Another sun filled blue sky day cups Ashlandia. It’s a quiet one out there. Like it’s a holiday and everyone else has gone away. They don’t know about the 70 degrees F and sun-kissed wind toying with our hair in Ashlandia. Clouds are gathering and we’ll top off our temperatures at 75 plus F today.

Papi is loving this weather, prancing in and out of the house with his tail up. Whenever we go out back, he emerges from his sun nap to visit with us.

This, for the record, is May 25, 2025, part of the Memorial Day holiday weekend in the United States. As always, my wife and I compare our childhood Memorial Days. For her, it was Decoration Day. Her family would make the pilgrimage by car to the family’s graveyards. They had two, one for Mom’s family, and the other for Dad’s line. Both were born and raised in southern West Virginia and had a family line that went back several hundred years. The graveyard was cleaned up, if needed, and fresh flowers were put on the graves.

My family, in contrast, were relatively new, in some ways. Mom’s side came over on the Mayflower and kept moving west. She was born in Turin, Iowa in the 1930s. Her grandfather helped establish the town, and her mother was born in Turin in 1910. Dad’s father’s family came over in 1899, went to Pittsburgh, PA, and stayed. His mother’s family arrived in Pittsburgh a little bit later and also stayed.

Memorial Day for me, then, wasn’t and isn’t about graves, but about sports, family, and food. As I aged, it did become more about military service and sacrifice. Now it’s just my wife and I out here in Oregon. Her mobility and diet are limited, and Memorial Day has been relegated to just another spot on the calendar.

My theme music today relates to a conversation with my wife this morning. A friend highlighted a post for me on Facebook. I don’t go much on Facebook. My wife doesn’t have a FB account but uses mine to lurk, so she saw the post and told me about it. The post is about misunderstood song lyrics — mondegreens. One song was “Panama” by Van Halen. A popular mondegreen, unfamiliar to me, is that they’re singing “padded bra!” instead of “Panama!” Reading this to me, my wife sang the “padded bra!” part, cracking herself up. The Neurons immediately shipped the song into the morning mental music stream, where it shares time with my thoughts.

My wife and I were in the office this morning, each pursuing our computer agendas. Suddenly she bursts, “There’s a FEMA carveout for Trump’s residences in the bill that was just passed.” She was livid. “Trump doesn’t send FEMA to help anyone any more but if one of his places are hit, he’s taken care of. This is ridiculous! This is disgusting! He’s supposed to be the servant of the people, not the other way around. When will those idiots wake up?”

A few minutes later and she launched into Trump’s latest crypto scam, piling on about how he’s using the presidency to enrich herself. I commiserate but don’t otherwise respond. I don’t want to go down the rabbit hole of how Trump and the Greedy Ol’ Trump Party is enshittifying the United States. I’m taking the day off from it.

Hope you have the best day you can. I’m gonna try to do the same. Coffee is at hand. And away we go.