Posted inSalem

Hood House will provide housing for five homeless Salem women

There's so much wrong going on in the world, it's refreshing to be able to report on something very much right. Russ and Delana Beaton, long-time advocates for the homeless here in Salem, Oregon, have created an innovative housing opportunity for five previously homeless women. The Beatons are members of a monthly discussion group that my wife and I belong to, so we've been kept up to date on the progress of their Hood House -- named for the street it sits on in northeast Salem. Here's how Hood House was described by Delana in an emailed invite to last…
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Posted inHome life

Here’s praise for Abiqua Irrigation and Dan’s Leak Detection

When you live on ten acres in rural south Salem, there's always something going wrong. I am that "you," along with my wife, so I know what I'm talking about. OK, not always, because that would be 24/7. But definitely things go wrong often. Which happened a couple of weeks ago when we noticed that two of our sprinklers were mysteriously running longer than they should have.  In fact, they wouldn't shut off at all. So I had to turn off the water to the entire sprinkler system while we figured out what the problem was. A control valve, obviously,…
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Posted inSalem

Photos of the 2019 Salem Art Fair & Festival

The Salem Art Fair & Festival always is hugely enjoyable. During our Friday visit, when I took these photos, I believe my wife and I spent more on food than on art, but, hey, artistry is involved in the food booths. This year I was told the secret of the So Cheesy food truck/food stand, but if I divulged why their grilled cheese sandwiches taste so good, I might be punished by the So Cheesy gods. Click on the image below to behold the Adobe Spark web page I made, complete with compelling commentary on the photos.
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Posted inSalem

Here’s my petition supporting LBGTQ rights in Salem

Please sign this petition I just started to support the Salem Human Rights Commission in its stand against the City of Salem leasing a building from the Salem Alliance Church to temporarily house the public library. Click on this link to the Care2 Stand up for LGBTQ rights in Salem! petition. The church rejects same-sex marriage and considers same-sex sex to be a sin. The Commission is calling on City officials to find another location for the library while renovations are made, even if that location costs more and is less convenient.
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Posted inDogs Home life

CBD drops seem to be helping our dog’s liver disease

About six weeks ago my wife and I were told by our vet that our nine year old Shepherd mix (ZuZu) was in the late stages of her chronic liver disease and likely only had a few days or at most, weeks, to live. Her belly was filling up with fluid. Her eyes were yellowish. She was lethargic and didn't want to eat.  Along with having the fluid aspirated twice, putting her on milk thistle drops, diuretic, antibiotic, and a cortisone medication, I decided it wouldn't hurt to get some dog CBD -- the non-psychoactive component of marijuana.  Twice a…
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Posted inBooks Philosophy

Stuff happens. Things fall apart. Such is life.

Sometimes the most obvious things about life need to be talked about. It's easy to overlook them not in spite of their obviousness, but because the familiar tends to fade into the background, while new stuff grabs our attention. So here's a few obvious truths about life: -- Life is finite. It comes to an end for every living being. Including us humans.-- Life is uncertain. We can hope for the best, but sometimes the worst happens.-- Life is about caring. We care, because what we're concerned about is finite and uncertain. I've been reminded about these truths by reading…
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Posted inHome life Salem

Photos and comments on 2019 Salem Tour of Homes

Every year my wife and I enjoy going to the Tour of Homes here in Salem for a couple of reasons. First, it's fun to see cool features in expensive homes that our 1970's era home lacks, like walk-in closets. Second, we like to criticize design choices that strike us as abhorrent, hopefully out of the earshot of the builder. Here's photos I took last Saturday at the 2019 Tour of Homes kickoff weekend. I've added some commentary that ranges from complimentary to snarky. We only went to four of the 21 homes. The Tour continues through June 23rd: weekends…
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Posted inHome life

Buy our 2018 Chevy Volt Premier, just $25,000

Here's a great opportunity for someone who wants a deal on a top-of-the-line 2018 Chevy Volt with just 8,230 miles that had a sticker price of $40,865.  My wife and I are leasing this Volt, which is the Premier model. This is our third 3-year lease on a Volt, having leased 2012 and 2015 Volts previously. We like the car a lot, but want to sell it after buying a 2019 RAV4 Hybrid recently, since we don't need three cars (also have a VW GTI). So a buyer of this car would need to wait a bit for us to…
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Posted inHome life Humor

I wore socks with sandals and…survived!

As the saying goes, I felt the fear and did it anyway. No, I didn't climb Everest. Nor did I surf a 50 foot wave. My action was way more courageous.  Two days in a row, I wore socks with sandals out in public.  And not just any old socks and any old sandals. I went for the gusto, the full enchilada, the maximum shock. I paired the colorful limited edition version of Teva's Hurricane sandal that's a collaboration with Outdoor Voices, and equally colorful Darn Tough socks that I found at the Salem Summit Company. Voila! Socks with sandals. …
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Posted inHome life

Sirius XM on Toyota’s Entune 3.0 disappoints

I'm a big fan of Sirius XM. That's all I listen to when I'm driving around in my 2017 VW GTI, even though my car offers Apple CarPlay.  Here's how Sirius XM looks on my GTI's screen. In short, beautiful. My Sirius XM favorites show up as large icons with the names of the stations clearly visible. I can easily reach out and touch an icon to change channels, which I do frequently since I abhor advertisements. News and political junkie that I am, I'll listen to MSNBC until an ad comes on, then shift to CNN until an ad…
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Posted inDogs Home life

2019 WillaMutt Strut photos

Today's WillaMutt Strut at Salem's Riverfront Park (put on by the Willamette Humane Society) was a poignant dog event for me. Our dog, ZuZu, is in the late stages of chronic liver disease. Her vet has told us that likely she will live weeks or months, not years. So this probably was ZuZu's last Mutt Strut -- which she and I have gone to quite a few times. We had a good time, though. I was grateful for that. I'm also grateful that while we humans can grasp impending death, dogs can't.
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Posted inHome life Salem

Why we sold our Highlander to Carmax rather than Capitol Toyota

Buying and selling cars isn't my favorite thing to do. Usually there's some degree of frustration involved. Yesterday was no exception. My wife and I did our best to trade-in our low mileage 2014 Highlander XLE as part of our purchase of a 2019 RAV4 Hybrid, but Capitol Toyota engaged in some tactics that were irritating enough to cause us to decline the purchase offer and head to Beaverton's Carmax instead -- where today we sold our Highlander for $600 more than Capitol Toyota offered, and with much less aggravation. Our Highlander in the final stage of the CarMax process…
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Posted inEntertainment Film

Beyonce’s Coachella show was mind-blowingly beautiful

Thank you, Netflix. There's no way my wife and I would have seen Beyonce's astounding  2018 "Homecoming" show at Coachella without streaming it the past two nights, courtesy of our Netflix subscription. For one thing, the many shots of the crowd showed that if anyone our 70'ish age saw the two live performances (over two weekends), they sure weren't in the front rows. For another, our willingness to travel long distances and put up with large crowds to see a concert are long behind us. So it was a gift to be able to sit at home and stare with…
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Posted inHome life Marijuana

Why SelectCBD.com isn’t accepting VISA

I'm a believer in CBD, the non-psychoactive component of cannabis/hemp. I've read enough about CBD to decide that taking it for general health promotion makes sense, since I take quite a few supplements for the same reason.  SelectCBD.com has been my main source for CBD drops, which I take twice a day. But around ten days ago I saw that the site wasn't accepting VISA, just MasterCard, due to "technical issues" with their payment processor. ------------------------------NEXT DAY UPDATE: This is either a bit of synchronicity, or this blog post has magical powers (my favored explanation!), since today I got this…
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Posted inHome life

My (not so) secret shame: car lust

They, whoever they are, say that confession is good for the soul. Even though I'm an atheist who doesn't believe I have a soul, I like the idea of confessing -- perhaps because I was Catholic for a short while as a child, and found the idea of being forgiven your sins for the small price of saying a few Our Father's and Hail Mary's to be way cool. So here's my confession: I spend a lot of time on the Internet lusting after hot models... of cars. Yet I'm happily married to my 2017 VW GTI, who I love…
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Posted inHome life Salem

Battery X-Change guys made me feel like less of a fool

I give two thumbs up to Battery X-Change on the corner of 17th and Center Street. One thumb is for selling me two hard-to-find batteries for my mower at a good price. The other thumb is for making me feel like less of a fool after I managed to fry the first battery they sold me within a matter of hours. My battery saga is a good illustration of why small locally-owned stores need to be patronized, because without them Salem would be much diminished. It began when I turned off my DR Field Mower, a walk-behind mower with a 16.5…
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Posted inHome life

Toyota’s special order process for cars is irritating

Don't get me wrong -- I love Toyota cars. But I'm not loving what's happened since February 5 of this year, when my wife and I thought we were putting in a special order for a 2019 RAV4 Hybrid in Limited Trim -- Blizzard Pearl color with black interior, plus several option packages. Based on my experience with special ordering several other cars fairly recently, a Mini Cooper S and a Chevy Volt, I expected that after we told a salesman at Capitol Toyota here in Salem, Oregon exactly what we wanted in a 2019 RAV4 Hybrid, that information would…
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Posted inSalem

Express yourself! City Club talk on Salem art scene was inspiring.

I'll begin with the end. Of talks by two art-encouragers here in Salem, Sandra Burnett of the Salem Art Association and Carlee Wright, producer of Press Play Salem.  After listening to Burnett and Wright speak yesterday at a Salem City Club meeting on "The Crucial Role of the Arts in Our Community," I got to ask a question. It went something like this. Carlee, I heard you say "express yourselves." As someone who writes almost every day, I know that I feel better when what is inside me is expressed to the outside world, and I then get responses from…
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