Posted inDogs Home life

Our rural south Salem property is looking good in its Spring greenness

We don't get a lot of visitors to our home in rural south Salem, Oregon. I like to share photos on my blog, so all the work we put into our property -- either hired, which we're doing more of as we age, or directly by my wife and I -- gets more views than it otherwise would. This is my favorite view of our yard. Our house is barely visible on the far left. Trees abound. The large old oak in the center of the photo, at the end of the lawn, lost a huge limb in the Great…
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Posted inHealth Philosophy

Treat life like a science experiment: embrace trial and error

Many years ago, a female massage therapist said, while we were chatting during the session, "I make more mistakes than my sister because I try more new things." I've never forgotten that line. It often comes to mind when I make a mistake, which is frequently. Mistakes bother me, especially when I should know better and simply screw up because of a lack of concentration, my mind having drifted off to another time and place instead of focusing on the task at hand. Yet if I make a mistake while trying something new, I do my best to look kindly…
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Posted inGrowing older Retirement community

We need more ways for seniors to live in their community, not in an institution

My wife and I aren't super old. We're just old. Of course, our age limit for "super old" keeps increasing as our birthdays add up. I've had 77 so far. Laurel is a bit younger. What hasn't changed over the years is our reluctance to move from the non-easy-care house on ten rural acres that we've lived in since 1990. I've tried to explain the reasons for this in various blog posts. Here's a sampling: I'm 65. Where's my "Aging Hippie" retirement community? Musings on the problem of where to live after retiring Why it makes sense for seniors to…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Science

Artemis II return to Earth was inspiring. Iran war negotiations not so much.

Today was a yin and yang news day for me. I was deeply moved watching the Artemis II crew splash down in the Pacific after becoming the humans who have traveled furthest from Earth in the course of their journey around the dark side of the moon. I continued to be disgusted and disturbed by the state of the supposed cease fire in the Iran war, which is mired in confusion, mixed messages, and general incoherence. So I saw the best of what science and technology can achieve in the United States' inspiring return to the moon -- or at…
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Posted inWeb/Tech

Claude is my new best friend. Google should be jealous.

It wasn't that long ago when "Googling" became synonymous with searching for something on the internet. Sure, there were other search engines, but Google was so dominant, few people used them. These days a search engine is coming to sound archaic, like a VHS recorder or a floppy disk. There are a couple of reasons for this, both of which should worry Google, especially the second one. First, I rarely look at the usual search results after I type in something in the Google search bar. The AI Overview that typically pops up at the top of the search results…
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