Posted inHome life

Septic tank additives aren’t necessary

To add or not to add? This is one of the big questions for anyone, like us, who lives in a home with a septic tank. For many of the eighteen years we've lived in rural Oregon, we've dutifully added enzymes to aid the tank's digestion of our waste. Whenever we've had our tank pumped or a line unclogged, the workmen have pushed an enzymatic additive, saying it'll help keep our septic system healthy. But is this true? After some Google research today, my conclusion is…No. Save your money and let nature do its thing. Mag Ruffman, the Tool Girl,…
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Posted inSalem

Ah, the “joys” of country life

If you live in the city, probably you have fantasies about moving to the country. Quiet. Open spaces. A laid back lifestyle. Bliss. Yeah, sometimes. But not when your well pump gives out on the Friday before the long Memorial Day weekend and you're visualizing what it'll be like to live without running water for longer than you want to. Which, it turned out, was about half an hour. That's when the newness of washing hands and dishes from one of the emergency water containers we keep on hand wore off. When I lived in cities, I can't recall ever…
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Posted inMeasure 37

Pete’s Mountain vesting case goes to court

Measures 37 and 49, which modified Oregon's land use laws, mostly are out of the state's consciousness after the hotly contested successful campaign to pass Measure 49 last November. But not out of mind for those concerned about large Measure 37 claims which hope to be deemed vested ("grandfathered in," basically) because they were far enough along with development before Measure 49 came along. A court case on the Tumwater at Pete's Mountain project just concluded two days of hearings. Read all about it in the West Linn Tidings: "Tumwater is in the judge's hands." Ralph Bloemers, a Crag Law…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Oregon’s non-religious voters go for Obama

Way to go, Oregon pagans, freethinkers, humanists, Buddhists, Wiccans, agnostics, atheists, and sundry other spiritual iconoclasts. You did a lot to give Obama a big win. From CNN: Obama also won big in another category: among those voters who say they do not have a religion, or have another religion outside of Catholicism, Protestantism, and Judaism. Nearly 30 percent of Oregon Democrats said they were not religious and those voters went for Obama by 21 percentage points, 60 percent to 39 percent. And among those voters who listed "other" as their religion, a group that made up 10 percent of…
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Posted inHealth

Align probiotic seems to work for me

There comes a time in a blogger's posting life when he says to himself, "How much do visitors to my blog want to know about my digestive system?" This is a question that separates the self-absorbed blogger who believes that the world is interested in the most intimate and mundane details of his body, mind, and soul (namely, the true blogger) from the faux variety. I've made my choice: to lead the reader deeper into the bowels of me. Though my digestive story isn't all that interesting. I've simply noted that my late-50s body doesn't handle food with quite the…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Oregonians go to political extremes

Thanks to Blue Oregon, I now better understand how my state can be so politically contradictory. We've voted for the option of assisted dying if we're terminally ill. That sounds progressive. We also handily approved a ban on gay marriage. That sounds conservative. A nifty analysis of the state's voters ("Oregon: Swing State or latte-drinking Prius-driving lesbian commune?") casts light on how we can swing both ways. [Personal note: this Salem resident does drink lattes and drive a Prius. However, I'm not a lesbian.] It turns out that liberal Oregonians are really liberal, and conservative Oregonians are really conservative. Based…
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Posted inHome life

“Ooh, it’s hot!” Oregonians are heat wussies.

Days like today, I feel so superior to most of my fellow Oregonians. I grew up in central California, where for much of the year a temperature under 100 degrees is considered a cool day. So here I am on May 16 in Salem, Oregon – enjoying a record breaking heat wave for this date. The thermometer in my car read "100" when I was downtown this afternoon. Ooh! Wow! One single freaking day with a three digit temperature and the local news is filled with tips about how to survive. Hydration. Sunscreen. Wear a hat. Don't exert yourself. Oregonians…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Shocking news! Cable “news” isn’t news.

Yesterday the TV truth hit home as it never had before. CNN, Fox, MSNBC – they aren't really news organizations, because what they peddle is mostly subjective fluff, not facts. The West Virginia Democratic primary election is what drew me to this conclusion. It was something I already knew, but which hadn't sunk deeply into my consciousness until I spent most of the afternoon working on some windows with the television tuned to CNN. It was unbelievable how an endless stream of pundits, reporters, political hacks, and elected officials could take a few crumbs of new information and turn them…
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Posted inEntertainment

What Survivor, the TV show, says about the election

We're fervent fans of CBS' Survivor. Haven't missed an episode, ever. Not once in sixteen seasons. We put so much time into the show, I like to discern Big Truths in the machinations that go on between the contestants. I'm not a Clinton supporter, but the Fans versus Favorites contest on a Micronesian island that concluded last night was a good omen for her. First, the women ruled. Everyone in the final four was female. The girls were way more devious than the guys. That's why this is called a "reality" show. Cirie talked about how her mother said that…
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Posted inMeasure 37

Oregon Supreme Court affirms Measure 49

Good legal news for those who love the naturalness of Oregon, rather than unneeded subdivisions on prime farm and forest land. Last Thursday the state Supreme Court ruled on the Corey case. The decision affirmed that Measure 49, voted in last November by a wide margin, trumps Measure 37 – which Measure 49 fixed. Oregonians in Action, plus others who favor the rights of a few Measure 37 claimants over the property rights of the many, had been hoping that Corey v. DLCD would overturn Measure 49 in some fashion. But the position of the Department of Land Conservation and…
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Posted inSalem

Belly dancers show need to shake up Salem

Beauty. Artistry. Color. Diversity. Energy. Passion. Not words usually associated with downtown Salem, Oregon. But yesterday Silverton's Raks Sarama belly dancing troupe, performing at a First Wednesday celebration, showed that this sleepy city has potential to wake up. In my You Tube video (embedded below) you can hear a conversation between me and a fellow progressive friend, Frances, where I extol the virtues of my Flip Video camera. Before that, Frances told me that she'd just been extolling the virtues of Lloyd Chapman, who is running for mayor against the incumbent, Janet Taylor. She ran into some Taylor supporters and…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Depression reigns if Clinton wins

I figure I'd better write this now, a few minutes before the Indiana and North Carolina polls begin to close, because later on I might be too depressed. I'm a grumpy new Democrat, having changed my registration to "D" from non-affiliated a few months ago so I could vote for Obama in the Oregon primary. I felt good back then. Now Obama v. Clinton is a game that's feeling way tired, way repetitive, way past its prime. The Democrats need to get it on against McCain, not themselves. Clinton is really starting to irritate me, though at first (briefly) I…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Inside look at Statesman Journal election endorsements

Like making sausage, if people knew more about how many newspaper editorial boards go about deciding on endorsements, they'd be disgusted. Today Salem's Statesman Journal, the newspaper in Oregon's capital, endorsed Hillary Clinton. That's no big deal. Here's why. I have a better understanding than most of how this paper's editorial board works, because last fall I got hot and heavy into investigating how the Statesman Journal was able to justify endorsing a "no" vote on Measure 49 – a fix for Measure 37, which the newspaper opposed in 2004. Go figure. My wife and I sure couldn't. Back in…
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Posted inRecreation

Maui tourists gone (mildly) wild

Proving that a man on a Maui vacation armed with a Flip Video and a You Tube account is an formidable cinemagraphic force, here are the final four videos in my 2008 Hawaiian Island oeuvre. These follow my preceding works of tourist art: "Maui beach people: beautiful or not?", "Video tour of Kapalua zipline course" and "Having a whale of a good time on a Maui cruise." Serious students of Flip Videography (assuming there are any) may notice an evolution in my style during our ten days on Maui. Myself, I can't. But often an artist can't recognize his own…
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Posted inRecreation

Having a whale of a good time on a Maui cruise

What is it about whales? And screaming people. I had plenty of time to ponder this question on the sunset dinner cruise that left yesterday from Maui's Lahaina harbor. As memorialized in my You Tube video, you can hear our fellow passengers (and me) getting super-excited when some whales appeared close to the Pacific Whale Foundation boat. Elvis and the Beatles probably didn't get more "oohs" and "ahs" when they came on stage. Yes, there's something about whales. My philosophical self likes this notion: whales are like God. Mysterious, powerful, unseen. Usually hidden beneath the surface, once in a while…
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Posted inRecreation

Video tour of Kapalua zipline course

Any mildly-extreme sport that starts and ends at an expresso bar is right up our alley. That's one reason we enjoyed yesterday's outing at the Kapalua Resort's zipline adventure on Maui so much. But naturally zipping was the main attraction. We'd never zipped before. If you don't know what it is, my four minute video will show you. It's a kick. You hang on harnesses attached to what we were assured is a super-strong cable. Then you let yourself go from a platform and zip – the longest of the four courses being over 2000 feet. In the video I…
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Posted inRecreation

Messages to Maui’ans from an Oregon vacationer

Ah, the World Wide Web is wonderful. It lets me communicate, potentially at least, with some people on Maui that I have messages for. --To the couple in the room next door: It was so nice to get to know you early this morning – through the loud cell phone conversations on your deck. I hope your mother is able to join you on Maui. Paying for her lodging if she springs for the airline ticket sounds fair. And good luck with finding a babysitter through the nanny hotline. Hopefully she'll keep your child quieter than you've been able to.…
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Posted inRecreation

Maui beach people: beautiful or not?

Wanting to make our Maui vacation intellectually productive (to a minimal degree), this morning I dedicated myself to a study of people passing by us on Napili Beach. I say at the beginning that I'm going to film ten consecutive beach walkers, but my study was so interesting, I kept on going. Hypothesis: Maui beachgoers are beautiful people. Reality: watch my You Tube video (embedded below). Now, I hasten to add a politically correct statement: We are all beautiful people in our own way. That said, some are more beautiful than others. A careful viewer of the video will note…
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Posted inHome life

From snow to sunshine with snafus

SNAFU is both a deeply philosophic acronym, and a pleasingly profane one. It's meaning, "Situation Normal: All Fucked Up" reflects the Buddhist reality that life is suffering. Traveling from snowy Salem, Oregon to sunny Napili Bay, Hawaii yesterday, we can testify that SNAFU is fully operative in the cosmos. Not that we needed any confirmation of that. It's just good to be reminded (albeit as infrequently as possible) that when everything is going right with life, that's an anomaly. Laurel and I started off fine, waking up bright and early for a planned 6:45 am departure from home so we'd…
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Posted inHome life

How’d that old man get in my photos?!

For a moment I was ready to turn around and head back to the Fred Meyer photo counter with an angry demand that I be given my digital camera printouts, not the ones belonging to some old geezer who seemed vaguely familiar, but clearly wasn't me. Except, after the moment passed and my mind jumped back to aging reality, I realized that he was. Me. This is a new experience – looking at a photo of myself, or seeing myself in a mirror, and thinking, "Who the hell is that?" Previously, I've thought "That doesn't look like me." But now…
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