Tag: wildfires

Tuesday’s Theme Music

20:16 – 06:13. Sunset, sunrise. I complete the math in my head. Daylight minutes are falling back. Sunrise is later. Sunset is earlier. An annual thing. Recurring. Yet, I let it dominate morning thoughts like the end is nigh. Probably a product of circumstance. Outside activity is limited. Another high dome is settling on us. Back up to 101-105. No humidity. The drought deepens. Its pervasive effects suck out life. Air quality is unhealthy as wildfire smoke curls up in the valley. Better the smoke than the fire, I remind myself with some weariness. Trying to be positive. COVID-19 cases are also setting new area records. ICUs are overrun. Hospital staff have contracted COVID-19. Then there are personal matters I don’t put in posts.

Good morning, and a happy Tuesday to you, too! Today is Tuesday, August 10, 2021. 2021 is hurrying by as a year but it’s gonna leave a mark.

For music, I’ve been sucked into a song by The Calling, “Wherever You Will Go” (2001). This was a cat issue. Tucker insisted upon being my bodyfloof, right there at my heels as I walked down the hall, jumping up on the desk when I sat to type, etc. I processed the usual requests – “Are you hungry? Do you want a treat?” Petted and brushed him. Gave him some nip. But he hung with me. Guess that’s what he wanted. Which prompted the song.

Stay positive. Yes, it’s hard, innit? Is for me. Life can be a wearying business. Especially if you’re like me, staring at the smoke, contemplating COVID-19, struggling to write, pondering the imponderables. But stay positive. Rant a bit. Let it go, if you can. Test negative. Wear the mask when it’s needed. Get the vaccination, please.

Here’s the music. Cheers

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Sunday’s Theme Music

“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, we’re living here in Allentown
And they’re closing all the factories down
Out in Bethlehem, they’re killing time
Filling out forms, standing in line

h/t to Genius.com

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.

Cheers

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Friday’s Theme Music

“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.

Here’s the music. Cheers

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Sunday Setting

  1. The kale started growing again. We’d grown and harvested it. Well, my wife, really. I helped buy supplies. Provided extra hands as needed. The kale took off initially, then wilted under a combined attack – heat, insects, sun. Wife battled on, then clipped it back. Per her orders, I moved its planter off the patio. I put them in the bush’s shade. Matter of convenience. Surprise: the kale is back. Hasn’t been watered since harvest two plus weeks ago, so she began watering it. It seems to like that shady spot.
  2. Tomatoes are doing well. Great to go out and pluck tomatoes as required. Ditto, the squash. Romaine is all gone, though. Sad face.
  3. Did some wardrobe culling. My wife’s simplify switch suddenly turned on. Ergo, I am expected to participate. Out went five bags of clothing between her and me. Two bags of books. Book sellers aren’t buying. Those like Powell’s who buy wouldn’t accept these books. The books are too worn. A bag of shoes. Old blender.
  4. Culling is a serious matter. Embarrassing, too. How much do I need? Well, I’m sixty-five. Things have been acquired for different eras and their needs. Much of it is from my suit and marketing days. Yes, wore suits. Did trade shows. Visited customer sites. Also required for when I returned to company headquarters. That was my U.S. Surgical Days. I worked in California. Headquarters was in Connecticut. Tyco acquired us. Talk about a crazy time. Yeah, time to get rid of those shirts. The ties were already gone. I left Tyco in 1999. Still did marketing work after that for a period for another startup involved with coping with peripheral and coronary chronic total occlusions. It was going under so I went on to Network ICE in 2000, where suits were no longer required.
  5. Also departing my wardrobe were my jockstraps, sweat bands, and racquetball gloves. Haven’t played in two decades. There it all was, buried at the drawer’s bottom, waiting for daylight.
  6. Purged underwear, too. I had enough underwear, I found, to go without washing them for fifty days. Why so many? Well, a large number was undies which no longer fit. Good-bye, I told them. Blew them a kiss. Now I have enough for twenty days. Don’t judge me. I judge myself enough for all of us.
  7. Ten belts were surrendered. All leather. Browns, tans, blacks, burgundy. Tested first. I could see where I wore them. What holes were utilized. Usually the third or fourth. The test today was that the belt must reach at least the second hole. The results amazed me. I generally couldn’t get the tip to the buckle. I had no idea that leather would shrink so much. Only four belts now remain. Black, brown, fancy, and plain.
  8. Catching up on the wildfire news in the U.S. west. Bootleg Fire still burns. Sixty percent contained. 420,000 acres. Drought is spreading. Deepening. Lightning strikes are causing more fires. I turn to other world news. Move beyond the Olympics. Past the spiking — again — COVID-19 numbers. Past the tales of regretful vaccine hesitant folks who are woke after suffering themselves or losing someone close. On to Europe, where Italy, Greece, and Turkey are evacuating tourists due to wildfires. It’s a hot, hot, hot world, and it’s getting hotter.
  9. Absorbing how much floofitude is on exhibit by a cat’s encounter with a spider or cob web. We have loads of them. Webs, that is, not cats. Just have three cats. Probably have so many webs because we have a strict no-kill spider policy. It’s an unending chore cleaning webs out of corners and from ceilings, walls, patio, porch, and garage. Spiders love throwing up webs. I opened the living room patio door this morning. Stepped out. Breathed in. Considered the browning landscape. Then turned to return inside. Walked straight into a web. Some spider must have seen the door open and hurried a dragline across there.
  10. The cats have different reactions to webs. Papi, aka Youngblood, the Ginger Blade, and Meep, is the youngest and most graceful. When he encounters a web, he immediately backs away and goes around it. Boo, our large-size bedroom panther with the small velvet paws, hurries through the web while shaking his head. Tucker, the big black and white alpha cat, stops, shakes his head, washes, and then shoulders on. I’ve witnessed this several times over the months — seriously, the number of webs and how quickly they emerge staggers me — spiders are productive little critters — and I’m certain about my assessment on the cats’ behavior.
  11. Writing has been entertaining. Yes, that’s the term I’ll employ. Absorbing will work as well. I’ve gone surprising places with the story. Then pause as I think, oh, WTF, and ponder the direction. I keep telling myself, just get out of your own way, fool. Don’t overthink anything. Just write. That works. Just need to hurdle myself. An interesting noir style has emerged. So I have a science fiction mystery thriller noir going.
  12. Got my coffee. The day’s second cup. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time. Then I’ll go clean off spider webs. Cheers
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Wednesday’s Theme Music

In a befuddled state of mind. Was traveling so the day of the week and my psyche are misaligned. Is this Tuesday, I asked myself. No, thinking verified, remembered, they picked up trash yesterday (oh, yeah), followed by Fitbit on the wrist validation. It’s Wednesday. Okay. We’re starting to synchronize. Wednesday, 7/28/2021. I guessed sunrise was about 6:00 AM and sunset would be about 8:34 PM. Nailed sunrise but sunset is at 8:36 PM.

We’ve resumed standard summer fare. Yesterday remained cloudy all day. Morning showers surprised us a few times. Nothing more came of it but temps were cool. We’ve been presented an azure slate today. Expect temperatures to range into the upper nineties.

No smoke from wildfires. Knock on wood. Know they’re out there. Bootleg fire is over 400,000 acres. Fifty-three percent contained. Lava fire is 78% contained. Jack fire is 60%. They’re an hour to two hours east, south, north. Nothing burning to the west. Yeah, knock wood.

I have “Roll Over Beethoven” hovering in my head today. It began with trying to roll over in bed and finding myself trapped by others, unable to roll over. After grunting through that otherwise silent struggle (followed by annoyed feline appraisals) and reflecting on dreams, the Beatle version of the song went through. Then, for whatever reasons, I compared it to the Chuck Berry original. Next came the ELO version. When I was thinking about the song this morning after I awoke, I found this live ELO version happening. Enjoyed it. So here it is.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, get the vax, and keep rockin’. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Monday’s Theme Music

Soft as the air, sunrise’s slow grace came upon our valley at 5:51 AM. Today is Monday, July 19, 2021. Heat is expected, but not too terrible. Seventy now, at nine AM, looking for 95 F before the sunset’s mellow withdrawal at 8:43 PM. More fires are burning in the Pacific Northwest. None too close to us, knock on wood. Bootleg continues burning, 300,000 acres, over a quarter contained. Tamarack down south has exploded. Favorable winds are keeping our air clean. Several small fires started locally but quick responses by people and fire departments contained them.

Walking yesterday, I channeled Flo Rida, “Good Feeling” (2011). I got those good feelings yesterday when I was walking. Often afraid to speak of them or write about them, lest I scare them away. I was high on a hill in the town’s southern end. Great view of some of the valley. Wineries. Brown hills. Mountain peaks. Air dirty yellow on the horizon, wildfire smoke.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, sometimes I get a good feeling, yeah
I get a feeling that I never never never never had before, no no
I get a good feeling, yeah
Oh oh, sometimes I get a good feeling, yeah
I get a feeling that I never never never never had before, no no
I get a good feeling, yeah

h/t AZLyrics.com

And I got that feeling. Wonder, how now? Why? What drives these feelings, a sense of optimism, almost invicibility? A sense that change is coming. Where does it originate? Is it an amygdala gone mad?

Maybe, yeah. Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

“And the beat goes on. Drums keep pounding a rhythm to the brain. La di da da dee.”

Welcome to this version of Wednesday. It’s July 14, 2021, the only time it’ll ever be this day and date. The future is now.

Sol’s first rays struck at 5:47 AM. Sunset will be at 8:46 PM. Temperatures are cooler today, 90 degrees. That’s good news for fighting and containing the Bootleg Fire. 100 miles to the east, it has burned through over 212000 acres. Although now eight days old, it’s zero contained and has burned down transmission lines, disrupting power to California while filling the area’s air with smoke.

It’s not the only worrying fire. Just the biggest and most fierce. Meanwhile, COVID-19 case numbers are rising again. Only sporadic evidence but I suspect the ABC gang — anything but COVID believers — happily embraced no masks and no vaccines as variants turn up. Perfect storm of ignorance and mutation, giving new life to COVID-19. The stories keep coming out about those people, like the 23-year-old emergency room news who died of it. A denier to the end, she was never vaccinated. Her parents have tested positive for COVID-19 as well. Sad situation. Worse because it could have been averted.

Well, get the vax, wear a mask as needed, stay positive, and test negative. Here’s some Midnight Oil from 1990 with “Blue Sky Mine”. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

The rotations continue, no matter what is done, sunrise, sunfall. 5:46 AM, 8:47 PM in slice of world in southern Oregon. The revolution continues, despite what is done, carrying us through summer, speeding us toward autumn.

Today is Tuesday, July 13, 2021. Wildfires continue catching and growing. Two are contained, five more start. Smoke doesn’t fill the sky but bleaches the blue into a yellow-tinged gray haze. Fine grey granules, almost white, sprinkle cars and the land. Think of how they coat skin. Get into airways. Spread into lungs, interfering with body functions like breathing.

The smoke is a cooling shade, keeping temperatures from rising over one hundred F but unable to keep us from experiencing high nineties heat. Green has been dried out of the grasses. They turn into a sandy shade of brown.

But, you know, good news. COVID-19 vaccinations appear to be helping, where people are allowing themselves to be vaccinated. As disease variants rise, the unvaccinated and vaccinated become positive, but it’s the unvaccinated who are typically hospitalized and dying.

The other good news is that people are shedding their masks, unless they need it to deal with smoke (at least out here in the American west). Stores are opening. Restaurants. Movie theaters. One can again attend movies. Isn’t that good news? And the All-star break is underway. Good news, right? Good news.

While drought spreads in the west, places are flooding in the south and east as hurricanes and tropical storms strike. Did you see the photos of the flooded New York subway and roads? Places are also experiencing power outages. Sometimes from storms, sometimes because power is cut off due to wildfires, sometimes because the wildfires burn power lines. Melbourne, Australia is locked down again but the NFL is looking forward to full stadiums. There’s a water shortage growing in America but a housing boom is underway. The stock market has never been better, and look how that economy seems to be recovering. Also, the Emmy list has been released. That’s good news, isn’t it?

An ad on an Internet page seems it all up for me. Showing a pristine red and white Chevy Corvette from the early sixties, the ad informs me, “Jag EType” (that’s how they put it) “in any condition, nationwide.” While showing a Vette. Makes sense to me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m an optimist. Hopeful. Hell, I keep grinding away on my writing routine. Must believe some future exists for it. Which brings me to the music.

Here’s the Pretenders from 1986. They do an homage to an old television show, “The Avengers”. My wife and I quite enjoyed that series as children. Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, get the vax. Cheers

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Sunday’s Theme Music

After peeking in through windows at 5:38 AM in Ashland with shy pale goldens, the sun boldly shouldered in, shouting, “We got your sunshine. We got your daylight.” Such a bold sun plans to put out browning, sweat-inducing heat, don’t you know. Temperatures will hunt the lower nineties before the sun, still in its place, disappears from the valley at 20:39.

Got the darkness trying to throttle me. It’s a debilitating but brief trough experienced when I ponder what’s the use of all this nonsense? I was walking as it struck, like a bolt into my soul, just before sunset last night. Because a wildfire is being fought and people evacuated, I was thinking about wildfires and water shortages. Many new homes are being built in Ashland. Development is the daily cry as the trucks lumber in with supplies and workers busy with foundations and walls. We were already being told to conserve water. Now there is less water to be divided among more households.

Dev is good but with that shrinking water base, we also have an expanding wildfire season. Before COVID-19 shut down activities, wildfire smoke did the same, cratering the local economy becoming an annual thing. The first time it happened, businesses dismissed it as a one off. Second time, some pulled the plug. Third time, dark mutterings about what are we going to do were heard.

City council lacks the leadership to move out of this mess. Frankly, the mess is bigger than them. Is it climate change? By the time sufficient data is collected, we probably won’t be around to know. Meanwhile, the new houses being built are closer together as land becomes a precious commodity. Streets are narrower. Traffic density rises. Did I mention that a two-lane state highway longitudinally bisects the town? Only one way in and out, not a reassuring realization for planning evacuations. Every street feeds into it.

With the darkness and these bleak realizations colliding, on came an old song by the Smiths. Here are the lines.

This town has dragged you down
And everybody’s got to live their life
And God knows I’ve got to live mine
God knows I’ve got to live mine

h/t to Genius.com

The 1984 song is called, “William, It Was Really Nothing”. Yes, it’s really nothing; just a little darkness nibbling the psyche. Stay positive (you know, like me!), test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax. Cheers

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Further Friday Frustrations

  1. Besides COVID-19, the drought and the threat of wildfires, we’re wondering about how the crazy worms will affect us.
  2. I’m also concerned that I’m not cheugy.
  3. Well, not that concerned.
  4. I’ve been accepted by Medicare. As a military retiree of a certain era, I’m covered by Tricare. Tricare requires me to get Medicare A and B when I turn 65. That happens in July. I applied when I became eligible. A few days later, I was accepted. Meanwhile, I receive phone calls, emails, and snail mail from individuals and companies offering to help me navigate making my Medicare choices. It’s another industry. Everything becomes an industry, and as you reach certain milestones, they make you aware of it. It used to be that my junk mail was all about buying a new car, shopping for clothes, or taking vacations. Now it’s about hearing aids, funeral services, Medicare, reverse mortgages, and Viagra.
  5. Of course, there’s a few new industries afflicting all of us who own a home or car. We receive regular phone calls about our car and home warranties. In our house, we don’t answer the phone unless we recognize the number. The other industry that’s aggressively chasing us is insurance against our water pipes bursting in our yard. A WaPo article says, in essence, yeah, it’s another scam.
  6. I think one of my cats has short-term memory issues. Whenever Boo encounters our other cats, Papi and Tucker, he reacts like, “OMG, who the hell are you?”
  7. To mitigate the fire threat in our town, a ‘firewise’ program has been established. Basically, don’t use any bark mulch on the ground. Don’t grow any flammable plants within five feet of the house. Store wood products that you might have at east thirty feet from the house. Trim back all branches so they’re not touching the house or close enough for flames to leap from the tree to the roof. Get rid of wooden decks, wooden fences, conifers and blackberries. Walking around Ashland, I can see that the program has made little progress. We were affected by a fire last year. There were actually three fires on the same very windy day. All three were started by individuals. The firewise program can’t address the wind or deliberate fires.
  8. They also tell us to keep your plants watered so they don’t dry out and become fuel, but we’re in an extreme drought, so hey, there’s little water to water plants. The only option appears to be to pull out all your plants except those of a desert variety and put small stones or pebbles in your yard to help reduce moisture. Of course, I’m also exploring polymers that are supposed to help the soil retain moisture.
  9. Delivering decorative bark (or mulch) had become a growing industry. Go to any hardware store’s garden area and there’s bags and bags of variations. Blower trucks will load up and come to your house and spread it for you with a giant reverse vacuum cleaner. Now, I suspect a new industry, to vacuum it all back up, will begin taking root.
  10. I thought that killer bees and murder hornets were bad. Now we can add crazy worms to the list of things nature has devised to make the world more interesting. The MSN story says, “Pick one up, and you’ll see why, as the creepy-crawly jerks, writhes and springs out of your hand. (It may even leave its tail behind, as a grim souvenir.) And now, scientists are finding the wrigglers have spread to at least 15 states across the U.S.” They resemble regular worms and are bad for the soil.
  11. I have a crazy cat. I really don’t want crazy worms.
  12. My wife is on her weekly coffee clatch call. Pre-COVID-19, they’d meet after exercise class every M-W-F. Their pandemic compromise is to meet every Friday after exercise class. They have a good time. Lots of laughing. I hear her now talking about her sagging breasts and my drooping scrotum. I’d told her that my sack hung in the water in the hotel toilet during our visit last week. Disgusting, right? Once you feel and know it, you can take action by not sitting all the way down. This is another reason why I prefer to stand and pee, even though I’m cursed with a forked stream. Aging. There’s always something.
  13. Haven’t smelled any skunk for over thirty days, yeah, knock on wood. I’m superstitious that way. Haven’t smelled the skunk, or sighted one, but my wife reports that she heard a thump last night for the first time in weeks. Time to block the entry (again) and see what happens. I would mount my camera but it has quit working. I’ve not been able to reset it and connect it nor receive any images from it. I don’t want to buy a new one because, waste. We’re such a throw-away consuming society. It’s frustrating.
  14. Being cheugy doesn’t offend me. And, from what I understand, I am cheugy. Apparently emerging from TikTok, cheugy is the new ‘square’, a way of saying something is passé, or out of it. Tres important, right? I’m bothered by too many other things, like crazy worms and skunks under the house, to think about being trendy.
  15. Got my coffee. Time to go write like crazy at least one more time. Before the crazy worms get here. We’re already full up on crazy. Even bought a warranty. It was offered on the phone.
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