Posted inHome life

A big burn pile is still fun for me at 73

There's pluses and minuses that come with living on ten wooded acres in rural south Salem, Oregon. Our property is a heck of a lot of work to maintain. But some of that work is so pleasant, it's better termed fun. Especially if that word, fun, is loosely defined.  Today Laurel, my wife, and I tackled a large burn pile. Originally it consisted of a massive amount of branches that I'd hauled up to our burn area from a pile under two tall redwoods -- remnants of some tree work we'd had done after a destructive ice storm last February.…
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Posted inLiving with a catheter

Facing Catheter-Related Depression: Brian’s Story

Today 180 Medical published the essay I wrote for them on their blog, calling it "Facing Catheter-Related Depression: Brian's  Story."  They decided not to put my email address in, though I said this would be fine with me. In case anyone wants to contact me about what I wrote, my email address is in the right sidebar, or click here.  The blog post looks great -- nicely laid out. There were a few edits to shorten the piece, but I didn't even notice what got left out. Jessica Flint's introduction was well put. It’s not often talked about, but the…
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Posted inWriting/Weblogs

“On the ground” is way over-used in the news

I'm writing this blog post on the ground here in my house in rural south Salem, Oregon. Does me saying "on the ground" add anything to that sentence?  No. Leaving it out takes nothing away that needs saying. "I'm writing this blog post here in my house in rural south Salem, Oregon" is completely accurate all by itself. I've noticed that on the ground is being used much more frequently in news shows. And mostly for no reason.  "We turn now to David Fleming reporting on the ground from Afghanistan" would only make sense if Fleming sometimes broadcast his segment while…
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Posted inPhilosophy

Let’s agree with George Bernard Shaw, “All men mean well”

It was kind of a strange place to resonate with a George Bernard Shaw quotation.  Last night my wife and I had just finished watching episode 7 of the HBO Max series, "Love Life." Following each episode, there's an interesting discussion of it between Anna Kendrick, who plays the main character with a love life, and three other people involved with putting on the series. One of them said something like, "As Shaw put it, All men mean well. Sinners, saints, everybody." Hearing those words, I paused Apple TV, got a pen and piece of paper, and wrote down the quote.…
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Posted inSports

Oregon’s loss to Stanford threw me into temporary depression

There's nothing worse than watching a favorite football team lose a game that they had well in hand, before they make a bunch of dumb-ass mistakes that snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. That's what happened to the Oregon Ducks this afternoon.  Sure, their play sucked in much of the first half. But Oregon had a 24-17 lead at 1:59 left in the fourth quarter with Stanford on its own 4-yard line. There should have been even less time left on the clock if Oregon hadn't inexplicably gone for a pass on its last possession instead of running…
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Posted inFamily

My wife’s sister died today. It was a good death.

We're all going to die. That's 100% certain. Death follows life with a cosmic inevitability. The big question is: Will we die a good death? This morning my wife, Laurel, learned that her older sister, Lynn, had died last night. Naturally there were tears. But not much sorrow. Because Lynn died a good death.  In fact, a very good death. Exactly the way most of us would want to go, Laurel and I definitely included. Lynn and her husband, Randy, had driven to Colorado from their home in Kentucky. Randy took her there as a romantic gesture.  He had proposed…
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Posted inHealth Web/Tech

My problem with the Mendi neurofeedback device

It's been a bit more than two months since I started using the Mendi neurofeedback device that I ordered via a Kickstarter campaign. I started off enthusiastic about my Mendi, as discussed in my July 26 blog post, "I'm enjoying my Mendi neurofeedback device." I've only been using the Mendi for a short time and need to do more exploring with it. This is my initial impression of what works best to get the ball moving upward. My first try with the Mendi produced a pretty good score. I think this was because I simply focused on the ball and…
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Posted inLiving with a catheter

My urinary catheter-related depression and anxiety

Recently I finished a 2,500 word essay for the consideration of 180 Medical, the firm that supplies me with urinary catheters. After I got a message from 180 Medical saying that they welcome essays about how people experience using a catheter, I wrote back saying I'm interested in this, having written a bunch of blog posts about my life with a catheter.Download 180 Medical essay PDF (I've also copied in the essay below.) A marketing specialist with 180 Medical read some of those posts and suggested I write about my catheter-related depression and anxiety. It took me quite a while…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Nuance is what our country needs now

There's way too many Americans unduly confident right now. They're sure they're right about Covid policies, the just-ended war in Afghanistan, racial justice, abortion, and a host of other issues that mostly get reduced to short sound bites, pithy Twitter tweets, brief Facebook posts, and other manifestations of our desire to appear absolutely certain about subjects that demand a word currently out of fashion.  Nuance.  Which means, a subtle distinction, an awareness of delicate shadings (as of meaning, feelings. or value). How did we get to such a dearth of nuance among a large proportion of our citizenry?  It's tempting…
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Posted inHumor Sports

Along with me, Oregon football team has #4 ranking

It was tough, but I did it! Last Saturday I pulled out a win against Ohio State, defying the odds and 100,000 crazed red-clad fans who desperately wanted me to lose so their team could maintain or improve on it's #3 in the nation ranking. Oh, guess I also need to give some credit to the University of Oregon football team. They were the ones who took the field against Ohio State.  But the way I felt after the game, I was right there with them -- a 72 year old guy who didn't even play football in high school,…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Salem

Oregon’s changing demographics — a Salem City Club talk

Today it was refreshing to hear Ethan Sharygin speak to the Salem City Club about Oregon's changing demographics. As befits the Director of the Population Research Center at Portland State University, Sharygin was 100% factual and 0% political.  These days that ratio often is completely reversed, especially when the fact-challenged side of the political spectrum is doing the talking. So my mind relished the data-filled slides Sharygin shared. Because of Covid, we met via Zoom, which made it easy for me to grab screenshots of most of his slides. In the course of introducing Sharygin, Russ Beaton made an interesting…
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Posted inHome life Philosophy

Life is only predictable looking backward

My wife and I have been married for 31 years. Looking back, it was meant to be. But almost certainly that's an illusion, because life only seems predictable after things already have happened. And even that is an illusion.  To understand why, let's look more closely at how Laurel and I met. The way I usually describe this is true, yet incomplete: I responded to a personals ad Laurel placed in Willamette Week back when the Portland alternative paper only came in a print edition. In a 2016 post on my Church of the Churchless blog, "Who's afraid of The Big…
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Posted inHome life

The curious case of MFS Total Return Fund (MSFRX) distribution history

I'm a long-time owner of the MFS Total Return fund. This is a well-respected mutual fund with a usual 60-40 split between stocks and bonds/cash. So the fund generates a fairly generous income stream. Many years ago a personal holding company founded by my grandfather and uncle merged with the Total Return fund. The fund got a bunch of quality stocks, and the personal holding company received Total Return Fund shares equal in value to what the stocks were worth. (The fund absorbed all of the capital gains from the stocks, a big benefit to the personal holding company.) After…
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Posted inHome life

My tip for starting a Stihl “easy start” chainsaw

I'm no chainsaw expert, but I've owned a small Stihl chainsaw for many years, needing it on our ten acre property in rural south Salem, Oregon.  This year I got a larger Stihl chainsaw after a bad February ice storm decimated many trees. They were in short supply around here for a month or so, but I finally went into Ace Hardware and saw that chainsaws were available. I ended up getting the MS 251C, an easy start Stihl model. I liked the idea of easy starting, along with being able to easily adjust the chain tension without a tool.…
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Posted inEntertainment

“The Chair” is a great look at college free speech

I know some retired Willamette University professors who would love "The Chair" on Netflix. This is a short (three hour) series that covers a lot of ground: college politics, free speech/cancel culture, how minorities are treated in academia. My wife and I liked it a lot. Sandra Oh, who I came to know and love in "Killing Eve," has a very different role here as Ji-Yoon Kim, the new chair of the English Department at a smallish university. She's terrific, as are all the other actors, notably including Everly Carganilla, who plays Kim's adopted daughter.  Though by far the youngest…
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Posted inCoronavirus

Maskless Oregonians, here’s what I’m thinking when I see you

Public health experts say we shouldn't shame people who choose not to be vaccinated or ignore mandates to wear a mask in indoor public spaces.  OK. I get that. Shaming isn't a good way to change behavior. Anyway, I'm too polite and well-mannered to go around telling maskless Oregonians what I think when I see them scoffing at Governor Brown's order to wear a mask because of the highly contagious Delta variant that has filled up almost every general hospital and ICU bed in this state.  This is causing non-Covid patients to die unnecessarily, because the mostly unvaccinated Covid patients…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Afghanistan is horrible, but Biden is doing right thing

For the past few days I've been agonizing over how I feel about the situation in Afghanistan. It pains me that the horrific scenes of panicked people at the Kabul airport trying to flee their country are happening on Biden's watch, since I view him as hugely more competent than Trump, and so far he's mostly done the right things as president. Last night my daughter, Celeste, and I talked by phone. Even though we're both progressives, much of our conversation centered on what was happening in Afghanistan.  Almost certainly the Taliban takeover will doom Afghan women and girls to…
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Posted inCoronavirus

Covid craziness tweets to make you outraged (and laugh)

For the past few days I've been collecting tweets from my Twitter feed related to the current Covid state of affairs. Most have to do with the horror show of Republican governors in Florida and Texas doing their best to kill people in their states by trying to prevent mask mandates, including in schools -- where children younger than 12 can't get a vaccine yet. Several tweets pertain to the worsening state of affairs here in Oregon. And one humorous tweet, my favorite, is from a woman in Tennesee who sent a marvelous email to school authorities regarding their policy…
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Posted inCoronavirus

Covid reality: thoughts are not facts

Driving into Salem today, listening to a news channel on satellite radio, I heard a public health expert say something that made me grab a piece of paper and write it down as soon as I came to a stop: Thoughts are not facts.  She was referring to wearing masks in schools as they reopen after a summer break. Like when a student or parent says, "But I thought that wasn't going to be necessary since Covid cases were declining so much a few months ago." OK. You thought that. But thoughts aren't facts, they're just thoughts. The only way…
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Posted inHealth

My hernia operation shows weirdness of hospital billing

I've been meaning to share what my May 6 hernia operation at Salem Hospital cost, because this shows how strange health care billing can be. But I'd been putting this off -- until I was spurred into blog post action by a story in today's Statesman Journal, "Salem Hospital lacks pricing transparency, new report says." Now, what I've shared below doesn't have anything directly to do with pricing transparency, but indirectly it does. I'm on Medicare. My insurance company is Regence MedAdvantage. Here's what the Medicare billing statement showed for my hernia operation. I combined the line items into categories,…
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