A cool one is expected today, in the mid to upper eighties. Had some wind yesterday. The heat dome shrugged its shoulders. Smoke lessened. The sun became familiar, ah, sunny hues instead of a red hole in hell.
Sunrise today, Monday, 8/16/2021, will come at 6:17 AM. Sunset will bless us at 8:12 PM. For music, I’m stuck on a 1970 song, “The Rapper”, by The Jaggertz. “So he starts his rapping. Hoping something will happen. He’ll say he needs you, a companion, a girl he can talk to. He’s made up his mind, he wants someone to sock it to!”
Ha, sock it to. Have you heard anyone use that recently. It’s like, “Where’s the beef?” Or, “Mama mia, that’s some spicy meatball.” “Oh, he likes it. Hey, Mikey.” Or, um, twenty-one skidoo. Or groovy. Or even, “Who let the dogs out? Who, who, who?”
Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, get the vax, you know? Enjoy the music. Cheers
Sunrise, sunset, smoke, weak sun, high temperatures, COVID-19 spiking. Yes, this is Saturday, 8/14/21. Hope your Friday the 13th went well.
So the sunrise, sunset, air quality, and temperature numbers go 6:12 AM, 8:11 PM, 162 (very unhealthy) and 100 F, again. COVID-19 case numbers are in the hundreds in our county. Highest ever. Delta variant. Unvaccinated account fo over 98 percent, according one doc. Hospitals overcrowded. ICUs full. Emergency assistance sought from the state. Plans to put up field hospitals. COVID-19 deaths are also the highest ever in our southern Oregon county.
Our town, though, remains a small oasis. More were vaccinated. Wore masks. Took precautions. Most cases in the county originate in two towns that went heavy for Trump. Who eschewed masking with extreme contempt. Sneered at vaccines. Fighting to keep their children from being vaccinated or wearing masks. Yep, even while they have the highest COVID-19 case numbers in the state. I think there’s some moral there. If I could just put my finger on it.
Busy, busy, dream night. Cats contributed. Keeping two of the three in due to heavy smoke. Third, the youngest, is too adamant to be kept in. Paws at windows. Beats blinds. Screams for freedom. Raises a ruckus with the other two. Because I’m keeping the two older bois in, the pet door is closed. Hence my multiple sleep interruptions.
Anyway, while brewing desperately desired coffee this AM, I was pondering dreams. So real. Was that a dream or is that a memory? Wasn’t sure with some of them. Worried me about my state of mind. Anyway, from that arose a song by Mister John Lennon. “#9 Dream” (1974). When I heard it on the radio, I also heard the DJ saying that the song came to Lennon in a dream. But the word, “Was it in a dream, was it just a dream? I know, yes, I know, seemed so very real, it seemed so real to me.” Had never seen this video until today. Eye opening and thought provoking, IMO.
Study hard and stay in school. No, wait. Started on the wrong phrases, didn’t I? Guess it was a slip back to 1974. Test negative and stay positive. Wear a mask as needed and get the vax. Here’s the music. Cheers
“Oh, what a beautiful morning. Oh, what a beautiful day. I got a beautiful feeling, everything’s going my way.”
Yes, Gordon MacRae is singing to me this morning. Part of an exercise to, um, exercise a more positive attitude.
In many ways, it is a beautiful morning. Though the sun is a whitish wisp behind a uniform chalky pale gray, the air is calm, windows are open, smoke isn’t actually entering the house, and nothing locally is on fire. See, I can be an optimist. It’s a cool 76 degrees F for now. Sunrise came prowling around my back door on or about 6:15 AM and sunset will get our attention at 8:16 PM here in the Rogue Valley area. The heat dome is still with us, feeding off the air and land temp. We expect a high of 102 plus. We expected that yesterday but didn’t achieve it as the smoke kept us below 96 degrees. Thanks, smoke!
Inside the house is our sanctuary. Not a large space. Nor fancy. But ours. Where we can walk around nude if we want. Laugh and argue. Read and eat. Sleep and bath. All in relative protection. Within it is my space. My desk. Laptop. Printer. Chair. Cats on three sides of me. Guarding or protecting me. I don’t know what they’re doing for sure. But they’re there, sleeping on the job. Snoring, purring, there.
Shifting from Oklahoma!‘s music, I’m now playing U2’s song, “The Fly”, from 1991. Always a little bit of a strange song to me. Not my favorite. But I was going through this one part that goes, “It’s no secret that a conscious can sometimes be a pest, it’s no secret ambition bites the nails of success. Every artist is a cannibal, every poet a thief. All kill their inspiration and sing about the grief.”
What I was thinking about that was drive. Effort. Persistence. Trying and striving. Don’t really see how it ties into those lyric, but that’s what my psyche came up with. Thinking about it more, I believe the song is associated with the album (Achtung Baby) which is part of a chain of time and events in my life in 1991.
All right. Stay positive. Test negative. Wear a mask as needed, and don’t try to bullshit yourself about whether it’s needed. And get the vax. Here’s the music.
Smoke blankets us. A heat dome squat over us. 102 to 114 F today. COVID-19 in our county are at their highest levels ever. Kind of puts me in the mood for “Eve of Destruction”. Too heavy handed, don’t you think? Would be like taking a howitzer to a mosquito.
Sorry, haven’t had my coffee yet. Feeling tetchy. Today is Wednesday, August 11, 2021. Sunrise came on at 6:14 AM. Sunset will be at 8:17 PM. The sunsets, watched from being windows and a smoky haze, are beautiful in their own red, hellish way. The sun glows a nuclear red. As it sets behind the hills, the red glow spreads across the sky, painting the parched, brown land in bright red tones. We could have called yesterday Redday instead of Tuesday. Yeah, not subtle. Our air quality sits at 256, the purple zone, which is very unhealthy. Advisories have been issued: it’s super hot, so don’t go outside. And it’s smoky and the air is unhealthy, so also don’t go outside. Keep your doors and windows closed. And if you do go in somewhere, wear a mask. Also, wear one outside.
Yes, the masks are making a comeback in Oregon. Not surprising. With ICUs filled and people being turned away, sixty employees of one local hospital are also COVID-19 positive. Not a fun month, August, 2021. Started out with a lot of promise and hope. Most of that’s been swallowed by heat, smoke, and COVID-19. Meanwhile, after the IPCC’s devastating report on climate change, WaPo has an opinion piece on why we shouldn’t give in to climate despair. Which of the other despairs should we give into?
All this leaves me feeling a little grungy this morning. Alice in Chains brings “Down In A Hole” (1992) to the mental concert.
Down in a hole and I don’t know if I can be saved See my heart I decorate it like a grave Oh, you don’t understand who they thought I was supposed to be Look at me now I’m a man who won’t let himself be
Down in a hole, feeling so small Down in a hole, losing my soul I’d like to fly But my wings have been so denied
We’ve done it! We’ve made it to another Monday. Give yourself a pat on the back. You deserve it. Most of us do. Doesn’t always seem like Monday wants us with it.
Today is August 9, 2021. Sol’s first pearly gold rays struck Ashland at 6:12 AM, immediately pushing the temperature up from the sixties degrees where it sat. With smoke sting nipping our nostrils, scratching our eyes and throats, and hazing the sky’s blue into an ancient gray, temperatures in the low nineties are forecast. Cynics believe it will be closer to the mid-nineties, pointing to a recent trend of under-forecasting the highs. The sun will grow into a red rubber ball and wink out behind the hills at 8:20 PM. At least we had a nocturnal break from the smoke. Windows were cracked. Fresh, cool air washed in. Ah, relief.
Multiple songs shared play time in my head yesterday, last night, this morning. Like, the Jefferson’s theme music. “Backfield in Motion”. “Wedding Bell Blues”. But also, “Surrender”. The Cheap Trick 1978 song is the loudest, strongest, most pervasive.
My Mum and Dad never got my Kiss records out and rolled around and such. Perish the thought! Here’s the music. Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax. Cheers
“Sunday, Sunday, Sunday.” That echoing baritone used to herald local events during television and radio commercials. Monster truck shows. Wrestling at the armory. That sort of thing.
Today is Sunday, August 8, 2021. Smoke continues plaguing us. It’s better than fire. So many fires continue burning out here in the western U.S. that only the most positive of people can stay upbeat. White clouds are skulking through the sky. Temperatures will be on the cool side, with a high around 82 F, they say. But Alexa told me yesterday that it would only get to 86. Then 90. Then 91. That’s where it peaked. Hope it stays cool
Sunrise’s gray, gold, and pink marbleized lights and shadows came into the valley at 6:09 AM. We’ll have another red ball sunset at 8:27 PM.
COVID-19, the Delta variant, vaccines, and masks continue to dominate my news cycle. Despite the Olympics and the new U.S. air strikes in Afghanistan. All ‘water is wet’ news anymore. The U.S. has been bombing someone throughout my lifetime. Probably will be after I’m gone.
Yesterday had me getting rid of some old exercise equipment. I disassembled things to make it easier to load, transport, and unload at the dump. (Yes, nobody wanted any of it, further depressing me.) The bike required an allen wrench. I have several sets. When I realized I needed one and headed to the workbench, Billy Joel began singing “Allentown” (1982).
Well, the song won’t leave my head. It played even when I was lying in bed. Even while feeding the cat getting a drink by the kitchen sink. So, I must spread it out to others to remove it from my mind. Sorry, friends. That’s how these things work. It’s been so since the first recorded song.
Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed — and they do seem needed again in the U.S. as the nation records record numbers of new cases — and get the vax, if you can. The vax may not fully and completely protect you from the virus but it will mitigate its symptoms and the probable results. In other words, you’re more likely to survive with the vaccine than without it.
A pause, you know, a pause from thinking, writing, and looking at bad news, you know? So tempting to enumerate it all in a mini-rant but that could easily turn into something longer and uglier and I just am not going in that direction today.
Today is Saturday, and Saturday night’s alright for fighting, get a little action in. It’s also August 7, 2021, my 46th wedding anniversary to my high school girlfriend, daughter of my father’s best friend. Sunrise came at 6:10 AM. Sunset will be at 8:23 PM. Sunny overall, with highs around 88 degrees F. (Oh, but the smoke — no, stop, damn it. Reel that thing in.)
I’m going with Pink today, “Raise Your Glass”, from 20…(hang on, looking it up)…10. Here’s the music. Here’s hoping you have a good day. Cheers
“What a difference a day makes. Twenty-four little hours.”
It made a difference here. Blue skies. Unfiltered sunshine. Just a taste of smoke southern Oregon’s air. A tincture of dirty cloud on the western horizon. AQI is back down to 40 — the lower, the better — and in the green. Green is good. Most of Jackson County and southern Oregon remains yellow, with warnings to take precautions in effect. Our windows are open for now. A cool breeze bathes my back. Hopes this is a reflection that the fires are now out, or lined, contained, you know, no longer growing.
Today is Friday, August 6, 2021. Ashland’s temperature is expected to top out in the mid to upper eighties. Sunrise fell upon us at 6:09 AM. The Earth will turn us away from the sun at 8:24 PM.
Going with A-Ha and “Take On Me” from 1984 for my theme music. My wife and I were in a military cafeteria in Japan when we first saw the video for this song. It seemed interesting, different, attention-arresting. It’s in my head this morning due to dreams. Cogitating on their details, I said, “Aha.” And there’s the connection. It’s a little deeper in reality; the dreams were all superficially military oriented, hammering the point about change and the past.
Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as necessary, and get the vaccine. Pleased to report that local pharmacies are suddenly swamped with people seeking one of the COVID-19 vaccines. Stories of people losing their lives or several loved ones from the virus because they were unsure about the vaccine have been circulating. They seem to be affecting people. Terrible reading about, example, a woman losing her husband, grandmother, mother, and husband’s father to COVID-19 because they wanted the vaccine to be more thoroughly tested first. Now she regrets their decision but she’s the only one who can get the vaccine. Too late for the rest.
They called it smoky Monday but Tuesday was just as bad. Lord, and Wednesday’s worse. Don’t know what it will be like Thursday but I don’t like the trend.
Today is Smoky Wednesday, August 4, 2021. The smoke continues to thicken from fires south of us in California in the Klamath National Forest. It’s miles away. The city and county keep putting out messages and alerts that evacuation in our area isn’t needed, the fires aren’t threatening us, but BTW, avoid breathing the air if you can. Limit it at least.
A ghostly pale sunrise was at 6:07 AM. The sun is a muted, cloistered presence. Sunset will come at 8:27 PM. The smoke keeps us a little cooler for most of the day with temperatures striding into the low nineties, but it’s a flat, still air. No wind at all. Stifling. Cool nights with temperatures falling to the low sixties are being experienced. But the smoke keeps us inside. I’ve learned that we must keep the western windows and doors closed, or the smoke comes in. Then we start sniffing, coughing, and sneezing as our throats grow dry and scratchy.
With all that, songs with smoke in them came to mind (you can already hear “Smoke on the Water”, can’t you) but no. I saw this video yesterday while stalking the net (or it was stalking me — such a relationship, you know?). It put a smile on my face and stuck with me. Not surprising, really. Music often sticks like peanut butter in my brain.
Here is Dave Grohl performing “Band on the Run” in front of Sir Paul McCartney and President Barack Obama and many other dignitaries in the White House in 2010. Hope you smile as I did.
Be safe. Stay positive. Test negative. Wear a mask as needed. Get the vax. On a mask aside, we went shopping in Medford, twenty miles away yesterday. We were masked, along with about ninety-five of the rest of the people in the stores.
Let’s turn this thing around. Get vaccinated. Wear a mask as needed. Test negative. Stay positive. Here’s the music.
That triggered the 1982 song, “Digging Your Scene”. Fateful words. When I answered, I knew who it was — recognized the number, yeah? — and said, “I just got your message.” Courtesy of a telephone call. Have the Blow Monkeys invading my mind this morning.
Temperatures are again expected in the upper nineties, maybe low 100s F. Air quality is moderate right now (76). (Remember that song?) Wildfire smoke is blowing in from the south, turning the sun into a red rubber ball. Sunset will be at 8:28 PM. Sunrise was at 6:06 AM. It’s already August 3, 2021. Today is Twisted Tuesday. Good morning.
Michael Seidel, writer 