Posted inSalem Sustainability

Fairview Woods approved by Salem City Council

It was good to see the Salem City Council vote unanimously last night to reject an appeal of the 14.1 acre, 16 lot Fairview Woods development.  Eric Olsen of Olsen Design & Development has been working on this project for several years. The Woods currently is a heavily treed parcel at the top of the old Fairview Training Center property in south Salem. It's filled with ivy, blackberries, and trash left by homeless people and others. As Olsen discussed at the City Council hearing (I watched via the City of Salem's Facebook feed), The Woods was a difficult design challenge. …
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Posted inUncategorized

VW’s new electric ID3: appealing design and quirkiness

I'm already a big fan of the electric car VW revealed today at the Frankfurt auto show. Only problem, every report I've seen says that the ID3 won't be sold in the United States, because we Americans aren't big on smallish hatchbacks. (Since I drive a 2017 VW Golf GTI, and love my car, I'm an exception.) VW has done a great job with the design of the ID3. It honors the Golf heritage, while modernizing the look and feel of past VW vehicles.  A Motor 1 story, "VW ID.3 Debuts As People's Electric Car With Up To 342-Mile Range,"…
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Posted inSustainability

Earth to Politico: eating meat enlarges a person’s carbon footprint

Having been a strict vegetarian since 1970, I've enjoyed almost fifty years of dietary self-satisfaction. (Vegetarians aren't as smug as vegans, but we're close.) So when I saw a Politico headline today, "Democrats bite on burgers and straws -- and Republicans feast," I anticipated that the article was going to irritate me, which indeed it did. Politico engaged in some questionable analysis of the lengthy CNN climate forum featuring Democratic presidential candidates. Here's some burger-related observations. Democrats’ verbal targeting of everything from plastic straws to cheeseburgers is stoking fears among anti-Trump forces that they’re unwittingly playing into Republican culture wars.…
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Posted inHome life

VW’s ID4 Crozz could be my next (electric) car

I've been car window-shopping recently. OK, not via a window, really, but through the Internet. Just when I thought I'd hold onto my 2017 VW GTI for a while, until the next-generation Mk8 Golf/GTI comes to the United States in 2020 as a 2021 model, today I decided to take a closer look at VW's electric vehicles that will be introduced at the Frankfurt Auto Show this month. My new idea is that I could keep my GTI for longer trips, such as when I go to our co-owned Black Butte Ranch house in central Oregon. Then my wife and…
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Posted inHome life

Loving my 2017 VW GTI, I’m willing to wait for the eighth generation

A few weeks ago I wondered if I could find car love with a Hyundai Kona after dating a VW GTI. That question may have been answered by today's drive from Black Butte Ranch in central Oregon, across the Cascades, to our home in Salem. Driving on the often twisty and steep mountain roads reminded me how freaking fun the GTI is. Now, I readily admit that after a test drive with a 2019 Hyundai Kona, I can agree with this guy that the Kona arguably is a hot hatchback -- especially in comparison with its competitors, such as the…
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Posted inBlack Butte Ranch Family Home life

My first Pickleball experience was frustratingly fun

My daughter, Celeste, and I had overly optimistic expectations of how great we'd be at Pickleball. Since this racquet sport is sort of a cross between tennis and ping pong, both of which each of us has played a lot of, we figured that Pickleball would be a breeze for us. Well, we were partly correct.  It was a breezy day at the Pickleball courts at Black Butte Ranch in central Oregon, where Celeste, me, my granddaughter Evelyn, and Laurel, my wife, tried the sport for the first time. That enabled me to blame some of my many mistakes on…
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Posted inSalem

CarMax to open store in Salem in February 2020

I love CarMax. My wife and I have sold three of our cars there, getting a better price than was offered by local dealerships here in Salem, Oregon. So I got excited when someone told me that they'd seen a sign near the I-5 freeway saying that a CarMax store was coming to town. It's taken more than five years for this to happen since a February 2014 Statesman Journal story by Michael Rose was titled, "CarMax on the course toward Salem location." CarMax Inc., a giant in the used car business with 130 locations nationwide, has started laying the…
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Posted inHome life

Our 2018 Chevy Volt lost half its value in 16 months

Today we said goodbye to our third, and last, Chevy Volt. My wife has loved the car so much, we've leased three Volts: in 2012, 2015, and 2018.  It seemed like a good idea to lease, rather than buy, given the steady improvements in battery performance. (The Volt is a plug-in hybrid vehicle that switches over to a gas engine/generator after about 45-50 miles of all-electric driving.) But we didn't anticipate that we'd buy a 2019 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid to replace our 2014 Highlander -- which came to seem like too large a car for our tastes. Plus it had…
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Posted inBooks Home life

I’ve written a new book: “Break Free of Dogma”

It feels great to have my new book go live on Amazon. My views about life, spirituality, God, and other Big Ideas have changed a lot since I wrote my previous three books.  I still agree with much of what I said in them, but some parts make me sort of cringe. Break Free of Dogma is much closer to my current atheist philosophical perspective.  It consists of 93 posts that I selected from the early years of my Church of the Churchless blog, 2004-06. So it was pretty easy to fashion, since I'd already written most of the content. Just…
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Posted inEntertainment Home life

I hate DirecTV even more than I hate Trump

Let me explain the title of this blog post. Trump isn't sitting under our television, controlling what my wife and I are able to watch in our rural south Salem (Oregon) home where the only TV choices are crappy DirecTV and crappy Dish Network. So DirecTV has a much larger direct impact on my life than Donald Trump does. That's why I'm complaining about DirecTV rather than Trump, even though both are hugely irritating. There's always something to hate about DirecTV. Let me count three of the ways, starting with the most recent -- which is the biggest current reason…
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Posted inHome life

Can I find car-love with a Hyundai Kona after dating a VW GTI?

It feels like it could be time to break up with my 2017 VW GTI. We've had close to three years together. I love her a lot. Our only rough spot came when her moonroof started to rattle, and it took a really long time for a dealer to figure out what the problem was, and to fix it. Still, all of my car relationships come to an end. And I've been watching a lot of videos about what could be my next car-love, a 2020 Hyundai Kona. The 2019 model is fine, but there's a few features on my…
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Posted inSalem

Hood House will provide housing for five homeless Salem women

There's so much wrong going on in the world, it's refreshing to be able to report on something very much right. Russ and Delana Beaton, long-time advocates for the homeless here in Salem, Oregon, have created an innovative housing opportunity for five previously homeless women. The Beatons are members of a monthly discussion group that my wife and I belong to, so we've been kept up to date on the progress of their Hood House -- named for the street it sits on in northeast Salem. Here's how Hood House was described by Delana in an emailed invite to last…
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Posted inHome life

Here’s praise for Abiqua Irrigation and Dan’s Leak Detection

When you live on ten acres in rural south Salem, there's always something going wrong. I am that "you," along with my wife, so I know what I'm talking about. OK, not always, because that would be 24/7. But definitely things go wrong often. Which happened a couple of weeks ago when we noticed that two of our sprinklers were mysteriously running longer than they should have.  In fact, they wouldn't shut off at all. So I had to turn off the water to the entire sprinkler system while we figured out what the problem was. A control valve, obviously,…
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Posted inSalem

Photos of the 2019 Salem Art Fair & Festival

The Salem Art Fair & Festival always is hugely enjoyable. During our Friday visit, when I took these photos, I believe my wife and I spent more on food than on art, but, hey, artistry is involved in the food booths. This year I was told the secret of the So Cheesy food truck/food stand, but if I divulged why their grilled cheese sandwiches taste so good, I might be punished by the So Cheesy gods. Click on the image below to behold the Adobe Spark web page I made, complete with compelling commentary on the photos.
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Posted inSalem

Here’s my petition supporting LBGTQ rights in Salem

Please sign this petition I just started to support the Salem Human Rights Commission in its stand against the City of Salem leasing a building from the Salem Alliance Church to temporarily house the public library. Click on this link to the Care2 Stand up for LGBTQ rights in Salem! petition. The church rejects same-sex marriage and considers same-sex sex to be a sin. The Commission is calling on City officials to find another location for the library while renovations are made, even if that location costs more and is less convenient.
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Posted inDogs Home life

CBD drops seem to be helping our dog’s liver disease

About six weeks ago my wife and I were told by our vet that our nine year old Shepherd mix (ZuZu) was in the late stages of her chronic liver disease and likely only had a few days or at most, weeks, to live. Her belly was filling up with fluid. Her eyes were yellowish. She was lethargic and didn't want to eat.  Along with having the fluid aspirated twice, putting her on milk thistle drops, diuretic, antibiotic, and a cortisone medication, I decided it wouldn't hurt to get some dog CBD -- the non-psychoactive component of marijuana.  Twice a…
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Posted inBooks Philosophy

Stuff happens. Things fall apart. Such is life.

Sometimes the most obvious things about life need to be talked about. It's easy to overlook them not in spite of their obviousness, but because the familiar tends to fade into the background, while new stuff grabs our attention. So here's a few obvious truths about life: -- Life is finite. It comes to an end for every living being. Including us humans.-- Life is uncertain. We can hope for the best, but sometimes the worst happens.-- Life is about caring. We care, because what we're concerned about is finite and uncertain. I've been reminded about these truths by reading…
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Posted inHome life Salem

Photos and comments on 2019 Salem Tour of Homes

Every year my wife and I enjoy going to the Tour of Homes here in Salem for a couple of reasons. First, it's fun to see cool features in expensive homes that our 1970's era home lacks, like walk-in closets. Second, we like to criticize design choices that strike us as abhorrent, hopefully out of the earshot of the builder. Here's photos I took last Saturday at the 2019 Tour of Homes kickoff weekend. I've added some commentary that ranges from complimentary to snarky. We only went to four of the 21 homes. The Tour continues through June 23rd: weekends…
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Posted inHome life

Buy our 2018 Chevy Volt Premier, just $25,000

Here's a great opportunity for someone who wants a deal on a top-of-the-line 2018 Chevy Volt with just 8,230 miles that had a sticker price of $40,865.  My wife and I are leasing this Volt, which is the Premier model. This is our third 3-year lease on a Volt, having leased 2012 and 2015 Volts previously. We like the car a lot, but want to sell it after buying a 2019 RAV4 Hybrid recently, since we don't need three cars (also have a VW GTI). So a buyer of this car would need to wait a bit for us to…
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