PINs and passwords are integral to first world life. Friends and I discussed how we manage our passwords and PINs. All that caused me to think and smile.
There’s an article out there about ‘things our children wouldn’t know about’ because whatever it was is now obsolete. Telephone party lines, rolodexes, TV ‘rabbit ears’ and outdoor antennas, carbon copy or carbon paper, and those sort of things. I was thinking of the reverse mode, and how astonished our children might be that we had no PINs and passwords when I was growing up in the 1950s to mid-1970s. We never had to figure out and remember a magical combination of letters, numbers and ‘special characters’ to get in and out of our online accounts. Number one, we didn’t have online accounts. We lacked the Internet and home computers. Now, there’s a PIN to learn to use a bathroom. Another PIN to access my voice mail. A different PIN to use my credit card, depending on the card reader, and to withdraw money.
I wonder, though, how many years it’ll be until the next generation is amused with our tales of PINs & Passwords and our explanations for how they were used.
There I was, trapped like a hunted animal, weapon in hand, growling in my throat as I firmed my spirit and mind to fight back.
Naw, it wasn’t anything like that. I was there to play a game. Don’t ask me what the game was; the dream assumed I knew that. There were four to a side. A female teammate and I were waiting to take the field. We were on a platform overlooking the game space. That space wasn’t large.
Besides us on that platform was a younger person, a black-haired white woman. She was part of the team we were playing next. She wordlessly walked between my teammate and me and moved to a corner where she stopped, leaning back against the railing. I knew of her but I didn’t know her. We’d previously played.
Crossing to her, I said, “Listen, I hope I didn’t hurt you before.” Yes, apparently during a previous game, I’d blocked her pretty roughly. “The move went awry and wasn’t executed as well as it could have been.”
Suddenly brightening, she answered, “Oh, no, it’s all good. That was pretty bang, bang. There’s not much we can do when the game is on, and you were in a zone. You played fantastic. I can’t fault you for anything.”
Her response surprised me. We chatted. My teammate joined in. We all became friendlier. Then we were called to play.
I was guarding my new friend, aggressively tracking her. She had the ball, which was round and brown like a basketball. She could bounce or carry it but could only be the one with the ball for a limited time, which a red-numbered timer tracked. As I harried her, blocking her moves, she threw the ball right to me.
This excited fans and the announcer. I hadn’t noticed either before this. A roar went up. The announcer shouted, “She threw the ball right to him! She threw the ball right to him!” My opponent was upset but regained her poise to come after me.
Seeing an opening, I passed the ball to a of teammates who were in scoring position. Incredibly, the guy who was supposed to catch it and pass it on bobbled the ball. Now it was my turn for disappointment and frustration.
Sunda, Mai 11, 2025, has arrived, per schedule. Happy Mother’s Day to all you mothers who celebrate it on this day. Happy Mother’s Day to all mothers even if you don’t celebrate it on this day.
I ordered Mom’s Mother’s Day present in April. It was delivered before the requested delivery date. I wasn’t overly concerned by that, except that Mom’s house was victimized by a wind storm that took out her power and caused her an electricity-free week plus of suffering and coping. I reported to my sister that Mom’s package was delivered, and if she has a chance, see if it’s there. I also told Mom, and repeated that message today. I didn’t call Mom but texted her. I didn’t call because she tends to drop into free verse laced with bitterness, anger, and suspicions, and doesn’t like talking on the telephone any longer because she can’t hear. Frustrating situation, as anyone who’s experienced things like this can attest.
I reminded Mom about how it used to be in my texts. Back in the day when travel was easier and less expensive, before the enshittification of so many travel aspects. I would have loved to go back there for Mother’s Day. We used to take her for brunch. She had her favorite places. In her later years, about the time she turned 70, she started eating dessert before main course, surprising me, cracking me up.
I haven’t heard back from her.
Ashlandia’s weather pulled a Trump on me.Flip flopping about the weather, one thing was promised and another thing was delivered. In the weather’s case, spring promised sunshine and warmth. Instead, we find the wind has fashioned wintry inflections. Instead of hyping “Summer is coming,” it’s singing, “Winter is coming,” ala Game of Thrones. Although it is 57 F outside right now, clouds are gathering and darkening, encouraging the wind. Today’s high will be a meager and un-Ashlandia May temperature of 64 F, if that.
Papi started today’s music. His nemesis came around last night. Gray and white, with a sneering attitude and chunky body, the interloper wasn’t moved by Papi’s loud demands for the other to surrender or leave. I went out and encouraged Papi to return inside. Papi loathed doing so. When Gray & white trotted away, Papi wanted pursuit. Finally, he surrendered to me and returned to the house’s safety.
Happening at pitch black AM, recalling the confrontation this morning invited The Neurons to add music. The music was “Surrender” by Cheap Trick. The song came onto the pop rock scene in 1978, when I was but twenty-two. It’s kind of an odd rock song as it addresses who his mother was before the narrator came on the scene versus who she is now. Then, reveal, Mom and Dad still have a wild streak that’s bared toward the son’gs finish.
But why that refrain? “Surrender, but don’t give yourself away”? Doesn’t it seem contradictory? Yes and no, to me. I think the surrender part is about giving up on some puzzling matters but leave your core values intact. But hey, it’s music. It’s rock. It doesn’t always necessarily make sense as long as it sounds good.
Coffee has been served and drunk. Shopping is on the horizon for my wife and I. Hope you have plans. Remember, doing nothing is still doing something. Cheers
Sunshine and warm air is spilling throug Ashlandia once again. 61 F now, Thirstda, May 8, 2025, will overtake the gorgeous day known as May 7, 2025. 80 F will be bestowed on us. Sure, it’ll be windy, that but’s okay.
The cat is happy, if I’m judging his tail right. Standing upright, like a sundial gnomon, we could use it to tell the time but he won’t stand still long enough. After eating, visiting, and grooming, he resumed his back fence residency.
Being out back depressed me. Wasn’t the sunshine. No. That’s fine and welcomed. It’s the lack of bees and butterflies. No humming birds, either. Also missing were the regular Jay visitors. All have desserted us. I hope they come back soon.
We discussed politics last night at the beery thingy. Like, re-opening Alcatraz. Such a gennyus move…not. Only a simpleton would think it is. Right now, simpletons are running the nation.
I’m late to posting this because of computer issues. I suspect it’s update stuff but basically, I’ll be busy doing stuff and thump, the computer gets
Four songs hover in the extended morning mental music stream. A common theme threads through them: small towns.
From 1975: “My Little Town”, Simon & Garfunkel. “Billboard described the song as “a good, nostalgic Americana style song that builds throughout.”[4]Cash Box said it has “catchy piano beneath historic harmony growing into a brass hook ending” and that “you’ll remember the melody by the third time you hear it.”
From 1985: “My Hometown” by Bruce Springsteen. This was a sad reflection on the demise of small towns in the United States, the end of mills, the end of jobs, stores closed up and boarded up. Reflected in the lyrics are the tensions experienced in the 1960s over segregation and integration and the violence which resulted.
1985 also brought us, “Small Town” by John Mellencamp. “”I wanted to write a song that said, ‘You don’t have to live in New York or Los Angeles to live a full life or enjoy your life.’ I was never one of those guys that grew up and thought, ‘I need to get out of here.’ It never dawned on me. I just valued having a family and staying close to friends.” h/t to Wikipedia.org
Then, from 2023, “Try That In A Small Town,” performed by Jason Aldean and written by a committee. In a review of Highway Desperado for Allmusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine stated “All its success was based on how the single and video deliberately pushed cultural buttons; strip those away, and ‘Try That in a Small Town’ is just another in a long line of crawling, glowering, arena-country from Aldean.”
Chris Willman of Variety called it “the most contemptible country song of the decade [and] the video is worse”, saying that the song “is close to being the most cynical song ever written about the implicit moral superiority of having a limited number of neighbors” and is “a list of hellishly dystopian tropes about city evils that seems half-borrowed from Hank Williams Jr.‘s ‘A Country Boy Can Survive‘, half-borrowed from the Book of Revelation“. He said that the video “conflates the act of protesting with violent crime”.[7] Marcus K. Dowling of The Tennessean wrote that “online critics highlighted the following song lyrics as emblematic of songs heightening pro-gun violence and lynching sentiments upon many in his rural, small-town fanbase”.
Tennessee state representative Justin Jones tweeted “As Tennessee lawmakers, we have an obligation to condemn Jason Aldean’s heinous song calling for racist violence … What a shameful vision of gun extremism and vigilantism.”[24] He explicitly referred to the song as a “heinous vile racist song” which attempts to normalize “racist, violence, vigilantism and white nationalism” in a later interview on CNN.
Kevin M. Kruse, professor of history at Princeton University specializing in 20th-century America, called out the song for “calling for people who aren’t law enforcement to mete out violence against people who haven’t broken any laws,” a callout to “law and order” that is “actually lawlessnness.” h/t to wikipedia.org
For me, the subject of small towns arose as my adopted small town copes with growth and development, rising costs and diminishing prospects. We’re wrestling with the need to change but can’t agree on how to change. As with many small towns, few want to abandon ‘what worked before’. That leaves us stymied about what to do and how to do it. As exhibited in “Try That In A Small Town”, the professed preference is to gut the other side.
I’m aware I do that a lot about the MAGAs myself. We don’t see eye to eye. We lack agreement about what are facts and history, and cause and effect. The polarization depicted in the last of these four songs is becoming the norm. Part of the background noise is about gun violence. As part of the left, I’m tired of hearing about thoughts and prayers and the need to arm teachers and increase security at schools, fairs, airports, malls, and other places whenever another mass shooting takes place. Put forward is this video is the threat to escalate violence.
How do we bridge these gaps?
It’s interesting, to, that the right wing is pushing to return to the values of previous years. To what year do they want to return? To the 1960s, when civil unrest and protests swept the nation and the small towns’ death rattles began? To further back, like the 1950s, when the United States entered into trade and defense agreements and taxes were high on the wealthy? Or earlier, when lynchings of Blacks were not uncommon, women lacked rights, and deaths from back street abortions were high, and the young died from measles and other diseases.
Let’s pause, perhaps, and remember how those big box stores, like Amazon, Walmart, Lowe’s, Home Depot, grand supporters of Trump and the GOTP, drove a spike through many small town businesses. Yes, and Starbucks and Costco, too.
The day is ending. Hope it was a good one for you. It was pretty good for me. Let’s do it again tomorrow. Cheers
Our cat sitter surprised us with her report on Papi.
Papi is our male orange cat. When I describe him, I use words like sweet but cautious. Wary.
The cat sitter said, “He’s such a sweet boy.”
Yep. We agree.
“He was always there waiting for me or showed up as soon as I called him,” the cat sitter said.
What? Papi shows up for me but often ignores my wife. We always thought Papi was distrustful of women.
“And he always wanted me to pet him and talk to me and purr, the sitter said.
Papi’s behavior was completely contrary to my wife’s experiences with him. Even though she bribes him with treats.
I noticed the cat sitter used a different sound when dealing with Papi. We use a kissing sound. She employed, “Psp, psp, psp.”
So I tried that on Papi.
The change was electric. He whirled around and hurried to me, tail up.
My wife’s eyes widened. She issued, “Psp, psp, psp.”
Papi turned and looked at her. “He usually ignores me,” my wife said.
We talked it over and agreed, that must have been the sound people used around him when he was young. Who knows, of course. We do know that the result is amazing. He’s a much friendlier and relaxed floof with sound employed.
Details matter. As always, the problem is in figuring them out.
IBM made news with the announcement of a ‘historic’ investment in manufacturing in the US. It made headlines and has the Trump Regime pretty excited.
Less coverage was given to IBM’s plan to ramp up operations in India. Working with new operations in Singapore, Brazil, Mexico, Europe, and Australia was a large part of my work for several years while at IBM. This was part of their offshoring investments to reduce overhead and personnel costs.
In other IBM news, IBM announced the ‘layoffs’ of 9,000 US employees. Many are being replaced by AI. As noted by many experts, a return to manufacturing in the U.S. won’t automatically translate to better employment numbers.
And keep in mind: the same replacements by AI are being planned at Amazon, Dell, and other U.S. corporations.
The old joke used to be that companies often required employees to train their replacements before they were released. Now it looks like employees are building their replacements.
I’ve become a sunshine person. It wasn’t always like this. When I was young, I’d go out in weather that had others questioning my sanity. As I grabbed coats, shoes, whatever was needed, people would eye me with aghast expressions. “You’re going out in that?”
“Sure,” I’d answer, “it’s just a little rain.” Even if was a monsoon. Rain, snow, sleet, wind, nothing kept me in. Not even thunder and lightning. “Just going for a walk.”
I loved pitting myself against the elements. Felt like a hero out of a 19th century novel, just a rugged individual surviving against the elements. I thought myself quite heroic. Especially when I knew there was somewhere safe, warm, and secure to retreat to when I had my fill of being heroic.
Different these days. “Where’s the sun?” I ask. I search all of the sky, even though I know where it’s supposed to be. I know where east is. I know the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. I know those directions. Still, I sweep the sky in search of the sun, in case it got off its leash.
I don’t usually get an answer to my question about the sun’s location. Others always think it rhetorical. Probably because everyone knows where the sun is going. Not like it’s a wandering cat.
I used to be more indifferent to the sun. Now, I’m very picky. I don’t want it too bright, too hot, or too much. I have become Goldilocks sampling the three bears’ stuff.
I like a good warm sunshine. Not enough for sweat these days. Used to be — but you know. I don’t want to sweat. I want to be warm, with enough sunshine that wearing sunglasses make sense. Not that it really matters to me: I’m almost always wearing sunglasses outside. Sometimes I wear them inside.
“Why don’t you take off your sunglasses?” my wife will say. “You’re inside now.”
“Hello, old man! If you’re reading this letter, then you made it: you’re 100 years old! Congratulations to you.
“Or, congratulations to me, I should say. I set you up for your success, right? Come on, give me credit. I’m the one who signed the contracts, took the money, made the payments.
“Yes, there are some downsides. You should be 100 years old but you’re probably not living on Earth. Part of the agreement, right? I have no idea which planet you ended up settling, either. That’s one reason why you’re getting a preserved paper letter. If you’re reading this, you remember all of this. It’ll be as real to you as it is to me. And you know all the details. Hell, biologically, you’re younger than me now, because they gave you a new body, assuming they lived up to their end of the agreement. You should now be 25 biologically, which, yes, you know. Yes, you’ll be another color; you won’t be white. Small price, right? They weren’t sure whether you would be blue or green. Said both of those were possible with our genes. Wish you could write me back and tell me.
“Hard to write this. I know things but you know them, too. But I write to think, to make sense of it all. I never expected the things to happen which did. The war. Getting frozen. Sent to storage in space, then returned to Earth. I mean, as you know, I know these things, but it’s all abstract to me. Happened to me but I wasn’t conscious of it. Not this version of — well, yeah, you know.”
I stopped reading then. I knew what the letter said. I just wrote it yesterday. Realizations were creeping up. I’m a slow thinker but I usually get there.
So I took in the shimmering individual standing before me. Gorgeous guy. Blue. Azure. Well built. So tall, his thick, glossy black hair brushed the room’s ceiling.
“You’re me,” I said. “But you don’t look anything like me.”
He snorted. “Yes, I know. I’ve seen myself and I see you now, along with the old photos of you. They gave me options to change my appearance and I took them.”
“I see.” I smiled.
“I mean, wouldn’t you?”
“I probably would. Well, I did, because you’re me and…anyway. So, you made it. I made it. We made it.”
“Oh, yes. It’s quite a future, so improved over this. And you wanted to know what color we’d be, so….” He shrugged.
“You came back to show me.”
He grinned. “Bingo. Well, mostly. I also came back to thank you.”
Stepping forward, he offered me his huge hand. “I don’t want to get mushy, but thank you. Thank you for having the fortitude to persevere. Thank you for the decisions you made and supporting the science. Thank you for trusting it.”
Setting the letter I’d written to my hundred-yead-old self onto the desk, I stood and shook his hand. “You’re welcome.”
Yesterday, sunshine was uncorked on us. Washing through blue skies, our air temp crested 70 F and lived there for a while. Gorgeous day, right?
Today, it’s 51 F and sunny. But we’re only expecting 63 F. And…rain. Still, pretty springish winter day. ‘Bout average for Ashlandia on Saturda, March 1, 2025.
Yep, a new month has begun. Sixteen percent of 2025 has been experienced. Those expecting a calm after the 2024 elections are probably disappointed. Those working for the Federal government in any capacity are likely stunned. Those hoping for lower inflation are probably too overwhelmed for emotions.
One thing unchanged are the lies that come out of Trump’s mouth. ‘Another lie’: MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace smacks down Trump and Vance’s latest claims. No matter the subject, he will reliably lie, twist history, and bloviate, a fool who thinks himself a genius. He’s demonstrated these ‘qualities’ throughout his lifetime. Since he first announced his run for POTUS, it has been recorded and documented. And it sill goes on because his cult followers and the GOTP gleefully slurp it up by the spoonful.
Let me turn away from that. Take a coffee break for a while.
The Neurons dragged today’s song out of 2015. It came from a morning compound of wondering and cogitating as I slept-walked through the morning observances related to cleaning, feeding, eating, drinking. Prepping goes with all that. The routines induced a reflective miasma about being younger. Only, I was not the direct object of these thoughts; I was focused on Mom and Dad. Dad is with his third wife. In his nineties, he has issues but she’s younger than him by a decade and tends him well. His situation is solid.
Mom, though, is 89. She lives with her 95 year-old-fiance. It’s an old, three-story house. She falls a lot. Injuries and worries ripple out of each fall. She blames her back for her falls. I blame pride. I blame her refusal to accept her limitations and adjust her activities to their new scope. I understand; I don’t give up my routines. They’re routines because they comfort or reassure, or we enjoy them. These routines address something in our psychological makeup which isn’t easily altered.
The song is by Lukas Graham. As I went through the thought exercise of looking back, gazing forward, and reflecting on now, “7 Years Old” played in my morning mental music stream. The song is about reflections of being different ages and the attitudes and memories of that age prevail. So it was quite apt for my morning mental meandering.
Coffee and a doughnut are trespassing on my taste buds. Don’t know how they got past my defenses. Hope your day rocks in needed good ways. Here we go, in three…two…one…
Michael Seidel, writer 