Breaking News

Local Columns

Reaching our best potential

This article is rooted in a search for words such as compassion, empathy, and mindfulness. The term “mindfulness” caught on a snag. How can there be a controversy about the meaning of “mindfulness”? Compassion: “moved or motivated to help others; sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it … a feeling and an action that stems from the feeling.” Empathy: “ability to relate to another’s pain vicariously, as if one has experienced the pain themselves … used just for the feeling.” Published articles describe ...

Deaths of despair: A loss of hope

Many of us remember the great recession of 2008. Others of us lived through the Economic Malaise of the late 1970s into the 1980s. (Economic Malaise was a gentler term than Great Depression.) How terrible it was for the families who depended on the steel mills for their livelihoods. And then everyone learned about ‘ripple effect.’ Contractors who worked for the steel industry were devastated as the dominoes continued to fall. Local stores were stricken when there were fewer customer dollars. You were fortunate if you could afford to have what you needed. Homes – and everything else ...

America’s power grid is facing real trouble

There are two reasons why consumers experience a power outage. The first is obvious: a storm comes along and knocks down trees and power lines. That’s what typically happens. But there’s now a second reason for power outages in the United States—there simply isn’t enough electricity to go around. Power generation in the United States has always been an extremely dependable commodity. But recently, there’s been a startling decline—and both Texas and California have offered previews of this worrying trend. In February 2021, portions of Texas’s natural gas infrastructure and ...

Are you ‘sober curious?’

The Golden Years. These are supposed to be full of wonder, adventure, less stress than during the child-rearing years. These are supposed to be the years of doing all of the things you couldn’t do when you were raising children: had a job, obligations and responsibilities. (Frankly, I think the best years of our lives are when our children are growing up under our roof, safely tucked in at night after the door is locked.) You know, alcohol can become problematic for anyone who drinks, any age. It can lead to serious health consequences … dehydration, poor sleep, weight gain … an ...

Effects of caffeine on older adults

EDITOR’S NOTE: This column was originally published Feb. 7, 2020 ——— Thanks to breakthroughs in medicine and nutrition in recent years, we are living longer than ever before. But this increase in life expectancy also brings an increase in the number of diseases, injuries and impairments that affect older adults. With this in mind, we at the local Visiting Angels office in Salem have created this series of articles to keep our older population and their families informed and to offer some practical advice for meeting the challenges faced by seniors and those who care for them. ...

Something you can do

Some years back a friend in another state told me his grandsons had gotten into his medicines while he was in the hospital. He was understandably upset that the two teenagers were experimenting with prescription drugs, and that they had taken them from his house. Fortunately, tragedy did not occur. It is not uncommon for youth to check out a medicine cabinet for something they can use. You never know what is going through a young person’s mind, or the influence of their peers. However, as we have said before parents, keep talking to your youngsters because they are listening even if ...