Posted inHealth

How my trabeculectomy is doing 7 1/2 weeks after surgery

This is a follow-up to my initial blog post about the trabeculectomy eye surgery I had on March 6, reported on in "My eye surgery went well, though not a load of fun." As a Johns Hopkins article about trabeculectomy says, this surgery is aimed at controlled eye pressure in people like me with glaucoma, when eye drops or laser surgery either aren't doing a good enough job at lowering eye pressure -- the only viable way of keeping glaucoma from doing more damage to the eye -- or someone can't use those other methods. In my case, Dr. Young,…
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Posted inHome life

My bad handwriting makes for interesting grocery checkout discussions

Since I'm 74, I suppose I'd have an excuse for my bad handwriting if I chose to make one up. Like, my hands are shaky due to a neurological condition. But actually my handwriting has been minimally legible to others for most of my life. Me, I can generally read what I write pretty well, though not always. On the plus side, my affliction makes for some interesting conversations in the grocery store checkout lane. Here's what the clerk at LifeSource Natural Foods here in Salem, Oregon and I talked about today. Clerk: The number you wrote on this container…
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Posted inTai Chi

Here’s a video of me doing Water Boxing (Liu He Ba Fa)

After practicing karate, a hard style martial art, for about 12 years, in 2004 I shifted to learning Tai Chi, a soft style martial art -- albeit one with useful martial applications.  I've been fortunate to have an instructor here in Salem, Oregon who had a lot of experience in several karate styles before also embracing Tai Chi, which is all that Warren Allen teaches now. So he understands the martial side of Tai Chi. Warren began learning Tai Chi from a Chinese man who used to live in Hong Kong, where he learned the Water Boxing form, Liu He…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Mental health gets talked about at Salem City Club

It's usually good to talk through your mental health problems rather than keeping them bottled up inside of you. Today the Salem City Club did just that, albeit from a policy perspective, in a program called Oregon's Many Mental Health Crises. The not-so-cheery news is that Oregon ranks 49th out of the 50 states in the prevalence of mental illness and access to care. So for sure, we've got a mental health crisis.  State Representative Rob Nosse started things off by talking about how the legislature is trying to fix things. He's chair of the House Joint Committee on Behavioral…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Entertainment

Bill Maher wrong about transgender athletes and Trump indictment

Bill Maher is a comedian. I like his jokes. It doesn't bother me when some of his one-liners mess with facts in order to get a laugh. That's what comedians often do: exaggerate in order to make a humorous point. What irritates me about Maher is when his playing loose with facts continues from his opening joke-filled monologue to the mostly serious discussion Maher has with his two panelists. Last Friday's show (April 14) featured Maher engaging in extended rants about transgender people and Trump's indictment. I didn't like what he said on both subjects. Maher claimed that transgender women…
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Posted inHome life Web/Tech

I try ChatGPT. Asking about myself, I’m impressed.

It took me a while, but after hearing a lot about the marvels of ChatGPT, the online chatbot offered by OpenAI, a company whose goal is A.G.I. -- artificial general intelligence that can do anything a human can do -- I got around to trying out ChatGPT just now. (All you need to do this is a free account with OpenAI.) Because I have a significant online presence, and my ego is also significant, my first question for ChatGPT was about myself. I was impressed with the result, which took about five seconds to pop up. Well, after reading that,…
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Posted inBooks Current affairs

Caste is a marvelous book about our racial divisions

I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that I hadn't heard of Isabel Wilkerson's book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, until I read a fairly recent TIME cover story by Wilkerson that provided an overview of Caste. Somehow I'd missed the publication of the book in 2020. Making up for lost time, I immediately ordered a copy from Amazon. It took me a while to finish Caste. For even though Wilkerson is a terrific writer with a smooth style that makes reading her a pleasure, her subject matter isn't cheery. So I'd read a short chapter on most days, rather…
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