Posted inPhilosophy Sports

Deep thoughts about Arkansas’ missed pop-up that cost a World Series championship

OK, I've put my philosophical reputation on the line with the title of this blog post. So I'll buy some time for my mind to come up with the promised deep thoughts by bringing readers of this post up to speed on the thoroughly mind-boggling play that cost the Arkansas baseball team the College World Series championship.  I live in Oregon, not far from Corvallis, the home of the Oregon State University (OSU) Beavers baseball team. So last Wednesday I was rooting for the Beavers to win the second game in the best out of three championship series with the…
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Posted inHome life Sports

Watching the Oregon State baseball team is better than reading a thriller

I've been hugely enjoying watching the Oregon State University (OSU) baseball team wend its way through the loser's bracket of the 2018 College World Series.  Now, I readily admit that I'm a "fair weather" OSU Beavers fan, since every year I only start watching them when the NCAA playoffs start. (I do have a good excuse, though, since I have DirecTV, and the super-irritating pissing match between DirecTV and the Pac 12 Networks shows no sign of being resolved. Thus it's only when OSU games show up on ESPN that I can record and watch them.) Back in high school,…
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Posted inSalem

Photos of what caught our eye at the 2018 Salem Tour of Homes

Yesterday Laurel and I visited the 2018 Salem Tour of Homes. Here's photos of what appealed to us when we visited seven of the more expensive homes in south Salem.  As much as we enjoyed the "eye-candy" of various architectural features, I end the Adobe Spark web page with these thoughts: So in the end, as happens every year we visit a Tour of Homes, we return home -- our minds filled with visions of what we'd like to have in our house, but also happy to know that what we do have has helped make us happy for the past…
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Posted inFamily

Regrets about the one hour I spent with my father

When Father's Day comes around I don't spend much time reminiscing about memories of my father, since I only spent one hour of face-to-face time with him in my entire life. (These are the only photos I have of my father. Obviously I don't remember these baby moments with him.) I wrote about this disturbing experience in an appropriately-titled blog post, "One hour with my father." Here’s a contrarian Mother’s Day story about the one hour I spent with my father. Note: the one hour, period. This wasn’t the best or worst hour, nor the happiest or saddest hour. It…
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Posted inHumor Living with a catheter

New life goal: be a humorous mindful Taoist stay-at-home

I find many things weird. Most of them reside within my own cranium. After all, that's really the only place weirdness resides -- in a human mind. Like, mine. One of my weirdnesses is that even though I'm an avid blogger, for the past year I've largely avoided writing about the Central Fact of my life since May 2017. Namely, my 68 year-old bladder deciding to call it quits during a visit to central Oregon, which led through a series of increasingly disturbing events to my current state of being an Old Man Who Has to Pee Via a Catheter. …
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Posted inCurrent affairs Health Living with a catheter

Between the black and white of suicide, there’s a gray area

The recent suicides of Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade have gotten people talking about the problem of taking one's own life. That's good.  But I don't feel like we're talking about an important issue that is almost a taboo topic: the gray area between (1) the black badness of people killing themselves when there are better options available to them, and (2) the white goodness of people taking control of their death when they are suffering and only have a few months or less to live. What I see as a gray in-between area is when a person considers that…
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Posted inSalem Strange Up Salem

Universe to Salem: “When in doubt, let it out!”

I rarely channel the Universe, because I'm usually dubious that it has a message for me, or anyone else. But the recent toxic algae water crisis here in Salem must have caused my cosmic connection to become more finely-tuned, since I'm picking up a communication for our city from the Universe that's coming in loud and clear. When in doubt, let it out! After all, the numero uno problem with how the folks at City Hall handled the cyanotoxin water tests was their mistaken decision to keep the initial positive test results to themselves, instead of immediately telling the public,…
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