Posted inCoronavirus Current affairs

Protests against vaccines and masks are super selfish

Tonight we had a meeting of the monthly Salon discussion group my wife and I are a part of. We met via Zoom because even though some in the group, including Laurel and me, are fine with meeting in-person, others aren't. So we do our best to accommodate those who are most wary of coming down with Covid, even though everybody in the group is fully vaccinated and boosted.  This is called being reasonable. Also, unselfish. Doing what you want only is justified if that action isn't going to harm other people.  I'd like to believe that most people feel…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Health

MDMA research shows war on drugs is absurd

Sadly, I've never tried MDMA, otherwise known as Ecstasy or Molly. If I had, maybe I wouldn't have said sadly, since MDMA is a feel-good drug due to its ability to induce a massive release of serotonin, creating a feeling of well-being, love, joy. In his book, "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion," Sam Harris describes an experience he had at the age of 19, taking MDMA with a friend in 1987. The setting of our experience bore little resemblance to the conditions of Dionysian abandon under which MDMA is now often consumed. We were alone in a…
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Posted inDogs Salem

For the love of dog, pave the Minto Dog Park parking lot!

Laurel Hines, my wife, is on a canine crusade to get the City of Salem to pave the horribly decrepit parking lot next to the Minto Brown dog park. As Laurel describes in the message below that went to city officials yesterday, the parking lot is unpaved, muddy, and full of water-filled pot holes. Every other heavily used area in the Minto Brown park has a paved parking lot. But not the dog park.  If you agree that the parking lot should be paved after reading her message -- which includes photos showing how bad the lot is -- send…
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Posted inHealth

I have glaucoma but not worried about CBD raising eye pressure

About three months ago I was diagnosed with glaucoma. I'm very nearsighted, which is a risk factor, along with age (I'm 73). The good news is that my eye pressure has dropped from 20-21 to 11-14 via prescription eye drops. (Lowering eye pressure is the only way of preventing further optic nerve damage from glaucoma.) Early on, though, I had a lot of anxious moments. After all, going blind from glaucoma or "just" experiencing functional loss of vision is scary.  My anxiety increased after my wife wondered if my use of CBD could have been a cause of the glaucoma.…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Nothing to celebrate on this Martin Luther King day

I was nineteen years old when Martin Luther King Jr. was killed by James Earl Ray on April 4, 1968. When it happened I was on a sophomore semester abroad in Zadar, Yugoslavia along with a couple of dozen other students from San Jose State College and a few professors. I remember local people coming up to me and my classmates expressing sympathy for King's death in broken English. The same thing happened a few months later when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated on June 6, 1968. That year, 1968, was a dark time for the United States. So is 2022.…
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Posted inCoronavirus Health

I got some CBDA. Covid can’t touch me now!

Like I said in a recent post about an Oregon State University study that found CBDA and CBGA prevented Covid infection in a laboratory study of cells, regular CBD has very little of these acids that are  precursors to CBD, so mostly disappear when CBD is created from hemp. But I found several online sources of CBDA. Fewer seem to exist for CBGA. This story describes the key differences between CBD, CBDA, and CBGA, with this takeaway quote. A study published this week by researchers at Oregon State University found some hemp compounds have the ability to prevent the virus…
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Posted inCoronavirus Health

Not much Covid-fighting CBDA and CBGA in regular CBD

I've been using CBD oil and capsules for quite a while. So I got excited yesterday when I saw reports of an Oregon State University study that found precursors to CBD, CBDA and CBGA, prevented Covid infection in a laboratory study of cells. Hemp CORVALLIS, Ore. – Hemp compounds identified by Oregon State University research via a chemical screening technique invented at OSU show the ability to prevent the virus that causes COVID-19 from entering human cells. Findings of the study led by Richard van Breemen, a researcher with Oregon State’s Global Hemp Innovation Center, College of Pharmacy and Linus…
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Posted inGrowing older

Time has a different flavor for old folks like me

Remember when you were three? Probably not. I recall what that age was like via my memory of what my young daughter and her friends would say when asked how old they are. "Three going on four." They were so eager to be older, they'd fudge their age to get the next birthday into the answer. Believe me, those days are long gone for us old folks. I'm fine with saying "73" when asked my age. What's more annoying is having to scroll down through history when a web site wants me to select the year I was born. 2000's,…
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Posted inCoronavirus

Salem, be Covid-safe on New Year’s Eve

After almost two years, we're all tired of dealing with Covid. A lot of people in Salem are going to want to party-on tomorrow night.  I urge you to do that responsibly.  Just as the admonition, "if you drink, don't drive," is intended to both protect the person who's drinking and others who could be harmed if they drive, the same applies to Covid. You might think that it would be no big deal if you were infected, which probably would be with the Omicron variant. But keep in mind the risk to your friends, family members, co-workers, and such.…
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Posted inHome life

Our 2021 Christmas letter adds an asterisk to how we’re doing: Fine*

If you're a store employee, or someone else who asked us how we're doing in 2021, likely we said "Fine." But that wasn't really true. We just either felt that they really didn't want a full answer, or there wasn't time to provide one.  Thankfully, we were able to correct this through our 2021 Christmas Letter. Here it is in both PDF and JPEG formats.Download 2021 Christmas Letter PDF
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Posted inHealth

Two things gym users do that really bugs me

Yeah, I know. It's almost Christmas. I'm supposed to be in a Happy Holidays cheerful mood. But today I was reminded of two things that fellow users of Courthouse Club Fitness do that irritate me enough to warrant a complaining blog post on the eve of Christmas Eve. One relates to sanitation. I always carry a small "sweat towel" with me to wipe off the handles of the equipment I was on after I'm finished with it: first, the elliptical trainer in the aerobics room, then the weight machines in the circuit training room. I also always wear a mask…
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Posted inCoronavirus Salem

Yelling at a grocery store clerk isn’t cool. They’re Covid heroes.

When I was ready to checkout after grocery shopping at the South Salem Fred Meyer store today, there were long lines at every register. I picked the most promising line. There were just a few people ahead of me. But one of them was an older woman who not only wasn't wearing a mask, she had a humungous amount of groceries and other items piled high in her cart. That worried me. However, I figured that it wouldn't take very long for the clerk to handle her purchases, and those of the woman just ahead of me. I was wrong.…
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Posted inCoronavirus

Take Omicron seriously, Salem. Very seriously.

Omicron, the newest Covid variant to impact our country, is more attractive than original Covid and the Delta variant. But even though it looks like a Christmas ornament, don't be fooled.  It appears Omicron could devastate Oregon in the coming weeks. So says an excellent Oregon Capital Chronicle story, "Governor, health experts brace Oregonians for a serious impact from Omicron by February." In the past week, the Covid-19 outlook for Oregon shifted dramatically, with the state now facing the prospect of having the highest surge yet of infections and hospitalizations. A new forecast by Oregon Health & Science University indicates…
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Posted inCoronavirus

I dove into the deep end of life with Covid today

Since March 2020 -- almost two years -- I haven't sat inside a home with friends to eat, drink, and talk. My wife and I, being in our seventies, have been Covid-cautious.  Even though we're fully vaccinated with booster shots, we've been reluctant to take the risk of getting together with other people indoors for an extended period. Laurel has eaten occasionally at restaurants with friends. I haven't.  But today I dove into the deep end of life with Covid. And it felt great! This afternoon we hosted a three hour meeting of our monthly Salon discussion group at our…
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Posted inBooks Current affairs

“Woke Racism” is a great book

Today I finished reading John McWhorter's terrific book, Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America. McWhorter is black. He teaches linguistics, American studies, and music history at Columbia University. He's appalled at the excessive wokeness of both blacks and whites who inhabit the far left side of the political spectrum and view race relations through a biased perspective. Many people will agree with what he writes in Woke Racism. I do. Others will disagree with him. That's fine also. My goal is sharing these excerpts from the book is to encourage people to buy the book and…
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Posted inSports

I should sue Oregon football after second loss to Utah

Is there such a thing as a breach of contract to a sports fan? Sadly, this is a dubious legal concept. But if it existed, the Oregon football team would owe me big time after their hugely disappointing 38-10 loss to Utah tonight in the Pac-12 championship game. So disappointing, even the Oregon mascot looked like they couldn't wait until the final sad minutes ticked away. But at least snapping this photo of my TV screen gave me something to do other than curse my bad luck for having more than three hours of my remaining life span wasted by…
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Posted inHome life Humor

Hot bath plus marijuana: a recipe for fainting

Since I'm always on the lookout for fresh grandiose ideas to spice up my senior citizen life, I'm putting out an alert that if someone is looking for a Poster Child, or in my case a Poster Geezer, to be a spokesperson for the danger of mixing a hot bath and marijuana, I'm available! (Especially if the gig comes with a generous expense allowance, which I can use to pay for our water heater electricity and visits to my favorite cannabis emporium.) Until last night I was blissfully unaware of what can happen when someone, like me, mixes these seemingly…
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Posted inCoronavirus Home life

Be Covid safe at Thanksgiving, then don’t worry much

Yesterday via Zoom, my wife, Laurel, and I discussed the holidays from a Covid perspective with a dozen friends about our age -- some older, in their 80s, some younger, in their 50s and 60s, and some like us, in their 70s. So, yeah, it was a decidedly senior group. Keep that in mind as I describe both the anxiety and hope shared last night.  Since this was a meeting of our monthly Salon discussion group, we took the opportunity to talk about what to do in December: have an in-person gathering, or keep on Zoom'ing.  Two-thirds (8) were fine…
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Posted inHome life

Our new composite deck looks great, thanks to Apex Paint & Remodel

We've had wooden decks and railings for the 31 years we've lived our here in rural south Salem. When we moved to our house, that was the only choice.  So every few years I'd stain the decks and railings. When I was in my 40s, it was sort of fun. Less fun in my 50s and 60s. And in my 70s, not fun at all.  That's one reason we had Apex Paint & Remodel take out our old decks and replace them with TimberTech composite decking with metal railings by CableBullet. My wife and I are really happy with the…
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Posted inGrowing older Health

Not so fun day: I probably have glaucoma

I thought the day started off badly when our dog threw up three times on our living room carpet. But it got considerably worse when I exited my visit to Retina Consultants here in Salem with a probable diagnosis of glaucoma. Well to be exact, Dr. Justin Baynham told me that my test results were "suspicious of glaucoma."  I'm trying to look at the bright side. Maybe it's good that my optometrist at Eye Care Physicians & Surgeons, Dr. Rebecca Chung, also wasn't completely sure that I have glaucoma. That's why she referred me for a consultation at Retina Consultants. …
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