Ashlandia, where people wear athletic gear except for five people in suits. It’s 68 F under a haze blanket with expectations of 91 degrees F. Today is Saturday, August 26, 2023, the last Saturday of August as it stands. The month sped by like excited electrons. We’re coming soon to the part of the time experience where the month changes once again. Coming up fast is the moment where the year changes once again.
Smoke? Yeah, it’s out there, a wall encircling the city, waiting to encroach. Folks I speak with are much like me, can we get some smoke-free time again? More than a few hours, more than a day? Long enough to start feeling better about existence and breathe some fresh air and get a few things done?
And there are whole areas where the summer has been worse for them. Imagine being in places in Canada where they’ve endured it all summer. Criminy.
The Neurons took up an odd route for today’s theme music. Opening blinds, doors, windows this AM, on alert for the perverting smoke, seeing that it’s somewhat clear — only unhealthy air today, woo-hoo! — I said to myself, I says, leave before the smoke comes in. Well, Der Neurons turned that into the Artic Monkeys song from 2006, “Leave Before the Lights Come On”, faster than you can say “Lock him up!” Never saw the video before today but it was another intriguing vid tale. Hope you watch it.
Now it’s time for the coffee race. Grab your cup. Ready – go! Stay pos and be strong. Here’s the music, and away we go. Cheers
Today is Friday, August 25, 2023, in Ashlandia, where the smoke is thick and the air is cool.
Had to take my car in and drop it off. 1. Great to have a break in routines and tedium. 2. Hated to have a break in my routines. 3. It felt early out there.
In the car shop were posters showing different aspects of cars and repairs — electrical, starter system, suspension, brakes, etc. I stood in front of them remembering fixing those things are different cars during my life. Not a love of doing it for me; I’m not mechanically minded. Too poor to pay someone to do it. But that honed that whole idea in me, fix me it myself. Modern cars are much different. And I have more money. Plus, the lack of facilities — the military provided us workshops and facilities to fix our cars — means I take my cars and drop them off for others to tend them. There aren’t any points and plugs to changed, no rotor. I only check fluids and air pressures in this generation of my life. It’s one of many things which have changed, and are still changing.
Had some chuckles over Donald Trump’s height and weight claims when he was booked in: 6’3 and 215 pounds. One person noted, that’s almost the same height and weight as Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow, and very close to other quarterbacks, such Tom Brady. Patrick Mahones, KC Chiefs QB, is an inch shorter but ten pounds heavier than DJT. Somehow, the weight looks very different on Trump. Must be the football padding and uniform…right? Right. What a vain, vain man and liar DJT shows himself to be. Make me hurt for his supporters who unflinchingly support and believe him — many claim. I wonder.
From that, it was an easy route for The Neurons to dial up a Three Dog Night song called “Liar” from 1971 and slot it into the morning mental music stream (Trademark surprising). No more to say about it. Most of the chorus is the group loudly singing, “Liar!”
For the record, it’s smoky out there, around here. 70 F now, we’ll clip the hear in the low nineties today. Stay pos and be cool. Hand me my coffee. Here we go. Cheers
Thursday, August 24, 2023. Ashlandia, where the crows are busy and the cats are wistful.
It’s like a different day out there. Sunny, good visibility, 68 F, light mountain breezes. The change chased me to the fire map to check on the fires’ statuses. Were they all miraculously put out overnight? No. Seems, after looking at the air quality map to see what the air is like, that we’re the beneficiary of some southeasterly wind. I’ll take it. With the cleared air and a different front moving in, today’s high will kick the mid nineties.
Didn’t watch the GOP debate last night. Just didn’t feel it in my bones. So I’m playing catch up, reading reports about what I missed. Except for DeSantis to a small degree — he held back more than I expected — they presented the impressions and delivered the expected comments. Nothing in any of the accounts I read this morning made me want to rethink who these candidates were.
Instead, I found myself more drawn in by two murder cases. Both killers were young women. One — 28 y.o. — killed a vocal coach by shoving them to the pavement and walking away; the other — 19, 18 when she killed — took her car up to 100 MPH and steered the vehicle into a building, killing her two passengers. The first will spend eight years in jail; the second was sentenced to fifteen years to life, eligible for parole in 15 years. Why my interest? Well, why did they do these things? What were they thinking? Anger played a role in both killings, although smoking marijuana was part of both stories. Both seemed to surrender control and acted out; these are the results. Very human and tragic. They received a lot of print and coverage. Maybe I just missed coverage of the others, but I searched for other young women who killed, and easily found three of the same age range and time period in other states in the news. Odd how the press clamps onto certain matters. Odd, perhaps, how they attracted my attention.
The Neurons have stuffed “Texarkana” by R.E.M (1991) into the morning mental music stream (Trademark fickle). Apparently, this was out of a dream sequence. My wife was mimicking Mick Jagger in the dream and I told her, “Don’t worry, I’ll catch you if you fall.” ‘Catch me if I fall’ is repeated in “Texarkana”. When I first listened to the album, I would like for “Catch Me If I Fall” as a song title. Texarkana? Whaaattt? Anyway, here we are.
Stay well, be strong and pos. My coffee-fueled day has begun; here we go. Let’s hear the music first. Cheers
Blue sky above my house, and clear sunshine bathing the area. But east is a smoky white wall curtailing the distance to the horizon; a gray west wall does the same. Smoky tentacles tease my nose. The walls close in, graying the blue sky.
This is Wednesday, August 23, 2023 in Ashlandia, where the pickleball courts are empty and the theater performances are cancelled – smoke for the outside venues, COVID-19 for other places. 60 F out now, a high of 86 F might be reached. Sadly, I noticed that it was dark before 8:30 last night. Yes, sunset has rolled back to 8 PM here. The long days of light are closing down already. School ramps up next week. Coincidence? Or dark conspiracy?
News: fires. Trump. Debate. Bridge collapse in India. BRICS. Rodgers and State Farm. SoCal and Baja recovering from Hilary. Grand Canyon flooding. India lands a craft on the moon. COVID cases rising. Celebrity stuff. Hoobastank.
Screech. Back up. Hoobastank?
Yes, they’re in the news for their video and song, “The Reason”. It was released almost twenty years ago. I knew the song so I watched the video, because I’d never seen it. It was an intriguing laugher. The Neurons have thrust it into the morning mental music stream (Trademark ancient). Who am I to argue with Les Neurons? No, I won’t argue with them, but I will try to placate them with coffee in the morning. They sometimes also like beer in the afternoon. They’re also very fond of watermelon.
Okay, let’s hitch this day up and get underway. Yeeha. Stay pos, be strong, and brush your teeth. Coffee is available in the kitchen. Here’s the ancient Hoobastank video. Have a better one. Cheers
Hey, it’s flip day. Monday, August 27, 2023. Call it flip day. Happens to be a Monday, but it’s a day when you flip your energies from weekend mode – or time-off setting – to business mode or work setting. It’s a state of mind. For me, this day is about businesses being open so I can call and make appointments to get matters attended.
Nature is having its way with us on the west coast. Count among the issues, fires, thunderstorms with lightning strikes, tropical storm with heavy rain, and earthquakes. Asteroid strike and Godzilla are missing but they could show up at any minute.
Ashlandia, where the deer roam everywhere and bears and cougars are frequent visitors, is cool and humid now. After smoke in the morning and in and out of the day, a rainstorm squatted over us and dumped a solid wet load. Struck the temperature down from the eighties into the low seventies like the current GOP taking down the last fifty years of progress.
So, 66 here. Supposed to clip mid-eighties today. Hints of smoke playing with the sky’s color, blending with the clouds, and striking our olfactory nerves. Several hundred lightning strikes recorded in our region this weekend. A few started fires. Those are being attended. Can’t get an update. Net keeps dropping on us. Been out a dozen times in the last twenty-four. Probably the storms, right?
My assumption is that the storms are wonkifying the net connections. Funny how the ancient diagnostics built into this Windows-based system assumes otherwise. They’re about checking your connections. Plugging in an ethernet connection. Checking your adapter. Making sure you’re not in sleep mode or your wireless is turned off. Like, when was the last time that these were problems? In my purview, the problems are generally outside of my walls; it’s the net down, and typically due to weather or power outages somewhere.
To deal with the outages, I’m writing posts in Word with the hope that a connection will come and I can post them. If you’re reading this, that worked. Update to that: went to the coffee shop. They have a connection. So what’s up at my house? Something to pursue once I go home.
Would it surprise anyone to hear that Les Neurons are feeding the morning mental music stream (Trademark stormy) with music about weather? There’s “Stormy” by Classics IV, and that blues staple, “Stormy Monday”, along with songs that feature rain, like “Here Comes the Rain Again” by the Eurythmics, and that one by Guns ‘n Roses, “Sweet Child of Mine”, and its lines about a woman’s hair:
“Her hair reminds me of a warm safe place, where as a child I’d hide. And pray for the thunder and the rain to quietly pass me by.”
Then we had B.J. Thomas (“Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head”). CCR offered a few songs about rain. The Beatles had one. “Fire and Rain”, James Taylor, very appropriate. Elvis. GNR again with “November Rain.” Can we overlook Prince and “Purple Rain” or that ancient classic, “Singing in the Rain”? My Neurons didn’t. How ‘bout “Laughter in the Rain”, “It’s Raining Men”, and “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain”? That’s just a drop in the rain bucket. I’m sure your neurons are peppering your thoughts with more.
But in a quiet moment, as the clouds were contemplated and the humid cool air threw itself against my face, came Gordon Lightfoot with “Rainy Day People” (1975). Cuz there’s a line, there, “Rainy day people all know it hangs on a piece of mind.”
Okay, coffee has landed. Stay pos, be strong, and have a good flipday. Fingers crossed and positive thoughts for all the peoples of the world dealing with weather disasters. Here’s the music. Cheers
Sunday, August 20, 2023. Ashlandia, where the sky tries to stay blue but the smoke rolls in from the south. 74 degrees F, eyeing 88 F as the heat’s top end.
Smoke is back. Air is filthy. Very unhealthy to hazardous. Easterly wind blowing but it’s so light, leaves are barely stirred, and the smoke mocks the effort. Not as bad as the other morning; the sun displays some semblance of its standard morning coloring. Depressing is rolling in. Coughing. Stuffed up noses. Watering, itchy eyes.
The cats aren’t pleased, neither, confined to quarters, their normal routines halted. Forced change is not fun. Well, Tucker is okay with it. He’s older and is, okay, fine, I’ll just nap in here. But Papi sometimes breaks into crys of freedom. Then I tell him no and he walks off.
In another of those WTF America stories, a woman, mother of nine, the story says, was shot and killed by a man angered by the rainbow flag on display at her store. Senseless.
Weather eye on Hurricane Hilary and California. Fire eye on Hawaii and their recovery. Fire eye also on California, Canada, and Oregon. Heat eye on most of the US.
The Neurons loaded the morning mental music stream (Trademark preposterous) with Ricky Martin, “Livin’ La Vida Loca”. Song came out in 1999. I mostly remember it from my Paris business trip a year, maybe two, later, when I went about singing living la vida mocha. Yes, I am a silly person. Figure it’s a good song for this era, when it all seems a bit crazy. I can speculate that most eras had people thinking that it’s a little nuts outside.
Speaking of mocha, I’m havin’ my coffee now. Stay pos, be strong, maybe have a little fun. Pretend it’s life and it’s worth living, even if you live it a little crazy. Here’s the tune. Cheers
Thankful this morning, for the firefighters around the world fighting fires, including those fighting fires in Oregon and California. Thankful for a lot of things which I have and enjoy, including good health, comfort, and security. Thankful, too, for the easterly wind which took the smoke out of our end of the valley. I’m cognizant that our good fortune is now someone else’s misfortune. Smoke goes somewhere as long as the fires burn.
The hourglass called Saturday, August 18, 2023, is running. Sands are pouring through it. The sands of August and the sands of 2023 are also rushing through through glasses. Guess they’re not truly hourglasses; just time glasses. Do they measure time’s passing, or are these mythical things creating time for us?
It’s a cool morning. A little smoke still crazes the sky’s blue facade and discolors small patches but the sun is the right color. 63 F was the overnight low. We’re up to 70 F now but will climb to 92 F in Ashlandia, where the political differences could be called the Deer Party and the Dog Party. Then there’s the Parks Party. DeP, Dop, and PaP.
The cats are so pleased that smoke vacated the area and cool air rides the day. After making morning rounds of the year, they staked out positions, washed, and settled into napping configurations.
I’m looking forward to the GOP debate coming up. First, I’m impressed that the GOP has verified that it’s about money; only those gaining enough monetary donations are able to participate. I guess the theory is, the potential candidates put themselves out there and convince people to give to more their candidacy forward. Works on a built-in assumption that all donors have the same power and money to give, contrary to the reality we’ve seen perpetually demonstrated since the age of capitalism began. But who are we to attempt to force reality onto the GOP? That, demonstratively, no longer works.
Although, fairness, the GOP is not homogeneous. The NYTimes published an article about the GOP’s factions this week. They included estimates about how much of the GOP each faction made up. While many have held that five factions dominate the GOP, the NYT identified six ‘types’ of voters in the GOP. The interesting aspect of reading this is that while they specify only 36% of GOP members support Trump, they show by their groupings that only one, Moderate Establishment, which accounts for 14% of the party, is the only Never Trump group. Dominated by an alliance between Trump’s biggest support factions, the Right Wing and the he rest either enthusiastically endorse Trump or they’re willing to swallow it and support him because they either agree with his positions or because they like him more than they like Democrats. Not really that different from Democrats and their position on President Biden.
For music, The Neurons have fed “Crossroads” by Cream (1968) into the morning mental music stream (Trademark fishy). This is their cover and interpretation of Robert Johnson’s “Cross Roads Blues”, layering it with a faster tempo and hard rock sound. I figure it’s right for this day, these times, when every day in the US seems to be about being at some kind of cross roads regarding the rule of law, ethics, democracy, climate change, etc. The rest of the world also seems at cross roads about multiple matters as well; some are the same as the ones affecting us in the US. So it’s a good song for t’day.
Have coffee, will travel. Be brave, be strong, be positive, and keep on being you. Here’s the music. Cheers
Might as well call this Smokeday. It’s August 18, 2023. The air in Ashlandia, where the roads are wide and the sidewalks are numerous, has gone into the trashcan. Yesterday, Purple Air showed the air quality jumping into the hazardous range and lurking there for the night’s entirety. Today finds it still mostly in the hazardous or unhealthy zones. We’ve gone all Twilight Zone apocalypse out there, with the mountains hidden behind he dirty air and no view of the valley. We could be the last island of civilization, if this view is the guide.
We’d been hoping we’d miss the smoky air this year. So far, we had done well, but lightning lit up the Klamath complex southwest of us, and its smoke drops a pall over the region. The fire centers on Happy Camp, which was also the source of our 2014 nasty air.
In good news, we’ve dropped out of the high temperatures. 72 F now, today’s high end is believed to be 92 F but I postulate that this thick smoke will keep us from reaching that high. Winds are from the east, clearing the smoke out right now. Sunshine has cleared its way after a long red dawn morning. It’s raining on the coast, which will put some moisture in the air around Happy Camp. That keeps us hope that the fire won’t be around into November.
The cats aren’t pleased with the smoke, as we’re keeping them in. Tucker the elder is fine with it but Papi issued declarations that staying in was not in his bucket list. He mostly makes his home in the master bath, with its cool and quiet, I suppose, and no one can slip up on him without being sighted. I’m thinking of Tucker in that, who gets passive-aggressive at times, and outright aggressive at others. TC is being mellow, though, but already a little under the weather with some respiratory issues brought on by the smoke. I’ll give him some Lysine L, which generally helps him deal.
Songwise, I have Croce in the morning mental music stream (Trademark worthy). Jim Croce arrived there after a convo in which someone said, “You just don’t do that.” My Neurons leaped into action, adding, “You don’t pull on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind, you don’t pull the mask off the ol’ Lone Ranger, and you don’t mess around with Jim.” So here we are with “You Don’t Mess Around With Jim”, some fun story-telling music from Jim Croce and 1972.
Time to coffee up and face the day. Be strong, stay pos, and don’t get sucked into the vortex of negativity. Here’s the music. Cheers
August 17, in the year of 2023, has graced us with Thursday, the after Lousy Wednesday and the day before Waiting Friday. It’s cooler, cloudier today in Ashlandia, where the workers are busy and the politicians are idle. We expect some storms of thunder, maybe rain, with 91 F as the designated stopping point for the day’s heat. 83 F right now, pretty comfortable, except the humidity is pressing in to make its point that rain could be coming.
Met with the beer gang last night, ten strong. Our first toast, breaking with standards, was to Fani Willis. She’s the Trump breaker indicting the former POTUS with some RICO brew that looks strong on paper and has gained some gushing reviews. First blush, it doesn’t look good for Trump and his gang of eighteen. These were the criminal masterminds trying to work an overthrow of the 2020 election, you know, the one Trump claims to have been stolen after he was soundly beaten. Refusing to bow to reality or lack of evidence, he’s kept on about it. My beer comrades are all looking forward to the moment when Fani Willis brings the wood.
You know Trump is concerned about this turn because he’s come out fast with multiple false claims. He says he has facts that will immediately exonerate him. Then he attacked Willis’ reputation by claiming that she had affairs (pretty laughable, coming from Trump and his shady history), while trying to undermine her role by spewing some lies about Atlanta having a record number of murders, suggesting it would be better use of the DA’s time to pursue murderers. Of course, all these things have been debunked, but since when are facts important in Trump World?
For music, I started singing “This Wheel’s on Fire” to myself yesterday while walking. Written by B. Dylan and Rick Danko, numerous entities have covered the song since its release, but I was singing The Band’s classic rendition, released last century. I think The Neurons’ inspiration was the walk to the brewery where we’d sip our beers. Bit smoky, spattering rain through ninety-nine degree heat, I wondered where the smoke originated, speculating about fires. Then the song started. Still remains in my morning mental music stream (Trademark worthy).
Alright, be strong, be informed, and stay positive. Time to rock Thursday so we can move on to Waiting Friday. Here’s the music. Cheers
Hypercharged weather continues in Ashlandia, where the pastries are gluten free and the coffee is organic and fair trade.
August 16, 2023 and Wednesday are here, for the records. If you’ve got an August bucket list, you might want to be applying yourself. Same with the summer BL. Summer’s end is rushing up like a horse coming to the Derby’s finish line.
It’s 89 with smoke here right now, 11:30 AM. I’m late getting started due to two matters. One, AC didn’t kick on last night. Lots of cursing about it, basic troubleshooting commenced, and a loose wire in the low-voltage sub system was discovered on the outside condenser unit. Reconnected and taped with electrical tape just for luck. Second matter was a plea for help from some friends for their Roku. It wasn’t running! One of my first questions was, did you change the remote’s batteries? They had. After we did a hard reboot on their system and were still getting nowhere, new batteries were installed. Voila.
Gonna be 102 F today, they tell us. Reached 102 or so at my house, on my system yesterday but the town only saw an official high of 99 F yesterday. Fortunately, yesterday’s cooldown was fast. Doors and windows were opened at 8 PM as the temperature drop commenced and fell into the low eights. Night took over and dropped us into the mid-seventies. Rain and thunderstorms are forecast for 7 PM this evening. We’ll see if they come, but they can be good, lowering the ground and air temp, but also could be dangerous, starting new fires with lightning. Fingers crossed about which way it goes.
Air quality is moderate due to smoke. Which fire is gifting us that? Don’t know. Might be a combo of all four — yes there’s a new one to the south, in the Klamath National Forest — as the heat dome has killed most breezes. Damn still air out there.
I’ve been reading more political news. One matter that disturbs me is how often Republicans say that they need to get rid of Democrats or liberals. Not win office over them; not work with them; get rid of them. Sad state when one half of the country basically professes to hate the other half. I don’t hear liberals/Democrats/Progressives talking about getting rid of the GOP. They talk about voting them out of office or maybe trying to discuss issues with them. Frankly, I am at a loss about their thinking many times, although I think it’s because they’ve sealed themselves in red wing information bubbles. Yes, red wing is deliberate; it’s beyond right wing, the home of the MAGAs. Like, we regularly check Red State to see what’s being reported over there. The skewing of news and information creates a harsh noise. Little of it aligns with what the rest of the world is thinking about. Like, Steve Bannon is already trying to blame Hawaii’s disaster on liberals, claiming that ‘actors’ kept people from fighting the fire or evacuating, etc., as these ‘actors’ started more fires. Evidence? Yes, just like his other claims, he has none.
It’s troubling, though. You can’t advance, you can’t be secure, you can’t grow as a society, nation, or civilization, if one half insists on spreading misinformation and fomenting distrust of the other. How are we to work together in such an environment? And that seems to be the red wing goal. To what end or purpose do they pursue such an agenda? It seems like, logically, it can only be for power. But then, much of what they do seems to defy the logic which the rest of us try to employ. Of course, from extensive polling and interviews in which we try to understand what they’re thinking, we’ve learned that the red wing supporters are mostly rural, dominated by men, and seem to feel victimized by by the rest of us and left behind. They blame ‘elites’, women, or racial minorities for their struggles as factories were moved to other nations.
Anyway, thanks to that, The Neurons have fired up Starship in the morning mental music stream (Trademark gifted). I’m hearing “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” from 1987. The Neurons point out that it’s about building a world together. That’s what’s hoped and needed. Silly Neurons, they’re frequently squinting at the world through rose colored lenses.
And now we come to the coffee drinking segment of the blog. Make mine black, of course. Stay pos and be strong, my friends. Here we go, one more time.
But let’s listen to some music first. Cheers
Post script: here I go, in the WordPress autosave bug that keeps a post from being published. Can’t even click ‘Publish’. Seems to happen at least once a week for me. Only thing to do is copy it all to a new post. Just the things I need to open up my cranky side.
Michael Seidel, writer 