Tag: summer

Munda’s Theme Music

We’ve made it through another cycle, and we’re set up to repeat it again. I mean the week, of course. Today is May 26, 2025. The month is singing its last notes. Many associate Memorial Day in the U.S. with the beginning of summer. I’m a traditionalist, though, and recognize summer’s start with the June solstice, as we’re north of the equator. The weather doesn’t care what we’re calling the season; it’s gonna do as it wants. Today, it looks like it wants more cloudiness baking with some sunshine. 60 F now, we’re be roaming the seventies through the late afternoon.

My bright mood has expired. Darkness has soldiered in. That’s my standard cycle. I just need deep breaths and patience to survive it, and then more normal moods will rotate in, and it’ll be up and down again for a while. That’s me.

In other cycle news, Jamelle Bouie’s opinion piece of May 24, 2025, recounted the Conservative routine: the promise of tax cuts which will strengthen the economy.

“With each new Republican administration, it is the same promise. With each round of tax cuts, it is the same result: vast benefits for the wealthiest Americans and a pittance for everyone else. There is little growth but widening inequality and an even starker gap between the haves and have-nots.“

Reagan promised tax cuts in 1981. Bush Senior was forced into tax increases to address the damage done by Reagan’s cuts. Dubya promised tax cuts, and then Trump in 2017, and now Trump in 2025. Each time those cuts came, the economy did not do better. It took Democrats in charge to clean up the economic mess and get the economy on track again. And here we go again. Will it work this time when it failed every other effort? Time will tell.

But as Mr. Bouie writes of this latest effort:

We are now looking at another round of Republican tax cuts. Yet again the claim is that this will benefit most Americans. “The next phase of our plan to deliver the greatest economy in history is for this Congress to pass tax cuts for everybody,” Trump said in his March 4 address to Congress. But as Paul Krugman points out in his Substack newsletter, this latest package is both a shameless giveaway to the rich and a ruinous cut to safety net programs for lower-income and working Americans.

Today’s song comes from reading about the viral corruption spreading under the Trump Regime. Out of that GRRRRRRRRRR news review, The Neurons dropped “Perry Mason” by Ozzy into the morning mental music stream. Perry Mason is a fictitious lawyer of high repute. He saved the innocent and delivered the guilty for a serving of justice. He came onto the scene in a series of Erle Stanley Gardner novels in the 1930s and joined the pop culture as a television show starring Raymond Burr in the 1950s and 1960s. Yes, I know of the later series. Anyway… Ozzy Osbourne put some words to music by guitarist Zakk Wylde and keyboard player John Sinclair. The song’s chorus goes,

Who can we get on the case?
We need Perry Mason
Someone to put you in place
Calling Perry Mason again
Again

h/t Genius.com

Yep, we need Perry Mason…again…to ferret out all the illegal antics pushed by the Trump Regime and get us some justice.

Rock on into the new week. Coffee is putting me on its shoulders one more time. Here we go. Happy Memorial Day to my fellow Americans. Cheers

1

Saturda’s Theme Music

Spring has sprung for loads of pastels in Ashlandia. Enjoy it while you can. Summer is rocketing toward us. For today is Saturday, April 19, 2025. It’s 62 F and feels colder due to cloud cover. Those clouds menace with rain, but the weather seers say that isn’t the case for us in Ashlandia today. Instead, it’ll stay mostly cloudy with some sun and spring up to 71 F.

The weather displeases the cat. Giving up on consistent sunshine and warmth, he’s accepted shelter in the living room where he resides on the Malabar chair. This is his favorite site. He does move around and can surprise us with his location.

Fer instance, I awoke at 4 AM. Did I hear something? Was it the cat?

The bladder said, “Hey, I can use a break.”

Grumbling about giving my bladder a break in the middle of the night, I used the required facilities. My mind was awake enough to wonder if the cat was in or out. If he was out, did he want in?

I looked around the bedroom, dining room, hallway, and living room. No cat in sight. He wasn’t at the front door. I changed direction for the backdoor. As I walked, I became aware of a padding noise at my side.

“Where do you come from?” I asked the cat.

He rushed to the door. “Let me out.”

Today’s song offering comes out of my mind’s old song vault. The Neurons pulled it up after I read news stories and wondered if I was in the right reality. Sometimes I think that someone pulled the old switcheroo on me and changed reality without telling me. Maybe they’re doing this as a prank. It’s not funny to me, but I can see how others could be secretly watching and laughing. Maybe aliens did it. They were tired of abducting and probing us, so now they’re switching realities on us. It could explain a lot.

Aware of these thoughts, The Neurons dragged out “Unreal Reality” and dropped it into my morning mental music stream. This is a song by The Kinks that came out in the 1960s. I’m surprised The Neurons could find it.

Here are the words. Feel free to sing along. It’s an unusual piece for rock ‘n roll. h/t to Lyrics.com

All that I see, seems so unreal to me, 
Is it the truth or is it only fantasy, 
Is it a dream or is it unreal reality? 
All around me is such unreality, 
Optical illusions as far as my eyes can see, 
Is the whole thing a fake, or the ultimate reality? 
That house is so big that it reaches right up to the clouds 
It's got hundreds of windows, so the people inside can look out, 
And they look down below and wonder what it's all about. 
Look at that lady she got silver all over her face, 
Is she a human being or a creature from outer space, 
Is she authentic or phoney, I guess it's just a matter of taste. 
Oh because they can feel it, it's gotta be the real thing, 
Because they can touch it, it's gotta be reality. 
If they say it's real, it's gotta be the real thing. 
See that fella, looking all spick and span, 
Is he a tailor's dummy or is he a real man, 
Is he genuine, or straight off the assembly line. 
All round me is such unreality, 
Optical illusions as far as my eyes can see, 
Is the whole thing a fake or the ultimate reality? 
Is it a dream, or is it the real reality?

Reality or not, the coffee is in me, summoning energy from the depths of my being, which, admittedly, are pretty shallow. Hope your reality works out well for you. Here we go, one more time. Cheers

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Goldilocks

Daily writing prompt
What is your favorite type of weather?
View all responses

I’ve become a sunshine person. It wasn’t always like this. When I was young, I’d go out in weather that had others questioning my sanity. As I grabbed coats, shoes, whatever was needed, people would eye me with aghast expressions. “You’re going out in that?”

“Sure,” I’d answer, “it’s just a little rain.” Even if was a monsoon. Rain, snow, sleet, wind, nothing kept me in. Not even thunder and lightning. “Just going for a walk.”

I loved pitting myself against the elements. Felt like a hero out of a 19th century novel, just a rugged individual surviving against the elements. I thought myself quite heroic. Especially when I knew there was somewhere safe, warm, and secure to retreat to when I had my fill of being heroic.

Different these days. “Where’s the sun?” I ask. I search all of the sky, even though I know where it’s supposed to be. I know where east is. I know the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. I know those directions. Still, I sweep the sky in search of the sun, in case it got off its leash.

I don’t usually get an answer to my question about the sun’s location. Others always think it rhetorical. Probably because everyone knows where the sun is going. Not like it’s a wandering cat.

I used to be more indifferent to the sun. Now, I’m very picky. I don’t want it too bright, too hot, or too much. I have become Goldilocks sampling the three bears’ stuff.

I like a good warm sunshine. Not enough for sweat these days. Used to be — but you know. I don’t want to sweat. I want to be warm, with enough sunshine that wearing sunglasses make sense. Not that it really matters to me: I’m almost always wearing sunglasses outside. Sometimes I wear them inside.

“Why don’t you take off your sunglasses?” my wife will say. “You’re inside now.”

“I’m fine.”

“You look ridiculous.”

I shrug. I’m used to that.

5

Thirstda’s Theme Music

Bold sunshine lured my eyes open. It’s summer, this hoople head’s addled neurons suggested.

It’s not summer. This is Thirstda, March 20, 2025. We’re stepping into spring’s threshold. I went onto the back patio with Papi the ginger blade, aka Butter Butt. The Butt did a little springish frolocking. “I agree,” I said. “It feels like a cold spring morning.” Daffs have pushed their yellow heads out. It’s 37 F but feels like 51 F, and is expected to climb to 45 plus F. Clouds have already hustled in, least we get too optimistic about the blue sky and sunshine. The weather ‘they’ couch their forecast with rain warnings. Not bad for Ashlandia’s first day of spring in 2025.

The addled Neurons have snuck a 2014 John Mellencamp song into the morning mental music stream. It’s a bit cynical. “Lawless Times” rails against the lack of trust that had begun emerging twenty years ago, the latest in many cycles of distrust – the trust in banks, business, goverment, trust in ourselves and one another, were all going down in flames, and here we are. It takes a certain amount of vetting to reach a point where you trust someone. Even though, you keep an eye on them. They might Schumer you.

The song started because I was in a Walmart the day before yesterday. My wife was looking for a kitchen item. Walmart was supposed to have it. I don’t think I’ve been in a Walmart in over a year. It’s not one of my regular shopping stops. Talk about a police state. Cameras everywhere. Signs at the end of every aisle reminding you that cameras are watching. And so many items were physically locked behind glass doors or in cages. Like all camping gear. Cosmetics. Vacuum cleaners. Is this the common American experience now? And that’s when “Lawless Times” first fired up. Walmart sure as hell doesn’t trust its customers. Of course, I do not trust PINO Trusk and his regime. I don’t trust the Roberts Court. I don’t trust the GOTP. I especially don’t trust Elon Reeve Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg. I sure as hell don’t trust JD Vance and Tommy Tuberville, MTG and Lauren Boebert.

Well, I don’t trust myself
I don’t trust you
Don’t get too sick
It’ll be the end of you
Don’t expect a helping hand
If you fall down
And if you want to steal this song
It can be easily loaded down
My, my, my
These are lawless times
My, my, my
These are lawless times
So you might ask yourself
Hey, what can I do?
I can’t trust the future
What’s been promised to you
Learn the rules hard and fast
Take care of yourself
And keep your eyes open
On everybody else

h/t Genius.com

Too much truth in that song but it has a catchy rhythm. You might end up, as I do, singing it to yourself as you go through your day.

I’ve invited coffee in again and it’s lit a small flame under The Neurons. Hope you day starts with promise and ends with satisfaction. Let’s rock it. Cheers

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Munda’s Theme Music

Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of winter. Yes, winter has compromised Nat King Cole’s hit about summer. Fact is, the Ashlandia day facing us here in southern Oregon are all of those things he uses to describe summer. A blotted, bloated face of puffy and sullen gray clouds mumble hello. Weak sunshine is acting like a wallflower trying not to get noticed. 44 F now, the temperature is gonna skyrocket to 45 F, they tell us. Betting window is open on rain.

This is Munda, February 17, 2025.

First, a quick reminder. Friday, Feb. 28, 2025, is a planned day of boycott. Hope you’ll participate. We are. The more the merrier. While it’s targeted on corporations which rolled back DEI policies under PINO Trusk’s encouragement, like Amazon, Target, Best Buy, PBS, NPR, Coca Cola, Pepsico, McDonald’s, Starbucks, and more. Costco is one of the few major corporations which stood firm against DEI changes. Share the news. Make it real. It begins at 00:01 AM on Feb 28th and ends at 11:59 PM.

We should all be insulted by Trusk’s moves against DEI. Unity is needed for a strong nation. There was a reason why DEI evolved. PINO Trusk and his disgusting rinions are trying to pretend those things didn’t exist or didn’t matter. Total bullshit. Beyond that, call out to those companies: don’t you realize how much stronger and more successful via DEI? No, you don’t. You’re too weak, craven, and greedy. Shame on you. Kudos to Costco.

Yeah, going with the Bangles’ version of “Hazy Day of Winter” today for the theme music. It’s a Simon & Garfunkel original but the Bangles successfully covered it in a more rock and roll style in 1987. But in the spirit of inclusion, I’m including both versions. The Bangles version has overwhelmed the S&A 1966 original in the morning mental music stream. That’s how it sometimes goes.

Bonus offering: Haim.

As the song says, “Hang onto your hopes, my friend.”

Coffee and I have reached detente again via some kitchen diplomacy. I’m sailing along on a stream of caffeine. Keep it real and have the best one you can. Cheers

3

Thursday’s Wandering Thoughts

Coffee warms my throat as I watch fat dark gray clouds sailing across the sky. Sunlight clears the clouds, dramatically lighting their heights. Looks like fall, alright.

Many people live by the weather when it comes to the season. I’m one of those. My attire today are jeans. Long pants. Long sleeve shirt.

Wind, chill, and rain, and lack of sunshine pulled the decision to don jeans free of my brain cells. Much as anything, it’s that feel to the air, the color of the sky, and the mood it all presents as winds chase leaves down the street, that the seasonal change is really here.

So, I’m wearing jeans, looking back on the hot, smoky summer, shifting my gaze toward the future, to the coming winter, and what it might bring.

Much like my ancestors probably did. Without the jeans.

0

DIY Update

I realized that I never issued a DIY update on my HVAC.

Background, the AC had ceased. I checked the usual issues and found nada. The A/C capacitator worked. 240 was reaching the unit. Nothing was coming from the thermostat.

After replacing the furnace’s stepdown transformer for the furnace and the furnace control panel and seeing no success, I tested the furnace cover’s safety switch. No power there. I tested the power into the junction box. No power.

The switch for the furnace is mounted on the wall not far from the furnace, right above the entrance into the space as you climb up the ladder from the garage. Not an easy access space. To check that box, I’d need to throw the circuit breaker for the furnace. That would kill any useful light in the attic space.

I mounted my trouble light up there on a rafter. Connecting it with an extension cord, I plugged it into a garage wall socket below. Light was restored. My largest concern was that my right ankle would roll on me while I was standing on the ladder. Although I wore a brace on it, it weighed on my mind. I imagined it rolling and toppling off the ladder. Such an imagination. I should write fiction.

Pulling the cover off the switch, I discovered the quick connects in it fried. Replacing the unit was short work after purchasing a new one.

Job done. Just in time for cold nights and morning. Really satisfying to hear that furnace start and run.

2

Tuesday’s Theme Music

Mood: waitinitis

Tuesday has slid in safe on October 8, 2024. Autmer continues holding the skies. Temp now feels like it’s 65 F but it’s only 56 F. What kind of madness is the weather doing to us, making the temperature feel so different from its actual temp? Makes me suspicious of the weather. Next thing you know, it’ll be raining but will feel like snow. Or it’ll be snowing or it’ll feel like sun.

The high will reach for the upper seventies and maybe get to the low eighties. Depends on its reach. Who knows what it’ll feel like? I think it’ll feel pretty good, no matter what the final temp. That range is ideal to me. Sky is again solidly blue. Yellow and red leaves are drifting from trees. The mood is shifting toward fall. People are decorating their houses for Halloween. So really get into it, but we’re more circumspect.

The price of candy is shocking us. My wife pointed it out at BiMart the other day: 5 pounds of candy for almost $40. Wow! Costco has 30 candy bars on sale for $32. Like, those are crazy prices to the boy who first began buying candy bars as a nickel treat. A nickel now won’t get you within smelling distance of the wrapper.

But this is change’s nature. Older friends talk in amazed tones about how the housing prices have changed. One was offered the chance to buy 6 acres for $50 grand decades ago. The deal outraged him. “Are you crazy?” he asked his friend. “I thought you were giving me a deal.”

“That is a deal,” the friend replied.

My buddy eventually bought a decade later for much, much more. Divided into quarter acre lots, those lots were now going $20 to $50 grand each. Things change, and prices are part of it.

Since I’m on my box and ranting, used to be that I got a haircut for one dollar. One dollar! Now I exit $25 to $30 lighter.

Housing, of course, is center stage in the price debate. Out here, ‘affordable housing’ is jumping over $200 to $300 K. Solution: built more housing. Problem: land. Water. Infrastructure. Rising costs of building more getting pushed further up by the rising need to build more.

Like many, I’m watching Hurricane Milton ploughing toward Florida. Was a cat 5 but has weakened to a 4 and may be a 3 before it hits, thank goodness. Fingers crossed.

Forgot to mention the SOU Pride Parade which took place the other day. I was kept from attending by other plans but I hear it went well. Here’s a link to the Ashland.news coverage with some pix. We also didn’t attend the OSF Gala but we heard from friends who didn’t attend that it was fun and raised $750 K for the festival’s 100 year celebration coming up.

We’re down to 28 days until election day. 28 days. We could make a movie about it. Call it “28 Days” or “28 Days Later”.

Thinking of that gap from here to there and the waiting, news, campaigning and hyperbole which must be endured encouraged The Neurons to fire up Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. “The Waiting” from 1981 is rolling through the morning mental music stream (Trademark delayed). Wikipedia’s entry quotes Petty as being inspired by something Janis Jopin said.

Frontman Tom Petty explained that the song’s title was inspired by a quote from fellow musician Janis Joplin, who once said of touring, “I love being onstage and everything else is just waiting.”[4] He recalled:

That’s where I think I got it from … [Roger] McGuinn swears that he said it to me. Maybe he did. I don’t think so. I think I got it from the Janis Joplin quote. That’s where it stuck in my mind. I don’t think she said, ‘The waiting is the hardest part,’ but it was something to that effect: ‘Everything else is just waiting.’ And so that’s where that came from.

Got me to thinking…imagine Tom Petty and Janis Joplin performing live together. Would that have been cool or what?

Stay positive, be strong, and vote blue in 2024. Coffee has cast its magic in me. Here’s the music. Cheers

2

Someday’s Wandering Thoughts

Fall has slid into the interseason space called autmer. Autumn with summer flavors. Night is mostly when we feel autumn. The air has some cold chompers. And the day looks like autumn. But then the sun strikes and summer strolls in.

All this causes a hot and cold thing at night. We’re not running heat nor air conditioning. Windows are closed day and night, except for mid-morning and mid-evening spurts to freshen the air. I end up running hot and cold in bed and sleep with one leg and that half of my body out from other the covers and the other side keeping warm under the sheets and blankets. Whole Jekyll/Hyde thing.

It’s always my left side that is out, too hot to be under cover. The right side wants shelter. Feels like my body might be striving to create some overworked political metaphor.

0

Tuesday’s Theme Music

Mood: Moontalized

And just like that, summer struck back. A friend wrote in an email about meeting up for a beer, “Is it PC to refer to this pleasant time of year as ‘Indian Summer?’ I sure hope so.”

Yep, autumn and autmer and sumumn have all been displaced for summer, if we use the weather as a ruler. It’s September 24, 2024 on the calendar. Here in Ashlandia, that should translate to autumn, or ‘fall’ as many locals call it. But with the low only dipping into the middle sixties last night and an expected high of 95 F, this Tuesday has summer scrawled all over it. Add in a deep blue sky tinged with hazy edges, and it feels like June has fallen on us once again.

There’s all manner of news spreading across the wires today. Good stuff like new 2024 election trends and Trump’s claim that if he loses this time, he’s done. WTF news about a blizzard in South Africa. Gold hit an all-time high, Texas is suing the Biden Administration, and Hurricane John is a cat 3 striking Mexico.

Oh, and Earth is closer to getting that ‘second moon’ we’ve always hoped for, though it’ll be just a temporary addition. Call it a trial run. We’ll need to be careful in how the new moon is introduced and ensure that it gets along with the old Moon. It’s used to being the only moon, so there’s some trepidation that the new and old moon will go after each other.

I was outside in the backyard at 3 AM (yes, it was a cat thing) when I was overtaken by the stunningly clear sky and brilliant, bold moonshine. I stood out there alone for a while, sucking in the fresh air and stargazing. That probably contributed to The Neurons posting a Thin Lizzy song, “Dancing in the Moonlight (It’s Caught Me in Its Spotlight)” in the morning mental music stream (Trademark two-step). The song came out in ’77 but it doesn’t get much radio play in the U.S. these days.

Stay positive, be strong, lean forward, and vote blue in 2024. I have reached the bottom of my coffee cup, so I am facing a personal sad time. Here’s the music! Cheers

2

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