Posted inLiving with a catheter

I offer advice to someone new to using a urinary catheter

Today I heard from a woman whose 56 year old husband had his bladder go atonic, dysfunctional, two months ago. Understandably, he's suffering both physically and psychologically given this abrupt change in his life. She had read the essay I wrote for 180 Medical, which supplies my catheters, that had the not-very-cheery title, "My urinary catheter-related depression and anxiety." I was asked if I had any resources, advice, or support I could suggest. Well, here's the thoughts that come immediately to mind. I'll use this blog post as a reply to the woman, copying it into my email reply. I'll…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

I can’t celebrate Independence Day when freedom is under attack

I resonate with this image I saw on Facebook, though it doesn't go far enough. Yes, the horrendous Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade took away the freedom of women in about half the states to choose an abortion. Thankfully, Oregon isn't one of them. But there's plenty of other threats to the values our country was founded on. We're in grave danger of losing them. Democracy. The January 6 committee is doing a great job of revealing the details of how close Trump and his enablers came to overturning the 2020 presidential election won by Joe Biden. What's…
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Posted inLiving with a catheter

Diet could play a role when having a problem inserting a urinary catheter

I've been doing the intermittent urinary catheterization thing five times a day since my bladder became atonic in May 2017, a bit over five years ago.  Or as I like to say, my bladder went on strike back then and hasn't returned to work since. At least, not very well. I can pee some on my own, but not enough to stop using a catheter to empty my bladder. At times I've suffered from some pretty severe anxiety and depression, which I described in an essay 180 Medical asked me to write. I've also wondered whether anyone cares about my…
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Posted inBicycling Salem

A gloriously-written ode to bicycles in The New Yorker

The May 30, 2022 issue of The New Yorker has a terrific book review by Jill Lepore that is a whole lot more than a typical review, since Lepore describes her love affair with bicycles in the course of describing Jody Rosen's "Two Wheels Good: The History and Mystery of the Bicycle." I encourage you to read the entire piece. But if that link doesn't work for you (I'm a subscriber), here's excerpts from what was called Easy Rider in the print edition, and the title below online. The New Yorker has some of the best writers anywhere. Lepore is…
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Posted inHome life Web/Tech

My email nightmare shows how hooked I am on Gmail

I've got quite a few problems in my life, as do we all. But what sets off a special fear in me is when I get a message from Apple Mail on my MacBook Pro laptop saying something like, "Unable to connect to Gmail. Username or password not recognized." Sometimes the problem is easily fixed by restarting my computer. But a few days ago it was a waking nightmare. Nothing had changed with my Gmail account. I'd simply shut the lid on my laptop, as I do every night before I go to bed, then flipped it open in the…
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Posted inWeb/Tech

Don’t fall for the “copyright violation” Facebook scam

I'm embarrassed to admit this, but for a while today I was taken in by this (now) obvious Facebook scam. My excuse is that I did indeed purchase a Facebook ad/promotion last weekend to support a petition asking the Salem City Council to include in an upcoming $300 million bond measure the Salem Bike Vision proposal for spending $10 million to build a network of protected bike lanes. (Sign the petition! If you're reading this before August 2022.) So my eye was caught by "your ad has been reported," since some commenters on my Facebook post are crazily anti-bicycle, and…
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Posted inBicycling Salem

Sign my petition to support protected bike lanes in Salem

Yesterday I started a petition that asks the Salem, Oregon City Council to support a proposal by Salem Bike Vision to build a network of protected bike lanes in our city. You can sign it by clicking this link. Here's what the petition says. Riding a bicycle in Salem should be much safer and more fun than it is now. Sign this petition to urge the City Council to add protected bike lanes to the projects in a $300 million community improvement bond measure.I'm excited about this Salem Bike Vision proposal. A "bike lane" consisting of white lines on the…
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Posted inEntertainment

The shows I love to stream tell a lot about me

After writing the title to this blog post, I had a strong feeling of obviousness wash over me. OK, so be it. I plead guilty to stating the obvious. What people like to watch on TV says a lot about them. So does the music they like to listen to. So do the books and magazines they like to read.  Still, I find it fascinating how our personality gets projected into those sorts of activities. It's almost as if we don't need to meditate, engage in psychotherapy, or stare into the darkness of a coffee house expresso to know our…
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Posted inHome life Salem

Don’t feed the ground squirrels in Bush Park. They can bite.

Yesterday Laurel, my wife, took our dog Mooka for a walk in Salem's Bush Park. Mooka loves going to the park because she finds the California ground squirrels there endlessly fascinating. Partly because they're so tame. Partly because Mooka hugely enjoys chasing squirrels on our rural south Salem property, though I don't think she's ever caught one. (Dogs suck at climbing trees; good news for squirrels.) Laurel got into a conversation with a man who told her that a child had been bitten at Bush Park by a ground squirrel, probably while feeding one of the cute little critters. He…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Right-wing extremism responsible for 10 mass shooting deaths

Yesterday thirteen people were shot and ten killed at a Buffalo supermarket by an 18-year-old white man armed with an assault rifle and high capacity magazines. A day after one of the deadliest racist massacres in recent American history, law enforcement officials in New York descended on the home of the accused gunman and probed disturbing hints into his behavior, as Gov. Kathy Hochul promised action on hate speech that she said spreads “like a virus.” The suspect, Payton S. Gendron, 18, shot 13 people on Saturday afternoon at a Tops supermarket in east Buffalo, killing 10, officials said. Almost…
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Posted inSalem

Statesman Journal eliminates opinion section. I’m irked.

I've been a subscriber to Salem's Statesman Journal newspaper for 45 years. The paper has always had an opinion section.  It's been my favorite part of the Statesman Journal. I enjoy reading letters to the editor. I like to peruse guest opinions by local people. Syndicated columns interest me. So do editorials written by newspaper staff, even when I disagreed with them -- which was frequent over the years. But yesterday Cherrill Crosby, the executive editor, wrote a piece saying that the Statesman Journal is doing away with the opinion section. The reasons were lousy.  Crosby claimed "this content does…
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Posted inBooks

Daniel Silva’s Gabriel Allon series is so good, I’m marrying it

At the (very real) risk of sounding like CNN's Wolf Blitzer, I'm announcing some Breaking News, Happening Now. After my many years of passionate dalliances with other writers of spy novels -- notably the Gray Man and Mitch Rapp series -- I've decided to commit to a literary marriage to Daniel Silva's Gabriel Allon series. I discovered Silva in 2018 after making the mistake of buying the book Bill Clinton wrote with novelist James Patterson, "The President Is Missing."  The book was bad. Not the worst I've ever read, but poorly written with shallow characters. After buying it, I read…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Young folks, here’s a tale of the not-so-good old days

Gather around the blog post kitchen table, young'uns. (Which means just about everyone, since I'm 73, older than all but a few people reading this, but, hey, if you're a sentient Giant Sequoia, I'm a baby compared to you.) I realize that hearing senior citizens talk about the good old days is just about the most boring thing imaginable. Not wanting to inflict that on you, I'm going to do something different. Talk about the bad old days.  I feel the need to do this because it wasn't all that long ago when I was a youngster just out of…
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Posted inCoronavirus

Covid cases rising in Oregon and Marion County with fewer people wearing masks

I've never stopped wearing a mask in indoor public spaces, even though masks are no longer required. When I see most people maskless, sometimes I wonder if I should join them. But since wearing a mask is no big deal, and I'd much rather do that instead of getting Covid and running a significant risk, about 30% I believe, of having nasty Long Covid symptoms persist for months or even years, I always end up putting my mask on. That decision is looking even wiser given the recent rise in Covid cases both statewide in Oregon and here in Marion…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

I’d like to trade Joe Biden for Volodymyr Zelensky

I'm a Democrat who is ever so thankful that Joe Biden is president rather than Donald Trump. But if I could trade Biden for President Zelensky of Ukraine, I'd make that deal without a second thought. Zelensky is a fighter. He's rallied the Ukrainian people behind him in their battle against Russia's invasion of their country. More: Zelensky has inspired the entire freedom-loving world by refusing to bow to the demands of Putin, an authoritarian ruler who is committing horrific war crimes in Ukraine, if not outright genocide. Biden, by contrast, is doing OK in supporting Ukraine, but not nearly…
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Posted inDogs Home life

How our dog drives me crazy: Example 1 of 1,000

I keep reading about how modern dogs are evolved from wolves who became domesticated when people realized that they could be useful, and stopped chasing them away from their prehistoric camps. That's probably true. But now the dog-human relationship seems to have swung almost totally in the direction of dogs benefitting from living with us.  Sure, I enjoy the company of our Husky mix canine, Mooka. However, she doesn't contribute very much around our house. The most useful thing she does is occasionally catch a mole or vole that's burrowing in our yard. Meanwhile, she regularly drives my wife and…
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Posted inBicycling Salem

Protected bike lane network proposed for Salem

I'm super-excited about the very real possibility that fairly soon Salem could have more than 55 miles of new protected bike lanes -- which now basically exist only in Minto Brown Park and a few blocks of downtown. This photo showing a protected bike lane elsewhere comes from a must-see web site that describes the Salem Bike Vision. At least, you must see it if, like me, you enjoy riding a bicycle but aren't wild about riding your bike in Salem on paths that are either nonexistent or consist of painted lines on the edge of a busy road. Here's…
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Posted inWeb/Tech

CenturyLink sucks when it comes to rural broadband

After we got Starlink satellite internet at our home in rural south Salem, Oregon in early 2021, I stopped complaining about CenturyLink after we dumped their crappy 6-7 Mbps DSL "broadband" and started enjoying 50-150 Mbps Starlink download speeds. But today a CenturyLink repair guy came to our house to fix an annoying buzz on our landline, which got me thinking about rural broadband again. (Yeah, we're old-fashioned, since we still have a landline, in part because the Verizon cellular connection on our iPhones is pretty poor, two bars at most, unless we take a hike up our long driveway.)…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Entertainment

Oscars blow it by a pitifully minor mention of Ukraine

Tonight's Oscars show was viewed around the world. It used to get hundreds of millions of watchers. Maybe that's less now. Regardless, both those who put on the Oscars and those who won awards blew it by failing to take a much stronger stand in support of Ukraine against Russia's unprovoked invasion. I watched every minute of the show. I kept waiting for someone -- a presenter, an award winner, anyone -- to make some impassioned remarks about the bravery of the Ukrainian people and the need for freedom lovers everywhere to support their battle against Russia. Instead, all we…
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Posted inHome life

My John Deere X394 lawn tractor works great on rough ground

After several decades of using a DR Field Mower (which you walk behind) to cut grass on our ten acres in rural south Salem, Oregon, last summer I decided to admit that my 73 year old body needed an easier way of doing that job. So after considerable research and discussions with Ray Rodriquez at Pape Machinery, our local John Deere dealer, I bought an X394 lawn tractor.  It's taken me a few mowings to get used to the X394 (X means it is only sold through a John Deere dealer; the 94 indicates that it is at the upper…
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