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