Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Patriots drive Priuses

We aren’t flying an American flag today. We didn’t go to a Fourth of July parade. We won’t be setting off any fireworks. But reading the great article in today’s Oregonian, “Global Oil: The Terminal Decline,” made me realize that we’re true patriots because we drive a Prius. A hybrid. A 45 mpg car (that’s our real everyday mileage, not fake EPA mileage). [Note: I couldn’t find the Oregonian article online, probably because it is syndicated. But here is another recent article by the author, Aaron Naparstek, that covers much of the same ground.] This article should be required reading…
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Posted inRecreation

Adventure on the Metolius

On our evening walk, Laurel and I encounter a savage beast, ready to leap on us from a rock outcropping. Our hearts pound. We wonder if this will be our last walk together, ever. Somehow, the beast is tamed. We marvel at the length of its tongue. Oh, how fortunate we were not to be engulfed by that fearsome maw! Reaching the river, a herd of large creatures that had been browsing in a meadow approach us. Laurel is brave enough to touch one. From their mouths, we surmise they are less carnivorous than our newly befriended beast. Ah, the…
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Posted inDogs Home life

Pampered pet, humbled husband

First, yesterday’s post about our dog’s overheating may have alarmed the many admirers of Serena the Wonder Dog, the Hines Family Animal Companion (we eschew calling her our “pet,” this being terribly Homo sapiens-centric, though the verb form of this word accurately describes how we spend much of every evening). Hopefully this photo that I snapped this morning when I went in to the dog room to wake her up will reassure anyone concerned about her welfare. Serena has an entire futon on which to sleep in her amazingly cute contorted dog postures. This is her famous “straight arm” pose,…
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Posted inDogs Entertainment Home life

“Fahrenheit 9/11” heats up audience (and our dog)

In our never-ending marital “told you so!” competition, my wife beat me two to one last night. We went to see “Fahrenheit 9/11” at Movieland in downtown Salem, and as the 7:45 pm showing time grew near I told Laurel that we should leave earlier than usual, since the movie was proving to be hugely popular among die-hard liberals—who, like almost everyone, love to be exposed to communications that confirm existing strongly held beliefs. Drawing myself up to the full height of my Alpha Male Head of Household Kingly Dominant position in our relationship, about 6:45 I emphatically decreed with…
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Posted inSustainability

275 urban ac.; 700,000 sq. ft.; grt. vu.; Salem; $13 mil/offer

It’s been a while since I’ve written about the Sustainable Fairview development. I decided it’s time to send a classified ad into cyberspace, as above. True, as a mere investor in Sustainable Fairview Associates (SFA), I’m not authorized to represent the property. But I can pretty much assure anyone out there who has both Green leanings and $13 million or so of the green stuff: no reasonable offer will be refused. Yesterday I asked Sam Hall, managing member of SFA, some questions about how things are going. This being a privately held limited liability company, I’m duty bound to keep…
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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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