Tag: traditions

Sundaz Theme Music

Happy solstice morning greetings from Ashlandia. It’s 41 F with moderately heavy rain today. The weather systems tell me that’s how it’ll be all day, with the high reaching for 47 F. A ‘white Christmas’ isn’t being dealt to us this year.

Yes, it’s Sunda, and it also happens to be winter solstice north of the equator, December 21, 2025. Down south of zero, they’re celebrating the summer’s arrival.

We’re doing our ‘traditional solstice’ dinner but it’s being winged. Our traditional celebration evolved from previous celebrations we’d cludged together from pagan practices regarding solstice. Building on those, we started having a simple dinner of soup, salad, and bread as part of solstice. It expanded for a while, with others invited in to celebrate with us. COVID broke the tradition. We observed alone for a bit but shifted from it. Partially contributing to that was a sense of weariness my wife and I both felt; just weren’t up to celebrating, given the world’s state and trajectory.

I proposed doing soup and bread for solstice dinner again. But instead of making it all ourselves, we’d visit the Food Co-op and Market of Choice and buy some fresh soup from them.

I read about “King Mida in Reverse” in blog comments the other day. I haven’t heard nor thought of the song in years. Think I heard it on Sirus XM while driving on a long trip back before BCP – Before COVID Pandemic.

The commenter was saying this song, by the Hollies, perfectly describes the Trump effect. He’s a destructive force masked as something else. Trump will advance, mostly through luck, lying, evading responsibility, and cheating, but whatever he touches is the worse for it. Look how he destroyed so many businesses and yet enriched himself. Now he’s doing it on a gigantic scale, destroying the moral fabric, government structure, and checks and balances of the United States. Meanwhile, he’s turning us, We the People, against each other based on race and politics, cratering the economy, and making us sicker via terrible health care decisions. Yes, PINO Trump is most definitely King Midas in reverse. That’s why he throws gold on everything in a desperate effort to change the optics on what he’s doing. But the results of dropping approval ratings, rising disapproval rating in all areas, increasing unemployment, decreasing employment, and diminishing affordability speaks for itself. Dizzy Donny is failing, flailing, and fading.

Unfortunately for the U.S.A., Trump has turned over governing to Russell Vought for domestic affairs, Stephen Miller for domestic security, and Pete Hegseth and Marcos Rubio for diplomacy and foreign policy. Except for Rubio, these are individuals We the People don’t trust with the keys to a car, let alone running the nation. But that’s where we are, thanks to PINO Trump.

Lyrics

~snip~

I’m not the guy to run with
’cause I’ll throw you off the line
I’ll break you and destroy you
Given time

He’s King Midas with a curse
He’s King Midas in reverse
He’s King Midas with a curse
He’s King Midas in reverse

It’s plain to see it’s hopeless
Going on the way we are
So even though I’d lose you
You’d be better off by far

He’s not the man to hold your trust
Everything he touches turns to dust
In his hands
Nothing he can do is right
He’d even like to sleep at night
But he can’t

All he touches turns to dust

All he touches turns to dust

All he touches turns to dust

All he touches turns to dust

~snip~

h/t to AZLyrics.com

Time to chug some coffee and crank the energy motor up. Hope peace and grace sneaks out of hiding to give you a hug. Here we go. Happy solstice. Cheers

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Wenzdaz Wandering Thoughts

The Great Penny Adjustment of 2025 has begun! Here’s my two cents about it.

The last penny in the United States was minted, ending a 238-year run.

The last pennies minted sold for a mint.

Last US cents sold at auction for a sum of $16.76 million were worth a pretty penny

Yes, there’s a national penny shortage now because pennies are no more. Well, there are no new ones. Hoarding pennies is a contributing factor. People hope their pennies will be worth more someday…

Here in Ashlandia, businesses are adjusting. My current favorite coffee hang, RoCo, has announced that due to the penny shortage, change will be rounded off to the nearest multiple of five. They’re always giving me six cents in change. I’ve always told them, “Keep the penny,” or dropped it into the ever present penny bowl.

Will the penny bowl remain? Doubtful. I mean, why would they?

Now BiMart has a notice up: “Due to the nationwide penny shortage, please pay in correct change.”

They owed me 88 cents after my purchase. I told them to keep the pennies. The cashier replied, “Thanks. I only have two pennies left.” Then she took a nickel off the top of the register. “Someone found this and gave it to me. You take it.” I laughed and accepted, thanking her. That was the gracious thing to do. I’ll pass it on to someone else.

Penny for your thoughts?

3

Traditions?

Daily writing prompt
What traditions have you not kept that your parents had?
View all responses

When I saw the prompt, I laughed and wondered, what traditions? Then I thought about it more seriously.

Dad doesn’t have traditions. He and Mom divorced in the early sixties. I moved in with him when I was fifteen. Well, he did have two traditions in those years: partying and working. Still on active duty in the U.S. Air Force when I moved in, he also had a parttime job, running a base all-ranks club. I have never seen Dad cook. Nor have I seen him clean house. Both of those duties fell to me when I moved in. I confess: I went back home to Mom’s house for Thanksgiving and Christmas for the next few years. Then I graduated high school, joined the military, and was off in my own life.

Back at Mom’s house, traditions gravitated around Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving. I guess there was also traditions for Memorial Day and the 4th of July: we always grilled out. Mom’s Christmas traditions were digging out decorations, putting up a tree, and that sort of thing. Easter meant baskets for the children and baked home for dinner. Thanksgiving was a lavish meal, turkey with stuffing, a bunch of fixings, and apple and pumpkin pie with whipped cream for dessert.

Well, it’s just my wife and me. Married for fifty years, we never had children. We did make Easter baskets for each other for a while, but neither of us claim a religion or a belief in God. I was also a shift worker for the first dozen years of my military career and often worked on Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, etc. And my wife became a vegan over thirty-five years ago.

The bottom line is, my Dad had no traditions, and Mom’s were limited. Now we have a tradition of going to a friend’s house to celebrate spring. We all bring a dish, hunt for easter eggs, and play cornhole. Once a year during the summer, we go to a local lake and dance to a local band with friends. There were fifteen of us this year. For the 4th of July, we always go to Pam’s house for a potluck branch and to watch the parade. A friend opens their farmhouse for all of us on Thanksgiving, another potluck affair, but they always provide a turkey.

I guess we have a new tradition of finding friends and celebating with them.

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Wenzda’s Wandering Thoughts

We slipped out of the house into the cool morning with a ladder and a few pint containers. Our objective is unchanged since 2007, our first spring and summer in this house: cherries!

Our neighbor has a cherry tree. At their insistence, the yield from any branch on our side of the fence belongs to us. Most years, the cherries are ready around July 1st. But blessed with the right weather, the neighbors picked their side earlier this week. We did our picking today. Cool and pleasant air, warming sunshine, a quiet neighborhood, and sweet, fresh, dark red cherries.

It was a morning to savor. Cherry scone, anyone?

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Sunda’s Theme Music

Another sun filled blue sky day cups Ashlandia. It’s a quiet one out there. Like it’s a holiday and everyone else has gone away. They don’t know about the 70 degrees F and sun-kissed wind toying with our hair in Ashlandia. Clouds are gathering and we’ll top off our temperatures at 75 plus F today.

Papi is loving this weather, prancing in and out of the house with his tail up. Whenever we go out back, he emerges from his sun nap to visit with us.

This, for the record, is May 25, 2025, part of the Memorial Day holiday weekend in the United States. As always, my wife and I compare our childhood Memorial Days. For her, it was Decoration Day. Her family would make the pilgrimage by car to the family’s graveyards. They had two, one for Mom’s family, and the other for Dad’s line. Both were born and raised in southern West Virginia and had a family line that went back several hundred years. The graveyard was cleaned up, if needed, and fresh flowers were put on the graves.

My family, in contrast, were relatively new, in some ways. Mom’s side came over on the Mayflower and kept moving west. She was born in Turin, Iowa in the 1930s. Her grandfather helped establish the town, and her mother was born in Turin in 1910. Dad’s father’s family came over in 1899, went to Pittsburgh, PA, and stayed. His mother’s family arrived in Pittsburgh a little bit later and also stayed.

Memorial Day for me, then, wasn’t and isn’t about graves, but about sports, family, and food. As I aged, it did become more about military service and sacrifice. Now it’s just my wife and I out here in Oregon. Her mobility and diet are limited, and Memorial Day has been relegated to just another spot on the calendar.

My theme music today relates to a conversation with my wife this morning. A friend highlighted a post for me on Facebook. I don’t go much on Facebook. My wife doesn’t have a FB account but uses mine to lurk, so she saw the post and told me about it. The post is about misunderstood song lyrics — mondegreens. One song was “Panama” by Van Halen. A popular mondegreen, unfamiliar to me, is that they’re singing “padded bra!” instead of “Panama!” Reading this to me, my wife sang the “padded bra!” part, cracking herself up. The Neurons immediately shipped the song into the morning mental music stream, where it shares time with my thoughts.

My wife and I were in the office this morning, each pursuing our computer agendas. Suddenly she bursts, “There’s a FEMA carveout for Trump’s residences in the bill that was just passed.” She was livid. “Trump doesn’t send FEMA to help anyone any more but if one of his places are hit, he’s taken care of. This is ridiculous! This is disgusting! He’s supposed to be the servant of the people, not the other way around. When will those idiots wake up?”

A few minutes later and she launched into Trump’s latest crypto scam, piling on about how he’s using the presidency to enrich herself. I commiserate but don’t otherwise respond. I don’t want to go down the rabbit hole of how Trump and the Greedy Ol’ Trump Party is enshittifying the United States. I’m taking the day off from it.

Hope you have the best day you can. I’m gonna try to do the same. Coffee is at hand. And away we go.

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Sunday’s Wandering Thought

I attended an Easter brunch at a friend’s house on Sunday. Great food, great friends, weather that skirmished between chilly and cloudy to hot and sunny.

At one point, I asked fellow attendees if any had made any Easter resolutions. No one had.

Looks like another tradition is fading away.

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Tuesday’s Wandering Thought

A college-aged woman entered the coffee shope as he was walking toward the door to leave. Seizing the door, she held it open from inside, pushing it out — or tried, as the door slid closed, mocking the angle and effort she made. Besides that, she was inside, which didn’t leave much space for him to pass in the narrow space.

But he appreciated the effort and sprang forward, catching the door’s edge, relieving her of the duty, smiled, and said, “Thank you,” because that’s how it was all done.

But he wondered, what were doors like in the past that people make such an effort to hold them ajar for one another? Must have been massive, heavy beasts. It was another matter to research.

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Friday’s Wandering Thought

It’s an old joke, heard every year at this time. People leaving and going in different directions tell each other as if it’s brand new, “Well, I’ll see you next year.”

Everyone laughs like it’s never been heard before.

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Thanks-day’s Theme Music

This is it, the fourth Thursday of November, Thanksgiving in the U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt signed a Congressional proclamation declaring this is what we were going to do as a nation going forward. Before that, Thanksgiving was all over the place, sort of like Elon Musk and Twitter, an agent of chaos and close to unpredictable.

It’s November 24, 2022. Feels like spring is visiting autumn outside. Recognizing sunshine, the cats wanted out immediately. Their eagerness was rewarded by calm air hovering around 56 F on its way to a 65 F high. Gadzooks, what a treat. Sunshine invaded at a little before the 7:12 AM sunrise. Sunshine will hang out until 4:43 PM.

Thanksgiving is a day of deep planning for many families. Traditions are observed, new ones established. Martyrs are born as people go to extremes to satisfy their Thanksgiving commitments. Warnings are a newer Thanksgiving tradition as people point out which foods are vegan, gluten-free, vegetarian, or contains eggs, dairy, or nuts. Mom and my sisters do Thanksgiving up, going over-the-top with their food. There’s turkey with stuffing and all the American food staples associated with that through the years of Thanksgiving, but also pasta dishes to honor the Italian side. Dessert and treats? My god, yes. Apple pie, and pumpkin, along with cookies, pretzels and chips, cheese trays with crackers and bread, relish trays, and, yes, cake and cheesecake. Leftovers are eaten for a week. Some things are frozen and eaten later in the year.

My wife and I celebrate Friendsgiving with a group. We’ve been doing this for a while and it’s become our Ashland tradition. I’m looking forward to it, as friends that I’ve not seen in months will be there. I enjoy their company and catching up with their news.

A friend of ours is breaking her tradition this year. She loves Thanksgiving and plays hostess to her extended family every year. This year, though, her newly married son invited her and hubby to his in-laws’ Thanksgiving celebration, an enthusiastically accepted invitation, with just one hitch: part of his new family’s Thanksgiving tradition is a visit to the family spa in the nude. About that, she is not enthusiastic. She is seventy years old and a radical mastectomy survivor. She’s not excited about others viewing her nakedness, age and mastectomy or not. She’s just not one to share her nakedness. We understand. As my wife said to, “Hell to the no. Nobody outside of you is seeing my body.” That’s a position she’s held since she was a little girl.

Today’s music comes out of a car ride yesterday. The song is called “Classic” by Cam and came out in 2020. There are lines in it which we enjoy: “Johnny and June, Chevy light blue (They don’t make ’em like this anymore), Bette Davis, Yellow pages (They don’t make ’em like this anymore).” When we first heard it after its release, we laughed, went home and confirmed that we heard right.

Well, if you’re read this post before, you know that The Neurons liked that and have kept it going in the morning mental music stream this morning.

This is a late post. I’ve had my coffee, as I spent the first hours cleaning up and doing dishes after my wife did her cooking last night. Stay positive and test negative. Hope you have a day with an outcome worthy of giving thanks. Here’s Cam with “Classic”.

Cheers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4J9QMr97o8
2

Monday’s Theme Music

Spread the alarm. Monday has breached the walls. Save yerselves.

Dawn came in a bit before seven. Sunrise came after the way was cleared, arriving to clear blue skies at 7:42 this morning. The temperature has sprinted up to 45 degrees F and will go all the way to 62 F. The Cedar Creek fire is now in its third month but it’s 68% contained. We don’t smell the fire in our sector any longer but I’m sure others are still enduring it, and I feel for them. Sunset will be at 6:06 PM, so set your alarms. It’ll be October’s last.

We used to go trick or treating after dark when I was a child. In fact, that was one of Mom’s stipulations for when we could begin: “It’s not even dark yet.” These days, darkness is an enemy of the event. Most trick or treating is done in more controlled environments. Schools, stores, and malls have joined the Halloween proceedings. We didn’t buy any treats this year. We’ve bought in the past and generally ate it ourselves in the nights after the goblins and monsters’ cries have faded into November. So we don’t do that no more. Kind of miss it but also, c’est le vie.

After reading emails and the mail last night, The Neurons started playing “Money (That’s What I Want)” by The Flying Lizards (1979). Totally understandable. Almost every entity sending emails and missives in my direction are asking for money. Subscribe to this or that. Buy more of this. Get a new one of that, and replace that other. You need more! Donate to me — we need money to stay free. So, yeah, no surprise that Der Neurons brought up “Money (That’s What I Want)”. Les Neurons could have gone multiple directions with this. Could’ve just fired up Pink Floyd’s song, “Money.” “Money (That’s What I Want)” has been released as a Motown hit, a moneymaker by the Beatles, a cover by the Stones, and, of course, The Flying Lizards.

The Flying Lizards’ rendition is a twist against the others, throwing out a simple tune with a bald, straightforward delivery: “Give me money. That’s what I want.” They’re not truly singing it, just deadpan presenting it. That’s why it works so well for all these money requests that inundate my existence. Take Pfizer, for example. They were heroes, one of several, coming up with COVID-19 vaccines. Now they want money so shots will be over one hundred dollars each. Don’t worry, insurance will cover it. No insurance? Oh, no, that’s not good. But Prizer is a corporation. They exist to make money, right?

BTW, has anyone done a new cover of this song recently? Seems like it’s overdue.

Well, you know the routine. Holds even for Mondays, even on October’s final effort. Stay positive, test neggy, etc. Coffee is in the morning’s collection plate. I’m gonna help meself to some. That’s what I want.

Have a good one. Here’s the tune. Cheers

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