Category: Information

Tuesday’s Theme Music

Mood: waitsive (waiting with a pensive feel, ya know?)

Greetings from the third rock. It’s Tuesday, June 25, 2024, and we have a crispy summery morning for you. Temperatures are slipping through the mid sixties and they’d keep that line going until we’re into the mid- to upper- 90s here in Ashlandia. The sky’s so blue, it must be true.

The status quo for me has settled. Act 1 is over, the first half, whatever sports or theatatrical term you wanna apply. We’re at intermission, half time, etc. Next, we’ll see what happens — the debates, the wars, SCOTUS decisions, Dad’s dialysis decision, my annual physical and my ankle, etc. I’m sure you have your own list of matters.

Yes, my ankle worsened yesterday. I went about without wrapping it, and it rewarded me by blooming into a larger size last night. I reciprocated with rest, ice, and elevation. Now it’s wrapped again. Bah, humbug.

With these matters occupying Der Neurons, songs with a waiting theme were percolating in the morning mental music stream (Trademark simmering) but then someone said something that sounded like, “Coming for you.” This was followed by some f-bombs and dog barking, all of which was traced to the street, a good long bomb pass away. A man was walking, his large dark dog unleashed. A woman with a leashed medium-sized canine was taking umbrage and the dogs were cursing one another with great teethy zeal. I went back in and checked on the cats (repping in the back yard) (repping: resting but not quite napping) and resumed my usual routines.

Pretty much a nothing burger, but it shifted Les Neurons’ path. Now they plied the morning mental music stream with “Great Rain” by John Prine with Mike Campbell from 1991. Conducting some forensics, I realized that one point in the verbal melee outside (would that be a verlee?), I thought I heard someone call my name. Confusing and brief, but it apparently hooked The Neurons, inducing them to think of this song’s lyrics, “I thought I heard you call my name.”

Stay positive, stay strong, lean forward, and Vote Blue in 2024. Coffee is being sampled and brain city is coming alive. Here’s the music. Cheers

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The Basis for Law

A good friend of mine, Herb, is a retired Yale professor. Hailing from Louisiana, he also has a lifetime of passionate progressive activism behind him. As part of his next act, he’s trying to help establish an online local news, Ashland.news, working with a handful of others. In accordance with that activity, he also publishes opinion pieces.

This week, Herb took on his home state’s misguided efforts to post the ten commandments in every school classroom. Louisiana proponents of that effort claim that the ten commandments are the basis of law in the United States. Without saying, poppycock, Herb points out that isn’t so, focusing on the Supreme Court building to help establish his point. It’s not a long article and I invite you to read it, but these are the gist of Herb’s position.

I would welcome opposition to publicly sponsored display of the Ten Commandments on historical and moral as well as Constitutional grounds. I would (and now will) argue that as a code of justice the Ten Commandments are rudimentary, and they were not especially formative of U.S. law.

In a National Public Radio interview, Dodie Horton, who sponsored the mandatory display bill in the Louisiana senate, contended, “Our laws are based on the Ten Commandments. In fact, without them, a lot of our laws would not exist.” Which laws might she mean (the interviewer didn’t ask)? It needs no voice from a thundercloud to teach us not to murder, steal or bear false witness. No society can tolerate such actions because they destroy social cohesion.

Hebrew society wasn’t even the first to write down these prohibitions. The Code of Ur-Nammu antedates the Book of Exodus by at least a millennium. In it, murder, rape, robbery and adultery are capital crimes. A somewhat later and more famous Mesopotamian code, ascribed to Hammurabi, has 282 laws and regulations addressing a wide range of social and economic interactions. A portrait of Hammurabi in marble relief is included in the frieze on the south wall of the U.S. Supreme Court chamber.

The figures in that frieze and its continuation on the north wall point to the many sources of our laws. Reading the south frieze left to right: Menis (from ancient Egypt), Hammurabi, Moses, Solomon, Lycurgus (ancient Sparta), Solon and Draco (ancient Athens), Confucius and Augustus Caesar. Reading the north frieze from left to right: Justinian, Muhammed, Charlemagne, King John (because he signed the Magna Carta), Louis IX, Hugo Grotius, William Blackstone, John Marshall and Napoleon.

We don’t have legal documents from all these figures, but most of them represent legal developments that were formative for us. Pace Ms. Horton, were there no Ten Commandments, our laws would look no different than they are, but they are unimaginable without the Corpus Juris Civilis (Body of Civil Law), the codification of Roman law under the auspices of the 6th century CE Eastern Roman emperor Justinian I. An even more formative influence was William Blackstone’s “Commentaries on the Laws of England” of the 18th century. It’s the best-known description of the doctrines of the English common law, which developed separately from Roman law.

If Republicans were more interested in facts instead of myths, they would know the facts as Herb laid them out. Unfortunately, they’re too busy suborning the U.S. Constitution and its foundations and forcing their religion on everyone else to bother learning facts.

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Floofmerge

Floofmerge (floofinition) – 1. Cover with animals. Origins: 1697, widely used in Europe.

In Use: “People with new puppies or kittens can swiftly discover themselves to be floofmerged.”

2. A union of several animals, generally of different species. Origins: 1931, Budafloof, Hungary

In Use: “Animal Farm, an allegorical novella published in 1945 depicts a floofmerge on a farm where animals take over and rule.”

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The Writing Moment

Revising again, and it’s a good damn thing. I’d modified a story line. This resulted in two new chapters during the last go-around. OMG, they need work. Stiff and ugly, I need to spend time and thought with them before moving on. Bad enough that when I read partway through one yesterday, I shut down to regroup. LOL.

Well, it happens. They were written in a rush and worked for the moment as part of a draft, but they’re subpar for a finished manuscript.

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Monday’s Wandering Thoughts

A deer came by this morning. I saw her strolling across the yard, nibbling at choice yard offerings. Then she settled down on a grassy patch by some bushes just off the front porch.

I wondered, is she the same one who came by three times last week to chill in the yard at night? We never exchanged names and the other one was in the dark, so I’m not sure.

Seeing her settled, I did my best to keep the noise level down as I closed windows and left the house to go write.

I didn’t want to disturb the resting deer.

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Monday’s Theme Music

Mood: summerpositive

The cats and I agree, it’s a strong sun today, biting my skin with its heat, blinding my eyes (yes, what else would it be blinding — my ears?) with its light. Not supposed to be hot today, just 87 F, and it’s just 67 F now. This is Monday, Jun 24, 2024.

The cats are pratically living in the backyard, slumbering beneath bushes or stretched out, floof-napping in green patches of lawn. They come in to visit me, get fed, and use the litter box, and then dash back out. Reminds me of being a young child in the summers, doing the same with Mom. Except I didn’t use a litter box. Not in those days.

I jest, of course! Spoke with Dad yesterday. He’s down. They — the omniscient they here is the medical staff — are pushing for the dialysis port, and he doesn’t want to go through with that. He seems fazed by the surgery and claims he doesn’t want to be a burden on people, as others would need to drive him to his appointments several times a week. I’m sure he will go through with the procedure but he needs to work himself up to it. I called him this morning to chat with him but reached his voice mail. I need to call Mom to catch her up on that news. Never did call her yesterday.

Terrible flooding in the midwest. Iowa was severely hit. Evacuations were ordered and bridges collapsed. I remember flying over the plains states decades ago. The floating and the heat dome are connected events. Hope the climate doesn’t get any worse or the nation and its citizens might start getting worried. Yeah, that’s snark, baby.

My spouse picked up a nice Charles Wysocki jigsaw puzzle at Ashlandia’s library of things yesterday. I thought we should have some on hand for more Internet outages. We began the puzzle last night, even though the net didn’t go out. Lovely little beach scene featuring an old house where a high school kite flying club meets. Kites lean against an old fence in the sand and a heart shaped balloon, tethered to the gate, floats above the scene, red against a cloudy blue and white backdrop. A few sailboats skim choppy waters in the background. I can almost smell that ocean.

Other than these matters and the standard form of our days of eating, cleaning, writing, reading, it’s quiet. I accept quiet. Still recuperating with my ankle issue.

Today’s music comes by way of Willy Nelson. I was reading about his show cancellations and the article reminded me of a gay cowboy song Willy sings. The Neurons immediately began a little rendition of the song, “Cowboys Are Frequently Fond of Each Other”, in the morning mental music stream (Trademark grazing). Although Willy’s version came out back when Brokeback Mountain was gaining Oscar attention, I picked up a later version done by Willy and Orville Peck. Hope you enjoy it.

Stay positive, be strong, lean forward, and Vote Blue in 2024. Also brace yourself for a busy news week. With more SCOTUS news forthcoming, the end of June sending up a cloud of dust as it sprints at us, and the debates and the weather, I’m sure there will be a lot to talk about, read about, and GRRRRR about.

Coffee has been sucked down. Here we. Cheers

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Floofbat

Floofbat (floofinition) – Activity characterized by an animal battling a machine, mechanical device, or inanimate object. Origins: Internet, circa 2020-2024

In Use: “Refusing to yield to the robot floor cleaener, the cat engaged in minimal floofbat with it.”

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Mood: Confloofeed

The world has dropped a Sunday bomb on Ashlandia, emphasis on sun. Little wind stir the heat. We’ll travel from our current relative pleasant found in 69 degrees to the upper eighties. Cooler than yesterday, not as hot as that endured by those under the skillet lid in the eastern U.S. Today is June 23, 2024. Next Sunday will be June’s final day. This means that almost half of 2024 has slipped by the surly calendar.

In bad news, a friend sent me stats on COVID-19, showing that it’s risin’ agin’. He saved me some time. I’d planned to look into it because eight friends reported they had it in June. Their experience was a few days with mild cold symptoms followed by two to three weeks of poor energy of any kind. One reported, she sit down with a book and go right to sleep.

I spent the morning texting with sisters. One is teaching her sixteen-year-old to drive as her newly adult high school grad takes on adulting as he preps for college this fall. She’s going down to Georgia to vacation with our oldest sister tomorrow. Meanwhile, texting me, the older sister tells me she’s had a couple strokes without elaborating on what kind. She’s always had back problems and now there’s stenosis and they want to fuse five of her vertebrae together. She’s also diabetic and has chronic kidney failure, a byproduct of her meds, she tells me.

Then there’s my middle younger sister. She and her family drove down to the Carolina coast yesterday. They’ve rented a beach house with a pool. They’re all hard workers and mo’ def’ deserve and need a vacay. Hope they’re able to relax and chill.

Meanwhile, my mind is floating around calling Dad to get an update on him and calling Mom to get an update on her and pass the update along about Dad. I’m not quite up to that yet. More coffee and some writing, first.

We had a net outage the other night. Actually, two nights in a row. This frequently happens when the heat jumps into the upper nineties. I mean degrees, not years, decade, or period.

With the net out, we read but then I surfed the television offerings. Since I cut the cable back in 2010, we survive on over-the-air digital broadcasts. We receive the big four networks, along with PBS, and the networks’ sub channels. Like NBC is channel 5.1, then there are three other networks broadcasting old shows or documentaries on channels 5.2, 5.3, and 5.4. X-Files, Two and a Half Men, Seinfeld, along with Green Acres and Hogan’s Heros, and several police/hospital/fire department-based dramas from past decades.

Watching Hogan’s Heros and its silliness, my wife and tried remembering what happened to Bob Crane. Was it suicide or murder? Bludgeoned to death, we rather later recalled, and then conneted it. (Yes, conneted is my word for ‘confirmed on the net’.)

My wife follows a tangent, recalling that Naomi Judd ended her own life. It’d shocked her and me; Naomi Judd, a lovely and talented person, seemed to have it all together, resulting in a life of artistic and commercial success. Naomi Judd, though, coped with many mental and physical health issues and decided, enough. Never know what’s happening in another’s skin and what’s passing through minds.

The final piece that evening was a sort of celebration of the Judds’ music, with my wife enthusing about their songs, like “Mama He’s Crazy” and “Girls Night Out”. But the one she particularly relished was “Turn It Loose” from 1988. She played it a few times once the net returned, heavily accenting her favorite lines by loudly singing along to them.

I love the slide of a steel guitar
I love the moan of an old blues harp
I love the shake of a tambourine
I love the bass when it’s low and mean
So put on your shoutin’ shoes
And turn it loose

h/t to Lyrics.com

It may surprise you that The Neurons in my head then loaded it up and sprang it on me this morning in my morning mental music stream (Trademark loose) as I was wandering around the kitchen, just minding my own business. So that’s today’s theme music.

Stay positive, be strong, and make what you can of the day. Needn’t be perfect. Just tryin’ can help. I’ve downed some coffee — the last gulp was cold as stone. Time to go write and roll.

Here’s the music. Cheers

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