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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Posted inDogs

Watch out for dog psychic hotline

Wanted to share some recent correspondence with the Oregon Humane Society, just in case anyone else shares a home with a malcontent dog. TO: Humane Society Dog Psychic Hotline CoordinatorFROM: BrianRE: Complaint received from our family pet, Serena This is in response to your recent letter expressing concern about the reported "starvation" of our dog. As you can imagine, I was more than a little surprised to learn that the Humane Society operates a Dog Psychic Hotline. However, this is Oregon. Guess I should have seen this bit of woo-woo coming. (Except, I'm not psychic.) At first I was deeply…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Yeah, I’m bitter. It’s tax time.

There's been a whole lot of misdirected talk about bitterness lately. You want to meet someone who's really bitter? Glad to meet you. My name is Brian. I just mailed my tax payments today. Speak to me, Barack. Let me know you feel my pain, Hillary. Are you on my side, John? Not just mine. Ours. All the individuals who are paying a bigger share of the tax burden, while corporations are paying much less. Yesterday's article in Parade magazine ("Are You Paying for Corporate Fat Cats?") was beautifully timed for maximizing tax-day bitterness. A 2004 U.S. Government Accountability Office…
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Posted inSalem

“Subdivided” points to ugliness of Salem

Sometimes, well often, when I'm driving around un-beautiful Salem, Oregon, I look at the atrocity of Commercial Street, Lancaster Drive, or the shuttered stores of downtown, and think "Who the hell foisted this ugliness on us?" It's amazing, really. We've gotten so used to the sterility, car-centeredness, garish billboards, utilitarian strip malls, treeless parking lots, and people-devoid sidewalks of the typical American town, the monstrosity of it all has left us numb to truly noticing it. That's why it takes a documentary like "Subdivided," which Laurel and I saw a few nights ago at Salem's Progressive Films Series, to open…
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Posted inHumor

Baby boomers confront the big “boom,” death

I'm going to be sixty this year. I keep thinking that some sign of the "golden years" should have popped up by now. Instead, growing old sure looks a lot more like ashen gray then luminous. Worse, it ends in black. Death. That's the worst part of aging: dying. On the other hand, for some people it's the best part. They're so miserable from sickness, loneliness, pain, suffering, poverty, and what not, death is a relief. For everybody else – those who want to keep on living – it's an unwanted intrusion into the pleasant pursuit of existing. Which seems…
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Posted inTango/Dance

Salem Tangos, vicariously

Wow! Last night sleepy Salem became, briefly, a Tango town. Unfortunately, it was only within the walls of the Elsinore Theatre, where a touring troupe, "Forever Tango," performed. Laurel and I took quite a few Argentine Tango lessons in 2006. We've forgotten much of what we learned. And watching the amazing dancers from our mezzanine seats made us realize that whatever we know about Tango is a tiny spark compared to the sensual firestorm they threw out. A review said: If you feel that tango is just another dance, then this show may not be for you. But if it…
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Posted inEntertainment

Heisenberg, Copenhagen, and unanswerable questions

I knew I was going to like the play, "Copenhagen," when one of the first lines said that some questions are unanswerable. That appealed to my churchless soul. As did Salem Repertory Theatre's reading of the play. For a mere five bucks each Laurel and I got to see "Copenhagen" performed last night. OK, read. But when a play has so much dialogue, and so little action, seemingly it doesn't make much difference whether the actors are sitting on stools with binders in their hands, reading, or sitting around on a stage reciting memorized lines. "Copenhagen" is about a 1941…
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Posted inTai Chi

Me doing Tai Chi

Proving that I'm on the edge of senility and losing my better judgment, I fired up my Flip Video camera yesterday, filmed myself doing a couple of Tai Chi forms, and then uploaded them to You Tube after adding some Tango music. This afternoon I had a locker room conversation at the athletic club with a guy I'd never talked to before. He told me about playing five games of racquet ball in a tournament against an opponent where he won a total of three points. "Sometimes I love getting my ass whipped," he said. I told him, "Well, if…
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Posted inPhilosophy

Atheism isn’t a religion, Thom Hartmann

Usually I agree with Portland's Thom Hartmann, Air America's progressive talk show host. But this morning he kept saying that atheism is a religion – that not believing in God is a belief system. That's ridiculous. It shows that no matter how smart and articulate Hartmann is, he's got some blind spots. Those logic-obscurers likely stem from his Christianity. Not being a regular listener of Hartmann, I didn't know before today that he's a Christian. But he told a caller that he prays every day. And not to some universal being, but to a personal God. This probably explains why…
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