HinesSight

A little Memorial Day tale of grocery coupon kindness

Memorial Day is about recognizing the ultimate sacrifice for our country: losing one's life. That deserves a lot of praise. But so do lesser sacrifices ordinary Americans perform every day to make things better for their fellow citizens.

That's who I want to honor today.

Not just those who have died fighting for the United States, but everybody who engages in actions large or small for the greater good. What happened to me while grocery shopping last week got me thinking about this.

I was in a checkout line at the south Salem Fred Meyer. The clerk had scanned my purchases and was ready to charge my credit card. But she paused, picked up a coupon, and read it closely. I was perplexed, since I hadn't given her any coupons.

"Someone couldn't use this," the clerk told me. "They asked that I use the coupon for someone who could. You know, a pay it forward thing." So I got $1 off a container of Baby Spring Mix organic salad greens. 

That spurred me to look in my wallet for a Fred Meyer grocery coupon that I'd been carrying around for a while because I never buy enough groceries to use the $7 off a purchase of $70 or more. I handed the coupon to the clerk.

"This is a good deal," I said. "Seven dollars off. Use the coupon when someone qualifies for it." The clerk asked if I was sure I wanted to give it away. Absolutely, I told her, mentioning that I never buy $70 worth of groceries.

As I headed off to my car after checking out, I realized that I felt hugely better about giving the $7 off coupon away, than I did about getting $1 subtracted from the cost of the salad greens. The adage it's better to give than to receive popped into my brain.

(The Bible says "more blessed" rather than "better." However, since I'm not religious, I prefer better.)

It's wonderful that evolution has led us humans to feel good about doing good. That's because our species is intensely social. In the early history of Homo sapiens, as today, we thrived by cooperating with each other to accomplish things beyond the capacity of any individual or small group.

Giving is one way we continue to form the bonds that tie us together, notwithstanding all the political and other pressures that drive us apart. When I thought about someone smiling at being able to get $7 off due to the coupon I gave the clerk, I was filled with the warm glow that comes from giving.

Almost everybody feels that way when they act in a way that makes life better for someone else.

In fact, probably I shouldn't have added that "Almost." Even the most selfish Wall Street trader, whose goal is making bucketloads of money for themselves and their firm, likely feels good that they're playing their part in the game of capitalism that keeps our country's powerful financial machinery humming.

So here's to all of the people who give to the greater good. Who are, again, everybody. Trash collectors. Medical personnel. Teachers. Plumbers. Store clerks. Students. Nursing home residents. Everywhere we look, there's fellow citizens giving of themselves.

Last night, on the 11 pm KGW news, there was a story about how electrical linemen are trained, who work with experienced crews from the very begging of their training. One of the trainees said that he loves it when lights go on in a house because of what his team did.

That's giving. That's sacrifice. Not nearly as dramatic as Patrick Henry's famous ""I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country," yet praiseworthy all the same.

 

My memory of Tina Turner

I saw Tina Turner perform with her jerk husband Ike at either Winterland or Fillmore in San Francisco during my college days in 1968 or 1969. (Hey, like they say, if you can clearly remember the 60's, you weren't really there.)

I was high on something, naturally. Being close to the stage, absorbing her amazing energy -- that was an experience I'll never forget. So sorry that she died. Here's a song of hers that sends chills up my spine.

Check out slides of the exciting re-development of Truitt Brothers cannery

There's some really encouraging stuff happening in Salem's urban core. Hey, at some point we may not need to feel like the boring-by-comparison waypoint between Portland and Eugene.

That was the upbeat message I got at today's Salem City Club program about the development of downtown and riverfront properties.

The speakers were Jordan Truitt, who used to be plant manager of the Truitt Brothers cannery just north of downtown, Jim Vu, board president of the Salem Main Street Association, and Shelly Ehenger, Urban Development Program Manager for the City of Salem.

In this post I'm just going to share the Truitt presentation. I'll discuss what Vu and Ehenger had to say in another post.

Truitt showed slides of the current plan to refashion the cannery into a vibrant mixed use development. I took photos of the slides. He started off talking about an invisible barrier between downtown and north downtown, which the cannery project will help erase.

The slide below shows the big picture of the cannery property.

The cannery property has a long history. It was first used as a cannery in 1917. The Truitt family took it over in 1973.

This was a touching slide of a multigenerational family connected to the cannery.

Canning used to be a really big deal in Salem.

Until it wasn't. Truitt said that pears from Hood River ended up costing twice as much as a can of pears from China.


After this bit of history, Truitt shifted to talking about plans for the property.

There would be true riverfront dining on a structure extending over the water.

Plenty of housing, along with retail shops.

A soccer stadium is being considered. I don't think this is the best use of the riverfront property. But I'm not a big soccer fan.

In a Zen-like comment, Truitt said "the train is the train." Adding "it will always be there."

Here's how people can help make the project become a reality.

It won't be easy. Truitt said this would be a $170 million development, with all the complexities that come with such a large project. 

I'm told, "Hey, you got a bit in my face there, man"

I'm a pretty mild-mannered guy. Yes, I get irritated at people. But almost always I either keep my irritation to myself, or express it in as respectful a manner as possible.

That's why what happened at my athletic club today surprised me.

I was almost finished using the weight machines in what used to be called the Circuit Training room. It was termed that because the basic idea of it is that you go from machine to machine, getting a full body workout.

But some club members who focus on the free weights and different machines in an adjoining room will use a "circuit" machine for a long time, doing a series of varying weights and rest periods in between.

That will irk me if I'm feeling rushed. Which I usually am, because I try to leave just enough time to do my workout before my afternoon Tai Chi class downtown. 

Today I was down to my last couple of weight machines when I saw two young guys begin to use one of the machines that I hadn't gotten to yet. OK, no big deal, I thought. One of them would use the machine, then go into the free weight room to do something else while the other guy would use the machine.

This repeated several times. Again, no big deal. I figured that I could come back and finish the circuit after doing some Tai Chi on my own in an upstairs workout room.

But then, yay!, it looked like both of the guys had finished using the machine that was my last stop in the circuit room.

One of them was standing next to the machine with his back to me, using his phone. I waited for a bit to see if he was going to get back to using the weight machine. Didn't look like it, so I walked up and said, "You done?"

He said, "Yes." I reached around him and adjusted the weight to what I was going to use. Then he said, "Let me wipe it off first." Meaning, use disinfectant on a cloth to clean any sweaty parts.

Sometimes people go overboard on the wiping, and I was anxious to finish my workout so I wouldn't be late for my Tai Chi class. So I told the guy, "No big deal. I'm not fussy." I've said this before to club members who want to clean a machine before I use it.

My unspoken message is that I'm fine with a bit of sweat, and besides, I'm going to wipe off the machine after I use it. But the guy took what I said in a different way.

After some wiping, he walked away into the free weight room, saying over his shoulder, "Hey, you got a bit in my face there, man." That surprised me. Even shocked me a bit.

I was just trying to save him some cleaning time. I had zero ill will toward him, since while he and his friend were taking turns using the machine, I recalled the time that I showed a friend of mine how the circuit machines functioned, which entailed me using a machine then him using the same machine.

So I wasn't even irritated, as sometimes I am, that he and his friend had spent so much time on the machine.

What struck me about this encounter, as minor as it was, is how so many people these days, me certainly included, are quick to take offense at small things. Like someone driving too slow, or too fast. Or having a lengthy discussion with a checkout clerk about the price of an item they think is on sale while fellow shoppers wait in line in back of them.

(I didn't pick these examples out of thin air; they're some of my habitual gripes.)

I wasn't blameless, of course. I could have simply said, "Thanks," when the guy said he was going to clean the machine. However, he could have done the old-fashioned respect your elders thing, since I clearly was old enough to be his father, and maybe even his grandfather.

I admit, though, that I sort of liked that he treated me like another young guy that he was irked with. That "man" on the end of his "Hey, you got a bit in my face there, man" comment made me feel kind of good.

How my trabeculectomy is doing 7 1/2 weeks after surgery

This is a follow-up to my initial blog post about the trabeculectomy eye surgery I had on March 6, reported on in "My eye surgery went well, though not a load of fun."

As a Johns Hopkins article about trabeculectomy says, this surgery is aimed at controlled eye pressure in people like me with glaucoma, when eye drops or laser surgery either aren't doing a good enough job at lowering eye pressure -- the only viable way of keeping glaucoma from doing more damage to the eye -- or someone can't use those other methods.

In my case, Dr. Young, a Portland glaucoma specialist, felt that I needed this surgery because I'd lost so much peripheral vision in my very nearsighted right eye, while my left eye is only very minimally affected by glaucoma. 

My eye pressure was in the low to mid 20's when I was first diagnosed with glaucoma. Prescription eye drops had lowered the pressure to 10-12 in both eyes,  but Dr. Young wanted to get the pressure in my right eye down to 6-7.

When I asked him why laser surgery wasn't an option for my right eye, Dr. Young told me that given the seriousness of my vision loss, and how slowly glaucoma usually progresses, he didn't want to wait a couple of years to learn how well laser surgery was working -- perhaps because I'm 74, and want to preserve as much vision as possible for the rest of my life.

So I had the surgery. Which then involved five follow-up appointments.

Those weren't convenient for me to get to, since Dr. Young practices in Tualatin, Oregon and I live a ways south of Salem, about a 50 minute drive from Tualatin. But mostly I didn't encounter the dreaded Portland-area freeway traffic, so the Trabeculectomy God must have been smiling upon me.

Dr. Young kept telling me that my eye looked fine, but when he pressed on the trabeculectomy site the pressure in my right eye would drop to zero, or one time 2, which isn't a good thing. In fact, it's a bad thing. 

This meant that while I could stop using an eye shield, and phase down on the post-surgery eye drops I was prescribed, Dr. Young wanted me to keep on not lifting heavy weight. At first the limit was ten pounds. Then twenty pounds. Than thirty pounds. Three weeks ago I was given the OK to lift sixty pounds.

That enabled me to use the weight machines at our athletic club, albeit some of them at a considerably lower weight than I was using before the surgery (120 pounds on four of the eleven machines).

Today, though, I got my trabeculectomy graduation notice, three weeks after my previous visit with Dr. Young where he'd said that my eye wasn't forming scar tissue very quickly. My right eye pressure was six, an excellent pressure and right on what Dr. Young had hoped for.

(Further, Young has told me that there's reason to consider that a low eye pressure following trabeculectomy is a "higher quality" pressure, since it doesn't vary much, whereas lowering pressure via periodic drops in the eye has more ups and downs during the day.)

And, yay!, Dr. Young said I could do away with any weight-lifting restriction -- though I told him that I'd gradually ramp up the weight on the machines where I was using 120 pounds. 

Time will tell whether the trabeculectomy is as successful in preserving the vision in my right eye as it seems to be doing at present.

My next appointment with Dr. Young is in four weeks. I have to wear glasses for the foreseeable future, after quite a few decades of contact lens wearing. I want to ask him when I can wear contacts again. This might relate to when I need cataract surgery, which so far I've avoided.

My bad handwriting makes for interesting grocery checkout discussions

Since I'm 74, I suppose I'd have an excuse for my bad handwriting if I chose to make one up. Like, my hands are shaky due to a neurological condition.

But actually my handwriting has been minimally legible to others for most of my life. Me, I can generally read what I write pretty well, though not always.

On the plus side, my affliction makes for some interesting conversations in the grocery store checkout lane. Here's what the clerk at LifeSource Natural Foods here in Salem, Oregon and I talked about today.

Clerk: The number you wrote on this container can't be right.
Me: (peering to see what was on the label I put on the container) Those are 9's at the end.
Clerk: No, I'm talking about the first number; 599 is bulk dish soap, and that isn't what this is.
Me: Yeah, it's bulk almond butter, 399. But hey, I got two of three numbers written legibly. 
Clerk: Thanks for remembering the number.
Me: Thank you for bringing me back to a memory of first grade. I'm going to go home and practice writing 3's until I can stop them looking like 5's. 
Clerk: Oh, you don't have to do that.
Me: I know, but I want to. Though in my defense, there was quite a crowd around the nut butter area just now, and I was a bit stressed wanting to write the number on the label I'd put on the container as quickly as possible.

Which was kind of true, though it doesn't explain the many other times I've been asked to decipher an item number I'd written on a label. Occasionally I'm even asked if the number is English, or, say, Sanskrit.

Here's a video of me doing Water Boxing (Liu He Ba Fa)

After practicing karate, a hard style martial art, for about 12 years, in 2004 I shifted to learning Tai Chi, a soft style martial art -- albeit one with useful martial applications. 

I've been fortunate to have an instructor here in Salem, Oregon who had a lot of experience in several karate styles before also embracing Tai Chi, which is all that Warren Allen teaches now. So he understands the martial side of Tai Chi.

Warren began learning Tai Chi from a Chinese man who used to live in Hong Kong, where he learned the Water Boxing form, Liu He Ba Fa and taught it to Warren.

Warren has passed on his knowledge of Water Boxing to some of his Tai Chi students interested in this challenging, but engaging, blend of Tai Chi and several other more martial styles, Hsing Yi and Ba Gua.

I've still got a lot to learn about Water Boxing, but decided to make a video of me doing the form yesterday, when April rains stopped for a while and the temperature was pleasant.

Mental health gets talked about at Salem City Club

It's usually good to talk through your mental health problems rather than keeping them bottled up inside of you. Today the Salem City Club did just that, albeit from a policy perspective, in a program called Oregon's Many Mental Health Crises.

The not-so-cheery news is that Oregon ranks 49th out of the 50 states in the prevalence of mental illness and access to care. So for sure, we've got a mental health crisis. 

State Representative Rob Nosse started things off by talking about how the legislature is trying to fix things.

He's chair of the House Joint Committee on Behavioral Health. Until now somehow I didn't understand what "behavioral health" meant. It's mental health plus substance abuse, since you can engage in the behavior of substance abuse without having a mental health problem.

Nosse said that due to the largesse of the federal government, Oregon got $1.3 billion for mental health in the last two years. He said that probably Oregon now ranks as the 46th or 47th worst state for mental health problems and access.

Up from 49, perhaps, but still decidedly pitiful -- especially since we're a blue state with supposedly progressive policies, not one of those backward conservative southern states.

Nosse explained the three levels of mental health care the legislature is trying to improve. The first level is community mental health programs where people are treated on an outpatient basis, often by nonprofits.

The second level is secure residential facilities for those whose care needs are in-between being in the community and in the state hospital. The hope, he said, is that fixing problems with the first two levels will relieve pressure on the third level, the state hospital here in Salem.

Measure 110, which decriminalized drugs like heroin and meth, was needed, Nosse said, since treating drug use as a criminal problem obviously hasn't worked. But he would have preferred to see Measure 110 money for treatment programs ramp up in a first year, with decriminalization happening in the second year, instead of both things occurring at once, as actually happened.

Now that the federal money that was plentiful in 2021 and 2022 has dried up, the legislature is focusing on implementing the programs already started rather than initiating new mental health programs. Nosse said that he's a tax and spend liberal who believes that Oregon needs more investment in mental health.

The next speaker was Ann-Marie Bandfield, a Marion County Health and Human Services Program Manager for many behavioral and mental health areas. She said Marion County has a 24/7 walk-in crisis center. Here's an excerpt from the center's web page.

At least one Qualified Mental Health Professional (QMHP) is on duty at all times to provide face-to-face assessments and crisis counseling. We also provide telephone triage, support, and referral. This service is provided on a first come-first served basis. Most of this work is done at the crisis center itself, but a large number of assessments also occur at the emergency room of Salem Hospital.

The last speaker was Heather Jefferis, Executive Director for the Council for Behavioral Health which helps support behavioral health workers in Oregon. She said it was great that health insurance now has to pay for mental health care. 

However, Medicare rates haven't increased in 18 years. And Jefferis said that Oregon is far below the number of substance abuse and inpatient supportive housing beds that are needed.

In the Q&A part of the program, someone asked the speakers if a universal single payer health care system would help with Oregon's mental health crisis. Each of them said that it would, though Rep. Nosse was skeptical that such a plan is politically feasible in our state. 

I got to ask a question.

I said that when I was diagnosed with a major depressive episode -- meaning I was super depressed, which is much worse than merely being deeply sad -- I contacted every psychiatrist in Salem. None were taking new patients. Some didn't even have a waiting list. I was told that I'd have to wait months to see someone. And I had Medicare Advantage insurance.

But I noted that people in my situation weren't talked about by the speakers today.

I said that people with insurance still have big problems getting mental health care due to a shortage of providers. (Eventually I learned that my Salem Health primary care physician's office had a psychiatric nurse practitioner on the staff, who saw me fairly quickly, prescribed an antidepressant, and saw me every week or two for several months until my depression had lifted.)

Rep. Nosse said my comments were right on, and that the legislature wasn't focused on the plight of insured people like me.

When the program was over I spoke with several people. The program chair told me that in getting background info for his introductory remarks, he learned that half the counties in the United States don't have a psychiatrist. And most psychiatrists don't take Medicare patients because Medicare pays so little for mental health care.

I also spoke with a psychiatric nurse practitioner who said that any doctor can prescribe antidepressants. True. But my wife, a retired psychotherapist, tells me that primary care doctors aren't as knowledgeable about managing psychiatric drugs, which is why she urged me to try to find a psychiatrist when I was depressed.

Bill Maher wrong about transgender athletes and Trump indictment

Bill Maher is a comedian. I like his jokes. It doesn't bother me when some of his one-liners mess with facts in order to get a laugh. That's what comedians often do: exaggerate in order to make a humorous point.

What irritates me about Maher is when his playing loose with facts continues from his opening joke-filled monologue to the mostly serious discussion Maher has with his two panelists.

Last Friday's show (April 14) featured Maher engaging in extended rants about transgender people and Trump's indictment. I didn't like what he said on both subjects.

Maher claimed that transgender women (who transitioned from being a man) were harming the rights of "real" women. I've never heard that from any of the women I know. The main argument presented for this assertion was transgender women competing in women's sports.

OK, this happens. Not often, but sometimes. Maher and the panelists, Katie Porter and Piers Morgan, spent quite a bit of time talking about a transgender woman winning a NCAA championship in swimming.

That was Lia Thomas. 

University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas became the first transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I title after finishing first in the women’s 500-yard freestyle event Thursday evening.

Thomas pulled away in the final 150 yards to win in 4:33.24.

Thomas, who previously swam for the men’s team at Penn, has come to personify the ongoing debate on trans women’s participation in sports and the balance between inclusion and fair play.

This is a worthwhile debate to have. There do need to be rules governing transgender women who want to compete in sports where they may have a competitive advantage. However, Porter made sense when she said this should be left up to the organizations that govern women's sports.

And Morgan was wrong when he said, as I recall, that Thomas won the 500-yard freestyle by 50 seconds over the next fastest woman. Actually it was 1.75 seconds, not exactly a blowout. Plus, Wikipedia says:

In March 2022, she became the first openly transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I national championship in any sport after winning the women's 500-yard freestyle event. Thomas lost muscle mass and strength through testosterone suppression and hormone replacement therapy. Her time for the 500 freestyle is over 15 seconds slower than her personal bests before medically transitioning. Thomas's winning time of 4:33.24 was 9.18 seconds short of Katie Ledecky's NCAA record of 4:24.06. In other races, Thomas has been beaten by multiple cisgender women as well as by Iszac Henig, a transgender man not on hormones.

Further, the NCAA has instituted a transgender policy that addresses the problem of assuring fair competition between transgender and cisgender women.

At its January 19, 2022 meeting, the NCAA Board of Governors updated the transgender student-athlete participation policy governing college sports. 

The new policy aligns transgender student-athlete participation with the Olympic Movement. The resulting sport-by-sport approach preserves opportunity for transgender student-athletes while balancing fairness, inclusion and safety for all who compete.

So it isn't true that transgender women are trampling on the rights of other women. Maher should educate himself about this before contributing to the transgender hysteria that, as Porter correctly noted, is endangering transgender people, who are subject to physical attacks at a rate much higher than their proportion in the general population.

Regarding Trump's indictment, this is a simpler Maher falsehood to address. First, he wrongly claimed that Democrats were after Trump because he had sex with Stormy Daniels, the adult film actress. That's untrue.

Hardly anyone cares who Trump has sex with, possibly excepting Melania, his wife. And Trump wasn't indicted by Democrats. He was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury that heard extensive testimony about false business records filed by Trump in an attempt to cover up the payment of hush money to Daniels a few weeks before the 2016 presidential election.

Maher blathered on at length about how Democrats were making the same mistake with Trump as Republicans did with Bill Clinton following his affair with Monica Lewinsky. But again, the charge against Trump isn't that he had sex with a woman other than his wife.

He's been indicted because he paid Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet about their affair just before the election where his misogyny was a central focus, and instead of reporting this as a campaign contribution, Trump falsely termed it legal fees.

Bill Maher is a smart guy. So is his staff. So I can't believe that Maher didn't know the facts about Trump's indictment. He knew. Maher just chose to say stuff on his show that was false, in order to take a cheap shot at Democrats.

Just like he took a cheap shot at transgender people.

I try ChatGPT. Asking about myself, I'm impressed.

It took me a while, but after hearing a lot about the marvels of ChatGPT, the online chatbot offered by OpenAI, a company whose goal is A.G.I. -- artificial general intelligence that can do anything a human can do -- I got around to trying out ChatGPT just now.


(All you need to do this is a free account with OpenAI.)

Because I have a significant online presence, and my ego is also significant, my first question for ChatGPT was about myself. I was impressed with the result, which took about five seconds to pop up.

Well, after reading that, I want to be ChatGPT's best friend. Its description of me was a bit over-the-top, but in my decidedly personal opinion, not hugely so.

ChatGPT did provide a profile of me that was kind of one-dimensional, since I'm also proud of my land use and political activism -- though I did ask Chat GPT about Brian Hines the blogger and author, and my Church of the Churchless blog has the largest Internet presence of my three blogs.

ChatGPT rapidly put together a description of me that was well written and accurate. My only minor quibble was that 2004 is 19 years prior to 2023 and ChatGPT said my churchless blog has been operating for "over a decade." But 19 years is over a decade, obviously.

I then tried to learn about Laurel Hines, my wife. But ChatGPT balked, telling me that it couldn't, or wouldn't, provide information on private individuals. I've urged Laurel to sign up with OpenAI herself to see if she has better luck learning about Laurel Hines. It could be that I have enough of a public presence to get a pass on the private person restriction.

Lastly, I recalled that ChatGPT is pretty good at poetry. So my curiosity, and ego, led me to ask it to write a poem about Brian Hines the blogger and author. Here's the result in two screenshots.

OK, this poem is more over-the-top than the prose description of me was. But I love it! Now I not only want ChatGPT to be my best friend, I want it to whisper sweet nothings into my ear about how much ChatGPT adores me. 

After I die, I definitely want ChatGPT to speak at the celebration of life held for me. Unless between now and then, ChatGPT turns sour on me, in which case it can go fuck itself, assuming a chatbot is capable of that.

On a more serious note -- not that I wasn't serious about what I just said -- it was both impressive and a bit creepy to see how well ChatGPT did with my two queries, each of which took only a few seconds.

We're only in the early days of artificial intelligence. There's reason for concern about it, but that's a topic for another blog post. For now, I'm content to bask in the warm glow of what ChatGPT said about me.