Posted inSustainability

Hornets sting me. Bees are disappearing. Got to be Bush’s fault.

I've been stung twice by hornets recently. A longstanding hive of wild bees on our property also has disappeared. Naturally I'm blaming George Bush. He's responsible for so many disasters, might as well pin these on him too. But seriously … this youa culpa isn't all that far-fetched. The climate, in Oregon and elsewhere, is changing due to global warming. That's having effects on plants and the insects that pollinate them. In Europe global warming is being blamed for the spread of the Asian Hornet into France and potentially Great Britain. These are giant hornets renowned for their vicious stings.…
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Posted inSalem

Qwest, I’m waiting for DSL…still waiting…

I'm seriously seeking DSL in our south Salem neighborhood, now that I've tasted the faster broadband life at our cabin in Camp Sherman. Yes, Camp Sherman, a hamlet of several hundred full-time residents in central Oregon that is as beautiful as it is isolated. Five miles from Highway 20. Ten more miles to Sisters, the nearest town of consequence. Yet one of our cabin co-owners just arranged to have Qwest DSL installed. So now when we're in Camp Sherman I can sit down with my laptop, facing Ponderosas and the Metolius River, out in the middle of nowhere, connecting to…
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Posted inMeasure 37

Measure 49 truth and lies

It's strong words to call someone a liar. But I'll do just that. The Measure 37-loving Oregonians in Action folks are spreading lies about a carefully crafted effort to restore fairness and balance to Oregon's land use laws. Measure 49, which will be voted on in November, doesn't bear much resemblance to OIA's misleading descriptions of it. This is reason enough to say "Yes on 49," because the group that misled Oregonians about Measure 37 is at it again with Measure 49. People are fed up with the fiction that Measure 37 was meant to allow claimants to build a…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Wow, the surge sure is working (badly)

Today's headline says it all: "Violence Rages in Iraq as Sunni Bloc Leaves Cabinet." Um, wasn't the surge supposed to produce a quell in violence that would let the Iraqi government pursue national reconciliation? We've got a fool for a commander-in-chief. Four US soldiers were killed yesterday because of Bush's idiocy. The madness has to stop.
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Posted inUncategorized

Emergency care for dogs is better than humans’

If you live in Salem, Oregon and you need to have a seed removed from your ear after 8 pm, I recommend that you put on a dog suit and learn how to whine convincingly. Because after hours emergency medical care for canines is much superior to that for humans. Not to mention medical care during regular hours. I'm not the first to wonder why in this not-always-so-great United States animals fare better than people when they get sick or have an injury. Sharon Glassman wondered, "Why is my dog's health care better than mine?" Excellent question, Sharon. I hope…
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Posted inRecreation

Canyon Creek Meadows trail still beautiful after forest fire

After the B and B Complex fire ravaged the area, we avoided central Oregon's Canyon Creek Meadows trail. We figured it'd be too depressing to walk through burnt trees. Today we were proven wrong, Even back in 2005, just two years after the summer of 2003 fire, William (Bill) Sullivan and other lovers of this area said that that it still had "corners of wonder." Well, I'm about to show you that this is an understatement in 2007. There are whole boulevards of wonder – including the burned areas. Directions to the trail head are online and in various hiking…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Edgy “In God We Trust” art fits godless Oregon

This piece of student art on display at the Portland airport looks just fine to me. Cynically titled "In God We Trust" by its creator, Peter Nichols, it points to the absurdity of our soldiers dying in Iraq for oil. Instead of stars, the flag has dollar signs. But easily offended Oregonian columnist David Reinhard says this is anti-American propaganda. No, David, it's truth-telling. Your patron saint, George Bush, is the anti-American here, since he – along with his neo-con cronies – have trashed the Constitution and our nation's values to further their selfish political ends. Last I looked, the…
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Posted inMeasure 37

A tangled web of Measure 37 deceit

It'd be comical if it wasn't so serious – the games Measure 37 claimants play when they get desperate to build 42 homes and wells on groundwater limited farmland. Today I opened up the newspaper and saw that my name had been used vainly in a letter to the editor from Greg Eide, one of the owners of 125 rolling acres near us that would make a beautiful vineyard if greed wasn't overriding honor and common sense. Common sense, because this Measure 37 claim is a horrible financial proposition. A Marion County report has proven that the area has water…
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Posted inSalem

Salem Art Fair is unfairly female centric

Men, it's time to stand up for our rights. We've been second class art fair citizens for too long. I'm tired of seeing those Homo sapiens with XY chromosomes looking bored like this… While the XX's are happily browsing a few feet away from them like this… Now, these female Salem Art Fair'ers happen to be Laurel, my wife, and Rita, a friend from Seattle who visited us this weekend along with her husband, Ron. So they aren't associated with the bored-looking men in the first photo. But Ron and I were right there at the waiting bench with these…
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Posted inTango/Dance

Why men lead and women follow

That's a provocative title for a blog post, one that contains an implicit addition: when dancing. Any man realizes that the dance floor is just about the only place he's going to be able to lead a woman with impunity. Especially if he's married, as I know from thirty-five years of yes, dear experience. So why is it that in partner dancing it's so acceptable for the man to call the shots? Well, not only acceptable – demanded, as we keep being told in our Night Club Two Step lessons. We've gotten halfway proficient at American Tango, thanks to Lora,…
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Posted inSalem

Oregon elected officials shouldn’t make land use decisions

A lot of weird stuff goes on in Salem. We're the home of the state legislature, mental hospital, and penitentiary – each of which is filled with certified crazies. Now the Salem City Council is joining the crowd that makes me think What the @#$%&! ??? when I open the newspaper. Last week the Statesman Journal headline was "Editorial prompts delay on development decision." The not-so-savvy city attorney, Randall Tosh, got it into his head that publishing an editorial or sending an email about a land use issue constitutes ex parte contact (a communication to a decision maker made outside…
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Posted inMiscellany

What I didn’t like about Shotokan karate

Over on my other weblog I've been asked what I found wrong with Shotokan karate. A good question. I trained in this Japanese-based martial art for about nine years. Then I flew the Shotokan coop and earned a black belt in a less traditional mixed style after three-plus additional years of training. Now I'm almost three years into an almost exclusive emphasis on Tai Chi – which most decidedly also is a marital art. Some would say the ultimate martial art. But who's to say? The trend line of my martial arts philosophy was expressed in the title of my…
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Posted inMeasure 37

Another Measure 37 outrage

Over on the spanking fresh "Yes on 49" web site (nice job, Kari Chisholm of Mandate Media) there's a Stories page where Measure 37 horror tales are told. There's only eleven there now. The proposed 125 acre, 42-lot subdivision on groundwater limited farmland near us in south Salem should be one of them. Along with other Oregon land use travesties that make you think, "How could they try to get away with this outrage?" Lots of they's in Oregon are much more concerned with money and politics than fairness and respect for our state. Oregonians in Action. Big timber companies…
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Posted inEntertainment

Hott4Hill(ary) hotter than Obama girl?

Who has the hottest music video featuring an ardent – and attractive – female admirer, Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama? This is the sort of political debate that should be going on right now. It's too early to decide on a Democratic candidate. But it's the perfect time to pay close attention to the positions of Taryn Southern, who's hot for Hillary, and Amber Lee, the Obama girl. You decide. At first I was drawn to Taryn, but after watching Amber I realized that she has her own, um, assets.
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Regence Blue Cross, stifle your premium increase platitudes

Every year I look forward to reading Regence Blue Cross' "Re: Your Annual Plan Renewal" letter. Not because I like the news about how much more money they'll be sucking out of our checking account every month. No, I enjoy seeing what half-assed excuses our health insurance provider came up with this time to justify their exorbitant premium increase. For 2006-07, it was 12.5%. For 2005-06, 11.8%. Inflation has been running around three percent, right?. So how does Regence explain the extra 9% or so? Pretty poorly. The cost of health care – hospitalizations, doctors' services, prescriptions, diagnostic tests –…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Oregon cougar killing plan senseless and subversive

Governor Kulongoski and the Democrat-dominated state legislature did a lot of good things this year. But the decision to allow volunteer hunters to kill cougars with the help of dogs was atrocious for several reasons. First, it subverts the clear intent of the voters, who twice passed a measure that prohibits the use of bait and dogs in hunting cougars and bears. So what if a hunter has a free pass to get out of Measure 18 from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife? Unfortunately, the voter-approved law allows cougars to be killed by a state agency. The writers…
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Posted inHumor

Hilarious and telling: “Four short crushes”

If you've ever fantasized about that stranger in line in front of you at Starbucks, imagining in the space of 30 seconds how wonderful your life is going to be together once he/she turns around, your eyes meet, and a cosmic connection is forged that will last forever (or at least, until the next morning) – and who hasn't? – you've got to read Paul Simms' marvelous The New Yorker piece, "Four Short Crushes." A sample to entice you: Another restaurant dinner with my boring girlfriend, another lecture about how I never really listen to whatever she's yammering on about.But…
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Posted inPhilosophy

The Tao of napping

It's nice to see that napping is getting the scientific respectability that it deserves. Napping has proven health benefits: Naps can restore alertness, enhance performance, and reduce mistakes and accidents. A study at NASA on sleepy military pilots and astronauts found that a 40-minute nap improved performance by 34% and alertness 100%. * Naps can increase alertness in the period directly following the nap and may extend alertness a few hours later in the day.* Scheduled napping has also been prescribed for those who are affected by narcolepsy.* Napping has psychological benefits. A nap can be a pleasant luxury, a…
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Posted inMeasure 37 Salem

Salem Monthly publishes what Statesman Journal wouldn’t

[Next day update: I'll give the Statesman Journal credit for printing my letter to the editor today, "Well users have property rights too." I'd rather have had 500 words than 200 words to make my case, but thumbs-up to the S-J for giving me this smaller soapbox after they rejected my bigger one.] This is why we need alternative news outlets. So stuff that's too edgy for the mainstream press gets out of the street. In the case of my Measure 37 subdivision opinion piece, out into the blue Salem Monthly boxes sprinkled around downtown. I picked up a copy…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Erogenous collarbones, fat rolls, and the sacred feminine

Feeling like Bob Dylan's ballad, all I know is something is happening here –with women's bodies– and I don't know what it is. It's a pleasure to pay close attention to this cultural issue, though. Really close attention. A few days ago I read a story in the Oregonian about the collarbone's ascension as a focus of female beauty. The piece originated in the New York Times as "The Collarbone's Connected to Slimness": "As the rest of women's bodies recede in spring fashions, the clavicles, or collarbones, and the upper chest between them, is rising to prominence. Toned shoppers who…
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