Friday’s Theme Music — All About Him
Ashland, southern Oregon — Friday, May 8, 2026.
Friday, we wear purple.
Thin white clouds marble a bright blue sky. 56 now, a high of 78 F is expected. Sunshine washes the greenery with bright, warm light. Papi says, “This is perfect weather. Don’t change it.”
The jobs report for April came out. I wasn’t surprised that more jobs than expected were added.
It wasn’t much: 115,000. Jobless claims held steady, 4.3%. The jobs growth saw a surprise increase in “messengers and couriers” of 38,000 jobs.
Healthcare added nearly 54,000 jobs. Again, not a surprise, because healthcare laid off 108k in January. Hospitals are closing in rural areas, and rebalancing is underway as the healthcare industry copes with Medicaid, Medicare, and private insurance changes.
May will be an interesting month for the jobs report, and travel, hospitality, and tourism industries. Gas prices are up over 50% since Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL! initiated war in Iran in February 2024. The national average is now around $4.53 per gallon.
Trump may not care but Americans who aren’t wealthy are worried. “The University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index dropped to a record low of 48.2 in early May 2026, missing market expectations of 49.5 and falling below April’s 49.8.”
Sure, Trump doesn’t care. Make a promise — “No new wars” — break a promise.
That’s him. Just like Trump’s Epstein ballroom. ‘Americans won’t pay anything for it.’ Sure. Now, we’ll just pay a $1,000,000,000. Or more.
We’re feeling the economy in my region. Southern Oregon University (SOU) is in a slow collapse; Assante is in decline, taking the regional healthcare system down; the City of Ashland is mired in financial struggles.
With SOU cutting back, music programs and activities are in danger of disappearing. Parks and Rec has been forced to cut back. Meanwhile, we’re holding our breath to see what happens with tourism, OSF, wildfires, and drought — along with rising gas, energy, and insurance prices.
What’s of more interest to me at this point: is how many other regions in the US are being affected in like ways?
Today’s music is brought to you by The Kinks. The song is “He’s Evil”. I first heard it when I was in high school.
It’s in the morning mental music stream today because, Trump.
Lyrics:
He comes on smooth, cool, and kind
But he wants your body, not your mind
He’s got style, personality
But he’s the devil in reality
He’ll make you laugh, make you smile
And make you feel good for a while
Wicked smile, decadent grin
He likes school girls, nuns, and virgins
His skin is soft but his mind is hard
He’ll lead you on and then he’ll tear you apart
He’ll treat you rough and he will make you cry
And you will kiss sweet innocence goodbye
And once you’re in, there’ll be no getting out
So look out, look out, look out
Look out, look out, look out
He’s evil, he’s evil, he’s evil, he’s evil, he’s evil
He’s evil, he’s evil, he’s evil, he’s evil, he’s evil
Hope you have an evil-free day, full of grace and peace.
Got my coffee. Time to rock.
Cheers
Squirrel!
My wife and I were driving around, dropping off books at Little Libraries. So far, we’d dropped off twenty-five books at five Little Libraries. Only one stop remained.
I turned off East Main. It was sunny but rain was falling on the windshield.
“Squirrel!” my wife shouted.
I’d seen the squirrel bolting into the street and was braking before my wife said anything.
The squirrel and I both stopped. They turned and ran back to the sidewalk but stayed there.
I edged the car forward.
The squirrel edged forward.
I increased my speed.
So did the squirrel.
“Damn, dude, what are you doing?” I asked the squirrel through the window.
It turned right.
I accelerated away.
Mailing the Card
Mother’s Day is upon us in the US again.
It’s tougher for me this year. A year ago, Mom and Frank, her live-in partner, were residing together at Mom’s house. All of that has changed.
I bought Mom flowers on line a few days ago and scheduled their delivery. Bought her a card, wrote a note, and mailed it. Provided her with a gift card to help with her expenses.
I was thinking, though, how very difficult the time is for my younger sisters. They live not far from Mom. Mothers themselves, it used to be their practice to take Mom to a local restaurant for a Mother’s Day buffet brunch.
Mom loved those times out, raving to me about the food and how nice it was to be with her daughters and their families, to be out at a restaurant with everyone, to see other people.
Change is change. We all do what we can to mitigate its impact. Some things remain out of reach.
Sorry, don’t mean to be a downer. I know that I follow in the steps of many others who have walked this path. In the end, my family has many good memories of this holiday. There are others who never managed to find that level of joy and happiness.
Bottom line for myself: accept the blessings. Reflect on the past.
But let go.
I hope you can balance your memories and changes with the day. If you’re fortunate enough that you and your mom are together and can celebrate the day, I hope you build something wonderful to remember.
Cheers
Monday’s Theme Music – Hope
Ashland, southern Oregon — Monday, May 4, 2026.
It’s cloudy this morning but it’s not a solid mass. Sunshine washes through to warm us. It’s 55 F but we expect a high in the mid to upper 70s, and thunderstorms. We experienced a high of 80 yesterday before thunderstorms cooled us in the mid-afternoon hours.
Trump’s thin ego and weak position has been on display all weekend, beginning on Friday night. Heather Cox Richardson summarized Trump’s frenzied Friday night texts in her May 3, 2026, edition of “Letters from An American”.
- This great uniter called Rep. Jeffries ‘low-IQ’ and a thug
- Trump continued his pattern of spreading fake information, showing an AI-generated image of Jeffries holding a bat
- Likewise, Trump showed an image of him and some of cabinet desecrating the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, a national monument
- Trump added a text showing his worry about the mid-term elections; in his mind, they’re going to be stolen
Trump also makes the fake claim that Democrats destroyed the US after the 2020 elections. History shows otherwise. BTW, gas was a lot cheaper back in President Biden’s days, wasn’t it?
Trump was promising to release the Epstein files, and still hasn’t released them all.
And we also weren’t at war.
Your Trump Quotes of the Day:
Hope is my theme today, though. Last night, I watched a documentary on Netflix about the making of the song, “We Are the World”. The documentary came out two years ago. Here is the Wikipedia summary of the song:
“We Are the World” is a charity single recorded by the supergroup USA for Africa in 1985. It was written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie and produced by Quincy Jones for the album We Are the World to raise money for the 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia. With sales in excess of 20 million physical copies, it is the eighth-best-selling single of all time.
Documentary trailer:
It’s the hopeful nature of the endeavor that made me decide to play the song today. The song was made at a time when there was a lot of hand-wringing as people asked, “We can we do?” It reminds me of now, as so many watch Trump stagger through the world, destroying the nation, peace, and the environment. Come together, focus, and work against him and his reactionary, destructive policies.
The documentary was full of some fascinating moments. Diana Ross took her music to Daryl Hall and asked him to sign it for her because she was his biggest fan. Watching those singers cope with the notes, wording, and situation fired my amazement about how capable and accomplished they are. They were also often star struck by the others in the room.
One of the most hilarious pieces came from an anecdote related Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles talking together. Both are blind. Ray commented that he needed the restroom. Stevie said, “Oh, I’ll show you where it is.” Stevie then led Ray away, leading someone to crack, “The blind are really leading the blind here.”
Hope you have a great day. I’m off to do Food & Friends deliveries with my wife.
Cheers
Saturday’s Theme Music — Stuck
Ashland, southern Oregon — Saturday, May 2, 2026.
Clouds rule our valley this morning. It’s an almost unbroken sea of white and gray but thin enough to let sporadic sunshine sneak in and out. 59 F now, we’re anticipating a high of 77 today. Again.
Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL! has recommenced. After Trump successfully grifted Republicans in Congress into believing that Trump’s Iran War is over, Trump has turned his sights to Cuba.
To recap:
- Eastern Pacific/Caribbean – killed 181 to 186 people while destroying 40 ‘drug boats’
- Venezuela: abducted the nation’s president and first lady
- Greenland: threatened to take it in the name of peace
- Iran bombed it twice
- October 2025, to ‘obliterate’ its nuclear capability
- February 2025 to now, because of its nuclear threat
- Now — CUBA!
Donald Trump says US will take over Cuba ‘almost immediately’
Yet, the Epstein files remain unreleased.
Trump’s approval ratings are dropping, and his disapproval ratings are falling.
High food, gas, and oil prices challenge US shoppers.
It’s all so Trump. He can’t solve problems, only create them, then lie about what they are, and insist that only he can fix it.
Your Trump Quote of the Day:
“Mark my words.”
Yes, we marked your words, Trump.
“In a February 2016 interview with MSNBC, Trump said the wall would go “probably 35 or 40 feet up.” The height reduction was short-lived, however. Later in the same interview he said “And I heard [Mexican President Vicente Fox] said that we will not pay. Guess what? The wall just got higher.” At rallies in early 2016, Trump repeatedly said the wall gained 10 feet everytime Mexico rejected paying for it.
“At the Republican presidential debate in March he reverted to his earlier claim that “the wall’s 50 feet high.” Later that month at a MSNBC town hall he stated the wall would be “a good 35 feet. It’s getting higher all the time” and reiterated Mexico “will pay in one form or another.” At the same town hall the price of the wall jumped to $10 billion.”
Repeat after me: you can’t believe anything that Trump claims.
Now tell me, who is going to pay for the ballroom? And how much will it cost?
Today’s theme music came as I went about lazily doing things this morning. Papi had been fed and was outside, washing, being a cat. I was lost in thought about a dream and realized, damn, time! So I told myself, “Get it together. Let’s go. Move.”
Hearing that, The Neurons hooked up with a U2 song, and delivered it to my morning mental music stream: “Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of”.
Sample Lyrics
You’ve got to get yourself together
You’ve got stuck in a moment
And you can’t get out of it
The song came out in 2001 — before 9/11. Yet it feels like a perfect summary of our political situation in the US since then, with war, Trump, the Great Recession, etc.
It feels like a moment we’re stuck in, and can’t get out.
I hope the end of today finds you better off than the start of the day, and that you can stack good days upon good days.
Cheers
This Old Thing
My wife carries a small Casio calculator in her purse.
Solar-powered, made of black and gold plastic and black vinyl, the calculator folds. When it’s folded, it’s about the size of a credit card and is as thick as two stacked cards. We bought it for a few hundred yen when we lived in Japan on Okinawa between 1981 and 1985.
We used it last night to balance the checkbook. As we finished, we talked to each other about how amazing it was that the little inexpensive still worked. Back then, the yen to dollar ratio was about 234 to 1.
Over forty years later, it’s a little worn but works perfectly. As I reflected on that, I wondered how many other things I’d ever owned that I could say the same about.
Tuesday’s Theme Music — Enduring
Ashland, Oregon — Tuesday, April 28, 2026.
Spring endures in Ashland. 48, blue skies, clouds, sunshine, high in the mid-sixties expected.
Mom endures in her assisted living facility. My sister couldn’t do the things she enumerated yesterday. Mom remains in the assisted living facility and seems agreeable to selling her house. However, she’s trying to manipulate us in other ways, according to my sister. She said Mom wrote a long text that she wanted sis to share with all of us. My sister refused. Life.
My plumbing endures. Mixed results with the plumber yesterday. Both shutoff valves replaced at the toilets, but the plumber felt only one had a leaking wax seal. When he pulled it, lo, the wood under it was soaked. So, wax ring replaced, toilet put back, but now we need to send someone under the house to examine that area. I’ve been under the house; not fun. We have a low, low crawlspace. But I don’t have the expertise needed for this kind of assessment. Thought about using different cameras to see what it looks like. Still noodling that.
Trump endures, too. It is remarkable but many speculate that Trump staged the attempt on him. While Trump blames ‘the left’, he continues to incite hatred and violence toward others while asking that we be nicer to him.
Part of this is that Trump is a documented liar and cheat. He wants to be feared, liked, respected, admired. As part of his ‘weave’, he’ll say anything but that’s shredded his credibility. We know now he makes grandiose promises and bizarre accusations and declarations; it’s all just air.
Doesn’t help, neither, that within hours of the attempt, Trump was calling to build his White House ballroom because, “Security!” But the WHCD was not in the White House. Even if the ballroom had been done, it wouldn’t have affected what happened at the WHCD.
I will also say that even if Cole Tomas Allen left behind a ‘manifesto’ and seems to have a life, Hollywood has convinced me that creating a legend like that is very possible. While I don’t particularly believe the Trump administration is sanguine enough to get it done, there are some high-tech security firms in his corner who could do it. If I believe Hollywood, so could the CIA.
Why not? It’s the age of deep fakes and AI.
With Trump not being held accountable for his lies and behavior, it’ll probably because worse as others attempt to emulate and duplicate his success as a con artist. More troubling is how his actions undermine our trust and belief in authority.
Meanwhile, the squeeze is on U.S. farmers. They’re in a bad situation: diesel is up, fertilizer is up, interest rates are up, available migrant labor is down, and droughts are in the forecast.
Perhaps they will reconsider who they vote for in November.
Your Trump quote of the day:
“Data from the USDA show that soybean exports to China, as of March 19, are about half the amount they were last year.”
Reminder: we’re into the eighth week of the Trump Iran War. He has no exit plan.
Reminder: the Epstein files have not been completely released.
Reminder: Trump’s popularity is declining and prices are rising.
Expect some new Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL! breaking news soon.
“Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)” ended up in my morning mental music stream. So many bricks being put into place between what we were, what we could become. Trump builds walls to divide and separate, keep the poor in misery and empower the wealthy, along with walls against equality, freedom, science, and education.
Hope you end up in the best possible place when this day is finished. Onward.
Cheers
Sunday’s Theme Music — Memories
Ashland, Oregon — Sunday, April 26, 2026.
Hope your April is going well. We’re saying good-bye to it this week.
It’s a cloudy spring day here. 46 F, our afternoon forecast includes rain and a high of 62. It’s a pretty tableau outside, with shafts of sunlight highlighting green leaves and far off trees rising on the southern mountains.
Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL! opened another line of distraction last night. Shots were reported at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Trump and his staff were hustled away. No one was hurt. Headlines were captured, though.
It seems so obviously planned or a deliberate lapse in security. First, Trump never goes to the dinner but decides to go this year. Second, the reactions afterward by Vance, Trump, etc., seemed false.
Bottom line: Trump really thinks we’re idiots.
The allegedly staged attempt is understandable, though. Trump is desperate. His approval ratings are falling, his war is going bad, prices are rising and everyone is reminding everyone else he said he’d lower prices day one. He said he’d end the Ukraine War before he took office but didn’t. He said, no new wars, and here we are, in another war.
We won’t rehash the Epstein files. He wants them buried. Forgotten. That’s not happening.
After the attempt, Trump then called for Americans to come together and resolve our differences peacefully.
Trump quotes of the day:
Trump has a history of using divisive rhetoric. Now he calls for unity.
I wonder how long it will be after this speech before he calls a political opponent, journalist, Democrat, or woman, a dog or scum?
All this focused The Neurons on Trump’s warped memories and views. “Time Warp” from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” entered the morning mental music stream. I found a Tenacious D cover of it that I enjoyed. Hope you do, too.
Let’s all have a Sunday of peace and unity, along with a little grace, and treat each other like humans.
Cheers
Friday’s Theme Music – Law & Order
Ashland, Oregon — Friday, April 23, 2025.
Rained earlier but a clear blue sky is above us now. Sunshine is warming us. We’re at 47 F but expect to hit the low to mid 70s today, spring weather at its finest.
Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL! continues. Trump announced he’s ‘renovating’ the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool with a pool cover. Classy as ever. He says some suggested covering it with granite; I’m surprised Trump didn’t leap at that, which was basically what he did to the historic White House Rose Gardens.
Trump had to do something. His approval ratings are tanking, and the DOJ announced they ended the criminal probe of the Fed head, Jerome Powell, without any indictments. That’s another failure in Trump’s efforts to persecute political enemies. Some indictments were also tossed because Lindsey Halligan was illegally appointed, which further tarnishes Trump’s reputation.
Your Trump quote of the day:
Trump fired Bondi nine months later as part of Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL!
Trump is right, the Trump administration is THE TALK OF THE WORLD.
They’re talking about how Trump has disrupted world trade and global markets. Many are talking about how Trump caused a 40% increase in gas prices in the US. They are talking about Trump’s disastrous war in Iran, now going into its 8th week. They’re talking about his spat with the Pope and how many people he’s ordered killed in his multiple military operations.
And they’re still talking about Trump and Epstein, and why Trump is so desperate to bury the Epstein files. In that regard, Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL! is backfiring.
The morning mental music stream was filled with “Lawyers, Guns and Money”. The song is by Warren Zevon, and it’s an angry tale about law, order, and things going wrong. This cover is by The Killers.
My hopes and wishes for you is that this is a happy, satisfying, and healthy Friday. Stack days like that, and you can have a good life.
Cheers
