Posted inUncategorized

Vote for these Salem-Keizer school board candidates

Are you tired of extremist politics? I sure am. We've become a bitterly divided country. That's bad enough at the national level, but when politics becomes the focus of a school board election, students are the ones who suffer from adults marching to the beat of their personal political drummer. Unfortunately, Oregon Right to Life and other groups on the far right side of the political spectrum have set out to control the Salem-Keizer school board. They're backing a slate of candidates in the May 2021 election who want to use the school board to push their extreme political agenda.…
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Posted inEntertainment

Worst Academy Awards show ever

Every year I look forward to the Academy Awards show. I should have reversed direction this year and looked backward to previous shows that were actually entertaining.  This was the first time I fast-forwarded through much of the interminable three-plus hours, because I wanted the damn thing to end so I could do something enjoyable. Whoever came up with the atrociously bad concept for the 2021 Academy Awards should be drummed out of Hollywood forever.  It wouldn't take me long to Google who that person (or people) was. But I found the show so uninteresting, I can't summon up the…
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Posted inCoronavirus

Marion County could go into Covid “extreme risk” soon

If you thought it was OK to relax with the mask wearing and social distancing, think again. Oregon Covid cases are increasing at the highest rate in the nation, 58% in the past two weeks. The next closest state is Alabama with a 37% increase. When Alabama is kicking our butt on public health, that's reason to be worried. Here's a chart of how badly Oregon has been doing recently. Remember how freaked out everybody was in the spring of 2020 when Covid was a new thing to worry about? The 7-day average of cases in Oregon back then was…
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Posted inGrowing older Health

My hernia consultation goes well (if I ignore scary stuff)

About two weeks ago I got a hernia diagnosis, which I memorialized in "Now I can scratch 'get hernia' off my bucket list."  The diagnosis wasn't a big surprise, given the large bulge on the right side of my groin that appeared suddenly while I was sitting in a dentist's chair a few days before I got the official diagnosis based on an ultrasound.  I've been trying to be as positive as possible while waiting for a surgery consultation. But as today's consultation approached, my mind veered off in some decidedly negative directions. My hernia is large; maybe it is…
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Posted inHome life

My office looks more Zen after painting forced it on me

I wish I could say that my many years of daily meditation led to an enlightenment experience that caused me to drastically simplify the office where I hang out in our house. (By "hang out,"  I mean that this is the one room where I get to decide how it is furnished and decorated. Elsewhere, my wife calls the decor shots, mostly because she is better at this than I am.) However, what actually happened is that last week we had three rooms painted by Apex Paint and Remodel, who did a great job.  One of those rooms was my…
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Posted inGrowing older

High schoolers today, here’s what I went through in 1962-66

Every generation faces its own challenges. And the challenges we faced in our youth color how we view present-day challenges.  My granddaughter will be 14 in a few days. I sent her a card (and cash!) today, saying that she timed her entry into high school next fall quite well, since the Covid crisis should be mostly over by then. I feel for high school students who have had their lives disrupted by the pandemic for over a year. This will be an enduring memory for them, no doubt. Being a senior citizen, I'm well aware that tales of the…
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Posted inGrowing older Health

Now I can scratch “get hernia” off my bucket list

Trying to find some humor in the hernia diagnosis I received today, this cartoon reminded me that, hey, I only have a single hernia, so lucky me!  (I also have taken to wearing joggers much of the time rather than regular pants, which qualify as skinny jeans. And sure, I've got a lifetime supply of bitter regrets -- which now includes getting a hernia. But it's a stretch to say I'm in midlife, since I'm 72.) As befits my age, I don't have a great story to tell about how I ended up with a right-sided inguinal hernia. No, I…
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