56 F right now, 62 is our projected high on a day when rain clouds have moved in and await their cue.
Had a big-ass thunderstorm here yesterday. Began with a heavy rain. Not monsoon level — I’ve experienced them in Southeast Asia — but heavier, harder, more intense than we typically experience. Thunder rolled in.
I went out on the porches to check the gutters. There are two places where the water was splashing out. They’re the usual suspects and need cleaned out again.
While I was out there, I saw lightning to the north. As I thought, lightning, boom, thunder cracked through the valley, violent and loud. That storm was right on top of us. We experienced several more sharp flashes of lightning and deep thunder and then it moved on.
I checked on Papi. My poor orange boi was retired to the master closet. No windows there. It’s his standard safe haven.
Stalemate with Mom continues. Won’t sell her house and asks my sister when the house is being put up for sale. Insists that she can live alone, and rejects anyone telling her otherwise. Doesn’t have a plan except to get out of the assisted living place. Which was basically her plan when she lived with my sister. It’s so frustrating.
Meanwhile, inflation was up in March to the highest level in two years, 3.3%. Gasoline prices in the US climbed over 21%. It all can all be traced to Trump’s war on Iran.
Who is surprised by any of this? This is par for Trump, creating a distraction from bad news, especially inflation and Epstein, and blaming others. Trump has turned our lives into a three-ring circus.
Today’s song is “Hold On” by Alabama Shakes. This came about when I was doing something and my dream surged back to me. I said, “Hold on,” and spent a moment collecting and assembling dream pieces.
But The Neurons, being who they are, kicked “Hold On” into the morning mental music stream. It’s a solid choice. I heard it I think the year it came out. But when I first heard it on the radio, they never told the song’s title or performer. So I listened, memorizing lines, then went back in and did a net search. Glad I did.
It’s also a song I don’t ever hear being played on the radio these days. That’s a shame.
Hope you and yours are doing well, and peace and grace carry you through whatever the circus of life brings to town.
A young friend wrote this email and sent it out to our group last night.
::sigh:: I feel particularly human today. As I sit at the white kitchen table in front of my computer screen, the light of our day star shines through a faceted crystal as it twirls in the open window, scattering little rainbows everywhere as if the sun is giving me a way to appreciate its beauty without hurting my eyes. I look at the spectrum of visible colors dancing around me and sit with the mirrored spectrum of feelings I’m experiencing today.
Homo sapiens have officially traveled farther away from our blue planet than ever before, and I am beaming with pride for that collective achievement. The Artemis II team represents the best we have to offer, and this mission to push beyond our earthly constraints and explore out into the unknown is the very essence of what it means to be human. NASA’s “Earthset” image was the first thing I saw on my Instagram feed when I woke up this morning, and it genuinely brought me joy to share in a new view of our home world and where we are in the cosmos that has never before been seen or captured by human eyes. This is a monumental moment, and I love it.
Then I saw the list of collaborators on the Instagram post: @nasa, @potus, and @whitehouse. My joy rapidly receded and was replaced by other equal and opposite emotions. Here we’ve got a team of brilliant, dedicated, model humans bravely taking us to the frontier of exploration, and their massive accomplishments are getting co-opted by a demented, cowardly, serial grifter and his pandering White House that exists only to stroke his rotting, intumescent ego. The most anti-science, anti-woman, anti-diversity, anti-progress regime our modern nation has ever suffered is basking in the achievements of people they vocally despise while they try to cut $5.6 billion (23%) of NASA’s budget, a move that would slash their science program in half. The first woman to fly on a moon-bound mission is currently out there making human history on a spacecraft named after a Greek goddess that represented and defended everything quintessentially female, while at home, white Christian nationalists who advocate for ending women’s suffrage and support “biblical patriarchy” are leading prayer services at the Pentagon and gaining political power. The first Black astronaut ever to be sent on a lunar mission is piloting our future into the stars, while an alcoholic, abusive, lascivious, vapid, Fox News host whose greatest recent accomplishment is not sexually assaulting anyone this week, fires Black service members because “woke”. Kind, thoughtful, smart people are out there in the lifeless vacuum of space naming a bright spot on the previously unexplored dark side of the moon after a person they loved and lost, while down here, a senile, malignanat narcissist who rapes kids threatens to wipe out “a whole civilization” in the war he started so he and his billionare buddies could stay out of prison and make disgusting sums of money while helping Israel genocide their way into an exciting new realestate opportunity. This is a monumental moment, and I hate it.
This is what I mean by feeling particularly human today. I’m feeling absolutely everything right now and it’s wonderful, and horrible, and joyous, and infuriating, and inspirational, and disgusting, and just, overwhelming. And here we all sit today, uncertain of the future because our collective fates lie in the tiny, decaying hands of a greedy, failed business man with a full diaper and an empty heart. There’s a nonzero chance that everything changes today, and I wanted to share my perspective in case anyone else was feeling the gravity of this moment in a similar way but hadn’t expressed it. I love this planet with everything I have, but I hate the world we’ve made.
54 F, clouds are parading across our valley’s blue sky. Forecasters tell us we have a high of 75 F and thunderstorms expected this afternoon.
Relief and tension feed my morning. Mom went to her PCP yesterday for blood in her urine. “What transpired of that?” I asked.
“Nothing,” is the answer.
I don’t know what nothing means in this context because it can mean so much.
Mom’s outing yesterday was a bit chaotic. They arrived at the doctor’s office only to be told that Mom had cancelled the appointment. Mom replied, “I thought it was a video appointment.”
That triggers an abundance of questions, like, hey Mom, where do you think sis was taking you? Why did you ask for a specific outfit to wear to the doctor?
Sis managed to talk the office into seeing Mom anyway. The doctor talked to Mom at length about living in the assisted living center vs living at home with the physician telling Mom, “You need 24 hours asistsance.” Mom was adamant; don’t want to live there. Can’t afford it. “Sell your house.” No!
Around and around and around it goes.
Likewise, there’s relief that a cease-fire was called in Iran. Just two weeks, leaving open the questions, will it be honored and what happens after that?
Not a surprise at all but both Iran and the United States claimed victory.
Oil prices plunged. Markets surged. Neither of those are a surprise, either. Reminders proliferate among economists and pundits, the price of gas won’t drop quickly because it’ll take time to restore the supply chain and start facilities that were sidelined.
We filled our gas tank yesterday. What amazed us was the vehicle ahead. He took eight minutes to fill his truck. What is going on, we wondered. And how much is his gas? Turned out, he filled a 31-gallon tank, which is over twice our tank’s size: $192. This was at Costco, which offers the lowest gas price locally.
I joked, it probably took so long to fill because he had to call for a loan.
Back to Trump, I wondered what he learned from this episode. He had been talking about using the military in other places. Hope that he pulls back from that.
Then I check the news: Iran is stopping traffic from going through the Strait of Hormuz because Israel attacked Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Not surprising but I ended up thinking about storms and shelter. The Neurons fed “Gimme Shelter” into the morning mental music stream. The song features some relevant lyrics.
Ooh, a storm is threatening My very life today If I don’t get some shelter Ooh yeah I’m gonna fade away
War, children It’s just a shot away It’s just a shot away War, children It’s just a shot away It’s just a shot away
The Rolling Stones came out with this rock classic way back in 1969. I enjoyed this version with Lady Gaga visiting to add vocals. She delivers. Her shoes, though…amazing how she moves on them. Wow.
Michael Seidel, writer 