HinesSight

"In the Heights" shows joy of belonging to a community

Today I praised the In the Heights movie to someone who hadn't heard of it.

They pulled out their phone and told me the film's Rotten Tomatoes ratings: 96% positive for critics, 95% positive for viewers.

I said, "I'm surprised it wasn't 100%." 

In the Heights is that good.

My wife and I watched it at home via our HBO Max subscription. It's showing at Regal Willamette Town Center and Regal Santiam here in Salem, plus the Independence Theater.

It looked and sounded fine on our TV. I'm sure it would look and sound even better on a really big screen.

But be warned.

It's a musical. Some people, mostly men I suspect, have an aversion to musicals. However, In the Heights isn't a traditional musical, assuming that word -- traditional -- has any meaning these days.

It's a musical in the style of Hamilton. Which isn't surprising, since Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote the music and lyrics for a Broadway production of In the Heights before he created Hamilton.

So the basic rhythms are rap, hip-hop, and Latin. The movie is set in the largely Dominican community of Washington Heights in New York City. 

I loved the sense of community that permeates the entire movie.

Which, by the way, doesn't have any bad guys/gals. No evil-doers. Nobody to boo.

It's that rare movie where 100% of the characters are positive people, all trying to do their best in a world that puts up barriers to them because of their heritage and circumstances.

Since I'm so used to movies that feature the main characters overcoming the malevolent actions of others, it took a while for me to settle in to watching In the Heights without the expectation of "something bad is about to happen."

Nothing does. 

Sure, there are problems people face. That comes with being human. The only tension in the movie arises from wondering how the main characters will deal with their problems.

Since it's a musical, problem-solving involves a lot of singing and dancing. And since it's a Latino-themed movie, often the singing and dancing has a salsa-like flavor.

I live on ten acres in rural south Salem. I grew up in a very small California town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. I've never lived anywhere that bears a resemblance to the highly urban Washington Heights. 

But In the Heights made me wish I could experience the warmth, neighborliness, energy, joy, and passion of the diverse community that's the centerpiece of the movie. 

Yes, it's an idealized picture of a few blocks in Washington Heights. Everybody gets along. No gangs. No trash. No violence. No police. No traffic jams. 

A summer power outage during a really hot spell is the worst thing that besets the community. And it doesn't take long before people are back to dancing and singing their way through this challenge. 

What kept going through my mind as I watched In the Heights is what a city like Salem (Oregon), where I live, misses by having a semi-small-town feel throughout most of the urban area. We do have a downtown.

However, there's no singing and dancing in the streets, aside from a few special occasions each year. Mostly our sidewalks are nearly empty. If someone started playing salsa music and invited passers-by to dance along, there'd be few takers almost everywhere in Salem.

Again, I realize that In the Heights isn't a depiction of real life. Still, the sense of community among the mostly Latino population felt decidedly genuine. This isn't something that can be packaged, sadly. 

It's a natural result of people living in close proximity to each other who share a cultural heritage that encourages openness, communal eating and drinking, celebrating joys and supporting each other in sorrows.

An NPR interview with Lin-Manuel Miranda and screenwriter Quiara Alegría Hudes ends this way:

I want to finally ask about the timing of this movie because it's going to be among the first wave of summer films to open in theaters as the pandemic is slowly winding down. How do you think that timing might shape how people take in this story?

Miranda: I think it's enormously poignant. We filmed this in the summer of 2019 before the pandemic hit. And I know when I see a picture of two people standing close together, I've been marked by this — "Are they OK? Are they vaxxed? Is this all right?"

And this movie is such a love letter to the power of being in community with each other, of being out on the curb, of hugging, of dancing together. It is such a reminder of the power of that. I'm really hopeful that it's giving folks a reminder of how we used to be and how we can hopefully one day be again.

How to get voice recognition working on LG TV

I'm enjoying our new LG television, which we got about two weeks ago. So far there's only been one glitch, and one annoyance.

The glitch was the voice recognition button on the remote for our OLED55C1PUB model stopping working, after it functioned fine initially. 

I kept getting the error message, "A temporary issue has occurred while attempting to connect to the server. Please try again later. (200)" But after later arrived, the voice recognition button still didn't work. 

A phone call to LG customer support led to a solution, though it took quite a while (three transfers) before I finally was able to talk to someone who deals with LG televisions. Not exactly the greatest support phone system.

After initially being told that it might be necessary to reset the remote, something I didn't want to do because it was difficult to pair the remote with our DirecTV system, I was given an easier procedure.

(1) Unplug the TV.
(2) Press the power button on the lower front center of the TV for 5 seconds.
(3) Plug in the TV.

Gee, I wonder why I couldn't think of that. So obvious... (not!)

That did the trick. Since, voice recognition has worked fine. 

By the way, it helps the customer support person if you have the correct model number for your TV The receipt we got from Video Only made a "1" look a lot like an "I," so I kept saying OLED55CI (as in eye) instead of OLED55C1 (as in one).

Unable to find our model, the support person eventually told me to press the mute button three times, which brings up a screen that has the model number and other useful info about the TV. Again, who knew?

The annoyance is how ads periodically appear on our LG TV. Not ads from a sponsor of a television program. Ads coming from businesses that must pay LG for the right to annoy people who just paid $1,500 for a new TV and now are forced to endure ads.

I poked around in Settings for a while tonight and may have found a way to turn off ads. I'll update this post if that approach worked. If it doesn't, I'll phone LG support and complain about ads appearing on our TV.

Californians are one reason Oregon lumber costs so much

Having moved to Oregon from California 48 years ago, the statute of limitations, non-native variety, seems to have absolved me of criticism for where I came from before living in what obviously is the best state in the nation.

So now when I hear that those damn Californians are to blame for some Oregon problem, I feel totally comfortable chiming in with criticism of those misguided neighbors to our south.

Today Laurel, my wife, and I headed off to Parr Lumber in Salem to check out samples of composite decking from Trex and TimberTech. 

Our large cedar deck needs work, which all wood decks do. As someone knowledgeable about decks recently told me, "Wood decks look great after you stain them. For about six months." 

Having stained our deck every few years since we bought our house in 1990, I agree with that sentiment.

The last time I stained it was in the fall of 2017, and it definitely is looking poorly. That's one reason Laurel and I are looking into the cost of replacing the deck with composite boards and metal/wire railings.

While Laurel was comparing color samples of composite decking material, I talked with a Parr Lumber guy about various subjects, including why the cost of lumber has increased so much. 

I told him that I was clueless about this happening, not having needed to buy any boards or plywood for quite a while, until I started seeing Facebook posts similar to this:

The one I remember showed a stack of plywood and said, "Just found a dozen sheets of plywood in my garage. Willing to trade for a 2020 Ford F-150 pickup."

I thought that was kind of a stupid joke until a friend said that they'd bought a few boards to make some steps for their yard, and it cost them $70.

Anyway, the Parr Lumber guy had a few interesting observations.

He said that California builders are driving to Oregon and bidding up the price of lumber here, then taking their priceless (almost) cargo down south where million dollar homes are in the moderate price range.

A bit of Googling I did couldn't confirm this, but it seems entirely reasonable to me.

The guy added that whereas local mills used to supply most of the lumber sold in Oregon, now it's more difficult to buy from them, since so much of their product is going out of state to people willing to pay a high price.

I said that the Trex web site says composite deck boards cost more than wood boards, but have various advantages over wood. I asked if this was still true, or if wood was more expensive than composite.

He gave me a Parr Lumber Decking Price sheet.

It shows 1 x 6 cedar decking at $4.43 per foot. The top of the line Trex Transcend 1 x 6 composite decking is $4.29 per foot. So it does appear that wood and composite are now roughly equal in cost.

Baseball as metaphor for politics: why OSU's loss bothers me

Today the Oregon State baseball team failed to win a regional series in the NCAA tournament.

After leading 5-0 in the deciding game against Dallas Baptist, Dallas Baptist scored eight unanswered runs and won 8-5.

After watching the loss on ESPN, I found myself more disturbed than seemed reasonable. After all, it was just a baseball game.

But sometimes I find deep philosophical meanings in sports events, as evidenced by "Deep thoughts about Arkansas' missed pop-up that cost a World Series championship."

In this case, it was the first pitch thrown by OSU reliever Joey Mundt in the seventh inning that cost the Beavers a trip to the NCAA Super Regionals, one step closer to the College World Series.

That pitch came with the bases loaded. Dallas Baptist's Andrew Benefield hit a grand slam home run. Since Dallas Baptist had scored two runs in the previous inning, that changed a 5-2 OSU lead into a 6-5 deficit.

And that, as the saying goes, was the ball game. One misplaced pitch. One good swing. Game over for Oregon State, since they didn't score again while Dallas Baptist added on another two runs.

On a post-game walk around our neighborhood I had a thought about why the OSU loss bothered me so much. It wasn't so much the failure to win, but what led up to the loss. 

The parallels with the troubles Democrats are having in Congress leapt out at me as I walked along.

Oregon State lost its first tournament game. After Trump was elected, Democrats were powerless in Washington D.C. until they took back the House in 2018.

Oregon State then won three games in a row in the regional tournament. In 2020 Democrats won the presidency, narrowly held onto the House, and eked out a 50-50 tie in the Senate after two surprising wins in Georgia Senate races that went to a run-off election.

It looked like Oregon States was going to win after taking a 5-0 lead into the sixth inning. Progressives like me were looking forward to Democrats passing important voting rights, infrastructure, climate change, and other legislation with their 51-50 lead in the Senate (Vice-President Harris breaks 50-50 tie votes.)

All Oregon State had to do was preserve its lead and they'd make it into the Super Regional. All Senate Democrats had to do was eliminate the filibuster on a 51-50 vote and they'd be able to pass groundbreaking legislation that would markedly help the country and world.

Oregon State's hopes were dashed by one grand slam home run swing. Last weekend Joe Manchin (D, West Virginia) dashed most of Democrats' legislative hopes when he said he'd never vote to abolish or weaken the filibuster and opposed the For the People voting rights act.

To build on these parallels, it looked to me like the Oregon State pitchers failed to be aggressive and confident as they tried to to preserve the OSU lead. 

Walks were common, as was getting behind in pitch counts. The game was there for Oregon State to win, but Dallas Baptist kept taking advantage of OSU mistakes until the grand slam put them ahead for good.

Likewise, Republicans are going all out to pass voter suppression laws in states they control, while Democrats are frittering away what likely is their only opportunity to get major legislation through Congress before the GOP likely takes back control of the House, and perhaps the Senate also, in 2022.

It wasn't so much that Oregon State lost that bothered me so much. It was the fact that the game was so winnable, yet OSU failed to win it.

As one of the commentators said, coaches don't get upset when their pitcher allows a batter to get a hit. That's going to happen. What drives them crazy is when walks put batters on base without needing to get a hit.

In the same vein, I don't expect Democrats to win every vote in Congress. What irks me is Democrats like Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema essentially giving Republicans wins by balking at doing away with the filibuster that requires 60 votes to pass a bill in a 50-50 Senate.

There's no way ten Republicans are going to support a voting rights act, immigration reform, climate change legislation, or an infrastructure bill paid for by raising taxes on giant corporations. 

So Democrats are akin to a pitcher walking batter after batter until runs are scored without the other team having to get a hit. (This benefitted Oregon State today, but not enough to win the game.)

Nonetheless, both baseball and politics are unpredictable. That's part of what makes them so fun to watch. Just when you think you know what is going to happen, it doesn't. Something else happens.

Democrats may surprise me and succeed in passing major legislation in Biden's first term.

And given the excellent overall play of the Oregon State baseball team this year, I won't be surprised if they make a strong run in the 2022 College World Series tournament. 

Just not this year.

Our new LG TV has artificial intelligence. But I hold the remote.

Jim Ramsey, a long-time friend, deserves a commission from Salem's Video Only store. 

When I told Jim that I'd just bought the newly released Apple TV device that streams Netflix, Amazon Prime, and a whole lot more in 4K, he said, "But now you need a 4K television."

Well, damn. I hadn't thought of that. 

We had a Samsung television that was working fine, though it had started to seem a bit dated. But until we ditched our crappy CenturyLink DSL, the only so-called "broadband" option out here in rural south Salem, for the hugely faster Starlink satellite internet (thank you, Elon Musk!), we didn't have the internet speed to make 4K streaming an option for us.

So with a Memorial Day sale in progress at Video Only, off my wife and I went yesterday to check out what TVs can do in 2021.

I was clutching a printout from Consumer Reports of the top-rated 55 inch televisions that had an LG model rated #2, just one point behind a more expensive Sony model. 

Pleasingly, the guy we talked to at Video Only -- Lucas Weimer, the Sales Manager -- told us he owned that LG television and liked it a lot.

Even better, he said that the Consumer Reports ratings were from 2020 and the 2021 LG televisions are even better. Plus, if we weren't going to mount it on a wall, we could save several hundred dollars by getting the tabletop model.

It didn't take much for Weimer to sell us on the LG OLED55CIP. It was $1,500, three hundred less than the LG list price and the Amazon price. I liked Weimer's casual, competent, low-key approach to making the sale. 

Of course, we basically were sold on this television once we saw the excellent OLED picture and heard its impressive sound. 

It fit nicely into my Subaru Crosstrek. Once the LG was set up at our home, it was time to put it through its paces. At my age (72), I remember well how simple televisions were for most of my TV-watching life. Which, basically, is my entire life.

You turned it on. You turned it off. You changed the channel. You changed the sound. That was about it.

Oh, except when I was young, growing up in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas, where the only channels came over the air from Fresno or Bakersfield, fuzzily, to change the channel I'd have to climb a ladder and get on our roof to turn the antenna this way and that while my mother yelled through an open window, "looking better, no; go back, that's worse; OK, guess that's the best picture."

So back then my mother served as the human intelligence which led to our black and white TV being (barely) watchable.

Now, our new LG is brimming with artificial intelligence, based on a description of our model on the LG web site and my initial forays into the guide to features that I've been making my way through using the remote control.

For example:

Ooh! Deep-learning algorithms. Now we're talking! 

But I want more than just an artificial intelligence (AI) that automatically adjusts the picture and sound. How about a television that knows me so well, it automatically presents me with what I'll enjoy watching most when I turn it on. 

Such a TV is coming. I just probably won't live to see it. 

Though I've only had a day so far to learn what our new LG television is capable of, it seems clear that increasingly, the line between smart phones, computers, and televisions is blurring. 

Eventually the only difference between them may be the size of the screen. Otherwise, televisions will be as connected to the internet as smart phones and computers, while those devices will have the same entertainment capabilities as televisions.

Regarding the OLED thing, I didn't really know what it was yesterday when we bought the television. I just knew that Consumer Reports had said it was a desirable improvement over LED technology, so I wanted it.

Turns out, from an informative CNET article, that back in late 2019 at least, LG was the only television manufacturer making OLED screens, which stands for Organic Light-Emitting Diodes. 

The LG web site talks trash about those archaic LEDs.

The CNET article says that "infinite contrast" may seem like an overstatement, but actually it isn't.

OLED TV marketing often claims "infinite" contrast ratios, and while that might sound like typical hyperbole, it's one of the extremely rare instances where such claims are actually true. Since OLED can produce a perfect black, emitting no light whatsoever, its contrast ratio (expressed as the brightest white divided by the darkest black) is technically infinite. And contrast ratio is arguably the most important aspect of picture quality.

 

Maskless indoor Tai Chi class today after long Covid layoff

Last week Warren Allen, my Tai Chi instructor, said that today he was going to start having indoor classes again at his Pacific Martial Arts studio on Court Street in downtown Salem.

I was worried, happy, reluctant, and eager. Which is fitting I guess, since Tai Chi is all about blending yin and yang in a harmonious combination of seeming opposites. 

My feelings were natural given how long it had been since I'd been maskless indoors with people other than my wife. About fifteen months, I guess. 

A Voice of America story, "Many Americans Anxious About Returning to 'Normal' After Pandemic" talked about this.

According to a survey by the American Psychological Association, about half of adults are uncomfortable about returning to in-person interactions after the pandemic. Their concerns range from getting COVID-19 to communicating with friends, family and co-workers again.

"Some people will feel paralyzing anxiety about resuming their normal activities after being in a fear mode for more than a year," McBride said. Even when the threat is gone and they've been vaccinated, it is going to take time for them to be comfortable reentering society after the pandemic, she said.

For sure. 

But I figured that going to a Tai Chi class was a great way to begin transitioning into normal post-Covid life. Naturally I trusted that all of my maskless classmates had been vaccinated.

And Warren had said that we wouldn't be doing any "push hands" training for a while requiring person-to-person contact. 

So I felt pretty darn relaxed as I headed up the stairs to the Tai Chi studio above the Court Street Dairy Lunch restaurant, clutching a bag of treats that I'd gotten from Great Harvest to celebrate our return to indoor classes. 

There were just six of us at the kick-off class this afternoon -- which, cosmic coincidence, happened to be the exact number of scones, muffins, and such that I'd bought.

Maybe because we all knew each other so well, it seemed like hardly any time had passed since we'd last done Tai Chi together indoors. (There'd been a few outdoor Riverfront Park classes.)

I'd been doing some Tai Chi every day at home during the pandemic. But that's a lot different from practicing Tai Chi with others. We were a bit rusty, yet not hugely so. I've been Tai Chi'ing since 2004, seventeen years, so the forms are embedded in my mind quite well now.

Talking with my classmates felt wonderfully normal. Covid has isolated us. I'm ready to start being more social again, so long as I'm socializing with other vaccinated people. 

Being retired, and living in a rural area, I'd fallen into a basic habitual pattern of daily activities.

Wake up; eat breakfast; read and meditate; take shower; exercise (Tai Chi, resistance band "weight training"); lunch; chores; dog walk; more stretches and exercising while watching political program on TV; dinner; write blog post; bath; watch entertaining TV; sleep.

Most days weren't exactly this way, of course.

However, during the Covid times I'd become accustomed to a life rhythm that didn't involve many face-to-face interactions with other people. While it wasn't like solitary confinement, it also wasn't unlike it -- if my wife and dog are included in "solitary."

This helps explain why I had some anxiety about our indoor Tai Chi classes starting again. New rhythm, though with familiar people. Pleasingly, I enjoyed the first Tai Chi class so much, Covid anxiety has vanished from my mind.

I'll still be wearing a mask when I go grocery shopping tomorrow. But likely even that will seem like something that is coming to an end. Or at least, the beginning of the end.

(I wanted to include a Tai Chi photo in this post, yet forgot to take one of my classmates today. So here's a screenshot from a video of me doing the Tai Chi sword form on our deck back in 2008 when I was so much younger. And just as gray.)

DirecTV wireless setup on Genie DVR overly confusing

It's been a while since I've bashed AT&T's DirecTV.

This doesn't mean that I like the crappy satellite television service any more than I did before, just that nothing additional that I detest about DirecTV has come to mind.

My previous frustrations still hold true. Local channels disappear regularly. The user interface sucks. DirecTV still doesn't carry the PAC-12 Networks. 

Today I was able to add a fresh irritation: how astoundingly difficult it was to get back the internet connection on our Genie HR44 receiver. 

I don't even know why we need an internet connection, since so far as I can tell, we've never used it. But it bugged me to see oft-repeated error messages pop up about the lack of an internet connection.

About three months ago we ditched our horribly slow CenturyLink DSL for much faster Starlink satellite broadband. (I'm a Starlink beta tester.) So that explains why our DirecTV receiver didn't have an internet connection.

I figured it would be simple to click on Menu, then Settings. And it was.

What happened after that was the frustrating part. No matter whether I clicked on a Reconnect option, or on the Internet Setup option, I couldn't find how to select our new Starlink wi-fi. 

Well, I did see it once as I went around and around the confusing menu options, but couldn't locate it again.

DirecTV kept checking for an internet connection, not surprisingly couldn't find one, and then told me to check with my internet provider about the lack of a connection.

I kept thinking, "It shouldn't be anywhere near this damn difficult." After all, I'm knowledgeable about setting up wi-fi networks. I have no problem getting my computer, iPhone, and iPad on Starlink. 

But DirecTV had a deeply unintuitive approach to reconnecting to the internet.

Which fits with the poorly designed menu system our receiver has generally, something I wrote about in "July 2018 DirecTV update changes user interface from bad to horrible."

Eventually I gave up and decided to call DirecTV support. That also turned out to be much more difficult than it should have been.

A support phone number isn't easy to find on the DirecTV web site. Eventually I found a number to call. That turned out to be a general AT&T support number.

I could barely understand the first person who answered my call. Eventually I conveyed that I had a DirecTV internet problem, not a different kind of AT&T problem. That led me to being transferred to someone else who still wasn't a DirecTV support person.

After being transferred a second time, I finally got someone who handled DirecTV internet problems. This time I ended up on a screen that showed an Ethernet connection, which I'd remembered encountering before. 

The person I was talking with said, "Yes, you should be using an Ethernet cable." I told him that we'd never used one before. Then I noticed the option to set up a wireless connection, which I'd been looking for all that time.

After that, it didn't take long to get Starlink set up to be the wi-fi network for DirecTV. As I was doing this, I had to listen to the support person tell me some "great news." 

That turned out to be an offer for AT&T to become the entity that takes care of all our computers, laptops, tablets, and such for an extra $12 or so a month. It took me a nanosecond to say, "No thanks."

The last thing I want is to have anything more to do with AT&T, since they've botched their ownership of DirecTV.

To mask or not to mask is a big Salem question

We're in an awkward stage of the Covid pandemic. Things are getting better fast, yet Covid cases, deaths, and hospitalizations are still quite high in Oregon. 

This is part of the Oregon Health Authority report that was emailed to me today.

Oregon Health Authority’s  COVID-19 Weekly Report, released today, shows decreases in daily cases and increases in hospitalizations and deaths from the previous week. 

-- OHA reported 4,108 new daily cases of COVID-19 during the week of Monday, May 10, through Sunday, May 16. That represents a 16% decrease from the previous week. 

-- New COVID-19 related hospitalizations rose to 265, up from 245 last week. 

-- Reported COVID-19 related deaths rose to 57, up from 31 last week — the highest weekly death toll in 10 weeks. 

So it's difficult to know how seriously we still need to observe public health measures like wearing a mask indoors and physically distancing ourselves from other people.

At first the CDC and Governor Brown were vague about how, exactly, people should behave given the effectiveness of vaccines and the low probability that vaccinated people could transmit Covid if they got a breakthrough (of the vaccine) infection.

Brown now is saying that it's OK not to wear a mask indoors if everyone else has been vaccinated. Problem is, businesses don't want to ask their patrons if they're vaccinated, and many people would lie about this regardless.

Probably most businesses are going to stick with requiring masks of everybody who enters their premises. This was the case last Monday when I did my weekly grocery shopping at Trader Joe's, Fred Meyer, and LifeSource Natural Foods.

The only store where I noticed several maskless people was Fred Meyer. Also, disturbingly, one young guy at the south Salem Walgreens when I went in there on Sunday. Sure seems like a pharmacy should be strict about customers wearing masks.

Fred Meyer still had their usual "No Mask No Entry" sign by the front doors. But I was behind a customer in the checkout lane who wasn't wearing a mask and seemed to be talking with the clerk about this, though I was too far away to clearly hear their conversation.

At both Walgreens and Fred Meyer I was tempted to say something to the maskless people. However, I figured that if store employees don't want to ask them about why they aren't wearing a mask, I'm not going to do this.

The best advice I've seen comes from Bob Wachter, M.D., chair of the UCSF (University of California at San Francisco) Department of Medicine. He shared this tweet a few days ago.

Makes sense. 

Yet these conditions are easier to assess in a small gathering of friends or family rather than a business. Again, it's very unlikely that Salem businesses are going to check the vaccination status of their customers.

Legally they could do this, and I wish they would. But after the Enchanted Forest theme park attempted to make this their reopening policy, they got a bunch of nasty emails and threats, according to a Salem Reporter story.

The much-loved amusement park located south of Salem had posted on Facebook earlier this week that it would open for the season on Saturday, May 22.  The post (which has since been deleted) said guests would be required to either show proof of vaccination or wear a mask while in the park.

But on Tuesday Susan Vaslev, a member of the Tofte family who’s run the park for nearly 50 years, said in a statement that the park would not be opening because of mask requirements that have been in flux since last week.

“We had hoped to do so this weekend with safety protocols consistent with the most up-to-date guidance from the (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), the Governor, and the state epidemiologist,” the statement, which was also posted to Facebook, said.

“Unfortunately, recent comments and threats have made clear that our community is not in agreement as to how we will interact in public places with regard to mask requirements for those who are vaccinated versus those who are not vaccinated.”

It's deeply disturbing that anti-vaccination/anti-mask people would threaten the staff of Enchanted Forest, one of the most enjoyable places to go in the Salem area with or without a child. 

Likely most of the threats came from conservatives who view asking for proof of vaccination or requiring a mask be worn as taking away their freedom.

Which isn't true, since businesses have a perfect right to limit what their patrons can do, as evidenced by the "No shirt, no shoes, no service" sign that popped up in the 1970s to keep long-haired hippies out.

(The shirtless shoeless ones, at least.)

Look, I'm not going to accost someone who isn't wearing a mask in a store I'm shopping at. Maybe they have a good reason not to wear a mask. Maybe they forgot to put one on, something I did at the Lowe's Garden Center a few months ago.

Likewise, I don't want anyone to give me, or someone else, a bad time because we choose to wear a mask in a place where masks aren't mandatory. 

When flu season hits, I'm leaning toward wearing a mask when I go shopping even if Covid cases have almost disappeared. I don't want to get Covid, and I don't want to get the flu. Putting a mask on is an easy thing to do. 

If it helps keep me and others healthy, I'm going to keep on doing it.

Memo to future self: Why our ten acres captures me

I'm 72. For thirty-one years, since 1990, my wife and I have lived on ten non-easy-care acres in rural south Salem, Oregon.

Well, for the first few years we had five acres.

But when the lot next to us became available, we bought it -- not wanting to run the risk of someone cutting down beautiful large firs and building a house there.

I've been the one in our marriage who has been more eager to move to a house in town as we've gotten older and our property feels increasingly like a pain to maintain.

However... that one word says a lot. Because we're still here. For some good reasons.

Ten days ago I had hernia surgery.

Not being able to do most of my usual exercises and chores for a while, I've been going on an extra one mile nature walk in the early afternoon to supplement my usual two-mile hilly dog walk on a road in the late afternoon. 

Being mildly depressed at the restrictions on what I used to be able to do during the six week surgery recovery period, I was pleasantly surprised at how much better I felt walking on our ten acres.

Nature is a great healer. 

And I feel deeply fortunate to have such beautiful natural surroundings right outside our front door. My post-surgery walking through our property to Spring Lake, a nearby nine-acre community lake, has, at least for now, changed my attitude about wanting to move.

In case staying here at our age, and older (sadly, we won't be getting younger), ever comes to feel like a bad decision to my future self, I took some photos today of how my daily nature walk looks.

Here they are, along with some narration.

My walk starts from our back yard. This old oak, probably well over 200 years old, lost two large limbs in a February ice storm this year. But it's still alive and growing. The oak is a good friend who I'd miss a lot if we ever move.

This path leads to our "other" lot, also known as the Rose lot, because way back when, Mrs. Rose owned it before she sold it to us. 

There's a mix of large firs and medium-sized oaks on the Rose lot. We've left it almost entirely natural, so it has a different feel from the lot our house is on, which gets mowed in places.

In warm sunny weather, like today, these trees feel all friendly. In cold dark winter weather, they can feel quite creepy. I like both sorts of feelings.

Trees have so much character. They all have their own personality. As with the oak in our yard, it's easy for me to feel like they're my friends -- albeit occasionally creepy friends.

The Rose lot trail curves around until it reaches our house lot near Spring Creek. We planted these redwoods maybe five years after we moved here. I look forward to seeing them grow even taller.

Looking up toward our house with some mowed areas. 

The trail heads down a slope toward Spring Creek. Laurel, my wife, has put in stepping stones for when the trail is wet and slippery. 

There's a little creek somewhere under all the ferns and other vegetation. It runs strong in the winter. Now, it's just a trickle, given how record-breaking dry spring has been in northwest Oregon.

We planted redwoods on the other side of the creek also. 

The trail on our property leads to one of the community trails on easements that are on most of the lots here in Spring Lake Estates. This is called the Evergreen trail, for an obvious reason.

Gnarly bent old trees appeal more and more to me as I become increasingly gnarly, bent, and old. This giant fir on our property close to the easement never fails to awe me. 

The variety of greens on the Evergreen trail are spectacular. Deciduous vegetation blends with evergreen vegetation in a multitude of ways.

Approaching the lake, the trail passes between some trees that feel like sentinels to me.

Spring Lake appears after the trail wends its way out of the woods. There's something calming about a calm lake, not surprisingly.

Someone planted irises near the edge of the trail that circles Spring Lake.

The lake looks different every time I walk around it. Also, the same.

A gnarly old damaged oak that's still oak'ing along. Naturally, I love it.

Water lilies, like lotuses, have that rooted in mud with flowers in the sun vibe. One of the more philosophical flowers.

I like to see young people fooling around on the dock, having a good time. Wholesome fun, to complement their unwholesome fun at other times and places.

I grew up in Three Rivers, California, which featured the Kaweah River running through it, fed by cold snow melt from the Sierra Nevadas near Sequoia National Park. So playing around in water was a big part of my youth. It's nice to see young'uns doing the same thing.

Walking around the lake back to the Evergreen Trail reveals a different perspective on Spring Lake. I believe the  bright dot in the boat is an inflatable pink flamingo, but maybe this was just a flashback from my LSD days in college.

There's a large collection of wild rose on our house lot. 

Speaking of our house, as I neared our home Laurel was working on the second row of three wood racks we got to hold a copious amount of oak logs that were split for us by workers who cleaned up tree damage near our house from the ice storm.

We also presciently had a large oak cut down in the dog yard behind Laurel, as it had branches overhanging our roof and side deck. There's a good chance some or all of it would have fallen on our house during the ice storm, so we felt good cutting it down, though it always hurts some to kill a tree.

Anyway, this was my walk today. Which will be my walk tomorrow, and the day after. The older I get, the more I appreciate the nature that surrounds us.

And by us, I don't mean just me and my wife. I mean everybody. We're just fortunate to be surrounded by more of nature than most people have nearby. 

That's a big reason -- really the only reason -- why I won't be surprised if Laurel and I are still living here when we're much older than we are now. I used to wonder why old folks were so reluctant to leave their difficult-to-maintain homes.

The walk I went on today offers up a big reason why.

No mask, no problem -- only if you're vaccinated

Obviously there's a lot to like in today's CDC guidance that fully vaccinated people don't have to wear a mask or socially distance both indoors and outdoors, with some exceptions.

We're tired of Covid restrictions. We want life to get back to normal. We're weary of being afraid of coming down with COVID-19 just because of breathing some infected air.

Governor Kate Brown wasted no time in saying that Oregon will follow the CDC recommendations. 

Today the CDC issued new guidance for lifting mask and social distancing requirements for fully-vaccinated individuals. It is yet another sign that, if we all continue to do our part, the pandemic is coming closer to an end.

Starting today, Oregon will be following this guidance, which only applies to fully-vaccinated individuals. That means Oregonians who are fully-vaccinated no longer need to wear masks or social distance in most public spaces.

Sounds good. But a Willamette Week tweet contains a caveat.

Well, to adapt the (somewhat erroneous) "Houston, we have a problem," Salem, we're going to have a problem. 

Lots of people here don't want to be vaccinated, resist wearing a mask in indoor public places, and bristle at being told what to do Covid-wise.

So I sympathize with stores, restaurants, and other businesses who try to make sure that everyone who enters their establishment without a mask has been vaccinated. 

If they simply ask people at the door, "Are you fully vaccinated, with two weeks having passed since your last shot?," there's no way to tell whether someone is being truthful.

If they ask for a completed vaccination card, many people won't have it with them. Or they could brandish one of the fake cards that are available online.

If they decide it's too much trouble to check their patrons' vaccination status, this undermines the ability of fully vaccinated people to not wear a mask.

Why? Because no vaccine is 100% effective at stopping a Covid infection.

When vaccinated people are together, the risk of coming down with COVID-19 is minimal. But throw in a bunch of unvaccinated people, and the risk rises. (Though perhaps to less than 1%.)

Right now I'm going to be reluctant to go maskless in a store.

I'd rather go through the small discomfort of wearing a mask than increase my chance of getting sick. When most people in the Salem area are fully vaccinated, upwards of 70% ideally, I might change my mind.

I'd feel fine going maskless in a store if I could be sure that all the other customers also were vaccinated.

But unless Oregon mandates some sort of foolproof vaccination passport, a low probability, I'd rather wear a mask and be safe, than not wear one and be (hugely) sorry I got COVID-19.

The frustrating thing is how much easier it would be if everyone would just get a damn Covid shot. They're safe, effective, and widely available now. No waiting. No cost. 

Yet here in Salem we've got a thriving community of irresponsible people who ignore Covid public health measures and wrongly feel that they have a right to put others at risk by not wearing a mask or socially distancing.

The Peoples Church has the dubious distinction of having the largest workplace outbreak in Oregon, 87 cases so far. Yet the pastor vows to keep on with packed, maskless, in-person services. 

Yay, Salem! We're #1 in COVID-19 religious idiocy.