Posted inHome life

We just leased our third Chevy Volt, avoiding the games car salespeople play

My wife, Laurel, should be hired by General Motors as a Chevy Volt spokeswoman. She absolutely loves the car. Me, not so much, which is why I drive a VW GTI. So Laurel and I don't always agree on what makes a car lovable. But we do agree on this: it is super annoying when car salespeople give you the runaround, playing ridiculous sales-games rather than being up front and open with us.  This is why we've leased all three of our Chevy Volts through Kelly Stewart of Salem's Capitol Auto Group, even though Kelly is with the Toyota side…
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Posted inHome life Salem

Why it’s so tough for older folks like us to leave their beloved country home

My wife and I moved to our house on five non-easy-care acres in rural south Salem way back in 1990. We were about forty then. The couple we bought the house from were in their mid-60's.  When we asked them why they were selling, they said "It just has gotten to be too much for us to maintain." Well, we're now pushing 70. (I'm pushing harder than my wife, but she's not far behind.) And a while back we bought the empty lot next door, so now we have ten acres to maintain. So why aren't we moving to a…
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Posted inHome life Living with a catheter

In my final hypnosis session I meet the V.P. in charge of my goals

My sessions with Emily Cahal of Salem Hypnosis Solutions have been delightfully varied. Today, my fourth session, and the last for a while, featured me meeting the Vice-President of my psyche in charge of achieving goals.  (I've described the three previous sessions here, here, and here.) Per usual, before the actual hypnosis session Emily and I talked about how things have been going with me since we last met. Naturally the focus was on how I've been dealing with my chronic health problem, a bladder condition, since that was my motivation for giving hypnosis a try. I told her that…
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Posted inSustainability

Messiness of recycling talked about at Salem City Club today

Along with most people, I already was aware of the basic changes to the Marion County recycling program prior to today’s Salem City Club program, “What’s Up With Recycling?” But the expert speakers provided a lot of useful background information, plus some good tips for dealing with the changes.  So here’s some of what I remember from the talks by Peter Spendelow, a recycling specialist and materials management policy analyst for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality; Will Posegate, the chief operations officer for Garten Services; and Alan Pennington, the Waste Reduction Coordinator for Marion County Public Works and head…
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Posted inHome life Living with a catheter

My third time is a purple charm with Emily Cahal of Salem Hypnosis Solutions

Today I had my third hypnosis session with Emily Cahal. I've blogged about the first two sessions here and here. It left me feeling good. Not that the first sessions had me feeling bad. Quite the opposite. I simply felt like today we went a bit deeper into my psyche, which might be a result of me becoming more familiar with Cahal's style and with hypnosis in general.  I like how Cahal blends traditional counseling with hypnotherapy. First we talked for about fifteen minutes about what's been going on with me during the past week. My focus, of course, was…
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Posted inTai Chi

Tai Chi philosophy: Dissolve and try something different

I've been learning Tai Chi for fourteen years. One of the things I love about Tai Chi is that it is Taoism in motion. Meaning, Tai Chi embodies Taoist (or Daoist) philosophy.  I can't think of any other form of movement -- dance, sport, whatever -- that similarly has deep philosophical principles reflected in it. Yin and yang, of course, are central concepts in Tai Chi. Softness (yin) and hardness (yang) alternate in the flowing movements. Of course, what passes for "hard" in Tai Chi is much softer than in other martial arts, so the "soft" is really soft.  …
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Posted inHealth Living with a catheter

My second hypnosis session got me way small

As I said in my blog post about my first hypnosis session with Emily Cahal of Salem Hypnosis Solutions, we had to make a decision about which way to proceed. She told me that there were two basic ways we could go with hypnosis. Basically, one way would focus on my particular presenting problem, so to speak. The other way would be more general, delving into my habitual way of dealing with life's problems.  Interestingly, as we chatted before beginning the second session, Cahal indicated that though we went the more general way last week, she favored going the more…
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Posted inHome life

Black ice story in New Yorker brings back some slippery memories

I'm hoping that a story in the most recent issue of The New Yorker, "Black Ice, Near-Death, and Transcendence on I-91," will make people more aware of the dangers of black ice, and also reassure people like me who live in areas that don't get a lot of snow, but do regularly get black ice, that we aren't winter weenies. (The title of the story in the print edition is "Six Skittles: the danger of black ice.") First, the story makes clear something that it took me a while to realize after I moved to Oregon from California in 1971…
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Posted inHealth Living with a catheter

Here’s how my first hypnosis session went

Today I had my first real hypnosis experience with Emily Cahal of Salem Hypnosis Solutions. Back in college I'd dabbled in self-hypnosis as taught by a Yoga teacher I was studying with. And I'd seen a form of "show business" hypnosis during an assembly at a high school where I briefly was a teacher's aide following my college graduation. A hypnotist did his thing on stage with a female student, then told her to go find Paul Newman in the audience. She walked by me, looking into the bleachers, then leapt into the second row where I was sitting and…
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