I wake up a lot at night. I wouldn’t call it insomnia, because I do a pretty good job going back to sleep after an hour or so. During that hour I read and think. I used to watch TV, but that kept me awake longer. Last night around midnight I decided to listen to some relaxing music, and that sent me on a journey that’s lasted into this morning.

I’ve had Tame Impala in my head for a while. All I knew of them was a couple of songs heard on FM 94.9, the alt-rock station here in Socal. Lately they’ve been playing The Less I Know the Better, a great song to relax me while driving.

With an Internet device in my hand, I can’t help exploring. So in addition to listening to Tame Impala music, I decided to find out more about “the band”. It didn’t take long to learn that Tame Impala isn’t really a band, it’s just one guy, the immensely talented and cool Kevin Parker from Australia. From Wikipedia, “…Parker writes, records, performs, and produces all of the project’s music.” Mind blown! I read Parker’s life story, listened to a few more tracks and then went back to sleep.

I woke at 530am with an odd idea in my head. Parker reminded me of John Lennon…maybe John Lennon reincarnated? A high-pitched though soothing voice, a pioneer in new music, a lyrical genius. Check, check and check. Same damn Jesus-style haircut, check. So I checked the date of Lennon’s death – Lennon died in 1980, and Parker was born in 1986. So what was Lennon’s soul doing those six years before re-entering this mortal plane as Parker? Probably figuring out how to make music without Paul, George and Ringo via electronics, then coming up with ideas for music and lyrics like New Person, Same Old Mistakes.

“New Person, Same Old Mistakes”

I can just hear them now
“How could you let us down?”
But they don’t know what I found
Or see it from this way around
Feeling it overtake
All that I used to hate
Wonder what if we trade
I tried but it’s way too late
All the signs I don’t read
Two sides of me can’t agree
When I breathe in too deep
Going with what I always longed for

Feel like a brand new person
(But you make the same old mistakes)
I don’t care I’m in love
(Stop before it’s too late)
Feel like a brand new person
(But you make the same old mistakes)
I finally know what is love
(You don’t have what it takes)
(Stop before it’s not too late)
(I know there’s too much at stake)
(Making the same mistakes)
And I still don’t know why it’s happening
(Stop while it’s not too late)
And I still don’t know

Finally taking flight
I know you don’t think it’s right
I know that you think it’s fake
Maybe fake’s what I like
Point is I have the right
I’m thinking in black and white
I’m thinking it’s worth the fight
Soon to be out of sight
Knowing it all this time
Going with what I always longed for

Feel like a brand new person
(But you make the same old mistakes)
I don’t care I’m in love
(Stop before it’s too late)
Feel like a brand new person
(But you make the same old mistakes)
I finally know what is love
(You don’t have what it takes)
(Stop before it’s not too late)

Parker’s body of work is much larger than the few songs I’ve heard on 94.9. I’m gonna have fun listening to it all. Tame Impala is suddenly right up there on my personal playlist along with Bilie Eilish, Khraungbin, Rush, and Jackson Browne.

The news from the eastern KY floods just keeps getting worse. My heart goes out to them.

I grew up with floods. Born in a town surrounded by floodwalls (Catlettsburg), I saw my grandparents’ home just down the river in Ashland flooded several times when I was very young, under the age of ten. Floodwater leaves a dark, mucky, stinky mud several inches thick once it recedes. Even if your structure survives, you’ve got to remove all that smelly muck. And these days it’s also likely poisonous, with god-knows-what chemicals in it, courtesy of the petrochemical factories upriver in West Virginia. And garbage – floods grab all the garbage in their path and leave it for the unfortunate flood victims to clean up. The floodwater and mud in southeastern KY won’t be as polluted as that of the Ohio River, but it’ll still be a mess.

Most of the towns in Appalachia are built in river and creek valleys, a bad practice in retrospect. Compare that with all the Italian towns on hilltops. Those towns were built on hilltops as defense measures against raiders, not floods, but the defense works for both threats. Kentucky’s settlers would have been wiser to model their towns after the Italians. Residents of places like Garrett and Dwarf, KY may get their chance – much of those little towns will have to be rebuilt, and they should strongly consider rebuilding on the hilltops.

Another irony of floods like the one in eastern KY is that they pollute and ruin water systems. After all that rain, there’s no fresh potable water in places like Garrett. It may takes weeks to restore fresh water services.

A final irony in all this flood news is that here in Fallbrook, it hasn’t rained since February, and it didn’t rain much then. It’s dry, dry, dry. And it’s not likely to rain until November.

California (Yosemite) is burning and Kentucky (Appalachia) is drowning in rain. Both extremes and both situations are horrible. As we consider all that pain and damage, we need something soothing to keep us going. So here are the soothing lyrics to James Taylor’s amazing song, Fire and Rain.

Just yesterday mornin’, they let me know you were gone
Suzanne, the plans they made put an end to you
I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song
I just can’t remember who to send it to

I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I’d see you again

Won’t you look down upon me, Jesus?
You’ve got to help me make a stand
You’ve just got to see me through another day
My body’s aching and my time is at hand
And I won’t make it any other way

Oh, I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I’d see you again

Been walking my mind to an easy time
My back turned towards the sun
Lord knows, when the cold wind blows
It’ll turn your head around
Well, there’s hours of time on the telephone line
To talk about things to come
Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground

Oh, I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I’d see you, baby
One more time again, now
Thought I’d see you one more time again
There’s just a few things coming my way this time around, now
Thought I’d see you, thought I’d see you, fire and rain, now

This verse in particular is the one that sticks with me. Pure poetry.

Been walking my mind to an easy time
My back turned towards the sun
Lord knows, when the cold wind blows
It’ll turn your head around
Well, there’s hours of time on the telephone line
To talk about things to come
Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground

We all need to walk our minds to an easy time.

Tonight we go to see the unique Leo Kottke at the BellyUp Tavern in Solana Beach. I bought these tickets a while back not knowing if we’d actually be in town, but here we are. I hope his talent has held up through the pandemic and the slow inevitable decline of age – he’s 76. I love guitar music and guitar players, and Kottke is in the very top tier. It’s been a couple of years since we’ve been to a music venue, and I sure hope we’re not making a mistake by going to this one at a time when BA5 is hitting San Diego pretty hard.

And speaking of COVID hotspots, we’re making final plans for our late August cruise to Alaska. We cancelled the cruise to S America and Antarctica earlier this year because of the worst case scenario of getting stuck very sick out of the country. Somehow cruising up the Canadian coast and then back into US waters seems a lot safer. We’ll see…I plan to spend a helluva lot of time walking round and round the ship on the outside track, sightseeing while getting some senior exercise done.

On the golf front, earlier today I read the first non-bullshit explanation of why someone would leave the PGA tour for the LIV tour. Many pros have said “it’s not the money”, when we all know it’s the money. But Charles Howell III mentioned that he looks forward to playing on his LIV team, playing golf as a team sport rather than an individual competition. Now that makes some sense. Being part of a competitive team is one of the most fulfilling activities in life, and LIV offers that every week, as opposed to one or twice a year for the traditional tour. Maybe they’re on to something.

Finally, I’ve started reading books collected at the recent Louisville Imaginarium conference. They’re not all great, but two authors in particular stand out – Trace Conger and Jeffrey James Higgins. Conger, based in Cinncinnati, writes excellent crime novels that remind me of Elmore Leonard (high praise, for sure). Higgins has written a good thriller set on a sailboat, titled Furious. I enjoyed meeting them and have enjoyed their work.

Yesterday was my Dad’s birthday. He had a tough one, as he spent the previous day in the ER and his birthday more or less recovering from that grueling experience. But he made it to 87, and that counts for something. At this point in his life it’s one day at a time, and that’s OK. Every day is a little win.

Thinking about birthdays, it turns out I can remember a lot of mine, at least the big ones.

On my 16th birthday my parents threw a party for me and my best friend Mike Delvizis. Little did they know that Mike and I had conspired to only invite girls. We thought it was great, but my Mom was pretty pissed. Chalk it up to being 16.

For my 20th birthday some of the guys at the steel mill (my summer job) took me to Huntington for a night of pub crawling. I don’t remember much of it. Probably for the best.

For my 30th birthday, I played tackle football with a bunch of the “young guys” just out of college at my workplace. They didn’t invite me originally, as they considered me old. At the game, I scored every single time I touched the ball. None of them could tackle me or catch me in the open field. I proved my point (not so old, huh?), and they never invited me again.

For my 40th birthday, daughter Emily and her then-stepsister Janay made fun of me becoming an old man. I received a cane and some other elderly assistance items. They had great fun, and I was just happy to be with them.

On my 50th birthday, I think K threw me a big party at the CA house, but I wasn’t into celebrating much. Pretty sure it was a great party (the parties at the CA house kind of run together after all these years). Fifty was the first time I felt old, so I think I downplayed that one.

For my 60th birthday, we got the extended family together in KY and had a great time at Emily and Greg’s house. At least until a relative got wasted on bourbon and accused me of some stupid/evil stuff, at which point the goodwill spell broke and we parted ways. I’ve always regretted that event – it was so outlandish, and it kinda spoiled the day for me.

These days birthdays are just a warning post that says “objects in your windshield are closer than they appear”. There’s not as much runway left as before. But it makes me thankful for every good day.

This week we’re getting our newfangled water filtration system installed. The new pump is back in the well, 600-ish feet down. Here’s a picture of the crew doing that work in and among the thirsty trees surrounding our well head.

Parts of the new filtration system are at the house/garage (a water softener and last-stage filters), but one of the more exotic parts is an addition to our storage tank – a “water polisher”. It swirls the water around in a whirlpool and sucks out the particulates through a process I don’t yet understand. For now it’s just FM. The polisher is pictured below – it’s the device with an orange stripe around it on a skidpad.

We’re investing a lot in our Water 2.0 system, but with good reasons. I’ve watched in dismay as our old system produced water that killed as many trees as it saved – the irrigation water was just too full of salt, iron and particulates for many plants. The new system should make the water as pure and salt-free as any city water system, without the chlorine. Check with me in 4-5 years and we’ll know if 2.0 did the job.

My brothers and I are functioning as the de facto health care advocates for my Dad, and it’s a busy job. Every morning lately we check his status, check his medical record, rally others to perform any necessary on-site tasks (my in-state brothers are a tremendous help here), badger and beg the various MD offices and the assisted living facility staff to pay more attention to his declining health. Today we had to bring in the heavy artillery and send him to the ER for some procedures. I don’t think this is the way things should be, but it’s the way things are. For anyone who doesn’t have an active, aggressive advocate to shepherd them through our crazy healthcare system, good luck. The system is made of mostly caring people, but as a system it fails to put the puzzle pieces together and get the right thing done at the right time for seriously ill people. It’s hard to believe until you’ve experienced it.

Finally, someone else who is thinking clearly about energy, water, and climate. Casey Handmer writes about photovoltaic solar as the way out of the environmental mess we’re in.

Handmer is really good at backing up his ideas and opinions with facts and trends from reliable sources. That doesn’t make the idea a buildable design, but it tends to increase one’s confidence in it’s feasibility.

He’s landed on some of the big ideas I’ve been pushing – PV farms powering desal plants to provide water for the western US. In addition, he’s touting the big idea of turning today’s energy economy upside down via a LOT of PV:

One of these ways has produced the cheapest electricity ever. Electricity so cheap that in an ever growing number of markets it now makes more sense to turn solar electricity into hydrocarbons, than to burn hydrocarbons to make electricity

His arguments are compelling. And he’s gone for the trifecta of a process where not only do we stop burning hydrocarbons to create electricity, we extract C02 from the atmosphere as part of the process.

If I were just a bit younger I’d join his company – this is a vision for the future I can get behind. I’ll look into how I can help makes those ideas a near(er)-term reality. My grandsons’ future needs some help.

Pro tip – invest in PV panel production companies. They’re going to be crazy busy if this future takes hold.

Facts for when your relatives lament how Biden is destroying the country. Yeah, I know, gas prices are high. But anyone with a brain knows that oil companies determine retail gas prices, not the government.

Facts don’t lie. Thankful to @POTUS pic.twitter.com/wyD07pYV9M

— Peace ☮️, love, voting & womens rights 💔 (@Bidenwonthnkgod) July 12, 2022

Here we go, down the slippery slope.

1. With Roe overturned, in conservative states women are going to be forced to carry a pregnancy to term and give birth whether they want to or not.
2. Now, in Missouri and soon elsewhere, pregnant women cannot get a divorce. So not only are you forced to give birth, you are forced to stay married to someone you may wish to part ways with.
3. Next, SCOTUS and certain conservative politicians have already said they’re coming after the right of contraception, so conservative women, your chances of getting pregnant just went way up.

Let’s face it, ladies. If you live in a conservative state, the state is going to own you and your body. You’re a possession, not a person. You’re going to have very little to say about your adult life. So wake up, and start voting Democratic.

Those of you who want the state to control your life, well, you can move to Missouri.

Update, 4-5 hours later. Further down the slope, and fast…

Just now:

A former supporter: “Joe, why’d you leave the GOP?

Me: “Because I believe in freedom.”

Him: “Bullshit. Give me 1 example of Republicans being against freedom.”

Me: “2 hrs ago, 96% of House Republicans voted against people having the freedom to use contraceptives.”

— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) July 21, 2022

This is the most amusing thing I’ve seen in a while. Mutineer’s Isle.

NEW SONG PARODY pic.twitter.com/zLBwK60AH4

— Roy Zimmerman (@IamRoyZimmerman) July 20, 2022