Summer is pushing more blue sky and sunshine on us. Chastised clouds have slipped the area and the sun reigns supreme. 70 F at 11 AM, we’re anticipating…78 F as our high. Sweet to me.
Papi the butter butt floof loves this warm weather. He came in this morning. We shared a purrful visit, then he stuffed himself on kibble, wet food, treats, and water. Now he’s floofsconced in the vinca. Only his sweet ginger and white face is visible among the green leaves.
Today’s music arrived with a boost from my wife. I was listening to a video which played a few seconds of every Billboard weekly number one hit song in the United States from the beginning of 1960 to the end of 1969. This came to my attention via 1440’s deep dive into the history of rock and roll.
My wife came in as the video advanced through “These Boots Are Made for Walking”, “The Ballad of the Green Berets”, “(You’re My) Soul and Inspiration”, “Good Lovin'”, and “Monday, Monday”.
“What year are you listening to?” she asked.
“Guess,” I replied.
She tried 1970, 1968, and then 1965. “1966,” I said. A little later, Bobbie Gentry sang, “Harper Valley PTA”.
My wife sang along and then said, “I love that song. But the very first record I ever wanted was “Society’s Child” by Janis Ian. I think I was thirteen. I asked for it for Christmas but I didn’t get it.”
I looked it up. “That came out in 1967.”
“How old was I then?”
“Ten.”
Anyway, The Neurons slipped “Society’s Child” into the morning mental music stream when I wasn’t paying attention. My wife thought the song had hit number one; I never told her that it didn’t break the top 10. Of course, bigotry and racism and it’s controversial topic of interracial dating kept it from getting airtime.
I’m at the coffee shop, my fix at hand. There was a line and a hold up. As I waited, the manager came around with my drink, along with the side of ice water which I always request. “Where do you want these, Michael?” she asked.
Laughing, I answered, “I can take them,” but she insisted on delivering them to my table for me.
Donald Trump has instructed Republican lawmakers to “erase” the events of January 6, a Democratic congressman said, as efforts to honor Capitol police officers with a memorial plaque remain stalled more than two years after its legal deadline.
Following the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot, during which over 140 officers were injured and five died in its aftermath, Congress passed legislation requiring a commemorative plaque to be installed by March 2023 to honor the officers’ bravery.
Yet, the National Association of Police Organizations, International Union of Police Associations, and FOP supported Trump last year. Trump, documented and celebrated for the art of the lie. Trump, first convicted felon to become POTUS. Trump, who dismisses due process. More FAFO at work.
Yes, those who let history be rewritten soon find it biting them in the ass.
Howard Lutnick is out there making an ass out of himself more, showing how disconnected he remains from reality.
Speaking at Axios’ Building the Future event in Washington on Wednesday, Lutnick said of the tariffs: “This is on since April. It’s not that the tariff is coming; it’s on.”
“Have any of you felt any of it?” Lutnick asked, to which several audience members responded with an audible “yes.”
The Trump Regime believes that it’s going just swell. They’re masters of oblivion.
I’m pleased not to be traveling by air this holiday season.
Certain factors about air travel are well established for 2025. Mix a shortage of air traffic controllers with a cup of failures in the software and systems used for air traffic control, stir in a trend of aircraft accidents and incidents and top with thunderstorms and tornadoes. Good luck to you if you’re flying.
It pays to play with the Greedy Ol’ Trump Party in the White House.
Boeing has reached a $1.1 billion deal with the Department of Justice that will allow it to avoid prosecution for two crashes involving its 737 Max jetliners that killed a total of 346 people.
“This kind of non-prosecution deal is unprecedented and obviously wrong for the deadliest corporate crime in U.S. history. My families will object and hope to convince the court to reject it,” Paul Cassell, a professor at the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law who is representing the families, said in the statement.
Once again, there’s a Trump tweet out there that calls attention to his thin skin and deep ignorance.
Whether this sort of tweet is a childish impulse caused by a general lack of maturity, his narcissism, aging, or dementia, what he shows is a lack of understanding about individuals and their rights to make political statements. It’s about the Bill of Rights and freedom of speech. Yes, we know from previous words and actions, Trumps shows little knowledge of how those pieces fit together. Of course, if Springsteen had expressed love and admiration for Trump, Trump would have instantly responded about how GREAT SPRINGSTEEN IS, WHAT A GREAT AMERICAN!!! That’s the Trump. Regardless, it again shows he’s unfit for office.
That’s the level of ignorance we’re dealing with in Trump. Which really, really, really makes me wonder about his MAGA supporters. I do not question why the GOP supports him, or Project 2025, or oligarchs and billionaires. He (and his MAGAs) are very useful idiots for them.
Tell you what. I’ve just made up three new words*: ignorant, bloviating, idiot. I think they’re going to get a lot of use, especially when people think, speak, write, or remember Donald J. Trump.
*Yes, I know I didn’t make up those words. Who do you take me for? Donald J. Trump?
If you want to save democracy in the U.S., here’s a reminder to protest against people who would crown themselves as our rulers, like Trump. Yes, I know our democracy is not perfect. It can be improved. Letting it fall to a self-serving, empathyless individual like Donald Trump is not the answer. Nor is letting it get torn down to be rebuilt. Better to save it now, fix what he and the Gutless Old Trump Party have broken, and then work on improving from there. Cheers
Sunshine and warm air is spilling throug Ashlandia once again. 61 F now, Thirstda, May 8, 2025, will overtake the gorgeous day known as May 7, 2025. 80 F will be bestowed on us. Sure, it’ll be windy, that but’s okay.
The cat is happy, if I’m judging his tail right. Standing upright, like a sundial gnomon, we could use it to tell the time but he won’t stand still long enough. After eating, visiting, and grooming, he resumed his back fence residency.
Being out back depressed me. Wasn’t the sunshine. No. That’s fine and welcomed. It’s the lack of bees and butterflies. No humming birds, either. Also missing were the regular Jay visitors. All have desserted us. I hope they come back soon.
We discussed politics last night at the beery thingy. Like, re-opening Alcatraz. Such a gennyus move…not. Only a simpleton would think it is. Right now, simpletons are running the nation.
I’m late to posting this because of computer issues. I suspect it’s update stuff but basically, I’ll be busy doing stuff and thump, the computer gets
Four songs hover in the extended morning mental music stream. A common theme threads through them: small towns.
From 1975: “My Little Town”, Simon & Garfunkel. “Billboard described the song as “a good, nostalgic Americana style song that builds throughout.”[4]Cash Box said it has “catchy piano beneath historic harmony growing into a brass hook ending” and that “you’ll remember the melody by the third time you hear it.”
From 1985: “My Hometown” by Bruce Springsteen. This was a sad reflection on the demise of small towns in the United States, the end of mills, the end of jobs, stores closed up and boarded up. Reflected in the lyrics are the tensions experienced in the 1960s over segregation and integration and the violence which resulted.
1985 also brought us, “Small Town” by John Mellencamp. “”I wanted to write a song that said, ‘You don’t have to live in New York or Los Angeles to live a full life or enjoy your life.’ I was never one of those guys that grew up and thought, ‘I need to get out of here.’ It never dawned on me. I just valued having a family and staying close to friends.” h/t to Wikipedia.org
Then, from 2023, “Try That In A Small Town,” performed by Jason Aldean and written by a committee. In a review of Highway Desperado for Allmusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine stated “All its success was based on how the single and video deliberately pushed cultural buttons; strip those away, and ‘Try That in a Small Town’ is just another in a long line of crawling, glowering, arena-country from Aldean.”
Chris Willman of Variety called it “the most contemptible country song of the decade [and] the video is worse”, saying that the song “is close to being the most cynical song ever written about the implicit moral superiority of having a limited number of neighbors” and is “a list of hellishly dystopian tropes about city evils that seems half-borrowed from Hank Williams Jr.‘s ‘A Country Boy Can Survive‘, half-borrowed from the Book of Revelation“. He said that the video “conflates the act of protesting with violent crime”.[7] Marcus K. Dowling of The Tennessean wrote that “online critics highlighted the following song lyrics as emblematic of songs heightening pro-gun violence and lynching sentiments upon many in his rural, small-town fanbase”.
Tennessee state representative Justin Jones tweeted “As Tennessee lawmakers, we have an obligation to condemn Jason Aldean’s heinous song calling for racist violence … What a shameful vision of gun extremism and vigilantism.”[24] He explicitly referred to the song as a “heinous vile racist song” which attempts to normalize “racist, violence, vigilantism and white nationalism” in a later interview on CNN.
Kevin M. Kruse, professor of history at Princeton University specializing in 20th-century America, called out the song for “calling for people who aren’t law enforcement to mete out violence against people who haven’t broken any laws,” a callout to “law and order” that is “actually lawlessnness.” h/t to wikipedia.org
For me, the subject of small towns arose as my adopted small town copes with growth and development, rising costs and diminishing prospects. We’re wrestling with the need to change but can’t agree on how to change. As with many small towns, few want to abandon ‘what worked before’. That leaves us stymied about what to do and how to do it. As exhibited in “Try That In A Small Town”, the professed preference is to gut the other side.
I’m aware I do that a lot about the MAGAs myself. We don’t see eye to eye. We lack agreement about what are facts and history, and cause and effect. The polarization depicted in the last of these four songs is becoming the norm. Part of the background noise is about gun violence. As part of the left, I’m tired of hearing about thoughts and prayers and the need to arm teachers and increase security at schools, fairs, airports, malls, and other places whenever another mass shooting takes place. Put forward is this video is the threat to escalate violence.
How do we bridge these gaps?
It’s interesting, to, that the right wing is pushing to return to the values of previous years. To what year do they want to return? To the 1960s, when civil unrest and protests swept the nation and the small towns’ death rattles began? To further back, like the 1950s, when the United States entered into trade and defense agreements and taxes were high on the wealthy? Or earlier, when lynchings of Blacks were not uncommon, women lacked rights, and deaths from back street abortions were high, and the young died from measles and other diseases.
Let’s pause, perhaps, and remember how those big box stores, like Amazon, Walmart, Lowe’s, Home Depot, grand supporters of Trump and the GOTP, drove a spike through many small town businesses. Yes, and Starbucks and Costco, too.
The day is ending. Hope it was a good one for you. It was pretty good for me. Let’s do it again tomorrow. Cheers
My body and mind were unanimous. More sleep was wanted. Yesterday was busy with an Easter Brunch. We’d been preparing all week. 10:15, we set off to go help with setup. By 11:30, all were there. A smorgasbord awaited. Mexican quiche, salmon with asparagus, salmon and cream cheese rolls. Dutch babies and lemon cake for dessert. Salads. Juices and libation to make it chippier. Easter egg hunt and korn hole. A half dozen present shared their latest stories about demonstrating against Trump in Ashland and Medford. 2 PM, it was all over.
Over to a friend’s house for his 93rd birthday. Just family and my wife and I. He has health issues and didn’t want a gathering. After singing the birthday song, witnessing the candle blowout, and visiting for two hours, we headed home to unpack and wash everything.
Blue skies were the day’s order. Light wind kept it from becoming too warm. 69 F was the tops. Today seems like it looked over yesterday’s shoulder and copied the weather.
I reminded my body and mind that sleeping in wasn’t an option. Today is Food & Friends deliveries. Crank up the car, pick up the food, and roll through the streets on route 3 to knock on doors and ring bells and drop off a small meal in southeastern Ashlandia. I’m the driver; my wife makes the deliveries.
Then, finally, it’ll be back to writing at the coffee shop for a few hours, and then home to wash clothes and attend yard work. The grass and weeds are gladded by the sunshine. It’s all shooting up fast.
Papi is beside himself with happiness by the time the air warms. It’s rolled up to 49 F now. He heads outside and sniffs out the sunshine. Then wind sniffs him out and he’s back in. It’s a never-ending game of ‘In & Out’!
The mountain air loads the night with temperatures that dribble down into the mid thirties. That temp feels colder. But we’re on the regular Ashlandia spring track. Only troubling thing is we’re not seeing any bees. They’re normally all over the place with their buzzing presence. Their absence disturbs.
Yesterday’s Easter Trump dump again illuminated his pathetic ways. That vitriol and lie-filled text mess is a sign of an insecure, demented, ignorant person. Trump’s dark forces again rose to show what a sinister and ugly place the United States is becoming under his hand as two young and wholly innocent German tourists were detained and deported, all for the crime of not having accommodations already reserved. Such fools are now in charge. Then there’s Trump’s undocumented bullshit broadside against Abrego Garcia. WTF, United States. Is this truly your vision?
With those thoughts spinning through my groovy organic thought machine, The Neurons spun up Aerosmith in the morning mental music stream: “Same Old Song and Dance”. Last time I used this ditty was in 2019. Trump occupied the White House then. I wrote back on that day,
Reading the news yesterday and today, I was shaking my head, partially laughing while crying. You know, it was the same old story.
That led to me streaming Aerosmith.
It’s the same old story Same old song and dance, my friend It’s the same old story Same old story Same old song and dance
It was an easy song to identify with when I was a teenager and the song was released. When you asked questions, you often heard, “That’s just how it is. That’s how it goes.” It was always the same old song and dance, no matter what you were asked.
So here we go. Trump is attacking and bullying whatever he can — law, courts, common sense, history, morality, it’s all open to a Trump attack. He’s like a puppy gnawing on clothes, shoes, and furniture. Nothing is safe from his brainless chewing. A puppy does far less damage, though. A puppy will grow out of it. Trump, with his deteriorating and aging mental capacity, will get worse.
Same ol’ story, same ol’ song and dance.
Have the best day you can, my friend. Fueled with coffee, I’ll rock on for another day, it seems. Cheers
I want to believe. But the rug was pulled out from under me last November. I’m leery of trust and hope. They used to be my friends. Now they let me down.
I read a Brian Tyler Cohen post. Petitioning the King. Cohen writes well. Intelligently. Persuasively. Mr, Cohen says,
It’s clear by now that Trump’s imposition of tariffs has been a disaster. The market has crashed, wiping away all gains since he took office, companies are laying off employees by the hundreds, fears of a recession are reaching a fever pitch, and far from pressuring other countries into coming to the negotiating table, they’re going around the United States and entering into new trade agreements without us. New reporting suggests that Japan and South Korea are coordinating with China to respond to our tariffs. How’s that for 4D chess? At a time when American superiority is threatened by China, Trump is driving other countries into the arms of China.
And so given how disastrous these tariffs are on the economy, and given how potent the issue of high costs are (Trump himself admitted that he won the 2024 election as a result of high costs), it would lend itself to reason that he would want to avoid this like the plague. Even someone like Trump (who can’t bring himself to admit fault because he views any capitulation as a sign of weakness) can see how disastrous this is and should want to cut his losses.
Which raises the question: why plow ahead?
Right on dubious schedule, Trump announced a 90 day suspension on tariffs for all nations except his arch enemy, home to his products, China. So Trump is not plowing ahead.
Could it be that his falling poll numbers changed Trump’s mind?
Perhaps it was the turning of the worms like Joe Rogan, Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, and Thom Tillis.
Maybe Trump had a good game of golf. It could be that he saw that shares of DJT were down, affecting his personal wealth, or he noticed that crytocurrency had precipitiously dropped.
I personally doubt it was any of those things. They would indicate logic, consistency, personal reflection, things that Trump doesn’t do. I think he did it to amuse himself because he likes being the talk of the world. He’s that kind of egomaniac.
I think Brian Tyler Cohen may posit it’s something else. He finishes:
Now comes the hopeful part: we’re wise to his plan.
There is a reason that the Trump administration suddenly rescinded the nomination of Elise Stefanik to be UN ambassador, fearing Republicans would lose a seat in a district that Trump won by 21 points in November. And they saw what happened in Wisconsin, where Trump-endorsed conservative candidate Brad Schimel lost by 10 points in a 50-50 state. And they saw what happened in Florida, where even though Democrats lost a pair of special elections, the races saw an average 16-point swing to the left. And on Saturday, they saw millions of Americans take to the streets to protest their overreach. This matters because this administration derives its power from the perception that it is untouchable and can act with impunity. The fact that Americans are standing up, turning out, and fighting back threatens their entire power structure. I know it doesn’t feel like we have much to celebrate, but I want to be clear: the energy, the momentum, and the enthusiasm is on one side right now, and it’s not Donald Trump’s.
Boy, I’d sure like to believe Mr. Cohen. But one thing my recent experience has taught me is, don’t get too hopeful.
That’s probably Trump’s plan: keep folks like me from getting too hopeful.
Michael Seidel, writer 