Tag: the pretenders

Thirstda’s Theme Music

After a beautiful Ashlandia day yesterday, today has improved to a better version of itself. Yesterday punched up to 89 F under rich sunshine. Today’s sky is bluer and cloud-free. But other conditions have been checked, so our high has dropped to the low 80s region. 60 degree F air armed with a cool mountain breeze moved through the windows and open doors this AM, kissing us with a refreshing chill. Little too chill for my wife, who turned on her little space heater.

This is Thirtsda, May 29, 2025. We’re sailing on through the second quarter of 2025. What a time it has been. Trump has earned a new name, based on his cowardly behavior. TACO means “Trump always chickens out”. Calling him TACO Trump would be repetitive. Should just be PINO TACO, or as I frequently absently call him in my mind, “Little PINO Trump”. Now, air warning: Donald Trump doesn’t like his new nickname, TACO. Feels it’s hurtful, mean, unfair. As he’s never flinched from smirking and bestowing hateful and cruel nicknames on others, I think we should spread it far and use it often.

Other Little PINO TACO news has the mango boi losing out in the courts and getting sued more frequently.

Donald Trump, Karoline Leavitt Sued by Deaf Association, “This Practice Abruptly Ended”

Judge extends order blocking revocation of Harvard’s enrollment of foreign students

Stocks waver after a federal court halted Trump’s tariffs

NPR sues Trump over funding cuts amid ongoing battle between administration and press

Oh, and as Republicans try to gush about how wonderful Little PINO TACO is doing, they’re getting facts in the face:

‘Easily Checkable Lies’: Republican Senator Roasted Over Wildly Inaccurate Post Trying to Hype Trump’s Wins In Office

The Pretenders own my morning mental music stream with a 1984 offering. The Neurons found it in my mental basement and cued it up after I read more news stories last night and this morning. My response has often been, “Time will tell.” Reacting to that, The Neurons gave me “Time the Avenger”. The song is a story told to a 1980s rock rhythm about time’s influence on lives and relationships.

The writing mind is getting greased and primed by a new load of coffee. Here we go, on into another day. Cheers

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Sa’day’s Theme Music

Talk around the coffee table yesterday was that everyone wants to go see Asteroid City. Terrific cast. Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Tom Hanks. If you’re a Wes fan, critics suggest you’ll like the film. If you’re not his fan, you might want to pass. We are his fans, so we might go. The subject is in the air. Don’t know where the currents will take it.

It’s Sa’day, July 8, 2023. Lots of room left in July at this point. Summer has slowed for us here in Ashlandia, where the day gets hot and the nights get cool. 66 F now, we’re expecting 92 around our homestead by mid-aft. I miss the annual blueberry pickin’. It would’ve already been done, and we’d have pints of fresh blueberries in frig and freezer. Some baking would’ve been done. But the drought and wildfire smoke killed it two years ago. Too hot, too dry, then too smoky. All conspired to take production down. Bushes died, and COVID took the heart out of it for the folks running it. Gone are those 6:30 arrivals at the gate, sipping hot coffee in cold mountain air as the sun pulls itself clear of the mountains and turns on the heat. Gone is the cold feel of wet berries in your fingers and the hunt down the rows for a bush that speaks to you. Gone is the hushed laughing and gossiping, more expected in a church than in a field picking berries, but all seemed to approach it as a solemn event. Well, almost all. There seemed to be one each year who had to be talking loudly on their cell phone while picking berries.

Thinking of those things reminded me of “My City Was Gone” by The Pretenders. Released in 1982, it’s about change. I’d been discussing change with others on a previous evening. I’ve seen change in Ashlandia, a shift in priorities, the decline of traditional events, the rise of doings that don’t matter to us. Our connections with the city and area are loose and breaking. We’re drifting away from it and no longer feel like we’re a part of it. Not as we were before.

I thought of Mom’s place in Penn Hills, PA, after that conversation. Her place has changed through the years, certainly. New siding, porches replaced, etc. Yeah, those physical changes took place, but its essence has remained steadfast. That’s what disillusions us with Ashlandia: its essence seems to be changing. Anyway, Les Neurons wedged “My City Was Gone” into the morning mental music stream, so here we are.

Well, stay pos, and muster the courage and strength to do it again. I’m building my energy to get out there with a strong dose of coffee. It’s what’s for breakfast, along with oatmeal. Here’s the music, and awaaayyy we gooo.

Cheers

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Saturday’s daylight is a thin gruel. Clouds dilute its potency, taking the light from blazing whisky to tepid tea. Enough light has wormed through the parting clouds that snow is seen on the surrounding mountain ranges. That’s something to cheer on for today, March 5, 2022. They’ll be updating the water tables and snowpack information this week, giving us a peek into our future expectations vis-à-vis our drought and water situation this summer. Sunrise came at 6:40 AM and the sun’s dip beneath the horizon at daylight’s end will be at 6:06 PM. We’re grinding closer to twelve hours of daylight. Moving toward the time shift, too, just when I’m starting to feel sorted. Temperatures smack of late winter/early spring — let’s call it lawiearing, pronounced ‘la wearing’ — with the current thermometer reading of 40 F (but it feels like 34) and an expectation of 44 for the high, much like yesterday.

I have two sick cats today. One isn’t eating, vomits once in a while, and remains aloof. The other is being turned into the elephant cat with tumors but still pushes to eat, socialize, and drink water. Caring for them challenges every aspect of normalcy. My admiration for full-time caregivers continue to rise. They must have enormous capacities to care for others and patience that’s beyond human.

I have Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders singing “Middle of the Road” from 1983 up in the morning mental music stream. I was first thinking about 1983 from a comment related to me from my wife about a friend. That was like the pebble that rolls down and creates an avalanche. Then, you know, I looked out of the window and wondered, “What’s that in the middle of the road?” That’s all the cheeky little neurons needed to light the song up in my head.

Come on, baby. Let’s get some coffee in the middle of the road. Stay positive, etc., knock on wood and fingers crossed that it’ll work well as masks are slipped away in a bureaucratic striptease. Here’s the song. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

The rotations continue, no matter what is done, sunrise, sunfall. 5:46 AM, 8:47 PM in slice of world in southern Oregon. The revolution continues, despite what is done, carrying us through summer, speeding us toward autumn.

Today is Tuesday, July 13, 2021. Wildfires continue catching and growing. Two are contained, five more start. Smoke doesn’t fill the sky but bleaches the blue into a yellow-tinged gray haze. Fine grey granules, almost white, sprinkle cars and the land. Think of how they coat skin. Get into airways. Spread into lungs, interfering with body functions like breathing.

The smoke is a cooling shade, keeping temperatures from rising over one hundred F but unable to keep us from experiencing high nineties heat. Green has been dried out of the grasses. They turn into a sandy shade of brown.

But, you know, good news. COVID-19 vaccinations appear to be helping, where people are allowing themselves to be vaccinated. As disease variants rise, the unvaccinated and vaccinated become positive, but it’s the unvaccinated who are typically hospitalized and dying.

The other good news is that people are shedding their masks, unless they need it to deal with smoke (at least out here in the American west). Stores are opening. Restaurants. Movie theaters. One can again attend movies. Isn’t that good news? And the All-star break is underway. Good news, right? Good news.

While drought spreads in the west, places are flooding in the south and east as hurricanes and tropical storms strike. Did you see the photos of the flooded New York subway and roads? Places are also experiencing power outages. Sometimes from storms, sometimes because power is cut off due to wildfires, sometimes because the wildfires burn power lines. Melbourne, Australia is locked down again but the NFL is looking forward to full stadiums. There’s a water shortage growing in America but a housing boom is underway. The stock market has never been better, and look how that economy seems to be recovering. Also, the Emmy list has been released. That’s good news, isn’t it?

An ad on an Internet page seems it all up for me. Showing a pristine red and white Chevy Corvette from the early sixties, the ad informs me, “Jag EType” (that’s how they put it) “in any condition, nationwide.” While showing a Vette. Makes sense to me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m an optimist. Hopeful. Hell, I keep grinding away on my writing routine. Must believe some future exists for it. Which brings me to the music.

Here’s the Pretenders from 1986. They do an homage to an old television show, “The Avengers”. My wife and I quite enjoyed that series as children. Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, get the vax. Cheers

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Monday’s Theme Music

Boom — it’s Monday. It’s like it happens every week. Today is April 19, 2021, which doesn’t happen every week. In fact, this date makes this day unique. Meanwhile, over in the sky, the sun came creeping around my back window in Ashland at 6:24 AM. It’s fully out now, and will steal away at 7:57 PM. Speaking of sun and long hours, yesterday cracked 80 degrees F but didn’t take us to the heat they’d been forecasting. We’ll strike the mid to upper seventies today.

It’s day three of our three-day green smoothie fast. It’s working well. Hard a handful of raw almonds, another handful of raw walnuts, a few celery sticks, and prunes, along with three smoothies. My favorite was the mango-pineapple-banana super-greens offering. Other than when I was out doing yard work and smelled someone’s Italian meal preparation floated through the air did I think, gotta eat. Didn’t, though. The smell reminded me of good food, but also things that Mom used to cook when I was a kid. Need to stop writing about it now because it’s having an adverse effect on my willpower.

Musically, “Brass in Pocket” by The Pretenders (1979) came to me after my shower, when I was drying off. Brass in pocket? Don’t know. My wife and I take little book-cations this year. A book-cation involves taking the book you’re reading, getting into the car, driving to the park, getting out of the car and finding a place to sit and read for a while. It’s just a break in routines and fresh air/experience nature opportunity. We went yesterday (got a new book to read, “The Resisters” by Gish Jen”) (yeah, finished “Circe”, “The Night Watchman”, “The Sentinel”, and “The Death of Vivik Oji”). When we did, though, I also took notebook and pen, like the old days, to think about the novel revisions and write through my thoughts.

How does “Brass in Pocket” fit in with that? Well, the song always struck me as a cocky attitude, a sort of ‘I can do this’ stance. I later saw confirmation of that in a Christine Hynde interview (she wrote the song’s lyrics). So, I suspect my mind pulled it out as an affirmation. It’s a good song for re-attacking a project, and a good song for a Monday.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, and get the vax. Cheers

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Today’s Theme Music

A circumstance beyond our control, oh oh oh oh
The phone, the TV and the news of the world
Got in the house like a pigeon from hell, oh oh oh oh
Threw sand in our eyes and descended like flies
Put us back on the train
Oh, back on the chain gang

~ ‘Back on the Chain Gang’, Chrissie Hynde, The Pretenders

So many words of these song resonate with me, making a natural as a theme song when walking around, alone, wondering, struggling. That she wrote it after her band-mate, twenty-five years old, died of a drug overdose, adds poignancy to the words.

The powers that be
That force us to live like we do
Bring me to my knees
When I see what they’ve done to you
But I’ll die as I stand here today
Knowing that deep in my heart
They’ll fall to ruin one day
For making us part

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=radFwHzD-PM

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