HinesSight

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.

My mother lives on in the back of my books

OK, let me make this clear right off the bat.

Notwithstanding the title of this blog post, I don't believe my mother exists as an ethereal presence in my books -- even though she also was a huge book lover, so if she had a choice of an afterlife, this notion would have appealed to her.

My mother has been dead and gone since 1985. However, in a very real sense she does indeed live on in the back of my books. I'll explain.

Carolyn Lewis Hines

My mother was fond of writing notes in the back of books. After she died, most of her books were donated to the Three Rivers, California library. (She lived in Three Rivers for the last thirty years of her life, loving the view of the Sierra Nevada mountains from the large picture windows in our house.)

This is a photo of the back page from one of the few books of hers that I kept for myself, P.D. Ouspensky's "The Fourth Way." My mother didn't believe in God, but she was a spiritual seeker of sorts, at least in the sense of pursuing self-development.

She wrote the notes in pencil, a charming reflection of a simpler time. Her name and "1957" is written in the front of the book, so that must have been when she bought it.

For a long time I used small post-it notes to mark noteworthy pages in non-fiction books, after post-it notes were invented, naturally. I'd also use a pen to underline significant passages.

When highlighters came along, I switched to those and dumped the pen. It wasn't until I was in my forties, and maybe even older, that I started writing notes in the back of my books.

Strangely, it didn't dawn on me right away that this was something my mother had done. The idea just popped into my head one day to pen in a page number and the topic on that page that I viewed as particularly interesting.

If other pages discussed the same topic, I'd add in those page numbers also. Basically I was fashioning my own personal index as I made my way through a book.

Here's an example from a book I've read several times, "Why Buddhism is True" by Robert Wright. (Great book, by the way.) I now use a highlighter to further emphasize back-of-the- book entries I've penned in, along with arrows, underlining, and circles.

What I'm getting at on this Mother's Day 2021 is how our parents live on within us even when we're not consciously thinking about them. 

I don't feel like I need to think about my mother today -- though I am, right now -- because she is such an intimate part of me, there's never any real separation between us.

Carolyn Hines is one half of my genetic heritage. My father, the man she divorced when I was a young child, is the other half.

But since I grew up with my mother, not my jerk of a father who I only saw in person for one hour in my entire life, her influence on me extends beyond the 50% or so of personality traits that is generally viewed as being inherited, or genetically determined.

Of course, I didn't inherit a specific inclination to write notes in the back of books. We humans don't have a whole lot of instincts. Compared to other animals most of of our behavior is learned, culturally determined. 

So the part of me that is my mother often isn't easy to identify. I don't knock on wood like she did so frequently. I've never stuttered like she did. 

It's more like many of my natural tendencies are hers.

Love of reading. Intellectualism. Admiration of science. Compulsion to write. Political junkie (albeit on the opposite side of the conservative spectrum she favored).

There's something beautiful about realizing that even though my mother is no longer physically alive, she lives on as me in a very real sense. I don't share her specific thoughts and emotions, but to a large extent I share her personality and interests. 

Same goes for my father, though to a lesser degree, since his contribution to my psyche is almost entirely genetic, not experiential. 

I look back at that one hour I spent with him in a Boston hotel room and wonder how that time could have been spent much more intimately than by me thumbing through General Electric manuals. Regret rises up within me when I think, "I blew that one hour with my father."

However, when I see how I've naturally taken up my mother's habit of making notes in the back of books, I realize that there's countless other things I do and am that flow from my mother, and yes, father, in a way that is inseparable from my very being.

I am them. They are me. We are still together. There's no way we can ever be apart. 

My robotic hernia surgery goes well. Behold one incision.

At the age of 72, I'm no longer an adult surgery virgin. 

Up until today my only surgery was a tonsillectomy that was so long ago, I had to say "I don't know" when asked about the date of previous surgeries. Probably I was four or five.

All I remember about it was ether being poured on some sort of cloth, then put over my nose and mouth. 

But now I have a blog! (three, in fact) So I can go beyond the usual verbal "let me tell you about my surgery" -- a sure-fire conversation stopper, especially if an old guy is talking to a younger person.

I can write about my surgery. And share a photo of one of my three laparoscopic incisions. 

Not too gross, right? And by viewing it in a blog post, you're saved from me pulling up my shirt and making you look at it in person.

I'm a bit leery of being too enthusiastic about how little pain I feel about seven hours after the operation, since the anesthesiologist told me he puts some painkillers in the anesthetic "cocktail."

But so far I haven't even felt the need to take a Tylenol, much less one of the Hydrocod-Acetamin pills I was prescribed on an "as needed" basis.

The right side of my abdomen is sore -- which isn't surprising, since my large inguinal (groin) hernia was on that side.

My Salem Health surgeon, Dr. Hsinchen Lin, used robots to aid in the laparoscopic procedure. I've read that robot-assisted surgery has some advantages over plain old laparoscopy. Hopefully one of those benefits is less post-surgery pain.

The most stressful part of the surgery was waiting for it to start. 

My wife and I arrived right on time for the 11:30 am check-in at Salem Hospital. And it didn't take long for me to be ushered into the surgery prep room, where I got to put on the charming backless gown, get my vital signs checked, have an IV started, and chat with several friendly nurses.

Since my surgery was scheduled for 1:30 pm, I optimistically thought that I'd be home before too long.

That happy thought lasted until around 1:45 pm, when I was told that due to the previous surgery taking longer than expected, mine wouldn't start for another hour. This was the toughest part, since I already was getting tired of the decidedly non-ergonomic hospital bed I was on.

Way too soft. No back support. My sciatica-prone right leg wasn't having a good time. 

What saved me was a nurse disconnecting the IV tube in my left arm so I could use the restroom conveniently located right next door to the room I was in.

That solved a couple of problems.

I got out of the damn hospital bed and could stretch my legs. And since I have to use an intermittent catheter to pee, my bladder having gone on strike four years ago, I didn't need to worry about going through a semi-lengthy urinating process right after the surgery.

And the nurse told me that surgeons want the bladder as empty as possible prior to surgery, given the  proximity of the bladder to the hernia location.

(The anesthesiologist had pointed out what I already suspected. Just as when you go to sleep, the body's peeing and pooping functions are basically put on hold during anesthesia.)

Anyway, it feels good to have the surgery done with. It'll take six weeks to get back to 80% normalcy, Dr. Lin said.

But I'll be able to lift no more than 10 pounds between now and then, so light exercising will be possible, along with my usual two-mile hilly dog walk in the late afternoon after a few days of shorter walks.

I really appreciated how smoothly the Salem Hospital surgery process went, leaving aside the unavoidable delay in my surgery time. The nurses made me feel well-cared for. My wife and I had a very enjoyable conversation with the first RN who looked after me.

Having a surgery is stressful. Being able to chat about subjects totally unrelated to what I was about to go through helped a lot to keep my mind from obsessing about what was to come. 

Time will tell if I continue to have minimal post-surgery pain.

Regardless, I'm happy that things went as well as they did. Dr. Lin had said that I might need four incisions, given how large my hernia was, so I feel fortunate that I ended up with three, her original prognosis.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention a tip that might benefit others who need hernia surgery. About ten days before my surgery I had a rare bout of constipation, perhaps caused by stress, but maybe not. I'm a vegetarian, so constipation hasn't been a problem for me.

At any rate, I found that MiraLax, a mild stool softener, ended up working best for me. It takes several days to work, so I was glad that I'd started taking it before the surgery. Straining to have a bowel movement is a post-hernia surgery no-no, which is why a stool softener was included in my discharge instructions. (Heavy duty pain medications cause constipation.)

But since they take a while to do their thing -- softening the stool -- to me it makes sense for someone scheduled for a hernia surgery to start taking MiraLax prior to the surgery. It comes in powder form that's dissolved in liquid, so less than the recommended amount can be taken.

Yesterday I was told that if I use the Hydrocodone I was prescribed, I should increase the amount of MiraLax I'd been taking. But since I don't need that pain reliever, I'm sticking with the usual MiraLax dosage.

Vote for these Salem-Keizer school board candidates

Are you tired of extremist politics? I sure am. We've become a bitterly divided country.

That's bad enough at the national level, but when politics becomes the focus of a school board election, students are the ones who suffer from adults marching to the beat of their personal political drummer.

Unfortunately, Oregon Right to Life and other groups on the far right side of the political spectrum have set out to control the Salem-Keizer school board.

They're backing a slate of candidates in the May 2021 election who want to use the school board to push their extreme political agenda.

Fortunately, there's another slate of highly qualified candidates with broad community support. Here they are. Be sure to vote for them when your ballot arrives in a few days.

Cottingham, Ortiz, Avila, and Pressey are endorsed by the Community for Salem-Keizer Schools. This is how the group describes themselves.

Community for Salem-Keizer Schools PAC is a coalition of education advocates, racial justice organizations, parents, educators, students, labor leaders, and community leaders committed to helping all children in our community succeed.

They make some great points on their web site.

Unfortunately, the Salem-Keizer School Board is dominated by very conservative politicians who represent a narrow ideological perspective. This small faction controls so much of what happens in our schools.

We can do better. Our school board can reflect the diversity of our community. We can bring back the community’s voice to board meetings.

To learn more about the candidates pictured above, check out their backgrounds on Community for Salem-Keizer Schools.

Worst Academy Awards show ever

Every year I look forward to the Academy Awards show. I should have reversed direction this year and looked backward to previous shows that were actually entertaining. 

This was the first time I fast-forwarded through much of the interminable three-plus hours, because I wanted the damn thing to end so I could do something enjoyable.

Whoever came up with the atrociously bad concept for the 2021 Academy Awards should be drummed out of Hollywood forever. 

It wouldn't take me long to Google who that person (or people) was. But I found the show so uninteresting, I can't summon up the energy to learn who produced this yawner.

It's difficult for me to decide what was the worst thing about the show, so I'll just list some of the things that turned me off in no particular order. 

-- No production numbers. The nominated songs just got a few seconds of play rather than a full production featuring the singer of them. 

-- Few clips from the films. It was incredibly stupid to not show, say, the costumes that led to a Costume Design nomination, instead having the camera linger on the nominee while the presenter talked about them. Hey, how about showing clips from the movies?

-- More ranting about no clips. Ditto with makeup. Ditto with sound editing. Ditto with almost every award aside from Best Picture, Best Animated Feature, and maybe a few others. Again, it was crazy to have the presenter talk about the sound nominees rather than letting us hear what the movie sounded like.

-- Lack of humor. With no host possessing comedic talent, there were no moments that even elicited a smile from me, much less a laugh.

-- Unlimited acceptance speech time. In the past, the best part about most acceptance speeches was hearing the music start playing that signaled "stop talking." This year, there seemed to be no limit to the speeches, so the boredom went on... and on... and on.

-- People of color got bad deal. Lots of BIPOC nominees won awards. Unfortunately, they won them on the absolutely worst Academy Award show ever, during which I'm confident many viewers turned the boring show off, or skipped through the uninteresting parts (most of the three hours).

-- Best actress got little time. Frances McDormand, the most quirkily interesting person in the show, only spoke briefly after she won Best Actress and the show was past its three hour scheduled length. Meanwhile, script writers and other lesser award winners blabbed on forever at the beginning of the show. 

-- Dumb attendee game. I would have much preferred listening to Frances McDormand instead of suffering through the "name that song" game where nominees in attendance were asked to say whether a song had been nominated for an award or something else. I've forgotten the something else because I fast-forwarded through most of this part of the show once I saw how bad it was.

-- Audience came last. The whole show reeked of a Hollywood insider focus rather than entertaining the viewing audience. Way too much self-congratulating and way too little concern with the public who pay the bill for movies through ticket buying and streaming purchasing.

-- Humanitarian award recipient missed out. In the past I've watched every minute of the Academy Awards show because most of it was interesting. This year, the show was so boring, I fast-forwarded through the humanitarian award to get to the end of this nightmare more quickly. 

-- Setting was completely forgettable. I'd heard the show was going to be in Union Station and somewhere else. Wherever it was, that place was so bland, it added nothing to the already blah production.

(For a real review of the Academy Award show, which echoes some of my points, check out the New York Times story, "The Covid-19 Oscars: Not Masked but Still Muffled.")

Marion County could go into Covid "extreme risk" soon

If you thought it was OK to relax with the mask wearing and social distancing, think again.

Oregon Covid cases are increasing at the highest rate in the nation, 58% in the past two weeks. The next closest state is Alabama with a 37% increase.

When Alabama is kicking our butt on public health, that's reason to be worried.

Here's a chart of how badly Oregon has been doing recently.

Remember how freaked out everybody was in the spring of 2020 when Covid was a new thing to worry about? The 7-day average of cases in Oregon back then was 50-70 a day. Yesterday it was 740.

So however much you freaked out a year ago, freak out ten times as much now.

Unfortunately, too many Oregonians wrongly believe it is time to go back to normal, with few if any Covid restrictions. The all-Republican Marion County commissioners are part of that group, sadly.

I hope the commissioners take a long hard look at how Marion County is doing compared to other large counties. 

These are the ten counties (out of 36) with the highest recent Covid infection rate per 100,000 population. Marion is doing the worst of any large county. Our 14 day change of +116% is double the state average of 58% -- which, again, is the worst in the nation.

So almost certainly Marion County is one of the dozen or so counties that Governor Brown warned could move back to an Extreme Covid risk category. Currently we're in the High risk group.

Here's excerpts from an Oregonian story about this, "Oregon governor to close indoor dining next Friday in some counties if COVID hospitalizations spike."

In her most serious and stark tone in weeks, Gov. Kate Brown said Friday that she will shut down indoor dining in bars and restaurants in Oregon’s hardest-hit counties as soon as the end of next week if COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations continue to surge.

Brown said despite her best efforts to keep the economy open while holding back on virus-control measures, she will cancel a “warning week” buffer and immediately move what looks like a dozen counties into an “extreme risk” category by next Friday if the number of statewide hospitalized patients reaches 300.

That could possibly include Clackamas County if not others in the metro area. The move would shut down indoor dining, as well as limit large gyms and movie theaters to no more than six patrons and prohibit indoor visits at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.

...Based on the most recent infection rates, the counties most likely to move into extreme risk as soon as next Friday are: Baker, Clackamas, Columbia, Crook, Deschutes, Jackson, Josephine, Klamath, Linn, Marion and Polk. That’s 11 counties, and Brown had mentioned “at least” 12 counties.

If indoor dining is shut down and movie theaters/gyms are limited to six patrons, we here in Marion County will have no one to blame but ourselves.

The bizarre thing is that conservatives like to rant about government overreach when it comes to Covid restrictions, but most of them aren't willing to wear a mask, socially distance, and do the other stuff that would allow Governor Brown to lift those restrictions.

It isn't that hard, folks. 

Health care workers, including the staff in my dentist's office, wear a mask for most of their working day. Putting on a mask indoors for a shorter period, or outdoors if a crowd of people are close together, is no big deal.

Remember, the life you save could be your own. And even if you don't die from getting Covid, the risk of nasty long-term symptoms should be plenty of motivation for everybody, young and old alike.

Plus, it's the right thing to do. Wearing a mask and socially distancing protects us, and it also protects other people. Let's act as if we're all in this together.  

My hernia consultation goes well (if I ignore scary stuff)

About two weeks ago I got a hernia diagnosis, which I memorialized in "Now I can scratch 'get hernia' off my bucket list." 

The diagnosis wasn't a big surprise, given the large bulge on the right side of my groin that appeared suddenly while I was sitting in a dentist's chair a few days before I got the official diagnosis based on an ultrasound. 

I've been trying to be as positive as possible while waiting for a surgery consultation. But as today's consultation approached, my mind veered off in some decidedly negative directions.

My hernia is large; maybe it is too large for surgery. I have to use an intermittent catheter to pee; maybe this will be difficult to do after surgery. My family physician said it was OK to exercise while wearing a hernia belt; maybe the surgeon will say this made my hernia worse.

Well, as often happens it turned out that none of my fears came to pass -- though the surgeon did bring up some scary stuff when describing what could go wrong with my hernia repair.

The Salem Health surgeon I saw today, Hsinchen Lin, M.D., made a great impression. Here's a screenshot from her official You Tube video.

Personable. Caring. Good communicator. And best of all, almost, Dr. Lin used the term "OCD" about herself while describing part of the hernia procedure. 

That's exactly what I want in a surgeon -- someone nice who also is obsessively compulsive about the details of the surgery she's performing. Especially when the surgery is being performed on me.

Dr. Lin started off by saying she didn't have her usual visual aid with her, so she'd have to draw me a diagram of the hernia surgery. She offered it to me as I was leaving. I grabbed the piece of paper, saying, "I'll keep this memento in a scrapbook."

Or, blog post. 

Those are my legs down at the bottom. The dot is my belly button, and the lines above are the three laparoscopic incisions she would be making.

My private parts are in the middle of the groin, though not drawn to scale, I hasten to say. The round circle on the right side of the groin is the hole where some of what should be inside me, like part of my bowel, has crept outside. 

Dr. Lin said that men are especially vulnerable to inguinal hernias due to the way the testes descend into the testicles in a boy baby. Then the wear and tear of aging can create a hernia in that already weak spot.

Plastic mesh is used to shore up the weak areas in my groin area. I penned in the word "sew" in the area where stitches would be used to fasten down the mesh. That can't be done on the lower side, for a reason I only vaguely remember.

Something to do with blood vessels and such that have to be left clear, I believe. So scar tissue forms over the mesh to keep it in place in those areas. And natural lining from my body also covers the mesh.

Early on in the consultation Dr. Lin used the term "robot" in describing the hernia surgery. For a bit I hoped that a robot would be doing the surgery, like an internal Roomba. Lin explained, though, that she controls the four robotic arms.

The laparoscopic approach is preferred by Dr. Lin over open surgery, though she said there was a small chance she'd have to go the open route after starting with laparoscopy. 

She told me that 50% of her hernia patients don't need pain medication after the procedure, which was great news, given how some Googling yesterday revealed that sometimes the post-surgery period can be quite painful. 

My scribbling is almost illegible, but I think Lin said that I shouldn't lift more than ten pounds for six weeks. Or maybe two weeks. Guess I'll find out after the surgery. Six weeks seemed to be the usual recovery period, with a two-week follow-up to see how things are going.

I mostly blurred out in my mind the obligatory explanation of what could go wrong with the surgery. The only note I made was "Chronic pain 1-6%." I'll focus on the one percent, liking those odds.

Pleasingly, this seemed to be a rare occasion when using a catheter five times a day to empty my bladder fully (I can pee some on my own, but my bladder basically went on strike four years ago) is a plus.

Dr. Lin said that sometimes the bladder works slowly after hernia surgery, and a catheter is required. But since I'm already using a catheter, problem solved! 

I double-checked with Lin about exercising while waiting for surgery, including chores like mowing the grass on our ten rural acres with a walk-behind mower. She said that'd be fine so long as I wore a hernia belt, which I've already been doing.

Now I have to wait for Regence MedAdvantage to approve the surgery. After that I'll get a call to schedule the hernia repair. 

At the end of the consultation Dr. Lin said I should consider whether I wanted the surgery, since I'm not experiencing any pain from the hernia at the moment.

It took me about two seconds of considering to say, "Let's do it."

My office looks more Zen after painting forced it on me

I wish I could say that my many years of daily meditation led to an enlightenment experience that caused me to drastically simplify the office where I hang out in our house.

(By "hang out,"  I mean that this is the one room where I get to decide how it is furnished and decorated. Elsewhere, my wife calls the decor shots, mostly because she is better at this than I am.)

However, what actually happened is that last week we had three rooms painted by Apex Paint and Remodel, who did a great job. 

One of those rooms was my office.

It had wallpaper dating from when we moved in some 30 years ago. For some reason we decided to replace kid-room wallpaper with adult-room wallpaper, rather than having my office painted, which in retrospect would have made more sense.

Anyway, I had to get everything out of my office -- kind of a strange term for a retired guy's room where he doesn't even keep his computer -- before the wallpaper removal and painting could begin.

Believe me, there was a lot of stuff to move. Including a lot of books.

Laurel, my wife, tells me that I love clutter. Actually that isn't true. It's more that I'm comfortable with clutter. I'll blame it on my mother, which is easier than blaming it on myself.

My divorced mother was even more of a bookaholic than I am. (She also was an alcoholic, but that's another story.) Piles of books were all over the house I grew up in.

Me, I just had piles of books in my office. The rest were in bookcases.

I was able to start moving stuff back into the office while the Apex Paint and Remodel guys were finishing up the other two rooms. On Friday I asked one of the crew to take a look at the office.

"Thanks for giving me this opportunity to start fresh," I told him. "I'm taking a Marie Kondo approach, only bringing things back to this room that give me joy, that make me feel happy. If you'd seen what it looked like before, you'd know what a big change has been made here."

Philosophically speaking, which is how I frequently like to talk, this empty room experience points to the benefit of emptying out now-and-then, whether this be a physical or mental turn toward an embrace of a form of nothingness.

When we start with a blankness, it's necessary to decide what it really needs to be filled with, and what is extraneous. With my office, I was able to choose between truly satisfying items and what had crept into the room through an unthinking "might as well put that here."

Here's photos of the result, taken today after pictures had been added back to the walls.

Most of our house has natural wood walls and ceilings. I like the wood, but having off-white paint in my office rather than wallpaper markedly changed the look and feel of the room, brightening it considerably, not surprisingly.

The panther had to stay. I sit in the chair during my morning reading/meditating time. The red fan is part of my collection of Tai Chi fans. I don't know how to use them very well, but I enjoy the resounding "clack" they make when opened and closed with a flick of the body.

The Apex guy I showed my office to also was a long-time martial artist. He admired the Japanese katana swords, so I explained how the one on top in the wooden scabbard was made by a skilled fellow student.

It took me quite a while to rearrange the books, which are my core "meaning of life" collection.

I gave Taoism the top left honor, with Buddhism taking the top right shelf. Lower down is philosophy and a variety of mystical/meditation books, including what remains of my Rumi books, which used to number in the dozens.

Atheism occupies another shelf, with neuroscience on the adjoining shelf.  I humbly (yeah, right) put books I've written on the bottom shelf along with mindfulness books and more neuroscience titles.

To astound my wife, I left the bottom left shelf empty so my balance board could fit in there rather than leaning against the filing cabinet, where it had resided for several years.

I really like the view out of the window, especially when the Japanese Maple has leaves, as it does now. 

I got this photograph at the Salem Art Fair from someone who took it in China. The artist told me that he encountered this man on a mountain that had a Taoist monastery, I think it was, at the top. I love the image of a old Chinese guy pleasantly walking along a decidedly scary path. 

Beautiful reflection of how life should be lived. On the edge; hanging on to necessary support; smiling at the abyss that awaits us all at some point. 

I vacillated on putting my black belt certificate back on a wall. Eventually I decided that since it means a lot to me, and I like the design of it (which generally doesn't include a reflection of me taking a photo of it),  I should put the certificate up.

The style was a mixed form of karate of the Korean variety. My instructor was eclectic, having trained in numerous martial art styles, but his focus was on the Chun Kuk Do Korean-based, American hybrid style founded by Chuck Norris.

It feels good to inhabit an office cleared of clutter. My wife probably is wondering how long this will last. Well, I'm wondering also. I've already fought some temptations to put back some extraneous stuff.

So far I've won that fight. Time will tell if that continues.

High schoolers today, here's what I went through in 1962-66

Every generation faces its own challenges. And the challenges we faced in our youth color how we view present-day challenges. 

My granddaughter will be 14 in a few days. I sent her a card (and cash!) today, saying that she timed her entry into high school next fall quite well, since the Covid crisis should be mostly over by then.

I feel for high school students who have had their lives disrupted by the pandemic for over a year. This will be an enduring memory for them, no doubt.

Being a senior citizen, I'm well aware that tales of the Old Days don't mean a whole lot to young people today. Assuming, of course, that they even read blog posts like this one -- a highly dubious assumption.

Nonetheless, I feel like taking a trip down memory lane into my own high school years.

After all, who knows how long my memories will be intact? At some point I might need this blog post to remind myself. 

So here goes my attempt at You think you have it tough, young 'uns, let me tell how it was way back when in 1962-66.

I lived in Three Rivers, California, on the other side of the Sierra Nevada mountains from, no big surprise, Nevada. 

The last above-ground nuclear test in Nevada was July 17, 1962, soon after I graduated from eighth grade. Sometimes we didn't get milk at elementary school lunch time because radioactivity had seeped into the grass California cows ate.

Few people worried about what the above-ground tests were doing to people. After all, we had the damn Soviet Union Communists to worry about. 

I and an eighth grade friend published our elementary school newspaper, mimeographed, of course. We polled our classmates about whether a nuclear war was imminent. Most students thought a war was going to happen soon. 

Fallout shelters were common. Nowadays in Oregon we worry about ducking and covering from an earthquake. Back then, we practiced doing this for a hydrogen bomb attack. 

Then came the Cuban Missile Crisis at the beginning of my freshman year in high school. The Soviet Union placed nuclear missiles in Cuba. Newly elected President John F. Kennedy managed to barely avoid war with the Soviet Union. 

But Kennedy was unable to avoid being assassinated on November 22, 1963, my sophomore year in high school. Without warning, the 500 or so students in Woodlake Union High School were summoned to an assembly.

We were told President Kennedy had been shot. It was a somber bus ride home. A few days later, Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who killed Kennedy, was himself murdered by Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner.

On the plus side, the Beatles came to the United States on February 7, 1964. On the negative side, boys in my high school were forbidden to have Beatles haircuts with longish hair. (Some tried, though.) 

Girls couldn't wear pants. They took Home Economics. Boys took Shop. No mingling of the sexes in these classes. Homosexuality was never mentioned in class, since it was viewed as an illegal perversion back then.

Yesterday I saw a mention of the 1965 Voting Rights Act on MSNBC. I don't recall any classroom discussion of it, nor of the blatant discrimination against Blacks in southern states that was still common in the '60s.

By the time I graduated from high school in 1966, the Vietnam War was going strong. I'd always planned to go to college, but getting a student deferment from being drafted was an additional inducement to head off to San Jose State College. 

When the draft lottery came along in 1969, I was fortunate to have my birthdate come up far enough along in the lottery to avoid being drafted.

So, yeah, my high school years were interesting, for sure. Also, stressful. I'm not saying my high school experience was more interesting or stressful than what young people are going through today.

Just different. Remember what's happening to you, high schoolers of 2021, so you can write about what things were like back then some fifty-odd years later, as I just did.

Now I can scratch "get hernia" off my bucket list

Trying to find some humor in the hernia diagnosis I received today, this cartoon reminded me that, hey, I only have a single hernia, so lucky me! 

(I also have taken to wearing joggers much of the time rather than regular pants, which qualify as skinny jeans. And sure, I've got a lifetime supply of bitter regrets -- which now includes getting a hernia. But it's a stretch to say I'm in midlife, since I'm 72.)

As befits my age, I don't have a great story to tell about how I ended up with a right-sided inguinal hernia.

No, I wasn't bench pressing too high of a weight. I was sitting in a dentist's chair for about 90 minutes, the first part of a lengthy session involving three fillings and a crown replacement.

During the time the new crown was being fashioned by a 3-D printer in my dentist's office, I decided to visit the restroom. When I pulled my pants down I was met by a shockingly large bulge.

Ordinarily I'd be pleased by such a bulge in the region of my groin. But this bulge was to the right of my penis, a bit less than half the size of a baseball. So impossible to miss.

I decided to ignore it for the time being, since my focus was on getting through the rest of the dental appointment. When I got home, I phoned my family physician's office.

Not surprisingly, their best guess was a hernia -- which somehow decided to manifest in a dentist's chair, since I'm certain the bulge wasn't there when I took a shower earlier that day.

I was able to see a nurse practitioner the next day. He asked if I had any pain. No, I told him.

He then stressed that if I did feel a lot of pain, that was a danger sign that should cause me to go to the ER, since a strangulated hernia where part of the colon gets deprived of blood can lead to gangrene and other nasty stuff.

I was scheduled for an ultrasound at Salem Hospital. That was done yesterday, and I got the results this morning. Not cheery findings, but pretty much what I expected.

There is a large right inguinal hernia containing fat and bowel as well as a small amount of fluid. Hernia sac measures up to 5 cm. Fascial hernia defect measures up to 3.4 cm. Hernia is partially reducible but not completely reducible.

What immediately worried me was that the nurse practitioner had said I should get a hernia belt, what used to be called a "truss." (And maybe still is, by some.) I'd ordered and gotten several belts from Amazon. 

They all said "for a reducible hernia." Meaning, the protruding stuff can be poked back into the body, thereby reducing the protrusion to nothing or almost nothing. 

So I phoned my family physician's office.

Pleasingly, I was told by a nurse to not worry and go ahead with wearing a hernia belt, which I did today. Since my hernia protrusion mostly goes away when I lie down, I put on the belt while lying prone on a bed.

The hernia belt is pretty comfortable. I went on my usual two-mile afternoon dog walk while wearing it with no problem. It gives me more confidence while I wait for a surgery consultation, which is in the works.

All in all, I'm feeling mostly OK about my new health problem. 

Hernias are much more common in men. (Thus they really should be called "Himnias.") Some Googling revealed:

Researchers estimate that about 27 percent of men and 3 percent of women will develop an inguinal hernia at some point in their lives.

OK, I've reached that point. Now I'm looking forward to getting past that point. Hopefully it won't take too long to schedule a surgery.

Reading recent Amazon reviews of hernia belts caused me to realize that many men who were diagnosed with a hernia last year around springtime had to wait quite a few months for surgery, since elective surgeries weren't being done during the first wave of Covid cases. 

I guess my hernia picked a good time to pop out for a visit. 

I'm also grateful that my family physician responded promptly to several My Chart messages I sent her with hernia questions.

Pleasingly, she said it would be fine if I kept on with my daily exercising with the Monkii 360 ball and resistance bands, as I've gotten addicted to this enjoyable wear of working out. She also told me I could continue doing physical therapy stretching exercises for my sciatica problem.

The only caveat is the same thing my physical therapist kept telling me: if it hurts after you do something, stop doing that thing. And obviously I shouldn't be lifting heavy weights.

In an attempt to be positive about having a hernia, I've discovered that when you have a couple of longstanding health problems, getting a new problem tends to shift the focus of your mind off of the old problems and onto the new problem.

Thus my sciatica isn't bothering me as much anymore. Yay! Only problem is, my hernia has become a bother.