Posted inCoronavirus

Why I’m still wearing a mask in public indoor spaces

I readily admit that if you look at photos of me with and without a mask, there's good reason to feel that the reason I'm still wearing a mask out in public, even though it isn't required now in most places, is that I look better with my face covered up. (For sure, I look younger.) But actually I have some pretty good reasons to buck the clear maskless trend, now that Governor Brown has lifted the indoor masking order (which still remains for health care facilities and pharmacies). These reasons are based on public health advice/information I've been getting…
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Posted inHealth Living with a catheter

My first counseling session: “I feel like you heard me”

I could have saved the $40 insurance co-pay by taking the advice of this cartoon and letting our dog make me feel better, instead of going to my first Salem Health counseling session. But after seeing Wayne Halle, a MSW counselor, I'm convinced that I made the right decision to take my problems to a human, rather than a canine. I was referred to Halle in late December after I told my family physician that I found a recent glaucoma diagnosis to be more than a little disturbing, especially when layered on top of a couple of other annoying health…
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Posted inCoronavirus Home life

Scheduling group meetings is tough in the Age of Covid

For many years I've done the scheduling for a monthly Salon discussion group my wife and I are members of.  Pre-Covid, that used to be easy.  We'd meet in the homes belonging to the dozen or so people in the group. I kept track of where we met each month, doing my best to keep to a regular rotation among the various homes.  I'd ask the people who were next up in the rotation if they could host a meeting on a certain date. If they could, then I'd email everybody in the group to see if that date was…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

If democracy is worth fighting for in Ukraine, it is in the USA

It's too early to tell how Putin's invasion of Ukraine is going to turn out. Currently a 40-mile long Russian military convoy is making its way toward Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital. Tough times lie ahead for the people of Ukraine, who have been fighting bravely against the stronger Russian forces. But one thing is certain. The freedom-loving world has been inspired by the fierce determination of Ukrainians to preserve their democracy.  Strong sanctions against Russia have been supported by most European nations, even including usually neutral Switzerland, which has frozen the accounts of Russian oligarchs and others targeted by the…
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Posted inGrowing older Salem

I’m an old man who wears purple

It was a good day for me to wear purple. But I didn't know that when I chose a jacket to wear on a decidedly cold February day here in Salem, Oregon. It felt like a Patagonia jacket day. I have quite a few colors. Green, orange, black, blue, gray, and my very first Patagonia jacket, a purple one that I got for half price, probably because Patagonia had figured out that not many men wear purple. I like the jacket. I like purple. However, the first time I wore it to my Tai Chi class, someone said, "You're brave," because…
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Posted inCoronavirus

Covid is declining, but these tweets show the danger of relaxing too soon

For about a week I've been collecting Twitter tweets from people knowledgeable about the current state of the Covid crisis. Most of them deal with the danger of relaxing public health measures too soon. Denmark did away with all restrictions, and now is paying the price in deaths and cases. Below you'll find screenshots of my carefully curated tweet collection. Most recent are shown first. The top tweet from yesterday has some possible good news for those of us in Oregon. Schmidt is referring to the fact that Governor Brown has announced that the indoor mask requirement in public spaces will…
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Posted inCoronavirus Current affairs

Protests against vaccines and masks are super selfish

Tonight we had a meeting of the monthly Salon discussion group my wife and I are a part of. We met via Zoom because even though some in the group, including Laurel and me, are fine with meeting in-person, others aren't. So we do our best to accommodate those who are most wary of coming down with Covid, even though everybody in the group is fully vaccinated and boosted.  This is called being reasonable. Also, unselfish. Doing what you want only is justified if that action isn't going to harm other people.  I'd like to believe that most people feel…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Health

MDMA research shows war on drugs is absurd

Sadly, I've never tried MDMA, otherwise known as Ecstasy or Molly. If I had, maybe I wouldn't have said sadly, since MDMA is a feel-good drug due to its ability to induce a massive release of serotonin, creating a feeling of well-being, love, joy. In his book, "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion," Sam Harris describes an experience he had at the age of 19, taking MDMA with a friend in 1987. The setting of our experience bore little resemblance to the conditions of Dionysian abandon under which MDMA is now often consumed. We were alone in a…
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Posted inDogs Salem

For the love of dog, pave the Minto Dog Park parking lot!

Laurel Hines, my wife, is on a canine crusade to get the City of Salem to pave the horribly decrepit parking lot next to the Minto Brown dog park. As Laurel describes in the message below that went to city officials yesterday, the parking lot is unpaved, muddy, and full of water-filled pot holes. Every other heavily used area in the Minto Brown park has a paved parking lot. But not the dog park.  If you agree that the parking lot should be paved after reading her message -- which includes photos showing how bad the lot is -- send…
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Posted inHealth

I have glaucoma but not worried about CBD raising eye pressure

About three months ago I was diagnosed with glaucoma. I'm very nearsighted, which is a risk factor, along with age (I'm 73). The good news is that my eye pressure has dropped from 20-21 to 11-14 via prescription eye drops. (Lowering eye pressure is the only way of preventing further optic nerve damage from glaucoma.) Early on, though, I had a lot of anxious moments. After all, going blind from glaucoma or "just" experiencing functional loss of vision is scary.  My anxiety increased after my wife wondered if my use of CBD could have been a cause of the glaucoma.…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Nothing to celebrate on this Martin Luther King day

I was nineteen years old when Martin Luther King Jr. was killed by James Earl Ray on April 4, 1968. When it happened I was on a sophomore semester abroad in Zadar, Yugoslavia along with a couple of dozen other students from San Jose State College and a few professors. I remember local people coming up to me and my classmates expressing sympathy for King's death in broken English. The same thing happened a few months later when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated on June 6, 1968. That year, 1968, was a dark time for the United States. So is 2022.…
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Posted inCoronavirus Health

I got some CBDA. Covid can’t touch me now!

Like I said in a recent post about an Oregon State University study that found CBDA and CBGA prevented Covid infection in a laboratory study of cells, regular CBD has very little of these acids that are  precursors to CBD, so mostly disappear when CBD is created from hemp. But I found several online sources of CBDA. Fewer seem to exist for CBGA. This story describes the key differences between CBD, CBDA, and CBGA, with this takeaway quote. A study published this week by researchers at Oregon State University found some hemp compounds have the ability to prevent the virus…
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Posted inCoronavirus Health

Not much Covid-fighting CBDA and CBGA in regular CBD

I've been using CBD oil and capsules for quite a while. So I got excited yesterday when I saw reports of an Oregon State University study that found precursors to CBD, CBDA and CBGA, prevented Covid infection in a laboratory study of cells. Hemp CORVALLIS, Ore. – Hemp compounds identified by Oregon State University research via a chemical screening technique invented at OSU show the ability to prevent the virus that causes COVID-19 from entering human cells. Findings of the study led by Richard van Breemen, a researcher with Oregon State’s Global Hemp Innovation Center, College of Pharmacy and Linus…
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Posted inGrowing older

Time has a different flavor for old folks like me

Remember when you were three? Probably not. I recall what that age was like via my memory of what my young daughter and her friends would say when asked how old they are. "Three going on four." They were so eager to be older, they'd fudge their age to get the next birthday into the answer. Believe me, those days are long gone for us old folks. I'm fine with saying "73" when asked my age. What's more annoying is having to scroll down through history when a web site wants me to select the year I was born. 2000's,…
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Posted inCoronavirus

Salem, be Covid-safe on New Year’s Eve

After almost two years, we're all tired of dealing with Covid. A lot of people in Salem are going to want to party-on tomorrow night.  I urge you to do that responsibly.  Just as the admonition, "if you drink, don't drive," is intended to both protect the person who's drinking and others who could be harmed if they drive, the same applies to Covid. You might think that it would be no big deal if you were infected, which probably would be with the Omicron variant. But keep in mind the risk to your friends, family members, co-workers, and such.…
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Posted inHome life

Our 2021 Christmas letter adds an asterisk to how we’re doing: Fine*

If you're a store employee, or someone else who asked us how we're doing in 2021, likely we said "Fine." But that wasn't really true. We just either felt that they really didn't want a full answer, or there wasn't time to provide one.  Thankfully, we were able to correct this through our 2021 Christmas Letter. Here it is in both PDF and JPEG formats.Download 2021 Christmas Letter PDF
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Posted inHealth

Two things gym users do that really bugs me

Yeah, I know. It's almost Christmas. I'm supposed to be in a Happy Holidays cheerful mood. But today I was reminded of two things that fellow users of Courthouse Club Fitness do that irritate me enough to warrant a complaining blog post on the eve of Christmas Eve. One relates to sanitation. I always carry a small "sweat towel" with me to wipe off the handles of the equipment I was on after I'm finished with it: first, the elliptical trainer in the aerobics room, then the weight machines in the circuit training room. I also always wear a mask…
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Posted inCoronavirus Salem

Yelling at a grocery store clerk isn’t cool. They’re Covid heroes.

When I was ready to checkout after grocery shopping at the South Salem Fred Meyer store today, there were long lines at every register. I picked the most promising line. There were just a few people ahead of me. But one of them was an older woman who not only wasn't wearing a mask, she had a humungous amount of groceries and other items piled high in her cart. That worried me. However, I figured that it wouldn't take very long for the clerk to handle her purchases, and those of the woman just ahead of me. I was wrong.…
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Posted inCoronavirus

Take Omicron seriously, Salem. Very seriously.

Omicron, the newest Covid variant to impact our country, is more attractive than original Covid and the Delta variant. But even though it looks like a Christmas ornament, don't be fooled.  It appears Omicron could devastate Oregon in the coming weeks. So says an excellent Oregon Capital Chronicle story, "Governor, health experts brace Oregonians for a serious impact from Omicron by February." In the past week, the Covid-19 outlook for Oregon shifted dramatically, with the state now facing the prospect of having the highest surge yet of infections and hospitalizations. A new forecast by Oregon Health & Science University indicates…
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Posted inCoronavirus

I dove into the deep end of life with Covid today

Since March 2020 -- almost two years -- I haven't sat inside a home with friends to eat, drink, and talk. My wife and I, being in our seventies, have been Covid-cautious.  Even though we're fully vaccinated with booster shots, we've been reluctant to take the risk of getting together with other people indoors for an extended period. Laurel has eaten occasionally at restaurants with friends. I haven't.  But today I dove into the deep end of life with Covid. And it felt great! This afternoon we hosted a three hour meeting of our monthly Salon discussion group at our…
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