Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
A riddle to begin: what is always new, different, and the same? Here we are now — Monday again. New day, different day, same day.
Yes, it’s Monday, October 4, 2021 — ten four. Do you understand? A soft-spoken, lethargic sunrise came into my life this AM at 7:10. Sun flight, where we spin away again, will come at 6:58 PM. AQI is one again — fresh air. Temperature is now 56 F but monsieur is expecting something in the upper seventies range, perhaps. Once again, it’s a pale, mottled sky, white with faint gray dimples and dips. What’s it portend? The weather gods might know.
An excellent walk was had yesterday. 77 F when I set out. Full sunshine that hills and trees blocked out quickly as I went upslope, temperatures dipping four, five degrees. Sometimes a light wind visited as I passed digesting deer, pondering cats, busy squirrels and birds, and dog-walkers with their animals. Four miles was done. Finished as the sun stood up and declared with a yawn and a stretch, “Well, I’m calling it a day.”
“Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” (1969) by Crosby, Stills, and Nash, inhabits the morning’s mental music stream. The song has always captivated me. Guitar variations; the lyrics, pitches, harmony, tempo changes, its personal nature as an attempt by the songwriter, Stephen Stills, to capture and explain what he’s feeling. Here’s a live version; a little rougher than the studio-produced gem, but honest. Plus, I always like seeing performers as they looked when they made their music.
Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, and get the vax & booster. Enjoy your Monday and October. Coffee time. Cheers
Sunday, Sunday. Another day older and deeper in debt. Perhaps, for some. My friend was giving me grief the other day. I told him that we don’t know what happens when we die. He replied, “When you’re dead, you’re dead. That’s it. Over and done.” He’s older. An older space industry engineer. I answered with reminders. What we didn’t know about existence fifty years ago. Hundred years ago, a thousand. How our knowledge improves — or we think it does — as our species matures. Develops new tools. New manners of perception. Wasn’t out to convince him. Just amused by his certainty. His response resonates with my beliefs about reality: we don’t know much about it and eat it in very small bites.
Today is Sunday, October 3, 2021. A fall month in the north. Spring month in the south. Someone posted a quote from Kierkegaard and his preference for fall. Here, paraphrasing: “In the spring, you look down at the ground. In the fall, you look up at the sky.” I look up in either but I grok what he’s saying.
Sunset will come at 6:49 PM. Sunshine splashed through our autumn blue sky at 7:10 AM. The trees are changing, and I do love the explosion of yellow, gold, and reds among the greens. For temperatures, we’re expecting a high of around 80 F. No rain. Light breeze. AQI of 1, again. Glorious walking day. I shall indulge.
The morning mental music stream has Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters playing “Walk” (2011) today. Came about while walking yesterday. Perfect in so many dimensions of air, sights, sounds, and temperature, the cap on a day that went well for me. So I pushed to walk hard, fast, far, and back. While out there, I was chuckling. Between smoke, heat, and COVID-19 concerns, walking like this was limited in 2021. Nice to be able to do it again.
Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, get the vax and booster. Sing a song, laugh, read…whatever. Have a good day. Cheers
Thunderstorms passed through yesterday. A spritz of rain, some threatening rumbling, a bite of wind, done. Checked on new fires caused by lightning strikes. Nothing new found yet.
Today is Saturday, July 31, 2021, the final day of July, 2021. The year is half gone. Up in the northern hemi, daylight grows less. Heat still remains, though. And drought, out here in the American west.
Sunrise cometh at 6:02 AM. Sunset is at 8:31 PM. With more thunderstorms expected, our high is projected to top out at 95 degrees F.
A Mötley Crüe song pesters me today, leftovers from a walk the other evening. Caught up in my stride, enjoying a cool breeze, absorbed in writing in my head, I went further than planned. Suddenly, oh, it’s twenty minutes until sunset and you’re three miles from home. Turn about and start walking, dude. I kicked up my pace and did so, time to get home. Which led to home sweet home. Which invited in “Home Sweet Home” from 1985. This rock ballad features plenty of guitars, a touch of wistful piano, and strong vocals that range from soft, reflective humming to belting out, “Home sweet home”. The video depicts the rock and roll circus that so many of us think of when pondering the expression, ‘hard rock concert’. These bois were mos def into the glam.
Stay positive, test negative, wear mask as necessary, and get the vax. Wearing a mask seems like it has become more necessary once again. Case levels have leaped to April’s levels. Might even overtake those levels. Not surprising for here. Jackson County is a Trump stronghold. They eschew masking and vaxxing. My little town holds to both but it’s a destination spot for others. Tourism, you know? Interesting enough, we had to run an errand yesterday, sevenish PM. The vacant streets and empty parking spaces belied it being a Friday night. Were people voluntarily home, sick, or in isolation?
Here’s the music. Cheers
5:49 AM, 8:44 PM. Those are today’s times for the sunshow on Saturday, 7/17/21. Rise comes first, with a lethargic unveiling. Set comes later, a gradual withdrawal. Between those times, the sun will work its heat on us. Not too bad today, upper eighties to lower nineties. Forecasts say get ready for a new rampup.
Although the Bootleg Fire and numerous others still burn, our southern Oregon’s valley air is clear and ‘safe’. Went up and down yesterday. Down in the evening, which helped make a summer concert a pleasant time. Listened to a regional band, East Main Street, play covers of the Eagles, Beatles, CSN&Y, Seals & Croft, CCR, etc. You get the feel, right? Had beer, wine, drinks, BBQ. Celebrated birthdays. Wondered how many were vaccinated. But we were outside.
Today’s music is a Nirvana song called “About A Girl” (1994). My mind brought it up to entertain and distract me as I ambled around town yesterday. Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax. Cheers
The door to the sky opens at 5:35 AM. The sun’s first impact shades the night gray. Rosy yellows spread as the door grows further ajar. Tuesday, June 8, 2021, has begun its day in Ashland, Oregon. As always, jays acknowledge the event first. Crows add to the dawn conversation after a few minutes.
Air that seems related to fall is outside. Rain fell last night, dropping temperatures into the lower forty F. Thick, broken clouds mottle the blue sky. Temperatures are a far descent from normal, with highs just barely edging over sixty. So it’ll be, a spring fall day, until the door closes on the valley sun at 8:45 PM.
Today’s music of the walking kind. Hopefully dressed for summer, shorts and a tee, with a light fleece, an edgy wind knifes my bare legs, sending chills over my body as I do my thing yesterday. After just three quarters of a mile, smelling rain in the air, I call it and make the turn to home. Thinking of home brings a Delaney & Bonnie song out of mental retirement and into active thinking. Called “Coming Home” The song, made ‘with friends’, was released in the late sixties. It was one of my recurring songs as I traveled during twenty years in the military and then later in marketing for several years. Hope you enjoy it.
Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get that vax. Cheers
“Should I try to do some more? Twenty-five or six to four.”
That’s how it briefly felt (befuddled and dazed), trying to scope the time when a dream’s sharp end poked me suddenly awake. Turned out to be 2:33 AM. A trip to release some fluids was in order, followed by a need to add more fluids. Cats, curious about what I’m doing up, seeing an opportunity for a meal, cosied up with purrs and mips. I opened the back door and let cool mountain air and clear starlight seduce me for a few minutes before regular programming was resumed.
Sunrise on June fourth Friday of 2021 came a few hours later, 5:46 AM. We ended up over ninety F yesterday. The weather masters all insist that today will top out in the high eighties, same claim as yesterday, so I believe we’ll peek into the low nineties before the Earth’s movement takes the sun out of our sky at 8:43 PM.
While ambulating about the hills yesterday, “I Ain’t the One” by Lynyrd Skynyrd (1973) started playing in my mind. I’d been thinking about conspiracy theories, partly because, news, reading of the fiction and non-fiction type, and partly, you know, fiction writing. In fiction land, I’d just finished reading “The Searcher” by Tana French a few days ago, and am now into “The Long Way Home” by Louise Penny along with “A House in the Neighborhood” by Bob Mustin, enjoying them all. Before that lot, I’d read several Lee Child books from the Jack Reacher series, and a few by each by Jonathan Kellerman, Craig Johnson, and Keigo Higashino. Parallel to them, I read “The Grammarians” and just finished reading “The Fifth Risk” by Michael Lewis. Almost all these feature some conspiracy theory thinking. Happens naturally when things happen in fiction and explanations are tasted for what and why. Over in the non-fiction side, “The Fifth Risk” is about DOE concerns about the U.S. electric grid and the Trump administration’s approach to things. Their approach included conspiracy theories about what bureaucrats and political appointees are up to. An interesting albeit painful read.
I queried my head about what conspiracies have to do with “I Ain’t the One”. It took a while of noodling to realize that buried at the song’s end was the clue. Here’s the song’s final lyrics.
Got bells in your mind, mama
And it’s easy to see
I think it’s time for me to move along
I do believe
I must be in the middle of some kind of conspiracy
Lynyrd Skynyrd – I Ain’t the One Lyrics | Genius Lyrics
I muttered a bit at my mind about that feeble connection. I mean, come on, man.
Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and please get the vax. Cheers.
They went to the library
because three new books were on hold,
ready for pick up
and they’d finished six books
so they needed to be returned.
Then they walked around town,
enjoying the mild spring day,
before deciding to go to the Co-op.
Because it’d been so long.
While they were there,
they picked up sandwiches,
chips,
and locally baked pastries.
Then walked back up to the car
and got a library book each,
and walked through the breeze in the park’s sun and shade
until they found a picnic table.
Whereupon they sat,
eating and reading in silence
until two hours later,
when she said,
“I’m cold. Let’s go home.”
Today finds us at Sunday once again. I was just looking at the calendar, confirming that it’s April 25, and was surprised to realize there’s another Friday in the month. Just not paying attention.
The sun made it to Ashland at 6:15 AM and will make its departure at 8:03 PM. We’re getting close to almost fourteen hours of sunshine, which I do like. Like my cats, I am a sunshine fan. Don’t know how much sunshine we’ll see. The weather is continuing a drizzly, damp, chilly pattern. It’s 42 F right now, and we’re not expecting much higher. As I read on the net, the weather slowed down like a driver doing 75 in a 55 when he sees a cop behind him.
“Wedding Bell Blues” by the Fifth Dimension (1969) is looping through my mind. The great Laura Nyro wrote and originally recorded it. Her songs were hits by several others, like “Stoned Soul Picnic”, “And When I Die”, and “Eli’s Comin'”. She died way too young, 49, done in by ovarian cancer.
And while I like all those songs, I’m in the mood for something upbeat this morning. I challenged the mind for something. After a period of crickets singing and playing, the Foo Fighters crept in with “I’ll Stick Around” from 1995.
Upbeat? Up-tempo, I guess.
By the way, the three-day green-smoothie fast ended for me yesterday, day eight. Energy level just felt too low. Tired while walking, and didn’t achieve twelve miles for the day. Been a while for that. So I’m back on solids, and just finished a bowl of gluten-free oatmeal with peanut butter, cranberries, and pumpkin seed/flax granola.
Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, and get the vax, including the second dose, if you’re going the Moderna/Pfizer route. Cheers
Michael Seidel, writer 