Category: memories

Monday’s Theme Music

5:42 AM came, bringing the sun — or did the sun bring the time? These are the things that are pondered when you awaken at an unexpected moment, along with the name of a favorite restaurant that you ate at one time in 1997, and obscure information, such as, what is the capitol of Paraguay, and other lines from Billy Collins’ poem, “Forgetfulness”. Then you find yourself trying to remember “What Dogs Think” and “A Dog on His Master” by Billy Collins, and then wonder, is Billy Collins still alive? Before you know it, it’s already 8:36 PM, and the sun is setting…

Unless you have pets, who remind you of your obligations to feed, love, and honor them, especially that feeding part, forcing you out of bed. My cats didn’t remind me of the day — who cares if it’s Monday, when you’re a cat doing the same thing every day? — and didn’t remind me of the date, May 24, 2021, because animals use a completely different calendar system. My cats assure me that their system is better. Every year is a floof year. They won’t explain what that means.

I was painting inside the house yesterday, attacking this year’s project, the great room. The great room is not great IMO. It’s just okay. It’s the living-dining-kitchen room, no walls between them, just one high ceiling. I painted the kitchen part last year after doing the foyer and front hall. I’d done the bathrooms and guest room the year before. You see the progression. I’d planned more painting last year, but then broke my arm after a poor dismount from the kitchen counter, which I was standing on to reinstall the kitchen blinds. The broken arm — two bones, at the wrist, and a buncha collateral damage — got me out of work, but I don’t recommend it. Just tell them that your cats stole the paint or something, if you don’t want to paint.

Anyway, while painting, I had Rihanna’s song, “Work”, going through my head for a while. You know, “work, work, work, work, work.” But Huey Lewis and the News took over the neurons with their 1982 song, “Workin’ for A Livin'”, and managed to stay there. Now I need to get rid of it, so I’m postin’ it here.

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

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Friday’s Theme Music

Just another fuzzy Friday. My I-don’t-have-to-work-day. My drink a cup-of-coffee day. Which makes it like every day, except the fuzzy part. It’s fuzzy with clouds and rain out there (yes — we like rain!) although a few degrees warmer (gonna be a struggle to reach sixty F today) would be appreciated.

This is May 21, 2021. May, and 2021, are storming past. The sun put some light in the sky at 5:45 AM and will take its gift of light and heat away at 8:31 PM here in the valley. The cats are quite ambivalent about it all, going out, coming in, searching for sunshine, hurrying from rain, sheltering from the winds that kick up, meowing at me to fix it before finding an inside place to retire for a few hours.

Thinking of what stage we’re at with the coronavirus, and what stage I’m at with different projects, dredged the ZZ Top song, “Stages”, up from 1986 memories into the active memory stream. “Stages keep on changing,” they sing, and they’re right. We’re at a stage with the COVID-19 crises where the mask guidance is changing, a stage where we’re waiting to see what’ll happen with variants and the vaccine, a stage where we wait to see if herd immunity can be achieved, a stage where we wait to see what the new normal will be.

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

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Guten morgen. Today is Wednesday, May 29, 2021. Muted sunshine began filling the valley this morning about 5:46 AM and will go on until the sun leaves the scene 8:29 PM. Cold cloudiness could lead you to think we’re headed toward autumn instead of summer. People on the morning’s exercise Zoom call were worrying over their vegetable plants and freeze warnings.

I’m in a “China Grove” frame of mind this morning. No particular reason for the 1973 Doobie Brothers song except that I like its energy, and the feel it imparts. So, why not, right?

Wear a mask when needed, stay positive, test negative, and get the vax. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Today is Tuesday, know what that means? Means it’s May 18, 2021. Your reality may vary.

Sol pulled out over the hills and sluggishly beamed into the valley where Ashland is nestled at about 5:47 AM. His visit is expected to last until about 8:28 PM, when we’ll wave farewell and watch him set off for the rest of his daily visits. It’s never ending for that guy. He just keeps going and going…

Sol’s arrival was sluggish because surly clouds, puffed up and thick as steroid-infused weightlifters, wouldn’t make room. Some rain could be in our day, fingers crossed. ‘Too dry’ is how I’d label this spring. Temperatures will tug onto the lower seventies, maybe just the high sixties, depending.

Historically, Mount St. Helens blew on this day back in 1980. I just read it, otherwise it would’ve blown right past me. The old volcano had been threatening for a few months. When it finally blew, it made major headline news. We just don’t experience many volcanos erupting in the continental United States.

I was in the Randolph AFB Command Post at the time (in the Taj Mahal, under the water tower — yes, it’s true), and called the commander with the information when the volcano finally erupted. My wife and I lived in base housing with two cats, P.K. and Roary, watching cable TV on a big Magnavox console. We were getting ready to leave and head to Okinawa on assignment. Our car was a metallic copper Pontiac Firebird, the first new car we ever bought.

Dredging up music, I came up with Pink Floyd The Wall and Billy Joel. “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me” was a big song at that point. Billy Joel was on a roll, pumping out albums and hits, and in the news because of his successful roll. I’m going with it because of its sentimental connections with who I was when. “Hot funk, cool punk, even it it’s old junk, it’s still rock and roll to me.” We can add a few more genres now, can’t we? It’s still rock and roll.

Stay positive, test negative, adjust your mask wearing as appropriate, and get the vax. Also encourage your friends and relatives to get the vax. Here’s the music. I’m gonna get coffee. Be right back. Ta

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Friday’s Theme Music

At about 5:51 AM on May 14, 2021, the sun walked onto the Ashland stage and said, “Hello. Welcome to Friday.” Birds burst out in song. Cats and dogs yawned. Many people turned over and privately promised themselves, “Just one more minute of sleep.” The sun will continue walking across Ashland until 8:21 PM, sprinkling warm sunshine across people’s shoulders, animals’ fur, flowers, and others who ask for it. Vowing to keep it cooler than the past several days, the sun said, “Today’s high in Ashland will be about seventy-seven degrees.” Polite but scattered applause answered except for one woman who kept yelling, “Woooo!”

The mind channeled a 1975 Eagles song to the forefront. “One of these Nights” made it to number one that year. It came into my head last night because I was thinking about what I want slash need slash should do. I promised myself that I would, “One of these days.” That morphed a little sloppily into “One of these things is not like the other,” because of the things that I was addressing. But breathing in the cool dark air while admiring the stars and thinking about what’s out there, out came the Eagles song.

Stay positive, test negative, and get the vax. Wear a mask? Well, we’ll see. CDC and state guidance is changing in the U.S. Some are dubious. Others are exuberant. I slide the spectrum between the two.

Have an excellent day — or night — wherever you are. Cheers

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Sunshine came to Wednesday, 5/12/21 in Ashland, Oregon, 5:53 AM. The light quickly exposed the night for what it was, a dark place where many go to rest. Few can resist the night; it rolls in, and they start yawning. Their eyes begin closing as night’s magic sweeps over them. Their heads soon nod. Slumping, their breathing deepens. As people fall into heavy slumber, night’s minions quietly move in, resetting reality. Night’s efforts will begin again at 8:22 PM. Meanwhile, daylight will strain to keep the borders secure.

Channeling Mick Jagger and the Stones today. Began by thinking about time, hurry, and rushing around, leading directly to some “Tumbling Dice” lyrics.

Always in a hurry, I never stop to worry
Don’t see the time flashin’ by
Honey, got no money
I’m all sixes and sevens and nines
Say now, baby, I’m the rank outsider
You can be my partner in crime

Baby, I can’t stay
You got to roll me and call me the tumbling
Roll me and call me the tumbling dice
Baby, oh my

h/t to Genius.com

Although I like the studio (’72) version better for tempo, piano, and familiarity, watching performers play their music in concert fascinates me. The little side winks, grins, and double-takes are extra flavoring, bringing in a sharper human side. So I went with with both a studio version and a 1974 recorded live version so you can hear the difference and decide which you prefer. With either, it’s a good party moment when they come to that chorus, “Baby. I can’t stay.” People enjoy belting that out.

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

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

As inexorable as the sun arriving in the east each AM, we’ve cycled into another Tuesday, labeled May 11, 2021, for official record keeping. The star known as Sol punched in at 5:54 AM and will punch out as regular as Fred Flintstone at 8:21 PM. Spring sunshine is as plentiful as green leaves and temperatures are expected to tiptoe into the upper seventies today. Lovely.

Feeling well today. During my Saturday evening hospital visit for a damn kidney stone, I was given batteries of tests to verify all is well. They keep saying things like, ‘you’re remarkably healthy.’ I always think, you should see the other guy. CT scan showed liver, gall bladder, appendix, intestines, colon, stomach, lungs, kidneys all in great shape. Blood work support those claims. So, yea, me, or more rightly, yea Mom and Dad for giving me genes that set me on the road of having good health.

Mom and Dad are still about. Dad and his siblings are all alive. Now residing in San Antonio, Texas, Dad is the oldest of that lot of five. Mom is less fortunate. Living in Pittsburgh, PA, second to youngest, she’s the sole survivor of her gang of five. Mom is 85 this year and Dad is 89. Mom had health problems over the last five years, dealing with various heart, lung, foot, and cancer issues. Now she consumes twenty meds a day but still moving. Dad had been doing well but suddenly has issues the last three years. Now he’s losing blood, uses a walker or a cane, oxygen at home for his COPD, and several care-givers coming in a few times a week. Despite several hospital stays, cameras inserted into various orifices, and lots of blood and urine work, they don’t know where the blood is going. His spirits are up, though. Dad is pretty indefatigable.

Mom and Dad divorced almost sixty years ago. They’ve arrived at this point in their lives with good partners. Dad is on his third marriage (although he lived with another three women for years) while Mom is on her sixth fellow. Mom and her fellow are not married but they live together. I’m happy they have someone growing old with them, taking care of them. I’ve seen how hard it is when you’re elderly and living alone.

I’m listening to The Clash in my head this morning. They’re singing the 1978 song, “Guns On the Roof”. Reading about the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan brought me to this song. We’re still leaving one thousand troops in there, along with contractors. We’ll also continue pursue our latest military fad, drone warfare. That brought up The Clash line, “I like to be in U.S.A. Pretending that the wars are done.” The United States is never done with war. Peace would wreck too many stock portfolios.

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

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Post Mother’s Day Post

I read an interview with Calvin Trillin today. He said, every family has a theme that runs through it.

I can dig that. I grew up with some very Catholic and Jewish friends. Lessons and classes were always interfering with plans. I went to Bible School every summer for a few weeks, for a couple years. Other than that, I think we were Presbyterians. We attended church on some Christmases.

Religion wasn’t my family’s theme. Neither was education. Mom and Dad took the attitude, don’t bring home a bad grade and we’ll be okay. Several other themes were possible. Mom married multiple times in a quest for happiness. She’d taken private vows not to be like her mother, cold, hard, distant. Mom would be friends with her children. We would play games together.

Man, did we play games. Card games, ball games in the backyard, board games, Mom was always up to playing a game with us. Tripoley, a card game Mom picked up from her in-laws, became the go-to game. There was a board, in our case, a green plastic sheet. On it were different card combinations, along with poker, and ‘out’. Everyone paid into some pots, usually two to three cents each hand. A dummy hand was dealt. The dealer had the choice to keep their hand and sell the second hand, or to pick up and use the second hand. When you evaluating a hand to see whether you would bid on the extra hand, you were looking for pay cards, like the King and Queen of Hearts, or the 8-9-10 combo, or if it was a good poker hand or one that would allow you to go out.

We always played for pennies, and had great old Maxwell House coffee cans filled with coins, because sometimes, those pennies started adding up. “Look at that King and Queen, is that silver in there? There must be eighty cents in there.” Such a large amount. No one counted it, though; counting a pot drew bad luck down on you.

My wife quickly learned about the game but most of the spouses stayed away from it. They didn’t understand how we could sit and play for several hours for a few pennies, coming away with a beam for winning almost three dollars. Woo hoo.

The theme also could be hiding. Mom taught us all to hide whenever someone came to the door. I never heard why we were hiding. Someone knocks, we freeze, falling silent, eyes wide, like it’s WW II and the Nazis have found us. “Who is that?” we’d mouth at one another. Someone would sneak to a window. Carefully peek out. We also did not answer the phone. Whoever was calling us needed to know the code: let it ring twice, hang up and call again. If you don’t use the code, we’re not answering your call.

Our family’s theme could be fragmentation. I left Mom to live with Dad when I was fourteen. The older sister moved out of state when she was nineteen. We lost contact with her. Mom moved many times in her quest to be a good single mother, work, and find joy in marriage. It just didn’t work out. Yet, whenever I returned home, it was like I’d never left. We picked up having good times, laughing at everything, playing games. My wife noticed it after a few visits.

Pressing myself for the truest answer, what is your family’s theme, I laugh and answer, “Food.” Of course. Many people probably say the same. Mom loved to cook. She loved making us happy with food, and she was a damn good cook. The sisters took it up. Holidays Fare always encumbered with too much food, too many munchies, too many desserts. Typically, there’s pies and cakes, because Mom and sisters didn’t want to overlook anyone’s favorite. There are salads as an homage to health, along with something Italian — spaghetti, ravioli, maybe, but usually lasagna — along with turkey or ham. Depends, you know? Thanksgiving always required turkey. Ham was on Easter. Burgers, bbq chicken, and hot dogs on Memorial, Labor, and Independence Days, along with the Italian entree. There is lots of food. Leftovers get divided for consumption. It was often enough to supply troops invading another country. Desserts are usually frozen for other occasions. It’s not weird in our extended family to offer someone dessert from the freezer. “I have some leftover birthday cake from Gina’s birthday.” That Gina’s birthday was two months ago didn’t matter. It was frozen; it’d still be good.

Mom loves a cook out. That’s what she calls it: cooking out. We call it grilling. While my wife and I grill vegetables, sometimes chicken, fish, or beef, Mom always grilled burgers and hot dogs. Both needed to be well done because Mom worried about food poisoning from undercooked food.

We have favorites, right? Mom’s potato salad and fried chicken are amazing. All say so, if I do say so myself. It ruined it for anyone else offering me those things. I’ve searched the world for Mom’s potato salad and fried chicken. Nowhere else comes close to her product. Mom’s Fried Chicken. It could be a thing, except we’d need to answer the door.

I guess we’ll set up a code.

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Monday’s Theme Music

Welcome to another May Monday, the tenth day of May, the one hundred thirtieth day of 2021. Sol marched into the sky at 5:55 AM and is staying until 8:20 PM. Our southern Oregon classic spring continues with cool, refreshing blue-sky mornings, clouds coming in later in the day, and a high in the low seventies. A mild wind mixes things up.

On a personal note, my kidney stone passed yesterday afternoon. A small brown pebble, I have named it Gerald. Although it talks and laughs much, it rarely moves.

Outside at midnight last night (actually stepping out after opening the door for two cats to return), I checked out the midnight sky and remembered CCR’s cover of “Midnight Special” from 1969.

Let the Midnight Special shine a light on me
Let the Midnight Special shine a light on me
Let the Midnight Special shine a light on me
Let the Midnight Special shine a everlovin’ light on me.

The original song was traditional folk song, and the light is thought to reference a train light coming into a jail cell. No trains were passing by when I heard the song in my head last night. Only starshine and houselights.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, and get that vax.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Yes, we’ve made it to Sunday May 9, 2021, and Mother’s Day in America. The sun’s fresh start in Ashland came at 5:56 AM while it will finish its day at 8:19 PM. Fine spring weather has come into the valley for the holiday. Temperatures, as it was yesterday, will creep into the low seventies. The air is clean and fresh.

Learned via correspondence with Mom that she’s going to my sister’s house for the holiday. Sis’s husband, Pat, is going for all the mothers and families. Very sweet of him. They’ve all been vaccinated. I still worry, though. It’s my nature. Locally, COVID-19 cases are declining again after rising throughout April. Two weeks ago, our seven-day average peaked at 49. Yesterday, it was at 33.

Went to ER yesterday. Yeah, wrote and posted about it, to help me process, and I slept in this morning. Anyway, the result left a song about doctors echoing through my mind. Here is Robert Palmer with his 1979 hit cover of, “Bad Case Of Loving You (Doctor Doctor)”.

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

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