HinesSight

Bummer! Trader Joe's Breaded Turkey-less Stuffed Roast discontinued for 2023

Oh, Trader Joe's, I'm so disappointed that you have put a piece of metaphorical coal in my vegetarian stocking this 2023 holiday season by discontinuing your marvelous vegan Breaded Turkey-less Stuffed Roast -- which is the favorite meatless alternative of its kind for my wife and me.

I bought several extra last year and put them in our freezer. Here's a photo of one of the last survivors of the Breaded Turkey-less Stuffed Roast purge before I took it out of the box and put it in an oven for Thanksgiving dinner. Now we're down to zero. Sob...

The roast still appears on the Trader Joe's web site, which at first gave me hope. But then I noticed this note. I appreciate the humor. However, I was smiling through the sadness of the roast's demise.

Well, I'd done just that a few weeks ago, spoke to several staff at the Trader Joe's store here in Salem, Oregon. I did this after searching for the Breaded Turkey-less Stuffed Roast in the parts of the store where it has always appeared close to Thanksgiving.

The first staff person I talked to knew nothing about the status of the roast. Neither did the second person the first person went up to. Then all three of us spoke with a knowledgeable person in the frozen foods aisle.

She said that the roast wasn't being offered this year because of poor prior sales. I expressed surprise at this, saying that my wife and I have tried every other vegetarian/vegan roast, such as Tofurkey, and the Trader Joe's roast was our favorite. 

When I repeated my lament to the checkout person, she said, "I agree; it was a great-tasting roast." Also nutritious. Here's the nutrition facts and ingredients.

The serving size, 1/6 of a roast, is substantial. The roast I made this year has served six people so far and there's still quite a bit left. I don't know how many calories there are in a serving of turkey and gravy, but I bet it's more than 360 calories. And the protein in the Trader Joe's roast is plentiful, 26 grams per generous serving.

But all is not lost. In a November 8, 2023 story, VegNews reported on the much-beloved Breaded Turkey-less Stuffed Roast being discontinued by Trader Joe's. There's hope.

VegNews reached out to Trader Joe’s and the company has confirmed that the product is discontinued and they will not have a meat-free roast offering this year. 

The cult-favorite holiday product will not return to shelves this holiday season because “it wasn’t meeting expectations,” according to one Reddit user. Some commenters suggested the reason might be because the recipe changed at some point and it was never as good as the original. 

However, store managers have told customers that a replacement could come to stores in 2024. 

“The notes in the internal system do say we are sourcing a replacement for 2024, it just didn’t come together this year,” another Reddit user confirmed. 

LOVERS OF THE ROAST, TAKE ACTION! Head to the Trader Joe's Product Feedback page. Tell them that you adore the Breaded Turkey-less Stuffed Roast more than life itself. Or if you prefer life to the roast -- my personal view, since if I'm not alive, I can't enjoy the roast -- tell Trader Joe's that you hope so much for a return of the roast, or a new and improved version, in 2024.

Sad to see last Pac-12 Oregon-OSU game. Glad Oregon won.

I had conflicting emotions this evening as I watched the Oregon football team defeat Oregon State 31-7 in what I've always thought of as the Civil War game, but now is the more politically correct Rivalry Game.

The traditional name sounds more fitting to me, because I'm so used to it.

But so does the longstanding tradition of the Pac-12 conference, which has been around in one form or another since 1915. That's 108 years of athletic history about to end, thanks to every school except Oregon State and Washington State departing for other conferences.

Since I moved to Oregon in 1971, I've enjoyed the annual football rivalry between the University of Oregon and Oregon State University. I'm an avid fan of both teams. Now, though, the Oregonian reports that there's no firm commitment for those football teams to play each other in future years.

There is no scheduled game beyond Friday’s 127th in the Ducks-Beavers series, which began in 1894. The schools continue to talk about playing a game as soon as 2024, but nothing official has been announced heading into the weekend.

This feels sad and wrong. Also, unnecessary.

After USC and UCLA announced they were leaving the Pac-12 for the Big Ten, it seemed like the Pac-12 could continue on with minimal disruption. However, the Pac-12 fell apart when a media rights deal with Apple was rejected by several schools who wanted more than the $30 million or so annual payment per school that the deal provided.

Now it turns out that $30 million is close to what Oregon and Washington are going to get in the early years of their move to the Big Ten conference, leaving me and many other frustrated people to wonder, was a somewhat imperfect media rights deal really a reason to kill the Pac-12 conference?

Regardless of the answer, the reality is that today's game was the last in the Oregon-OSU Pac-12 series, and nearly the last football game to be played in a Pac-12 regular season, aside from the upcoming conference championship game. 

That's what made the game so filled with conflicting feelings for me. 

I wanted Oregon to win, because their sole loss of the season was to Washington and a tantalizing rematch with Washington in the Pac-12 championship game next Friday in Las Vegas was in their future if they beat Oregon State. Which happened.

So I was happy that Oregon won in a convincing fashion. This keeps quarterback Bo Nix in the hunt to win a Hesiman Trophy, and it keeps alive Oregon's chance to play in the four-team national championship playoff if they beat Washington and become the Pac-12 champions.

All through the game, though, I found myself rooting for Oregon State to make a comeback. It just seemed fitting that OSU's last game with Oregon as a Pac-12 rival be as evenly fought as possible. Yeah, I realize that this conflicts with what I just said about being happy that Oregon won in a convincing fashion.

That's the way conflicting feelings work: they aren't logical, but emotional.

Oregon simply was the better team. No doubt about it. Oregon State will play in a bowl game, but otherwise the future of OSU football is uncertain. Will Coach Jonathan Smith stay or leave? Will the current Pac-2 be able to add more members to the conference? If not, where will Oregon State and Washington State end up?

I admired the fight shown by Oregon State, which was without some key players due to injuries. The running game, normally the strongest aspect of their offense, was held to only about 50 yards. So not only did Oregon State lose, this game didn't show them at their best. 

That disappointed me.

Still, Oregon State had a good season. losing three games by just a total of eight points, with this 31-7 defeat the only blowout. Now I'm hoping Oregon defeats Washington next Friday. That will take some of the sting out of the Pac-12 conference's demise. Not all of it, though. That will hurt for quite a while.

I'm thankful for a 98 year old guy I barely know

With thankfulness in the air, given that Thanksgiving is tomorrow, I feel a push to make this a theme of my daily blog post (I have three blogs and write something for one of them each day.)


I don't want to run through a litany of all the things in my life that I'm thankful for. That's boring, and I'd end up feeling that to balance things out, I should also mention all the things in my life that I'm not thankful for.

Which also would be boring. So here's one short, simple moment of thankfulness that happened to me this afternoon.

Whenever I go to our athletic club, almost always three times a week, I see an elderly man who is there about the same time I am. When our paths cross in a machine circuit training weight room, I say hello to him. And that's basically been the extent of our interactions for quite a few years.

Sometime this year I noticed that a friend was accompanying him during his workouts. I assumed this was because the elderly man (meaning, he looked quite a bit older than me -- I'm 75) couldn't drive any more.

Today the elderly man, whose name I don't know, had gone into the cardio/aerobic room to ride a stationary bike while I and a few others, including his friend, were still in the weight room.

I overheard part of a conversation between an older woman and the man's friend. The woman was asking about the elderly man. I thought I heard the friend say, "He's 98." Wow, I thought, is that really correct? He looks much younger to me.

Becoming part of the conversation, I asked the friend if I'd heard correctly. "Yes, he's 98. And in good shape. Very sharp mentally." He went on to tell us some things about the elderly man.

"He served in the Pacific during World War II. While there he got a disease. Doctors told him to exercise every day. He's kept that up his entire life. He comes to the club every day. He used to work for a state agency. He walked to work every day from his home."

I found this deeply inspiring. I don't like getting old, and I'm 23 freaking years younger than this man -- who uses a cane when he walks, but otherwise moves quite well. 

When I went to my Tai Chi class in downtown Salem after exercising at the athletic club, I told the instructor and fellow students about the man. Warren, the instructor, said, "I hope I'm able to still do chores on our rural property when I'm 98."

Me too. Learning how old this man is, and how he's made exercise a daily part of his life for a very long time, made me feel thankful that his friend shared some information about him. He's now someone I look up to and want to emulate.

And I'm going to tell the man that next time I see him. There's unsung heroes everywhere. We just need to recognize them.

I rejected getting an Apple Watch. Now I'm a big fan.

Well, I guess this shows that I have truly joined the Cult of Apple. Before, I only had a MacBook Pro laptop, an iPhone, an iPad, Apple TV, AirPods, and HomePod speakers. 

That speaks of abject devotion to all things Apple, but isn't quite cultish. However, now that I also have an Apple Watch, Series 9 variety, I believe that I qualify for membership in the Cult of Apple. (Don't need an invitation; I'm self-selected.)

For a long time I looked down on people with an Apple Watch, or indeed any sort of smart watch, as being techno-snobs. I proudly wore my Casio watch that was solar powered and kept time via transmissions from the atomic clock in Colorado, I think it is. That was plenty high tech for me.

Bu then my interest was piqued when Apple released some new products, including an updated Apple Watch. Since this happened near my birthday, I figured it wouldn't hurt to check out the Series 9 as a potential present from Me to Me.

I'm glad I did. Because I've come to know and love my Apple Watch, even though I haven't learned more than a small percentage of all the things it can do.

My first revelation was that it's marvelous to be able to choose what sort of display a watch has. When the Apple Watch arrived, I switched between several watch faces that appealed to me. Soon, though, I settled on the colorful and informative face shown in the photo above.

The globe at the top left shows where I am. OK, that's not informative, since I'm aware of being in Oregon. Next to it is the easy-to-see date and time. Naturally the time is always correct. It was pleasant to not have to fuss with changing a watch when Daylight Saving Time ended, as my Casio usually required me to get out the manual and refresh my memory about how to do this.

The Apple Watch is waterproof, by the way, as was my Casio. One difference is that sometimes when I take a shower with the Apple Watch, a warning pops up that my hearing could be endangered by high decibels, which must be the result of shower spray hitting the watch.

In the second row is a weather summary that I assume comes from the Apple Weather app. It shows the current temperature in Salem along with the high and low temperature for today. Now and the next four hours are shown with the forecasted temperature and whether it is expected to be sunny, cloudy, or rainy. Or, dark.

The left side of the bottom row is an exercise indicator. The red circle shows movement (calories burned, steps, miles walked) in relation to a goal, 10,000 steps a day, I recall I set it to be. The green circle is exercise. The blue circle is standing (which I nail every day, because I made the goal just three hours, I believe).

My Apple Watch sends me periodic messages to stand when I've been sitting for a while, and praise when I hit a fitness goal. I used to find this kind of annoying, but now I view the messages as my watch trying to make me healthier, instead of being a nag.

I haven't made use of the compass yet.  I do enjoy checking the elevation, though (368 feet at our rural south Salem home) and the offer to record my route in case I get lost.

The temperature info on the bottom right is the same as what's shown above. However, I like how the color of the semicircle indicates how cold or hot it is. This Apple Watch face comes in a wide variety of colors. I've stuck with this multi-colored option in part because it provides more information than a single color would.

Like I said, I haven't delved much into other tricks my Apple Watch can do. It will tell me if my heart rate is much too slow or much too fast, or I guess if my heart has stopped. I didn't get a watch with a cellular connection, figuring that since I almost always have my iPhone with me, I don't need that.

At first I wondered how I'd time 60 seconds, which is how long I use mouthwash twice a day. Then I realized that if I made the Apple Watch apps appear in alphabetical order rather than as icons, it was easy to have the Timer near at hand, where I could set timers for various lengths.

One benefit of timing with the Apple Watch is when whole wheat spaghetti is cooking for 11 minutes while I'm watching TV with my Apple AirPods in my ears. I couldn't hear the timer on our microwave with the AirPods in, but the Apple Watch vibrates when a timer is completed, so now I have no problem knowing when the spaghetti is ready.

The band I got is very comfortable and easy to fasten. It's great to be able to easily change a watchband, though I haven't needed to do this yet, rather than having to fiddle with those little pins on traditional watchbands.

So I'm pleased with my Apple Watch. It charges every night, though it looks like it could go several days without charging. Thus I don't have it with me when I'm sleeping. I put it on first thing in the morning, looking upon it like a friend I haven't seen for a while -- which I never did with my Casio watch.

Why we're still postponing living in a retirement community

Recently someone emailed me, saying that they'd Googled "hippie retirement community," apparently found my 2013 post, I'm 65. Where's my "Aging Hippie" retirement community?, and wondered if my wife, Laurel, and I had downsized or moved into a community.

Short answer. No and no. 

A bit of arithmetic, which thankfully I'm still capable of, reveals that if I was 65 on November 24, 2013 when I wrote the earlier post, and today is November 14, 2023, then I must be 75 now. 

Bingo! Right on. Nobel Prize in Mathematics please.

I was going to reply to the email message with the reasons why Laurel and I were still living on our ten non-easy-care acres in rural south Salem, Oregon, rather than somewhere seemingly more fitting for our mid-70's ages.

Then I had the bright idea of searching for my previous blog posts on my subject. (Appropriately, they're in the Retirement Community category of this blog in the right sidebar.)

Up popped a 2016 post, Why it makes sense for seniors to postpone living in a retirement community. Though it was written seven years ago, when Laurel and I were a more youthful 68 or so, what I said then resonated just as strongly with me today. 

A few excerpts, including what I disagreed with in a retirement community's pitch to move there:

My wife and I are in our late 60's. For 26 years we've lived in a 3,200 square foot house on ten non-easycare acres in rural south Salem, Oregon. We've visited four retirement communities in the northwest, and browsed numerous others online.

It's tough for seniors to decide when to leave a beloved home because it's become too damn difficult to maintain. Various factors enter into that decision: health status, where children and other family members are living, how attached one is to a current location -- all kinds of stuff.

We've mulled over the reasons to stay where we are, and the reasons to move to a retirement community. Our conclusion: it makes sense to keep on living in our home for as long as possible. I like to say, they're going to have to tear my DR Field Mower out of my cold dead hands. 

[NOTE: I tore that walk behind mower out of my warm alive hands a few years ago, getting a John Deere X394 mower that I like a lot, being capable of mowing both lawn grass and taller field grass. And it's much easier on my aging body.]

OK, here's what I disagree with.

(1) "There are advantages to making the transition at a younger age." This assumes that seniors know the future. Which, of course, nobody does. I don't know how long I'm going to live, or what the cause of my death will be. What if I moved into a retirement community that I wasn't really wild about because I envisioned myself growing old and infirm there -- then died in a head-on crash with an out-of-control semi on the freeway a year or so later?

My last thought would be, "Shit, I shouldn't have moved, because I could have spent my last year happier in our rural home, rather than in the retirement community, and now I'm about to di..."

Us baby boomers came of age in the live for the moment 1960's.  Now we're in our 60's. Planning ahead is fine. However, so is enjoying life right here, right now. Finding the balance between planning for a possible future, and living in the reality of the present moment, this is a central dilemma for seniors.

Our leaning is toward now, a more vibrant reality than could be.

(2) "Being able to enjoy the freedom that such communities offer." Question is, freedom from what? Apparently, Hutkin means, in large part, freedom from home and property maintenance.

But my wife and I enjoy the freedom of living in our own house and making our own decisions about how to maintain it. As noted in the post linked to above, I even enjoy the sweaty, dusty, muscle-fatiguing work our property requires.

Recently I was up on the roof of our house, walking along the edge of the gutters, blowing out debris with a Stihl backpack blower. I would really miss doing this in a retirement community where most of the chores are done by others. It makes me feel free to do difficult, even semi-dangerous, jobs around our house.

[NOTE: a few years ago we had Leaf Blaster gutter covers installed, another concession to aging in place.]

Sure, I realize that there may come a time when we aren't physically able to do what we're doing now. But as long as we are, why shouldn't we keep on doing what we enjoy? 

(3) Moving when you're younger and more able-bodied also allows for the opportunity... To be with older and less able-bodied people in a retirement community. This is a fact.

My stock line when we talk with a salesperson who has just shown us around a retirement community is, "Thanks for the tour. You've got a nice place here, but I'm freaked out by how many old folks we saw."

That's meant to be humorous. But I'm also serious. 

It's depressing for me to see old people getting around with walkers, and sitting at card tables playing something-or-other on a nice warm sunny day. I realize that this often is what happens with increasing age. But since my wife and I are pretty darn healthy at the moment, and don't feel as old as our driver's licenses say we are, we look upon retirement communities with a decidedly wary eye.

Still do. Interestingly, recently we've been contacted by two of the retirement communities that we toured and put deposits down for standalone houses, Capitol Manor here in Salem and Mary's Woods in Lake Oswego.

When told that a house was available, we replied to both places, "Thanks, but the time isn't right to sell our house and move to your community." The Mary's Wood person agreed with me when I told her that if we weren't absolutely certain joining their community made sense for us, we should stay put. 

She said that in her experience, unless an individual, or in our case, a couple, doesn't feel completely sure about moving to Mary's Woods, they won't be happy there. I appreciated that advice.

But she also told me that if we're still in our current home three or four years from now, we should start thinking more seriously about making a move, since around 80 is when many people start heading downhill more steeply, health-wise.

Also good advice. 

My daughter's thrilled that she was employee #1 of an $80 million company

Bragging can be annoying, but I'm claiming the Father Exemption, because I can't resist sharing the news about a company being bought for a reported $80 million that my daughter was the first employee of.

I learned about the acquisition of Barton Perreira, a high-end California eyewear company, by LVMH, a luxury conglomerate (Louis Vuitton, Tiffany & Co, and Dior, among others) from my daughter, Celeste Vos, a few days ago.

She no longer works for Barton Perreira, having left to become the Vice President of Sales for Silhouette, another eyewear company. But she has fond memories of her time at Barton Perreira, where she was hired in 2007 by the founders, Bill Barton and Patty Perreira, as employee #1.

Here's a 2017 photo of Celeste doing her Barton Perreira sales manager thing at a Neiman Marcus conclave. 

Celeste told me that she's pleased about the sale of Barton Perreira to LVMH, since it's satisfying to know that she helped to build Barton Perreira from a humble startup into the quality company it is now.

A CNBC story, "LVMH buys eyewear brand Barton Perreira as it looks to rebound from luxury showdown," says:

Barton Perreira has a cult-like following among Hollywood stars and collectors of high-end sunglasses and frames. Its models typically retail for $500 or $600, and its limited edition designs, made in small quantities, are especially coveted. Daniel Craig wore a pair of Barton Perreira “Joe” sunglasses in “No Time to Die,” and Demi Lovato, Sandra Bullock and Ryan Gosling are also reported to be fans.

Zanardo said Barton Perreira was an ideal fit for LVMH because of its commitment to quality.

“Barton Perreira has a very strong founding principle, which is design and quality without compromise,” he said.

Since Barton Perriera only has a handful of stores in the U.S., LVMH can use its global reach to take the brand overseas, with better distribution in Europe and Asia, Zanardo said.

Barton Perreira was founded in 2007 by Bill Barton and Patty Perreira, after they left Oliver Peoples when it was acquired by Oakley. Zanardo said the two founders will stay at the company after the acquisition and “make sure the DNA of the brand remains in tact.”

Celeste also worked at Oliver Peoples, where Barton was the CEO and Perreira the designer. Celeste left Oliver Peoples to join Barton Perreira the year her daughter, Evelyn, was born. That makes Celeste's work there even more impressive, in my proud fatherly opinion. I'm sure her husband, Patrick, would agree.

Celeste was born in Oregon and attended elementary, middle school, and high school in Salem after my wife and I moved here in 1977 with our five-year-old. I not-so-fondly remember paying out of state tuition to the University of Arizona when Celeste decided she wanted to leave Oregon for college, where she majored in Fashion Merchandising. 

But now that money seems very well spent. I'm super proud of her. There were ups and downs during her time at Barton Perreira, this being the case with every business. The acquisition of Barton Perriera by LVMH is a high point for Celeste, regardless of the fact that she no longer works there.

Starlink couldn't recognize my Gen 3 Starlink router. Here's the fix.

Last August Starlink, the SpaceX satellite internet service, sent me an email saying that because I was an early beta customer, I was entitled to send them $200 for a third-generation router that offered better features than our first-generation router.

I accepted that offer. After an initial installation glitch caused by sometimes glitchy me, I ended up liking the Gen 3 router more than the first generation router that came with our round dish. 

Recently, though, I encountered a bit of weirdness associated with the Gen 3 router. Maybe this was unique to our setup, but in case someone else has this problem, I thought I'd describe it along with the easy fix.

I discovered the problem after the Mobile Link app associated with the Generac whole house generator that we'd gotten for our rural south Salem home this year let me know that the wi-fi connection with the generator had stopped working.

The app had easy to follow instructions for restoring the connection. All I needed were the keys to the locking lid, my iPhone, and the wi-fi password.

Hey, no problem, I thought, heading out to the Generac. But after I tried and failed three times to get the generator hooked up again with Starlink wi-fi, which had a decent but fairly weak signal at the Generac location, I knew a call to Generac support was in my future.

The wi-fi specialist I ended up talking with said that he'd work me through a semi-secret technique that he thought should be in the Generac manual, but wasn't. It was fairly complicated, involving using Safari and what I assume was the generator's IP address to attempt a Starlink wi-fi connection.

That didn't work either. He then told me to contact Starlink and ask for them to split off a dedicated 2.4 G network by itself, as from past experience with other Generac customers he'd learned that the default mixed 2.4 and 5 wi-fi didn't play well with a Generac, which is designed for a 2.4 G connection.

I put in a Starlink support ticket, as requested. The response I got was to open up the Starlink app, go to settings, click on the Starlink network, and activate "Split 2.4 / 5 GHz Networks." Problem was, I got this error message.

Well, it seemed strange that Starlink didn't recognize the Gen 3 router that I'd bought from Starlink. And I couldn't reboot the router because even though I'd been using the router for several months with no problems, the lack of recognition meant rebooting wasn't an option.

So I reopened the support ticket, explaining this problem. This was the response I got.

I wasn't wild about trying the "if this does not work" option, since it sounded more complicated and scary that the first option of deleting the Starlink app and reinstalling it with my log-in credentials. 

Which, thankfully, solved the problem. I was able to click on the split 2.4 and 5 networks button, which created a new wi-fi network that I cleverly called Starlink 2.4 G. When I headed out to the generator this afternoon, the wi-fi set-up process went smoothly after I selected Starlink 2.4 G as the wi-fi network to use. 

The Mobile Link app is showing only a 32% wi-fi signal strength, but that seems to be sufficient to keep the Generac happy.

As a bonus, I discovered that the Ting device our insurance company sent us for free that plugs into an electrical outlet and monitors the safety of our house's electrical system is back to working now after it also lost the 5 G wi-fi connection, and I reinstalled the Ting with a 2.4 G connection.

Our job is to empathize with both Israelis and Palestinians

We live in an age of extremism. Our politics is marked by right-wing and left-wing, with little room left for moderates in the middle. "Whose side are you on?!" is said with an accusatory exclamation mark, since too often it is unthinkable for someone to be on both sides; you've got to choose one or the other.

This is why I admired an essay in the November 6 issue of TIME by Israeli historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari, "The world's job during the war."

Harari says that while currently both Israelis and Palestinians are too filled with pain to be able to empathize with the suffering of the other side, it is the job of outsiders who are not in such extreme pain to keep alive the quest for peace.

It's a beautiful piece or writing. Below I've shared the last part of the essay where Harari speaks so eloquently about empathy for both sides. 

Hamas' crimes cannot be justified by blaming them on past Israeli conduct. Two wrongs don't make a right. There is much to criticize Israel for -- for holding millions of Palestinians for decades under occupation, and for abandoning in recent years any serious attempt to make peace.

However, the murder of the Kutz family and the many other atrocities committed by Hamas were not meant to restart the peace process, nor are they likely to end the occupation. Instead, the war Hamas launched inflicts immense suffering on millions of Palestinians. 

In its war against Hamas, Israel has a duty to defend its territory and its citizens, but it must also defend its humanity. 

Palestinian civilians deserve to enjoy peace and prosperity in their homeland, and even in the midst of conflict their basic human rights should be recognized by all sides. This refers not only to Israel, but also to Egypt, which shares a border with the Gaza Strip, and which has partially sealed the border. As for Hamas, it and its supporters should be excommunicated by humanity.

The aims of the Gaza War should be clear. Hamas should be totally disarmed and the Gaza Strip should be demilitarized, so that Palestinian civilians could live dignified lives within it and Israeli civilians could live without fear alongside it. Until these aims are achieved, the struggle to maintain our humanity will be difficult.

Most Israelis are psychologically incapable at this moment of empathizing with the Palestinians. The mind is filled to the brim with our own pain, and no space is left to even acknowledge the pain of others.

Many of the people who tried to hold such a space -- like the Kutz family -- are dead or deeply traumatized. Most Palestinians are in an analogous situation -- their minds too are filled with pain, they cannot see our pain.

But outsiders who are not themselves immersed in pain should make an effort to empathize with all suffering humans, rather than lazily seeing only part of the terrible reality. It is the job of outsiders to help maintain a space for peace.

We deposit this peaceful space with you, because we cannot hold it right now. Take good care of it for us, so that one day, when the pain begins to heal, both Israelis and Palestinians might inhabit that space.

Oregon State football coach made a bad decision. But don't we all?

Oregon State football fans, of whom I'm one, along with almost everybody who watched yesterday's OSU game against Arizona, are grappling with the astoundingly bad decision Jonathan Smith, the Oregon State coach, made at the end of the first half.

Jonathan Smith

This is how CBS Sports described the debacle. The game was a 27-24 victory by Arizona.

While the game ultimately came down to that final drive, Oregon State's fate may have been decided much earlier when coach Jonathan Smith dialed up one of the most questionable calls of the year. The Beavers had the ball at Arizona's 16-yard line with three seconds to play in the second quarter. Oregon State lined up for a field goal, but the holder pitched the ball to kicker Atticus Sappington for a fake.

Sappington gained nine yards, but it didn't matter because time expired. If the Beavers had kicked and made the field goal, than their late fourth-quarter touchdown would have tied the game. 

A YouTube video of the play showed how the fake punt had very little chance of success.

The Portland Oregonian had a story after the game, "What Jonathan Smith said after Oregon State's narrow loss at Arizona." Here's a couple of questions and answers about the fake punt.

Q: You said ultra aggression. I guess just in that moment, what was the decision to go for it there and why?

Smith: Yeah, it was like we had prepped the thing for two weeks because we had a bye. And I was just chomping at the bit to get the thing called because the picture what we anticipated and really what we got was a pretty good look. But the logic going into the thing was fourth down medium — fourth and 5, 6 — and I just rolled the dice on that one and in hindsight it was not good.

Q: Coach, you like to go for it on fourth down. I mean you’re pretty aggressive, generally speaking. On the fake, just how would you describe your mindset in situations like that?

Smith: There’s strategy to this thing. It’s not just like blind aggression. There’s some strategy. That one, just logically, the kicker’s got to run 20 yards. Just back off.

Q: Do you regret that call?

Smith: Sure. It didn’t work.

I liked that Smith was so straightforward about the bad decision to call the fake punt play in a situation where a field goal attempt was by far the better option.

But I was still deeply irked at the fake punt, since it played a large role in the Oregon State loss, which pretty much ended the team's chance to win a Pac-12 championship in the league's final year of having twelve members, which will dwindle to two soon: Oregon State and Washington State.

However, I felt better about Coach Smith and his botched fake punt after I began to think what would happen if bad decisions I've made -- as we all make -- were to be widely televised, then discussed in a press conference featuring me and reporters asking probing questions.

I'm reluctant to share one of my really bad decisions, so as an example I'll use an incident that happened to me today when I had my usual early Sunday get-together with a friend at the Urban Grange coffeehouse in West Salem.

I'll describe the bad decision in a pseudo news story.

On Sunday afternoon Brian Hines arrived at the coffeehouse before his friend, Jim, did. He chose one of the few two-person tables not being used by customers, which was in a corner of the coffeehouse. After toasting a bagel, Hines removed his phone from his fanny pack, which he prefers to call his hip pack, then set the hip pack on the floor under the table, as he always does when meeting with Jim.

When his friend arrived, Jim said, "Our usual table is open now. Do you want to move to it? It's more centrally located." "Sure," Hines replied, gathering up his latte, bagel, and phone. After a congenial conversation where they talked about the Oregon State game and how Coach Smith made such a bad decision with the fake punt, Hines bent down to retrieve his hip pack.

Which wasn't there. He checked again. It still wasn't there. Hines then remembered that he put it under the table he sat at originally. It was empty of customers. He walked briskly to the table and looked for his hip pack. It wasn't there. He checked again. It still wasn't there. Moderately panicked, Hines told Jim that not only were his car keys in the hip pack, so were his credit cards, drivers license, and a lot more.

Hines then walked to the counter and asked the barista if someone had turned in a black bag. "You mean a fanny pack?" he was told. "Yes," he said. "It's over here," the barista said, as she retrieved the hip pack. 

Here's some of the questions asked at the news conference.

Q: The many Americans who watched the video of you putting your fanny pack under a table, then moving to another table without bothering to retrieve the fanny pack, are wondering: what the hell were you thinking? 

Hines: First, it wasn't a fanny pack. It was a hip pack. I don't wear it on my butt. Second, I wasn't thinking at all. I'm not in the habit of deciding to leave my hip pack under a table where other people would be sitting and could have taken it.

Q: It sounds like you were really careless. Do you regret deciding to leave your fanny pack under a table, then moving to another table without taking it with you?

A: Hip pack! Hip pack! Not fanny pack. Again, I didn't decide anything. It was just a bad decision, I mean, an unfortunate happenstance, that my friend Jim suggested we move to a different table and I failed to remember to take the hip pack with me.

Q: Seems like you're blaming Jim. Do you always fail to take responsibility for your bad decisions?

A: No, I'm not blaming Jim. It was just an unfortunate happenstance. 

Q: Like Jonathan Smith calling for a fake punt at the end of the first half of the Arizona football game?

A: Yes. Just like that. No more questions, please. I've got to reconsider whether I should be irritated at Coach Smith. For this episode reminded me that if we're human, we're going to make bad decisions.

Maine mass shooting and Israel war are both result of craziness

This evening the suspect in the killing of 18 people in Lewiston, Maine and the wounding of 13 others was found dead, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot. Robert Card had suffered from mental illness, having been hospitalized for two weeks last summer.

Reportedly he had been hearing voices.

Well, while Card likely had some form of schizophrenia, what he has in common with the rest of us is substantial, for we all hear voices inside our head: our own.

Card's voices may have told him that other people were out to harm him, so he needed to kill as many of those "others" as possible.

And the Hamas terrorists who crossed the border from Gaza into Israel on October 7, killing about 1,400 people, had voices telling them that it was their duty to kill innocent men, women, and children, along with Israeli soldiers, because of the injustices Israel had wrought on Palestinians.

And leaders in Israel had voices telling them after the Hamas attack that it was their duty to kill innocent men, women, and children in Gaza, along with Hamas militants, because of the injustices Hamas had wrought on Israelis.

There's plenty of insanity evident here.

A couple of weeks ago I shared on my Church of the Churchless blog three views about the war between Hamas and Israel that I considered reasonable at the time, and still do.

(1) Hamas engaged in unforgivable terrorism when its fighters attacked Israeli citizens, killing women and children, decapitating infants, slaughtering young people at a music festival, and taking an estimated 150 people hostage. Now Israel is justified in fighting back against Hamas.

(2) Israel has fanned the flames of Islamic resentment in the Middle East by treating Palestinians in the occupied territories badly and showing little to no recent interest in pursuing a two-state solution to the longstanding conflict. The current right-wing administration of Benjamin Netanyahu has made a bad situation in the West Bank even worse through its oppressive policies.

(3) Most of the two million people living in Gaza aren't Hamas fighters. Israel should do everything possible to protect them during its war against Hamas. This entails complying with generally accepted rules of war to the greatest extent possible. 

Protecting the people of Gaza from horrendous Israel bombing attacks, as well as a ground invasion that may come soon, needs to become an Israeli priority. As President Biden said in a speech soon after the war began, a thirst for revenge can't be seen as more important than human decency. The United States learned that lesson after our 9/11.

The news out of Gaza has stopped, because today Israel destroyed the internet and cellular communication there. It is clear, though, that things are very bad and getting worse. Today on MSNBC I heard a report from a Norwegian doctor who worked in Gaza hospitals that there are tens of thousands wounded from Israeli shelling, 70% of them women, children, and the elderly, plus thousands dead.

How can Hamas attacks on innocent Israeli women, children, and the elderly be used as an excuse by Israel to attack innocent Palestinian women, children, and elderly? That's crazy, yet at the moment that's the insanity that seems to be holding sway among Israeli leaders.

Fortunately, voices of reason are urging Israel to reconsider the wisdom of a massive ground invasion of Gaza, and of continuing to deny the people of Gaza food, water, electricity, and fuel. Here's a post on X from Chris Hayes today, an eminently reasonable MSNBC commentator.

Thankfully, the Biden administration is urging Israel to scale back its plan to essentially demolish Gaza in order to destroy the Hamas terrorists. So says a Washington Post story, "U.S. urges Israel against Gaza ground invasion, pushes surgical campaign."

The Biden administration is urging Israel to rethink its plans for a major ground offensive in the Gaza Strip and instead to opt for a more “surgical” operation using aircraft and special operations forces carrying out precise, targeted raids on high-value Hamas targets and infrastructure, according to five U.S. officials familiar with the discussions.

Administration officials have become highly concerned about the potential repercussions of a full ground assault, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters, and they increasingly doubt that it would achieve Israel’s stated goal of eliminating Hamas. They also are concerned that it could derail negotiations to release nearly 200 hostages, particularly as diplomats think they have made “significant” advances in recent days to free a number of them, potentially including some Americans, one of the officials said.

The Biden administration also is worried that a ground invasion could result in numerous casualties among Palestinian civilians as well as Israeli soldiers, potentially triggering a dramatic escalation of hostilities in the region, the officials said. U.S. officials think a targeted operation would be more conducive to hostage negotiations, less likely to interrupt humanitarian aid deliveries, less deadly for people on both sides and less likely to provoke a wider war in the region, the officials said.

And the United States also is in favor of humanitarian pauses in the Gaza fighting, according to another Washington Post story, "U.S., in policy shift, urges humanitarian pauses in Gaza." Good news. It's never too late to ditch the insanity of all-out war and find a more balanced approach to protecting both Israel and the people of Gaza, while eliminating Hamas to the greatest extent possible.

After weeks of declining to back growing international calls for “humanitarian pauses” in Israeli airstrikes to allow a steady flow of aid to enter Gaza, permit American and foreign citizens to exit into Egypt and facilitate the release of hostages, the Biden administration is now fully in favor of them and is pressing Israel to agree.

The abrupt policy shift comes as the humanitarian situation inside the enclave has become more dire and much of the world has declined to follow the U.S. lead in withholding public criticism of how Israel is conducting its war against Hamas.

...The administration’s public promotion this week of humanitarian pauses came after what one U.S. official said was “a lot of the groundwork in private communications.”

But it still left the United States behind the curve of international opinion, as the U.N. General Assembly Friday overwhelmingly approved an Arab-sponsored resolution calling for a complete ceasefire. Only 14 of the 193 U.N. member nations voted against the measure, including the United States, Israel and several Pacific island and eastern European states. Most close U.S. allies were in favor or abstained from the vote.

The resolution called on “all parties” to comply with international law in the conflict and specifically demanded rescission by Israel, “the occupying power,” of evacuation orders in Gaza. It did not mention Hamas by name or refer directly to its Oct. 7 attack on Israel.