The Wrack Line Blog: Oregon Beach Info, along with Unique, Informative, and Often Philosophical, Articles
Welcome to the "Wracklineblog"!
In a world where you can't read much of anything without a subscription, and/or you must try to read while
pestered by increasingly intrusive and insistent advertizing, the Wracklineblog remains freely given
for your enjoyment, education, and just good cheer.
Here you will find what I consider to be the most comprehensive
articles on many Home Improvement/Maintenance projects. Check out the "Building Fences" article for an example. I also
have articles on nutrition and good foods, as well as articles on eliminating muscle pain. There's some humor, too - check out
"The Standard Superhero Plot".
Want a list of the most moving music on the planet? Check out "Jimmie's top 500 Ambients"
(actually over 900 titles!) Finally, you will also find thoughtful essays and journal musings, including a "Going Deeper"
essay at the bottom of some of the D.I.Y. articles. You may even find some of these to be healing.
Further information, including the "About", "Contact", and "AD/Cookie policy" can be
found below, underneath our weekly Scenic Image.
So, a BIG difference from most sites: NO ads, NO subscriptions, and NO cookies! However I might note that, as an "Amazon Associate" I earn a small amount from qualifying purchases - also explained below.
What's a "Wrack Line"What's NEW in the Wrackline blog?
NEW: The Electoral College This is an article written on the day after the 2024 election, and is intended to show why the Electoral College elects our President based in large part on the vote of just seven states.
NEW: Installing Wall LIghts This is an extensive article detailing how you can add some wall sconces/lights. It shows how to add an additional light switch to an existing light switch box, among many other things.
COMPLETE RE-WRITE: The Common Cold I offer a comprehensive description, including the "little" details, on handling a cold and particularly, The Cough.
UPDATED: Coal Tar Compounding Added a completely new and much simpler method of compounding your own coal tar compound.
NEW: Jimmie's Guide to Creating a Rock Border Elevated Garden Bed. Here I show how to create your own elevated garden. You can do this when you have really lousy dirt or want to grow some plants which require rich, friable soil (and almost all plants do).
NEW: Jimmie's Guide to HVAC Systems I offer some information on the relative cost of replacing your whole HVAC system, with emphasis on Heat Pumps and their (significant) advantages. Included is a description, with some excellent graphics, on how heat pumps and air conditioners actually work.
Jimmie's Top 500 Ambients Added 110 new tracks! The total is now 929 Ambients. Jimmie's Top 500 Ambients now offers names and links to music available on Bandcamp, where you can listen to the entire selection before purchase, not just 30 seconds.
UPDATED: Growing Blueberries Added new information on optimizing harvesting, and how to grow bigger blueberries.
UPDATED: Growing Hebe Plants Added 3 new varietals, along with picture updates showing hebes after 4 years of growth.
UPDATED: Change Your Assumptions Added a third example of how our assumptions can really interfere with our success in finding solutions.
UPDATED: How to Build a Fence Added some information on how to keep your new fence from turning grey after a few months.
UPDATED: Assorted Useful Items Added Light Bulb Socket Extenders. These are about 2 inches long, and will lower the bulb in ceiling "can" fixtures. This greatly extends the life of bulbs by reducing their ambient heat, and gives more light to your rooms.
RECENT: Jimmie's iPhone Battery Tips This is a comprehensive article on optimizing the iPhone battery life (and simultaneously reducing Cellular Data and significantly enhancing Privacy).
RECENT: Jimmie's iPhone Camera Tips I have rewritten my previous article "iPhone Camera Tips" to include the remarkable camera in the iPhone 15. Example: You can use "Live Photo" to create a Long Exposure effect. Another example: You can edit camera settings just like you would do on a pro SLR camera. And one more: You can (with the iPhone 15) "Digital" zoom to 10x, and the results are almost identical to "Optical Zoom"!!
RECENT: Schizophrenia is not a disease. For many years, I have wanted to write this very personal essay. It represents a unique and different take on schizophrenia, depresssion, and other "mental" issues, based on a lifetime of personal observations and journal entries. You won't find standard medical definitions here!
Also, Check Out a related article: "Medical Science and Worry". Here I discuss Health and Spiritual trust vs Medical Science and measurement (and worry). It's under "Health and Nutrition".
RECENT: "Home Theater Made Simple" Added new information to handle recent changes and improvements in Home Theater equipment. Added a link to improved HDMI cables. Described my AV Receiver upgrade.
RECENT (and just updated): Creating Graphics with Powerpoint. Want to create your own graphics for a class book, a technical article, or for your blog? You can create virtually everything you might need with Microsoft Powerpoint.
RECENT: Amazon is Actually Indispensible Some (perhaps well-meaning) regulators want to break Amazon. I would assert that this would actually hurt many consumers, particularly those who live in rural areas. An article on this is under the link "Essays".
Check Out the four articles on Vegetarian nutrition and breakfast/lunch "recipes", for more readable layout, and some extra information. They're under "Health and Nutrition"
Check Out "An Assortment of Useful Items". Over the years I have discovered many useful items (or useful amounts for ordinary items).
Bangages in packages of 100 of the same size
Mechanical pencils (pkg of 12), pencil leads (pkg of 144, "2B" rather than "HB")
Pencil erasers that you can cut to size
And many more!
Check out "Jimmie's Top 500 Ambients". This is a list of some of the finest QUIET music on the planet.
Check out "Our 'Negative Pension' " This is an article on the Subscription Pandemic. It was written in 2018, and by 2023, just about every entity wants a subscription. Subscriptions have become so common that we now face a substantial and recurring payout of cash - a reverse pension.
Check out "Using a D.I.Y. site to Create a Will". Been putting off creating your Last Will? Here is an article describing my experience using a well-known D.I.Y. provider.
Check out "Replacing NOISY bathroom fans". Replace your noisy "builder grade" bathroom exhaust fan with a QUIET one
Check out "How to Rebuild Toilets". Shows how to completely renew most toilets (fill and flush valves, tank-to-bowl seals), for about $40 instead of $200-$300
Check out "Install Full Length Drawer Slides". Replace those irritating drawer slides that only come out 2/3 of the way.
Check out "Transforming the 'Builder White' Door". Tired of the standard issue "4 Panel Composite Door" - in Builder White? Try staining it. I show how in this article
Check out "Piping Terms Demystified". Do you find it unusually hard to find the right faucet or toilet flexible line? That's because acronyms like "IPS", "MIP", and "MPT" all mean the same thing!
Check out "Growing Hebe Plants". This article shows many varieties of Hebe Plants, which grow well on the West Coast.
Check out "Quick Luches from Scratch". Among other things, it has Instant Pot times for beans, rices, lentils, and others.
Check out "Vertigo Notes". It shows how to handle vertigo and to to even turn it into a positive condition: improved balance.
Check out Our two articles on Music Theory. The will provide a good introduction to the origin of musical scales, "major" and "minor" triads, and chords.
Check out "The Standard Superhero Plot"! It's a spoof on Superhero movies, since every superhero movie has essentially the SAME plot! Look in "Essays".
Updated every 3 or 4 weeks: "Entries from Jimmie's Journal." The home
page will feature a quote from my journals, which span from 1975 to the present. It is hoped that these little quotes
may lead to a little extra depth of feeling for you, and that some of them might even lead to a greater understanding
of our relationship to the Universal Consciousness. And also, some of 'em are for just for the sake of humor! There's also
a "Previous Journal Entries" link (on the right) for past quotes. This is also updated every 2 or 3 weeks (unless, of course,
yours truly is busy fiddling with music, or home improvement/landscaping projects!)
Click the audio player below for some quiet music to accompany your reading, if you want to.
This was an essay that appeared originally at the end of my previous article on the Common Cold. It's not in my current re-write on the same subject. Nonetheless I feel it could possibly be of value for those who might be experiencing any "mental" issues.
1/10/2020: Going Deeper
And by the way, why is the phrase "catch a cold"? "Catch"? Why "catch"? If we have a fever, do we say "we caught a hot"?
We would all love it if Medical Science could come up with a Pill to "cure" colds. Just go to the doc, get a prescription for anacoldcyclene HCL,
take one stat and 1 a day for 2 days and it’s gone. But would we? It could be said that a cold gently reminds of our mortality, that we can't just
continue to plow through life with big plans and work-related activities and not take some time to just idle out and consider some of the deeper
parts of existence.
In other words, I suppose if we could fix everything (by ourselves, Spirit not needed), few people would then take the trouble to maintain belief in
a Being who does not give us big, obvious, visible Signs that prove its existence.
A cold is a time of our lives where we can't quite regulate our internal temperature. We can't maintain our own heat. That is, we're "cold". Also,
we are not "all there" during a cold. Feelings are down - there is simply not the usual depth of feeling. Perhaps, too, we may speak of lack of
"inspiration" (in-spir-ation - the taking in of air) due to the congestion. When we are well, we take in air well. Our nasal passages are open,
and each breath is rich and full - we take in air both literally and figuratively (taking it in figuratively is "inspiration"). But when we are congested,
we do not take in air well; there is a limited exchange of earth and air during these times.
We are beings of Earth and Air. The part of us that is part of the Air thinks, makes plans, dreams, and occasionally soars; the part of us
that is of the Earth understands.
Also note that the words that came to me were "A cold is a time of life'. "Time of life" is the wording that I will be using in subsequent
articles for "mental" issues like depression or schizophrenia. We don't "have" depression. Instead we are experiencing a time in our life
in which we don't quite have the upright stance; we are not quite walking in tune with the beat of our heart. Likewise we don't "have"
schizophrenia. Instead we are experiencing a time in our life in which we are temporarily out of touch with our physicality.
Note the Time word: "Temporarily". We are not eternal. Things change. The cold, like the depression or schizophrenia, will pass.
So we say, then, that we don't "have" a cold, in the sense that a cold is exclusively an "it" that we can't control and can't (at least
partially) have some dominion over - as Spiritual Beings that are a part of the Universal Consciousness. A cold is a time in our life in which the
appearance is that the microbes and viruses are in control. The reality is that we are in control, but of course that may be hard to
believe when we can't even sleep at night due to an unremitting cough.
Is it all chemical and physical? Do we get a cold because of chemical and physiological changes due to viruses – chemical and physical
entities? Or is it because the virus "caught" us at a time of reduced Life-power, a time of low internal heat?
For example I have taken cold hikes many times on the beach with the shrieking Pacific winds chilling me to the bone and yet
did not ‘catch a cold’ but there have been times where cold/hot temperature changes did have an effect. One of those times for me was when I had the
start of a cold but stopped it with a good night’s sleep and some green drink, and the like. However, since my kids were visiting, I
took a long cold hike in a forested area near Portland and got chilled to the bones, after which I found myself sweating for about 15
minutes in an inordinately hot restaurant waiting for a to-go order. So the cold came back in full force.
So I will leave unanswered the question "which started first – the reduced Life-Power or the chemical change?" But in any case the chemical
and physiological soon take over, both in the case of the cold and in the case of the depression or schizophrenia. And, in the case of the
viral-mediated cold, we try to use pharmacology to "cure" the condition but the best we can do is relieve the symptoms. The antihistamines and
decongestants relieve the symptoms but they do not cure. And in the case of the depression, some event or a time of unusually low self-esteem
catches us at a time of reduced Life-Power. Then the physiological might take over and we find ourselves fresh out of neurotransmitters.
The Prosac creates more serotonin but the Prosac does not cure either.
We do the cure. We do it by virtue of our words. We speak the words of healing, and the words have the same creative power as the creative words used by Spirit when It spoke the words of Creation a long time ago.
Netarts Bay, 9/2024
Here's an excerpt from my "Quiet Music".
Quiet Music
Copyright © 2024 J.A.
Wrackline "about":
The Wracklineblog started started with the "Hwy 101 Beaches" links. These lead to individual pages covering more than 70 beaches from Astoria, Oregon down to Brookings, Oregon. Each page has beach/park information, usually a picture of the entrance sign, and one or more scenic pictures taken by the author.
Here's an illustrated sample
Over the years, the Wracklineblog has expanded!
Check out all the red links on the right side, including:
"Jimmie's Top 500 Ambients", an exhaustive list of the most moving ambient music.
Photography explained and simplified (for SLR cameras and iPhones).
Very comprehensive articles on Home Improvement, each having unusual and practical tips. Build your own fence, Reface your cabinets, Transform those Builder White doors by staining. Put together a boss Home Theater.
How to successfully grow berries and ornamental shrubs.
A substantial health/nutrition section. Learn how to stay young! Learn how to eliminate muscle pain!
Engaging essays, especially in the "Previous Journal Entries" link. Learn how to create ease in living, and perhaps to release "dis-ease" in mental health. Indeed, you will find a "Going Deeper" section at the end of some of the D.I.Y. articles, offering up some tidbits and ruminations on self-achievements, self-acceptance and other themes.
"HTML coding" references and a cool HTML color tool.
NOTE: The Wracklineblog may not be exactly "mobile-friendly" (except for the Oregon Beach information!) The term "mobile-friendly" simply means the web designer has excluded content and/or functionality in order to get the site to look good on a tiny screen! The articles here present a great deal of information, and are accompanied with numerous graphics and/or photographs. I highly recommend a tablet, laptop, or desktop in order to get the best experience for this site.
Wrackline "Contact":
(I figured that there should be at least some facility to contact me!) Please do note that I keep myself busy during
my retirement years, and may not be able to reply to all comments, however. Thank you for your interest in The
Wracklineblog.
I'm Jim Adams (graduate from University of Dallas in 1973). I can be reached at wracklineblog(at)gmail.com
Wrackline "AD Policy":
NO ads! NOTHING that moves! Period.
And NO Cookies, either.
However some of the sections have links that will allow you to purchase books and/or other items. For example,
the "Deciphering Light Bulbs" article has a link to purchase a 6 pack of "Cool White" LED lights - hard to find in stores.
And the "New Home Wishlist" article has a link to buy a special Night Light to use for stair lighting. So, if you have an interest
for any of these items, purchasing them by way of these links will provide a little extra income for the author, who is retired.
NOTE: Clicking on these Amazon links takes you to the same location that you would get if you searched for
the item and clicked on it yourself. The security level is the same.
Amazon has an "Associates" package, in which Amazon itself pays a small percentage to the referring web site,
for qualifying purchases. All the payment information is handled entirely by Amazon, completely isolated from any Amazon
"Associate".