Wenzda’s Wandering Thoughts

I had two dental appointments yesterday. The first was scheduled for 10:00 AM in Ashland. A second required me in Medford, up Interstate 5, at 2:10 PM.

The first dentist is about a mile from my house. A road closure caused some initial issues. They’d closed Tolman, my usual route, to re-oil the chipseal. Like, thanks for the notice, city! It’s something we’ve consistently encountered in Ashlandia in recent years: they close roads for work with little warning and just expect you to find your own work-around.

I disliked that start. This appointment was for a new bridge. The one installed back in ’07 — yes, this century, smart ass — had finally given up the clue. I sneezed it out one day last fall, chipping it. I was recovering from ankle surgery and decided I’d deal with one issue at a time. Then, finding a dentist, making appointments, and here I was, having it done in June.

Went pretty well except the AI on their bridge design software decided to take some time off. The bridge was scheduled to be done by 12 PM. I left the chair at 11:15, went home, and came back at noon only to be told about the issues. It’d be at least another 35 minutes. I left for home again. Each time that I went home, BTW, I’d go in and show my wife my incomplete work and ask, “What do you think of my new smile?” Returning at 1 PM, the bridge was ready. Fifteen minutes later and $3900, it was done. On to Medford for my oral surgery consultation.

I arrived at my Medford appointment at 1:45; they saw me at 2:30. “Sorry for the wait.” Yeah, thanks, I had nothing else to do! I’d spent the time reading “The Sentence” by Louise Erdrich. Once in the chair, I went through the usual medical history stuff and had the 360 digital scan of my mouth done. I was there to plan to have oral surgery to install three implants.

One implant was for an occlusion above it. They felt the tooth needed to be extracted and replaced. I agreed. The other two teeth had left on their own last November and December. They were side by side on the upper right side of my smile.

That plan went a little awry. “You have an abscess up here,” Mike Doherty told me. He was the grinning, energetic guy who was going to do this part of my dental work. “It’s 8 millimeters wide. Something of that size, we recommend a biopsy.”

Of course I’ll have the biopsy done. Gotta be safe about these things.

“Also,” Mike said, “because of the abscess’s size and location, we’ll need to do a bone graft first. Once it’s healed, in four to six months, we’ll do the implant for that tooth. In the meantime, it’ll be an empty space, just as it is now. But we can go ahead and do the other two now.”

So, okay. It’s scheduled for week from tomorrow. The process was quoted at $7,000. Which was depressing. The first car I bought was a 1968 Chevy Camaro with a 328 V-8. Paid $1995 for it in 1975.

Wish I had that car now.

June 11, 2025 4

Wenzda’s Theme Music

Wenzda is here, Wenzda is here! Yeah, I’m not that excited. I’m down today.

Regardless of my mood, it’s June 11, 2025. 66 F now, 86 F is the expected upper realm, a nice takedown from the 90s where we’ve been living. The high temps will be back, though. This is Ashlandia, and summer is coming.

My normal awakening process is to stir from sleep, reflect on dreams and then move into the realms of current events going on, personal issues and family, plans for the day and week, and so on. I’m not sanguine about any of those aspects of life. I feel like I’m teetering on depression. But, for me, it’s probably part of my regular cycles. My schedule didn’t permit me my luxury of writing, so I’m likely feeling that. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to do what’s wrong, trying to stand up for others and help others, trying to move us as nation, as a species forward. I wasn’t alone. Many others led the way and inspired me. It feels like everything that we did before now is being callously and stupidly clawed away by Trump and the right wing. To paraphrase Ceelo, “Fuck him, and fuck them, too.”

My version of the Statesboro Blues. Papi seemed to have them, too, incessantly talking to me for attention. I played with him with red dot. Got some lackluster results. Searching for an answer, I whipped out a long shoe string. Man, he went nuts over that, attacking and pouncing, racing away and coming back for more. It was a good time for both of us.

For a whim, I turned to the net and asked, “What was the number one song on billboard fifty years ago in the United States?” And this marvelous technological function called AI said told me it was “Me and Bobby McKee”. Now I know some brain cells have abandoned me but I know that wasn’t the song. Fifty years ago would have been 1975. The cited song came out years before. By 1975, the performer, Janis Joplin, was dead. But, of course, the jackass AI, just like so many other jackass search engines, focused on just one piece of the query and spit out a jackass answer:

“Fifty years ago today, March 23, 1971, the number one song on the Billboard Hot 100 was “Me and Bobby McGee” by Janis Joplin. The song was written by Kris Kristofferson and originally performed by Roger Miller, but became a hit for Joplin after her death.”

Like, hello, you fucking piece of technology, why are you giving me an answer for another month, day, and year? You trying to gaslight me OR are you just that worthless? All those Google answers, and none answered what I asked. But I THINK that had I asked that five years ago, the right answer would have been giving in .0217 seconds. Not this year, not in the year of the Great Trump Enshittification.

For the record, I asked Microsoft Bing the same question. Here’s the top answer:

The number one song on the Billboard charts fifty years ago was¹ ² ³ ⁴ ⁵:

“Grazing In The Grass” by Hugh Masekela (July 1968)
“Piece of My Mind” by Janis Joplin (posthumously released, after her death)
“My Guy” by Mary Wells (May 16, 1964)
“Downtown” by The Monkees (classic hit)
“You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling” by The Righteous Brothers (on a specific day)

Seriously, WTF Internet land. You guys have lost your way.

Try it for yourselves, please, kind readers. If you get some sane results, please let me know. I can use a little ray of sanity today.

Dark dreams flavored with bitterness and frustration ruled my night. From that mental morass, The Neurons brought up The Black Crowes with “She Talks to Angels” from 1991.

Nothing to do but push through. Have coffee. Enjoy the cool breezes coming through the windows right now, licking me like a giant dog. Drink more coffee. Write.

Cheers

June 11, 2025 2

A Dream Hodgepodge

This dream had quite a jumbled collection.

It starts with me returning. I was off to the military; now I was back. People had been staying in my place while I was away, but that was done with my permission. Things were a little out of hand because they’d treated it like a party crib. I had a stern conversation with them; yes, they were welcome to stay there. Sure, it was okay to have people over, but they’d start trashing things, and that wasn’t appreciated. They were very understanding in return.

Then I was tidying. I had shelves of old electronics, mostly stereos, cassette and 8-track tape players, CD players, and VHS players. The dust on some were thick. As I resettled back into life, I exclaimed to myself, “Man, I have a lot of gear here. How the hell did I get it all?”

A young boy came up. He didn’t pay any attention to me. He seemed to be looking for something so I asked, “What’s up?”

The boy answered, “I’m looking for a music player for my friend. He wants one for his bicycle.”

I said, “I think I can help him.” I pulled out a small black box and dusted it off. “This has a radio and tape player. It’s small and he can mount it on his handlebars.” I looked more closely at the black box. “It also has record player on it so I don’t know if he would want it.”

“That’s okay,” the boy said. Taking it, he went away.

In a weird dream shift, my place was both outside and inside. I worried about my cats. I had two, and they were a plush gray with golden eyes. Both were young. I looked around for them. They were busy investigating things just outside and playing. When I called their names, they hastened to me, which mitigated my worries.

Then, I worried about my schedule. I needed to call and find out where and when I needed to be for work. Going through my cluttered place, I picked up the phone and dialed 633 while going to my desk to find what the final four numbers were. A woman answered the phone, “Operator intersect.”

I laughed. “Sorry, I didn’t expect that,” I said. “What’s an operator intersect?”

The operator explained, “The call is diverted to the operator whenever the call is not completed but the line is open in case someone has an emergency but can’t finish dialing.”

I answered, “Sorry, I just don’t know where I’m calling. My bad.”

Next, I thought, oh, I should call Mom. So I did. Answering before a ring finished, she said, “About time.” No hello or anything else.

Irritation jumped through me. “Wait, are you pissed because I didn’t immediately call you when I got home? Is that what’s going on here?” She did not answer. I said, “You’re being childish. I’m going to count down from five. If you don’t start talking before I’m done with the countdown, I’m hanging up. Understand?”

No answer.

I began the countdown. When I said, “Three,” I went on, “Oh, forget this. This is stupid. You’re an adult, Mom, and you’re behaving like a child.”

Then I hung up on my mother.

Dream end.

June 8, 2025 0

Sunda’s Theme Music

Well, it’s toasty out there. Step into the sunshine and toasty shifts to broil.

Yes, Sunda in Ashlandia is a hot space. 92 F now, a 98 F high will crisp us before the thermometer drops back to 65 tonight. Last night had us hanging at 80 F at 10:30 PM, which makes it a push to cool the house before the next heat cycle — I mean, day — begins. We will see some cooling on Wednesday, when the temperature sinks to 86 F.

The heat is expected. This is Jun 8, 2025. This is Ashlandia. Summer is coming.

Thinking about the heat pushed a faraway recollection of my father-in-law once saying to me, “It’s hettin’ up outside,” into my mind’s foreground. I laughed, and he responded, “What?” He passed away the year my wife and I returned from our tour of duty in 1991. And the memory of him saying “hettin’ up” was old by then.

Papi was a rambunctious floof this morning. He slept and chilled all day yesterday so his energy cup was brimming over. He was also apparently bored. Starting a little before 5 AM, he came in, jumped on the bed, and purred loudly at me, often tapping me awake or rubbing his little chin against my head or arm. I kept rising and feeding him. By by count, I fed him six times between 5:30 and 8 AM. And he chowed it all down.

Political heat is rising. Americans are reacting to Trump’s ICE raids. Resistance is rising. Americans don’t care for masked gunmen disappearing other Americans off the streets in snatch and grab ops. Getting particularly het up in Los Angeles. Resistant is rising and protests are planned. Numbers are stacking. So is irritation, as are TACO Regime counter measures. TACO has never been on for restraint and is always eager to rush to violence. It would’ve been more of a surprise if TACO called for restraint, but he rushed in 2,000 National Guard troops in a move that’s sure to escalate tensions and further divide the nation. That’s TACO, the Great Divider, bitchboi for billionaires everywhere.

Today’s song is a 2015 tune. Rachel Platten and David Bassett wrote the song and Rachel Platten performs it. “Fight Song” was written when Rachel Platten was at a low point, and sees the song as a vehicle for empowerment. Some sample lyrics for you:

This time this is my fight song
Take back my life song
Prove I’m alright song
My power’s turned on
Starting right now I’ll be strong
I’ll play my fight song
And I don’t really care
If nobody else believes
‘Cause I’ve still got
A lot of fight left in me

Losing friends and I’m chasing sleep
Everybody’s worried about me
In too deep they say I’m in too deep
And it’s been two years
I miss my home
But there’s a fire burning in my bones
I still believe, yeah I still believe

I wasn’t too surprised that The Neurons offered it to the morning mental music stream as I read news and analysis of the LA protests.

Feel free to raise a fist and sing along.

Coffee is at hand. It’s hot, cuz some, like me, like it hot. Coffee, I mean. Hope your day caps off a good weekend for you. Cheers

June 8, 2025 0

Saturda’s Wandering Thoughts

An elderly woman asked for my help at the coffee shop yesterday. She’s another coffee shop regular. I’ve seen her here for several years. By observing and eavesdropping, I knew where she lived, what she drove, her previous occupation, her standard order, and her name.

She’s named Sandy. As I helped her, she said, “I was an elementary school teacher.”

I replied, “What a coincidence! I used to go to elementary school.”

She laughed.

I’m thinking of Sandy today because I’m reflecting on Mom. Mom is 89; Sandy is 82. I’ve witnessed Mom’s decline over the past decade. I’ve seen Sandy declining over the past two years. She used to have no problem walking. Always a diminutive person, she seems smaller, thinner, and weaker, and struggles to stand, sit, and walk. Terrible to see.

It affects me because I’m also seeing such a decline happening in my wife. It’s surreal because I’ve had many more medical emergencies and don’t attend to my health as my wife does. I generally bounce back from whatever I endured. Yes, my bounce is not as high these days, and it takes more bounces to get back to close to what I was. My wife, though, is slowing and weakening. She often loses her balance. Her diet and activities are becoming so limited.

All of this reminds me of how impermanent things are. This is true of products, societies, our bodies, our existence. Ground Penetrating Radar finds forgotten settlements. We come across photographs of relatives we never knew about. Genetics and genealogy can fill in blanks about who your ancestors were but it’s typically in broad terms. Names, places, occupations, mostly.

It all finally roosts in me as a reminder to not take things for granted, whether it’s success, health, family, or your government. Nothing really lasts forever. Worse, the ending can come without much warning. As in so many other matters, it’s something which I learned before, and then forgot.

June 7, 2025 5

Saturda’s Theme Music

Saturda, June 7, 2025, has fallen upon us splay-legged with sunshine and muggy with clouds. 84 is Ashlandia’s rough temperature, depending on where you stand. It’s cooler by the creek in the park in the old trees’ shade. Today’s high will be in the low 90s, beginning a string of days with highs in the 90s. Looks like summer is doing a temperature check preparatory to taking the stage.

My wife remarked today, “How long will it be until some U.S. citizen will challenge a masked ICE gunman and get shot?” She thinks we’re due for another Kent State moment, when Ohio National Guard killed four demonstrators in the early 1970s. I agree with her point. Any time we have armed people being pressured by resistance, the chance for violence goes up. Wonder what oddsmakers are saying about it? I hope my wife’s fortune telling is wrong.

Today’s song come about from broodling — that is, brooding and noodling — about another novel underway. Sipping the first dark brown hot fluid this morning, I thought, “You gotta find a way for what you want to say.” I answered myself, “Yes, but do you know what you want to say?”

Bored with the exchange, The Neurons unleashed Oasis and their 1994 song, “Supersonic”, into the morning mental music stream. I recognized that they did it because there is a line which goes something like my thoughts. I didn’t do much more thinking about it at that point because Papi was urgently wrapping himself around my legs while purring like an old VW Beetle. I fed him and then he and I hit the backyard sunshine to take the day’s measure for a few minutes.

Stay safe and have the most solid day you can develop. Me, I’m in for more writing, more yardwork, more reading. It’s a rough life but it’s where I landed. Cheers

June 7, 2025 5

Thirstda’s Theme Music

My fellow Terrans. Today is Thirstda, June 5, 2025 in Ashlandia. Some refer to the day as Thursday.

Summer is rising in Ashlandia. Ridiculously blue skies have us covered like a fine duvet. Sunshine is showing up early and staying late, putting on a bright display. Today’s high will be 82 F, about 8 degrees north of our present temperature. Humidity is not bad, and light winds lazily stir the leaves and brush past.

Papi is happy as a floof can be, chirping around the house in the early morning before floofsconcing into a nap nest. My wife isn’t as happy. Although her various ailments are easing, mosquitos are finding her irresistible. Their bites swell on her which is an annoyance. As for me, I’m embroiled in an agent hunt put my personal happiness and satisfaction both at 7.5 on the scale, where ten means it’s all awesome. That might just be coffee influencing my spirits.

The world continues its status as fascinating but complex. For example, forecasters and personnel at NOAA. We’d heard that DOGE took its usual cleaver to NOAA. Meteorologists vacated the business, taking early retirement, etc. But there was U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick at a Senate hearing telling us that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is “fully staffed” with weather forecasters. Meanwhile, a search for news updates about NOAA tell multiple other stories.

Scientific American: New Hires Will Still Leave the NWS Dangerously Understaffed, Meteorologists Say

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: NOAA is scrambling to fill positions after Trump’s cuts. How are Wisconsin offices faring?

The Mirror US: Florida weatherman warns viewers he won’t be able to predict hurricanes because of Trump’s federal budget cuts

Those stories were all posted a day ago. Lutnick testified last week.

There’s always been news churn where politics encumber how facts are related. But vetting those facts with the TACO Regime is increasingly challenging. We do understand that. Trump is a dedicated liar and butchers facts. He’s willing to make up anything to make himself look good. The people he hired are right off the same cookie sheet.

Today’s music is by Billy Joel. “We Didn’t Start the Fire” is Joel’s musical recitation about facts and history culled from his lifetime. The song came out in 1989. From Wikipedia:

Joel conceived the idea for the song when he had just turned 40. He was in a recording studio and met a 21-year-old friend of Sean Lennon who said “It’s a terrible time to be 21!”. Joel replied: “Yeah, I remember when I was 21 – I thought it was an awful time and we had Vietnam, and y’know, drug problems, and civil rights problems and everything seemed to be awful”. The friend replied: “Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it’s different for you. You were a kid in the fifties and everybody knows that nothing happened in the fifties”. Joel retorted: “Wait a minute, didn’t you hear of the Korean War or the Suez Canal Crisis?” Joel later said those headlines formed the basic framework for the song.

Looking further back in U.S. history, there’s been multiple awful times to be 21 years old, a truth known around the world. Some irony creeps in for someone from a privileged background, Sean Lennon, son of John Lennon, making that observation back in 1989.

The Neurons brought the song into the morning mental music stream after I read about actual wildfires in the United States and Canada. I feel for the people and animals in those places, as we’ve worried about California and Oregon wildfires for much of the last twenty years.

But the song is a good song for today, mostly because it strikes me that the TACO Regime is trying to fan the flames rather than fight the fires. As others note, it’s increasingly evident that TACO is tearing down the world order to make it easier for the wealthy to take over, rule, and make more money. Anyway, here is the song.

Got my coffee. Hope you have your beverage of choice. Let’s do the best that we can today. Here we go. Cheers

June 5, 2025 1

Wenzda’s Theme Music

Welcome to Wenzda, June 4, 2025. Blissful on the back patio this morning. 65 F and sunny, the backyard was vibrant with greenery, and absolutely still and silent, a perfect setting to sip coffee, catch rays, and rebalance my circadian rhythm. Papi the butter butt floof was my sole companion. Fresh from eating breakfast, he was content to clean himself with occassional passes against my calves. 80 is again the mark nature has set for us as a high in Ashlandia.

Happy Pride Month. June is Pride Month. Fools and charlatans in the Gold House, the place previously referred to the White House, contest the need to celebrate Pride Month. They prefer to believe that anyone who professes anything but straight genders and roles are crazy, making it up, or other ridiculous things. And I say, screw them. We will keep building and progressing. It might be on pause while they’re in control, but they are not moving us back, no matter how hard they try, no matter what they do. We will build an inclusive world where all people are equal without any qualifications imposed by anyone else. It’s strikingly hypocritical that the right will say things about God being the creator and giving rights and simultaneously deny that God created anyone who dares say, for example, my name is Michael, and my preferred pronouns are she and her. “How dare you,” these self-annointed arbiters shriek. I ask them back, “How dare you. Who the hell are you to decide who the rest of us are? Screw you.”

In honor of Pride Month, let’s begin with “Born This Way” by Lady Gaga. Wikipedia gives us a good summary of the song.

“Born This Way” is a song by American singer Lady Gaga, and the lead single from her second studio album of the same name. Written by Gaga and Jeppe Laursen, who produced it along with Fernando Garibay and DJ White Shadow, the track was developed while Gaga was on the road with the Monster Ball Tour. Inspired by 1990s music which empowered women, minorities, and the LGBT community, Gaga explained that “Born This Way” was her freedom song.

Lady Gaga said, “I want to write my this-is-who-the-fuck-I-am anthem, but I don’t want it to be hidden in poetic wizardry and metaphors. I want it to be an attack, an assault on the issue because I think, especially in today’s music, everything gets kind of washy sometimes and the message gets hidden in the lyrical play. Harkening back to the early ’90s, when Madonna, En Vogue, Whitney Houston and TLC were making very empowering music for women and the gay community and all kind of disenfranchised communities, the lyrics and the melodies were very poignant and very gospel and very spiritual and I said, ‘That’s the kind of record I need to make. That’s the record that’s going to shake up the industry.’ It’s not about the track. It’s not about the production. It’s about the song. Anyone could sing ‘Born This Way’. It could’ve been anyone.”

Got my coffee. I enjoy a cup in the morning. I was born that way. Have the best Wenzda you can. Cheers