Posted inHome life

There’s tricks to chainsawing that I don’t know

I'm a chainsaw middle schooler, I suppose. Meaning, I've learned quite a bit over the 25 years or so I've occasionally used a small Stihl chainsaw on our property in rural south Salem. But in no way do I feel totally comfortable with a chainsaw. A feeling that I was reminded of today when I tackled a challenging tangle of logs that had fallen during the recent ice storm on a common property trail that runs behind our property to Spring Lake. Yesterday I had the good fortune to stop by Ace Hardware and discover that they finally had some…
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Posted inEntertainment Film

“The Great” is, well, great! Here’s why I liked it.

My wife and I came late to The Great, an engrossing ten-episode series on Hulu that is (very) roughly based on the story of Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia.  It was released on May 15, 2020. We discovered it last month after looking for something else on Hulu, noticing The Great, and having my wife say, "I've heard it's pretty good." From that moment we watched The Great almost every night until we finished the last episode yesterday. Thankfully, Season 2 is in the works, because we loved the show. It's like nothing else I've ever seen -- not…
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Posted inHome life Salem

Tree cleanup guys are the new Salem-area heroes

Ah, what a difference it made to my mood having tree debris from the recent ice storm cleaned up from our rural south Salem yard. We'd done a lot of picking up small branches ourselves. And I'd been able to cut some larger limbs with my small 16-inch chainsaw. But there was no way I could handle the big limbs from a giant oak that fell on our lawn. That required a bigger chainsaw and younger muscles than I possess. So for almost three weeks my wife and I have been staring at a mass of tangled branches whenever we…
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Posted inFamily

“The Hiltons” is a book about my great-uncle, Conrad Hilton

I consider myself genetically lucky. While I had nothing to do with being born as Conrad Hilton's godchild (he was my mother's uncle, and my grandmother's brother), I got to read 443 pages about the Hilton family courtesy of J. Randy Taraborrelli's book, "The Hiltons: The True Story of an American Dynasty." Few people are able to have a book describe a relative in such tantalizing detail. Taraborrelli must have put a heck of a lot of work into his research, which included interviews with people who could cast light on the life and times of Conrad Hilton, the famous…
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Posted inHome life Salem

PGE tree clearing crew were artists at what they do

Yesterday a Portland General Electric (PGE) tree clearing crew was working in our neighborhood prior to the restoration of power following a massive ice storm. We and our neighbors had been without electricity for 11 days at this point. So it was a joy to finally see PGE repair activity occurring. Laurel, my wife, had noticed a PGE truck in the driveway of our neighbor to the south on Lake Drive in rural south Salem, where a tree was in contact with an electrical line. She walked over to talk to the crew to make sure that they knew about…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Neighborhood Salem

Ice storm conversation highlights

Tonight our monthly Salon discussion group met via Zoom. Laurel, my wife, was able to host the meeting even though electricity is still off in our rural south Salem neighborhood, thanks to our generator and the Starlink satellite internet system. Not surprisingly, most of the conversation centered around the recent ice storm and resulting power outages. We all shared our stories of how we're coping. Here's some themes that emerged in the course of our 100 minute discussion. How to prepare for no electricity. Some people favor going the green route. Others the fossil fuel route. Since we live in…
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Posted inHome life Salem

PGE getting well-deserved ice storm criticism

First off, I want to say that I'm as thankful as anyone for the PGE crews that are working to restore power to the hundreds of thousands of Oregonians who are without electricity after the recent massive ice and snow storm.  But I'm a believer in the middle way: give credit where credit is due, and assign blame where blame is due. PGE deserves some of each. (PGE stands for Portland General Electric, not to be confused with PG&E, Pacific Gas & Electric, a Calfornia utility.) My main gripe with PGE is their decision to stop giving estimates for when…
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Posted inHome life Salem

Our dog is enjoying no electricity. Me, not so much.

Out here in rural south Salem, Oregon, we've been without electricity for two days after a big ice storm caused trees to topple and electrical lines to crumple. My wife and I sleep in different bedrooms. We have a wood stove, but the heat from it doesn't reach to where I sleep. I toughed out the first night without electricity, though naturally my room was much colder than usual, Last night I decided that I'd sleep on a blow-up bed. I put it in the living room, which is close to the wood stove in our open-plan house. Our Husky…
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Posted inHome life Salem

Photos of the Great Salem Ice Storm of 2021

l've lived in Oregon for 50 years. I've seen plenty of freezing rain. But I've never experienced anything like the ice storm that struck northwest Oregon yesterday.  Here's photos that I took this morning as my wife and I surveyed the damage to our property in rural south Salem, which was considerable. The ice was amazingly thick. Up near Lake Drive this twig had ice the width of my index finger, about 5/8 of an inch.  The walkway outside our front door was littered with fir branches. Trees and shrubs were bending over from the weight of the ice. There…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Mark Cuban is right. National Anthem is way over-played.

Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA team, is no longer playing the National Anthem, a.k.a. The Star Spangled Banner, before home basketball games. Good for Cuban.  UPDATE: Bad for Cuban. He gave in to the NBA.  The National Anthem has nothing to do with genuine patriotism. Neither does the Pledge of Allegiance. Neither does the American flag.  We could get rid of all three, except for very special occasions, and our country not only would be just fine, it would be even better. Why? Because nationalism is divisive. Also, ridiculous. People in every country believe that they live…
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Posted inHome life Web/Tech

USA broadband sucks. In rural south Salem, it sucks more.

Having fast internet no longer is a luxury, if it ever was. A year into the Covid crisis, it's clear that access to genuine broadband -- defined by the FCC as at least 25 megabits per second download (25 Mbps) and three megabits per second (3 Mbps) upload -- is a necessity.  Distance learning can't happen without it. Working from home can't happen without it. Keeping in touch with friends and family can't happen without it. Streaming entertainment can't happen without it. OK, I've exaggerated a bit.  Those things can happen with slower internet. However, I speak from experience when…
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Posted inHome life

Honey-Do is a great Salem handyman service

Today I was impressed again by the quality work that Laine Larson did for us via his Honey-Do Handyman Service. Laine is a neighbor, so during a dog walk this afternoon I took this photo of the back of his trailer so I could share it in this laudatory blog post. For many years Laine was a State Farm Insurance agent. Now he's into the handyman thing, and doing it very well. My wife and I have used him for several projects that exceeded my decidedly minimal husbandly handyman capability. Laine is very easy to work with. Honest, straightforward, pleasant,…
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Posted inStarlink

Our Starlink is working well on its Ridgeline Roof Mount

Eight days ago I was happy with the speed of the Starlink satellite internet system that I'd been chosen to be a public beta tester for, but not with the reliability.  As I said in "My first Starlink beta test: fast but loses satellite connection," it wasn't a surprise that the connection kept dropping, since I had to put the Starlink on its tripod on one of our decks. We live in rural south Salem, Oregon, and our home is surrounded by large oaks and firs. So I was eager to see how the Starlink did when the Ridgeline Roof…
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Posted inHome life Web/Tech

My first Starlink beta test: fast but loses satellite connection

Yesterday the long-awaited box from Starlink arrived after I'd been notified that I was able to be part of the public beta test for this groundbreaking effort to bring broadband to underserved areas via thousands of low-altitude satellites. I happily paid for the equipment. Naturally I was eager to open it up. At first glance, I wondered if somehow they'd forgotten to put the equipment inside. But no, the goodies were under the cleverly fashioned plastic cover: satellite dish, tripod, router,, and cables. Showing how old I am (72), I looked around for an installation manual. Then I realized that…
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Posted inLiving with a catheter

My routine for using a pre-lubricated catheter

Since May 2017 I've used a catheter after having a urinary retention episode that showed my bladder had become atonic, a fancy word for not working any more as it should, likely due to my lengthy history of an enlarged prostate. I haven't written a whole lot about my experiences with a catheter. Recently I decided I should, starting with a post that has a rather plaintive title, "I've learned a lot about using a catheter. But does anyone care?" In that post I listed some questions that I wanted to address in other blog posts, regardless of whether anyone…
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Posted inCoronavirus

Should Oregon seniors get a Covid vaccine before teachers?

There's little debate about who should get the first doses of Covid vaccines allocated to Oregon: health care workers and long-term-care residents/staff. These groups are at high risk of being infected by the virus. Plus, the older someone is, the more likely they will die after falling ill with COVID-19. Those 65 and older account for the vast majority of Covid deaths, with people 85+ accounting for about a third. So it makes sense that both the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and Oregon health officials agree on who should be immunized initially with the Pfizer and Moderna…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Philosophy

Let’s all be compassionate Warriors of Reality in 2021

My hoped for New Year's resolution is that as many Americans as possible vow to do better at being (1) more compassionate and (2) more in touch with reality. I see these goals as being complementary.  Compassion requires a clear-eyed view of what is causing our fellow humans, animals, and other living beings to suffer. If we aren't correct about what is real, versus what only exists within our own mind, we'll be thrown off track by misplaced concern. For example, here in Oregon there's currently a push by some to demand that businesses shut down by Covid restrictions, such…
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Posted inGrowing older Health

I finally fill out an Advance Directive. But not a POLST.

Well, it only took me about forty years. Better late than never, as the saying goes. Tomorrow I'm taking an Advance Directive to my family physician when I go for my annual physical exam, so it can be made part of my medical record. I've had this booklet from Oregon Health Decisions sitting at the bottom of a pile of papers in my office for a year, at least. This booklet replaced a previous booklet that I lost or threw away. It's kind of strange that I've been so reluctant to make my end-of-life wishes known, since I was the…
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Posted inEntertainment Film

The Prom is a great feel-good movie (ignore The New Yorker)

Hah! A seventy-two year old father, me, showed in one instance he's more culturally with it than his forty-eight year old daughter, Celeste.  Usually Celeste has seen, or at least heard of, cinematic offerings before me. After all, she lives in Orange County, which is a lot closer to Hollywood than I am here in Oregon. But in a post-Christmas FaceTime call this afternoon, I asked Celeste if she had seen The Prom yet. No, she hadn't. And it appears she wasn't even aware of this Netflix production. I highly enjoyed The Prom. So did my wife. I don't get…
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Posted inHumor

The Dreaded ChristmasLess Newsletter is funny and dark

For your holiday amusement, here's the 2020 Christmas letter from Nancy, a friend of my wife. Nancy has a great sense of humor that leans toward the dark side -- which I find highly appealing. I've changed the names in the letter just in case anyone doesn't want their identity splashed across cyberspace. Enjoy.... The Dreaded ChristmasLess Newsletter Not much going on this year. I got to know my couch better. Discovered new flavors of Cheetos. Immediately answer all emails, texts, IM, voicemail, tweets, Instagram, GroupMe, anything really as I am just so gosh darn happy to communicate in some form with…
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