Posted inRecreation

Images of Salem’s World Beat Festival

The worst-kept secret in Oregon? Salem is a boring town. I like to say that Salem is the amorphous undistinguished center between four interesting one-hour-away compass points. North is Portland. South is Eugene. West is the Pacific Ocean. East is the Cascades. And in between all these wonders? Blahville USA. Except for a few times a year. July's Salem Art Fair & Festival and June's World Beat Festival are exceptions to the boring rule in the town we call, yawn..., Home. Laurel and I went to the World Beat Festival at Riverfront Park last evening, and I returned for another…
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Posted inHome life

Reason #836,492 why Microsoft sucks

Using Microsoft Office reminds me of being married to my ex-wife during our final unhappy years together. It’s all I’ve got for the moment, but I just have to believe that there is something much better which would really meet my needs. Today it was Outlook 2003 that drove me to imagine the hell that rightfully awaits Microsoft programmers (or, more justly, the executives for whom they work). I dutifully have upgraded to Outlook 2003 from 2002, hearing that the integrated spam filter alone is worth the price. Yes, it is a nice spam filter, better than the stand-alone product…
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Posted inWriting/Weblogs

View my blogified photo (quickly)

When Jack Bogdanski emailed me and asked to use my recently-posted photo of the Three Sisters on his way-cool and way-popular Jack Bog’s Blog, I was thrilled. Wow! I never dreamed I’d be almost a professional published photographer, the “almost” a necessary qualifier because (1) naturally I’m not being paid for use of the photo, (2) the heading of a weblog isn’t really a publication, and (3) simply snapping a digital photo when the camera is on automatic barely qualifies as photography (I did, however, press the zoom lens button with my right index finger, which involved some minimal decision-making).…
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Posted inDogs

Oh, great, our dog is fat

While it might seem that a Pet Health Report Card isn’t the most fascinating thing in the world, actually there is a quite a bit of interest here. Laurel handed this to me when she returned from Serena’s semi-annual “wellness exam with preventative care” (it runs two pages, but the “Urogenital” section is on the second page and I wanted to preserve at least a semblance of Serena’s canine confidentiality; the condition of her sex organs is between her, us, and every dog in the world who comes up and sniffs her). First, I was struck by how much more…
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Posted inHome life

We visit an exotic land, the Pearl District

Rural south Salem is just sixty miles or so away from Portland’s Pearl District, but we felt as if we had journeyed to a foreign exotic land, so marvelous were the sights seen there. Not so marvelous, though, was the unfamiliar manner in which we learned Portlanders drive, on Friday afternoons at least. Rather than use their cars to move from one place to another, as is done in Salem, drawing near to Portland we observed thousands of them lined up neatly on the southbound freeway, seemingly motionless. We could not understand why so many Portlanders would choose to assemble…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Neighborhood

On torture and lot line adjustments

Yesterday, once again, we sat for over three hours in the Marion County room where land use appeals are heard. Then I went home, exercised and fed the dog, had some food myself, laid down on the couch, and opened up the Oregonian to a full-page story about the Department of Justice torture memo. By this time, my first thought was: “All lawyers should be ______” (you fill in the blank; just don’t make it anything pleasant) Understand, we know some nice, ethical, good-hearted lawyers. So I really should have made some exceptions for the “All” above. But after listening…
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Posted inRecreation

Three beautiful Sisters

Yesterday it was easy to fall in love with Three Sisters, they looked so beautiful. This photo was taken at the top of a knoll near Black Butte Resort that I’m pretty sure is called Gobblers Knob. Whatever it’s called, this was a great place to be on one those cool, clear June days in central Oregon that makes you feel, “Everything’s all right with the world so long as there are still places like this.” It’s Laurel’s double-nickel birthday next Monday. So we started celebrating early with one of her favorite activities, a two-hour Black Butte Stables trail ride.…
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Posted inRecreation

Great Camp Sherman “mountain” biking trail

We’re pleased to share with the wired world our favorite “mountain” bike trail ride in Camp Sherman, Oregon (it’s almost totally flat, which is the way we like our “mountain” biking, better termed off-road biking)). Since we haven’t seen this ride described elsewhere, this seems to give us the right to name it. I briefly considered something close to my heart, like Brian’s Trail, but I’d rather save my fifteen minutes of naming fame for something more dramatic, like a heretofore undiscovered chemical element (Brianhinesium, I like the sound of it.) So I’m calling this the Camp Sherman Creeks and…
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Posted inDogs

Trying to keep up with the border collie

I have to assume that Laurel is trying to keep our dog up with Rico, the really smart German border collie who knows the names of 200 objects and has language skills comparable to a young child. Otherwise, why would she suddenly engage in a frenzy of obedience training today with Serena, the most recent (and still very much ringing in my ears) example being a 45-minute walk in the Metolius River countryside punctuated by virtually non-stop calls of “Serena, closer!” “Serena, no!” “Serena, heel!” “Serena, stay!”—depending on what out of control behavior Serena was exhibiting at the moment. Laurel…
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Posted inNeighborhood

Four hours talking about groundwater

I bet you think that sitting in a Marion County Board of Commissioners meeting room for almost four hours listening to people talk about Sensitive Groundwater Overlay (SGO) zone policies would be boring. Well, if you think this, you’d be absolutely right. But there we were at 10 a.m. yesterday, Laurel and me, along with a half dozen other Spring Lake Estates residents who wanted to let the Commissioners know what we think about the current loose and lax county system that almost allowed a lot to be partitioned here, and an extra well drilled, when it was proven that…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Some religious common sense on C-Span

This is why C-Span is so great, even though it is so boring much of the time. Once in a while I channel-surf through the Dish network news channels, pause on C-Span, and listen to someone making so much sense I want to bottle what he or she is saying and pour it, forcefully if necessary, into every federal and state legislator’s brain. No, why stop there? Into the brain of every person in the United States. Even the world if I could find enough bottles. Melissa Rogers was testifying today before a Congressional hearing on “Religious Expression in Public…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Home life

How Reagan almost broke up our relationship

On Air America today (“the left side of the dial”) I heard the super liberal Randi Rhodes admit that she had voted for Ronald Reagan. “Once,” she said, noting that Reagan was appealing because he was so positive in a time of negativity. This reminded me of how Reagan almost broke up the nascent relationship between Laurel and me. Nascent, because this was just our second date, so there wouldn’t have been much to break up at that time. But looking back at our fourteen years of marriage, it would have been a shame if a little thing like voting…
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Posted inHome life

Amazing what a big stud can make my wife like

Okay, a potential stud, according to Thoroughbred Times.com. Regardless, Smarty Jones got Laurel to do some things I never believed I’d see her do. Like, ask “Where is the sports page?” this past week and then actually read the section that heretofore had as much interest to her as the classifieds. Also, sit down in front in the TV this afternoon and watch a sporting event, the Belmont Stakes. Of course, today there is no joy in Hinesville, for Smarty Jones pooped out on the backstretch. But we enjoyed our brief excursion into the land of horseracing, which probably was…
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Posted inPhilosophy

Why Jesus couldn’t have been married to Mary

Today I experienced within my consciousness one of those supernova bursts of enlightened understanding that dazzle me with my own brilliance (though not, it must be admitted, with my own humility). For I have discovered an unarguable answer to the controversial question posed by Dan Brown in his “Da Vinci Code”: Was Jesus married? Specifically, to Mary Magdalene. No. This is an impossibility. For in the time Jesus spent on this earthly plane he came to be considered as the perfect Son of God by those who knew him most intimately. Hence, ergo, thusly, Jesus could not have been married,…
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Posted inPhilosophy Writing/Weblogs

Eccentrics make the world go unround

When you attend a meeting of 500 aspiring mystics of both Eastern and Western persuasions, as I did last weekend, you’re bound to run into some interesting people. But there is “interesting” and there is “eccentric,” the latter being a pearl of greater price. For eccentrics, by definition, make the world go unround. They remind us that neat and tidy isn’t nature’s way. Rivers don’t take a straight course to the sea. Trees sprout branches in every direction. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing some wonderful eccentrics. Eric was a friend of my youth. A few years older than me,…
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Posted inPhilosophy

Not lost in translation

This morning I gave a 45 minute talk to the 500 or so National Satsang Weekend attendees at the Science of the Soul Center here in Petaluma, California. No, I’m not a member of a cult, no matter what my wife says (jokingly, I should emphasize, just as I fondly call her “infidel” with a smile on my face). Aside from my talks, Laurel chooses not to attend meetings of my spiritual group, for reasons I can completely sympathize with. I look upon spirituality as a science that investigates whatever may lie beyond the physical reality with which we are…
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Posted inRecreation

Recipe for a fun time

Here’s a recipe for a fun time. (1) Fly to Oakland on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend starts. (2) Rent a car at the airport and get on the freeway in the middle of the afternoon, just as every single person who works in the East Bay decides to take off work a few hours early and get a head start on the holiday. (3) For maximum enjoyment, head to Petaluma, as this way you will get to fully experience, in excruciating slow vehicle motion, what happens when three lanes of holiday traffic on 580W merge into one lane…
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Posted inSustainability

Aren’t the dinosaurs dead?

Since we own a 45 mpg (in real life) 2004 Toyota Prius, we’ve been taking a smug, holier-than-thou attitude toward rising gas prices and the anguished cries of those who get 15 mpg in their way-over-sized SUV. Every time I drive back home from the store with my four bags of groceries neatly stowed away in the back compartment of the Prius, and pull alongside someone in an Expedition with their own four bags of groceries rattling around in the cavernous interior, I look over with a smile that hopefully communicates, “Now, don’t you feel silly in all that unnecessary…
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Posted inWriting/Weblogs

An author’s scariest moment

An author’s scariest moment is when the first advance copies of a book arrive from the printer. Also, this is an author’s most wonderful moment. But scariness precedes the wonderfulness. “Are the pages printed all screwy? Is the cover color wrong? What major typo did we miss?” Yesterday Laurel yelled from the front door at me: “A box just came. It looks like books.” Oh, God, I thought. This is it. My writing life is over. And it is just beginning. Both. Neither. I couldn’t think straight. I didn’t want to go up and open the box. I dearly wanted…
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Posted inEntertainment Science

“What the #$*! Do We Know?!”

Great question. Great movie. Short answer: not much. Made in Portland, and starring the wonderfully expressive actress Marlee Matlin (an Oscar winner for “Children of a Lesser God”), “What the #$*! Do We Know?!” mixes together a fictional storyline with non-fictional expositions of quantum physics, neuroscience, and other findings from the cutting edge of science. Having written a book about the relation of the new physics and old mystics (“God’s Whisper, Creation’s Thunder,” which I’ve revised and am working to get back-in-print), this was a movie that I couldn’t miss. Unfortunately, lots of other people will. I only found two…
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