Ah, Sunday, December 10, 2023. The fog has lifted and spread out into a thin layer in some northern spaces of the valley. Break out the rain gear again, though, as more is on the way. Also be sure to wear some warm clothes. 34 F now, cloudy skies and a chance of 50 F as the high in Ashlandia, where the people can be pretty remarkable, sometimes.
It’s concert weekend. Rogue Valley Symphonic concert has their holiday offering going on, as to the Siskiyou singers. My wife attended the latter’s concert yesterday, one of three, and we’ll hit the symphonic offering today. Then the RVS has a thank you/support by invitation event, for $20, at a local store. I’m not attending that, as the store offers substantial discounts and I’m not a shopping individual, so my wife and a friend who likes shopping will be attending. Later this week is a friend’s 75 birthday celebration, and then a tradition Swedish smorgabord is scheduled for Saturday. There’s a lot of food to be eaten this week.
The Neurons had nothing in the morning mental music stream (Trademark eaten by the dog), so I turned to the net. I found an article on the NYTimes called, “Best Songs of 2023”. First up is Allison Russell with “Eve Was Black”. I’d never heard of it or it, which embarresses me. Looking it up, I enjoyed it, so I’m offering it to you. I’m offering a recording of her playing it live at Farm Aid 2023, as I like seeing the musicians’ skills on display. It is different from the studio version, so I added it, too, after some thought. Hope you enjoy the song as much as I did.
Be safe, stay positive, and leeeaaannn forward. Coffee is in hand — I’ve even had a few sips. Here’s the video. Cheers
Rain showers the street and sidewalks outside the coffee shop windows. Between the clouds and rain, gray smothers the day like swaths of gray flannel.
The coffee shop is cold. It’s always cold when the sun ain’t cracking through to brighten and warm us. Despite wearing a fleece jacket, I’m shivering, and my hands are cold. My wife, who suffers Renaud’s disease, would be in misery.
And I had to pee again. I finally decided to seek the answer about why I pee more often when I’m cold and did a search.
“Cold-induced diuresis,” thenakedscientists.com on the net informed me, basically an increase in urine due to more blood being filtered due to vasoconstriction to conserve heat, more or less.
At least I know the reason now. At least my laptop’s keyboard warms my fingertips a little. How we artists must suffer.
It’s foggy in Ashlandia again. Fog closed in on our fair town, where the mountains are low and the valley is narrow, yesterday afternoon. The for went away for the night and returned this morning, along with a doughnut sprinkle of rain that’s expected to keep up intermittently for the day. It’s all part of the season called aunter, which falls in the last third of fall, bringing dampness, dark days, and cold air, and winter, when the snow is summoned.
But look out. It’s 45 F now but we’re gonna get warmer, even broaching the sixties, maybe, they say, maybe getting as warm as 66F. Not bad for a aunter day.
This is Wednesday, December 26, 2023.
I was in a Dollar Store with my wife yesterday. She’s planning a holiday gift for her exercise class instructor. My spouse has been going to this class since 2005. The instructor is 78 and has been telling people what to do to music since the early 1980s. She’s quite popular. My wife became friends with her over exercising and books. My wife and two others, who were then known as the Woo-Woo girls, started talking about books they were reading as they warmed up before class. Soon the instructor joined, and then a few others, giving rise to the Ladies’ Most Excellent Book Club, which became the book club. They limit it by vote to ten people, and they’re serious readers. We’ll be going to the instructors’ house for a traditional Swedish smorgasborg later this month.
Anyway, as part of the holidays, my wife has started a new tradition of collecting money and signing a card for the instructor. The instructor rarely keeps the money, either donating it to families who need it, or to local causes with the food bank. My wife likes going to the Dollar Store for supplies. It might be a Dollar Tree store; I don’t pay attention. I know they’re no longer a store where things are a dollar or less. But yesterday surprised me.
The dollar store has restaurant and big box store gift cards, along with iTunes gift cards. Many were for $25 or $50. I didn’t bother asking the busy staff it the cards sold for a dollar. They’ve probably heard that joke, and nothing on that end cap display said, “Olive Garden $50 Gift Card: One Dollar”.
It’s just more evolution for the dollar store trio who combined into one business entity a few years ago. I remember first going to one of them thirty years ago after moving back to the United States. I was like, everything in the store is for sale for a dollar? Why, yes, that was exactly the premise: a dollar or less. Being in the military, not getting paid much, and liking a bargain, we went frequently to the Dollar Tree or Dollar Store to get household cleaning supplies, notebooks and paper supplies — including greeting cards — and whatever little bargains we found.
Sad that the stores have changed their philosophy, but that’s how progress works. I guess. At least we’ll someday be able to tell future generations that there used to businesses which sold things for a dollar. They’ll probably ask us, “What’s a dollar?”
An apartment building neighbors us not too far away. With the leaves out of the trees, I can see some of their upper windows from my backyard. Yesterday, I saw a cat in one of the windows. It’s not the first cat I’ve seen in the building, so it’s not that remarkable. This was a fine looking cat, young and slender-appearing, sitting erect as a statue in that graceful cat manner we so often see. White with calico spots, it was intently watching me. I wondered if the cat was lonely and I hoped that it was’t.
That tiny reflection invited The Neurons to offer a song to the mental music stream, where it continues in the morning mental music stream (Trademark nutty). “Only the Lonely” by The Motels, not to be confused with “Only the Lonely” by Roy Orbison, came out in 1982. So it’s for that cat and the other floofs alone and watching that this song is offered as Wednesday’s theme music.
Stay pos and strong, and lean in. Coffee has arrived at the brain center, exciting The Neurons. Here we go, off to start the day. And here’s the music. Cheers
Don’t be misled by the misleading headline for this breaking news. Tuberville still maintains a chokehold on promotions for four-star generals, which are generally (ha, yeah, couldn’t be helped) the most critical senior leadership position.
He’s still a terrorist posing as a Senator, undermining the nation at a critical time as nail-biting situations continue around the world.
“I’m releasing everybody. I still got a hold on I think 11 four-star generals. Everybody else is completely released from me.” Tuberville told reporters. “But other than that, it’s over.”
What bull. What absolute arrogance. He should have never been holding these promotions up. It was political grandstanding and hypocrisy at its worse.
Wish the Florida-living senator from Alabama will get voted out of office but he won’t because he was a college football coach, and Alabama loves its football. He’s an empty head, parroting MAGA points, standing with Trump in calling the 2020 POTUS election “stolen”, and fighting against climate change legislation because he doesn’t think it’ll amount to anything for the next 400 years. Just like Trump, he knows better than the military; he knows better than the scientists and refuses to believe any evidence presented to him.
So just remember Tuberville when the extreme weather increases and causes more damages and deaths, when hurricanes ramp up faster and become more intense, wildfires strike more states, and drought causes more water shortages and crop loss, and thank the voters of Alabama.
We’re back onto Tuesday. Seems like it was Tuesday just last week.
Today is December 5, 2023 in Ashlandia, where the sidewalks are becoming above average but the roads are getting below average. It’s a solid flat white sheet of clouds lording the sky. Breezes are blowing and rain is coming but it’s 52 F now and we’ll see 61 before orbital mechanics drops darkness on us again.
It’s my little sister’s birthday. That would be little sister #1, who is a three-time granny. When she has 20 great-great-grandchildren, she’ll remain my little sister. Happy birthday, sistah. She didn’t have the best of times when she was a child and then teenager. It’s a story often told about some things going wrong in modern America. But she pulled out of it and is now the family’s solid center, the responsible one who looks after the rest.
Her birthday was celebrated last week because little sister #2 goes in for her ileostomy reversal surgery today, did in fact go in for it several hours ago — different time zones. She’s in the east and I’m in the west. This is the next stage for her cancer treatment, which has gone well, knock on wood, as Mom always said, something we children all carry forward.
Today’s song is by The Pogues, and The Neurons and I came up with it together. The song came out in Europe in 1988. Stationed there at the time, I first heard it at a friend’s house one Christmas a year later. He loaned me his CD because I wanted to learn the lyrics.
The song is “Fairtale of New York”. I sing along with it as best as I can as it circulates the morning mental music stream (Trademark fried). A duet, it’s a sad, bitter tale about a life between a man and a woman, and how it went from being one thing of love, hope, and dreams, to a weary edition of drinking, drugs, and hanging on. Sung with jaunty sarcasm, it’s also a brief remark on the differences on those who make it and those who don’t. ‘Faggot’ is in the lyrics, which was a verboten term by the time I was in high school in the early 1970s, so its inclusion was conroversial. The songwriter insisted it fit and needed to be there because of who the woman was singing the word; the word’s use shows her desultory character and was part of the times.
The male vocalist, Shane MacGowan, died last month from pneumonia, and was just a few months younger than my wife. With a lifelong problem of alcohol and drugs, he suffered from lingering maladies brought on by falls and was confined to a wheelchair before he was fifty because of a broken pelvis.
His female counterpart, Kristy MacColl, died when she was 41, over twenty years past. She was on vacation with her sons, diving in Cozumel, when she saw a speedboat coming at them. One son was out of the boat’s path and safe, but the other was in danger. She saved him, but was killed in the effort. The boat involved was owned by a millionaire so justice was a facade.
Lean forward, be strong, and stay positive. Keep working on it. I’m working on this cup of coffee, myself. Then I’ll work on the rest. Here’s the video. Cheers
Greetings and welcome to Monday, December 4, 2023. Coming up ahead, you’ll notice kinaras, menorahs, and Christmas trees awaiting between the commercial ads, music, and secular lights of the holiday spirit.
Here in Ashlandia, where Ashland’s annual Festival of Lights took place on November 24 and was average, wind pushes around air that’s about 54 F, close to where it’ll be as a high today. Partly sunny, partly cloudy, partly rainy later on. Our mountain snows and mists have evaporated,snow waits though if you take a roads an hour north or twenty minutes south and drive up into the moutains.
Did you read about ex-POTUS Trump’s declaration the other day? “I think if you had a real election and Jesus came down and God came down and said, ‘I’m gonna be the scorekeeper here,’ I think we’d win [in California], I think we’d win in Illinois, and I think we’d win in New York.” h/t Rolling Stone Magazine.
Yes, Trump world Jesus is not a brown, humble man who preaches to love others, not be greedy or worship money, and to help the poor and sick. No, Trump Jesus — guess I’ll just write it Truses — supports lying and hate. He’s all in for the wealthy and the whites and cares nothing for social justice. I’m sure Trump supporters have created or found a bible where this bizarro Truses exists. Facts mean less and less to them; power and authority are what their dogs hunt, or they’d be questioning the morals of a person accused of rape several times, a man of multiple affairs, one who can’t be trusted to tell you the right day of the weak, one who blatently lies about his physical condition.
I can’t decide which is the worst aspect of the support of Trump; that so many give up their values — or that they’re now displaying values that most of the world find abhorrent; that they ignore his constant lying and bragging; that they ignore his history, and also discard much world and US history; or that many of them are now giving up their religious beliefs and throwing away the progress we as a nation made in the last 246 years. And for what? For a warped vision of how a society should act based on bigotry, hate, and prejudice fueled by lies and exaggerations. It makes my spirit ache and my head explode.
All that inspired The Neurons to stick me with INXS and “Devi Inside” from 1988 in the morning mental music stream (Trademark countered). That all come from thoughts that the MAGA-led Republicans, as defined by Trump’s vision, seem engrossed with a vision of hell on Earth. This includes trampling others’ rights, denying progress unless it benefits making more money, and ignoring truth and justice to society’s detriment. I mean, Trump now refers to anyone who doesn’t support him as ‘vermin’. He advocates using violence and imprisonment to limit opposition to him, and goes on hateful screeds whenever someone does say something he doesn’t like, especially if it’s about him, and his supporters applaud or pretend nothing is wrong. Is there any wonder that The Neurons brought up the INXS line, “It’s hard to believe we need a place called hell.”
Here come the man With the look in his eye Fed on nothing But full of pride Look at them go Look at them kick Makes you wonder how the other half live
The devil inside The devil inside Every single one of us the devil inside
The devil inside The devil inside Every single one of us the devil inside
Here come the world With the look in its eye Future uncertain but certainly slight Look at the faces Listen to the bells It’s hard to believe we need a place called hell
I hope you can be strong and positive, and keep leaning forward, at least better than I seem to be doing. I’ve had coffee but I think I need a bit more. Here’s a recording of an energizing INXS concert production of “Devil Inside”. Hope you enjoy it. Cheers
Sunday has bubbled up into the latest reality. It’s the 3rd of December, 2023. Mists follow the green conifers of the southern mountains. Our sky did have a small amoeba of blue sky fluctuating above us. It was 50 F with the announced idea that 66 F is our potential high. Right now, rain is hovering in the area, and clouds that look like a turbulent gray sea have buried the blue sky. That’s life in Ashlandia, where the weather can change in a Pacific northwest minute and we can experience several seasons in one day.
My first December event was okay last night. Got my haircut so I look like I can fit in with any military unit that requires short hair. Fit in well with Guanajuato Nights 2023, last night’s annual event. It was the fourth we’ve attended, impelled by friends involved with the Amigo Club behind the event almost as much by the money raised for scholarships and interest in Ashland’s sister city, Guanajuato, Mexico. Excellent Mexican foods were on the menu, starting with hors d’oeuvres of empanadas, tiny tortilla spoons filled with guacamole with lime and cilantro, and ending with flan with a chocolate base flan. Unfortunately, dinner was slow in coming out and our food, like many, arrived late at the table.
Feeling a little weary and thoughtful this morning, I deliberately sought out some music from Playing for Change. Founded in 2002 to pursue a mission to connect the world through music, the music project features musicians from around the world.
Using the money raised, the Playing for Change Foundation builds art and music schools for children.
Anyway, my search for today’s theme music finally brought me to a original song called “Playing for Change” written by Sara Bareilles. Hope you find it worthy as today’s theme music.
Be strong, stay positive, and keep leaning forward. Coffee has been ingested; time for another cup, I think.
Hey, sunshine has broken through the gray, though there is no blue. Think I’ll schedule a walk for later. Here’s the music. Cheers
Good morning. Today is Saturday, December 2, 2023.
I am so aggrieved today. Not due to the weather. 41 F with a high of 48 F in our sights, it’s been raining, and snow tops the northern ridge that marks our valley’s boundary. So, the weather is standard late fall trope for our area, cold, misty, dull and wet, something worthy of being the backdrop for a dystopian trudge as the earth’s course leads us around the sun and into winter.
No, the issue is that it is December and the parties and activities commence. We’re due to appear at several already, all due to my enchanting wife, who has a strong friend base who likes her and enjoys her presence. As several are couples things, I’m invited, too. I know most of the people, so they’re not strangers, and I want to be the right person, supportive of her as she is for me, but that means leaning way out of my preferred mode of being alone and writing. It also means I must play reindeer games, the term I coined decades ago for cleaning up and dressing up for December parties and activities. Top of the list is a haircut. After being required to have haircuts all the time for the military and then frequently when I was in marketing, I dislike worrying about my appearance. I tell her that I don’t need a haircut because I’ll be with her, and everyone will be looking at her, but she’s adamant that because I’m beside her, I must look pretty, so I will do so.
Yes, on the one hand, I’m being petty, complaining about being forced out to social engagements, truly a first world whine. On the other hand, going to these things is completely against my nature, and uncomfortable for me because I’m socially awkward. Yeah, that’s my problem.
Today’s music starts with making the cats’ brekkie. I’m cleaning bowls when The Neurons remind me of the movie, Twins, with Arnold Schwartzenegger and Danny DeVito as the starring twins. From there, The Neurons poured the airplane scene where Arnold’s character has left his island home and is off to find his twin. Exposed for the first time to rock and roll, he’s listening on headphones and singing, “Yakey Yak” out loud, disturbing/slash amusing the other passengers. Now that’s song in my morning mental music stream (Trademark cyclical).
The song by the Coasters came out a few years after I was born in the late 1950s. I guess I heard it on the car radio, and the melody, lyrics, and voices appealed to me, because those words are seared in my mind. Some of them were used by Mom, “Don’t you give me a dirty look,” or variations such as, “Don’t give me that look.” She also liked to sing the song to me when I went to her with a request sometimes, depending on her mood.
Lean forward, be positive, and stay strong. Happy holidays. Just had my Saturday morning coffee. Here’s the music. I’m off to get a haircut. Cheers
Today is December 1, 2023. It’s Friday in Ashlandia, where the rain pours down like it’s Okinawa. We used to get some mighty downpours there.
Let me pause here to go turn over the wall calendar’s page. Made by Pete Lyons, it’s devoted to the racing I watched and followed when I was a teenager.
So it’s cold, 38 F, and rain comes down at an unrelenting pace. Wonder comes, will the sky ever run out of rain, which triggers story ideas to muse over as I feed the cats and sip my coffee. Then it’s to the news, where two large stories dominate in the morning cycle
Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor died, and Rep. George Santos was expulsed from the US House of Representatives. Both are news of a historic nature. Justice O’Conner was the first woman appointed to the SCOTUS. Took just over two hundred years from the time the court was established in the early days. Progressives like me were pleased because, hey, a woman has finally arrived in a place of power and respect in the US government, but also dismayed because she’s white and conservative. Can’t have everything.
At least O’Connor upheld Affirmative Action, and ended up supporting Roe v. Wade when its foundation was challenged. In the 1992 case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Justices O’Connor, Kennedy, and Souter, three conservative, Republican-appointed justices, surprised us with an opinion that reaffirmed the “core” of the 1973 precedent. It was an interesting opinion as they said that overtuning the precedent in the face of 1992’s political pressure would cause “both profound and unnecessary damage to the court’s legitimacy, and to the nation’s commitment to the rule of law.” That seems like what we’ve seen with Roe v. Wade being overturned by the current court, as it’s polarized the nation’s politics in a massive way and has many wondering about the SCOTUS court and its legitimacy, fearing that it’s become thorughly politicized by the right wing.
Much of my memory about O’Connor’s rulings and point of view was aided by the NYTimes’ story about her today. I thought this paragraph gave a good overarching summary of some of Justice O’Connor’s position on the matter of separation of church and state in a 2005 case.
In a 2005 case, McCreary County v. American Civil Liberties Union, she joined a 5-to-4 majority in invalidating the display of framed copies of the Ten Commandments on the walls of courthouses in Kentucky. Respect for religious pluralism had served the country well in contrast to other societies, she wrote in a concurring opinion, adding, “Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: Why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?”
As for George Santos, he’d been found to have told so many outrageous lies while practicing both shady campaign finances and personal finances, a plurality of the House Representativs finally decided it was enough and booted him. Those of us on the left cheer, “About damn time.” We felt he should never have been elected and his expulsion should’ve happened long before this, but at least it has happened.
Today’s theme music is rooted in last night. Looking at the clock as I was reading, I realized it was coming up o midnight. I thought, I’ll wait until midnight, and then get up and yadda, yadda, yadda. When I did get up to get ready for bed a few minutes post midnight, The Neurons began spinning “In the Midnight Hour” by Wilson Pickett, where it remains in the morning mental music stream (Trademark floundering). The song came out in 1965 (I looked it up), when I was nine. I don’t know when I first heard it, but it’s woven into my musical being as part of what shapes me. It comes on, and my head bops and my body sways. I snap my fingers to the beat, and sing the lyrics.
Stay positive, lean forward, and be strong. I’ve been drinking coffee, and I’m verge of finishing my morning cuppa. Here’s the video. Cheers
It’s 39 F outside in Ashlandia, where the skies are cloudy all day. Clouds smudged with dark shadows collide above, smothering sunshine, undermining warm temperatures, and dribbling and spittin’ on us. It’s Thursday, November’s final day of 2023, i.e., the 30th. Tomorrow, we take it to December, and December brings it to us. It’s getting darker and colder as the day slides into afternoon, like fall is ready to surrender to winter.
I’ve been reading many news articles, ranging from straightforward local news to updates on various trials and political issues, elections, war, disasters, science, and technology. Many of these things are wearying as so much of it has been written about with little changing; I await endings just to give me a break. I suppose I could take a break from it all but I appear to edge toward being obsessive compulsive about some of it.
The most exciting news to me was a story in the NYT about six planets orbiting in resonance around a star 100 light years away. Twelve telescopes were used to observe this and put it all together. Scientists say that such orbits in a solar system takes place “1% of 1%” of the time. They believe that when planets form and the solar systems begin, this resonance happens but then events take place to disrupt the orbits. Finding a solar system like this provides them an opportunity to study how the orbits change, a sensational learning opportunity.
For theme music today, The Neurons have installed OneRepublic with “Secrets” (2009) in the morning mental music stream (Trademark treacherous). This all comes down to the manifest insincerity I read about in so many news articles about complex issues. It’s a large catalyst to the weariness coming down on me. I mean, it’s one thing to read about issues but quite enough to gag through loads of insincerity presented in the articles. See, a line in the song goes “I’m sick of all the insincere”. That’s where the connection comes up.
Let’s take Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, ex-college football coach. He seems to live in Florida, according to records.
“As of last month, Tommy Tuberville did not own a single square foot of property in Alabama after selling parcels in Macon and Tallapoosa counties for $1.4 million, according to a Washington Post report published Thursday.
“And while a spokesman for Alabama’s senior senator maintained to the Post that Tuberville’s primary residence is an Auburn house owned by his wife and son, campaign finance documents and property records suggest Tuberville’s main home is in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, the paper reported.“
“The sale of the Alabama properties were notarized by a Santa Rosa Beach resident, which the Post reported suggested the senator was in Florida when the transaction went through on July 14.
“The report went on to say that Tuberville’s wife, Suzanne Tuberville, is a licensed real estate agent in Florida and has worked for a Santa Rosa Beach real estate firm since the start of the year. She does not have an Alabama real estate license, according to the Post.”
Senator and Mrs. Tuberville sound like fine Alabama citizens, perfect reps of their people, even if they don’t seem to live among their people, don’t they? (Yes, that could have been snark.)
It bothers me even if his constituents aren’t concerned because it strikes me as counter to the ideal of a representative democracy and the founders’ vision about what they were trying to create in their idea of a government by and for the people. It’s another ethics lapse for Tommy T in my mind, but then I’m predisposed against him.
Some of my reasoning against him is that he’s holding up military promotions, basically having a hissy fit and behaving as a terrorist to coerce change on the military while undermining the US military’s strength and stability. That’s particularly galling becaue he claims he’s a great supporter of the military. Of course, he’s never served, because the military isn’t that important to him. (Yes, I definitely detect snark there.)
Tuberville so supports the military that he founded the Tommy Tuberville Foundation “to recognize and support organizations and causes that connect with the beliefs and values of the Tuberville family: assisting our military and veterans; awareness, education and prevention of health issues, particularly among women and children; and, education and community initiatives.”
“Through its first five years, the foundation raised $289,599 but spent just $51,658 on charitable causes, tax records showed.[56]This rate of 18% is less than the 65% that the Better Business Bureau says ethical charities should spend on their causes.[57] In 2020, the Associated Press called the Tuberville Foundation “a questionable charity that raises money but gives very little away”.[58] Foundation officials said the tax filings did not reflect volunteer labor and donated materials used to refurbish veterans’ homes.[59]
“In 2020, The New York Times reported that Tuberville campaign and foundation officials “produced internal records for 2018 that showed nearly $20,000 was raised for a temporary project to provide a retreat for veterans. But the records raised bookkeeping questions, since they showed more than $61,000 of 2018 revenue, roughly twice what the charity reported to the I.R.S. that year”.[60]
In 2021, the Washington Post reported, the foundation “reported it had $74,101 in revenue and spent just 12 percent of that, or $9,000, while $32,000 went to administrative costs (including nearly $12,400 to pay off a truck the charity purchased in 2018 for $27,369)”.[61] By the end of 2021, the foundation’s website had gone defunct.[62]
“In July 2023, a spokesperson for Tuberville said that the foundation had been under audit and had paused its activities, but that Tuberville was reforming it.[61]“
h/t to Wikipedia.org, emphasis mine.
Do you get how I mean that reading about Tuberville reeks with insincerity that fills me with nausea?
Anyway, have a better day, stay positive, be strong, and lean forward. Coffee has been slurped up on my end, and I’m ready to sit inside and take on the cold rain.
Michael Seidel, writer 