Watching leaves falling from trees on a windy autumn day, he wondered if it would be appropriate to say leaves are leaving in droves.
Friday’s Theme Music
Autumn has turned down the temperature here. Nights are cooler. So are days, despite a sunshine filled sky that chased out darkness at 7:20 AM. Speculating about others around the world watching sunrise and sunset is an intriguing engagement. Someplace is always experiencing a sunrise or sunset. It’s a never-ending mechanism and inspires and instructs us in multitudes of manners, as it’s been such we first realized as creatures that a sun is in the sky.
The sun’s tenure for my area will end at 7:25 PM. Temperatures will float up from its current 46 F t0 62 and back down to 45 tonight. This is Friday, September 23, 2022.
I was thinking about the toss of the dice this morning, a stretch out of a previous conversation with others about rolling the dice and how arbitrary results seem on the surface. And while we were speaking, I thought of chaos theory, but didn’t speak to that group about it. Anyway, The Neurons, observant as an NFL ref, picked up the thinking and pitched “What It Takes” by Aerosmith from 1990 into the morning mental music stream.
Stay positive, test negy, and so on. Now, I must hunt down a cup of coffee. Hope your Friday rolls up the way you need it. Here’s the beats. Cheers
Sunday’s Theme Music
The deciduous trees were so lovely recently in golds and yellows, scarlets and reds, oranges, yellow-green, russet and brown. A few windy days and the leaves lay heavy on the ground as naked skeletal branches wave toward the sky. Blue sky holds today, a few clouds trickling in, high and away, as if they’re spying on us from lofty perches. They might be winter’s advance guard. I think I hear them whispering, “Winter is coming.” Whether they’ll bring the ice king, we’ll see.
Today is October’s last day, the 31st. We’re galloping through 2021’s final quarter, racing toward Thanksgiving in the U.S., and dashing toward the December holiday season. Sunrise cameth at 7:42 AM. So late, right? But next Sunday, Nov. 7, DST ends and we turn the clocks back. By then, the sunrise will be about 8 AM, so we’ll roll it back to 7 AM. But we’ll suffer on the day’s posterior end. Sunset today comes at 6:10 PM. That’ll dial back to before six next week, so we’ll be looking at sunsets before 5 PM after next Sunday. And we’ll still be moving toward the longest night in December.
Today, though, it’s 51 degrees F. High today will only be 61 degrees but right now, it’s a soft, gorgeous day. The cats and I went out together. I paused for a deep inhale. Was so clear and invigorating, I hung around and repeated deep breaths for several minutes. Stress, frustrations, anxieties all washed out. Into the morning mental music stream came The Hollies’s 1974 cover of “The Air That I Breathe”. Works for me on October’s final day.
Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax and boosters as needed. Speaking of needs, I’m heading into the kitchen for some coffee. Here’s the music. Cheers
Welcome
A carillon chimes the hour. The sun gives it a warm shoulder. She always works her own hours. Two deer digest, still except for ear flicks against flies and shifts to identify sounds. Blue-eyed and black faced, a long-haired blond feline assesses the day and listens to a woodpecker beat out a love sonnet on a wooden utility pole. Acorn treasure in mouth, a squirrel flicks a bushy gray tail and trots along a red-brick wall as two black and blue scrub jays hop across the green grass below him. A warm zephyr dries off forehead sweat and whispers close to ear, “Welcome to autumn.”
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
Wednesday’s Theme Music
Greetings from Terra.
Today is Wednesday, September 22, 2021. Fall is fully on us in my planetary niche. The sun poured liquid gold into the valley this morning at 6:58 AM. Sunset won’t come until 7:10 PM so we’re not really at equinox, yet. Not at that point when the daylight and night stand as equal. The pincers are closing, though. It’ll come soon.
Our air quality is still Good, but on the scale’s upper end of that part of the spectrum, ranging from the low twenties to the mid forties, with two places edging over fifty and into the yellow zone – Moderate. The region’s rains definitely helped the wildfire battles in Oregon and Nor Cal. It’s a relief that the rain came.
Temperature yesterday topped 90 F. Expect the same today. It’s easily endured with fresh air and temperatures cooling into the fifties at night. Yesterday also saw a windy morning. Drove the three house beasts inside. These cats are not fans of wind.
Which brought to mind a Gerry Rafferty song from the last century, circa 1978. As I surveyed the cats in their sleeping positions on living room chairs, I thought, look at them, sleeping right down the line. Naturally, my brain, acting like Alexa, said, “Playing Gerry Rafferty, ‘Right Down the Line'”. So it was the song entered the music stream and remains in the morning mental music stream. I don’t mind; the song refreshes memory from that year in my life — getting out of the military, going to college, owning a restaurant, working a second job, returning to the military — quite a year.
Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, get the vax, drink plenty of fluids and get some rest. Here’s the music. I’m off for coffee. Cheers
Monday’s Theme Music
“Just another manic Monday.” Yes, welcome to Monday, September 13, 2021. I generally wasn’t fond of Mondays in my school days. Monday. Yech. Up early. Off to await the school bus. Then in the building. Didn’t mind school and did well but disliked that routine. Never was routine oriented in those days. Writing changed that for me. A routine was essential. Of course, I centered it around coffee.
We didn’t drink coffee as children when I went to school. Rarely drank sodas, pop, sugary carbonated beverages, whatever you wanted to call them. Our drink was chocolate, as in hot chocolate or chocolate milk. I’ve noticed that every coffee shop close to a school has a regular glut of children in there getting a morning beverage. Chai tea seemed like the fave was the longest. Of course, in my day, we didn’t know about chai tea, or cafe mochas or lattes. There weren’t usually coffee shops. They were rare and small. A place to get a blue plate special. Change, right?
Sunrise today was a proper one. Boosted by a clear sky and just the right angle, full sunshine beamed into the valley at 6:49 AM. We had a clearish day yesterday with good- to moderate- rated air. Green and yellow. Nothing over 90 on the AQI. Today’s AQI is 39. Sweet. Sunset will come to our valley at 7:24 PM tonight.
As for songs, a 1966 cover of an older song is in the mental musical stream. “See You in September” was covered by the Happenings and became a pop hit. Hearing it provides an interesting look back at how pop music sounded then, and how it was evolving. You had the surf sound going on, the Brit invasion, but also songs like this along with others by the Four Seasons, and Motown soul. Rock and roll was growing, and so was folk music. Rock and pop has always been eclectic. One of the reasons I love it. A song for any mood, a sound for any time. I admit that I lean toward blues-based guitar and piano sounds with subtle soul nuances. Sounds like I’m describing a wine, doesn’t it?
Here’s the music. Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax. If we do these things, then maybe we will see one another in September, out in public, without a mask, enjoying fresh autumn air. Cheers
Wednesday’s Theme Music
Despite the feeling that I’m walking on broken glass that I’m having (thanks to the presidential elections in the U.S.), I woke up feeling terrific and eager for the day (with a caveat that I told myself, just ignore the news for a while).
But, hey, man, I had a sweet sleep after a pleasant day. The wife had made pumpkin dougnut muffins (mmmm). I tested them with my coffee. And yes! They went great! (Might need to have another…or two. Hey, they’re minis.)
And coffee! Got coffee! I feel it coursing through me, kickstarting my heart, firing up the old neurons and synapses…
Ahhh, coffeee…
And then there is the sun and sky, with the autumn foliage, a gorgeous and uplifting sight.
Now, given how 2020 has gone thus far, I expect (and am bracing myself) for calamity. (I know, such a pessimist, yeah?). Oh, yeah, did I mention writing? Going fabulous (knock wood). I have that weird feeling I get when I begin realizing, hey the tale is coming to an end. It’s pleasing, because, accomplishment! But then, it’s sad because it’s an entertaining ride, a diversion from everything else that stirs rants, frustrations, and irritation. Hey, I would claim it’s because I’m a crotchety ol’ man (I am in my sixties), but really, I’ve been this way for the better part of three decades. Guess I turned old and crotchety early.
Today’s song streamed into my head without problem. Here’s Love and Rockets and their 1989 song, “So Alive”.
Michael Seidel, writer 