Monday’s Theme Music
Mood: lifted.
I begin, it’s Satur — no, wait, it’s Su — oh, damn, we know this is Monday.
It’s Monday, Septembe 25, 2023. As always, I’m surprised that another month is almost ending. Another is close to beginning. We ride the day merry-go-round.
For weather, light gray clouds frost our sky. The sun sometimes escape the cloud cover to present us with a bright glow for a few minutes. Soft rain drifts through Ashlandia.
Smoke has left our area. My sinuses and eyes feel so much better for that. Gone is in the burning and itching, and the congestion and sneezing. Thank you, fates.
We’ve been receiving light rain off and on. Sometimes, it comes so quick, and leaves so fast, hurrying by on cat’s paws, that we have little knowledge it’s been there. We see the drying street and the damp sidewalk. Hindsight can be helpful.
It’s 65 F now, so it’s warmed up but we’ll only kiss 70 F today. That’s good enough for a windy fall day. By the way, I was negligent in not welcoming south of the equator folks to spring. Hope you have one friend of floods, fires, and other disasters.
I’ve always hunted balance, I reckon, balance in work/life, living and loving, doing and dreaming. Oh, yes, and I’ve sought balance between moods, between the dark sides and the sunny, less threatening times. I’m more familiar with my cycles as I’ve gotten older; I know when they arrive. When the darkness comes, I’m ready to curse and give up, walk away from things. I want freedom then, and I feel weary. But I know how to press myself and shut it down and not do anything stupidly impulsive.
Dark days come over me less frequently in my senior years. I’m 67.25 years old, you know. I suspect some of the evening can be attributed to less worry, but also fewer hormones. I’ve also managed to cultivate that calmness that, hey, things aren’t so bad for me. That many things which worry and trouble me are temporary, and that I give these matters a surfeit of attention. Beyond those basics, I find great solace in my writing processes.
Like many Americans, I’m following long stories about Trump’s trials, the potential US government shutdown, various disasters around the world, and Sen. Bob Menendez and the charges against him. Rep. Jeffries had a terrific response to the GOP threats to shut down the goverment. He cited all the times the GOP has done this, referencing their flaccid reasoning for their demands, and pointing out the damage to people and the economy incurred each time. His theme, though: we will not pay the ransom. I embrace his reaction completely.
Meanwhile, on the Menendez front, the evidence is heavy — especially the gold. Hah! But he is innocent until proven guilty. Let justice plow the field and see the results, just as we’re doing with Trump. But if either is guilty, I expect heavy punishments for the crimes against we, the people, that they did while being paid as servants of our nation.
On to music. The morning mental music stream (Trademark insane) is filled with Lucy Spraggan and “Balance”. Surprised?
Not me. The Neurons and I are in tune today. I’m not overly familiar with Lucy Spraggan’s work. I first heard “Balance” online last year. The first several times I listened to it, I was striving to understand the words and message. Eventually, I found enjoyment in the song’s cadence.
Stay pos, if you will, if you can, find your balance and be strong. Here’s the music. Coffee is at hand. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time. Cheers
Fact Checking Trump
Scottie pointed me to ten bears’ fact-checking of Trump’s interview. We expected lies from Trump, and we got ’em.
Friday’s Theme Music
Posting note: once again victimized by WordPress; post went into autosaving mode and never left it. Had to start over, once again. And then, one more time. Sigh. Tech can be capricious but conversely, where would we be without the dang stuff?
Mood: variable, sunny to moody to frustrated to pensive
W-1. Wedding is tomorrow night. Tonight is the meet n’ greet cocktail gig. Don’t know who will attend, so anticipation has a ragged edge. Several sisters and their spouses bowed out. Bummer but they have issues they’re dealing with, such as preparing for surgery or dealing with a teenage son dealing with his newfound health issues. The son loved playing basketball; now, due to fits of dizziness caused by medication used to combat seizures, he can’t play b-ball. His weight has ballooned by twenty pounds and he’s of course, depressed. Not a good place for a fourteen year old or his parents and family.
We’ve moved hotels. The first, a Holiday Inn Express, was chosen for easy access to family and familiarity with the area, Monroeville and Penn Hills. Now we’ve shifted to the Hyatt House in Shadyside, where the wedding will be.
Weather here continues to be big sun and cool air, a pleasant, refreshing, relaxing combo. Sounds like a drink advertisement: “Drink weather, a pleasant, refreshing, relaxing flavor that your body and mind will love.”
Still reeling from the Libya flooding disaster. We just seem to pivot from disaster to disaster: within the past few weeks we surfed from Hawaii’s fires to Morocco’s quakes (over twelve thousand dead) to Hurricane Lee to Libya’s flooding (over one thousand dead) to the tropical storm formerly known as Lee, with some domestic and political drama (auto worker strikes, Hunter Biden’s legal issues, China’s missing defense minister) sprinkled over it to add depths.
Los Neurons have activated Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers with “The Waiting” (1981) in the morning mental music stream (Trademark unheard of). It’s fitting. Although well-practiced in waiting (I’m 67, been married over 48 years, and was in the military for over twenty years, things which all reinforced the need to wait for things to happen), I’m not good at it. After months of slow pacing toward the day, acceleration exploded this week. Suddenly days are falling off the cliff and the moment is here. But that sort of time change happens with many things we’re anticipating, doesn’t it.
Stay pos and be strong, and try to stay sober. I’ll do the same. Hand me that coffee, wouldja? Here’s the beats. Cheers
WTF, Again
It’s time once again for WTF, Again, also sometimes called WTF, America. This is a New Mexico edition.
A white family experienced an emergency when a speeding car hit their pet dog. Jumping into the car with the injured animal, they raced for the nearest vet in an attempt to save their beloved animal. Enroute, they sped past a police car, who gave pursuit and pulled them over.
William Albrecht was driving. According to KRQE’s excellent reporting, he didn’t expect what happened next.
“I imagined if he was going to pull me over for speeding, I’d pull over,” Albrecht told KRQE. “He’d say something to me and then maybe even help us get there. You know, I’ve heard of stories like that before, but that didn’t happen.”
No, that didn’t happen. According to video, the police showed no sympathy and little concern for anything except enforcing their police power. The officer ordered Albrecht out of the car at gunpoint and made him kneel. The officer wasn’t interested in what was going on at all. He just wanted Albrecht to do what he was told, reporting that he felt threatened because Albrecht seemed enraged and had clenched fists in the air.
Note that no video support the officer’s story.
More officers were called to the scene, of course, because this unarmed white man and his wife and son were so damn scary, and Albrecht was handcuffed, of course.
Albrecht was especially distraught because they always ‘support the blue’ and feel that they’d done nothing to warrant this police reaction. It’s easy to imagine that if Albrecht was black, he might have been shot, because it’s happened to so many others. I imagine, too, that the city and police force will stand behind the officer and the wall of blue, and many citizens will support the police, because they support the blue.
According to KRQE, ‘BPD’s policy does call for de-escalation, stating, “the level of force employed must be commensurate with the threat posed by the subject and the seriousness of the situation.”. Yes the BPD police officer was clearly working hard to de-escalate that situation, wasn’t he? His situational awareness was just top notch.
Sadly, the dog passed away, a young boy had a traumatic moment compounded because the officer showed no empathy or concerns, and a family has come to understand why fewer people ‘support the blue’. I’m sorry for the family’s loss.
Sunday’s Theme Music
Mood: spirited
Seems like Indian Summer is on its way here in Ashlandia, where the peaches were sweet and juices this year, and the cherries were no-shows. 64 F now, 82 is today’s high, but get ready; we’re heading into the upper nineties this week.
It’s Sunday, September 10, 2023
Technically, if one can say such a thing for an expression like Indian Summer, it can’t be Indian Summer now, as it’s September, and it’s still summer. According to the sages, Indian Summer happens in October or November, and at least after autumn commences. But they’re not sure about the phrase’s origins, and can only make educated guesses about it. Then, they applied those rules about when it is and isn’t.
Horrific news out of Morocco as the death count after the quake rose and rose. At least 2,000, were killed by the ‘strongest quake in 100 years’, and more were injured and displaced. In other news, someone is killing trees in a wealthy enclave around Sidney, Australia. Locals theorize that someone is doing it to improve their view of the water. Sadly, as one person mentions, property values are all about things like views. It seems totally possibly in this age, doesn’t it? And as another interviewee said, they’ll probably get away with it. Another grrr moment in life.
Playing with Whichbook.net, a tool designed to help you find your next read. I’ve never had a problem finding my next book to read. So many books at there waiting to be read, my problem is that I need to make more time to read them. But that then takes away time from other things. Terrible, ugly circle of time and things to do. But I checked out the tool because I was curious. Twenty-four attributes you can look for in a novel are listed. Things like, “Short, Long”, “Happy, Sad”, “Optimistic, Bleak”. You can select four. A slider feature lets you put greater emphasis on one side of the scale over the other. I suppose it can be useful if you’re really in a muddle about to read or at a lost because you’ve tired of a genre and you’re trying to find something different. It’s interesting that it doesn’t address genre or era.
Once again, The Neurons pried a song out of the vault and tossed it into the morning mental music stream (Trademark fishy) without giving any clues about their logic. In this case, the song began while doing various tasks at home under the general umbrella of housekeeping. Then the song started: “When I think of those East End lights, muggy nights, pink curtains drawn in the room downstairs.” Yes, it’s the 1975 Elton John song, “Someone Saved My Life Tonight”. Although other songs came and went for a while as I cleaned, this song arose in the MMMS this morning. It could just be that The Neurons started roaming through my mind as I worked, bored with what I was doing, and brought up this and those other old songs to alleviate the tedium. But why’d they put it back in the MMMS? Another question which I can’t answer.
Time to commence things, like drinking coffee. Stay pos, be cool, be strong. Here’s the music. Cheers
Friday’s Theme Music
Mood: upbeat
Swaddled in surreal dreams, tucked into bed, left alone by the cats, I slept late and solid. Now I’m back, baby, ready for Friday, September 8, 2023. After clouds gathered like buffalo at a watering hole yesterday afternoon, we passed through the night without wetness falling from the sky, thunder, and lightning. Today brought us impressive sky clarity and blueness. It chilled overnight. Back into the late sixties now, we’re heading into the mid 80s realm.
Reading Peter Navarro was convicted pushed my belief in the US justice system fractionally higher. Hurricane Lee still has me watching anxiously to see what’ll happen. You’re talking Cat 5, sustained winds over 159 MPH, strong enough to easily flatten frame houses.
Interesting article over on NYT about data being delivered by the James Webb Space Telescope and its impact on our knowledge and theories about the Universe’s origins. Confounding and unexpected discoveries have cosmologies saying “Wait, what?” I’m pleased because one theory being considered is whether physics itself is evolving and changing. That’s one of several personal ideas in my quiver, along with the idea that we have many ‘variations’ of time which we haven’t even begun to approach, and that these things are not uniform nor consistent, giving us a much richer tapestry of existence. Fun to ponder with coffee, beer, or wine.
We have a repeat of a song posted in 2017. The Neurons have dug out “Long, Long Way from Home” by Foreigner (1977) and plopped it right into the morning mental music stream (Trademark confounding). I don’t know what aspects of my dreams, thinking, or activities inspired Les Neuros to pop this one out. Trying to figure them out is like understanding quantum mechanics, and I ain’t nowhere near even explaining QM to others. By the way, remember when QM meant a Quinn Martin production? Yes, that’s The Neuries talking.
Okay, a collective demand for coffee is swelling through my corporeal being. Time to move it, move it, move it. Stay strong, be pos, test neg, and carry on. Here’s the music. Cheers
Wednesday’s Theme Music
Mood: sultry
Wednesday in Ashlandia, where the air is clear today, and the people are happy, today. 58 F now, the weather system is expected to deliver a high of 82 this afternoon before the night shift comes on.
Ukraine’s stand against Russia’s land grab continues, which is good for the number of deaths but not anything else. War, what is it good for, you know. This one isn’t good for anything. I’m impressed by Ukraine’s stand and hope that Russia — sorry, Putin — will come to his senses and declare a cease fire. Not holding my breath, though.
I applaud Gov. Kemp’s stand against the false election lie peddlers, aka Trumpists and MAGAts. Nice to hear some principles of law are respected by a few Republicans, at least on this matter. I’m weary of the others and their constant cry about stolen elections. No evidence, turned down in multiple courts, multiple levels, multiple states. Yet their claims keep going. The trail against Trump and gang will be intriguing.
Was some good news when DNA evidence cleared a man of wrongful conviction after five decades. Imagine the weight of being accused and convicted while you know you’re innocence, and all that happens to you in the penal system after such a conviction. Imagine that weight being finally lifted when you’re 72 years old.
Reading about Gary Wright’s death from cancer at a respectable age of 80 — not bad for a rocker — has The Neurons playing “Dream Weaver” (1975) for me in my morning mental music stream (Trademark giftwrapped). It helps that I had several dreams of interest to me. With Buffett Harwell, and Wright’s death, existence lived up to the ‘always in threes’ billing of celebrities dying.
Stay pos and strong, and raise your head and look forward to what you can do. I’ll do the same after I have some strong black coffee. Here’s the music. Cheers
Michael Seidel, writer 