Tuesday has slid in safe on October 8, 2024. Autmer continues holding the skies. Temp now feels like it’s 65 F but it’s only 56 F. What kind of madness is the weather doing to us, making the temperature feel so different from its actual temp? Makes me suspicious of the weather. Next thing you know, it’ll be raining but will feel like snow. Or it’ll be snowing or it’ll feel like sun.
The high will reach for the upper seventies and maybe get to the low eighties. Depends on its reach. Who knows what it’ll feel like? I think it’ll feel pretty good, no matter what the final temp. That range is ideal to me. Sky is again solidly blue. Yellow and red leaves are drifting from trees. The mood is shifting toward fall. People are decorating their houses for Halloween. So really get into it, but we’re more circumspect.
The price of candy is shocking us. My wife pointed it out at BiMart the other day: 5 pounds of candy for almost $40. Wow! Costco has 30 candy bars on sale for $32. Like, those are crazy prices to the boy who first began buying candy bars as a nickel treat. A nickel now won’t get you within smelling distance of the wrapper.
But this is change’s nature. Older friends talk in amazed tones about how the housing prices have changed. One was offered the chance to buy 6 acres for $50 grand decades ago. The deal outraged him. “Are you crazy?” he asked his friend. “I thought you were giving me a deal.”
“That is a deal,” the friend replied.
My buddy eventually bought a decade later for much, much more. Divided into quarter acre lots, those lots were now going $20 to $50 grand each. Things change, and prices are part of it.
Since I’m on my box and ranting, used to be that I got a haircut for one dollar. One dollar! Now I exit $25 to $30 lighter.
Housing, of course, is center stage in the price debate. Out here, ‘affordable housing’ is jumping over $200 to $300 K. Solution: built more housing. Problem: land. Water. Infrastructure. Rising costs of building more getting pushed further up by the rising need to build more.
Like many, I’m watching Hurricane Milton ploughing toward Florida. Was a cat 5 but has weakened to a 4 and may be a 3 before it hits, thank goodness. Fingers crossed.
Forgot to mention the SOU Pride Parade which took place the other day. I was kept from attending by other plans but I hear it went well. Here’s a link to the Ashland.news coverage with some pix. We also didn’t attend the OSF Gala but we heard from friends who didn’t attend that it was fun and raised $750 K for the festival’s 100 year celebration coming up.
We’re down to 28 days until election day. 28 days. We could make a movie about it. Call it “28 Days” or “28 Days Later”.
Thinking of that gap from here to there and the waiting, news, campaigning and hyperbole which must be endured encouraged The Neurons to fire up Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. “The Waiting” from 1981 is rolling through the morning mental music stream (Trademark delayed). Wikipedia’s entry quotes Petty as being inspired by something Janis Jopin said.
Frontman Tom Petty explained that the song’s title was inspired by a quote from fellow musician Janis Joplin, who once said of touring, “I love being onstage and everything else is just waiting.”[4] He recalled:
That’s where I think I got it from … [Roger] McGuinn swears that he said it to me. Maybe he did. I don’t think so. I think I got it from the Janis Joplin quote. That’s where it stuck in my mind. I don’t think she said, ‘The waiting is the hardest part,’ but it was something to that effect: ‘Everything else is just waiting.’ And so that’s where that came from.
Got me to thinking…imagine Tom Petty and Janis Joplin performing live together. Would that have been cool or what?
Stay positive, be strong, and vote blue in 2024. Coffee has cast its magic in me. Here’s the music. Cheers
It’s Mumday, October 7, 2024. The night had a chilly mountain breath but the sun is again restoring warmth, a practice that’s been going on for millions of years. 64 F now, blue sky and sunny, nary a worrying cloud, we’ll top out in the mid to upper 80s. Air quality is again close to excellent.
Many are familiar with expressions about ‘staying mum’, ‘keeping mum’, or ‘mum’s the word’. These imply that they’ll be silent on a subject. Many don’t know how the expression is derived from the same origins which gave Monday it’s first ancient name: Mumday.
The Mums were a religious sect. Their original idea of ‘being mum’ began as a process for honoring the dead. The society was a small religious outlier in ancient Egypt, where the practice of preserving the deceased involved mummifying them. The Mums would wrap their heads as though they were mummified and remain silent in a day of worship and respect of the dead. During the day, they were tasked with doing good deeds and charity in the name of the day, all without speaking. They were allowed to utter, “Mmmm,” to acknowledge that they heard. As this day was often done the day after Sunday, the day after Sunday became Mumday in recognition of the practice. Later societies modified the expression into Monday, which was supposed to be a nod to the Moon. But historians ‘dug up’ the truth while excavating sites where mummies were found.
Later, after the switch to Monday and the re-discovery of the Mums in the late sixteen hundreds, the popular variations on ‘being mum’ evolved.
Always good to start the day with a new fact, isn’t it?
All kinds of music is inspired by Monday, but The Neurons went with a rocking pop tune. “Walk Like An Egyptian” by the Bangles occupies the morning mental music stream (Trademark mum). The Bangles did’t write it, though. From Wikipedia.org:
Liam Sternberg said he was inspired to create the song while on a ferry crossing the English Channel. When the vessel hit choppy water, passengers stepped carefully and moved their arms awkwardly while struggling to maintain their balance, and that reminded Sternberg of the depiction of human figures in ancient Egyptian tomb paintings.
Ah, hah. He did a demo of it and offered it to Toni Basil. She turned it down. Lene Lovich recorded it but never released it, and then ended up offering it to the Bangles. Three of the four Bangles share lead vocals. Lovich deemed the drummer’s efforts, Debbi Peterson, so Debbi was relegated to backup vocals. If you check out the accompanying video, you can see that Peterson also isn’t playing the drums; that was accomplished by a drum machine while she played tambourine. Can’t be surprised to learn that the dual actions about her role caused some tension in the group. Nonetheless, the song became the Bangle’s first number one hit. It’s a fun song to me, a good one to energize a Monday.
So happy Mumday. Be strong and positive. Vote blue and don’t stay mum. And yes, powered by coffee, I made all that up about Mumday. My tongue was firmly in my cheek.
Fall has slid into the interseason space called autmer. Autumn with summer flavors. Night is mostly when we feel autumn. The air has some cold chompers. And the day looks like autumn. But then the sun strikes and summer strolls in.
All this causes a hot and cold thing at night. We’re not running heat nor air conditioning. Windows are closed day and night, except for mid-morning and mid-evening spurts to freshen the air. I end up running hot and cold in bed and sleep with one leg and that half of my body out from other the covers and the other side keeping warm under the sheets and blankets. Whole Jekyll/Hyde thing.
It’s always my left side that is out, too hot to be under cover. The right side wants shelter. Feels like my body might be striving to create some overworked political metaphor.
A front has driven in, strewning clouds of different complexities over Ashlandia, giving us variables in lights, shadows, temperatures, and expectations. Sumumn still holds but it’s beginning to look like autmer as trees flirt with new colors in their leaves. Only dropped to the high fifties last night, and today’s high temperature will spank 90 degrees F.
This is Monday, September 23, 2024. You understand that 2024’s ninth month is closing out and there are but 94 days until Kwanzaa, 93 days until Christmas, and 93 days until Hanukkah? There’s also only 43 days until the U.S.’s 2024 elections. Things are getting tight.
Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah) inspired today’s musical choice, although coffee contributed. Having indulged in my first hit of black goodness, I saw Tucker came out from eating. Moving slow, his eyes were mostly closed and his tongue was busy going over his whiskes and mouth. Sitting, he commenced to watching.
That’s when The Neurons or somebody caused me to sing, “Tucker. I just fed a kitty named Tucker.” This was done to the tune of “Blue Jean” by David Bowie. Right after that, the 1984 song fired up in my morning mental music stream (Trademark dished). It’s a catchy little Bowie number, jaunty with memorable lines which don’t convey any great depths. How did he do that?
Stay positive, confident, and strong. Lean forward and vote blue in 2024. Coffee has been served in the office; here’s the music. Cheers
Michael Seidel, writer 