Monday, December 29, 2025
Time: 7:42 AM
Song: California
Dreamin’
Artist: The Mamas & Papas
Mode of Consumption: Listening to MP3s on the way to work.
In the field to my left, snow swirled like a dust devil in a pasture. Are they called snow devils?
Overnight about an inch of snow fell, but the wind blew at forty-to-fifty-mile-per-hour gusts. This morning the snow fall was done, but the wind remained. The sky was indeed gray as this song came on.
“A winter’s day in a deep and dark December,” the Mamas & Papas sang, and I thought this is almost too on the nose. I was now in the Cs of my alphabetical journey through my MP3s. I was in store for even more songs about the warm beaches of California.
After “California Dreamin’,” came The Beach Boys’ “California Girls” and Katy Perry’s “California Girls.” Both songs intimate in no uncertain terms that females both in the 1960s and the 2010s are better than females from other places. After that, I heard half of Billy Bragg & Wilco’s “California Stars,” before arriving at work.
California was on my mind for other reasons. One, the Bears lost to the 49ers last night in Santa Clara. It was a high scoring affair where the Bears failed to score on the game’s final play. Still, the Bears are the division champion and will be playing in the playoffs in two weeks.
I also was thinking about San Diego, the only place in California that I’ve ever been. It was the summer of 2015, and I attended an APSE conference hosted at an old hotel in downtown California. Bill Walton presented Bob Ryan with the Red Smith Award during one of the lunches at the conference. The San Diego Chicken also appeared.
Mostly, I remember
it being 70 degrees with no humidity. That was a pleasant thought on this “deep
and dark December,” day.
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