Category: weather

Monday’s Theme Music

A riddle to begin: what is always new, different, and the same? Here we are now — Monday again. New day, different day, same day.

Yes, it’s Monday, October 4, 2021 — ten four. Do you understand? A soft-spoken, lethargic sunrise came into my life this AM at 7:10. Sun flight, where we spin away again, will come at 6:58 PM. AQI is one again — fresh air. Temperature is now 56 F but monsieur is expecting something in the upper seventies range, perhaps. Once again, it’s a pale, mottled sky, white with faint gray dimples and dips. What’s it portend? The weather gods might know.

An excellent walk was had yesterday. 77 F when I set out. Full sunshine that hills and trees blocked out quickly as I went upslope, temperatures dipping four, five degrees. Sometimes a light wind visited as I passed digesting deer, pondering cats, busy squirrels and birds, and dog-walkers with their animals. Four miles was done. Finished as the sun stood up and declared with a yawn and a stretch, “Well, I’m calling it a day.”

“Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” (1969) by Crosby, Stills, and Nash, inhabits the morning’s mental music stream. The song has always captivated me. Guitar variations; the lyrics, pitches, harmony, tempo changes, its personal nature as an attempt by the songwriter, Stephen Stills, to capture and explain what he’s feeling. Here’s a live version; a little rougher than the studio-produced gem, but honest. Plus, I always like seeing performers as they looked when they made their music.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, and get the vax & booster. Enjoy your Monday and October. Coffee time. Cheers

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Sunday, Sunday. Another day older and deeper in debt. Perhaps, for some. My friend was giving me grief the other day. I told him that we don’t know what happens when we die. He replied, “When you’re dead, you’re dead. That’s it. Over and done.” He’s older. An older space industry engineer. I answered with reminders. What we didn’t know about existence fifty years ago. Hundred years ago, a thousand. How our knowledge improves — or we think it does — as our species matures. Develops new tools. New manners of perception. Wasn’t out to convince him. Just amused by his certainty. His response resonates with my beliefs about reality: we don’t know much about it and eat it in very small bites.

Today is Sunday, October 3, 2021. A fall month in the north. Spring month in the south. Someone posted a quote from Kierkegaard and his preference for fall. Here, paraphrasing: “In the spring, you look down at the ground. In the fall, you look up at the sky.” I look up in either but I grok what he’s saying.

Sunset will come at 6:49 PM. Sunshine splashed through our autumn blue sky at 7:10 AM. The trees are changing, and I do love the explosion of yellow, gold, and reds among the greens. For temperatures, we’re expecting a high of around 80 F. No rain. Light breeze. AQI of 1, again. Glorious walking day. I shall indulge.

The morning mental music stream has Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters playing “Walk” (2011) today. Came about while walking yesterday. Perfect in so many dimensions of air, sights, sounds, and temperature, the cap on a day that went well for me. So I pushed to walk hard, fast, far, and back. While out there, I was chuckling. Between smoke, heat, and COVID-19 concerns, walking like this was limited in 2021. Nice to be able to do it again.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, get the vax and booster. Sing a song, laugh, read…whatever. Have a good day. Cheers

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Friday’s Theme Music

Someone used a palette knife to spread white from horizon to horizon over our heads. A few dabs and streaks of black and dark blue were blended in to prompt wonder, will it rain?

It’s Friday, October 1, 2021. Time to turn the page on your calendar. Hold on while I do mine.

It’s also World Smile Day. Let’s give them something to smile about. Sunrise shuffled in at 7:08 AM. It’ll shuffle out as the world turns at about 6:53 PM. While here, warmth that’ll rise all the way to 76 F will be experienced. For now, it’s 56. Air is clear, though, with an AQI of…1. Huzzah!

With all this talk of smiling on the net — did you know that today is World Smile Day? — the morning mental music stream is pulling in songs that feature smiles and smiling as part of its lyrics. After a bit, I thought “Cult of Personality” (1988) fits the need. After all, we’re still suffering in the shadow of a cult of personality here in ‘Murica, where an ex-POTUS’s lies and general BS continues to pollute the political realm and freeze meaningful movement in multiple areas. I posted this Living Colour song back in 2017 as the theme song. I highlighted these lyrics from the song back then:

I sell the things you need to be
I’m the smiling face on your TV
I’m the cult of personality
I exploit you, still you love me
I tell you one and one makes three

They still fit.

Stay positive. Test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax and boosters. Here’s the music. Enjoy your day. Smile.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

It’s a soft Thursday morning, here in Ashland, Oregon. Blue skies hug the low mountains of changing colors. Cool air — 48 F — hugs our bodies. We expect it to reach the upper seventies today. Looking forward to it.

It’s September 30, 2021. I go through the old rhyme, “Thirty days has September,” confirming, this is the final September day, turning to look at the calendar in confirmation. Yes, September’s last day. It’s hectic in some places: the quarter’s last day. The last day of FY2021 in some realms. Spend the money, get the orders, book ’em, Dano, because the books are going to close. Such an artificial construct, but a critical element of book-keeping, accounting, sales, taxes, and profits and losses.

Sunrise was later yet, an effect felt in the house. Sunrise didn’t arrive until 7:07 AM. Lights were required for activities in different rooms, a dispiriting acknowledgement that the hours of daylight are drawing down. It’s my preference to get up to bright morning sun, like the sun we get in the summer mornings. But I like the fall’s ambiance and temperatures. Its occasional rain. It’s a friendlier season than summer, who can become quite brutal. Sunset will be at 6:54 PM. Too early for my taste, but wait: it’ll be earlier yet tomorrow, and so on, until we ‘fall back’ with our clocks. That takes place November 7 in the U.S. this year.

Today’s theme song arose from reading. I read a NY Times article yesterday evening ‘When the Times Book Review Panned the Classics’. What other doesn’t like reading how critics trashed great books and novelists? One of the books trashed was Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald. That’s also the title of a 1983 Jackson Browne song from an album I enjoyed, Lawyers in Love. My ever waiting mental music stream jumped onto the connection and played it in my head. I thought I’d played it for you.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and vax, if your body can handle it. Some people’s underlying conditions won’t react well to the COVID-19 vaccine. Do it if you can.

Here’s the music. Enjoy.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Hello, all you hep cats. Today is Wednesday, September 29, 2021. A sluggish sunrise sifted apricot hues over the valley at 7:06 AM. Sunset will be at 6:56 PM. Clear skies triumph. Temperatures sank to 42 F overnight but have climbed into the fifties at this point. We expect a high of seventy or higher today.

On a side note, wouldn’t it be amusing and chaotic if the cultural climate, politics, and technology reflected the temperature? Thinking of the US, of course. That’s what I know. With the temperature in the 50s, I look out to see 1950 Chevies, Cadillacs, and Fords go by. People are dressed for the year. The net has gone down because it doesn’t exist. Neither does this computer. In fact, it won’t reach a temperature for me to have a laptop at hand. We’d reach the seventies today. Bellbottoms would abound.

I have a friend who uses the expression Hell’s bells quite often. This amuses me. I’d heard the expression often as a child by older adults, like Grandpa Paul. So I associate the expression to them. The friend who employs it isn’t as old as Grandpa — he would have been 130 years old at this point — and is only fifteen years older than me. But fifteen years older makes him eighty! You have to laugh at it, right? Anyway, in the context of thinking of him, I began using Hell’s bells to curse at some point of the day when something happened. Naturally, my mental music stream picked up on it and replied, “Playing ‘Hell’s Bells’ by AC/DC.” So now I have the song stuck in the stream. To be sure, it’s actually only the opening that’s stuck: my mind keep replying the song until the first chorus of “Hell’s bells” is sung. Then it starts again. Yes, I’m in a broken mental music stream loop. I keep hitting myself, hoping to jar it into normalcy. Ain’t working.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get vaccines and boosters. Here’s the song. Check out the video and how young AC/DC members look. Reflect on your own life and youth. Enjoy. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

We call this stormy Tuesday but Monday’s just as bad. We also call it September 28, 2021. With dark, dramatic lighting, we call it, “The Final Tuesday”. It’s here for you, and it’s not about basketball.

Rained part of the night. Trailed off into a lazy gray sunrise at 7:04 AM. Sunset is due at 6:58 PM. Chilly. Had the heat come on this morning. Low was 42 F. Expect a high of 66 F. It is fall. Time for fall treats. Pumpkin pie.

A skunk fight interrupted our deep sleep. When I say a fight, t’weren’t any sounds associated with it. Just an intense smell. Like a dirty dozen pack of skunks entered the house and let loose on us. The air purifier was pressed into service. Fiful sleep returned after an hour plus, unusual for me, known as he-who-falls-asleep. An early telephone call interrupted it. I rolled out and into a lumbering run, wondering, “Who is it, what is it,” etc. Turned out to be the solar system installer. New inverter has arrived. Can he send his team over with it this afternoon?

I returned to bed to suck up more zzzs. But my thinking had conjured a Macklemore & Ryan song into my head. “Can’t Hold Us”. 2011. Spun up from these second-stanza lyrics:

Return of the Mack, get up!
What it is, what it does, what it is, what it isn’t.
Looking for a better way to get up out of bed
Instead of getting on the Internet and checking a new hit me.

Admittedly, I know these lyrics mostly because I’ve looked them up after querying myself, “What are they saying?” Macklemore and Lewis rap so fast. Common among rappers, though. It’s all about quick speech. Quick minds. I’m just too slow. Ray Dalton’s singing is a welcome break on the song for me.

It’s fascinating how you become adjusted to circumstances like smells. I’d been up for a few hours. Thought, oh, good, the skunk odor has dissipated. Then I went outside to experience the world. When I returned inside, the skunk’s smell lanced through me, fresh and sharp. Windows were opened. Furnace turned off. Purifier turned on.

Stay positive. Test negative. Wear a mask as needed. Get the vax. Enjoy the music. Have more coffee. You know I am. Here’s the tune. Cheers

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Welcome to the land of Nod, where it’s Saturday, September 25, 2021, where sleep was precious last night. A friend is having her house’s floors redone so we put her up for a few nights. Well. Certain feline household members were wound up by this, you know. Insisted on talking about it, especially when a door was closed. “What’s going on behind that closed door?” they wondered. “I’ve never seen a closed door before. I must get in and learn what’s on the other side.” On and on through the night. Woof.

Can you believe that it’s the last Saturday of the month? Yes, already. And the first Saturday of autumn if you live to the equator’s north. First spring Saturday to the south. First Fall Saturday should be a holiday, I think. Let’s make it one.

Sunshine folded in on us at 7:01 AM. Sunset will be at 7:03 in our valley. Almost to the tipping point, hey? The night temperature bottomed out at 60 F. Yesterday we saw 87. It was a fascinating rise. Rose 18 degrees in less than an hour as a warm wind swept the region. A high of about the same is expected today.

Memory inspired today’s mental music stream. I was walking a few years back and witnessed a murmuration over a cemetery. Might have been one; I don’t know if they were starlings. But there was a large flock conducting organized, high-precision flights, turning one way and then another in a fascinating display. Much noise with it. I recalled the scene this morning while checking out the AM landscape. Birds were busy birding and socializing. Coldplay’s 2005 song, “Speed of Sound” came into mind play.

All that noise, and all that sound
All those places I got found
And birds go flying at the speed of sound
To show you how it all began
Birds came flying from the underground
If you could see it then you’d understand

h/t to Genius.com

Stay positive, test negy, wear a mask as needed, get the vax when possible, do all the right things so we can get through this and put our feet back onto a more normal setting. Meanwhile, I’ll get a cuppa coffee and pass it around. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Friday’s Theme Music

Ready to shake up the days? Most are, when it comes to Friday. People rush from work and school with shouts of “Freedom” and “At last!” Not necessarily because they hate those things. No, they’re just looking for some change. A little wiggle from routines.

Today is Friday, September 24, 2021. Don’t know about you, but our area is enduring splendid weather. Cool nights — upper fifties, low sixties — days warming to the upper seventies, lower eighties, and air so clear you can see tomorrow. Sun came spilling in with lazy insouciance at 7:00 AM. Our world area turns away from it at 7:05 PM. Almost to that point of equilibrium. That momentary balance.

I’m inclined toward a Natalie Cole song from 1975 called “This Will Be” today. Started with me thinking, this will be. This will be a good day. Not a proclamation so much as a feeling, a realization. Ever get that? Just like a lick of lightning to your brain — this will be a good day. I’ve had the opposite, too. Either feeling gives me a chance to prepare to walk the tightrope, know what I mean?

The song entered the morning’s mental music stream through the outre, “from now on”. Rightly, the song is a brassy R&B love song that starts soft and becomes belted out with optimistic energy. Just remembering those last lines, hearing those final notes, has a galvanizing effect on my spirit. Hope it has the same on yours. Because every once in a while, you just need a song that feels like an affirmation.

Stay positive. Test negative. Wear a mask as needed. Get the vax. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Fanfare: today is Thursday, September 23, 2021. Why the fanfare? Why not? This day and date is rarely afforded fanfare. Might be birthdays for some, wedding anniversary, etc. But for most, it’s just another day sneaking by, bold as daylight, little counted. Not the end of a quarter. Nor the start of a season. Just a part of the year going on. I think it deserves a little fanfare, a little recognition for being another average, ordinary day in existence.

Sunrise on this ordinary day of ordinary grace came at 6:59 AM. Sunset will be at 7:07 PM. Almost to that moment of balance between night and day. Temperatures were unexpectedly cooler yesterday. High of just 80 F. Felt weirdly warm in the house. Today’s weather is delivered more of the same.

Went and had beers with friends last night. Outside at a local brewery. Well situated away from others. Six of us. We’ve done this off and on through the last three months, smoke allowing. All of us are vaccinated. One’s wife has already received a booster. Works with the homeless. The servers are all masked.

We were there to enjoy the fresh air and some local brews. Three days in a row without smoke, everyone told one another, friend to friend, server to patrons, patrons to server. Isn’t it great? God, how it must suck to live in a devastated area. To have lost your home. Maybe animals. Possessions. We count ourselves fortunate but already begin looking toward next year. For the record, I drank Caldera Brewing Amber Ale. I don’t hesitate to recommend that tasty beverage.

I mentioned to the others that it’s been a long time since I rock and rolled. Was joshing, you know? No one recognized the line. Or said anything about it, at least. Not even a blink. But of course, it’s out of Led Zeppelin’s 1972 song, “Rock and Roll”. A fast-paced ditty that I thoroughly enjoy. Natch, overhearing me think of it, the mental switches turned it on in the morning mental music stream. Good song to have there. I will share it with you and thank the Gods of Rock for delivering it to us.

Although I enjoy the original studio song, I went with this recording of a live performance. I wanted to pause, consider the group and stage setting. Such simplicity. So small. Intimate. No monster screen televisions giving close ups to people five hundred feet away. No smoke. Lasers. Just the performers, stage, and crowd. Simpler time, then, yet, so much more complicated and different than the ten years before it. So it goes in the mirrors of life.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax. Here’s the tune. Rock on, brothers and sisters. Rock on.

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