Category: memories

Friday’s Theme Music

Sol’s magic numbers for the Oregon coast for Friday are 6:26 and 8:13. That’s AM and PM. If you had those times in the pool, you may already be a winner.

Hello. Today is August 20, 2021. In the news today, COVID-19 vaccinations, cases, and deaths are all up. Locally in my county, the vaccination rate jumped to 2.1% a week. Yeah, progress. Probably because people are becoming woke. ICUs filled. Hospitals running out of beds and staff. Greater reports of people who said, “I’m healthy. I’ll survive it.” Then they succumb. In one case, it was a forty-two y.o. mother and her forty-eight y.o. spouse. They left four orphaned children. Mom’s final request was that her children get vaccinated. Why didn’t you go get it, Mom? Why?

In other news, there are still wildfires burning and a drought going on. Politicians and columnists are wringing their hands over the evacuation out of Afghanistan. Yeah, they apparently didn’t see that coming. Perhaps I’m too cynical but it’s exactly what I saw coming back when George Bush and his administration made their promises in 2001. War was going to pay for itself. A cakewalk. Wasn’t that the gang that said they’d always have an exit strategy? The ones who weren’t into nation building? Yeah, so, sorry, not surprised by this disastrous end to a disastrous war. Should have never been there. In drone news…

Yeah, not going there. Just revving you up a little.

Turning to weather, it’s partly cloudy and cool here on the Oregon coast. Low sixties. High will be in the mid sixties. Breeze of about ten MPH blowing. Clear air.

My mind began playing “Love Hurts” for me this morning. I don’t know why. Decided to go with it. Nazareth. 1975. Stay positive. Test negative. Wear a mask as needed. Get the vax. Let’s be careful out there. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Another day on the coast. Sunshine shouldered in at 6:24 AM. Clouds took note of Sol’s mood and sauntered off oh so casual, not really going because he was there but just ‘cuz. Temperatures perked up. They swear it’ll be in the mid sixties by the time Sol strolls out at 8:16 PM.

Today is Wednesday, August 18, 2021. Our housesitter back home said smoke is gone. AQI sits at 105 this morning per the Innertube. Still not healthy. Yesterday’s high in Ashland, she said, was in the mid-seventies. It’s going to be in the low eighties today, is the claim. We’ll see.

Nice to be indulging in a little vacation. Sharing a condo with friends. Two couples. It’s enough space but my energy veers away from the spectrum’s social end. I’m more internal. Like my writing. Routines. Those are all unintentionally trample by others. Because, to be normal in America means you stop what you’re doing. Socialize. ‘To have fun’. Just shut off one thing. Turn on the other. Doesn’t work like that for me. While the wife knows, she suffers it. So I suffer because she suffers. There.

My mental music today is “Push” by The Cure. Picked it up from my friend yonks ago. Think it came out in 1986. At least, that’s when I associate the song with my life. Could be wrong. Wouldn’t be the first. Could attempt to hunt down the correct year but I’m a little lazy this morning, sitting by the water in the shadows as the sun’s presence grows.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, and get that vax. Even talking a third shot. At least 99% of those encountered in stores and restaurants are masked. Bit reassuring. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

On the Oregon coast for today, Tuesday, August 17, 2021. Sunrise was at 6:20 AM. Sunset is at 8:09 PM.

Cool, here. Rained this morning. Ahhh. Rain and coffee. Is there a song for that? We expect a high of 64 degrees F. Brilliant, walking along in the cool, fresh air, going to a coffee shop in the early hours while the sun is still clearing its eyes behind a bank of clouds. Going into a funky coffee shop. Fantastic art by local artists on the walls. Fresh coffee. Fresh pastries. Fortunate to enjoy such things.

Back home, the woman staying in our house and taking care of the three amigos told us the smoke blew away after we left town. Yes, we’re taking it personally. The heat dome wandered on. Temperatures dropped by twenty degrees. Yes, we’re taking it personally.

Talking with friends about their lives, medicines, treatments, and ailments. Friend visited Pompei back in the mid seventies. I’m listening to the Bangles’ cover of “Hazy Shade of Winter” in my head. You know, “Time, time, time, see what you’ve done to me. While I looked around for my possibilities. I was so hard to please. Look around. Leaves are brown. And the sky is a hazy shade of winter.” It’s another terrific Simon & Garfunkel composition. Paul and Art released the original in 1966. The Bangles did their bang up in 1987. Here I am, thirty plus years later, listening via technology’s assistance. Do you have a preference between these two versions, or another?

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, get the vax. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Monday’s Theme Music

A cool one is expected today, in the mid to upper eighties. Had some wind yesterday. The heat dome shrugged its shoulders. Smoke lessened. The sun became familiar, ah, sunny hues instead of a red hole in hell.

Sunrise today, Monday, 8/16/2021, will come at 6:17 AM. Sunset will bless us at 8:12 PM. For music, I’m stuck on a 1970 song, “The Rapper”, by The Jaggertz. “So he starts his rapping. Hoping something will happen. He’ll say he needs you, a companion, a girl he can talk to. He’s made up his mind, he wants someone to sock it to!”

Ha, sock it to. Have you heard anyone use that recently. It’s like, “Where’s the beef?” Or, “Mama mia, that’s some spicy meatball.” “Oh, he likes it. Hey, Mikey.” Or, um, twenty-one skidoo. Or groovy. Or even, “Who let the dogs out? Who, who, who?”

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, get the vax, you know? Enjoy the music. Cheers

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Friday’s Theme Music

Yes, it’s Friday the Thirteenth of August, 2021. The sun’s limp gaze — too much smoke for it to be noticed, really — came on at 6:15 AM. Sunset, which has been a succession of fiery red orbs sinking into a hazy red horizon this week, will come at 8:15 PM. Yes, we have less than twelve hours of daylight going forward. ‘The days are getting shorter’.

Might cool off some today. Might rain. Thunderstorms are in the forecast. Not good news. We’ll listen and watch with collective bated breath to see if new wildfires explode. Already have so many going. New ones would not be welcomed.

Today’s high will be about 100, again. The thing with the heat dome is that the heat stays longer into the night. Midnight found us at 86 F last night. But with that smoke — the AQI has been red or purple — unhealthy or very unhealthy all week — opening windows will funk you up. We’re sitting at purple, 205, very unhealthy right now. Visibility is struck down. Like we’re in a fog. Except it’s smoke. Can see about three hundred feet. No upper horizon. No sign of the mountains and forests. Better than being in the fire, though, knock on wood.

Embracing the day’s superstition, I’m channeling “Superstition”. A Stevie Wonder composition, he hit with it back in 1972. Several have covered it since then, including Stevie Ray Vaughn. I went with a video of Stevie Wonder with Jeff Beck at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 25th Anniversary Show.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax. Cheers

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Thursday’s Theme Music

“Oh, what a beautiful morning. Oh, what a beautiful day. I got a beautiful feeling, everything’s going my way.”

Yes, Gordon MacRae is singing to me this morning. Part of an exercise to, um, exercise a more positive attitude.

In many ways, it is a beautiful morning. Though the sun is a whitish wisp behind a uniform chalky pale gray, the air is calm, windows are open, smoke isn’t actually entering the house, and nothing locally is on fire. See, I can be an optimist. It’s a cool 76 degrees F for now. Sunrise came prowling around my back door on or about 6:15 AM and sunset will get our attention at 8:16 PM here in the Rogue Valley area. The heat dome is still with us, feeding off the air and land temp. We expect a high of 102 plus. We expected that yesterday but didn’t achieve it as the smoke kept us below 96 degrees. Thanks, smoke!

Inside the house is our sanctuary. Not a large space. Nor fancy. But ours. Where we can walk around nude if we want. Laugh and argue. Read and eat. Sleep and bath. All in relative protection. Within it is my space. My desk. Laptop. Printer. Chair. Cats on three sides of me. Guarding or protecting me. I don’t know what they’re doing for sure. But they’re there, sleeping on the job. Snoring, purring, there.

Shifting from Oklahoma!‘s music, I’m now playing U2’s song, “The Fly”, from 1991. Always a little bit of a strange song to me. Not my favorite. But I was going through this one part that goes, “It’s no secret that a conscious can sometimes be a pest, it’s no secret ambition bites the nails of success. Every artist is a cannibal, every poet a thief. All kill their inspiration and sing about the grief.”

What I was thinking about that was drive. Effort. Persistence. Trying and striving. Don’t really see how it ties into those lyric, but that’s what my psyche came up with. Thinking about it more, I believe the song is associated with the album (Achtung Baby) which is part of a chain of time and events in my life in 1991.

All right. Stay positive. Test negative. Wear a mask as needed, and don’t try to bullshit yourself about whether it’s needed. And get the vax. Here’s the music.

Cheers

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Inappropriate

They were ordering food. Take-away from an outdoor café. Burritos, wraps, and sandwiches. Fries, of course. Sodas. A hut where the cooking, storing, and sales transactions took place. White tables with red umbrellas surrounded the hut on a small pond of blazing white cement.

The food was ordered. Waiting commenced. Others were eating. It was outdoors. They wouldn’t eat there. They’d go home. A man and three boys were at one table. Food-focused, none looked up. Nobody spoke. Blonds. Crewcuts. Dad appeared to be in his mid thirties. The boys ranged from guesses that put them six to twelve.

Their ticket was called. He got up and collected their food. His wife joined them on their walk to the car.

“You see what happened behind you?” she asked.

“No.”

“Did you see the man and three boys a few tables over? The littlest one got up and walked over and peed behind your seat on the grass by the sidewalk.”

He gasped. “Did his father see that?”

“I think his father told him to.”

The man thought, he’d have to pass this on to Jill. Some see something as inappropriate, but to others, it’s fine.

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Monday’s Theme Music

We’ve done it! We’ve made it to another Monday. Give yourself a pat on the back. You deserve it. Most of us do. Doesn’t always seem like Monday wants us with it.

Today is August 9, 2021. Sol’s first pearly gold rays struck Ashland at 6:12 AM, immediately pushing the temperature up from the sixties degrees where it sat. With smoke sting nipping our nostrils, scratching our eyes and throats, and hazing the sky’s blue into an ancient gray, temperatures in the low nineties are forecast. Cynics believe it will be closer to the mid-nineties, pointing to a recent trend of under-forecasting the highs. The sun will grow into a red rubber ball and wink out behind the hills at 8:20 PM. At least we had a nocturnal break from the smoke. Windows were cracked. Fresh, cool air washed in. Ah, relief.

Multiple songs shared play time in my head yesterday, last night, this morning. Like, the Jefferson’s theme music. “Backfield in Motion”. “Wedding Bell Blues”. But also, “Surrender”. The Cheap Trick 1978 song is the loudest, strongest, most pervasive.

Whatever happened to all this season’s
Losers of the year?
Every time I got to thinking
Where’d they disappear?
But when I woke up, Mom and Dad
Are rolling on the couch
Rolling numbers, rock and rollin’
Got my KISS records out

[Chorus]
Mommy’s alright
Daddy’s alright
They just seem a little weird
Surrender
Surrender
But don’t give yourself away
Hey, hey

h/t to Genius.com

My Mum and Dad never got my Kiss records out and rolled around and such. Perish the thought! Here’s the music. Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax. Cheers

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Sunday’s Theme Music

“Sunday, Sunday, Sunday.” That echoing baritone used to herald local events during television and radio commercials. Monster truck shows. Wrestling at the armory. That sort of thing.

Today is Sunday, August 8, 2021. Smoke continues plaguing us. It’s better than fire. So many fires continue burning out here in the western U.S. that only the most positive of people can stay upbeat. White clouds are skulking through the sky. Temperatures will be on the cool side, with a high around 82 F, they say. But Alexa told me yesterday that it would only get to 86. Then 90. Then 91. That’s where it peaked. Hope it stays cool

Sunrise’s gray, gold, and pink marbleized lights and shadows came into the valley at 6:09 AM. We’ll have another red ball sunset at 8:27 PM.

COVID-19, the Delta variant, vaccines, and masks continue to dominate my news cycle. Despite the Olympics and the new U.S. air strikes in Afghanistan. All ‘water is wet’ news anymore. The U.S. has been bombing someone throughout my lifetime. Probably will be after I’m gone.

Yesterday had me getting rid of some old exercise equipment. I disassembled things to make it easier to load, transport, and unload at the dump. (Yes, nobody wanted any of it, further depressing me.) The bike required an allen wrench. I have several sets. When I realized I needed one and headed to the workbench, Billy Joel began singing “Allentown” (1982).

Well, we’re living here in Allentown
And they’re closing all the factories down
Out in Bethlehem, they’re killing time
Filling out forms, standing in line

h/t to Genius.com

Well, the song won’t leave my head. It played even when I was lying in bed. Even while feeding the cat getting a drink by the kitchen sink. So, I must spread it out to others to remove it from my mind. Sorry, friends. That’s how these things work. It’s been so since the first recorded song.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed — and they do seem needed again in the U.S. as the nation records record numbers of new cases — and get the vax, if you can. The vax may not fully and completely protect you from the virus but it will mitigate its symptoms and the probable results. In other words, you’re more likely to survive with the vaccine than without it.

Cheers

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Saturday’s Theme Music

A pause, you know, a pause from thinking, writing, and looking at bad news, you know? So tempting to enumerate it all in a mini-rant but that could easily turn into something longer and uglier and I just am not going in that direction today.

Today is Saturday, and Saturday night’s alright for fighting, get a little action in. It’s also August 7, 2021, my 46th wedding anniversary to my high school girlfriend, daughter of my father’s best friend. Sunrise came at 6:10 AM. Sunset will be at 8:23 PM. Sunny overall, with highs around 88 degrees F. (Oh, but the smoke — no, stop, damn it. Reel that thing in.)

I’m going with Pink today, “Raise Your Glass”, from 20…(hang on, looking it up)…10. Here’s the music. Here’s hoping you have a good day. Cheers

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