Posted inSports

These Tokyo Olympic moments surprised me

I'm so old, it feels like I've been watching the Olympics ever since those ancient Greeks wrestled in the nude, foreshadowing gay pride for athletic muscular dudes. Thus I was prepared to be underwhelmed by the 2021 Tokyo Summer Olympics, which were supposed to be the 2020 Olympics if Covid hadn't thrown a pandemic wrench into the gears of the games. The opening ceremony bored me. I figured that Japan would put on something to surpass the ceremony in China some years ago, which was a mesmerizing spectacle. But no, I had to watch pieces of wood being shuffled around…
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Posted inHome life

Goodbye DR Field Mower, hello John Deere X394

It was a bittersweet moment when I sold the DR Field Mower with lawnmower attachment that I'd bought in 2016. Over the past 25 years or so I've owned maybe five versions of the DR Field Mower, each better than the last. They've been put to a lot of work mowing grassy natural fields on our ten acres in rural south Salem, along with our lawn. I've written about my field mowing experiences in a number of blog posts: here, here, here, here, here, here. But as the saying goes, all good things come to an end. Hopefully so better things…
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Posted inHome life

Hey, Salemians, start a Salon discussion group

Do you enjoy intelligent talks with friends? Does embracing the art of conversation appeal to you? If so, consider starting a Salon discussion group.  That's what my wife, Laurel, and I did back in the early 1990s. Since, a group of about a dozen people has met each month in someone's home for three hours of so of pleasant conversing. Here's a photo of us in December 2017. Our Salon membership has changed some in the past four years. But everybody in the photo is still part of our group, even though Jim (front row on left) has moved to…
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Posted inBooks Salem

Five reasons to buy Kelly Williams Brown’s new book

I buy and read lots of books. So many, I deserve a bookaholic diagnosis. But at first I had some reservations about getting a new book by Kelly Williams Brown, the Salem author who wrote Adulting (about becoming a grown-up) and Gracious (a modern etiquette book of sorts). Even though I admired the writing Brown did when she was a Statesman Journal reporter, I figured that regarding Adulting, I was already so grown-up I have one foot in the grave, and regarding Gracious, I'm at the age when you just feel entitled to act however you damn well please --…
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Posted inBlack Butte Ranch Salem

Black Butte Ranch roads have lessons for Salem streets

Salem, like almost all cities, isn't a pleasant place to drive around in. The exceptions are quiet residential neighborhoods where the speed limit is low, 25 mph or a bit higher, and the streets are narrow with plenty of trees. That's why the roads in central Oregon's Black Butte Ranch, where my wife and I have owned a 1/4 share in a vacation house for about four years, can teach Salem streets some valuable lessons. Wikipedia says that the permanent residents in Black Butte Ranch only numbered 366 in the 2010 census. But "During the peak tourist season, the population,…
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Posted inSalem Sustainability

Oregon is becoming a climate change hellscape

We're not quite there yet, thankfully. Oregon hasn't transitioned from a wonderful place to live into a hellscape -- "a harshly unpleasant place or environment." But the handwriting is on the global warming wall. Today my daughter, Celeste, her husband, Patrick, and my granddaughter, Evelyn, arrived to visit us at the Black Butte Ranch house that we have a 1/4 share in.  They're from southern California, though Celeste was born and raised in Oregon.  Chatting with them as we ate pizza and salad outside at the charming Lakeside Bistro, I pointed out how little snow there is on the Three…
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Posted inEntertainment Film

Summer of Soul — great movie about 1969’s Black Woodstock

Last night, via Hulu, my wife and I finished watching Summer of Soul, a hugely entertaining movie about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival that featured outdoor concerts with musicians such as... Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Sly and the Family Stone, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Mahalia Jackson, B.B. King, and The Fifth Dimension. It's been called the Black Woodstock. However, a big difference is that Woodstock, which also happened in 1969, became a cultural phenomenon, with a movie about the festival coming out just a year later in 1970. By contrast, footage of the Harlem Cultural Festival sat untouched for…
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Posted inDogs Sustainability

Fireworks should be shunned like cigarettes are

I'm not delusional. I don't believe fireworks are going to be banned anytime soon. Heck, here in Salem, Oregon, the City Manager ignored pleas from the public and several city councilors to ban the use of fireworks this year given a severe drought condition and recent record-breaking high temperatures. But I'm hopeful that with enough citizen education, the downside of fireworks will be understood so well, anyone setting them off on or around the Fourth of July will be viewed by most people with the same don't you know better attitude a cigarette smoker is these days. I've been familiar…
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