Posted inSalem

LifeSource Natural Foods has a great response to my blog post

I really appreciate the prompt response from LifeSource staff after I sent them a link to the blog post I wrote yesterday, "I love LifeSource but recent changes are disappointing."  Matt Trickey, the bulk department manager, emailed me this morning with some insights into the challenges that LifeSource Natural Foods faces -- along with most other locally owned stores in Salem.  I feel considerably more sympathetic to LifeSource now. It isn't that what Matt said is totally new news to me. I just hadn't fully understood how difficult it is for LifeSource to compete against grocery stores that are jumping…
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Posted inFood and drink Salem

I love LifeSource, but recent changes are disappointing

This is a "tough love" blog post, because I've shopped a lot at LifeSource Natural Foods ever since it opened way back when. Three or four times a week I go there. But changes LifeSource has been making cause me and my wife to be a bit less satisfied with the store. I readily admit that those changes probably are profitable for LifeSource. However, they go against the grain of my longtime vegetarianism -- which began about 50 years ago while I was in college. (Along with other students of a crazed Greek yoga teacher, we started the second health…
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Posted inDogs

Yikes. Our dog is becoming more catlike. Not good.

Fortunately, we live out in the country. Thus only a few people would have wondered why we spent well over half an hour yesterday screaming "ZuZu, come!" into increasing darkness.  However, the bad news is that some of those few people are cat lovers, and our dog's name is ZuZu, so they might have been listening smugly, thinking, "I'm glad we don't have a disobedient dog." What perplexed us was that until recently ZuZu didn't behave weirdly. Basically she was a normal dog. I mean, look at that sweet face. Could this canine drive her owners into, not quite madness,…
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Posted inSalem

Photos of Salem Women’s March 2019

Here's photos I took today at this year's Salem Women's March. My wife is the "cover girl." (Or "cover woman," I hasten to add.) The 2019 Women's March was just as inspiring as the 2017 and 2018 marches. Lots of creative signs, which I feature in the photos.
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Posted inHome life

Damn you, GM. I wanted more plug-in hybrids, not none.

General Motors has announced that it won't be making any more plug-in hybrids. It has killed off the Chevy Volt as of March 2019. Our 2018 Chevy Volt My wife and I have owned (well, leased) three Chevy Volts, as described in these blog posts I wrote about them:  a 2012 model, a 2015 model (which our dog bought!), and a 2018 model.   So we're disappointed that General Motors is only going to have pure electric and pure gasoline cars/trucks -- no more plug-in hybrids. Here's an excerpt from a Green Car Reports story, "GM president dashes hope of…
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Posted inHealth Salem

Dr. Vinay Prasad zaps fellow physicians at provocative Salem City Club talk

"Maybe 40% of what doctors do is mistaken." That was one of the first of many OMG! zingers medical provocateur Vinay Prasad, MD MPH, flung at us at today's Salem City Club presentation, rather drily titled Evidence Based Medicine: Weighing the Evidence for Effective Health Care. But not one moment of his talk was boring. In fact, it was one of the most interesting and entertaining City Club talks I've experienced. And I've been to many of them. Prasad is a great speaker: funny, caustic, informed, blunt, spontaneous. I found what appears to be a very close version of his…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Salem

2019 Salem Women’s March is January 19 on Capitol Mall

People of Salem and surrounding areas, here's my strong advice for what you should do from 11 am to 3 pm on Saturday, January 19. Attend the 2019 Salem Women's March on the Capitol Mall.  My wife was an organizer of the first 2017 Salem Women's March. We loved it.  In 2018 we went to the rather weirdly named Salem Womxn's March. We loved it also. (See below for the photo/video web pages I made of the events.) Here's how the 2019 Women's March is described on a Facebook event posting: The Third annual Women's March in Salem is scheduled.…
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Posted inWriting/Weblogs

I’m loving JournoPortfolio. It’s a writer’s dream.

I'm a long-time writer. Yesterday I easily fashioned a JournoPortfolio site to showcase a selection of my blog posts, the three books I've authored, and a few of the videos and photo essays that I've created.  Below is a screenshot of the top of the home page. Click on "Behold!" to, not surprisingly, behold my JournoPortfolio masterpiece. Behold! JournoPortfolio is a unique Internet animal. It's sort of a cross-fertilization between a blog and a web site. I've been blogging since 2003, and I've used several web site builders, so I understand how difficult it is to find the right balance…
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