HinesSight

Happy dancing videos bring summer smiles

Hey, it's almost August. And the Northwest's record-breaking heat wave is about over.

Time to celebrate by sitting on our finally-cool deck and sharing some viral dance videos that brought smiles to the sweaty brows of my wife and me yesterday.

Like this title of this video says, this has got to be The Best Wedding Entrance Dance Ever. For sure.

Then there's this guy -- who must have watched Beyonce's video of Single Ladies a million times to get his copied moves down so perfectly.

To check his work, here's Beyonce's version. Actually, I think the guy is a better dancer.

Panoramic Metolius River photos

It got up to 103 degrees here in rural south Salem today, so this is a good time to dig out some photos I took recently at what was a much cooler spot in Oregon -- the Metolius River.

I'm still learning how to make my new Sony DSC-HX1 do its camera tricks. I hadn't played around much with the Sweep Panorama mode, so decided to give it more of a try. Here's a description:

World's first digital camera with Sweep Panorama. Equipped with Sweep Panorama mode, the HX1 reaches beyond the limits of wide angle lenses and makes it easy to capture expansive, breathtaking panoramic shots. Simply press the shutter button and "sweep" the camera horizontally or vertically—and the camera assembles the shots into a single frame which can cover up to 224 degrees field of view. 

Here's a shot of the Metolius not far from the spring-fed headwaters. You certainly get a better feel for the mood of the river with 224 degrees of camera vision.

When we're in Camp Sherman, Serena and I usually take our late afternoon dog walk upstream, then return to the cabin through the Riverside campground.

Small Ponderosas have been thinned out, so the campground is close to what a mature old growth Ponderosa forest probably looks like (large trees resist fire better than small ones, so I've read that before humans started controlling wildfires, central Oregon forests had larger and fewer Ponderosa pines, compared to today).

To contrast the panorama mode, here's a normal photo of the Metolius taken from about the same spot as the top photo above. Nice, but different. I like having another picture-taking option.

Along that line, I discovered that reducing the resolution of the image taken by the Sony to the smallest choice ("email"), the already powerful 20x zoom turns into a 108x zoom.

I stood in the middle of the bridge leading to the charming Camp Sherman store and pointed the camera downriver. The small image resolution reduces the photo quality.

But, wow, the 108x zoom would be great for spying. Resting the camera on the bridge railing, combined with image stabilization, produced this image of the cabin barely visible in the non-zoomed photo above. Cool!

Ending on a cute note, this is "Bling," a dog I encountered at a street fair booth when we went to Sisters last Sunday. Laurel keeps telling me that I need a little white dog. I don't know about that. But I'm sure attracted to happy canine faces like this one. My nose got licked, big time.

Facts about health care reform

Ooh, that's a scary word for lots of people nowadays: facts. They prefer the truthiness of Stephen Colbert:

Truthiness is what you want the facts to be, as opposed to what the facts are. What feels like the right answer as opposed to what reality will support.

Like most progressives, I like policy-making to be based on reality that is as real as possible. Things just go better when they're founded on facts rather than falsehoods.

Sure, you're free to drive a car assuming that a red light means "go," and a green light means "stop" -- what right does society have to tell you what your truth is? -- but you'd better have good auto insurance with a low collision deductible and a non-cancellation clause.

A New York Times editorial (five more scary words for truthiness devotees) on "Health Care Reform and You" is the best summary I've read of what proposed legislation would mean for Americans.

Bottom line: almost everybody would benefit.

And I'm tempted to leave out "almost," but don't want to appear utopian. We're not talking socialized medicine, or government takeover, or rationing.

The editorial concludes with:

All of this suggests to us that the great majority of Americans — those with insurance and those without — would benefit from health care reform.

Facts please. Here's an excerpt from the editorial that had me thinking, "let's pass this legislation pronto!"

As part of health reform, all insurance companies would be more tightly regulated. For Americans who are never quite certain that their policies will come through for them when needed, that is very good news.

The House bill, for example, would require that all new policies sold on or off the exchanges must offer yet-to-be-determined “essential benefits.” It would prohibit those policies from excluding or charging higher rates to people with pre-existing conditions and would bar the companies from rescinding policies after people come down with a serious illness. It would also prohibit insurers from setting annual or lifetime limits on what a policy would pay. All this would kick in immediately for all new policies.

I've written several posts about how Regence BlueCross of Oregon recently denied my request to shift to a different plan because I had two minor health problems, a.k.a. preexisting conditions.

You see, health insurance companies don't like it when policy-holders need health care. This reduces their profit margin. What is "health care" to  you and me is "expense" to the Regence accounting department.

This is why Regence has a two million dollar cap on lifetime benefits per individual member. Sure, that's a lot of money. But it isn't unheard of to run up medical bills that large if you have serious health problems.

When you get to $2,000,000 in health care costs, Regence says "goodbye and good luck." Yet Republicans are almost universally united in opposing any changes to our health insurance system, with many wanting this to be Obama's Waterloo.

How's that for compassionate conservatism? Let Americans die and go broke in order to make a political point.

It's summertime. I'm trying to chill out during a wonderfully warm Oregon summer. But I just decided to get off my complacent butt and donate some money to help the health care reform effort.

Check out what you can do, much of which doesn't cost anything. It's easy to submit an online form that says you support Obama's reform efforts.

What reasonable person could disagree with what he's trying to achieve?

Reduce costs — Rising health care costs are crushing the budgets of governments, businesses, individuals, and families, and they must be brought under control

Guarantee choice — Every American must have the freedom to choose their plan and doctor – including the choice of a public insurance option

Ensure quality care for all — All Americans must have quality and affordable health care

Letting children die isn't a valid religious belief

It's a warm Oregon day, but I'm still frosted over a jury deciding that child sacrifice in the name of Jesus deserves no more than a legal slap on the hand: the father was found guilty of criminal mistreatment, a misdemeanor; the mother got off entirely.

Over on my Church of the Churchless blog, I said "Child sacrifice gets a yellow light in Oregon." That post has generated a lot of comments, many of which mystify me.

Disturbingly, they seem to reflect the misguided sentiments of the jurors who voted to absolve Carl and Raylene Worthington of the most serious charges. Believing that hurting someone is right doesn't make it so, not under our laws.

Today I responded to a commenter who, like the jury, argued that people should be free to believe whatever they want.

Phil, interesting legal theory you set forth -- which, thankfully, isn't accepted in cases of child abuse, spouse abuse, and such.My wife was a psychotherapist in private practice for many years.

She encountered quite a few men, usually Christian, who believed that it was fine to beat their wife or children because, gosh, God has decreed that the man is the head of the family, and whatever he feels Jesus/God wants him to do, that's the best for everyone.

So I assume that if someone is a meth addict, and believes it is OK to not take their child to the doctor when seriously ill, because there's just no point and doctors don't know shit anyway, you feel this is a reason to absolve them of legal guilt?

What's the difference, as an Oregonian columnist pointed out, between someone high on deluded religious beliefs and someone high on a pharmaceutical?

If I'm ever stopped for speeding, I'll try telling the policeman, "I'm innocent because I didn't believe I was going that fast," or "I believed it was fine to go 90 on this stretch of road."

I'm up with the sort of moral relativism you espouse when breaking laws doesn't hurt other people. But when it puts innocents in danger, as in this case, they have to be protected from an attitude of "Hey, everyone is entitled to believe what they want to."

The jury members had a tough job. However, they should have stuck with the law, rather than their emotions.

The Oregonian newspaper reported that the jurors' empathy led them to a "epiphany": the Worthington's didn't take Ava, their 15 month-old daughter, to the hospital because they thought she was getting better.

There's two problems with this: (1) Oregon law doesn't require intent to be a factor in determining whether someone is guilty of manslaughter, a fact the jurors ignored. (2) Ava's grandfather testified that under no circumstances would the family seek medical care, because their bizarre religious belief is that Jesus heals, not doctors.

I'm pleased to see that one juror now is saying he wishes he could change his vote, since he didn't know about the other deaths of children in the faith-healing church. Unfortunately, it's too late. But not too late to save the lives of other children.

Oregon needs to toughen its laws in this area. And religious fundamentalists need to learn that their right to believe as they wish ends when acting on a belief harms someone else. 

Obama, take my health insurance company -- please

Yeah, this blog post title is based on an old joke.

But the fact that I remember it, because I'm old, is related to my increasing anxiety over whether President Obama is going to pull off the health care reform that this country in general -- plus my 60'ish wife and I in particular -- sorely need.

I want Obama to save us from the clutches of Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon. Recently a Twitter Tweet popped into my head:

I'd love to have government come between me and my health insurance company, just as I want a policeman to come between me and a robber.

Which is what insurance companies are, based on the double-digit annual premium increases Regence has been inflicting on us for quite a few years.

I have zero warm feelings toward Regence.

That's unusual, because every other company we have an ongoing relationship with is at least passingly pleasing to me. Regence BlueCross BlueShield, not at all.

It could disappear tomorrow and we wouldn't miss it a bit. All they do for us is pay medical bills, reluctantly, and tell us what sorts of medical treatments they'll cover, unpersuasively.

My latest gripe with Regence, described here, started with us applying to switch to a different insurance plan. I thought that would be simple, since we've been enrolled with Regence for so long and are pretty healthy.

Nope.

I was denied the switch because I'm taking two medications for an enlarged prostate, Avodart and Flomax. A Regence underwriter said this meant I was at a higher risk for needing surgery eventually.

Wrong. A few minutes of Google research turned up this bit of information:

GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK) announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved AVODART (dutasteride) in combination with tamsulosin [Flomax] for the treatment of symptomatic enlarged prostate, a disease that affects half of all men over 50 years old. The new indication reflects emerging research showing the combination of the two medicines treats the symptoms of enlarged prostate more effectively than either medicine alone.

So either medicine reduces the probablility of needing prostate surgery, and taking both together reduces the risk even more. Yet the Regence underwriting department had it backward, as I'll be telling them soon in a letter.

The plain truth is that health insurance companies don't want people to get health care.

They do their best to deny claims if you're insured, and to keep you from getting an individual policy if you have any preexisting conditions if you aren't yet insured.

By contrast, I've never felt that Apple or AT&T don't want me to use my iPhone. However, I have an absurdly large number of phone call minutes that I fail to use each month. That's fine with me.

I pay a monthly bill to AT&T for iPhone service. Then I use my iPhone however I want to. It's a lot like a single payer national health plan, except I'm not a nation, and the service I'm getting isn't health care.

Nonetheless, I want a health plan that is a lot more like my iPhone contract than our Regence BlueCross policy.

Simple. Straightforward. Easy to understand. Non-bureaucratic. Our current private health insurance setup is none of these.

I haven't watched Obama's prime time press conference yet. I'm hoping that he comes out swinging passionately and articulately for health care reform, and can cogently explain what sorts of changes he expects in a bill.

I agree with a New York Times analysis:

The immediate task facing Mr. Obama — in his news conference on Wednesday night and beyond — is to explain that the health care system doesn’t really work the way it seems to. He won’t be able to put it in such blunt terms. But he will need to explain how a typical household, one that has insurance and thinks it always will, is being harmed.

The bailouts were fairly easy to encapsulate: government investing in private businesses to save their asses.

So is the cap and trade climate change legislation: keep the planet green and clean to avoid some really mean consequences.

But so far I haven't grasped what Obama's health care reform is all about. Neither has the American public, which is why the right-wing ideologues have been able to spread their lies about socialized medicine and such.

Hopefully tonight Obama will lead the country in a fresh health care direction. I'm ready to follow. 

Marijuana is getting high attention -- legalization near?

No, it isn't a flashback from my '60 days. I've carefully perused the dates on a bunch of marijuana-related stories, and they're all recent.

Something is happening here, particularly in the western reaches of the United States, and I don't know what it is. (To paraphrase an old friend.) But it sure seems like the times they are a-changin'.

Evidence...

Oregon's Governor is about to sign a bill that will legalize the industrial production of hemp.

Oregon is on the verge of becoming the first Western state to allow farmers to grow industrial hemp... Oregon will then become the seventh state to allow farmers to grow hemp, even though the federal government says it's still an illegal crop.

Plans are being laid to place a citizen initiative legalizing marijuana on Oregon's 2010 ballot.

If they can gather 87,000 signatures to put it on the ballot, and voters then approved the initiative, the act would set up the Oregon Cannabis Control Commission. The new agency would sell pot to buyers 21 and over, with 90 percent of the profit going to the state’s general fund and 10 percent for drug treatment.

Yesterday the Associated Press ran a lengthy story about California's marijuana "green rush."

Marijuana has transformed California. Since the state became the first to legalize the drug for medicinal use, the weed the federal government puts in the same category as heroin and cocaine has become a major economic force.

No longer relegated to the underground, pot in California these days props up local economies, mints millionaires and feeds a thriving industry of startups designed to grow, market and distribute the drug.

A few days ago a New York Times article, "Marijuana is Gateway Drug for Two Debates," spoke of the push for legalization and the concern about negative effects of today's more powerful pot.

The drug cannot lead to fatal overdose and its hazards pale in comparison with those of alcohol. But at the same time, marijuana can be up to five times more potent than the cannabis of the 1970s, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Thanks to Jack Bog's blog, I learned that there's an iPhone app for finding marijuana.

The purpose of the app is to help locate legal medical marijuana in states and locations where it can be found. Will this app lead thousands of iPhone users to cannabis, or is it a tool of a movement in favor of marijuana legalization? The answer, surprisingly, is both.

This month Portland's Willamette Week had a cover page story, "Just Say Now," about the fight to legalize marijuana.

Nearly every day offers another object lesson in the merits of marijuana reform. And the American people seem to be noticing. At least four polls in the past three months have shown a greater uptick in the public’s receptiveness to legalization than ever before.

Going back in time to a year ago, a fascinating article in The New Yorker described how medical marijuana is transforming the California pot industry.

Only a small percentage of consumer marijuana sales in California occur within the medical-marijuana market. Even so, the dispensaries, by serving as a gold standard for producers and consumers, have fuelled the popularity of high-end strains in much the same way that the popularity of the Whole Foods grocery chain has brought heirloom lettuce to ordinary supermarkets.

And -- no big surprise -- there's a web site, WeBeHigh, that bills itself as: Worldwide Marijuana Travel Guide, Marijuana Prices, Spots & Legalization Status

I checked out Portland, Oregon. The "smoking tolerance level" approaches Virtually Legal status.

Portland police are very forgiving toward marijuana smokers, and do not look for them. In fact, there are some areas in Portland (see “spots”) where it is very common to smoke pot in public.

Photos of 2009 Salem Art Fair

Salem (Oregon), as I frequently point out, doesn't have a lot going on compared to its much cooler city cousins an I-5 hour drive north and south -- Portland and Eugene.

But we do have the Salem Art Fair, a first class event, that's beautifully nestled in the towering trees of Bush Park. In the northwest is there a nicer setting for an art fair? Can't believe there is. This is how the fair looks walking up to it from High Street.

And this is a view from the line exiting the vastly popular stand that sells "Moo" shakes of various flavors. I chose raspberry, with whipped cream, and enjoyed every moo'ey drop.

This always is the scariest sight of the fair for me: a sign at Brie Kriebel's booth that sends anticipatory chills up Laurel's clothing-loving spine, and leads me to ponder how female-centric art fair events like this one are.

I didn't see any booth where men were examining the items on display with such evident passion and intensity as I observed during the lengthy, oh, yes, say that again, lengthy, time I spent here.

Per usual, I was impressed by how Laurel manages to be almost perfectly color-coordinated with even the clothes she is trying on.

(As for me, I bought one t-shirt that featured a rather abstract image of a creature that I like to think is an angry, biting house cat, since that reminds me of a not-so-beloved family pet feline, Taco; after he departed, my hands and arms had a chance to heal.)

Every year new artists are featured at the juried Salem Art Fair. I'd never seen these metal cactus sculptures before. Not here. Not anywhere. Creative, but I wondered how they would fit in with typical Oregon landscaping.

Laurel and I spent three hours volunteering at the Friends of Marion County booth, soliciting signatures for a ballot initiative seeking to enlarge the county Board of Commissioners from three to five members.

It's a great idea.

Check out the Have a Voice Everyone web site, which describes how Marion County would be much better off with five non-partisan commissioners elected by district, rather than the current three at-large political positions. 

We got many more signatures than I expected. Even though the booth was in an out-of-the-way corner of the fair, response to Laurel's entreaties was great.

She's a much better salesperson than I am -- as is Roger Kaye, president of Friends of Marion County, who also had a knack for attracting registered voters over to the booth.

My specialty was pointing at the line where they signed, muttering "written signature... date... print your signature... address" at appropriate moments.

Oh, and also walking over to the "Moo" shake stand when we needed caloric sustenance. Political activism requires all sorts of skills.

Our new well silts up 60 feet. Here's why.

We're always learning something new about country living. Today, it was that our 440 foot new well, just three months old, can quickly accumulate 60 feet of silt.

Who knew?

It surprised even our well driller, Troy, who said that in his experience he's only had a couple of ten inch wells manifest this odd behavior. Unfortunately, it was our well and the next one he drilled.

Unlucky us. But at least now we know what's going on, and how to fix the problem, thanks to some down-the-well diagnosing with a submersible camera.

When Oregon Pump came by a few weeks ago to install a pump in the new well, they found that a probe couldn't get anywhere near the bottom. Since the well has a liner all the way down, that surprised us.

The slots in the liner where water flows in are only 1/8 of an inch wide. We couldn't understand how so much debris could get into the liner from the sides of the well, especially since we hadn't been using it, so no water was moving up and down.

Since there was a possibility that the liner had collapsed, we decided to take a look down the well. It was interesting to watch the viewing screen as the camera slowly descended down the liner.

When it got to about 380 feet, we hit pay dirt. Or rather, dirt that we'd paid to have removed, but was still in the well. This wasn't Troy's fault -- just one of those things that happens in well drilling, and thankfully it's fixable.

The camera's probe descended into the muck a bit, showing that it was very fine, not at all solid. When the camera came out of the well, the operator honored my finger with some of the silt.

It was slimy rather than rocky or dirty. Tiny particles were evident in it. Troy explained that this is probably what happened:

After he enlarged the well to ten inches (we started with a six inch well), he let the water settle for a day. Then he put the liner in -- 20 foot lengths of perforated PVC pipe, glued together.

He had no problem getting the liner all the way down to the bottom, so the well obviously hadn't silted up right away.

Troy figures that the large ten inch well must have contained a lot of fine particles that were still floating around in the water (about 1800 gallons worth) even after a day of settling. Water was both inside and outside of the liner.

So most of the silt, or sediment, was already inside the liner, and simply settled to the bottom eventually. Likely there also is sediment outside the liner also, between the pipe and and the walls of the well.

Troy is going to rent a sediment pump, take out the liner, and then remove the silt. He explained how the pump works, but I'm incapable of re-stating the mildly erotic details of the suction process.

This should restore our well to close to 440 feet deep. Certainly much closer than we are now. The pump will be installed 20 or so feet from the bottom, in case some silting reoccurs.

I wanted to tell our story in case someone else has a similar problem, and finds this blog post via a Google search. This amount of silting isn't common in a new well. Doing my own Googling, I couldn't find any obvious references to what happened to us.

But not many residential wells are ten inches in diameter. There's three times as much water in a ten inch well as in a six inch well, so seemingly there also would be three times as many floating particles.

It's still difficult to picture how those particles could end up silting up 60 feet of a six inch liner. Yet the camera showed that this is what we've got.

(If you are a city dweller who reads this post, out of boredom or some other reason, be thankful that all you need to do is turn a faucet and water comes out. We love living in the country, but at times, like today, a condo with a couple of potted plants on the deck sounds pretty appealing.)

When to start getting Social Security benefits? I say, ASAP

It's hard to believe, but my gray hair (and driver's license) testifies to the fact: in a bit over a year I'll be 62 and eligible to start getting Social Security benefits.

So a New York Times article caught my eye this morning. Reading "Collect Now or Later? Timing Your Social Security Benefits" I realized that no matter what the experts say, I'm strongly inclined to stick with my current inclination:

Give me my freaking benefits As Soon As Possible -- ASAP!

Now, I realize that others will decide differently. And that's understandable. I just wanted to share my philosophical take on this subject, for what it's worth.

That's what it comes down for me: philosophy...of life.

The article focuses on how much total money someone will get from Social Security if they start taking benefits at 62, versus waiting until 65 or 70. If you live long enough, waiting brings in more bucks.

For people who choose to defer benefits until age 66, it generally takes about 12 more years to collect as much as if you started getting checks at 62. So you break even, so to speak, about age 78, according to Avram Sacks, a Social Security law analyst for CCH, a tax and accounting information service. “If you are in good health, and you expect to live to 78 or longer, then the advantage goes to the person who waits,” he says. “But that’s assuming we’re all prophets and we know what’s going to happen tomorrow, and we don’t all know.”

I don't understand this way of looking at "advantage." Life is about a lot more than dollars and cents, or the quantity of living we do.

Mr. Sacks points to the financial advantage of waiting to start getting checks from Social Security, if you end up living longer than 78. However, what about the quality of life disadvantage of foregoing what you could have done with the money from age 62 to 78?

Traveling. Buying stuff you've always wanted. Gifts for grandchildren. Fixing up your home. Charity. Whatever you want. Including, naturally, simply living: paying for groceries, gasoline, and such.

I'm not saying that my life at 78, if I get that far, isn't going to be worth living. However, I know what life at 60 is like, and it's pretty damn enjoyable.

I'm healthy, energetic, and enthusiastic, of sound body and mind (aside from my usual psychological quirks and minor ailments). So I want my Social Security benefits ASAP, because I don't like the idea of having extra money when I can't enjoy it as much as I can now.

Makes sense to me. And to other people I've talked with who are leaning in a similar now, now, now direction when they turn 62. We don't see any reason to wait.

But like I said earlier, I can understand why someone else would choose to. The decision as to when to start getting benefits isn't entirely philosophical -- this is just how I look at the question:

What will bring me the most satisfaction? Using the Social Security money from now until I'm 78, or after that age?

The truth about Obama's butt ogling

I never really believed that President Obama would ogle a teenager's butt (though it was undeniably attractive) at a public function.

Now the truth comes out, thanks to a Daily Kos video. No surprise: once again, Fox News purposely spread a falsehood. See for yourself:

Health insurers shun people with health problems

Here's a personal story -- a single vignette out of countless others -- that shows why the United States needs to reform our screwed-up health care system, pronto.

Earlier I wrote about how we labored to fill out a lengthy on-line Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon application: a request to change our individual coverage from Plus to Premier, since that seemed to fit our needs better.

Yesterday my wife and I got individual letters from Regence. Bottom line: denied. Here's how my letter started out.

Thank you for your application requesting a change to your current coverage.

After carefully reviewing your health application and any available claims history we find that we are unable to honor your request for a change in your coverage based on the following condition(s) and/or symptom(s):

Hyperlipidemia
History of enlarged prostate

Our inability to honor your request for a change is based on the medical history profile, which contains risk factors that fall outside our Individual plan underwriting guidelines. We apply our risk criteria fairly and consistently to all applications we receive for coverage.

Well, this must mean that Regence rejects almost everybody around my age (60) who just has a few minor medical problems, because I'm on the upper end of the healthy bell curve, for sure.

My dreaded "hyperlipidemia" consisted of a one-time total cholesterol reading four years ago of 212, which dropped instantly into the 160's after I started taking a generic low-dose statin, and now sits at 181.

So for one year, according to the American Heart Association, I was at a borderline-high risk level, and now I've settled into the desirable level by taking $10 per month lovastatin.

My other big risk factor, which also popped up in 2005, was a moderately enlarged prostate. At the time, I blogged about my family doctor finding evidence of this via the least enjoyable part of my physical exam.

This was my first prostate exam where I got a running verbal commentary from the doctor: “Hmmmm. Feels pretty normal. Regularly shaped. Just about normal size. Well, let’s make that a normal size for men your age who have a somewhat enlarged prostate.”

Great. A prostate exam is the only time you don’t want to hear from a female who is inspecting your genital area that you’re larger than average. Maybe Flomax will get me nearer to normal.

Which, it did. Along with Avodart, a complimentary drug I started taking a few years later.

And that's the sum total of the medical problems that caused Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon to deem me outside of their underwriting risk factors.

I feel sorry for the many people who are denied coverage completely because of pre-existing conditions, since I was only denied a change to another Regence plan. The ugly truth is this:

Health insurance companies don't want to insure people who aren't healthy.

That, of course, includes almost everyone at one time or another. In 2008, one in five Oregonians who applied for individual health insurance were rejected due to pre-existing conditions. 

Crazy. The private sector of our health care system is dedicated to providing as little health care to people as it can get away with.

To a patient, health care fulfills a need. To the insurer, health care is a cost that detracts from profits.

A MSNBC piece, "When you are denied health insurance," explains that in the 1930s hospitals began offering insurance policies that were fair and affordable.

But commercial insurers, who joined the game in the 1950s, had another obligation: pleasing shareholders. The simplest way to make money was to try to attract healthy customers, who were less likely to rack up big medical bills. That way, insurers could charge lower premiums yet still clear a profit. Excluding sick people wasn't so easy when insurers agreed to cover the employees of a large corporation.

But denying coverage to risky prospects who sought coverage individually was simple. If an applicant had a history of illness, weighed too much or worked in a job that carried greater-than-usual physical risks such as mining or construction, the insurer would charge higher rates or simply refuse coverage. And once a few insurers started screening applicants, the others were forced to follow suit — or chance winding up with all the sickest people, a certain path to bankruptcy. Within a decade, such weeding out of the infirm or those likely to become so was common practice.

So that's how we've arrived at the insane situation where people who need health care, even if they have relatively minor problems, are rejected by private insurance companies. That keeps profit margins up.

And the United States' health ranking down. We spend more of our GNP on health care than any other country, yet the performance of our health system ranks 37th in the world.

People our age, over 60 but under 65, get particularly screwed if they're retired and couldn't continue with an employer-based insurance plan. Which describes us.

I'm suspecting that Regence is eager to get us onto Medicare and off our current policy. So they weren't going to approve our request to move to a different plan, since they'd prefer we didn't have any Regence plan but have to put up with us for another four to five years.

Tomorrow I'm planning to phone Regence and ask some questions about why I was rejected. Check the comments to this post for any updates to our story.

Oregon Country Fair photos -- the '60s live on

 Today Laurel and I headed to Veneta for a marvelous counterculture celebration, the 2009 Oregon Country Fair.

I wished we had an old VW bus to drive there, but had to settle for our Hybrid Highlander (less cool, but not nearly so prone to break down).

We hadn't been to the Fair for about fourteen years. It was good to see that the '60's flower power hippie ambience hadn't changed.

Except the original flower children, like us, had aged. But as some of my photos show, we're still youthful at heart.

Walking to the fair entrance, we encountered some philosophy: "The material world is but an illusion." Yeah, but we still had to buy $18 advance tickets to get in.

I'd intended to get to the fair in time to enjoy some belly dancing. Leaving late from Salem, we only were able to see a few minutes. Next year, more!

Laurel was wearing blue feather earrings she'd bought at the fair many years ago. Probably from this very booth.

Now she has a feather to match the earrings.

Many fair goers favor the wild and crazy look.

Others, a cool and sophisticated appearance.

When we got to the Main Stage, some classic rock was playing. And these ladies were groovin' to it. I went to free concerts in Golden Gate Park back in the good old '60s days. Today I had some flashbacks.

Now, though, the tie dye was worn under gray-haired heads.

I thought, "Man, it would have been something to encounter this sight back in my LSD-taking days."

Highly creative artistry abounds throughout the fair grounds.

Along with apt banner sayings.

Quirky parades snake through the winding fair paths.

The parades, like almost everything else, are wonderfully colorful.

Including Laurel browsing a booth.

There's loads of attractive semi-nudity at the Oregon Country Fair. This couple simply was semi-nude.

By comparison, some of the dancers at a drumming circle were considerably more shapely.

There didn't seem to be as many topless women as there were fifteen years ago. Or maybe I'm just getting to be such an old geezer, I didn't notice them so avidly as I did before. This was one of only a few photo opportunities.

An Oregon Country Fair archetype. Beautiful. May the '60s live on forever.

If divorce screws kids up, what's wrong with that?

Reading the new issue of TIME magazine last night, I came across an article that says divorce is worse for children than most people believe.

Great.

Here I am, sixty years old, having been raised by my mother, no contact with my father except some phone calls and a one hour visit shortly before he died, and now it seems that I should be even more screwed-up than I've considered myself to be.

Caitlin Flanagan, who must be super well-adjusted since her article starts off by mentioning her parents' 50th wedding anniversary, writes:

The reason for these appeals to lasting unions is simple: on every single significant outcome related to short-term well-being and long-term success, children from intact, two-parent families outperform those from single-parent households. Longevity, drug abuse, school performance and dropout rates, teen pregnancy, criminal behavior and incarceration — if you can measure it, a sociologist has; and in all cases, the kids living with both parents drastically outperform the others.

Well, here's my utterly biased and unashamedly personal take on this sociological research: who cares?

Because even though in the aggregate all those nasty effects of divorce may be true, I'm not a big believer in normalcy.

Flanagan disses heterosexual divorce, along with gay couples who want to raise a child. Her vision of the American good life is a married man and woman staying together til death do them part.

OK. That will work for some people.

It didn't for my mother, who divorced my jerk of a father for exceedingly good reasons and never remarried. It didn't for me, who got divorced after eighteen years of marriage when my daughter was a junior in high school.

In addition to growing up without a father, my mother was an off-an-on alcoholic.

"On" marked most of my early teen years, when I had to face the trials and traumas of adolescence while listening to my mother ramble on at night in a highly disturbing vodka-fueled fashion from her room next to mine while I wondered "what the fuck is life all about?"

And let's leave it at that. I loved my mother. I still do. But to put it mildly, growing up with her challenged me.

So much so, there were many times in high school when I'd drive by our small town's only liquor store and fantasize about throwing a rock through the window and trashing the interior so people would realize that beneath my more-or-less normal exterior persona lurked the underground psyche of a seriously disturbed kid.

Yet...when I finished reading Flanagan's article, which ends with a Hallmark sentiment that made me want to barf ("What we teach about the true meaning of marriage will determine a great deal about our fate"), I had these thoughts:

Would I change anything about my childhood? If I could have grown up with a happily married mother and father, neither alcoholic, in a nice warm and fuzzy family cocoon, would I choose this?

Answer: no.

I like who I am. I like who my mother was. Why, I even like who my father was. Each of us is/was imperfect, flawed, unbalanced, dysfunctional to some degree or another.

In short: interestingly human.

Now, I'm not saying that people with fewer quirks are necessarily less interesting than deviants from the psychological norm. I've just always found the complex taste of  eccentricity, even when it approaches serious pathology, to be more appealing than white bread normalcy.

For sure, I'm a product of my family heritage. Who isn't?

As a child I heard plenty of tales of divorce, alcoholism, affairs, and other assorted weirdness during the cocktail hours, where I'd carry drinks around and pass the nuts while absorbing the adult conversation.

Early on I grokked that abnormality was the normal way to live. I still believe this.

Life simply is too complex, too individualistic, too passionate, too beset with dark desires and bright aspirations to be capable of reduction to sociological or psychological platitudes. Such as "divorce is bad for kids," or "an alcoholic single parent will screw up his or her children."

What's bad? What's good? What's a screw-up? What's normal?

I don't know. Like I said, I just know that however I was raised -- flawed, fine, or whatever -- this is how I'm thankful it happened. I wouldn't want to be anyone other than who I am now.

A child of divorced parents. Who did their best. And sometimes their worst. All of which combined to make my life a heck of a lot richer and more interesting than it would have been otherwise.

So I return to my title:

If divorce screws kids up, what's wrong with that?

Salem sucks: Trader Joe's coming to Corvallis!

Reason #437,618 why Salem, Oregon's tribute to boring white bread living, sucks big time: Trader Joe's has chosen to open a store in Corvallis rather than here.

"It's really about the income of the community and the education level of the community. Those two points are really important in Trader Joe's world for analyzing a site," said Martin, who specializes in retail properties. Corvallis ranked a bit higher than Salem on both points, she said.

Salem Mayor Janet Tayor has been lobbying hard to get a Trader Joe's in Salem. Great job, Mayor. Somehow her efforts were useless in convincing the company that a city of 155,000 people is a better Trader Joe's site than a town of 55,000.

My wife and I would drown our woes in a gallon of Two Buck Chuck, but we can't buy any -- because there's no freaking Trader Joe's near us! Now, it looks like...forever.

A scooter will change your life! Here's why.

I'm approaching the one-month anniversary of getting a Suzuki Burgman 650 Executive scooter. I can predict pretty well how Burgie and I will celebrate: by going for a ride!

As you can tell by the exclamation marks in this blog post title and first paragraph, I'm enjoying my new scootering life even more than I thought I would. Yes, I am!

So much so, I run the risk of becoming a scooter evangelist, which is kind of scary given my churchless leanings. I don't want to end up going door to door, on my Burgman, naturally, handing out pamphlets that say, "Repent your car-nality! Scooters save!"

(Note: I include motorcycles in my praise of two motorized wheels. However, scooters make so much more sense to me -- quieter, no manual shifting, more storage, easier to get on and off, etc. -- I heartily recommend considering them over a motorcycle; my Burgman is as powerful and large as a motorcycle, without the drawbacks).

Rather than becoming an annoying Scooter Witness, I figured proselytizing via my blog is a better way to go. Here, then, are some reasons why scootering will change your life, based on my first 28 days of experience.

(1) No talk radio. Or any radio. I've been riding my scooter almost exclusively since I got it, the summer weather here in Oregon having been perfect for two-wheeling it. Usually I drive our Prius only one day a week, when I do the grocery shopping.

I've been wondering why I feel calmer. Not so upset about current events. Much less inclined to want to throw people on the opposite side of my political leanings into a bottomless pit. Then I realized: I haven't been listening to talk radio.

Or any radio. Scootering, all I do is drive (you need to, to stay alive, given the greater risk, albeit manageable, of riding a scooter or motorcycle).

No playing with a cell phone either. Or my car's climate controls (on my scooter, to warm up I close vents and zippers on my jacket; to cool down, the opposite). It's wonderfully refreshing to simply be doing one thing while I ride along: riding along.

(2) Life is a whole lot livelier. Motorcyclists and scooterers call cars "cages." Apt term. They keep us insulated from nature and sensory inputs, both natural (smell of a newly mowed field) and unnatural (diesel exhaust fumes).

I love being out there on my scooter. I notice things along familiar roads that escaped my attention before. Just coming to a stop sign or light is an adventure.

I roll off the throttle, feeling the Burgman's considerable engine braking coming into play. Bumps in the road are evident. As is the bumper of the car ahead of me, no longer hidden behind an enclosed windshield.

I'm right there, life to every side of me, clearly evident with a turn of my helmeted head. (In my Team Oregon motorcycle safety class, the instructor pointed out that helmets don't obscure your peripheral vision as some riders claim. This is even more true of my Arai helmet, which has a 10 mm wider eyeport than usual.)

(3) More connections with other people. Partly I'm talking about the "motorcycle wave," which is cool -- a left hand acknowledgement to my fellow rider that we're part of a brother- and sisterhood of people who choose to travel to their own two-wheeled drummer, unlike the cagers.

I enjoy getting and giving the wave, which has some subtleties to it. Since my Burgman looks a lot like a motorcycle, especially from the front, I'm getting more waves than I expected -- since I was warned by a Suzuki salesman that I'd never get a wave from a Harley rider, given I was on a scooter and, horror of Harley horrors, a Japanese machine.

However, I have. And I've decided that regardless of whether the other person waves back, I'll wave at passing motorcycles, scooters, and bicycles, anything and anyone on two wheels. 

Also kids in a crosswalk. I did this last week and had one of those only-on-a-scooter moments. I was stopped at a downtown intersection. A father and two young children walked by in front of me. A boy turned in my direction, idly looking at the stopped traffic.

I raised my right gloved hand. Gave him a wave. His eyes opened wide. A big smile popped out on his face. He and I had made human contact! None of the people in cars were visible, hidden behind glass and long hoods. The kid and I were right there, together. 

Riding off, when the light turned green, I thought: Man, this is why I love scootering.

(4) You'll embrace your wild side. We all have one, a wilder side than we normally show to others. But let's face it: if yours isn't sufficiently developed, you won't enjoy a scooter or motorcycle.

Motorized two-wheeling takes some special skills. It also requires a bit of daring, being more dangerous than driving around in a seat-belted air-bagged car.

But when you pull up in front of wherever you're going, even if you're on a 50 cc Vespa, you're going to feel like Brando when you pull off your helmet. (OK, Brando didn't wear a helmet, but you should, because it isn't cool to be dead...or brain-dead.)

Maybe you have an urge to climb Mt. Everest, hitchhike through South America, or break the bank at Monte Carlo. Sure, you could try to do those things. Why not stay at home and just ride a scooter, though?

You'll express a side of yourself that needs expressing, at less cost, time, and trouble. Plus, you'll be able to stop at the store and pick up whole wheat torillas. Scooters are pretty practical, given their under seat storage. 

I remember reading a story about a Marine in Iraq who explained why he enlisted: "I wanted to do something that could kill me," he said. Sort of a strange quote, but not really. I feel like I understand what the guy meant.

Life is risky. Taking risks, reasonable ones, makes life more vibrant, alive. People have told me, "scooters are dangerous."

Well, yes. So is life. None of us make it out alive. What matters is how fully we live life. That's an individual decision, what makes us feel Yes, Yes, Yes! rather than a blah, That was OK.

My scooter does that for me. One could do the same for you. Something to think about. But not too long. Life doesn't last forever. Our living has to be done now.

Photos of Independence, Oregon Fourth of July celebration

On Independence Day 2009, it seemed oh so appropriate to head over to nearby Independence to see how a namesake Oregon small town celebrates the Fourth of July.

I hadn't been to this annual event for a long time. But now that I have a Suzuki Burgman 650 scooter, I look for reasons to go for a drive. Even on a 93 degree day.

My timing wasn't so great, because I got to Main Street just as the parade had ended. Onlookers hadn't left yet, so at least I could pick up a hint of the parade vibe.

The town of Independence has a strong Latino presence. At first I thought this guy was a traditional bicycling ice cream vendor. Then I saw the Hispanic side to the tradition.

The town's amphitheater, in a park next to the Willamette River, is a great place to listen to music on a hot July day.

I didn't know that "lowriders" came in a bicycle version. This guy was cool. Later I saw him with two buddies, who also rode similar cruisin' bikes.

Staking out spots for tonight's fireworks display over the river, I suppose.

This pool by the park entrance, just off Main Street, was popular with the kids. Given how hot it was, I wished I was fifty years younger. Or not wearing so many clothes.

When these boys saw me taking photos, they yelled "take one of us!" I told them, "You've got to do something interesting." They did. My new camera got a nice shot.

I love the bright Independence Day colors. And the appealing all-American tackiness of the booths.

This booth didn't appeal to me, though. Good god! Why would a kid want to listen to a Bible story at a fair? However, they had a decent audience when I walked by.

Kudos to this woman on her Fourth of July color coordinated outfit. Including accessories. She needs to get her guy matching better, though.

Another religious booth. Must be an Independence, Oregon thing. I didn't stop to get my answer. Figured I already knew what it would be.

Great view of the Willamette River.

I didn't realize so many things could be deep-fried until my hungry, but health-conscious, mind studied the menus on the food booths.

Starting at one end of the food area, I walked all the way to the end, and back again -- pondering the chances of not immediately suffering a cholesterol/fat-fueled heart attack if I ate what was being purveyed.

Ended up with a tasty strawberry shortcake. Which featured Oregon strawberries, the best in the world.

Looking safe and stylish on my Burgman 650 scooter

Three weeks after my first three days on my Suzuki Burgman 650 maxi-scooter, I've still got plenty of smiles on my two-wheeled motoring face.

With plenty of warm and dry weather here in western Oregon (pretty typical for June-September), I've been riding as often as possible. A big part of my scootering enjoyment, aside from the hugely lovable Burgman, has been my choice of riding gear.

I want to be safe on my scooter. I also want to be comfortable. And, naturally, stylish. I feel like I'm batting three for three with the gear I bought prior to picking up the Burgman.

This was a personal decision -- every motorcyclist/scooterer has a unique vibe they want to present to the world, and themselves -- but maybe my choices will be of interest to those facing a similar gear selection decision.

Here I am in my riding glory, prepared to hop on my 2009 Burgman 650 Executive, which now has close to 300 miles on it.

From head to toe, I'm outfited in...

(1) Arai Corsair-V full face helmet. These are absurdly expensive. But I got $200 in gear purchase credit when I bought the scooter, and a 10% discount on Cycle Country purchases because I also bought a maintenance contract (Burgman service reportedly is spendy).

And it turned out that this was by far the most comfortable helmet I tried on. I'd ordered a Shoei flip-face helmet. However, after wearing it around the house for just ten minutes, my forehead had a red-spotted pressure point.

I took the Shoei back, and tried on a bunch of other helmets. Didn't feel good in any of them. Then the sales guy reached up to a top shelf, took down a helmet, and said, "Here, try this." I did.

And replied, "Wow, this feels great. First helmet that had even pressure all around my head." (My powerful brain apparently presses out my forehead, because most helmets constricted me front to back.)

Then I asked the price. And said even louder, "Wow!"

The salesman told me, "That's why I show people the Arai last." Meaning, when you can't find a helmet that fits, and the Arai does, you're more willing to fork out the big bucks.

Anyway, I've been happy with the Corsair-V. Great vision, lightweight, nice ventilation, never too hot or too cool, doesn't fog up. It's a Japanese technological marvel, like my scooter.

(3) Olympia Moto Sports GT Air All Seasons Transition jacket and Airglide 2 Over Pant. I did a lot of online jacket research before picking this one. No regrets.

When I took my Team Oregon motorcycle safety training class last month, at the first session the instructor picked up a snazzy looking jacket and said, "This is what I wear."

Cool, I thought -- the exact Olympia Moto Sports gear that I'd recently purchased. Even the same neon yellow/pewter color scheme. I like the looks of both the jacket and pants, plus how they feel. Good armor protection that isn't too obtrusive.

When I picked up my scooter, the temperature was in the low 60s. Today, I was riding in the low 90s. The jacket and pants are comfortable in pretty much every condition, what with the venting possibilities and the insulated waterproof liners that can be zipped in (I've removed them for summer, obviously).

(4) Icon Pursuit gloves. I like the curved shape to the gloves, and the knuckle protection. They're soft and comfortable. Probably I'll need cool weather gloves eventually, but for now these Icons are fine.

(5) Klim Transition boots. Cycle Country had just started carrying these Goretex boots, which look like hiking shoes (and might well be). They aren't the traditional black leather boots, and I'm glad about that. I'm willing to trade some ankle protection for a scooterish vibe.

Plus, the yellow laces and highlights on the boots match my jacket's neon yellow almost perfectly. Sweet. The Harley guys in their black leather who sit outside of Starbucks won't think much of my boot and other gear choices, of course. As if I care.

One of the great things about the Burgman 650 is that it has a large storage compartment under the seat. I can put my riding pants, jacket, gloves, and helmet in there, with a bit of room to spare.

Frequently, though, I'll leave on the over pants if I'm going into a coffee house, to my Tai Chi class, into a store, or such. The pants look good, and speak this is a biker dude to those in the riding gear know.

However, sometimes I take the pants off when I park the scooter-- hoping that I've remembered to leave my shorts on before I left the house. The Airglide 2 pants have velcro fasteners at the bottom plus a zipper that runs most of the way up the leg.

I can either step out of the pants while leaving my boots on, or take the boots off and remove the pants without fussing with the velcro and zippers.

Either way, once all my riding gear is off and stored under the seat, I'm looking stylishly dressed (by casual Oregon standards), and can comfortably head anywhere.

Recently I went to a waterfront festival dressed like this, except I brought along some sandals in the back pack that I almost always carry on a scooter ride (usually under the seat, taking it with me when I stop).

I took off the boots, put on the sandals, and carried the boots with me in the back pack -- since they wouldn't fit under the seat along with all the other gear.

System worked fine. Much better than having to lock a helmet and jacket to a motorcycle, or carry your gear with you -- as I see some motorcyclists doing.