Category: memories

Saturday’s Theme Music

Mood: upbeat and restless

Today is Saturday, June 22, 2024. Summer had asserted itself with a firm hand. A solidly blue sky gazes down on Ashlandia and bright sunshine blisters our skin and browns the land. Currently 73 F, Ashlandia’s area will experience low to mid 90s for the highs today. The wind has shifted and the smoke has drifted out of our valley to go plague others in another valley, so it’s breathable outside. Take precautions against the heat and outside activities can be pursued. It supposed to get cooler for a few days, with temperatures dipping into the eighties.

It feels like it’s been a long week. Realizing it’s Saturday surprises me. The big Biden-Trump debate looms on the calendar. Personally, I have a physical this week. Slowing down, moderately overweight, I feel like I’m aging by the day — which, yeah, we all are — so I’m not looking forward to the physical.

Mom and I spoke yesterday. She related one of her favorite precautionary tales. Her mother had a thing about smells. She was living alone, in her nineties, as her children discussed putting her into a nursing home or assisted living facility. Those discussions had stalled.

Meanwhile, on a cold December Nebraska night, her mother put on a light jacket and took a banana peel out to put in the outside trash. She slipped and fell, staying on the ground for forty-five minutes before noticed and helped. That was the end of her living alone. She lived for several more years but wasn’t the same.

On her part, Mom’s big fall over a decade ago triggered her long health decline. For my part, when I was immobilized with an obstructed bladder a few years ago, I saw changes quickly emerge. I was suddenly stiffer and less fluid in my movement. My balance felt slightly off. My metabolic rate had changed as I aged, of course, but suddenly I put on weight. Much of my muscle seemed to slack off overnight. Then, boom, my skin all seemed to be sagging.

It’s likely that all those things were happening but I didn’t notice until my routines were changed. Seeing those changes made me more cognizant of my retreating hair line, and the color fleeing my hair and beard. I feel older, slower, and weary. Reading news of the world and its people, and political news, doesn’t seem to help at all. I turn to coffee for energy boosts but I know I shouldn’t be drinking it any longer. Like Grandma and her banana peel, I can’t stop myself.

I read Jill Dennison’s blog as frequently as I can. She and I seem like kindred political spirits, part of the same tribe as many of you who regularly visit my blog and comment. I read one of Jill’s posts and commented yesterday. In her comments back to me, she mentioned that she’s looking for a rainbow.

That was like a set up for The Neurons. As soon as that was read and digested, they began playing Chris Rea’s song, “Looking for A Rainbow” from 1989, in the morning mental music stream (Trademark smoldering). The song starts out slow as it carries forward the album’s theme, The Road to Hell, but becomes jauntier and of course features Rea’s slide guitar work.

Well we come down to the valley
Yea we’re looking for the honey
I see a rainbow
I say that’s the land of milk and honey

Me and my cousin
Me and my brother
My little sister too
Come looking for a rainbow
Yea we’re looking for a rainbow

Well we come down to the valley
Got our babies in our arms
Yea we’re Maggie’s little children
And we’re looking for Maggie’s farm

Me and my cousin
Me and my brother
My little sister too
Come looking for a rainbow
Yea we’re looking for a rainbow

h/t to Genius.com

Yeah, Jill, baby, I think many of us are looking for a rainbow and the land of milk and honey. Some seem to believe the only way there is by holding others back, beating them down, or banishing them. Yes, I’m looking at you, Republicans.

Stay positive – yes, it’s hard – be strong – yes, also hard – and lean forward and Vote Blue in 2024. Maybe we can create a place that attracts rainbows. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Mood: Humpnotized

I was gently serenaded awake by the dulcet tones of a cat upchucking somewhere nearby. Investigating, I found it was Tucker heaving up kibble and a hairball. Fortunately, I had an exercise towel down. It was for foot and leg exercises to cope with my ankle injury, based on recommendations from my sister, a physical therapist. Tucker and Papi had staked out the green towel as the new ideal napping spot in the house. That’s where Tucker was sleeping when I went to bed. Apparently, he slept there until he awoke and puked.

That’s how my Wednesday, June 19, 2024 began. Hope yours was better. I raise my coffee cup to Juneteenth and my fellow Americans who celebrate it for all the right reasons.

Spring’s hold is weakening in Ashlandia. Sprummer has burst back onto the scene. It is a beautiful blue skied morning. Sunshine baths runners, bikers, grooming cats, and everything else under the sky. 61 F, today’s high will bounce into the low 90s. With this abrupt weather shift will come high winds.

After the puke check, I squirmed back into bed, and then tumbled with dreams and thoughts. The thoughts went down a parental aisle. Dad in the hospital. Mom was there in April. The two are divorced, with new partners. They actually divorced over fifty years ago. Dad has been with his ‘new wife’ for 35 years, his third marriage. Mom has been with her beau since 2009. Family whispers say that she’s been married seven times. Mom has a secretive gene so vetting information is a challenge.

Mom professes to constant pain. She complains frequently and often about her existence, frequently demanding her daughters’ attention, repeatedly regaling all of us with tales hospital visits, doctor appointments, and health details. Going backwards, appendicities, and before that, a perforated appendix put her in the hospital. Her pacemaker was replaced. COVID hospitalization, spinal stenosis, swollen foot (but not edema, she tells me, although she had sixteen lymph nodes removed during foot surgery), and of course, fifteen years ago, the disastrous fall down the steps. She sleeps with a mask on to help with her breathing because of emphysema. Hardly able to walk, she insists on tottering around the house to clean it, though to most eyes, it’s immaculate. She takes dozens of medications, vitamins, minerals, and supplements.

Dad tells me from his hospital bed, “I’m fine,” with a chuckle. “They have a hundred doctors helping me. They want to put me on dialysis but at my age, they worry about whether I’d survive the procedure.” He’s been stented over ten years ago. Uses a wheelchair and a cane. Has oxygen at home, which he insists that he doesn’t use. Only his wife is there to help him.

Mom always complains about her beau. He can’t hear, she says, and I’ve witnessed the truth of the 94-year-old man’s hearing issues. “He’s forgetful,” she angrily hisses. “I always have to tell him things and make him lists.”

Dad’s wife laughs about Dad and his idiosyncrasies. He never says a harsh word about her.

What a difference their worlds are.

Today’s song choice by Les Neurons is a little ditty called “Twilight Zone (When the Bullet Hits the Bone)” by Golden Earring from 1982. A song inspired by an adventure spy novel, it’s presence in my morning mental music stream (Trademark split) is all on me. See, I was feeding the cats and somehow ended up singing, “You will come to know when the kibble hits the bowl.” That’s a variation of Twilight’s chorus, “You will come to know when the bullet hits the bone.”

Stay positive, be strong, and Vote Blue for 2024. Coffee has stolen into my body. Here is the music video. Cheers

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Mood: Slowed

Thursday, June 13, 2024, begins with a front’s impact. Chilliness rules the night and fends off the morning sun’s advances, rising through the fifties into the sixties, holding off on the seventies until afternoon. It sounds like I’m talking about decades or periods, but I’m referencing the temperatures in Fahrenheit. Right now, we’ve settled on a comfy 80 F.

While I’m still RICE-ing my right ankle, we plan to see the Green Show on the Oregon Shakespeare Festival bricks tonight. The performing band, Rogue Suspects, is one of our favorite. Through regular attendance of their shows, we’ve become friends with several of them. Can’t wait to enjoy their music tonight. They cover a wide range of rock, blues, pop. Sometimes they’re focus on a specific performer, like Aretha Franklin or The Eagles. Don’t know what we’ll get tonight, but they always give us a solid performance.

The Rogue Suspects 2023

Some good news from the Supremes about the abortion pill, mifepristone, was read this morning. Naturally I thought, man, ain’t that good news. That thought triggered The Neurons into starting the Sam Cooke song, “Ain’t That Good New” from 1964, in the morning mental music stream (Trademark still legal). Had to pause a mo’ to reflect that this recorded performance was sixty years ago.

Be positive and strong, and Vote Blue in 2024. Here’s Sam Cooke. Cheers

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Mood: smooottthhh

Sprummer still thrives in Ashlandia in southern Oregon. Clouds have departed again, leaving our June 12, 2024, coated with blue. Temperatures sitting a 65 F, they’re getting ready to stand and take us into the low to mid 80s. Windows are open and a winterish zephyr is snaking through our Wednesday, depositing chill pockets. It’s fresh, invigorating, and pleasant.

I’m hanging about the house with a bum ankle. RICE is the recipe – rest, ice, compress, and elevate — so I’m nixing my coffee shop routine. Writing at home as much as possible around interruptions. No beer with friends tonight, either.

I enjoy music and read several posts each day where they incorporate music. ‘Classic rock’ tops my list but I enjoy other sounds beyond that. I’m always surprised by how often people will say that a song isn’t to their liking.

Then I get reflective about what I mean about that. Many songs exist that I enjoyed at one point which know doesn’t work for me. Part of that I suppose is because my tastes have changed, or it could be that at some point I was overexposed to the song and became sick of it. “My Sharona” is one of these songs which now make me change the station. Several other syrupy songs are on my perpetual do-not-play-change-channel-list, like “Sugar Sugar.” Woof. But the whole process led me down a road where I wondered, am I just not discriminating about music?

Today’s song was called up by The Neurons because I was waiting for several phone calls. I’d earlier decided to slow down and take it easy, encouraging The Neurons to plug up the morning mental music stream (Trademark lazing) with everything from Frank Sinatra (“Nice & Easy Does It”) to The Eagles (“Taking It Easy”), Foreigner (“Walking Slow”), and “Slow Ride” (Foghat). But then, checking the time and wondering about the calls had The Neurons bring Blondie and “Call Me” from 1982 storming in. So that’s le music du jour.

Looking for a video to share, I found Deborah Harry performing with an orchestra at something called “Night of the Proms” (Rotterdam, Netherlands, 1997). It was fun and energetic performance. Hope you find it as fascinating as moi.

Meanwhile, looking up “Night of the Proms”, I discovered holy smoke, this is a pretty big, serious dealio in Europe. It even happens here in the U.S. Color me embarassed by my ignorance. After that, I watched a half dozen more “Night of the Proms” videos.

Stay positive and test negative (COVID is rising again) and Vote Bleu in 2024. Coffee has been swallowed, calls have been received. Time to make like a banana and slip away. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Thursday’s Wandering Thoughts

The thing about growing old is how you accumulate memories of so many of your firsts. I don’t know how much of it is true, but my mind informs me about many remembered firsts. Kisses and sex, purchases and experiences.

A big first for me was watching John F. Kennedy’s funeral on television. Another was watching the first moon landing.

But I remember buying my first car, and my family’s first color television. A big Magnavox console with a 25″ screen, my stepfather procured it after it fell off a truck.

Other big first include my first broken bone, meeting my wife and the first time we told each other, I love you. Another memorable first was the first funeral, for a school mate. Firsts fall in line: aircraft flights, purchasing a microwave, VHS player, CD player, home computer.

Now my latest firsts are witnessing a former POTUS declared guilty by a jury of his peers for crimes he committed, and NAZI flags being flown by his supporters as we commemorate the Normandy Landings done to fight NAZIs eighty years ago.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Mood: summery

Carrying on with modern traditions and protocols observed in the western world, I find myself in Wednesday, June 5, 2024.

What a Wednesday it is. Sunny and fresh, like it just came out of the oven. 74 F now, we’ll climb to 86 on the thermostat. No talk about rain or thunderstorms but some suspicious clouds are hanging around.

You see the weather in Texas? After clipping 105 degrees F in Marathon, Texas, they had a minus 50 degree swing and ended up with several feet of hail. It’s all part of a miserable extended period of bad weather and weather swings — thunderstorms, tornados, flash floods, extreme heat. A few are dead and power was out for over 600,000. I feel for Texans and hope that we don’t end up on the same route out here in the PNW.

Now a bon voyage to Wiltmore and Williams. I know it sounds like a law firm specializing in personal injury cases on late night television. They’re not. They’re astronauts on the Boeing Starliner heading for the ISS.

Today’s morning mental music stream (Trademark flooded) inhabitant is “Woman from Tokyo” by Deep Purple. The 1973 song is quintessential seventies rock. Yet it has that soft, reflective middle interlude that puts a pause to the rocking beat. Why are The Neurons playing it for me his morning? Don’t know. They’re not talking. While I remember several dreams from last night, I can’t trace the song’s lineage to any of ’em. Just another mystery. Either way, this is a fun rendition of the song for me.

Stay positive, deal with the weather as needed, remain strong, and Vote Blue in 2024. Here’s the music video. The coffee consumption has begun. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Mood: Cofflective

Here we go, Tuesday, May 28, 2024. Tornados have been messing with large swaths of the U.S. resulting in death and destruction. I’m thankful it’s milder here in the Churchill Valley, although it’s worrisome that lightning apparently struck a house and put it on fire.

Unevenly shaped, rough clouds muddle this morning’s pale blue sky. Sunshine skates in and out. It’s a cool but pleasant 60 F out. Today’s high will flex around 70 F. Thunderstorms and rain are in our close future.

Mom is doing well. Well is a relative term. She’s always expressing weariness and pain; those are regular life features for her. But she buzzed around the house, getting downstairs to do her laundry as only she can do it. She ate well. And she watched television, cursing Trump, wondering again who and why anyone would vote for “that thug”. ‘Idiot’ is sometimes subbed for ‘thug’. I need to remind her to do her property tax senior rebate.

After all the local holidays and birthday parties, I’m afraid that we’re running out of desserts. We only have remnants of angel food cake, a chocolate chip cake, coconut cream pie, an almost whole large apple pie, half of a tuxedo cake with chocolate mousse, and pecan sticky buns. It’s looking grim.

Tonight I visit with my sister’s family again. Tomorrow night is my nephew’s graduation. Thursday, I wing my way out of the area on an Alaska Air flight. Fingers crossed that all goes well with the flight and weather. I’m already working out the packing logistics to account for items added while here.

I ended up with “Stick Season” by Noah Kahan (2020) in the morning mental music stream (Trademark sharp). This almost stream of consciousness song about who the singer is after the changes wrapped up with a relationship’s end just mesmerizes me. It felt like a natural as I thought of my relatives’ lives, as well as my own, and where I’m at, and where they’re at. In our conversations about these things, struggles, failures, success, and frustrations were discussed, sometimes in short, sharp anecdotes and confidential revelations, but often through a long lens of reflection.

Let’s get on the move. Stay positive, be strong, and go forward. Also Vote Blue this year, okay? It’ll help us be strong and move forward.

Coffee is being gulped down and my pulse has resumed. Here’s the music. Have a strong day. Cheers

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Monday’s Wandering Thoughts

Boys and girls in clean baseball uniforms come into the coffee shop and wait for drinks. Last names and numbers adorn the jerseys. The young players all wear their caps with its team insignia. Crocs, or Croc wannabes adorn their feet so they’re not wearing their cleats into the shop.

The parent situation varies. Sometimes a solitary adult accompanies the young athletes; less frequently, it’s a couple. I wonder about the family situation and whether about the significance of the adult situation.

None seem particularly happy. Phones are often studied, arms crossed, as they wait. But one father and the children talk, joke, and laugh.

All so different from my years of young ball playing. This is part of the new Americana, Starbucks, phones, and Crocs. I wonder how many times these scenes play out across the land on this Monday American holiday.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Note: Returned home to discover a technical glitch in The Neurons resulted in a failure to launch.

Mood: understated

Good day. Please come in, come in. Welcome to May 26, 2024. It’s 65 F now, sunny with blue sky outlining a fleet of sulking white clouds. Thunderstorms are possible.

Thunderstorms struck yesterday

Today is part of the middle of the Memorial Day weekend. Take a mo’ to recall all those who lost their lives trying to support the United States’ ideals of freedom, equality, justice, and independence. I know those ideals have always taken some shots. Written by white men, it was mostly written to white men’s benefit. Females and other races were eventually ‘given’ the same rights and benefits as white men.

Well, that’s what it said in the words and documents. They’re based on ideals and logic. Emotions are harder to wrestle. People who don’t like those changes are hostile members of our nation and are regularly rolling over our ideals while bizarrely claiming to be promoting our ideals through their abhorrent behavior. It’s a headscratcher.

My sisters and BIL and I went to the Pitt Floyd show in Oakmont last night. It’s a beautiful old theater, and we had a good time. Most of my good time was because I was with family. The sisters and I laughed and acted silly, and BIL gave perfect support.

The music was okay, as were the accoustics. The show could have used a good sound engineer to balance the notes and volumes, but we can’t have everything. Hearing the collection of PF songs fired a spectrum of emotions. Their early music came out while I was a teenager. Their music was part of my life as albums came out and I went to their shows and cheered the new stuff. They aged, of course. Several members died. This is life. I thank them all for their talents, and thank last night’s musicians for their talents, too.

I had a bizarre incident after I left the show. I’ve been having an issue with my right foot. A matter of pain, motion, and support. Those facets all wax and wane, sometimes limiting my effort to properly walk but generally ceasing after a few minutes.

Well, last night, we left the show. Encountering the band’s female vocalist, we complimented her for the show and her talents. Then, walking across the street, I made a step and turn.

Snap, went my right foot. Crack followed. My foot released its support. My right leg felt like it was kicked out from under me.

I caught myself before I went over. Pain burned through my right foot. Righting myself, I hobbled to the car. By the time I was home, agony has established a home in that foot. Diclofenac Sodium Topical Gel was liberally applied. I slept with my foot on a pile of pillows. It was an uncomfortable night. As a 68 year old man who drank two beers earlier, I had to pee twice. Fortunately, I found an unused cane.

I stayed home this morning, eschewing writing, instead icing, exercising, and massaging my foot. I can’t see any swelling or discoloration. It’s not working right, especially when standing on it alone as I put on my underwear, and going down the steps. Especially the down part. I will live, however.

With Pink Floyd’s songs ringing in my brain and thoughts of the nation’s founders mixing in my head, The Neurons dropped a Pink Floyd tune into the morning mental music stream (Trademark censored). Mom and I had been talking about political news and she commented, “I wonder what the men who wrote the Constitution would say about what’s going on.”

Boom! The Neurons plugged “Wish You Were Here” in. What would John Adams et al say about our current situation? I think they would need to be updated about history, like the American Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement, the ERA, Roe v. Wade and Dobbs decisions, and the other wars which shaped our nation and world.

I don’t know what those guys would say. I’d hope that they’d condemn Trump’s lies and hateful propaganda. I hope they would chastise Trump’s supporters for their appalling ignorance and hypocrisy. I hope they would lecture the corporations for their greed, newspapers for doing a poor job of informing the citizenry, and come down on we citizens for not being being more involved in our nations affairs and our poor voting records.

Enjoy your day. Be strong. Vote Blue in 2024. Gotta go. A cookout calls.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Mood: Dreamspired

Pervasive bright sunshine announced another day was starting in the Churchill Valley.

It’s Saturday, May 25, 2024. A brand-new Saturday, its warranty covers everyhing that might happen, except climate change, politics, war, protests, and natural disasters.* Besides the forementioned sunshine, it was 68 F outside. Clouds were forming for a parade but not stopping the heat from coming on. We expect a high of 83 F but we’re also expecting thunderstorms.

Reading the news today, The Neurons ended up putting “The Pretender” by the Foo Fighters (2007) into the morning mental music stream (Trademark indicted). With all the ‘pretender possibilities out there in rock music land, I had to pause to hunt down, why is this rocker stomper prevailing in the MMMS?

Coffee-fueled noodling about the song, and I concluded, it’s about the song’s chaos, tension, and its threats of violence, and what might happen. Reminds me of the here and now in he U.S.

Fresh coffee has been poured and consumed. I’m ready to keep on keeping on. Be strong, remain positive, and Vote Blue in 2024. Here is the music. Hang on. Cheers

*Other restrictions may apply. Warranty voided at midnight. Non-transferrable.

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