It’s a stillish fall morning outside the windows. Rain’s been falling from darkly loaded clouds. They’ve overtaken the blue and sun today.
It’s Thursday, October 17, 2024. Chilly with that rain, the high will be 61 and the low will be 37 F. Freeze warnings are in effect for tomorrow morning’s early hours. On the bright side of matters, our air quality is excellent, just single digits.
Got a call this morning from the county emergency system. Today is the great shake-out. They wanted us to pretend an earthquake was underway and practice surviving it. I’ve been through a few smaller quakes so I easily imagined the shaking.
The situation provoked some pre-coffee thinking. When I was a child in Wilkinsburg, PA, I remember us doing a duck and cover under my desk, in case the commies launched their nukes. Then, in the military, we were always practicing surviving war and natural disasters. There were fake NBC attacks. Fake unexploded ordinance to deal with. And of course, nukes and EMP. What would happen if we lost our telecommunications; how would we survive? We practiced decoding messages which would send us to war, and other exercises to receive notification hostilities were over. My career’s final years saw me fighting simulated space wars. Throughout, I was engaged in war planning, getting ready to deploy equipment to some theater’s front lines, etc., and reporting on our efforts to get ready and be ready, briefing the general who was our commander five days a week at one assignment, and getting ready to brief him.
Naturally, here in southern Oregon, we stay ready for wildfires. We have checklists and go-bags for evacuation. I’m fairly prepared in that regard, as I wrote local plans, checklists, and guidance for evacuating bases for wherver I was, and trained others in executing that stuff.
Seems like a lot of my life has been about getting ready. I was getting ready to be an adult as a teen. Beyond getting ready for war and natural disasters during, I was constantly getting ready for flu season, to move to another assignment, and I was getting ready for retirement.
Now I’m getting ready for my foot surgery. Getting ready for Mom and Dad to pass. That could be my life motto: “Get ready.”
Of course, as I reflect on my needs to get ready as a child and adult, I think it’s better than the active shooter drills so many children now go through to get ready for the real deal. Their need is driven by people with guns walking into schools and committing mass murder. My need to get ready was much more abstract and distant.
I have a pre-op appointment for my foot surgery next Wednesday. It’s to get me ready for the surgery. Actual surgery takes place the following Wednesday. The pre-op appointment came out of the blue. No phone call or coordination about what time works best for me; just a sudden message through Mychart telling me that the appointment was made. Poor communication, to me, and sort of arrogant, and annoying. Like, hey, what if I was out of town that day? Fortunately, I’m not, but still…
Today’s music comes via Tom MacInnes’s website. I enjoy Tom’s posts about music history, along with his experiences as a teacher and a father, particularly his stories about reading with his daughter and his students. Yesterday’s post was “The Great Canadian Road Trip…Song #76/250: Sk8er Boi by Avril Lavigne”. I ended up with “Sk83r Boi” in my morning mental music stream (Trademark bopping). It’s a lively, energetic song, and completely free and clear of political nuances, so I latched onto that. I need a political break from scanning news on either side of the schism, and tales of polls, rumors, innuendoes, and courts. Just give me some simple teenage offering.
I’m pretty pleased with it as a song choice. The Neurons had been offering “The Monkey’s Uncle” from the Disney movie with the same title. I don’t know why the hell The Neurons chose that song. Never saw the movie, but I knew of its elements, and obviously that song and some of the other songs the movie offered. That was from an era of beach movies. I never dug ’em.
Stay positive, be strong, and vote blue in 2024. Coffee has been introduced to my systems once again and I believe I have a pulse. Here’s the music. Get ready for the election.
I found myself thinking about my parents as I dressed this morning. One is from Iowa and resides in Pennsylvania. The other is from Pennsylvania and lives in Texas. They divorced way back in the mid 1960s. Were friends or friendly off and on. Now Mom is bitter and angry about Dad; Dad is reflective about Mom.
I left their homes when I was 17. I’ve visited both as they moved around, remarried, and raised other families. As they’ve aged, Dad tells me he’d like to be closer to me. Mom tells me she’d like to hear from me more often because she worries about me.
But a large elephant marches through their desires. I’ve been married 49 years. Mom visited me once, when I bought her an airline ticket and forced it to happen. Dad visited me once in my first year of marriage, dropping by with my father-in-law for thirty minutes while they happened to be in the area. It just didn’t seem like they were deeply invested in being part of my life.
I don’t feel abandoned by them. Dad admits he wasn’t a good father and wasn’t there. Mom insists she was there as much as she could be. I do see their sides but I’m indifferent to Dad’s efforts for us to be closer or to Mom’s request for me to alleviate worries. I could employ simple sophistry and claim, they made me who I am, but really, I head little from them across my decades of living. Sure, they always sent birthday and holiday cards, but mostly there were months of silence. Yes, I know they each raised other children and went on through a few more marriages.
I get all of that. My feelings about them slice along a spectrum. I love them as they love me, from a distance. I know they made sacrifices on my behalf to ensure I had food and shelter security and a place to call home. But at an early age, as I watched their fights and listened to their arguments, I made a decision to be independent of them. Sure, there are days when I surf the spectrum of our relationships when I want to help them out of guilt or empathy. They become less as I move through my life, age, and deal with my own issues.
My parents both have been supportive in many ways. They tell me they’re proud of me. My wife points out that it all would’ve probably been different if she and I had children.
But we didn’t, and this is where my parents and I stand, like many other parents and their offspring, at a complex crossroads which we never leave.
I was walking down street when a silver Hyundai Santa Fe pulled out of their drive and turned my way. As they came on, I realized that a can was resting on top of the car on the passenger side.
“Hey,” I called. Gesturing, I tried playing charades with the driver: something. Car. Roof. Meanwhile, I hollered at him, “There’s a can on your car’s roof.”
Beaming, he gave me a big, friendly wave.
“No, no,” I cried out. “There’s something on your car’s roof.”
It’s a windy beast out there this morning. Definitely a creature of autumn. Trees are shimmying and waving branches like they’re cheering on the University of Oregon Ducks football team.
It’s technically a Sattyday, or Saturday as they call it in some parts of the U.S., samedi in some other places. October 12, 2024. 64 with a lovely balminess riffing. Most of the sun action is obscured behind a cloudy gray monolith. Our air will tiptoe into the low to mid sevenities this day.
The cats are out there, trying to make out like they’re happy with the weather’s shape. But their dismayed whiskers reveal their truths, that this wind is disturbing their sleep, mussing their fur, and annoying them with its sounds. Whenever I go by a door or window and look out, they eye the house like they want back in. I will go back and see if that’s true. Both will probably come in. Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah) will stay but Papi will go back out. He has a short memory when weather is introduced as the topic.
You know who else doesn’t like the wind? DJ Trump dislikes the wind. The former President said some stuff about the wind at one of his rallies last week as part of his magic weave. This is lifted from a Huffpost article shared on Yahoo:
“The wind, the wind, it sounds so wonderful. The wind, the wind, the wind is, the wind is bullshit, I’ll tell you,” he said.
The crowed roared.
“It’s horrible, so expensive. Just too expensive. It doesn’t work. All of that to do y’know one tenth of one percent, I mean the whole thing is crazy,” he said.
Trump complained that wind power means people can’t watch television on days with no breeze.
He is right; the whole thing is crazy.
Speaking of wind, it’s a mess down in Florida after Hurricane Milton finished with them. Millions without power. Massive flooding. Sixteen dead, but people left homeless. Gas stations lack gas and alligators are swimming freely as a threat. President Biden has asked Congress to return to pass more funding for FEMA. Let’s see how the GOP reacts.
Moving on.
I have a friend with a fruitful fig tree, and she’s generous with its produce. After receiving pint after pint after pint of fresh, ripe figs, my wife baked a fig cake with a mix of almond and white flour. Excellent with coffee. I theorize it’d go well warm with a scope of vanilla bean ice cream as a dessert. But I’m having it this morning, cold with my coffee. Still fine riding on the taste buds.
All this wind thinking lends itself to songs about wind. I ended up with Kansas singing in the morning mental music stream (Trademark blown away). The Neurons agreed with the choice (although they did campaign for “Against the Wind” by Bob Seger and The Scorpions’ windy offering, “Wind of Change”. So here is “Dust in the Wind”, the 1977 progressive rock offering.
Stay strong, be positive, and vote blue in 2024. Rock on with your day. I’ve been rocking mine with coffee. Here’s the music. Cheers
I parked in the coffee shop’s lot. A silver SUV battle scar from its travels had the front passenger door open. I glanced that way. It seemed like the SUV was someone’s home. A woman was in the seat, her foot sticking out the open door, as she painted her toenails pink.
I thought of multiple things associated with painting nails. To feel and look attractive. Or maybe to fit in. To seem normal to others. You know, norms, values, mores, judgements. Or carrying forward from the past, trying to remain that person they were.
Then again, I could be all wrong. Might be that they’re not living in their car. They could just be a traveler, pausing to get coffee, taking advantage of a break in their schedule to do their nails.
It’s the kind of scene that inspires questions and thinking about our life and society.
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
Awoke with a nostalgia for change and thought, someday. The Neurons filled in the date as Someday, October 6, 2024. Sounds like a potential novel title.
Someday is another autmer day, kicking off in the low fifties. Building on sunshine and blue skies, the final temperature measurement should sing at about 86 degrees F. Air quality is good, two, single digits to double digits surfing the teens and low twenties. Sweet air.
Less than 30 days until Election Day 2024. Vote blue.
So much news to potentially write about that I shun writing about any of it. Sumovit is so damn depressing that it pulls my thoughts down into some deep mud and I just don’t wanna be there today. Weary of the effort for now. Turning attention to other things. Like a requirement to attend another’s seventieth birthday party.
Sounds like a good thing, right? A party, yea! Cake, snacks, all that. Starts at 2 PM. Right in the afternoon’s meat.
But. The cranky bug bit me in the ass today. Think it might have happened when I was sitting on the can doing the daily. A cranky infection has spread, affecting my spirit. Gotta grit my teeth to go fete my casual friend. I have many other things I want or should be doing. As always, a balance between the do’s — must, will, want, can’t do — must be struck. Then you ride the wave of the day best you can. Fall off, get back up, start riding again.
Today’s music is “I Will Follow” by U2. Came out in 1980. Entered the morning mental music stream (Trademark someday) today. Once again, cats caused The Neuron’s choices. Talking to my floofs, I was urging them to follow me if they want their breakfast. Papi the ginger blade was eagerly willing — “Let’s go let’s go let’s go” were his reaction — but Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah) seemed to be collecting flies. Finally, with some mild irritation and exasperation — let’s call it irasperation — Tucker did a slow roll stroll another direction. “Okay,” I said. “I will follow you.” And that’s when U2 kicked off with their 1980 rocker in my head.
Stay positive. Stay up on your vaccination against the cranky bug. Crankiness can spread faster than the flu. Coffee has made its grand entrance. Here’s the music. Walk away, walk away, I will follow. Cheers
Play the taps. It’s that time. Another tee shirt is being retired.
The apparel in focus is a black tee shirt with Michael Schumacher in an F1 Ferrari in the rain at Spa. Bought in 1996. Not so much that I’m a Ferrari or Schumacher fan — I was rooting for Damon Hill in the Williams — but I liked the shirt’s colors and action. Its style.
I wore it for playing racquetball. Used to play three or four times a week back in the you know. Then it became part of casual Friday work clothes while toiling for start-ups. Spent the last ten years as yard work uniform and then sleepwear.
I’ve gotten my use out of it.
One underarm yawns with a huge hole. Otherwise fine. The hole appalls my wife, who is sensitive about worn clothing.
I won’t throw the tee away. Sentimental attachment. It’ll join a few other aged worn tees in my bottom drawer. Let ’em toss ’em after the flames feast on my body.
Michael Seidel, writer 