Posted inCurrent affairs

March For Our Lives, Salem — photos, video, commentary

Here's photos, a video of a moving song, and some commentary on today's uplifting March For Our Lives rally at the Capitol. The organizers estimate a crowd of 3,500, which seems believable to me. I enjoyed taking photos of people with creative signs that had great messages. We've got to act to prevent more mass shootings. Repeat: GOT TO. Click on the image below to see the Adobe Spark page I made.
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Posted inBooks Current affairs

“How Democracies Die” advises against hardball tactics with Trump

Well, it wasn't the most fun reading I've ever done, not by a long shot, but today I finished "How Democracies Die" by two professors of government at Harvard, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. A basic message of the book is summarized in the final chapter: When American democracy has worked, it has relied upon two norms that we often take for granted -- mutual tolerance and institutional forebearance. Treating rivals as legitimate contenders for power and underutilizing one's institutional prerogatives in the spirit of fair play are not written into the American Constitution. Yet without them, our constitutional checks…
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Posted inHome life

My 2017 VW GTI had a creaky sunroof. Here’s the tale of a 5 week repair.

I love my 2017 VW Golf GTI. It's a great car, the most enjoyable to drive I've ever owned. But about a year after I bought the GTI, the sunroof developed an annoying creaking sound, mixed in with some rattles. Here's a nighttime photo of the little devil. After the noises appeared, I did some Googling and found that sunroof problems appear to be fairly common with Golf/GTI models. The first time I took my car into the VW of Salem (Oregon) service department, the staff checked it out but couldn't determine what was causing the problem.  So I went…
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Posted inOregon history

City Club Kalapuya talk showed who the real native Oregonians are

Today David Harrelson started off his Salem City Club talk about the Kalapuya tribe by asking how many people in the audience considered themselves native Oregonians. A bunch of hands went up from those, I assume, who were born in this state. Harrelson then pointed out the difference between the First People, genuine native Americans, and native Oregonians.  The former, he said, could count at least 500 generations in their family history. So when people talk about being a 5th generation Oregonian, that doesn't impress him. Harrelson is the Cultural Resources Department Manager for The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde.…
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Posted inPhilosophy

My dentist’s daughter died in a skiing accident last Friday

My teeth-cleaning appointment started with a statement and ended in sadness. "Dr. Panet-Raymond isn't here today," I was told. "Friday his daughter died in a skiing accident on Mt. Bachelor."  That hit me hard. I've known Marc Panet-Raymond for a long time. We've talked a lot about philosophy and many other subjects during the time my mouth wasn't wide open for dental work.  A story in the Oregonian, "Woman who died on Mt. Bachelor 'lifted everyone who was around her,' father says," tells what happened. But no story can capture the feelings of Panet-Raymond, his wife, and son on the day…
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Posted inHome life

NAD+ is my new Fountain of Youth dream supplement

It's only been three days since I started taking NAD+, which grabbed the attention of my wife and me when we read about it in a TIME magazine piece, "Is an Anti-Aging pill on the Horizon?" Anti-aging products from skin creams to chemical peels are part of a $250 billion industry, but scientists have yet to discover a longevity elixir that stands up to medical scrutiny. A group of researchers believe they’re getting closer, however, thanks to a compound called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or NAD+ for short. “NAD+ is the closest we’ve gotten to a fountain of youth,” says David…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Why calling shooters “mentally ill” won’t reduce school massacres

Following the most recent school shooting in Florida that resulted in 17 deaths, Trump and the NRA are resorting to their usual blather about mental illness being the problem, not guns.  This is crazy.  The United States doesn't have more mentally ill people than other countries with vastly fewer school shootings. What distinguishes our country is the number of guns we have. With around 4% of the world's population, we have about 48% of the world's guns. Also, most school shooters aren't really mentally ill. My wife is a retired psychotherapist. She understands mental illness. And she understands that most…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Seventeen young lives cut short. We need a real culture of life.

Four days ago seventeen people were shot to death at a Florida high school, fourteen students and three staff. It infuriates me that there's any debate about what needs to be done: ban the AR-15 and other assault rifles along with high capacity magazines, and strengthen background checks for all gun purchasers.  More could be done, of course. But this is a good place to start. The surviving students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School understand this. They're pressing hard for gun control legislation.  Shut up and listen! That’s the message seething students have for President Trump and other gun-friendly lawmakers,…
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Posted inHome life Marijuana

Cannabis cartridges are a long (good) way from rolling a joint

Well, it's been a couple of years since I last wrote about how to imbibe marijuana. Time for an update from this 69 year old baby boomer who is still learning new cannabis tricks in our happy new world of legal pot here in Oregon and elsewhere. As I said in "Tips for 'vaping' marijuana if you want to go first class," there's a lot to like about buying cannabis flower/buds, grinding it up, and vaporizing the weed rather than rolling a joint -- which was usually the only way we Flower Children smoked it way back in the late…
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Posted inBooks Health

“Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I’ve Loved” is a great book

Kate Bowler has written a book about her struggles with several serious health problems, with the worst being a stage 4 colorectal cancer diagnosis. It is funny, sad, moving, inspiring, and so much more. From the first page to the last, I was deeply engrossed in her story.  "Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I've Loved" is one of the most moving books I've ever read. Even though I don't believe in God, and Kate Bowler does, I felt wonderfully close to her as I finished her marvelous book in a few transfixed sittings. She and I have much…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Early spring on our property shows need for Oregon cap-and-trade bill

Global warming is real. We humans are causing it. Urgent steps need to be taken to reduce carbon emissions. These three facts are borne out by some photos I took a few days ago of how vegetation is leafing out much earlier than usual on our ten acres in rural south Salem, Oregon. We've lived here for 28 years. This is really unusual plant behavior for February 4. The green shoots screamed to me, Global warming is making us do this! Now, I'm old enough (69) and have lived in Oregon long enough (47 years) to run the risk of…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Salem

Bridging our Divide meeting was a mind-opening experience

I'm a left-leaning atheist. Last night I had pleasant interactions with a Christian conservative. That was the goal of the Bridging Our Divide meeting at the IKE Box: to get people to listen to those with differing political views with empathy, respect, open-mindedness. Here's part of how the Bridging Our Divide web site describes their mission (they're based in Portland, but hold meetings around the country): Bridging Our Divide is working to promote constructive dialogue across political and ideological divides by creating forums for conversation.   Our work is focused on hosting Community Dialogue Events and Common Ground Debates in various…
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Posted inHome life

Two ways (among many) our dog controls me

Some people worry about artificial intelligence becoming so powerful, devilishly smart computers will rule humanity. I've got a more pressing immediate problem: I'm under the control of our dog, and I'm powerless to do anything about it.  ZuZu looks innocent, doesn't she? Well, let me tell you, looks deceive. Particularly when it comes to canines. ZuZu is a master manipulator. My wife, Laurel, is a volunteer at the Willamette Humane Society here in Salem, Oregon. She's got the exalted rank of a "blue" walker, which means she can handle the most difficult dogs. If I volunteered there I can't imagine…
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Posted inWeb/Tech

Don’t trust Google’s “security issue found” alert if you use Apple Mail

Google caused me a lot of frustration last night. I got an email from Google that warned of a security issue. After I dealt with it, I couldn't use Apple Mail to access my Gmail account.   Bottom line: don't trust a Google security alert if you're a Mac user. Here's the disturbing details of what happened to me. First, I got this email from Google. At first I thought this could be a scam. But after Googling "Google security issue found on your account" I became convinced that the email message really had come from Google. So I decided…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Moderation in the pursuit of justice is a virtue. Usually.

Today I came across a letter written by Martin Luther King while he was in jail. It criticizes "white moderates." That got me to thinking about Barry Goldwater's saying about moderation. Interestingly, King and Goldwater seem to have something in common, though their political views were very different. King: First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate,…
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Posted inHome life

For us, this is a fatal flaw of continuing care retirement communities

My wife and I are almost 70. We're still trying to figure out what we want to do in life. Or rather, the rest of our lives. I've written about our quandary in numerous blog posts, such as: I'm 65. Where's my "aging hippie" retirement community?Our retirement community conundrum continuesNew York Post features us in story about hippie retirement communitiesWhy it makes sense for seniors to postpone living in a retirement community At the moment we're still living in our non-easycare 3200 square foot, multi-level house on ten acres in rural south Salem, Oregon. We're thinking more seriously about moving…
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Posted inPhilosophy

Aliveness is a pretty damn good goal while being alive

You and I are alive. I know this to be true, because I'm writing what you're going to be reading, and writing/reading require being alive. The question is, how alive are we?  Pretty clearly, aliveness comes in degrees. At one extreme, someone in a coma is living, yet just barely alive. Maybe not at all.  Most of us would say that there's a point at which life isn't worth living. This is why so many people have a living will, durable power of attorney, do not resuscitate instructions, and such. But there's also the question of aliveness in what we…
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Posted inHome life Humor

Here’s another dark, twisted, and funny Christmas letter

If you like dark and twisted Christmas letters, and I sure do, you'll love this one that just came from one of my wife's friends. She has a great sense of humor. I changed the names to protect the innocent, aside from my wife's name, Laurel. A previous Christmas letter by the same person that's also darkly funny can be found here.  The Dreaded Christmas Newsletter So who wants to be a millionaire? I will soon be one, but I think I must die first. My liquid assets amount to $27 in the bank, but my house is fast approaching…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Salem

2017 Salem Women’s March in words, photos, videos

Wow, in the course of writing about the 2018 Salem Women's March, which looks like it will be a Womxn's March for reasons I'm unable to fully fathom, I just realized that I never put up a blog post about the 2017 Women's March.I must have been so eager to share the Adobe Spark page I made of that event -- words, photos, videos -- on Facebook, that I forgot to do the same in a blog post.  So... enjoy. It's fitting that I'm doing this on Christmas day, since the 2017 Women's March was a huge gift to Salem.…
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Posted inHome life

Contacting Amazon via chat worked great for me

Maybe this isn't astonishing news, but in the past I've had difficulty contacting a human at Amazon who could help with a vexing problem. So I wanted to share what worked well for me this evening. I'd gotten an email from Amazon saying that I was being charged for some tire chains that I'd returned, but hadn't been received by Amazon.  Having checked on the return status several times, I kept seeing "In Transit." Amazon had already refunded me the cost of the chains after the return shipment had been logged in via UPS. But since the chains must have…
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