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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Posted inFamily

Making my baby granddaughter into an existentialist

I'm discovering one of the joys of becoming a grandfather: since I don't bear the responsibility for my granddaughter's ultimate development, I can play with her psyche as much as I want to. When she eventually seeks psychotherapy, Evelyn never will connect her existential angst with the children's book that I read to her over the weekend. Of course, she didn't grasp the deeper aspects of "Ned Goes to Bed" this time around. (When you're not quite a year old, pondering philosophy plays second fiddle to seeing if the pages rip out of a book.) But I intend to keep…
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Posted inFamily

A one-year old takes my house apart

My granddaughter is making her first visit to our south Salem home. It didn't take Evelyn long to figure out how to begin taking it apart. This southern California baby saw her first snow today. Thanks, Oregon. Here she is, a bundle of cuteness, up early with her dad on a chilly morning. I got to push her stroller most of the way around our neighborhood's two mile loop. Of such events are a new grandfather's dreams made of. Llamas aren't all that common in Evelyn's Hollywood environs. She took them in stride, with my daughter Celeste by her side.…
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Posted inSalem

Starbucks wants to be my new best friend

It's sort of touching, those signs that have popped up in every Starbucks store. "We're your neighborhood Starbucks." Well, actually you aren't. I live at least seven miles from the nearest Salem Starbucks. And that's the way this rural resident likes it. If I want a friend, I'll get a dog. In fact, I have a dog. Pretty much all I want from Starbucks is a skinny venti vanilla latte a couple of times a week. However, atmosphere does matter. When I have a latte choice, I head for a locally owned place like the Coffee House Café. I like…
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Posted inMeasure 37

Subdivision’s Measure 37 vested rights to be tested

I can't remember when I've looked at a front page headline in our local newspaper and seen better news. I was ecstatic, overjoyed, uplifted when I pulled the paper out of our box this morning. Whew! We looked fine in the picture a Salem Statesman Journal photographer had taken of us yesterday, standing in front of the proposed Measure 37 subdivision adjacent to our neighborhood. Mostly because the photo that made it into the paper was taken a fair distance from us, unlike the many close-ups that, thankfully, earned a "delete" button press. The "Land case may test 'vested rights'"…
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Posted inHumor

“Stuff White People Like” mostly right

Thanks to a friend, Randy, I now know that I'm white. He told me about "Stuff White People Like," pointing out to me #35 in the full list. The Daily Show/Colbert Report. Yes, I'm a habitual viewer. Thing is, I've watched so much of Stephen Colbert, like him I no longer see race. So I'd forgotten that my wife and I are white until I browsed through the ninety-one stuffs and realized that I liked a lot of them. Scoring high on half of the first ten pretty much proved that we're white. #1. Coffee#2. Religions their parents don't belong…
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Posted inSalem

A newbie Democrat sees Obama in Salem

Oh, yeah. Now I've really jumped into the Democratic deep waters, after a lifetime of swimming around as an independent. Today I made a pilgrimage to see the reason I became a Democrat: Barack Obama. He came to Salem this afternoon. An hour late, but he made it. Guess I can't complain (though I do on the video below), since it took me several decades to make myself into a Democrat – and someone who cares enough about a presidential candidate to go to quite a bit of trouble to hear him speak. It turned out that Laurel and I…
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Posted inMeasure 37

LUBA decision aids our Measure 37 subdivision fight

Our neighborhood got some good news today from the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals. A ruling was issued on the Keep Our Water Safe Committee appeal of Marion County's decision to approve a 43-lot Measure 37 subdivision on groundwater limited, high-value farmland. LUBA remanded the case back to the county. Meaning, the Board of Commissioners has to deal with an error they made in granting a Measure 37 waiver of land use regulations to the four owners of the property. Land use law junkies can pour over the first ten pages of LUBA's Final Opinion and Order to learn…
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Posted inSalem

Obama coming to Salem – I got tickets!

Below is some video of an enthusiastic crowd in downtown Salem today, waiting to snap up tickets to Barack Obama's appearance in our normally sleepy city on Friday. The Coffee House Café must have done some bang-up business. Proving that laid-back counter culture types also can have business sense, a nicely tattooed employee worked the line (which stretched most of the way down the block). As you'll see, I was desperate to cover up the corporate latte that I'd just bought at a nearby Starbucks. That's where I heard about the ticket giveaway, which led me to head down the…
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Posted inUncategorized

18th anniversary — Dr. Laura is even more wrong

Maybe it's the luck of the Irish, getting married on St. Patrick's Day way back in 1990. Whatever, here Laurel and I are, celebrating our 18th anniversary. Which is many years more than Dr. Laura Schlessinger would have predicted our marriage would last. As I observed in my earlier take that, Dr. Laura! post, she doesn't believe that someone can make sound decisions about a new relationship for at least a year after getting divorced. That's ridiculous. Laurel and I met in July 1989. I proposed to her in October. We got married the next March. There aren't any rules…
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Posted inNeighborhood

Images of Oregon’s Ides of March

It's yin and yang time in the Willamette Valley. Oregon is doing its changing thing. Rain most of the day, then a burst of late afternoon sunshine. The daffodils in our garden use it to show off. Look at me, so bloomin' beautiful! Down the path, Spring Creek is springing. New growth on winter's bare branches. Nearing the lake, a long shadow pointed the way to the sun. A first cherry blossom welcomed me to the lake shore. Aging oak. Aging bird house. Belonging together. Cattails, old. Willows, new. More yin and yang. Last year's cattails. This year's willows. Each…
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