Posted inEntertainment Home life

Our new LG TV has artificial intelligence. But I hold the remote.

Jim Ramsey, a long-time friend, deserves a commission from Salem's Video Only store.  When I told Jim that I'd just bought the newly released Apple TV device that streams Netflix, Amazon Prime, and a whole lot more in 4K, he said, "But now you need a 4K television." Well, damn. I hadn't thought of that.  We had a Samsung television that was working fine, though it had started to seem a bit dated. But until we ditched our crappy CenturyLink DSL, the only so-called "broadband" option out here in rural south Salem, for the hugely faster Starlink satellite internet (thank…
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Posted inCoronavirus Tai Chi

Maskless indoor Tai Chi class today after long Covid layoff

Last week Warren Allen, my Tai Chi instructor, said that today he was going to start having indoor classes again at his Pacific Martial Arts studio on Court Street in downtown Salem. I was worried, happy, reluctant, and eager. Which is fitting I guess, since Tai Chi is all about blending yin and yang in a harmonious combination of seeming opposites.  My feelings were natural given how long it had been since I'd been maskless indoors with people other than my wife. About fifteen months, I guess.  A Voice of America story, "Many Americans Anxious About Returning to 'Normal' After…
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Posted inHome life

DirecTV wireless setup on Genie DVR overly confusing

It's been a while since I've bashed AT&T's DirecTV. This doesn't mean that I like the crappy satellite television service any more than I did before, just that nothing additional that I detest about DirecTV has come to mind. My previous frustrations still hold true. Local channels disappear regularly. The user interface sucks. DirecTV still doesn't carry the PAC-12 Networks.  Today I was able to add a fresh irritation: how astoundingly difficult it was to get back the internet connection on our Genie HR44 receiver.  I don't even know why we need an internet connection, since so far as I…
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Posted inCoronavirus

To mask or not to mask is a big Salem question

We're in an awkward stage of the Covid pandemic. Things are getting better fast, yet Covid cases, deaths, and hospitalizations are still quite high in Oregon.  This is part of the Oregon Health Authority report that was emailed to me today. Oregon Health Authority’s  COVID-19 Weekly Report, released today, shows decreases in daily cases and increases in hospitalizations and deaths from the previous week.  -- OHA reported 4,108 new daily cases of COVID-19 during the week of Monday, May 10, through Sunday, May 16. That represents a 16% decrease from the previous week.  -- New COVID-19 related hospitalizations rose to…
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Posted inGrowing older Home life

Memo to future self: Why our ten acres captures me

I'm 72. For thirty-one years, since 1990, my wife and I have lived on ten non-easy-care acres in rural south Salem, Oregon. Well, for the first few years we had five acres. But when the lot next to us became available, we bought it -- not wanting to run the risk of someone cutting down beautiful large firs and building a house there. I've been the one in our marriage who has been more eager to move to a house in town as we've gotten older and our property feels increasingly like a pain to maintain. However... that one word…
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Posted inCoronavirus Salem

No mask, no problem — only if you’re vaccinated

Obviously there's a lot to like in today's CDC guidance that fully vaccinated people don't have to wear a mask or socially distance both indoors and outdoors, with some exceptions. We're tired of Covid restrictions. We want life to get back to normal. We're weary of being afraid of coming down with COVID-19 just because of breathing some infected air. Governor Kate Brown wasted no time in saying that Oregon will follow the CDC recommendations.  Today the CDC issued new guidance for lifting mask and social distancing requirements for fully-vaccinated individuals. It is yet another sign that, if we all…
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Posted inBooks Family

My mother lives on in the back of my books

OK, let me make this clear right off the bat. Notwithstanding the title of this blog post, I don't believe my mother exists as an ethereal presence in my books -- even though she also was a huge book lover, so if she had a choice of an afterlife, this notion would have appealed to her. My mother has been dead and gone since 1985. However, in a very real sense she does indeed live on in the back of my books. I'll explain. Carolyn Lewis Hines My mother was fond of writing notes in the back of books. After…
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Posted inHealth Home life

My robotic hernia surgery goes well. Behold one incision.

At the age of 72, I'm no longer an adult surgery virgin.  Up until today my only surgery was a tonsillectomy that was so long ago, I had to say "I don't know" when asked about the date of previous surgeries. Probably I was four or five. All I remember about it was ether being poured on some sort of cloth, then put over my nose and mouth.  But now I have a blog! (three, in fact) So I can go beyond the usual verbal "let me tell you about my surgery" -- a sure-fire conversation stopper, especially if an…
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Posted inUncategorized

Vote for these Salem-Keizer school board candidates

Are you tired of extremist politics? I sure am. We've become a bitterly divided country. That's bad enough at the national level, but when politics becomes the focus of a school board election, students are the ones who suffer from adults marching to the beat of their personal political drummer. Unfortunately, Oregon Right to Life and other groups on the far right side of the political spectrum have set out to control the Salem-Keizer school board. They're backing a slate of candidates in the May 2021 election who want to use the school board to push their extreme political agenda.…
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Posted inEntertainment

Worst Academy Awards show ever

Every year I look forward to the Academy Awards show. I should have reversed direction this year and looked backward to previous shows that were actually entertaining.  This was the first time I fast-forwarded through much of the interminable three-plus hours, because I wanted the damn thing to end so I could do something enjoyable. Whoever came up with the atrociously bad concept for the 2021 Academy Awards should be drummed out of Hollywood forever.  It wouldn't take me long to Google who that person (or people) was. But I found the show so uninteresting, I can't summon up the…
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Posted inCoronavirus

Marion County could go into Covid “extreme risk” soon

If you thought it was OK to relax with the mask wearing and social distancing, think again. Oregon Covid cases are increasing at the highest rate in the nation, 58% in the past two weeks. The next closest state is Alabama with a 37% increase. When Alabama is kicking our butt on public health, that's reason to be worried. Here's a chart of how badly Oregon has been doing recently. Remember how freaked out everybody was in the spring of 2020 when Covid was a new thing to worry about? The 7-day average of cases in Oregon back then was…
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Posted inGrowing older Health

My hernia consultation goes well (if I ignore scary stuff)

About two weeks ago I got a hernia diagnosis, which I memorialized in "Now I can scratch 'get hernia' off my bucket list."  The diagnosis wasn't a big surprise, given the large bulge on the right side of my groin that appeared suddenly while I was sitting in a dentist's chair a few days before I got the official diagnosis based on an ultrasound.  I've been trying to be as positive as possible while waiting for a surgery consultation. But as today's consultation approached, my mind veered off in some decidedly negative directions. My hernia is large; maybe it is…
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Posted inHome life

My office looks more Zen after painting forced it on me

I wish I could say that my many years of daily meditation led to an enlightenment experience that caused me to drastically simplify the office where I hang out in our house. (By "hang out,"  I mean that this is the one room where I get to decide how it is furnished and decorated. Elsewhere, my wife calls the decor shots, mostly because she is better at this than I am.) However, what actually happened is that last week we had three rooms painted by Apex Paint and Remodel, who did a great job.  One of those rooms was my…
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Posted inGrowing older

High schoolers today, here’s what I went through in 1962-66

Every generation faces its own challenges. And the challenges we faced in our youth color how we view present-day challenges.  My granddaughter will be 14 in a few days. I sent her a card (and cash!) today, saying that she timed her entry into high school next fall quite well, since the Covid crisis should be mostly over by then. I feel for high school students who have had their lives disrupted by the pandemic for over a year. This will be an enduring memory for them, no doubt. Being a senior citizen, I'm well aware that tales of the…
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Posted inGrowing older Health

Now I can scratch “get hernia” off my bucket list

Trying to find some humor in the hernia diagnosis I received today, this cartoon reminded me that, hey, I only have a single hernia, so lucky me!  (I also have taken to wearing joggers much of the time rather than regular pants, which qualify as skinny jeans. And sure, I've got a lifetime supply of bitter regrets -- which now includes getting a hernia. But it's a stretch to say I'm in midlife, since I'm 72.) As befits my age, I don't have a great story to tell about how I ended up with a right-sided inguinal hernia. No, I…
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Posted inHome life Writing/Weblogs

Blog blast from the 2005 Statesman Journal past

Tonight Laurel, my wife, found a clipping from the August 12, 2005 Statesman Journal. Wow, there I was in the "Got Blogs?" story by Angela Yeager, looking 16 years younger than I do now. Naturally my first thought was, I've got to write a blog post about how blogs were looked upon back in 2005.  Yeager did an excellent job at capturing the excitement of the Dawn of Blogging. Below you can read her entire story, which I was pleased to capture with my halfway decent touch typing skill. My second thought was, I wonder if Google still looks kindly…
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Posted inSports

Watching Oregon State basketball is my happy drug

It's a natural high -- watching the Oregon State men's basketball team pull out six unlikely victories,  starting with the PAC-12 tournament. UCLA. Oregon. Colorado. Those underdog wins produced a PAC-12 tournament championship, the only way Oregon State was going to make it into the NCAA March Madness. Unable to see Oregon State play during the regular season because I'm stuck with DirecTV, which refuses to carry the PAC-12 Network, I became a big admirer of how the team was able to covert their underdog role into top dog wins. Then came the NCAA tournament. Tennessee. Oklahoma State. Loyola Chicago…
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Posted inCoronavirus

Trump’s inept Covid response killed about 400,000 people

It's been clear for a long time that Donald Trump caused many thousands of Americans to die needlessly because of his astoundingly inept response to the COVID-19 pandemic. What's been in question is how many.  Thanks to Andrew Akteson, a UCLA professor, we now have an answer: nearly 400,000 deaths could have been avoided if the United States had done things differently and better. That's an astoundingly tragic number.  Not all of those unnecessary deaths are Trump's direct responsibility. But most are, since he oversaw our country's Covid response when strong public health actions could have markedly reduced the death…
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Posted inSports

Oregon State men’s basketball team is heart-stopping fun to watch

Whew! My heart rate has slowed down enough to enable me to share some praise of the Oregon State basketball team that just beat Oklahoma State -- getting Oregon State into the Sweet 16 round of NCAA's March Madness. Their first win in the tournament over Tennessee was wonderfully satisfying. Tonight's win was even better, in part because Oklahoma State has Cade Cunningham, a great player who might be the #1 pick in the NBA draft. Oregon State is a delight to watch. The team has great chemistry. When a starter is faltering, or in foul trouble as Ethan Thompson…
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Posted inHome life Salem

Goodbye, print Statesman Journal and Oregonian. We went digital.

Today was a day that I never thought would arrive -- the day my wife and I decided to stop getting home delivery of the Salem Statesman Journal and Portland Oregonian. Given our age, early 70s, we grew up reading newspapers printed on dead trees that crinkled when you turned the pages. Laurel and I both like print newspapers.  But we also like seeing the Statesman Journal and Oregonian in the paper box at the end of our driveway. And increasingly, that wasn't happening. Our neighbors reported the same thing was happening to them. So even though I registered a…
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