A frequent presence on my clock radio early Saturdays is the superb jazz show on KCRW-FM. I sleep through a lot of it and am thankful for the miracle of website replay. One morning years ago I thought I heard host Bo announce the death of the great saxophonist Bob Cooper. It turned out to be true.

On a subsequent Saturday the first hour of Morning Edition feathered through my weekend mind, which in that year of 1999 was recovering from no doubt another grueling week at Telfair Ave. ES, and I thought I'd heard Grover Washington, Jr. had died from a heart attack. It was also true, as wakeful daylight brought print tributes.

In this ongoing California drought there seemed to shimmer as a distant summer Santa Clarita landscape the curtailing of activities at Castaic Lake. Maybe I had heard speculation or something incomplete. They were set to open for swimming this Memorial Day Weekend but yesterday as I visited their site again something was all too final: swimming beaches closed for the summer due to drought conditions.

I can rationalize my visits several times a summer the last few years weren't as full of the esoteric spectacle enjoyed during my initial visits during the early 2000's but this bespeaks future shock become present. Another station, KFI, has its billboards flash out various slogans about how truthful they are. The pseudo-word "truthiness" climbs up my skin, seeming to both warm and chill but certainly crawling. Something about all my reading of the run-ups to war.

Both stations mentioned have their parts in the debate about global warming, insults coming from deniers and warning trackers alike though one side has the most intensity. Refuge in music, some will say. No, I am currently watching sexual harassment seemingly ignored by two band leaders, one very Republican and other very vocal on Facebook about playing in a band, in which she is not the leader, that performed on a July 4 on the grounds of the Reagan Library.

I am writing on this Memorial Day out of queasiness.

Castaic swim beaches consist of a north and a south, separated by the suggestion of an isthmus. There appears to be no segregation or partisanship, patronage dictated more by such as the north beach closer to a slope and parking. In other words, not every analogy can be pushed. Neither can the notion of correct politics making correct people.