Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
The coffee shop was busy. Only a few tables were available.
But I found one with what I needed: table and seat, a smidge of privacy, ‘puter power.
I set myself up, turned on and tuned in. Then amused myself. When coffee shops and cafes are busy like this, I always entertaining a thin fantasy that we’re in a business on a starship heading to another planet.
No real reason for the fantasy except that I find it fun.
Back at home with individuals not driven to write, the conversations awaken my muses. They gather to watch people, and think about their lives and times. A common concept about pain, end of life, children dealing with Mom and each other, begins evolving.
Aspects emerge. Donuts being thrown against the side of the house one frozen December Sunday. Children running away and returning. Marriages and divorces. Many marriages and divorces. Enduring secrets. Diseases that strike and tear our family apart and bring us back together.
The first stories I remember hearing about Mom was when she was fourteen. She lived in Turin, Iowa. Small town. V-E and V-J were just a few years before. The children habitually walked the streets over to watch television through a window. The window belonged to the hardware store, which was also a cafe. It had the town’s only TV, as television was then so new. The hardware store/cafe also had the town’s only phone. If a call came in for a resident, the owner’s son ran to fetch them.
Then there is Mom’s tale about the Sunday chicken. Her mother was leaving and warned Mom and her older brother, “Don’t you get this house dirty while I’m gone.” They heard the iron in their mother’s voice and the threat it carried.
But they were siblings and started teasing each other. It escalated until Mom grabbed the roasted chicken and threw it at her brother. He ducked. The chicken slammed into the wall. They watched it slide down, fixing the wall with a greasy trail. Looking at one another, they knew Mom was going to beat them.
Yes, there’s stuff to be told, as there is in many families.
A friend was telling me about his eye-sight deteriorating, which got me thinking. I finally asked him, “How are your ear-hearing and brain-thinking?”
Mood: reflective
Sun and clouds compete today. Their efforts culminate in a pleasant spring day, almost perfect for Sunday, April 28, 2024.
It’s 55 F at this point, just two degrees below our expected high. No rain or other precipitation is expected, despite the clouds. And guess what? No thwumper today. Don’t know if the job is done or they’ve taken the day off.
Three conversations dominate the household today. Nothing about Trump or his trials, the SCOTUS, or the election is being discussed.
No, today’s main topic began yesterday on Reddit. It was asked of women, “Which you rather meet a bear or a man in the woods?” It generates first, what kind of bear? Men are generally preferred over polar bears. People are ambivalent about the grizzly, but most said they’ll take a brown or black bear over meeting a man in the woods any day.
Salient points made were like, if a bear attacks you, people believe you, whereas, if it’s a man, it’s iffy. As one commenter summed it up for us, ‘”Har har, this woman would rather run into a bear than a man,” isn’t the comedic piece you may think it is. Instead, it’s a sad testament to the lives of many women and girls.’
And that is the point.
The question reverberated strongly in Australia. Attacks on women, especially domestic violence, is up in that nation in 2024. Women of that nation are protesting and discussing whether they’re prefer a bear over a man in an encounter in the woods.
One woman said in a tangent, “If I see a bear in my backyard, I’m not worried. But a man in my backyard is trouble.” She then explained her reasoning.
It’s a sad situation. So many women have been abused or killed by men that distrust among women has surged. And men are frequently responding with anger, resentment, and diatribes against women. That doesn’t move the needle in a positive way for men.
Next up in topics is whether I’ll go visit my aging mother. My wife is very supportive of me going to visit. (I actually think she’d experience it as a mini-vacation from the being who is me.) My goals would be to give Mom an emotional lift and help her with her daily needs, providing a break for the rest. They rightfully sound emotionally exhausted. I think I’ve decided that I will go. I just need to make the plans.
Finally, in what is seen as good news, our third subject is how great Tucker is doing. Energy levels and interaction are up, he’s gained more weight, and he’s eating with enthusiasm. I was telling him every day that he needs to eat and gain weight and strength, and he’s earnestly doing so.
Today’s song comes from looking for the thwumper yesterday. My wife was trying to see it but the sun was in her eyes. Hearing this, The Neurons responded with “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”.
The 1967 song is a Beatles composition. Written mostly by John Lennon, it was inspired by his son’s artwork about a classmate. Young Julian Lennon specifically told his father the drawing was “Lucy – in the sky with diamonds.” (h/t to Wikipedia.org).
I know of the original song and covers by three other bands or individuals. I always enjoyed Elton John’s 1974 cover best, so I went with it.
Be positive, lean forward, remain strong, and Vote Blue in 2024. Coffee has found its way into me. Time to rock and write, at least one more time.
Here’s the music video. Have a good one. Cheers
The weather has pressed pause on the rain. Shards of broken sunshine are coming through but as soon as they broach the dark clouds’ defenses, a new mass of clouds rush in to patch it up.
A refrigerating breeze circles the streets with a load of petrichor. Like a madeleine for Prost, the petrichor delivers stacks of memories. I flash to being a boy in Wilkinsburg and Penn Hills, PA, a young airman in Korea and Germany, a tourist walking outside a tavern on a darkening day to visit with Dad in West Virginia.
Such is the power of smells to foster memories.
Mood: thwumpy
Thwump thwump thwump thwump
The helicopter — there’s just one, despite the traveling, echoing sound — continues its cleanup action. Good news: it isn’t black. No one rappels down from it.
Other than the chapter, Wednesday, April 24, 2024 in Ashlandia, offers up a mild and attractive spring day. 55 F, hunting for a 68 F high. Scanty clouds are mixing it up with the blue sky and sunshine.
Depressing news on the Mom front. She returned home but is suffering a lot of pain. I’m flummoxed. After days of being mostly upbeat, she’s in pain, angry, snapping at everyone.
Why is she in pain again? What’s the source? It seems to be a culmination of issues. She’s eighty-eight. Systems, muscles, joints fail. Pain ensues.
I try mounting context around her situation. She wasn’t allowed to go to my nephew’s eighteenth birthday party. Arrangements were made so she could join via Facetime to sing happy birthday. She was a no-show. When contacted, she said she saw how she looked on the screen and didn’t want anyone to see her like that.
Meanwhile, there were miscommunications and misunderstandings when she returned home. The facility offered her a wheelchair. Mom said, no, because she has one at home. The sister with her didn’t say anything but the rest of us responding, “What wheelchair? She doesn’t have a wheelchair.” So that opportunity was missed.
Her home stairlift quit functioning. Turns out that it needs a new battery. There are claims that it’s been beeping for weeks. Why didn’t someone notice that and do something about it? That would make sense, wouldn’t it?
Mom’s live-in boyfriend and my two sisters who live near Mom are emotionally exhausted. They’re struggling with their health and life matters. Mom calls for them to come help her but their balance is broken. It’s become harder for them to rise to the moment. They’ve been doing so for about five years.
A third sister leaves near Mom. Her husband has just been diagnosed with prostate cancer. No other details are being leaked. They’re a secretive couple.
My fourth sister, the oldest sibling, now 70, lives in Georgia. She works, but her finances are tight. Going to help Mom would be a huge financial challenge for her from what I know.
And I, I sit across the country in my world, frustrated, guilt-ridden because I’m not there to help. I feel selfish. I want to go to help them.
I am selfish. I’m trying to pursue my long-delayed writing dreams. And I have my wife, house, and cats to take care of, along with a bunch of other issues. If I go back to help Mom and the rest, that puts a lot on my wife. She’s dealing with her own matters.
I feel like I know what I must do. Sacrifice and go. But also load it on my wife. And that causes more stress, more guilt, more depression.
Bit of a rant, wasn’t that? I know so many others have gone through like situations. I watched and helped as my wife went through this with her mother for several years. Other friends and relatives have gone through it or are going through it. This is part of modern American life.
On to music, okay? The Neurons have loaded ELO’s 1977 song, “Turn to Stone”, into the morning mental music stream (Trademark overdue). I get that. I feel paralyzed by demands, choices, and the need for decisions. Yeah, I’m turned to stone. Need to suck it up and move.
One other matter on my morning agenda. A toast to Voyager 1. NASA has restored contact with it. Launched back in 1977, a friend of mine was involved with its mission planning with NASA. He passed away from a brain tumor a few years ago. He said that he was only involved in a small degree. His expertise was measuring plasma composition in different regions of space. But even a little involvement is something. So, to Voyager, NASA, and Ed.
Be positive and keep strong. I know it can be a struggle. I’ve already launched some coffee into my body but I’ll probably add another round. Here’s the video. Cheers
When I say thank you in response to service, the young baristas respond, “Of course.”
Makes me smile. I remember when I used to respond, “No problem.” Then some elder – he must’ve been fifty or more, and I was pushing through my teens – said, “Whatever happened to ‘you’re welcome’?”
Fifty years later, I understand his lament.
Mood: Wonstalgic
Thwump thwump thwump thwump
The copter continues the watershed cleanup. I can watch him manuever through the kitchen window. Sounds give clues of his comings and goings. Right now, he’s resting in the air above the peak of a conifered-blessed mountain.
Looks like a good flying day out there on Tuesday, April 23, 2024. Sunshine gleams off windows and cars. Full-fledged green leaves on trees dapple lawns and houses with shadows. A few clusters of cloud islands hold steady on the western horizon.
It’s 17C outside, about 62 F. We’re heading for a 76 degrees F high. Rain has a chance but it’s less than 40% chance. Usually at those odds, we don’t see it.
Mom is supposed to be heading home today. She should actually be there, per the schedule, as she told me she was being released noon Eastern. Which was almost an hour ago. I find that most hospitals are optimistic about when things will happen. Like the military and DMV, there’s a lot of waiting at a hospital. I’m living on a hope that she’ll go home today and be relatively healthy and happy for a while and put some of these health scares to rest.
With that thinking, I tripped down the trail of what it used to be like back home, when I still held the flowers of youth in my appearance. The Neurons responded by conjuring a jazzy Stevie Wonder song that speaks to that essence, “I Wish”. The 1977 song is echoing through my morning mental music stream (Trademark drifting). I found an online offering of him doing the song live in 1982. Sweet. I hope you enjoy it.
Here we go. Stay positive and be strong. Vote Blue in 2024, and let’s see if we can stem the retreat of rights and sanity. Coffee is brewed and ready to be introduced to my body.
Here’s the video. Cheers
I was skateboarding the net yesterday, swerving from click to click. An ad bounced up for an Ashlandia coffee shop I used to regularly frequently. It permanenly closed due to the pandemic, Jan 2021.
My backstory is that I enjoy coffee shops as a place to write. I began doing that when I started working from home and began writing short stories in parallel. I use the process of going to the coffee shop as a method to put on my writing hat and throw off the rest of the world. Finding the right place is a challenge. There’s the taste. Location. Prices. Staff. Decent writing surface and a place to plug in. Wifi is a nice convenience to add.
The coffee’s shop closure during the pandemic was the abridged edition. Located in a hotel, a husband and wife team managed it on behalf of her father. He owned the hotel He came in one December day and told them that plans were changing. They protested. The exchange grew angry and loud. The husband and wife were fired.
I’d been loyal to them. The staff walked out with the managers in protest. Long-time customers like me left and didn’t return. They made changes. I visited once a few months later. It wasn’t the same. Management declared after that that only hotel guests were welcome. That was only in the morning.
Replacing it had been difficult. An ad to come patron it surprised me. I checked online: permanently closed, according to its FB page and website.
But businesses are often shoddy about keeping their social presence online up to date. I drove by. Dark. Empty. Closed.
I went on to my new favorite coffee shop. I’ve already lost four Ashlandia coffee shops in the nineteen years I’ve lived here. Hope I don’t lose a fifth. Yes, it’s all about me.
Still, I had to ponder the business intricacies that had an ad for a closed business riding on the net. Sometimes, it’s still garbage in, garbage out.
Like many things, my computer is aging. It’s developing problems from that.
This HP Envy 17 has been in use for ten years. Not bad, I suppose. But in the last few months, it’s begun developing keyboard issues. Specifically, when typing, the selected letters don’t show up.
“In exampl, here is an uncorreced section. It’s not consistent. It was always the e when it first started, and then he r. But now the problem migrated right. It’s saying on the same line, but it’s now most often the t and the y.”
Really can be disruptive to the whole writing/typing process. I will clean the keys again. Trouble is, I did that a few months ago, and now I worry that I may have contributed to the problem.
In a way, it reminds me of typewriters I’ve used. Some of them had keys which needed extra attention. Like an old Brother typewriter I used for several years. Press a few of those keys and they were instantly stuck, full stop.
New computer, you suggest? You crazy? This one still has a lot of good life to it. It just requires a little extra focus and the willingness to adjust.
Besides, if I purchase a new puter, I’d need to rid myself of this one. Or just add it to the others in my house, maybe build some sort of ‘Puter Henge and pretend it’s art.
Michael Seidel, writer 