HinesSight

Typepad told me they aren't going out of business. Hope that's true.

I've been blogging with Typepad since 2003, which is when Wikipedia says Typepad launched. So I must have been one of their earliest customers. Now I have three Typepad blogs.

So while I've gotten used to fairly frequent Typepad outages as problems with the blogging service have become more common, when I couldn't log in to my account on March 3, I got more concerned than usual.

Even though things were back to normal by the next day (which for Typepad is still pretty crappy, especially when it comes to uploading photos, as this person complained about in 2022), I felt the need to send Typepad a support ticket that said:

The Typepad outage yesterday spurred me to do some Googling about Typepad. I saw that you haven't accepted new customers since 2020 and may not be in business much longer. Hopefully that isn't true.

But if it is, I sure hope you guys will have a plan for those of us who have been with Typepad almost from the start, 2003. In those 22 years I've made about 8,300 posts on my three blogs. It's just overwhelming for me to think about losing all that content, which includes many personal experiences, since I partly use blogging as a form of a diary.

So I've got posts about deaths in the family, my granddaughter's birth, health problems, joys and sorrows, all that stuff. It's all under a Typepad URL, so if you go away, so does my ability to retrieve those posts.

I'm simply asking what I hope you're already planning to do in case Typepad goes out of business. Please seriously consider a plan to keep the posts of people like me available. I'm not computer savvy enough to know what this might be. I just know that I'd be willing to pay more to preserve that content, as I'm confident other Typepad users would be.

The response I got made me feel better, though it wasn't totally reassuring.

Hi Brian,

Thanks for your message. Although Typepad is no longer accepting new sign-ups, we continue to support our existing customers and there are no plans for that to change. If it were to change at some point, there would likely be a tool to help bloggers migrate to another platform. However, as mentioned, there is no plan at this time to shut down Typepad, and the Support team are still here for you.

Thanks,
Laura

I replied with:

Laura, thanks much for your positive response. I feel better now. The notion of a tool to help us bloggers migrate to another platform sounds great. Seems like that would benefit both the other platform (new customers!) and Typepad bloggers (no need to get degree in computer science!). Hopefully it won't come to that. I feel a large sense of gratitude to Typepad for sticking around since 2003, which I like to refer to as several hundred years in Internet Years, given the rapidity of change since that time. Of course, that's when I began blogging, which makes me a several hundred year old blogger -- a bit more than my actual ancient age of 76.

Quite a while ago, maybe as many as ten years, I looked into converting my many thousands of blog posts into a WordPress format. It turned out that this would be very difficult to do, if not impossible, so I gave up on that idea.

This helps explain why I felt so good about Typepad support saying they hope to offer a tool to help bloggers migrate to another platform if it came to that. I'd hate to lose not only the text of my posts, but also all of the photos, files, comments, and such that have been part of my 8,300 posts. 

Laurel Hines, my wife, supports changes to Oregon's Death With Dignity law

The Oregon legislature is considering a bill, SB 1003, that would make changes to our state's Death With Dignity law -- which allows people who have six months or less left to live to exercise control over the time and manner of their death by taking physician-prescribed medication.

Passed by Oregon voters in 1994, and affirmed in 1997 when it took effect after a legal challenge, the law is a good start, but it needs improving. That's why my wife, Laurel Hines, testified in favor of SB 1003 at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on March 3.

Laurel told the committee that it makes sense to allow physician assistants and nurse practitioners to deal with patients who want to make use of the Death With Dignity law. In many rural parts of Oregon, PAs and NPs are the primary caregivers, since physicians are lacking in those areas. 

She also approved of a proposed change that reduces the waiting period to use the law from 15 days to 2 days, telling the committee that a 15 day wait after deciding on a peaceful death could be intolerable, and it prolongs the patient's emotional agony. Further, some people lose the ability to self-administer the medication over a 15 day period (that's a requirement under the law).

My wife was quoted in a couple of news stories about the hearing. Here's an excerpt from a story in The Lund Report (an independent publication focused on health care in Oregon), "Senators hear passionate arguments over how terminally ill patients end their lives in Oregon."

How easy should it be for terminally ill people to end their lives? Debate over how Oregon should answer that question is flaring in Salem.

A group of doctors want to cut the waiting period for Oregon’s Death with Dignity law from 15 days to 48 hours and allow not just physicians but nurse practitioners and physician assistants to prescribe medication and oversee the process that allows terminally ill patients to end their lives.

Critics say the changes will remove safeguards voters were promised when they approved Oregon’s physician-assisted dying law in 1994 and affirmed in 1997. Supporters, however, say the law needs an update in response to doctor shortages and for patients who are on the brink of death.

“I believe that these changes that are being proposed are not radical at all, and extremely reasonable,” Laurel Hines, a retired Salem social worker, told lawmakers Monday.

Lawmakers considered those arguments during a hearing of Senate Bill 1003, which would make the most far-reaching revisions to Oregon’s Death with Dignity program in the history of the law.

Hines said that Oregon’s law is modest compared to what’s in place in Canada and other countries. Without reforms to Oregon’s law, she said more people would turn to “do-it-yourself options.”

“I now have traumatic memories of my sister dying the way she did, and being in the condition she was and in pain that morphine didn't control and her loss of autonomy."

The Portland Oregonian also had a story that mentioned Laurel, "Bill to ease medically assisted suicide runs into wall of opposition." 
Download Bill to ease medically assisted suicide runs into wall of opposition

The bill would loosen Oregon’s first-in-the-nation law by reducing the standard waiting period after patients ask for lethal doses of medication from 15 days to two days. Among other provisions, it would eliminate the need for two doctors to sign off on medically assisted suicide and instead allow two physician assistants or nurse practitioners to do so.

No individual lawmakers have signed on as sponsors of Senate Bill 1003, which was filed by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Only two people spoke in favor of the bill Monday. Eight people spoke in opposition, along with 150 Oregonians who submitted written testimony objecting to the bill.

Dr. Paul Kaplan, who said he was speaking for a group of about 30 mostly retired doctors who’ve focused on end-of-life care, told the committee the bill would help reduce inequities in rural Oregon where most residents use physician assistants or nurse practitioners for their medical care.

“There are very large areas of Oregon where there is not a doctor available for hundreds of miles,” Kaplan said. “And so this service is literally not available to patients who live in those areas.”

Laurel Hines, a Salem resident, told the committee that sometimes waiting 15 days is too long. Hines said her sister deteriorated within a few days of going into hospice and would not have been able to self-administer a lethal dose — as required by Oregon law. Though Hines’ sister died in Illinois, where there is no medically assisted suicide law, Hines used her sister’s death as an example of what can happen to terminally ill patients.

“I now have traumatic memories of my sister dying the way she did and being in the condition that she was and pain that morphine didn’t control,” Hines said.

It seems that many or even most of the 150 comments in opposition to the bill likely came from an organized effort by Oregon Right to Life. Laurel read the comments and told me that there was talk about the horror of killing unborn children, though abortion obviously has nothing to do with the Death With Dignity law. Most of those opponents probably hadn't even read SB 1003, so hopefully their comments will be discounted by the committee.

Ukrainian refugee speaks at Salem City Club on day Trump insults Ukraine

The timing was coincidental.

Still, yesterday it was jarring for me to leave for the noon Salem City Club program on "Finding Home in a New Culture and Country" after learning the news about how Trump and Vance had insulted Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, which really was an insult to the entire country, only to find that one of the program speakers was Kseniia Hnatovska, a Ukrainian.

Here's how she was described in a City Club email:

Kseniia and her family fled Ukraine at the onset of the war and undertook a long and challenging journey that brought them to Salem. Kseniia works as Ukrainian Navigator/Case Manager with Salem For Refugees organization now and helps other refugees to settle in and feel safe. Kseniia works hard to build a Ukrainian community in Salem and bring people and resources together.

Hnatovska shared some images of what her city, Kharkiv, was like before and after the unprovoked Russian invasion three years ago. I couldn't help but think of how Trump criticized Zelensky for being so angry at the Russian dictator, Vladimir Putin.

Gosh, Donald, maybe that had something to do with Putin being responsible for the deaths of so many Ukrainian, along with senseless attacks on civilians.

This is Hnatovska, her husband, and daughter in happier times back in Ukraine.


Her city looked beautiful.

Until Russian bombs started to fall. 

Parents would write a child's identifying information on their back in case the child became separated from their family. Or if the child was the sole survivor of a Russian attack.

Eventually Hnatovska and her family made it to Salem, where they were aided by the Salem for Refugees and other local people.

Tania Wilson Moran, the Volunteer Coordinator for Salem for Refugees, also spoke at the City Club program. She explained the rigorous process refugees have to go through before they are cleared for entry to the United States. Sometimes refugees have to wait over ten years to jump through all the hoops.

Irritatingly, Moran said that some Salem-bound refugees were ready to board planes to come to this country. Then the Trump administration cancelled all refugee admissions, an amazingly heartless and cruel thing to do.

The historic average of refugees allowed to come to the United States has been 65,000 to 70,000 per year. In 2023 the number was 60,000. Now the number is sitting at zero.

Moran said that in Salem, over 500 volunteers, 50 community partners, and 35 faith communities have welcomed over 1,000 refugees from 17 different countries who speak 29 different languages. That's wonderful. Hopefully the Trump administration will find a glimmer of compassion in its so-far cold heart and resume the entry of refugees to our country.

In response to a question from the audience about how the current dysfunction in Washington, D.C. has affected her organization, Moran said that Salem for Refugees is in a tough spot, having lost most of the group's federal funding. However, I recall her saying that they've been able to raise $100,000 from other sources.

Another audience member had a right-on comment about Ukraine losing the support of the American government. His hope was that Ukraine keeps the support of the American people. I feel the same way.

Salem Health dumps Regence after each blames the other

When I went in for a teeth cleaning session at my dentist's office this week, I told the front desk person that I had different insurance now, having signed up with Providence MedAdvantage at the end of 2024 because I didn't want to run the risk of my Regence MedAdvantage plan being severely handicapped by Regence and Salem Health failing to renew their contract -- which seemed likely at the time.

I was told that many of their dental patients have done the same thing: dumped Regence. A few days ago the wisdom of that move became clear when Salem Health issued a news release whose title says it all: "Update: Negotiations fail, Salem Health can no longer accept Regence insurance." Excerpt:

For over a year, Salem Health Hospitals and Clinics has worked tirelessly to reach agreement on a fair and equitable contract with Regence BlueCross BlueShield that covers the cost of providing health care in the mid-valley. Despite daily negotiations and numerous accommodations by Salem Health, Regence has been unwilling to offer any meaningful compromise, forcing Salem Health to stop accepting BlueCross BlueShield insurance effective Feb. 24, 2025.

“It is Salem Health’s obligation and privilege to provide high quality of care for our community,” said Cheryl Wolfe, Salem Health president and CEO. “Unfortunately, that means making difficult decisions to ensure we can provide that level of care now and for the next generation. We understand this decision will be difficult for our patients who are BlueCross BlueShield members. We have worked so hard to find an alternative path with Regence and are so deeply frustrated and heartbroken that this is where we are.”

Since the contract between the two parties expired Jan. 1, Salem Health has seen a pattern of Regence denying coverage and passing the full cost of care to their members. This leaves patients with overwhelming medical bills, even as these members continue to pay their premiums to Regence.

Of course, Regence has a different perspective on this corporate pissing match, issuing its own news release, "Salem Health's leadership has walked away from negotiations." Excerpt:

We have been working for months to find a reasonable path to bring Salem Health’s providers and facilities back into our network. But today their leaders said they are not interested in continuing conversations if we won’t give them a 40% increase.

Salem chose to terminate our contract at the start of this year and appears uninterested in serving Regence members.

We’ve been transparent that our aim is to protect our members and customers from unsustainable increases in the cost of care. We hear regularly from people who are frustrated about the very real impact health care affordability has on their lives. Those frustrations extend to our regulators, who have asked us to limit care to 3.4% growth annually.

Salem Health leaders have continued to insist on reimbursement rates that far exceed that amount. We’ve regularly given them increases through the years, and we have offered them an increase in our current conversations as well. However, they continue to demand more, and we cannot do that to our members and customers, knowing any increases in the price of care will cost them more.

We understand that Salem Health’s position is that they are ready to stay out of network for a long time, asserting that they do not need Regence for their continued business and plan to prioritize patients insured by others. They’ve indicated that they can easily replace our members with other patients.

This is a most unfortunate position that prioritizes their profits and not their patients and turns a blind eye to the disruption they have caused in the community. We want to provide access to our members, but we will not ask them to shoulder the burden of lining the provider’s pockets.

I don't know who to believe. My leaning, I guess, is a bit toward Salem Health. After all, Salem Health says that they have contracts with 15 other insurance carriers, though it's unclear how many of those contracts were newly negotiated.

When I turned 65, I signed up with Regence MedAdvantage. So for over ten years I've been mostly satisfied with Regence. In 2024 I paid $72 a month for coverage, in addition to what is deducted for Medicare from my Social Security payment. Now I'm paying Providence MedAdvantage $82 a month for a roughly similar plan.

What disturbs me is the disruption caused to people in the Salem area who have Regence health insurance and either weren't able to switch to a different insurance company, or didn't want to switch, perhaps trusting that Regence and Salem Health would work out a deal. 

The number of people potentially affected is open to debate. Salem Health's news release says more than 30,000:

Salem Health requested continuity of care for all Regence members after January while the two parties negotiated toward a fair contract. Regence largely denied this request. Out of more than 30,000 local BlueCross BlueShield members, Regence has granted continuity of care for less than 400, leaving the others with almost no local access to care and large medical bills. To avoid further crippling medical debt for patients, Salem Health has made the difficult decision to stop accepting BlueCross BlueShield insurance.

Regence's press release says 30,000 is too high.

Salem Health says Regence has 30,000 affected members – not true: this number includes members from other Blue plans across the country as well as thousands of people who were no longer eligible with any Blues plan.

Regardless, it's a sad commentary on our nation's dysfunctional health care system that two giant corporations can hold hostage the physical and mental health needs of many thousands of people in our area.

I'm not expecting that the next four years of the Trump administration will see any improvement in this regard, since at the best our health care system will be fortunate to maintain the crappy status quo: way more expensive than in other comparable countries, while we have poorer health outcomes.

2025 Super Bowl made me into a NFL fan

I can't be absolutely sure about this, but after watching the 2025 Super Bowl, for the first time I feel like I'm turning into a NFL fan -- even though I've watched every previous Super Bowl and never had that inclination. 

It's hard for me to tell what made the difference this time.

Sure, it was an entertaining game, filled with surprises. I expected that the contest between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles would be close. When the score was 24-0 at halftime after Philadelphia held Kansas City scoreless, I realized a blowout was more likely.

Yet all through the game, Kansas City bottled up Philadelphia's star running back, Saquon Barkley, who only got 57 yards total. That didn't matter much, as the final score was 40-22 with Kansas City getting 16 points in the fourth quarter after the game had been effectively decided.

My best guess is that this Super Bowl allowed me to turn the page on my longstanding reluctance to be a big fan of professional sports.

I've always preferred the college game, whether it be football, basketball, or baseball -- aside from my time in high school when I was a huge San Francisco Giants fan back when Willy Mays, Juan Marichal, and Orlando Cepeda were on the team. (Yeah, I'm old.)

College sports just seemed purer to me, athletes playing for the joy of the game rather than for big bucks. Of course, it bothered me that college athletic departments raked in lots of money from those athletes.

So when the NIL (name, image, likeness) policy came into being, which allows college athletes to make money from their personal brand, that seemed like a good thing to me. However, NIL has blurred the line between college and professional sports, making it more difficult for me to view the college game as purer.

Also, this year I watched the NFL division championships along with the Super Bowl. This helped me see something that is obvious, yet wasn't readily apparent to me until now: NFL players are top college players, just some years older.

Meaning, for the first time I could put the "professional" part of the NFL game in the back of my mind and focus instead on how NFL players are the cream of the crop of college football that I've enjoyed so much over the years.

The age spread of NFL players is greater than in the college game, but otherwise watching an NFL game is roughly similar to watching an All-Star college football game. And I could see in today's Super Bowl that the players are just as emotional as college players, ecstatic when things are going well, despondent when they aren't. 

There is, though, one thing I refuse to accept about the NFL: using roman numerals to denote Super Bowls. That seems incredibly outmoded. How many people can tell what year this Super Bowl was? (Answer: 2025)

Just about nobody, even if they somehow know that LIX means 59. Roman numerals made a bit of sense when there was just a few Super Bowls, but now it's time to simply call them by the year they were played.

I loved Emilia Pérez, a highly creative genre-bending film

Last night my wife and I finished watching Emilia Pérez on Netflix. We loved the movie, which won four Golden Globe awards this year and likely will be nominated for many Oscars. 

We tried to imagine what the pitch would have been to movie studios. "Hey guys, we want to make a film about a man who is a vicious Mexican drug lord, but whose dream is to become a transgender woman. It will be largely in Spanish with English subtitles and feature lots of singing and dancing."

Yeah, right, not going to happen seemingly would have been the typical response. Yet Jacques Audiard, writer and director, did succeed in making the movie -- which blends the genres of a musical, drama, and thriller. 

I found the song lyrics deeply moving, especially those in which cartel kingpin Juan "Manitas" Del Monte, played by transgender actress Karla Sofía Gascón, expresses his deep desire to be who he truly is, a woman, before he dies. 

Basically Manitas is saying, I want to truly live before I die. Which is how almost everybody feels. Yet often we don't reveal to others, or maybe even to ourselves, what our innermost nature genuinely is. 

Before I watched Emilia Pérez, I was very sympathetic to transgender people who undergo gender-affirming care. After seeing the movie, even more so. Manitas has to go through a huge amount of trouble, making tremendous sacrifices, to become the person he feels himself to be.

This is the power of movie-making. Watching a marvelously-made film about someone transitioning from a man to a woman had much more of an emotional effect on me than all of the news stories I've read about transgender people and gender-affirming care. 

Yes, the director apologized after Mexican outrage over Emilia Pérez, which was made in Spain. And he's come in for criticism from a LGBTQ group. But I think critics of the movie are missing what really counts about it: how we humans can have an intense desire to be true to ourselves that compels us to make great sacrifices to that noble end.

In Providence strike, I'm on the side of nurses and doctors

Last Friday Oregon's largest health care strike in history kicked off as about 5,000 nurses, doctors, and midwives walked off their Providence Hospitals jobs. Dissatisfaction with working conditions was a major reason for the strike, according to the Oregon Nurses Association. 

One of Oregon’s largest healthcare providers, Providence, is a system in crisis that threatens the health and well-being of all Oregonians.  

We are nurses, doctors, physician associates, nurse practitioners, and certified nurse midwives from Providence facilities across Oregon. Some of us have been bargaining with Providence for more than a year and are working without a contract.

Providence has rejected our common-sense proposals to improve patient care and safety by not committing to safe staffing and other critical patient safety issues in our contracts. That’s why we’re going on strike starting January 10.

When healthcare workers are asked to do more with less, patient lives are at stake. Providence has pushed nurses, doctors and other healthcare professionals to work under unsafe staffing conditions.  

Providence hasn’t offered any real plan to increase retention. Providence simply isn’t competitive with other healthcare systems in the areas where they operate. That means fewer workers; longer ER lines; longer surgery waits; and more medical complications, as Oregonians can’t get the care they need quickly. 

We have made the difficult decision to go on strike because Providence executives aren’t listening to us. We need Providence to put patients before profits and do everything they can to make sure healthcare professionals can work to the top of their practice and stay for the long term.  

Today Providence paid for a full page ad in the Sunday Oregonian newspaper. I'm a digital subscriber. Here's screenshots of the ad, which I found annoying and demeaning toward nurses.

Providence Health & Services claims that the Oregon Nurses Association called a strike with the intent of cancelling patient appointments and services. I doubt there's any solid evidence supporting that assertion, and it goes against the ONA statement of concern for patient well-being. 

And Providence also claims the Oregon Nurses Association is fully responsible for disruptions to patient care. Huh?

Negotiations over union contracts obviously involve two parties, the employer and the employees. Sure, often each side blames the other for being unreasonable if a strike occurs after negotiations break down, but usually this is hyperbole. Each side should shoulder some blame for the strike.

Hopefully Providence isn't operating under a fantasy that the public is more sympathetic to a giant health care corporation than to the nurses and doctors who provide care at the eight Providence hospitals around Oregon. 

I deeply doubt this is the case.

When someone needs care at a hospital, it is given by nurses and doctors, not by the management of the entity that owns and runs the hospital. I've appreciated the competency and friendliness of the doctors and nurses who handled my fairly recent hernia and eye operations at Salem Health, along with screening colonoscopies.  Administrators of the health care organization responsible for my care mean nothing to me.

After ten years of being a member of Regence Medicare Advantage, I just switched to a Providence Medicare Advantage plan after Regence and Salem Health failed to agree on a 2025 contract, which meant that I'd have to pay more for out-of-network care from Salem Health as of January 1.

So far (just twelve days), I'm satisfied with Providence Medicare Advantage. Several times I've phoned Providence with questions about my new insurance plan. The people I've talked with have been helpful and pleasant. But again, I'm thankful for the front-line staff at Providence, not management. 

The financial aspect of the offer Providence says it has made to nurses and doctors seems pretty reasonable. But it appears that working conditions and staffing levels may be the bigger concern for the nurses and doctors. I'm on their side, as I strongly suspect a majority of Oregonians are.

Oregon's Rose Bowl loss reminded me of Harris's presidential loss

There I was, all prepared for what I thought was going to be an enjoyable television watching time.

I'd been looking forward to this moment for months. I was highly familiar with the contest that finally was going to be decided. I realized that my favorite wasn't guaranteed to win. But there was every indication that this had a good chance of happening. I figured that the worst that could happen was an evenly matched contest where it would take a while for the winner to become obvious.

Sadly, what I just said applied equally to two disturbing events spaced about two months apart: Kamala Harris's loss to Donald Trump on November 5 in the presidential race, and the University of Oregon football team's loss to Ohio State on January 1 in the Rose Bowl.

Of course, these losses involved very different consequences. Harris's defeat risks the future of our country and indeed the entire world. Oregon's loss just means that a national championship isn't going to happen for the team ranked #1 for many weeks.

Yet both hit me hard emotionally. I wanted my favored contestant to win, really badly. I'd envisioned how good I was going to feel after their hard-fought victory had finally happened. I had settled into my TV watching chair with a lot of optimism.

But it didn't take long for me to realize that the Oregon Ducks weren't quacking away on the football field like they had earlier in the season when they'd defeated Ohio State 32-31 thanks to the Buckeyes quarterback sliding to the turf a split second too late when he had gained enough yardage to put his team in field goal range, and the game ended before a field goal could be attempted.

Either Oregon had taken a big step backward, or Ohio State was a much better team now. Probably both were true.

Regardless, watching Ohio State score 34 unanswered points in the first half, when the Buckeyes were only favored to win by three points or so, was shocking. Oregon sort of came to life at the end of the first half and some parts of the second half, though it seemed to me that the final score of 41-21 made the game seem closer than it really was. 

In football, there's always next year. Oregon had a great 2024 season with a 13-1 record. It's how much the  "1" hurts that stops me from feeling good right now about how the team did. Plus, Oregon has come close to a national championship before. I'd convinced myself that this was the year the Ducks would break through that "close but not quite" barrier.

Didn't happen. Maybe it will in 2025.

2024 Silvertongue Apple-Peal pokes satirical fun at Silverton

The Silvertongue Apple-Peal not coincidentally has a name similar to Silverton's recently deceased serious newspaper, the Appeal Tribune, which met its end in 2022 when the nearby Salem Statesman Journal stopped publishing it on the command of its corporate master, Gannett. 

Thankfully, the Silvertongue Apple-Peal lives on since 2012, thanks to local gadfly Gus Frederick, who has come out with a new edition on the pleasingly languid schedule of every two years to mark a general or midterm election. 

Our Town described Gus Frederick's effort in a story about the closing of the Appeal Tribune after 142 years. 

Frederick said The Appeal-Tribune had a personal impact on him and his eventual career in multimedia. He said, during high school, he worked on page layout for Davis, and was hired during the summer as a photo lab technician.

“The Appeal was a great initial learning experience,” said Frederick. “And while everything I do nowadays (video, photography, publishing) is digital, the analog background I lived through not only exposed those principles in graphic detail, it also makes me greatly appreciate these new modern whiz-bang tools we have today!”

Frederick felt so inspired by his experience that, in 1987, he and friend Rick Ernst published The Silvertongue Apple-Peal, a spoof newspaper poking fun at local institutions in the style of MAD Magazine and National Lampoon. The paper was published every April 1 using then-state-of-the-art publishing software, but even with a yearly print cycle Frederick said his small staff became burned out and the spoof paper was discontinued after five years.

But The Apple-Peal made a surprise comeback in 2012, this time being published every other year and coinciding with major elections. Frederick admitted his political views “drift towards port,” but neither liberals nor conservatives are spared in this new iteration, with the 2022 issue expected to come out soon.

The 2024 Silvertongue Apple-Peal is another work of creative pseudo-journalistic genius. I love every satirical bit of it, but am particularly struck by the ads, some of which I've shown below -- in part for the practical reason that my MacBook Pro laptop doesn't have a big screen, so I'm limited in the size of the screenshots I can capture and share.

Here's part of the 2024 front page, along with some favorite ads.

GIMME-ITT refers to Gannett, the much-despised owner of the Statesman Journal and many other newspapers in the country that Gannett uses as cash cows, laying off staff to reduce expenses and making as much money as possible from a paper before it is closed for good.

It's cool that the Silvertongue Apple-Peal has ads for related magazines.


Edgy but amusing ad.


Corny financial news plus bathroom humor directed at the Statesman Journal. Perfect!

My wife made the healthiest main dish in the history of Christmas Eve dinners

Part of me says, "You shouldn't be bragging on Christmas Day." Another part says, "Dude, go ahead and brag -- you aren't bragging about yourself, but about your wife, Laurel."

I'm listening to that part.

For while the title of this blog post might seem to be an exaggeration, it accurately reflects the prevailing opinion among me, Laurel, and five friends we invited for a Christmas Eve dinner at our house last night 

Well, in the history of Christmas Eve dinners is an embellishment that I added for dramatic effect. But it's true that all seven of us agreed that few people were having as healthy a main dish as what Laurel served for dinner.

Here's a photo of my leftover plate that I'm having for dinner again today.

It's a vegetarian loaf with organic lentils, kale, brown rice, and carrots, with cranberry sauce as a glaze on top, plus some other minor ingredients. (It was supposed to have a celery stalk also; Laurel forgot to put it on the list when I went grocery shopping on Sunday, so celery wasn't included.)

UPDATE: Here's a link to the Ultimate Vegan Thanksgiving Load with Cranberry Sauce recipe. You have to scroll down a ways to find the recipe on this web page. 

Since I've been a vegetarian for 55 years, with no meat or fish entering my mouth during all that time, I readily admit that my taste buds are so attuned to healthy vegetarian food, there's no way I can compare this veggie loaf with turkey, ham, or any other food that once was walking around -- assuming it was raised outside of a factory farm, since in those places some animals don't have enough room to walk.

All I can say is that it tastes good to me, as it did to everybody who ate it last night. Of course, our Christmas Eve dinner included some other food: mashed potatoes, salad, green beans, chocolate cake, poppy seed cake. Our guests contributed several of the dishes. 

I'm not religious, but it was a Christmas miracle of sorts when I got on the scale this morning for my daily weigh-in and found that not only hadn't I gained any weight, I had lost some, even though I ate quite a bit last night.

That's a side benefit of eating healthy vegetarian food during the holidays, as well as throughout the year. It tends to be lower in calories.

My weight has bounced around a bit during the vegetarian phase of my life, which began when I was about 21. Currently I weigh just a bit more than I did in high school. However, my height is a few inches less (damn aging!) so my BMI, body mass index, must be greater now.

I'm not a strong proselytizer for vegetarianism.

Still, I'm not shy about pointing out that not only is giving up meat good for a person's health, it's good for our planet. Raising animals for food is a major contributor to rising greenhouse gas emissions, which makes being a vegetarian wise both personally and environmentally.