Posted inBooks Family

My memories of growing up with books in the 1950’s and 60’s

Listen up, you youngsters who read blog posts like this (if you exist): an old man is going to tell some tales of what it was like in the Old Days when books -- yes, books, of the paper variety -- were way more important in people's lives than they are now.  These memories were stimulated by the donation I made today of eight boxes containing 201 books to the Friends of Salem Public Library.  Needing to downsize my collection, I spent quite a bit of time culling through a bunch of books, deciding which of them I'd fallen sufficiently…
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Posted inHome life

I’m glad I sold my Mini Cooper to CarMax

Being the age I am (68), I've bought and sold quite a few cars over the years. I've found that buying is more pleasant than selling, especially now. New car dealerships increasingly have a fixed or no-haggle price. When I bought my 2011 Mini Cooper S in Portland, Oregon, I was told there was only one possible price: MSRP.  OK. I wanted the Mini. I paid that price. Simple. Similarly, when I recently decided that a 2017 VW GTI should enter my driving life, replacing the Mini, I was told that the VW dealer here in Salem (Lithia Motors) has…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Family

Clinton’s election-eve campaign speech reminded me of how far women have come

Driving home from my Tai Chi class tonight, my election-obsessed brain caused my fingers to choose the MSNBC button on my car's satellite radio rather than the Chill or Classic Vinyl music stations that ordinarily attract me. I heard President Obama's voice.  He was speaking at one of Hillary Clinton's final campaign events, a 40,000 person rally in Philadelphia. Obama was inspiring. Obama strongly urged people to get out and vote tomorrow. Naturally, for Clinton. Then Clinton took the stage. You can hear part of what she said in the video below. What moved me was how positive she was,…
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Posted inHome life

Why my wife’s “That’s not realistic” drives movie-watching-me crazy

I'm curious if anyone else has this problem with their significant other, or if -- on a planet with over 7 billion people -- I just happen to be married to the only person in the world who habitually (and repeatedly!) blurts out "That's not realistic" while we're watching a movie at home. This drives me crazy, because I have a totally normal approach to movies: aside from documentaries, they're escapes from the real world.  If I want to view life as it is really is, that's easy. I just go out and about in the world as usual. Movies…
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Posted inHome life Retirement community

Why it makes sense for seniors to postpone living in a retirement community

My wife and I are in our late 60's. For 26 years we've lived in a 3,200 square foot house on ten non-easycare acres in rural south Salem, Oregon. We've visited four retirement communities in the northwest, and browsed numerous others online. It's tough for seniors to decide when to leave a beloved home because it's become too damn difficult to maintain. Various factors enter into that decision: health status, where children and other family members are living, how attached one is to a current location -- all kinds of stuff. We've mulled over the reasons to stay where we…
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Posted inSalem

“How Can Salem Become a Strong Town?” — October 5 Chuck Marohn talk

I'm really looking forward to this free talk by Strong Towns founder Chuck Marohn. Put it on your Must Attend list for October 5. I'm pleased that Salem Community Vision is supporting this event (I'm a member of the SCV steering committee). It took us about zero seconds to decide to do this. Chuck Marohn is an energetic, creative, thoughtful advocate for the sorts of positive changes that need to happen in Salem. Salem Weekly has a good story about the Strong Towns talk in its current issue. Check out "Reimagining Salem as a Strong Town." This is how the…
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Posted inEntertainment Home life

Pac-12 Networks now on Sling TV. Because of me! (I like to think)

I DID IT! (in my magical thinking brain, at least) Just five days after my annual blog post rant about DirecTV not carrying the Pac-12 Networks -- and the Pac-12 Networks not being offered on any streaming service -- today a deal has been announced between Sling TV and the Pac-12 Networks.  SAN FRANCISCO– Pac-12 Networks announced today a new agreement with Sling TV to make all six Pac-12 Networks regional feeds, which collectively offer live coverage of more than 800 sporting events, available to Sling Orange and Sling Blue customers who subscribe to the “Sports Extra” add-on pack as…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Follow FiveThirtyEight and PredictWise to stay presidential-poll sane

For political junkies like me, it's easy to go a little (or a lot) crazy during the excruciatingly long presidential campaign season -- becoming joyful when a chosen candidate (Clinton, in my case) is ascendent in the polls, and despondent when a downturn happens. Here's my advice about how to handle this: Follow the best poll analyzer around, FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver's operation. After he left the New York Times, Silver and Co. branched out into analyzing sports and other areas. But politics, not surprisingly, is his emphasis at the moment. I follow FiveThirtyEight on Twitter and enjoy his highly competent…
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Posted inEntertainment Television

Will 2016 be the year DirecTV carries Pac-12 Networks?

This is the freaking fifth year I've complained about DirecTV not carrying the Pac-12 Networks. Count 'em: 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016.  (See here and here for links to my previous blog post rants.) Today, once again, I had to scramble to watch the Oregon Ducks football opener against UC Davis. Yes, after some Googling I found a free online stream of the Pac-12 Networks broadcast. But I'd much prefer to watch the game on my big screen television than on my 13" MacBook Pro. I hope both DirecTV and the Pac-12 Networks realize they're acting like idiots. Their five…
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Posted inHome life

How to put on a Smith Optics integrated sunglasses leash without going (too) insane

I love my Smith Optics Captain's Choice sunglasses. They're spendy, but I got mine on Amazon for considerably less than list price. Comfortable. Nicely designed. Polarized. Great color quality (blue sky looks way more intense with them on). And they come with an integrated sunglasses leash. "Integrated" means the narrow plastic flexible wire fits into the frame of the sunglasses, so the leash won't come off, and nothing protrudes on the head side of the frame (a drawback of leashes with elastic connections that slip over the end of the frame). That's the good news. The bad news is that…
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Posted inHome life

I file a BBB complaint about the Oregonian’s “premium editions”

Just when I thought the Portland Oregonian couldn't irritate me any further, the newspaper DID! (Since 2013, I only get four print editions a week delivered to my south Salem home, and I don't like the Oregonian's increasingly right-wing editorial positions.) A few days ago a letter arrived from The Oregonian informing me they'd now be charging my EasyPay account $2.99 for each of four "premium editions" -- the first of which would be a 100 page Investment & Retirement Guide that will be delivered with my September 18 Sunday Oregonian. Even more irritating: in addition, I'm slated to be…
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Posted inHome life Salem

Most Oregonians are heat weenies. But not ex-Californian me.

With western Oregon in the midst of a several-day record-breaking heat wave -- temperatures over 100 degrees here in the Willamette Valley -- it's a great time for me to reprise my May 2008 blog post, "'Ooh, it's hot!' Oregonians are heat wussies."  Days like today, I feel so superior to most of my fellow Oregonians. I grew up in central California, where for much of the year a temperature under 100 degrees is considered a cool day. So here I am on May 16 in Salem, Oregon – enjoying a record breaking heat wave for this date. The thermometer in…
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Posted inSalem

My shout-out to local Salem businesses who compete with national firms

Until recently, I thought I had to accept the pain-in-the-butt necessity of having my 2011 Mini Cooper S serviced in Portland at the one and only Mini dealership in Oregon. But now that I've discovered Prestige Auto Repair right here in Salem, specialists in Mini, Mercedes, and BMW cars, I'm overjoyed to know that a drive to Portland isn't necessary to have my Mini serviced or repaired. This is the review I left several places online: Chris and the other Prestige Auto guys were wonderfully competent and pleasant. I've been having my 2011 Mini Cooper S serviced at the Mini dealership…
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Posted inEntertainment Salem

Enlightened Theatrics made “The Wizard of Oz” new for me

Thank you, talented cast members of Enlightened Theatrics' current cultural gift to Salem, a marvelous stage production of "The Wizard of Oz."  You've restored the pleasure I felt as a child when I'd watch, and re-watch, the classic movie version of The Wizard of Oz. It was shown annually on television from 1959 to 1991.  So, since I was born in 1948, I must have seen it close to half a dozen times before I went off to college in 1966. What pushed me over the Oz edge, though, was raising a daughter born in 1972. I remember watching the…
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Posted inHome life Neighborhood

Rural south Salem wildlife caught on our trail camera

OK, let's get this clear right off the bat: these photos from the trail camera my wife, Laurel, tends to -- moving it around our property in rural south Salem in attempts to capture what our non-human neighbors are doing -- aren't exactly National Geographic quality. But, hey, they show wild creatures living their animal lives on what sure seems to be a popular spot. (The dates on the photos appear to be off; so is the time, probably.) Coyote! Wily canines who we occasionally see in the daytime, but not often. We have some irrational coyote-hating neighbors who tried…
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Posted inBicycling Salem

Tell City officials you want a bigger and better Salem Sunday Streets

Bicyclists, walkers, skateboarders, and other fans of non-motorized getting-around here in overly autocentric Salem, I've got some bad news and good news for you. Bad news. There won't be a Salem Sunday Streets event in 2016. One happened in 2013, 2014, and 2015, but it has been cancelled this year.  Salem Sunday Streets is part of the burgeoning "open streets" movement.  Open streets initiatives temporarily close streets to automobile traffic, so that people may use them for walking, bicycling, dancing, playing, and socializing. With more than 100 documented initiatives in North America, open streets are increasingly common in cities seeking innovative…
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Posted inSalem

I’m attached to Salem, Oregon. Check out this “place attachment” scale.

How much are you attached to the place where you live? A book I've just started reading, Melody Warnick's "This is Where You Belong: The Art and Science of Loving the Place You Live," lets you find out by answering 24 simple questions -- which I've shared below. I answered 21 of the 24 questions "true." So I'm attached to Salem, Oregon (my wife and I have a Salem address, though we live in a rural neighborhood about six miles from the city limits). Warnick says: The more times you answer "true," the more likely you are to be attached…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Melania Trump’s plagiarism shows why Donald would be a horrible president

If anyone needed a reason to oppose Donald Trump's presidential ambitions, the debacle of his wife's plagiarized speech at the Republican Convention last night sure offers up a good one. It's obvious to anyone with half a brain -- which apparently doesn't include Donald Trump -- that Melania Trump borrowed from Michele Obama's 2008 speech at the Democratic Convention where her husband won his first presidential nomination.  The New York Times has a clear comparison of the Trump and Obama speeches in "Questions Over Melania Trump's Speech Set Off Finger-Pointing." Here's the more extensive example of plagiarism. (click to enlarge)…
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Posted inEntertainment

Odysseo by Cavalia in Portland is a thrilling horse production

Last night, Laurel and I saw the newest version of Cavalia's marvelous "horse show." (I put that in quotes to indicate that it is like no horse show you've ever seen before.) Which, like the show we saw five years ago, also in Portland, basically is an equine Cirque du Soleil.  In 2011, I blogged, Cavalia is a magical horse show -- Portlanders, go see it!    I don't know why I omitted my fellow residents of Salem in the title, so now I'll add -- Salemians, go see it! As noted in my first post about Cavalia, my wife…
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Posted inWeb/Tech

BrianHines.com gets a much-needed makeover, thanks to Adobe Spark

Being an early Internet adopter, I was fortunate to snap up the domain name www.BrianHines.com way back when. After all, there are a lot of Brian Hines' in the world. (However, I was a bit behind the times with Gmail; some other Brian Hines got his Gmail email address first, so I'm stuck with BrianHines1 -- which is better than BrianHines999, admittedly.) I've ignored my BrianHines.com web site for many years. My blogs, Facebook pages, and such have occupied my cyberspace attention. Plus, even with an easy to use website builder, maintaining a site isn't my idea of a fun…
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