Tag: freedom

Wednesday’s Theme Music

Mood: Rebelfeinated

TL/DR: It’s hot, liberty is in danger, Vote Blue, and “Come Together”.

Sunshine is slicing through the blue sky like a sword scything through air.

Today is Wednesday, July 3, 2024, and we’re looking at a hot one. 73 F at this intersection of existence, the hot temperatures will test us with peaks in the mid 90s. They’re just prepping us for the SHS – Seriously Hot Stuff – descending on us tomorry.

For giggles last night, I was thinking of a song called, “My Country, Tis of Thee”. Around for a while, many just call it “America”. Its second line is, “Sweet land of liberty.” With MAGA-led initiatives, an asterisk needs attached to that line. Not a land of liberty for book-reading in many GOP realms where they’re banning books in schools. Nor is there liberty if you want to encourage diversity, equity, and inclusion, nor if you dare risk raising your voice to discuss climate change and its dangers. Not a land of liberty if you’re talking about using a name which you think fits who you are, nor is it a land of liberty for you if your gender isn’t exactly as stated on your certificate of birth. Don’t overlook the limits on liberty if you’re a pregnant woman, no matter how it came about, because in Godly Republican states, you don’t control your body. That’s the state’s job, so shut your mouth and do as they tell you. That’s GOP-style freedom in the MAGA dome.

Today’s music was created by the songwriting team of Lennon-McCartney. The Beatles released “Come Together” in 1969. Thirteen years old, I loved the freakin’ song. Fifty-five years later, The Neurons have brought it up in response to our political atmosphere and have it going in the morning mental music stream (Trademark united). Yes, some crazy messages are in that song but that basic vibe, “Come together”, is what The Neurons are feelin’. Come together and support President Biden and the Democratic Party in 2024. Come together to stop the MAGA train and its authoritarian destination. Come together to bring some semblance of a vision of America moving forward to a pinnacle where we all share equal rights and freedoms, regardless of our physical and sexual attributes, a place where we’re willing to negotiate and compromise as needed to improve life for all and protect the planet. Yeah, I may be a dreamer, but I know more are out there.

Stay positive, be strong, lean forward, and Vote Blue in 2024. Coffee has crested past my lips and has infiltrated my body in a good way. Here’s the music. I choose a different version from the original but included a couple takes of the song for your viewing pleasure. Any buzz your neurons in a pleasure way?

Cheers

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Friday’s Theme Music

Mood: upbeat

It’s a sunny, cloudy, snowy, dry, cold Friday out there in Ashlandia today, January 12, 2024. (Ashlandia: where the snowfall is below average.) The snow isn’t falling but hazardly tossed as lumpy blankets as it unevenly melts and freezes. Roads are clear and dry. Clouds are a buff, low gray mass which sometimes permits a blinker of sunshine. It’s 34 F now, but rain is supposed to be coming as we’re treated to a high of 44 F today.

The cats are out, taking advantage of the storm lull. Though I dislike it, Papi is prowling and inspecting, looking for changes in his kingdom. Tucked in with his tail wrapped around him as a warmer, Tucker is just breathing fresh but cold air on the covered front porch’s doormat.

I’m better, thanks, already drinking coffee, breakfast already well along the digesting process. It’s interesting, too, but after Wednesday night’s BVVP experience, my tinnitus is amost completely gone. The worst after-effects is worry that it’ll happen again – especially in somewhere public — and my abdominal muscles. Every giggle, guffaw, laugh, yawn, cough, sneeze, and grunt has those muscles screaming, give us a damn break.

I perused the list of ‘not banned’ books in Escambia County, Florida yesterday. These over sixteen hundred novels, biographies, dictionaries, and encyclopdias are not banned, the county always explain, but have been called unsuitable by some and were removed for review and decisions.

From the cited article, PEN America notes (their emphasis),

“Five dictionaries are on the district’s list of more than 1,600 books banned pending investigation in December 2023, along with eight different encyclopedias, The Guinness Book of World Records, and Ripley’s Believe it or Not – all due to fears they violate the state’s new laws banning materials with “sexual conduct” from schools. 

“Biographies of Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Oprah Winfrey, Nicki Minaj, and Thurgood Marshall are on the list, alongside The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Black Panther comics by Ta-Nehisi Coates. The Feminism Book was banned along with The Teen Vogue Handbook: An Insider’s Guide to Careers in Fashion. 

“The list obtained by the Florida Freedom to Read Project also includes Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl, The Adventures and the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile. The Princess Diaries and 14 other books by Meg Cabot have been taken from libraries, alongside books by David Baldacci, Lee Child, Michael Crichton, Carl Hiassen, Jonathan Franzen, John Green, John Grisham, Stephen King (23 of them), Dean Koontz, Cormac McCarthy, Celeste Ng, James Patterson, Jodi Picoult, and Nicholas Sparks. Conservative pundit Bill O’Reilly’s two books, Killing Jesus and Killing Reagan, were also banned pending investigation.”

I have to thank Scottie’s Playground for pulling this together and providing it to us. To close, the most shocking aspect are the quotes Scottie included from Judd Legum’s coverage:

Attorney General Ashley Moody argued that the school board could ban books for any reason because the purpose of public school libraries is to “convey the government’s message,” and that can be accomplished through “the removal of speech that the government disapproves.” This is a novel argument about the purpose of school libraries.

That’s GOP freedom and democracy for ya.

For some alien reason, The Neurons were playing operator-themed music in the morning mental music stream (Trademark perplexed). Songs like “Operator” by Jim Croce, “Smooth Operator” by Sade, ”Operator” by the Grateful Dead, and “Operator” by Manhattan Transfer. The last stayed put for a longer period, morphing into today’s theme music.

Although either agnostic or pastafarian — it changes as much as the weather — I enjoy gospel music. I also feel for the search for community, support, reassurance, love, information, etc., from something beyond our daily endeavors. You never know what you’ll find or where you’ll find it when you reach out in need. Although religion doesn’t do much for me, I’m happy for those who can find their answers there, so long as they don’t tread on me or try to foist their answers on the rest of us.

On to the day. Stay pos, be strong, test negative, and keep leaning forward. I know it’s not always easy, believe me, but I’ll keep trying for those four fundamental foundations. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Mood: Excitgry (excited but hungry)

Light rain and gray clouds sang in Tuesday’s entrance on January 9, 2024. Snow is gone from the valley floor. Fog veils the mountains and ridges so I don’t know what the situation is up there. Gloomy is the word, the word that you heard. It speaks to the day’s general malaise, weather-wise. It is 39 F now, humming along to a 44 F high. My floofs are nestled into comfortable niches where they can sleep in warmth and safety.

Pretty much as expected, Republicans are descending into tit-for-tat politics, talking about trying to remove President Biden from the POTUS ballots in several states, reflecting their deranged approach to politics. “Because you removed Trump!” they whine. “Because look at what Biden is doing to the border,” they declare. “And his birth certificate. I mean, her emails. I mean, Hunter Biden.”

They’re descending into a new low level, setting themselves up as a punch line in history books. “Look at how they used to act,” people will say, discussing the GOP of this era. “How did they become so lost and confused about what was going on? What happened to their principles and leadership?” We in this era reply, they became consumed with desire to be in power. “Power tends to corrupt,” Lord Acton wrote in a previous century, summarizing what others had observed. Power tends to corrupt. That seems to be what we’re seeing in the GOP as they corrupt their values and principles to stay in power, no matter how they malign the ideal the founders established, no matter how far their behavior guides them from the principles they claim to uphold.

Of course, their hold on what is ‘supposed to be’ regarding our founders’ intentions are as nebulous as a kitten’s grip on their own tail. Can you imagine what the founders would be saying to Lauren Boebert after she declared that she was tired of this separation of church and state junk?

I can’t honestly say, though. I only wonder. I don’t know how they, the founders, would say to multiple arguments of this modern era. What would they say to the “Moms of Liberty” for banning ideas and books? How would they respond to Republicans like DeSantis declaring what parts of history should not be taught? And I don’t know how the founders would stand regarding the mass murders with automatic weapons that happen so routinely in the US in this ‘modern age of reason’. I like to think that the founders would be horrified and take action to stop it, but then, I thought the GOP, the ‘pro-life’ party as they call themselves without irony, would be horrified by the murders, deaths, and sorrows, and take some action. I just can’t gauge the depths of the GOP’s corruption, hypocrisy, and cynicism. Each time that I believe they’ve hit bottom, they go lower.

And of course, pundits are wondering, what will happen if Trump runs for POTUS in 2024 and loses? Will the GOP peacefully support the result, accept defeat, and continue with governing? Or will they go full-blown rebellion and insurrection? There is enough darkness glimmering in the MAGA base frothing at Trump’s whiney ‘campaigning’ that there is serious reason to believe they’ll go Jan 6 once again but escalate it to new levels of violence.

Meanwhile, a fragment of them will say the Pledge of Allegiance, loudly enunciating, “Under God”, and then talk about how they hate Democrats, and want to kill them or send them to another country. Do they have any self-awareness?

Beyond all that, The Neurons have the Eagles singing the 1980 song, “I Can’t Tell You Why”, in the morning mental music stream (Trademark separated). The Neurons had caught on with my thinking — they can be sharp at times — about not being able to comprehend and explain things. I can’t tell you why Republicans let Justice Clarence Thomas remain in office as revelations of his relationship with wealthy Republican patrons generate concern about Thomas’s ethics. I can’t tell you why they let Thomas remain involved in cases regarding Trump as POTUS in the face of revelations about his wife’s role. I can’t tell you why they turn a blind eye to Trump’s bullshit. I can declare it’s politics as usual, but it’s not the kind of politics seen in this nation for several decades. I thought, and it seems I was naive, that we as a political body, no matter the party, had evolved past that. Of course, I never foresaw what social media, AI, and web bots would do to our political discourse. I never foresaw people who weren’t being treated for mental issues clinging to insane conspiracy theories, and I can’t tell you why they cling to them. All I can do is make up my own theories.

Ah, well, time to shuffle news and politics aside and rebalance myself. Coffee helps, of course. Stay pos, be strong, and keep leaning forward. Don’t let yourself get too wrapped up in the minutiae of trying to understand and explain why. Keep your eye on our own shared goals of freedom, justice, democracy, and equality, and the idea that we should all enjoy them. I once read that those are pretty good ideals to chase.

Here’s the music. Admire the Eagle’s youth seen in this video, and remember. Cheers

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Mood: giddy

Beautiful windy, cloudy, sunny Saturday morning in Ashlandia, where the drivers are average and polite, but getting hit while you’re walking is close to happening all the time. The temperature is 54 F. Light rain might visit, and our high temperature will only be 57 F, but that’s better than 47 F.

It’s November 18, 2023, already. Counting down to all those things that are growing more and more imminent, from tests for students to mark the year’s end or term’s end, to buying presents and cooking foods for different holidays, to making travel arrangements to visit family or run away to somewhere warmer. All of these things speak from positions of privilege and having the money and food security to make these plans. Too, too many people will be scrambling as they have for years, trying to be safe, have a warm place for themselves and their families to sleep, and a decent meal. Their reasons for those situations are many; some are from choices made, but others arrived at their precarious situation through discrimination and bias, personal disasters, or mental health matters. Hope you can keep them in mind and help them out some during this season of celebration.

It’s time for the Leonids meteor show again. I went out to look for them last night, but the sky wasn’t cooperative. While Thursday night was fantastically clear, Friday night was hopelessly overcast. Bummer to me as I like watching the streaks and think about where they’ve been and what they represent. Three trips outside were done, and nada was seen but clouds and light pollution.

The Neurons popped an Isley Brothers song from 1970 into the morning mental music stream (Trademark marginal). “Freedom” is a song off an album called Get Into Something. I first heard it at the house of a girl I was seeing, but it was her mother playing the album. Her mom was about my mom’s age, but their musical selections seemed very different. As a thirteen-year-old heading for fourteen, I found myself listening intently to the vocals and the lyrics, and enjoying the instrumental elements of this R&B sound. I’d heard R&B previously but this was like, wow, there is such energy.

Let me tell you, this particular song, “Freedom” is so apropos as today’s theme music. Check out these lyrics.

Well, I wanna say, I wanna tell you
I wanna say when you can do what you wanna do
And go where you wanna go
And live where you wanna live
And love who you wanna love

And be what you wanna be
Join what you wanna join
Well, well, well, that’s freedom
Yeah, yeah, freedom, yes sir

When you can learn what you wanna learn
And read what you wanna read
(Free, free, free)

And write what you wanna write
(Free, free, free)
Do what you feel is right
(Free, free, free)

h/t to Songlyrics.com

Because, I’m remembering this song at a time when a group of misnamed people called “Moms for Liberty” are getting books banned, so students can’t read what they want to read. Red state school systems are pushing to limit what is taught so you can’t learn what you want to learn. And you can’t be who you want to be when state legislatures are making shit up and declaring that people who aren’t binary can’t decide what pronoun they will use or love who they want to love because these narrow-minded cultural dictators think that love and sex is only between a man and a woman. So, “Freedom” by the Isley Brothers is a solid theme music choice for this new wave Era of Repression and Fear that Republicans are pushing.

Stay positive, be strong, and lean forward with optimism and courage toward a brighter future of freedom, equality, and justice. As Martin Luther King, Jr., said, as written in a 1918 book, “Readings from Great Authors”, attributed to Theodore Parker, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” h/t to quoteinvestigator.com.

Ah, the sun is shining and rain is falling. There’s a rainbow somewhere. Here’s the music. See you at the coffee maker. Cheers

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Friday’s Wandering Thoughts

It seems like the United States’ GOP is working hard to divide the nation. Through actions like dictating what pronouns and genders must be used, and what can be read and taught in schools, they’re narrowing the boundaries of freedom and undermining intellectual thought and creativity.

Once the Republicans were happy to merely oppose the Democrats. Now they oppose personal freedom and choice, forging deeper and sharper divides based on the formulation of ‘us’ and ‘them’, far from the Founders’ vision of ‘we, the People’. Congress under the GOP, and as en extension, the Federal government, is obstructed from governing as Republicans do all they can to stop anything and everything the Democrats attempt to do, treating everyone outside of the GOP’s narrowing scope as enemies. They demand compromise while offering none. Even Republicans who do not heel hard to the line, “Our way or no way,” are ostracized as enemies.

It is one thing to disagree and debate, and another to throw tantrums and hold parts of the government hostage. Holding the government hostage is the modern Republican way, whether it’s:

  • the US military (Senator Tuberville’s ongoing blocking of senior officer promotions until they make changes Tuberville wants);
  • the Federal budget (the GOP Freedom Caucus threatening to shut down the government again and again, as the GOP has done before);
  • reading and education (the GOP embraced ‘Moms of Liberty’ and their advocacy against school curricula that mention LGBTQIA+ rights, race and ethnicity, and ‘critical race theory’, as well as Governors Abbott (Texas) and DeSantis (Florida) and their bids to ban books and forbid teaching certain aspects of history);
  • or the ability for the Federal government to execute and enforce laws (Speaker Johnson’s moves to cut funding for IRS agents and their investigations of tax fraud).

In the GOP’s latest vision of the United States, the vision of who the people are and who may vote, and what rights ‘they may have’ is diminishing in front of the GOP’s idea of God, their idea of religion, their idea of science, and their idea of culture and history.

In so doing, they drive the United States further and more deeply away from being a welcoming melting pot of freedom, independence, and equality for all. Their tools to accomplish their vision are fear, intimidation, discrimation, and bigotry, fortified and encouraged by lies and hypocrisy, often done under cover of ‘religious freedom’, citing the Bible as the source for things it never mentions, in a nation where separation of church and state are supposed to be a foundation of our nation’s existence.

Ironically, the GOP marches down a path that is directly against the words of their party’s founder. President Lincoln declared in his House Divided speech (June 15, 1858), “A house divided against itself, cannot stand.”

It’s an insight which the GOP in its right-wing, short-sighted zeal, has chosen to ignore.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Mood: caring

We’ve come upon a rare beast: Thursday, October 12, 2023. It only happens once.

47 F in Ashlandia, where the air is clear and the people are refined. Never fear, the rain has stopped, and the skies are clear deep blue. With the sun and air working together, we’ll reach 69 F before sunset comes at 6:35 PM. This sunset gives us an swath of daylight just over eleven hours long. The clock is running.

There’s a great deal to care about in the news, as usual. Several wars and politics just edge baseball and football. Best news heard this week is that my little sister looks cancer free after having her rectum removed in September. Hurrah for that. As another friend privately noted, but once you’ve experienced a close encounter of the cancer kind, the fear it’ll return haunts you.

The Neurons have plugged a 1982 Donald Fagen song into the morning mental music stream (Trademark petrified). I heard “I.G.Y. (What a Beautiful World)” on the car radio a few days ago. The song is a riff off of an International Geophysical Year – IGY – which Fagen read about. The IGY was in the 1950s. Fagen then contemplates a beautiful future.

Standing tough under stars and stripes
We can tell
This dream’s in sight
You’ve got to admit it
At this point in time that it’s clear
The future looks bright
On that train all graphite and glitter
Undersea by rail
Ninety minutes from New York to Paris
Well by seventy-six we’ll be A-OK

What a beautiful world this will be
What a glorious time to be free

Get your ticket to that wheel in space
While there’s time
The fix is in
You’ll be a witness to that game of chance in the sky
You know we’ve got to win
Here at home we’ll play in the city
Powered by the sun
Perfect weather for a streamlined world
There’ll be spandex jackets one for everyone

What a beautiful world this will be
What a glorious time to be free

h/t Genius.com

The words and sentiment kept pestering my thinking. Simplifying, part of the IGY philsophy was to bring scientist together to discuss problems propose solutions.

Hearing this song, though, about how science and technology could advance and help us, I’m dismayed. Science and technology is under attack by many. Witness what’s been going on with the COVID-19 vaccines, along with other vaccines. (Point of order, many have derided vaccines for decades, so that’s not a clearly new development.)

So, let’s point out that people doubt what scientists are saying about global warming. This, despite the rise of sea waters, drought, melting ice caps, and increased extreme weather which scientists warned us about.

Led by hard right conservatives, people doubt the potential benefits of solar and wind power. Most focus on the negatives, ignoring the negatives behind the accepted energy sources like fossil-based fuels and nuclear energy.

Fagen talks about new technology like undersea trains taking us from New York to Paris in 90 minutes. I can’t help but wonder who that might help besides the people who can afford it. We already have space travel for the wealthy developing. Of course, they like to say that if space travel can become common enough, prices will come down.

But how much does space travel help the masses? For my end, I’d prefer to see high speed rail built in the United States so that it doesn’t takes days to cross the country and a small fortune, as it does now. Perhaps electric trains to move people and cargo so we’re not all crowding into commercial aircraft like sardines in a can.

And I’d rather see money and technology spent on solving problems that affect people every day, such as we saw happen with vaccines. Let’s do the same to battle cancer.

While saying all of this, I do remember a television show called “Connections“. James Burke hosted the show. The subject was about unexpected uses and benefits derived from technology, and how these improvements were connected through science and medicine, and the continual quest for improvement. So, while I poo-poo space travel for the wealthy, perhaps unexpected benefits will be derived to solve some of the problems our world faces.

Finally, Fagen mentions, “What a glorious time to be free.” Yet, war is on the rise. So are challenges to people’s basic rights.

Book banning is on the right, as is racism and white supremacy.

Doesn’t feel like a glorious time to be free.

Anyway, “I.G.Y. (What a Beautiful World)” is today’s theme music. Please listen to it and contemplate the ideas in it. I’d enjoy hearing what others thing. Perhaps, I’m just emerging as a pessimistic as I lean in toward my geezer years.

Time to saddle up this day and ride on toward the sunset. Be strong, stay safe and optimistic. Here’s the music. I got my coffee and I am a go. Cheers

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Friday’s Theme Music

I’m sitting at my desk at home, sipping hot black coffee. A cool breeze washing over my back through the window. Machine noises are carried in. Sounds like excavating equipment is hard at it in Ashlandia, where wine is made on one side of the valley, and beer is brewed on the other.

It’s a summer morning, Friday, July 7, 2023.

A weary state of mind has overtaken me. Just read about dark waters and the pollution causing cancer to humans and animals. Companies like DuPont do this to communities and fight against taking responsibility, while manipulating laws and lawmakers to make more money, more profits. They epitomize the worse of corporate greed. Unfortunately, they’re one of many. And our hugely right wing Supreme Court goes and guts laws to protect water and people and animals, and the right wing shouts, “Hurray. Freedom.”

That article was atop reading about the proliferation of shootings across the nation on this holiday week. How these murders are enabled by the NRA, with right-wingers heartily going along with it, shouting, “Hurray. Freedom.” Death doesn’t mean much to the pretend ‘pro-life’ party called the GOP.

The GOP party has become the party of minority rule — meaning a rule of one. One person in many GOP led states can complain about a book and have it taken off shelves. One person can take up an automatic weapon and go shoot up a school, a synagogue, church, workplace, neighborhood, resulting in deaths and the ruination of many lives and that party will continue to shout, “Freedom.” They write into laws against others, and shout, “Freedom.”

Naturally, thinking of all of this, my neurons sink back to Janis Joplin’s magnificent cover of the Kris Kristofferson song, “Me & Bobby McKee” from 1970. The lines so many of us remember from the song, the one I was reminded of as we celebrated a nation’s beginning that is supposed to be founded on principles of freedom, democracy, and equality, are, “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose. Nothin’ ain’t worth nothin’ but it’s free.”

Stay as positive as you can as we endure this era. Try to look forward to what we can build, and don’t be dissuaded or disheartened by those trying to create something other than a land of freedom and equality for all. Or as it’s written in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The coffee is half gone. The breeze is fading and the heat is rising. 71 F now, it’ll be in the low 90s before the sun slips out of view. Time to take this show on the road. Here’s the music. Cheers

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