lovely grin, “It’s Tuesday, innit?”
Today, she said, “Just two days in and it’s already a burden.”
I smiled. “Too true.”
Natalie began entering the order into the register.
“You have my Co-op number?” I asked.
Her emerald eyes widened. “Five nine nine six?”
Classic rock spilled out of the speakers.
“Bingo,” I shouted.
Natalie and I laughed like maniacs.
“It’s Tuesday, innit?” I asked.
Natalie bent over in laughter. “It’s Tuesday, innit?”
Good to Laugh
It’s good to laugh, especially when I can laugh at Trump. Jill Dennison again provides the need laugh-fuel for a weary feeling March Tuesday. Here are my top choices from her terrific solution. Hope you read the rest and find your own.
Feels good to laugh, even when it hurts a little because it’s all too damn true and real.
Tuesday’s Theme Music: Disruptions
Ashland, Oregon — Tuesday, March 10, 2026.
Cloudy and 39F outside, dry with a high of 52 F projected.
This post is mostly about me and Mom. Pings erupted in the middle of the night. Mom had launched a text blitz, and the sisters were sharing and discussing them. I read many and saw it basically as the same old, same old on every front. One sister had helped Mom by picking things up at her house; another had responded, telling Mom that she’d created this living situation mess.
Meanwhile, searching for info and thinking late last night, I hunted for more about Heritage Grove, the assisted living facility where Mom now lives. I found this photo on their Facebook page. That’s Mom, the 90 year-old in the front left in pink in the ‘drive’ wheelchair. She’d won a Snickers bar at bingo.
Returning to sleep after the text barrage was a challenge. I finally slept but awoke when I thought I heard a man saying, “There’s a fire.” There was no man there and the house was silent. I rose, though, and walked through the house, trying to see if I smelled smoke or saw sparks or flames. Then back to bed, back to sleep, but ended up getting up late. Just eating breakfast now, 10:30, two hours late. Bah, humbug.
While I was awake in the night, I thought about yesterday’s news.
Trump urges Australia to give Iran’s Asian Cup players asylum
The story quoted Trump saying on Truth social, “Australia is making a terrible humanitarian mistake by allowing the Iran National Woman’s Soccer team to be forced back to Iran, where they will most likely be killed.”
Damn it, the only people he’s fooling are his unthinking supporters and the uninformed. This is the same person who has Homeland Security and ICE rounding people up and sending them anywhere he could get away with sending them, without one damn thought about whether they’d be killed. In the process of rounding up people and shipping them out, people were actually and being killed. And Trump always, always blamed the victims, labeling them as domestic terrorists, criminals, or thugs.
U.S. Deports Planeload of Iranians After Deal With Tehran, Officials Say
The NYTimes headline was from last October. Since then, the Iranian government killed thousands of people. And, were any of those people Trump flew back to Iran in 2025 killed when Trump bombed them in 2026?
It all has me shaking my head.
Which carries me into theme song territory. The Neurons came up with “Helen Wheels.” To which I responded, what?
The Paul McCartney & Wings song is about Paul’s Land Rover and driving around. How did it fit into my mind?
Well, it hinged on two salient aspects: “Ain’t nobody else gonna know the way she feels.” And yep, that’s Mom and life with Mom at this point. It’s a mystery. And the other part is the long-sigh “bye buh” I feel toward what’s happening with Mom, especially with my sisters.
The upbeat song feels like it’s driving me forward, pulling me off the night’s inertia.
I hope your day is going well, wherever you are, whatever you doing. May peace and grace nestle up against your efforts and help you move forward.
Cheers
Michael Seidel, writer 