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…
5
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…
No Comments
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…
2
Posted inHome life

Been married for 31 years today. But I’m not great at proposing.

In 1990 Laurel and I got married on St. Patrick's Day, March 17. Great decision. I've never forgotten our anniversary, not even once in the past 31 years, because an image of green beer always makes me think, "Time to get flowers and a card!" Shock (not). We looked much younger when we were much younger. Our wedding was at the house we'd bought a few months before in Spring Lake Estates, where we're still living. My only regret about our wedding was how I'd botched my marriage proposal. On the plus side, it was spontaneous, though I'd been thinking…
5
Posted inFood and drink Health

Metabolism myths about diet, exercise, and weight loss

Science rocks. It's by far our best way of understanding reality.  But most of us, me certainly included, often are prone to embracing folk wisdom rather than science when it comes to losing weight. I'm six feet tall and 178 pounds at the moment -- though sadly, my long-term trend (I'm 72) has been to lose a bit of height and gain a bit of weight.  Since I'd like to get to about 175 pounds and know how difficult it is for me to lose even a few pounds, I was eager to read the front page story in the…
1
Posted inCurrent affairs

Making daylight savings time permanent is a must, Congress

Tomorrow at 2 am Daylight Savings Time returns. May it never depart again.  Late fall and winter already are depressingly dark. Losing an hour of late afternoon sun in November, when Daylight Savings Time ends, means that doing anything outside at that time is dreary, if not impossible.  Fortunately, there seems to be a good chance Congress is going to do away with the twice yearly clock changeover. So says a LA Times opinion piece. It’s nearly that time of year again when Americans reset their clocks one hour ahead, grumble about losing an hour of sleep — and wonder…
No Comments
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…
No Comments
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…
No Comments
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…
No Comments
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…
2
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…
2
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…
1
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…
No Comments
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…
1
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…
2
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…
No Comments
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…
2
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,…
No Comments
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…
21
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…
3