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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Posted inDogs Home life

Mooka, our Husky mix, is obsessed with hunting moles

All dogs are strange. Every dog owner knows this. That's part of what makes them so interesting and adorable -- their strangeness. Of course, if dogs could talk, I'm pretty sure they'd say, "Hey, you humans are even stranger!" No argument there. I wasn't a dog person until after a divorce I got married again to a woman who had a purebred German Shepherd. I had a cat. But not for long, since the dog and cat didn't get along. Fortunately, we were able to find a cat lady on the Oregon coast who was able to adopt my cat.…
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Posted inHome life

I am the Leaf Whisperer. Behold my talent.

After 31 years of living in a rural south Salem property that I at first considered Leaf Hell, I've upgraded my opinion to Leaf Purgatory, since Leaf Heaven is beyond my reach -- unless I develop a brain tumor that somehow makes me love to deal with gigantic amounts of leaves every fall. Actually, I don't mind leaves all that much. Especially on a fairly warm, sunny, calm day like this Saturday in very late October. They're undeniably beautiful. At least, when they're still on trees. Once they reach the ground, my affection for leaves diminishes.But rather than curse my…
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Posted inEntertainment Salem

I liked Dave Chappelle’s Netflix show, transgender jokes and all

Usually a joke is just a joke. Let's not over-think it, folks. Standup comedians are supposed to push the boundaries of what's socially acceptable. And, naturally, be funny doing so. Dave Chappelle's new Netflix show, "The Closer," succeeds on both counts in my obviously personal opinion. Others disagree. That's fine. If they feel that Chappelle was unduly nasty toward the LGBTQ community, with his special focus on transgender people, they're entitled to their own obviously personal opinion. Me, I don't expect comedians to be paragons of virtue. I want them to make me laugh, cause me to look at life in…
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Posted inCoronavirus Salem

A look at how Covid was handled in Marion and Polk counties

Today the Salem City Club meeting featured a Zoom program, "Lessons Learned Combatting COVID in the Mid-Willamette Valley." The Salem Reporter has a good story about the program.  So I'm going to focus on how I viewed what the speakers said. Here's a screenshot of two of the speakers, Jacqui Umstead, RN, Public Health Administrator for Polk County Health Services (top) and Katrina Rothenberger, MPH, Public Health Director for Marion County Health & Human Services (bottom). They came across as caring and competent. Almost always that's the case with public health workers. We're fortunate to have them as key leaders in…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Supply chain woe: we can’t get a part for our broken washing machine

I'm not allowed to use our washing machine, since my wife (correctly) doesn't trust me to handle clothes with the proper water temperature and dryer settings. But ever since our fairly new Maytag decided that it would be a fun joke to start a washing cycle, then turn off when it got to the rinse mode, Laurel hasn't been able to use the washing machine either.  She searched our files and found that, as she remembered, we did indeed buy an extended warranty from Kelly's. Sweet, we thought. It wasn't hard to find the "Parts and Service" page on the…
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Posted inHome life

A big burn pile is still fun for me at 73

There's pluses and minuses that come with living on ten wooded acres in rural south Salem, Oregon. Our property is a heck of a lot of work to maintain. But some of that work is so pleasant, it's better termed fun. Especially if that word, fun, is loosely defined.  Today Laurel, my wife, and I tackled a large burn pile. Originally it consisted of a massive amount of branches that I'd hauled up to our burn area from a pile under two tall redwoods -- remnants of some tree work we'd had done after a destructive ice storm last February.…
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Posted inLiving with a catheter

Facing Catheter-Related Depression: Brian’s Story

Today 180 Medical published the essay I wrote for them on their blog, calling it "Facing Catheter-Related Depression: Brian's  Story."  They decided not to put my email address in, though I said this would be fine with me. In case anyone wants to contact me about what I wrote, my email address is in the right sidebar, or click here.  The blog post looks great -- nicely laid out. There were a few edits to shorten the piece, but I didn't even notice what got left out. Jessica Flint's introduction was well put. It’s not often talked about, but the…
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Posted inWriting/Weblogs

“On the ground” is way over-used in the news

I'm writing this blog post on the ground here in my house in rural south Salem, Oregon. Does me saying "on the ground" add anything to that sentence?  No. Leaving it out takes nothing away that needs saying. "I'm writing this blog post here in my house in rural south Salem, Oregon" is completely accurate all by itself. I've noticed that on the ground is being used much more frequently in news shows. And mostly for no reason.  "We turn now to David Fleming reporting on the ground from Afghanistan" would only make sense if Fleming sometimes broadcast his segment while…
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