Tag: Ashland

Twozdaz Wandering Political Thoughts

My thoughts are drawn to our local political scene. Ashlandia is a small town, dependent on tourism for most of its business revenue. Ashlandia is home to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, which puts on several plays from March to November. A local university, Southern Oregon University, supplements the employment base by hiring people for its needs. Adjacent to rivers and a ski resort helps draw more tourism for us. We also have multiple local breweries and wineries. Other than that, we’re mostly restaurants, coffee shops, a couple bookstores, head shops selling THC and CBD products, and several grocery stores.

With tourism down, we’ve been struggling as a town. Tourism was driven down over ten years ago by droughts which lasted several years ago, deepening into a serious problem which called for water rationing, followed by smoke pollution from wildfires. Plays were cancelled due to these threats. Outdoor activities were curtailed. Then the pandemic struck, with all that it delivered to the table. Finally, Trump has struck. Just as tourism was beginning to rebound, his xenophobic policies and tariffs take another axe to our numbers. Local services were also curtailed due to grant cuts and budget cuts. SOU enrollment is down…again. Tuition is up…again. SOU programs and classes were cut…again.

With all this afflicting us, the city was strapped for cash and has a budget deficit. Besides those issues, we also have a homeless problem. Trump’s cuts did us no favors on that front.

Into this cauldron of difficulties come our local government leaders. Their solutions.

  1. Cut back on park maintenance and add service fees to local utility bills to make up the parks deficit.
  2. Build a new park. Mind you, they’re short of funds to take care of the existing parks, but WTH.
  3. Shut down the senior center and pool. Because they’re short of funds, they couldn’t hire the people needed to keep those open. But let’s build a new park that we don’t have the money to maintain.
  4. Give BIG pay raises to the city management staff, especially the city manager. Because, hey, with this budget deficit, revenue down, and tourism down, we need to ensure they’re better compensated than We the People, the Ashlandia denizens.
  5. And let’s cut essential service staff after giving those pay raises because you know, less people are better. We’ll also cut the hours to the utility and city offices because we need to cut expenses.

They even, from time to time, talk about doing away with the police department because it costs too much.

The city manager states, without evidence, that the new park will draw tourists. Ashland already has Lithia Park, Hunter Park, Garfield Park, Clay Street Park, and a half dozen more. Their facilities are being closed because of budget deficits. Sure, the water park shut off the water this summer because we lacked the funds for the water and staff to run it, and Mountain Park is mostly closed for the same reason, but let’s build another park to draw more tourists.

That makes a lot of sense. Not.

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A Couple Signs

My wife and several of her friends lunched together to catch up. They dined at a small local restaurant called Sauce. It’s normally a very popular lunch site.

“It was weird,” my wife related. “Besides us three, there were only two other people in the restaurant. None of us had ever seen it so empty at lunch time.”

It got better (worse?). After she ate, my wife went clothes shopping. Few places in Ashland offer new clothes; we instead have several ‘used-clothes’ boutiques, such as the Good Will. She says she’s outraged by the new clothes being sold, less by the prices and more by how cheaply they’re made. She’s bought stuff and had it fall apart after one or two outings. This infuriates her.

Her second point about buying used clothes is that it makes her feel better about being a consumer. “I’d rather buy used clothes and give them a second life, than have those clothes thrown away and filling landfills.”

I agree with that. She went on, “Besides that, we have an older population in Ashland. Most are retired professionals who have generous retirement incomes. A lot of times, I can find new clothes with the tags still on them.” And, because of those factors which she cited, the used clothes tend to be from better brands.

So she went shopping at her favorite used-clothing store today, Deja Vu in the Ashland Shopping Center on Ashland Street. When she returned home, she said, “Michael, you should have seen it. They had so many pieces of used clothing, the store was filled. They had it piled everywhere. But there were only two or three other people shopping. I heard an employee say to another customer, ‘Nobody is buying. Everyone is selling.'”

Don’t know how much these anecdotes reveal about the state of the union, but they say volumes about what’s happening in little Ashland, Oregon.

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Fridaz Theme Music

Frida, July 25, 2025, landed on Ashlandia with a gently familiar thud. Weather is a relaxed blue-sky & sunshine state of being. 70 F now, we’ll be clicking on the low 90s by daylight’s end, which is about our average. No smoke bothers me. The Cram Fire is the largest, 95K of acreage, 77 % contained, north of us. South, in California, is the 19,000 acres Butler Fire. Prevailing conditions are keeping us safe, knock on wood.

Being Frida, the news front is slow and lazy. A shooting at a college in New Mexico results in more gun violence death. Couple police officers were ambushed elsewhere, shot and killed during their lunch break. This will all generate more handwringing but no action. Another handwringing moment hangs in the air as it was revealed that under the guise of ‘shipping out criminals’ during the Venezuelan swap, the United States imported a convicted killer of three. Terrific. Yes, the Trump Regime is always sloppy about vetting the details. But hey, he’s white and male, so it’s okay, right? Beyond that, the story still smokes about how Trump lied to Jerome Powell at the Fed, was called on it, and just blew it off. Lying is what he does, along with posting and sharing fake information, and splashing the world with bellicose hatred. This is the current face of the United States.

Today’s song is an ode to the cat. When he was served up and chowed down, he purred and chirped like, this is just what I needed. Which, yes, compelled The Neurons to serve up the 1978 ditty, “Just What I Needed”. Whole thing gives me a happy smile. A new wave pop song, it was part of the regular FM radio cycle for a while. So easy to hear, easy to understand, non-offensive and easy to sing along to, the cat gets it.

A smoke smell pesters my nostrils. The windows are closed for the day, to be re-opened tonight. I don’t see any discoloration in the sky. Air quality remains good. It’s just me and my olfactory processes working overtime.

Time to advance into the fray. Hope your Frida meets your needs. I’m gonna do my best to fit it to my needs, starting with coffee, I think. Cheers

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Twosda’s Theme Music

Cool air regales us today, Twosda, July 15, 2025, in Ashlandia. Tiny wet old smoke offset’s the mountain air’s freshes. We’ll live. 68 F now, 97 F is forecasted. We saw 99.3 at our house yesterday but didn’t need the A/C. A clear blue sky and focused sun says, yeah, this might be a hot one.

On local news, the talk is about affordable housing. Affordable housing has been discussed since I moved here twenty years ago, along with growth. Each time ‘affordable housing’ is approved and built, investors snatch it up to flip or rent out. So it’s all been 20 years of talk and churn with no substantial changes.

Our local economy isn’t doing well. Ashland depends on tourism and Southern Oregon University (SOU) for the most part, along with some spotty light industry, mostly related to outdoor tourism, and of course, healthcare. Wineries and breweries give us two more legs. Beyond that, we have a service based economy, as most residents are older and retired. Tourism has been damaged by heat, wildfires, and smoke. Tourism’s centerpiece is the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, assisted by a series of outdoor concerts called the Britt Festival. Both were heavily cratered by smoke, heat, and wildfires. The pandemic then knocked tourism back again just when recovery began. Now we hold our breath, cross our fingers, and wait to feel what Trump’s attacks on people, trade, common sense and other nations does to tourism.

Meanwhile, healthcare’s rising costs have driven costcutting, layoffs, and firings to that local industry. The Greedy Ol’ Trump Party’s monstrous bill is expected to implode rural healthcare activities, and we’re part of that scene.

Finally, SOU has announced that enrollment has declined again. Tuition has been raised but they can’t keep raising it, so they’ve cut staff and programs. Desperate for money, they’re planning to shift some unused parts of their their campus into that fast-growing industry, assisted living. But again, the greed propelled GOTP absurdly named ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ is expected to body slam education at all levels. Trump has cut Pell Grants and other programs, and that will leave a mark.

Underlying all of it: Trump’s charge to deny climate change and do nothing except punish those who do try to talk about it and address its impacts and causes. But climate change will affect the beer and wine industry, tourism, and wildfires. Did I mention that insurance companies withdrew from providing coverage in the area?

BTW, talk is about more than just this. We’re also talking a lot about deer, as they’ve become aggressive and attack dogs and people walking dogs.

Today’s song is “Rebel Rebel” by David Bowie. The Neurons slotted the 1974 song into the morning mental music stream for reasons they closehold and don’t disclose.

In a final comment on the morning, the local Internet, and by local, I mean ‘at my house’, is very sluggish. Anything happening to it out there in the world? Probably, but when will we learn?

Have the best day you can. I hope it’s excellent. Cheers

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Frida’s Wandering Thoughts

The parade is over. The fireworks await us tonight. Cloud cover has passed away so viewing shouldn’t be a problem. The arguments over whether they’re entertaining and patriotic or an environmental hazard and an ordeal for animals continues.

2025’s Ashland Independence Day parade was remarkable for its thin festivities and shortness. Didn’t even go an hour this year even though four bands entertained us with march and show music. The are the same four bands heard every year. Indivisible had a “No Kings” display and vocalized that, encouraging us to join. La Clinica was barely there. Climate awareness scuffled past, as did Peace Corps members who knew their legacy was being defunded and dismissed.

Applause was muted; many participants seemed tired, trudging, not marching, forcing dull smiles out as they remembered to toss a feeble smile. Some performers, like the elderly female dancers, were still into it, zinging us with smiles and waving with happiness, but they were the rarity. Mayors from Medford, Phoenix, Talent, and Ashland all drove by, along with other minor local government functionaries. The cars, an Austin Healey 3000, two Jag E types, and a Bugatti GTC, brought comments, along with the vintage and antique cars that gassed us with exhaust fumes out of the 1940s.

The weather stayed cool but the sunshine was hot, a crisply contradictary way of being, which felt perfectly symbolic for this national holiday in 2025.

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Frida’s Theme Music

Yes, it is the Fourth of July in 2025, Independence Day in the United States. May the spirit of the 4th and its ideals of freedom, justice, and equality be with you wherever you may be in the world.

Not an overly warm day on this Ashlandia holiday Frida. Now sitting at 55 F, clouds shroud the sky and cancel the sun. Today’s high will be just 78 F.

Thunderstorms roamed the region late yesterday afternoon, putting us on wildfire alert. Two are noted down in California, in the Klamath and Happy Camp. Both are lightning strike products.

Trump is out there and spreading garbage again. He never takes a break. This time he claims his ‘beautiful bill’ rescued two billion farms. Sure. And he’s pretending that the social security tax exemption for seniors is for everybody. Maybe he’s lying; maybe he just doesn’t know. There’s often an appearance that he’s not connected to what’s going on. Just wondering how many people he’ll have ICE disappear to celebrate the holiday.

Going with Bruce Bruuuuuuce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” for the holiday. Kind of has The Neurons snickering over using an angry anti-war song that many mistakenly think is patriotic as the theme song on this holiday celebrating independence is in my morning mental music stream.

Got coffee. Heading down to Pam’s house to join in a buffet, see old friends, meet new ones, and watch the parade flow with stops and jerks down Siskiyou onto Main Street. The parade starts early this year to beat the heat. Have a better one. And away we go.

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Thirstda’s Theme Music

The cat and I agree. It’s not as warm out as we expected from eyeballing the scene. The full sunshine just isn’t cutting the notorious north wind playing in the trees. Papi, ever hopeful, keeps making the trek out through the door, only to beat the window within ten minutes, his cat signal to get back in. I don’t blame him. That batting wind inspires a change in my dressing plans.

It’s Thirstda, April 17, 2025. 59 F and sunny, 72 will rise on the thermometer before the day’s end. I think the wind will have me rethinking how it feels, though.

Our city is going through some budget wrassling. Parks and Rec, as ever, wants to hire more people, buy more land for parks, develop more parks. A continuous battle has been transpiring between Parks and the City and citizenry for years. Parks wanted to be given all tax monies gained from the local sales tax. Oregonians are anti-sales tax. Ashland’s sales tax is often cited for reasons why others in the area won’t eat in the town. It’s only prepared food that’s taxed. Five percent. Outrageous, the anti-sales taxers cry.

Things came to a head last night with Parks and the City Council. Parks wanted $9 a month tack onto every household’s monthly utility bill to pay for more Parks stuff. They threatened layoffs, closures, and cutbacks if that doesn’t happen. The city itself is already planning cutbacks in services because of a budget deficit. The populace is already balking at a lot of this. Ashland’s water rates are already high. Hikes are planned to build a new water treatment plant. It’s a quite contentious thing.

Of course, the city’s plan for its new water treatment plant take a huge step backward this year. Trump cut FEMA plans and fundings. Ashland’s water treatment plant was due to receive a $50 million grant from FEMA’s Flood Mitigation Assistance Grant Program that was created by Congress as part of BRIC. Trump ended that program. “Wasteful,” declared the orange White House occupant.

Today’s music is from Bon Jovi. I’m not particularly fond of “Wanted Dead or Alive”. I think the lyrics are a little silly with lines like “a loaded six string on my back”. What is a loaded six string? Well, Jon Bon Jovi wrote the song. He explained that this song is about the rough rock star touring life. How exhausting it all is. His lyrics were inspired by comparisons with ‘wild-west outlaws’ and the Bob Seger song, “Turn the Page”. So I cut the song some slack.

Not caring about any of that, The Neurons have the song going in the morning mental music stream. I tried to pin them down on their reasoning. That’s like trying to get an explanation from the cat about why the food he loved last week is not acceptable this week.

I’ve had some coffee and I’m feeling alright. Hope some magic comes your way and makes good things happen for you. Time to work on making Thirstda real. Cheers

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Where To?

Daily writing prompt
What is your favorite restaurant?
View all responses

I think of this as, ‘Which of these restaurants would I like to go to right now?’

Like movies, books, and music for me, my favorite restaurant has a weight attached to it. Company is that weight. Time and place. Who was with me, and where did I live on the water slide of my existence.

A second question comes up. Which of these places remain in existence?

The top five, counting up to number one.

5. Yes, it’s a cafe. Coffee shop, actually. La-di-da. Half Moon Bay, California. Terrific Mexican mochas and good vibe. Ten minute Saturday or Sunday morning walk from my house. Another ten minute walk west to the Pacific ocean. A thirty minutes or so drive back into the insanity of Silicon Valley. It’s gone, baby, sold and sold again.

4. Seaside. Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan. Wonderful place for a long afternoon lunch when the time for a break came. Overlooked the East China Sea. Still there, according to Kadena’s website.

3. Chanello’s Pizza. Hugh square cheese-laden, toppings-heavy crispy thing. We used to order it when we lived on Randolph AFB, Texas, in the late 1970s. Just outside of Universal City. A short drive from San Antonio. Cousins would come over and we would chow down.

2. Laughing Planet in Eugene, Oregon. Such awesome burritos. We’re fans of burritos but this place knocks us out. My wife and I sometimes play a game: which places would we like to have in our town? This place consistently arrives on our list.

1 – The Green Salmon Cafe in Yachats. We enjoy their vegan, gluten-free pastries and breakfast sandwiches. It’s another place we’d like to have here in our town.

Honorable mentions: Ruby’s, here in Ashland, Oregon. Awesome burritos, sandwiches, and burgers. Garden Fresh Chinese Restaurant in Mountain View, California. They used plant-based meat way back in the 1990s. Chevy’s Tex-Mex in Foster City, California. You know, I think we’re pretty partial to Mexican food. DeNunzio’s Italian Trattoria in Monroeville, PA. Great food, wonderful staff.

They’re all favorites. I wouldn’t mind hitting all of them just one more time.

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Wenzda’s Theme Music

Greetings from snowy Ashland. It’s Wenzda, February 5, 2025. Our first snowstorm of 2025 came in, kicked our asses, stamped its feet, and moved on.

The entire time that it snowed, there was no wind. The snow fell straight down. The temperatures hung between 31 and 33 degrees. When the snow ceased late yesterday afternoon, the light shifted. Rosy hues colored the snow. Probably sunset from behind clouds, I speculated. Then, it all went gray.

Next, the temperature, released from its obligation to remain at freezing while the snow fell, shed nine degrees in three hours. Clouds now sail through blue skies and sunshine. Trees and utility lines are shedding large clumps of melting snow. It’s up to 29 degrees F. A high of 38 F is possible, ‘they’ tell us. When all the snow stopped falling, my yard was buried under 14 inches.

Watching all that snow falling yesterday, my wife summarized the day well for us: “I guess it’s good to be retired and not need to go anywhere.”

Yes, good thing, because the storm dropped a ton of chaos on our little town. White stuff falling from the sky really confused people’s sensibilities. Didn’t help that the city on which we depend on services seemed really confused by what was happening. Or maybe it was people out sick, miscommunications, or people overcome with two much going on. Roads weren’t getting plowed — no, some roads were getting plowed. Several roads were plowed over and over while other roads, particularly on the newer south end of town, didn’t see plows at all. For the record, our road was just plowed for the first time. It’s not a major matter, as it’s not that long and only has about forty houses on it.

FB photo of I-5 in the valley not far from Ashland. If you zoom in on the road, you’ll see what looks like a train. Those are actually semis stopped in traffic because the Interstate is closed.

Other factors threw complications into the mix. Trees and branches found new resting places on the ground. So did power lines. People who lived on hills parked down where the roads were flat and walked home. Snow convinced some folks to just stop their cars where they were and walk away.

Without much local media, we were at a disadvantage. The city did nothing to bridge that gap. We have an emergency text message system but that wasn’t engaged much, other to say, “It’s snowing. Stay home.” Our best tool turned out to be Facebook. Friends in three other parts of town reported their situation. Between the four of us, we could compare notes and track developments.

One thing that puzzled my household as we surveyed activities from our window: why were so many people out in light jackets without hats and gloves?

But it’s over. Lessons learned? Probably not.

Our snowstorm stirred memories of another snowstorm. This one was in 1978. I’d just returned from a tour of duty in the Philippines. My wife was living with her family in WV while I was overseas. Now, with me back in the U.S., we bought a car and were driving to a new duty location by San Antonio, Texas. A huge blizzard struck. We made the decision to get the hell out of there and drove several hundred miles through blinding snow.

Thinking back on that time, I looked through a pop list, remembering songs. I’d been overseas. This was pre-Internet, pre-satellite TV, etc. When I returned to the U.S., I felt a deep disconnection with the nation. Looking at a list of songs from that time, I saw “Follow You Follow Me”. I know the song but there’s no memories connected to it, much like a lot of music I know from that period. It’s just there, floating in my mind, unmoored to anything.

One good thing emerging from the two snow days for us is that we used the time to clean the oven and pantry. My wife was the major mover on the pantry, emptying it, tossing outdated stuff, wiping the shelves. I only helped with the reorg and handing things to her.

The bad thing about the snow days is that she kept getting sucked into the bad news cycle. Infuriating to watch the checks and balances disintegrating in the face of GOP complicity.

Coffee and I have ran into each other in the kitchen, so we sat and had a cup to talk about the day. Hope you enjoy a good one. Cheers

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Tursda’s Theme Music

Sunshine is booming here in Ashlandia on January 23, 2025. It’s 46 degrees F. ‘They’ say that it feels like 51 F and that 52 F is possible, which, when it arrives, might feel like 55 or even 56! The big question pulsing through our small town is, will we see any snow this year? Smart money says it’s not happenin’ in January. Although people got a little titallated when a NextDoor poster shared news that’d spotted a snowflake the other day. I think she meant that in a meteorological sense and not the political sense.

Today’s theme music is dedicated to all those Trump voters and supporters out there. The ones so sure that the felon stands for law and order who he’s overruling juries and the judicial system and releasing killers and other criminals. This is for the Blacks who voted for the PINO who is rolling back civil rights. I’m sure those Black voters who didn’t like Kamala Harris because <fill it in> and instead voted for Trump are happy about that, right? As are those immigrants, illegal and otherwise, who will be affected by his campaign to turn America white. Those people who voted for Trump who love the outdoors and get out there to enjoy the fresh air might be sorely surprised as Trump’s deregulations darken the air with pollutants. This song is for them, too, cuz they probably won’t be going out there much any longer.

Yes, this song is dedicated to all the rights that will be gone in the name of freedom, all the religions which will suffer in the name of religion, all the justice that will flounder in the name of justice, and all the poor who will grow poorer in the name of, um, also freedom, the freedom of capitalism and greed unchecked. This song is dedicated also to logic and critical thinking, which are being tossed aside, and the history and heritage being trampled underfoot. This song is dedicated to opportunity which manifest from being educated in a good public school system. These things are all being undermined by Trump and his wealthy reactionary rogues as they pursue the enshittification of the United States.

Here, dedicated to all these things and more, courtesy of The Neurons, live from my morning mental music stream, is the late Dolores O’Riordan and the Cranberries with “When You’re Gone”.

Coffee and I have again worked out a balance, and the fluid is going in without interruption. Hope you enjoy the video and that you have a strong day in your personal life, wherever you may be. Cheers

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