slice of life – Page 10 – Michael Seidel, writer

Ashland, southern Oregon — Tuesday, June 9, 2026.

Lightly rained off and on all day yesterday. We have a marbled sky today, gray and white against blue. Sunshine cuts through the clouds, darkening the mountain’s greenery with shadow islands. 56 F, our high will cut into the mid 70s. I don’t mind; give me this instead of the drought’s extreme dry and the blistering heat that usually strikes.

Gina is on the warpath, as we put it in my household growing up, a carryover from Mom and her generation and those before her. Mom called Gina with reports of theft and the lack of regular cleaning. Mom said that she’s been cleaning her own bathroom floors with wet wipes.

As the most confrontational of my family, Gina charged right in: this needs to be fixed. What’s the ‘or else’ implied? I’m not sure. It might be ‘more Gina’.

My wife got her latest ‘real ID’ yesterday. This one has the star. What will adorn them next?

Getting that for her required an appointment and a visit to the ‘big’ DMV in Medford. It was either go there or camp out at the Ashland DMV every morning and hope the Gods of Bureaucracy were kind.

She took in her birth certificate. Not the real thing, but a tattered, certified ‘photographic reproduction’ created in 1962. Much of the birth certificate’s entries were in cursive. The DMV agent, a very nice person, laughed about the struggles to read cursive, as she hasn’t had to in a while. That led to a sidebar about her children. They don’t know cursive and when she writes notes using cursive, they ask things like, “What language is that?”

That chased us into a conversation about signatures. The DMV agent said anything can be used and recognized as a ‘signature’. From further conversation, it appears that we’re basically going back to ‘making our mark’.

On the Trump side of things, my wife and I were talking about the food prices. My gosh, how they’ve gone up.

This morning had news about Scott Bessent, Trump’s secretary of something, claiming that prices are coming down. I’m sure you can cherry-pick and find some prices have declined. Overall, prices remain UP.

I did a search about Bessent’s claim and saw that he’s made that claim a few times the last several months. And as late as last November – 2025 – he was trying to blame Democrats for the prices. I know from Trump’s latest Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL! pivot, aka the Trump Iran war, that Trump knows that prices are higher. He knows that the war is causing it.

*probably also knows his tariffs are causing them but won’t admit it because that would reveal he’s been wrong all along*

Trump, though, has pivoted. He’s not worried about high prices, affordability, or Americans’ finances, no; he’s saving us from Iranian nukes.

Ironically, of course, that was also the Bush-Cheney claim for the war against Iraq: WMD.

Yes, Trump and the GOP have dragged WMD back out of the closet. They’ve avoided using that phrase. That phrase — WMD — is loaded with baggage for US voters and the world.

It shows that in the end, Trump and the GOP only have three dimensions to their strategy: fear, distract, and cause dis-unity. For when facts, truth, and unity show up, Democrats win, and we move forward. Not evenly, and certainly not perfectly. But we move forward in our efforts against poverty, food deserts, climate change, and real challenges. Not fake challenges that are monsters only in unthinking minds.

Trump’s war is now 101 days old and counting. Iran shot down a helicopter. Trump vowed retaliation. That’s how it works with cease-fires with Trump.

The other big Trump news was about Trump attending the NBA game in New York.

Trump couldn’t make time to go to his son’s small, private wedding, but oh, boy, he loved showing up at an NBA playoff game.
The arrogance and selfishness Trump showed by going to that game, and its impact on fans’ ability to enjoy the game.
Boos rained down on Trump. He heard it and tried to pretend it was cheering. LOL. But he knew it was booing, and he didn’t like it.
A photo showed Trump asleep at the game. Real? I don’t know. But Trump has been shown sleeping at enough events that the photo has legs.
Trump looks really bad. Sick. Tired. OLD. DOTTERING.

Not a good outing for Trump.

Your Trump Quote of the Day:

The Epstein ballroom remains under construction. No new news on who is paying for it.

Trump’s approval continues its slow crash. Disapproval numbers show a sea of red. In a way, Trump is starting to live up to the vision he had of himself as a ‘unifying’ force; unity in disapproval of him and his policies is increasing.

My morning thoughts were about a dream that involved flying. The Neurons were snooping around, found out, and introduced “Aeroplane” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers into the morning mental music stream. Hope you enjoy it.

My hopes for everyone and everything is to go with peace and grace and make life better for all of us. Not just a privileged few.

Cheers

I was at the front door, staring at the corner to my right. My wife joined me.

We stared together. “The big spider is gone,” I said.

She and I looked around to see if the big spider was just outside of its usual location. “I don’t see her,” I announced. “You?”

“Maybe he went somewhere else,” my wife replied.

The big spider is a ‘daddy longlegs’. I always thought it was a female because it was large spider. Spiders need to carry eggs so the larger ones tend to be female.

My wife disagreed. “I read that some large daddy longlegs are males.”

Windows flank our front door. The big spider had been in the right window for months, a sentry against insect invaders. I’d watch her web become larger and larger. Some days, I came in and she was actively adding threads. I couldn’t figure out the design, though. Made no sense to me at all.

We didn’t mind the spider’s presence or its web. Never bothered us, so we didn’t bother her. Papi never gave her a glance. Although he’s gone to chase down the laser’s red dot, he’s rarely interested in bugs, insects, or spiders.

This is a huge contrast to Quinn. Quinn used to go after anything that moved on the floor or wall, swatting and swatting with his little black paw. The thing is, Quinn was a coward. If the critter turned and headed his way, Quinn freaked out, backpedaling and scrambling to get away, trying to bat the thing as he did. I never saw Quinn ever ‘get’ anything, but any blueberries that found the floor were whacked across the room repeatedly until it disappeared under some appliance.

We checked the web for a few more days but the web remained empty. I asked our other resident spiders if they knew what had happened to her. None ever spoke up.

I guess it was just meant to end.

And we never named her. She was always just the big spider.