Tag: We Didn’t Start the Fire

Thirstda’s Theme Music

My fellow Terrans. Today is Thirstda, June 5, 2025 in Ashlandia. Some refer to the day as Thursday.

Summer is rising in Ashlandia. Ridiculously blue skies have us covered like a fine duvet. Sunshine is showing up early and staying late, putting on a bright display. Today’s high will be 82 F, about 8 degrees north of our present temperature. Humidity is not bad, and light winds lazily stir the leaves and brush past.

Papi is happy as a floof can be, chirping around the house in the early morning before floofsconcing into a nap nest. My wife isn’t as happy. Although her various ailments are easing, mosquitos are finding her irresistible. Their bites swell on her which is an annoyance. As for me, I’m embroiled in an agent hunt put my personal happiness and satisfaction both at 7.5 on the scale, where ten means it’s all awesome. That might just be coffee influencing my spirits.

The world continues its status as fascinating but complex. For example, forecasters and personnel at NOAA. We’d heard that DOGE took its usual cleaver to NOAA. Meteorologists vacated the business, taking early retirement, etc. But there was U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick at a Senate hearing telling us that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is “fully staffed” with weather forecasters. Meanwhile, a search for news updates about NOAA tell multiple other stories.

Scientific American: New Hires Will Still Leave the NWS Dangerously Understaffed, Meteorologists Say

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: NOAA is scrambling to fill positions after Trump’s cuts. How are Wisconsin offices faring?

The Mirror US: Florida weatherman warns viewers he won’t be able to predict hurricanes because of Trump’s federal budget cuts

Those stories were all posted a day ago. Lutnick testified last week.

There’s always been news churn where politics encumber how facts are related. But vetting those facts with the TACO Regime is increasingly challenging. We do understand that. Trump is a dedicated liar and butchers facts. He’s willing to make up anything to make himself look good. The people he hired are right off the same cookie sheet.

Today’s music is by Billy Joel. “We Didn’t Start the Fire” is Joel’s musical recitation about facts and history culled from his lifetime. The song came out in 1989. From Wikipedia:

Joel conceived the idea for the song when he had just turned 40. He was in a recording studio and met a 21-year-old friend of Sean Lennon who said “It’s a terrible time to be 21!”. Joel replied: “Yeah, I remember when I was 21 – I thought it was an awful time and we had Vietnam, and y’know, drug problems, and civil rights problems and everything seemed to be awful”. The friend replied: “Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it’s different for you. You were a kid in the fifties and everybody knows that nothing happened in the fifties”. Joel retorted: “Wait a minute, didn’t you hear of the Korean War or the Suez Canal Crisis?” Joel later said those headlines formed the basic framework for the song.

Looking further back in U.S. history, there’s been multiple awful times to be 21 years old, a truth known around the world. Some irony creeps in for someone from a privileged background, Sean Lennon, son of John Lennon, making that observation back in 1989.

The Neurons brought the song into the morning mental music stream after I read about actual wildfires in the United States and Canada. I feel for the people and animals in those places, as we’ve worried about California and Oregon wildfires for much of the last twenty years.

But the song is a good song for today, mostly because it strikes me that the TACO Regime is trying to fan the flames rather than fight the fires. As others note, it’s increasingly evident that TACO is tearing down the world order to make it easier for the wealthy to take over, rule, and make more money. Anyway, here is the song.

Got my coffee. Hope you have your beverage of choice. Let’s do the best that we can today. Here we go. Cheers

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Mood: springflective

Thursday arrives with a whisper so soft, most miss it. It’s April 11, 2024.

Spring outside pulls me in. 51 F degrees. Still wind and expansive sunshine. The air is expected to bring temperatures in the low 70s.

Sounds of the city travel through the yard. Cars on the roads. A train warning of its advance. Hammering and sawing. No voices except crows, robins, and sparrows passing on observations. The cats listen. They don’t reveal what they’re thinking.

OJ Simpson passed from cancer, Alexa tells me when I ask her about why she’s lit green. My wife says, I don’t know what to think about that.

Truly. Simpson was once an American hero on the gridiron. First in college, then in the NFL, if those things matter to you. Otherwise, he was just another citizen. Then came the murders, the trial, the riots, the questions. It all hangs over us like a pause in existence.

In personal news, Mom is still coping at the hospital. The place was packed. After spending most of the day in a bed in a hallway, she was moved into an ER space for the night.

She’s being transferred today. They’re going to put her into rehab and work on her balance and mobility. She’s grumbling about it. A creature of habits, she gets uncomfortable being wrenched from her ruts. I know because I’m much like her.

As far as the fever and pain over the last several days, the med staff is postulating that this is just the after effects of her abdominal surgery. The surgery was five days ago, so my little sister on the spot has flagged it as dubious. But, that’s how it’ll be treated, going forward.

Thinking about our small town’s sounds later in the morning has The Neurons summoning songs about cities. Stevie Wonder’s music about living in the city whispers through the morning mental music stream (Trademark under construction). Then comes Billy Joel. 1982 “Allentown”.

Yes, more it’s more fitting. Billy Joel’s song was about hopes and changes. Substitute America for Allentown. Change some other words and you have a new anthem for the U.S.

“Well, we’re living here in the USA.

“And the way it’s changing is hard to say.

“Standing in lines, watching our phones.”

But the song’s real heart for me comes later when he addresses the promises made or implied by teachers that we would succeed and advance, “if we worked hard, if we behaved.” The promise was hijacked. I put it on corporate greed, but that’s fueled by individual greed, selfishness, and now, by a GOP that is trying hard to go back in time as a way forward.

Sorry, boys, but there’s not a DeLorean big enough to fit all of us to take us back in time and change now. The vast majority of us know that. We’re moved on. We’re moving forward, and we’re going to keep moving forward.

I don’t think of everything in terms of politics, BTW. May seem like it’s so but it’s more that this seems like a politically charged period for me and many others. I also look back through the lens of history to see what changed, how it changed, and what did not.

Stay positive, despite what has happened so far. The promises were made or implied that we’re part of a grand experiment in the US, creating a government by the people, for the people. It’s a work in progress. Other nations are doing it as well, and many have become better at it than we are now.

I’ve already boarded the coffee train. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Friday’s Theme Music

Volcanos erupting in Japan and Indonesia, threats of missiles being exchanged between the U.S. and North Korea, Black Lives Matter, voter right suppression, Russia-gate, white supremacists, gun control arguments, protests, the Weinstein scandal, war refugees, Pacific Northwest and California wildfires and destruction, the Hurricane Maria disaster in Puerto Rico, hurricane and earthquake disasters in Mexico, hurricane destruction in several other American states, plans to build a wall on the southern U.S. border, the President threatening freedom of the press, the Vegas mass killer….

Contemplating it all over coffee brought to mind Billy Joel’s nineteen eighty-nine song from “Storm Front,” “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” He covered the headlines from nineteen forty-nine, when he was born, until the year the album was released, but the fire goes on.

At least, it feels like it on this cool, autumn morning in twenty seventeen.

 

 

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