Posted inHome life Neighborhood

Fire karma comes closer

Nothing grabs your attention like hearing the phone ring, picking up the receiver, saying “hello,” and then having the neighbor across the street excitedly tell you that he has just called 911 because there is a wildfire burning a few lots down from you. The neighbor was out of breath because he had noticed smoke, went to check it out, and ended up trying to put it out with a garden house (the people whose house the fire had started next to weren’t home). Laurel was in town, so I left a message at one of her likely stops, LifeSource…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Recreation

Rain dances, please

We would most appreciate some rain dances tonight and tomorrow, focusing your attention on the Camp Sherman area in central Oregon. Rain prayers are fine as an alternative. Rain magic…rain wishes…rain sorcery…rain making. Anything that will put out the Booth Fire before it torches Camp Sherman, and the cabin we own with three other people on the Metolius River, do it. The weekly newspaper in a nearby town (Sisters), the Nugget, has been doing a fine job reporting on the fire via their web site. Camp Sherman has been evacuated as a precautionary measure, even though the fire is still…
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Posted inHome life

Correction!!!

The publisher of HinesSight, namely me, has been contacted by someone, namely my wife, who was prominently mentioned in these pages recently, namely in the last posting. The publisher rashly printed out this post for Laurel’s information and amusement, and discovered that she was more informed than amused. Even though the publisher emphasized that some exaggeration is central to humor (do dogs really talk to bartenders?), my understandable desire to be able to go to sleep tonight without fearing that, sometime during the night, my head or some other important bodily organ will be smashed with a baseball bat by…
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Posted inHome life

What Laurel leaves me

Recently a HinesSight reader, who would remain nameless except for my writing “Karen Lord,” asked a question that goes right to the heart of my marital relationship, and deserves answering in some detail. Before we get into this, I should add that Karen is our CPA. And a very good CPA at that. Further, she is probably the only liberal/progressive CPA in the entire United States, a real mark of distinction. So, if you call up Karen, tell her Brian sent you. Recently we referred a new client to her, which means, I hope, that we get a free tax…
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Posted inNeighborhood

Anti-partitioning battle continues

The Hines’ battle to save the Earth from greedy land developers, or, at least, the small corner of the Earth that is Spring Lake Estates, continues. A few weeks ago we were surprised and dismayed to learn that the Marion County Hearings Officer had overruled herself on the Nielsen’s lot partitioning case. We won the first appeal, as the Hearings Officer found that the Nielsen’s hydrologist had failed to demonstrate that this partitioning wouldn’t harm the long-term sustainability of groundwater in the surrounding area. When the Nielsen’s appealed this denial, the Marion County Board of Commissioners remanded the case back…
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Posted inEntertainment

“Winged Migration” not for the birds

Meaning, this is a movie to see, because you’ll like it. Really. It is indeed all about birds, with people showing up in just a few scenes (and even then often badly, as when hunters are shown shooting down hard-working geese, gamely migrating along in their beautiful aerodynamic fashion, only to be sent into a downward death spiral for the pleasure of a few guys who think it is macho to kill a defenseless bird with a shotgun). Roger Ebert’s review contains some interesting background information about the film, which I won’t bother to repeat. “Winged Migration” has images that…
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Posted inDogs Science

Serena renaming not in the works

At least, the past few days have convinced us that the family pet definitely shouldn’t be renamed Thor, a.k.a. the Viking thunder god. Notwithstanding Serena’s proud half German-Shepherd bloodline (the other half being Labrador, though her Lab DNA must be missing all retriever instincts, given how much time and energy I spend retrieving tennis balls), we’ve learned that she is a total dog-wuss in the presence of thunder and lightning. Here in the Camp Sherman environs of central Oregon, we’ve had some impressive thunderstorms the past few days. (A few trees reportedly caught fire on Black Butte last night, but…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Suspicions about conservatives confirmed!

I suspected it all along, that hard-core conservatives are psychologically disturbed. And now here’s a study to confirm it. Well, the U.C. Berkeley study doesn’t say exactly that conservatives are psychologically disturbed, but it isn’t hard to draw this conclusion from the findings. I mean, if at “the core of political conservatism is the resistance to change and a tolerance for inequality,” that doesn’t sound like the person I’d like to be, or have living next to me. As anyone can tell from listening to talk radio, conservatives can’t tolerate ambiguity very well, so they tend to see and state…
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