Tag: oregon

Friday’s Theme Music

We’ve come to Friday. Full stop. What else needs said? Everyone has a Friday sense, a feel for what Friday means for them. We do that with every day, though, depending on schedules and activities, wants and needs, desires and confusion, determination and goals.

Rain is falling on this Oregon coast August 19th. The sun’s reappearance was dampened by clouds but still took place at 6:23 this morning. Turning away from Sol — which often invokes Pink Floyd and someone singing, “On the turning away” — takes place at 8:19 this evening. By that time, we’ll expect to be at 67 F, a small jump from our current 16 C. They say it feels like 60. Whatever, it’s loaded with soft salty fishy oceany fragrances sprinkled with dirt, sand, and asphalt, along with plant smells. Know that melange? It’s a relaxing scent to inhale, one that unfolds the soul and pours out cares, at least for a little while. It also invokes memories for me, of where I’ve been, my present intersection of time, space, and being, and the final leg, who I am. Cue The Who, “Who Are You”.

Falling rain means Elvis Presley for The Neurons, today, though. They could have gone with Blind Melon and “No Rain”, I suppose, but no, they have “Kentucky Rain” (1970) circumambulating my morning mental music stream. Why? Silly one, The Neurons don’t explain their processes and decisions. Perhaps that’s only me. Your Neurons might be much nicer. Well, my neurons are nice, just as wild and free as a clowder of kitties chasing dandelion seeds on the wind.

Here’s the music. Stay positive and test negative. I must go on a coffee quest. (Yes, now The Neurons have folded “The Impossible Dream” into the morning mental music mix.)

Cheers

16

Tuesday’s Theme Music

Good morning. Today is Tuesday, August 24, 2021. We’re into August’s last legs. September begins next week. Autum will take over in a few weeks. 2022 is hurtling toward us with comet speed.

Sunrise and sunset are 6:28 AM and 8:08 PM, respectively. Temps are lower. Just 60 F now. Expect mid-80s by the mid-afternoon.

We’re back to reality. Back home. In Ashland. Spent a week on the Oregon coast. Drove home yesterday. Coming south/east, smoke took over as the dominate feature, rendering trees and mountains into sketchy outlines, killing breathability, locking out blue sky and sunshine. Oregon, 2021: another year of smoke.

Yardwork needs tending. I’ll put on a mask and do it, though philosophical reservations pummel me. Is having a pretty yard really so critical when attaining it means risking your health. Hell, no, of course not. But, property values, the marketing forces reply. Image and impressions. Some suggest, hire someone. Sure, take advantage of another’s weak financial security and force them to sacrifice their health. Makes sense. Ah, but their choice, right? And they need the money. And there is capitalism’s doom loom in its essence.

The boys — Tucker, Boo, and Papi — are happy to have us back. Lot of love time spent with each yesterday. Heads were scratched. Purrs were issued. Comforting was done.

Had the Animals song, “It’s My Life”, in my mental music stream this morning. “Comedown” by Bush. Then Duran Duran replaced those with “Ordinary World”. Somehow, Lost Frequencies came through from 2015 with “Reality”. Just a matter of words with this light tune, really:

Decisions as I go to anywhere I flow
Sometimes I believe, at times I’m rational
I can fly high, I can go low
Today I got a million, tomorrow I don’t know

Stop claiming what you own, don’t think about the show
We’re all playing the same game, waiting on our loan
We’re unknown and known, special and a clone
Hate will make you cautious, love will make you glow

Make me feel the warmth, make me feel the cold
It’s written in our stories, it’s written on the walls
This is our call, we rise and we fall
Dancing in the moonlight, don’t we have it all?

h/t AZLyrics.com

Yes, I’m all over the map this AM. Happy to be home. Sad to be away from the ocean. Relieved my fur friends and home are okay. Appalled by the state of the air, the extended drought, the multitude of wildfires. Depressed by the break in routine, the inability to saunter to a coffee shop to write (see Air Quality, COVID-19 restrictions), humble that I have a life where I can make such choices.

Reality can be great. It can also suck. At the same time.

Stay positive. Test negative. Wear a mask as needed. Get the vax. Have some coffee. Or tea. Wine. Whatever. Enjoy the music. Cheers

2

Shocking Day

The consequences of the Almeda Fire (yeah, not ‘Alameda’), as it’s been declared, are rippling out. It’s named after the little street where the grass fire was first reported. The air is surprisingly clear, declared green by AQI, with a rating of 46, but a smoky odor teases you like a strong memory.

My little town, Ashland, Oregon, was where it started. We suffered some losses of homes. The area to the northwest suffered much more.

A trailer park is gone. Fast food restaurants and homes are gone. A winery.

Continuing into Talent…much of the northern side burned. The Camelot Theater is gone.

On into Phoenix…

Most news services are declaring that the small town of Phoenix, population of forty-five hundred, is gone. The primary road into town is blocked off, so confirmation is yet to come, but Youtube videos taken during the night attest that Phoenix suffered. Information is spotty, as the news services cope with elections, COVID-19, wildfires across the western US, and the snow in Colorado. We’re hampered locally as reporters had to evacuate their homes and the fire burned through a cable affecting at least one service provider. Some early reports said it was a local ISP called jeffnet, but others say it was Spectrum. Maybe it was both.

Those who bundle everything — television, phone, Internet — to one provider suddenly found they weren’t receiving the local emergency alerts, a new consideration offered for you the next time that you’re debating you options.

The fire continued into south Medford, about fifteen miles up the Interstate. That section of city was evacuated, along with the

Damage reports continue seeping in. So many fires are burning that the area lacks the resources to combat them. While towns and cities this part of Jackson County are fighting this fire, a larger fire is consuming another part of the county to our northeast. The county to the west is battling its own blazes, as are towns further north in Oregon. Little help is available.

The wind has abated. This is good news. Cooler temperatures are prevailing, the low nineties, but it’s going to increase again tomorrow and continue to get hotter the rest of the week.

5

Thursday: A Few Things

  1. Still walking. Sounds like I’m bragging, right? I’m talking about exercising. My progress goes up and down. My 28-day average is just 7.51 miles (sixteen thousand plus steps), with my best being last Thursday, ten and quarter miles. I try to get in more, but stuff. I’m in a heavily hilled area. Examining results with where I walk is interesting. My flights will increase to fifty to sixty a day, and my activity level will increase, but my miles decline. That’s because the steep hills really slow me down. Coming down is less of a physical exertion, but requires a lot from my legs to keep from just pitching forward. Great views, though, and getting the exercise outside is worth it.
  2. COVID-19. We have people who shunned masking, attending rallies (see Herman Cain and Tulsa), church, and parties, who are now testing positive and being hospitalized. Some, like Cain, had underlying conditions. Cain is seventy-four, and I guess he’s okay with getting sick, possibly going through what others have endured, and dying, but what about spreading it to others, and putting them through it? Yeah, nobody say this coming.
  3. COVID-19 Redux. Other crazy reports have one, teenagers trying to deliberately contract COVID-19. Let’s play a game and see who can get infected. (Alabama Teens Are Throwing Coronavirus Parties with Cash Rewards for the First to Get Infected.) Oh, the young… Proves that life can be stranger than fiction. Beyond that, some people who are testing positive are refusing to help with tracing. (Party Guests Wouldnt Talk After 9 Tested Positive.) Hit with subpeonas and facing fines of $2000 a day for not helping, they caved. Florida setting new records for their state with ten thousand cases in one day, a one hundred sixty-eight percent rise. Of course, commentators are blaming the protests or riots, and Gov. DeSantis has vowed that Florida wills stay open. Paul Krugman has an interesting threads based on Opentable reservations for Texas, Florida, and Georgia. After reservations rose with re-opening, reservations began declining as positive cases surged. Here in Oregon, cases are rising. Gov. Brown has declared masks mandatory inside businesses, but several sheriffs have declared her policy unconstitutional and have refused to enforce it. I always thought it was up to the courts to decide constitutionally, not the sheriffs, but they know better. Even Oregon State Police aren’t even masking as they enter businesses. To quote one officer who wasn’t wearing a mask, “Fuck Kate Brown.” That’s protecting and serving for ya. Shows why trust and support for police keeps declining; they’re deciding what laws they’ll obey and enforce, and mocking what they don’t like.
  4. I’m not good at celebrating. My sixty-fourth birthday is this week. As with every year, my wife asked me what I want to do to celebrate. I don’t have an answer. Parties don’t generally entice me. Socializing in general doesn’t entice me. She knows these things about me. I feel pressured to ‘do something’ to celebrate to mollify her.
  5. Still painting walls. We have high ceilings in the dining-living-kitchen combo. Three hard to reach corners where the walls and ceiling met. I’ve bought an extender that telescopes out to twelve feet. I have an edger, brush, and roller that can be attached. Control, though, is challenging, and a bit comical, and a strain on the neck, squinting up there at the wall from twelve feet away. Refreshing the paint on them is also an interesting process.

Got my coffee. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

6

Vote By Mail

A vote-by-mail storm has been waxing and waning. I’m a proponent of voting by mail, myself. I served twenty years plus in the military. Stationed all over the world, I voted by mail throughout my career, no problem.

Retired, I settled in California for a decade. As a citizen of that state, I voted in person. Compared to how it was done by mail in the military, it was a pain in the ass.

In 2005, I moved to Oregon. All of Oregon’s voting is done through mail-in ballots. Here’s (roughly) how it goes.

  1. When you get your driver licence, you’re registered to vote.
  2. A few weeks before an election, you get a voter’s guide summarizing measures, proposals and candidates.
  3. Closer to the election date, you receive your ballot. You fill it in at home following the instructions provided, seal it in the envelope, sign the envelope, and return it by midnight on election day. There are specific dates circled around this. We usually have the ballot in hand for ten days, plenty of time to review things and make decisions.
  4. Vote by mail is only part of the equation. Towns have drop boxes for ballots established. Our town’s drop box is by the library’s returned books drop boxes in the downtown area. Drive through or walk up, and put it into the box. Done. The boxes are only opened for the two week period before the election.

That’s the essence. It’s beautifully simple. I recommend it for everyone and anyone.

That is all.

3

Mask Up

Sharing a story. Yeah, anecdotal, about a bus driver, a coughing passenger, and a COVID-19 death. The bus driver is the death in this tale. He was fifty years old.

Wear masks, people. Wear masks. They can save you. I was out yesterday, had to make a supply run. While I was masked and gloved and practiced social distancing. We’d ordered online, and the purchases were delivered to the car’s trunk. While sitting there, I watched the scene. First, I was dismayed by how many were out, looking as if it’s business as usual. Social distancing? What’s that? Counted twenty-seven people as I sat there, awaiting my delivery. Counted five with masks. One with gloves and masks.

When a twentyish employee brought the order out, she wasn’t wearing a mask or gloves. Her arms were bare. I cringed with speculation about her condition.

Oregon — my state (yes, I bought it a number of years ago, so it’s my state — still have the warranty) has over eight hundred cases. Jackson County, where my experience took place, has almost thirty.

First case in Oregon was announced Feb. 29. My wife and I took measures after the possibility of the first case emerged in our area, March 14. Since then, more evidence of the value of masks has emerged as data has rolled in, showing how poorly people are responding to social distancing. My county got a C. I could see why when I was on my supply run yesterday.

Lot of folks were out. Not as heavy as a normal day, no. But less people would’ve been out if Oregon U. were playing a football game.

Yes, I know, some are essential. Thank you to all of them. To the rest, think about why you’re out. Sometimes, we have a need. But if you’re out, take precautions, for your sake, my sake, all of our sake.

The groceries are in the car’s trunk (boot, if you need a translation). There’s nothing perishable. They’ll stay in the trunk for three days. After that, I’ll fetch and clean them, and clean the car. We bought them for the long term, deciding to stock up now rather than waiting for when there are more cases in our area.

Changed clothes in the garage when I returned home, too. Yeah, given all the vectors possible for transmitting something to us (my wife and me), we’ll probably contract it, if we haven’t already. We’re trying to buy time for the world to come up with the resources and vaccines to combat this thing. We’re also trying to keep from spreading the thing.

Hope you’re all doing well at there. Take care. Wear masks. That is all.

4

Afternoon View

Yeah, just thought I’d share my view of the placid Pacific today off of the Oregon coast. Not bad, let me tell ya. I can use to this.

The wine is 14 Hands red blend, btw. Marvelous.

 

 

6

The Greeting Card Dream

I’ve been dreaming, but most of it’s been the standard surviving storms, climbing mountains, and flying stuff. This dream last night was odd, so I thought it worth thinking more about, which translates to writing about it.

I was creating a greeting card. Nothing special about that. It’s something that I’ve done off and on on computers for decades. In this one, though, I was creating a greeting card with the outline of Oregon on the cover. It was a cut-out showing a photo of me with my wife.

Trying to figure out what should go inside, I realized I didn’t know the card’s expected recipient. Closing it to think, I looked at the card’s front and saw that I’d printed, “Wish you were here.” I realized the photo was of us when we were younger.

That made me laugh. Someone was calling me (off dream, if you will). I said, “Just a minute. I’m not done.”

Then, looking at the card, I thought, that could be the basis for a clever line of cards.

End dream.

I woke up smiling.

2

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