Posted inFamily

My wife’s sister died today. It was a good death.

We're all going to die. That's 100% certain. Death follows life with a cosmic inevitability. The big question is: Will we die a good death? This morning my wife, Laurel, learned that her older sister, Lynn, had died last night. Naturally there were tears. But not much sorrow. Because Lynn died a good death.  In fact, a very good death. Exactly the way most of us would want to go, Laurel and I definitely included. Lynn and her husband, Randy, had driven to Colorado from their home in Kentucky. Randy took her there as a romantic gesture.  He had proposed…
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Posted inHealth Web/Tech

My problem with the Mendi neurofeedback device

It's been a bit more than two months since I started using the Mendi neurofeedback device that I ordered via a Kickstarter campaign. I started off enthusiastic about my Mendi, as discussed in my July 26 blog post, "I'm enjoying my Mendi neurofeedback device." I've only been using the Mendi for a short time and need to do more exploring with it. This is my initial impression of what works best to get the ball moving upward. My first try with the Mendi produced a pretty good score. I think this was because I simply focused on the ball and…
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Posted inLiving with a catheter

My urinary catheter-related depression and anxiety

Recently I finished a 2,500 word essay for the consideration of 180 Medical, the firm that supplies me with urinary catheters. After I got a message from 180 Medical saying that they welcome essays about how people experience using a catheter, I wrote back saying I'm interested in this, having written a bunch of blog posts about my life with a catheter.Download 180 Medical essay PDF (I've also copied in the essay below.) A marketing specialist with 180 Medical read some of those posts and suggested I write about my catheter-related depression and anxiety. It took me quite a while…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Nuance is what our country needs now

There's way too many Americans unduly confident right now. They're sure they're right about Covid policies, the just-ended war in Afghanistan, racial justice, abortion, and a host of other issues that mostly get reduced to short sound bites, pithy Twitter tweets, brief Facebook posts, and other manifestations of our desire to appear absolutely certain about subjects that demand a word currently out of fashion.  Nuance.  Which means, a subtle distinction, an awareness of delicate shadings (as of meaning, feelings. or value). How did we get to such a dearth of nuance among a large proportion of our citizenry?  It's tempting…
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Posted inHumor Sports

Along with me, Oregon football team has #4 ranking

It was tough, but I did it! Last Saturday I pulled out a win against Ohio State, defying the odds and 100,000 crazed red-clad fans who desperately wanted me to lose so their team could maintain or improve on it's #3 in the nation ranking. Oh, guess I also need to give some credit to the University of Oregon football team. They were the ones who took the field against Ohio State.  But the way I felt after the game, I was right there with them -- a 72 year old guy who didn't even play football in high school,…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Salem

Oregon’s changing demographics — a Salem City Club talk

Today it was refreshing to hear Ethan Sharygin speak to the Salem City Club about Oregon's changing demographics. As befits the Director of the Population Research Center at Portland State University, Sharygin was 100% factual and 0% political.  These days that ratio often is completely reversed, especially when the fact-challenged side of the political spectrum is doing the talking. So my mind relished the data-filled slides Sharygin shared. Because of Covid, we met via Zoom, which made it easy for me to grab screenshots of most of his slides. In the course of introducing Sharygin, Russ Beaton made an interesting…
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Posted inHome life Philosophy

Life is only predictable looking backward

My wife and I have been married for 31 years. Looking back, it was meant to be. But almost certainly that's an illusion, because life only seems predictable after things already have happened. And even that is an illusion.  To understand why, let's look more closely at how Laurel and I met. The way I usually describe this is true, yet incomplete: I responded to a personals ad Laurel placed in Willamette Week back when the Portland alternative paper only came in a print edition. In a 2016 post on my Church of the Churchless blog, "Who's afraid of The Big…
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Posted inHome life

The curious case of MFS Total Return Fund (MSFRX) distribution history

I'm a long-time owner of the MFS Total Return fund. This is a well-respected mutual fund with a usual 60-40 split between stocks and bonds/cash. So the fund generates a fairly generous income stream. Many years ago a personal holding company founded by my grandfather and uncle merged with the Total Return fund. The fund got a bunch of quality stocks, and the personal holding company received Total Return Fund shares equal in value to what the stocks were worth. (The fund absorbed all of the capital gains from the stocks, a big benefit to the personal holding company.) After…
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Posted inHome life

My tip for starting a Stihl “easy start” chainsaw

I'm no chainsaw expert, but I've owned a small Stihl chainsaw for many years, needing it on our ten acre property in rural south Salem, Oregon.  This year I got a larger Stihl chainsaw after a bad February ice storm decimated many trees. They were in short supply around here for a month or so, but I finally went into Ace Hardware and saw that chainsaws were available. I ended up getting the MS 251C, an easy start Stihl model. I liked the idea of easy starting, along with being able to easily adjust the chain tension without a tool.…
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