Three Beautiful Things 01-04-2026: That Sunshine Muffin Hooked Me, Yoke's and the Elks' Pantry, A Satisfying Day of Listening

 1. Beach Bum Bakery opened a small mobile shack on Bunker Avenue here in Kellogg in October of 2022. I'm not sure when I first shopped there, but I do know that the first baked good I purchased was a Sunshine Muffin. I love Morning Glory muffins and the Sunshine Muffin reminded me of the Morning Glory and that one muffin hooked me on Beach Bum's baked goods and I continue to be hooked today. 

In fact, today when Rebekah texted out what goods she had available today, I saw I could purchase a Sunshine Muffin.

Around noon, I blasted uptown to the bakery and bought a muffin and one of my favorite cookies, the oatmeal raisin. 

I had a latte in a travel mug in the car and blissed out on my way down to Yoke's as I ate half the muffin and sipped on the latte. 

2. On my way to Yoke's, I stopped off at the food pantry at the Kellogg Elks to see what the pantry had in it and what I might add. 

At Yoke's I bought items like beef stew, chili, tuna fish, and other food products and bought some toothbrushes to go with the pack of tubes of toothpaste I brought from home. 

I had intended to donate pet food and forgot to buy some at Yoke's. I'll remedy that sometime early this coming week. 

3. I had a terrific listening day today. When I drove out to Walmart to pick up a curbside order, I listened to an album of Chopin's piano etudes. I continued listening to these jewels later in the morning when I went uptown and to Yoke's. 

Back home, I took out the book, A Year of Wonder, and listened to the pieces the author, Clemency Burton-Hill had chosen for this weekend, January 3rd and 4th. 

The medieval Benedictine nun and abbess, Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), famous as a philosopher, mystic, prophet, medical expert/botanist, poet, and composer of music composed the January 3rd selection.  The four minutes of listening to the Kronos Quartet play her O virtus sapientine transported me to a place removed from the disorder and bewilderment of this world. I experienced this music as calming and sacred. 

The January 4th selection came from Beethoven. The Tokyo Quartet played the fifth movement of his String Quartet No. 13. It was beautiful in a whole different way in its complexity and its explorations of the nature of human life. By the time Beethoven composed this piece, he was completely deaf and so we are hearing music played that he never heard, except as he could hear it in his mind as he wrote it. It explores the fragility and deep feeling that is central to being human. 

This day of varied pleasures began to wind down as I listened to another chapter and a half of Lonesome Dove and, to repeat myself, I am experiencing the music making and the virtuosity of Larry McMurtry as a novelist much more immediately and vividly as I listen to Will Patton read the book to me than when I was reading it to myself earlier in 2025. 

Three Beautiful Things 01-03-2026: Catching Up with Debbie, Homemade Patty Melt, Figuring Out My Ember Mug

 1. Debbie called me this evening and updated me on what lies ahead in Virginia and New York over the next, oh, I'd say three weeks. I appreciated Debbie bringing me up to speed. I'm always happy to be able to report to her that Gibbs is doing great and so is Copper and that the holiday season for all of us here in Kellogg was full of good cheer. 

2. I had purchased a loaf of light rye bread from Beach Bum Bakery and at dinner time I had a great idea. I had thawed a small packet of ground beef and suddenly thought that I could fix myself a patty melt.

And I did. 

The rye bread was perfect. I liked the sandwich dressed with ketchup and mustard and was grateful I had Swiss cheese on hand. 

Next time I'll add a dill pickle. I'll also make the meat patty less thick. 

All in all, though, it was a fun and mostly successful experiment, giving me good reason to always try to have some ground beef, Swiss cheese, and bakery fresh rye bread on hand. 

3. Debbie thought I might enjoy having an Ember mug. To me, it's an electronic device that keeps hot drinks at pleasantly hot temperatures, depending on what setting a person chooses. I've been setting my cup at 142 degrees, the max, and that's working for me. 

This device has flaws. It doesn't work consistently well with the Android Ember app. Its battery doesn't hold a charge for a very long time. It also has other eccentricities. 

But, with patience and experimentation, I've figured out ways to work with these imperfections and it's fun having a latte or a cup of hot Trader Joe's Cinnamon Sunset Black Tea stay comfortably hot. I'm glad I invested time and patience in working with its flaws and developing simple ways to make it work for me. 

(One example: it doesn't take long, but I freqiemt;u have to uninstall and reinstall the app.)

Three Beautiful Things 01-02-2026: "This Week in Baseball", Karaoke Dreams, Chillin' at The Lounge

 1. A program daily comes on WUOL at six PST called "Exploring Music", hosted by Bill McGaughlin. It has theme music that helps open most shows, not all of them, and it reminds me of the music that played while "This Week in Baseball" came to an end. 

I teared up when I found the "This Week in Baseball" theme songs on YouTube. The opening music was jazzy, kind of urban, and set the mood perfectly for Mel Allen to come on the air and narrate highlights, some baseball history, and funny things that had happened over the previous week. 

The closing music featured, among other instruments, strings and confirmed for me that similarity does exist between "Exploring Music" and "This Week in Baseball". 

I glanced over at the right hand side of my screen at the videos YouTube recommended and clicked on an entire episode of "This Week in Baseball" from March 31, 1977. 

My insides shook with pleasure and I got teary again. 

I loved those days in baseball and seeing highlights of the Yankees playing the Red Sox, the Pirates playing the Cubs at Wrigley, and other highlights rekindled the deep affection I had for teams like the Reds and the Dodgers I never rooted for, but deeply admired, as well as the teams I pulled for.  

I also really enjoyed seeing the style of play: lots of action created by hits that stayed in the ballpark, sacrifice bunts making highlights, and seeing pitchers like Ken Holtzman, Luis Tiant, and Rudy May getting hitters out with guile, creativity, and intelligence. None them served up blistering fastballs or put devastating spin on their pitches. 

I realize everything changes and I understand that executives, managers, coaches, and players have a different understanding of the game in 2026 than the players who moved me today had in 1977. 

I wasn't assessing, while being transported back nearly fifty years, what was better. 

I was just enjoying and letting myself be moved by baseball back then and the great music that made baseball come alive for me weekly on "This Week in Baseball". 

2. I was seeking out these videos on YouTube while working the always challenging Saturday New York Times crossword puzzle.

Suddenly, for no sane or rational reason, I began to fantasize about singing karaoke. 

In my fantasy, I was a top-notch singer. I could do anything with my unlimited vocal range and impeccable sense of rhythm. 

For my two performances, I clicked on two songs I loved imagining myself performing, but at some risk, not knowing if anyone in my imaginary audience knew these songs. 

I've been crazy for over thirty years about the Celtic folk rock/folk punk group called Oysterband who have also called themselves The Oyster Band. 

I blew my fantasized audience away taking over the lead vocals on their song, "Take Me Down". 

(By the way, when I regained consciousness after a couple days or so of unconsciousness thanks to a 1999 bout with bacterial meningitis, Debbie brought a cd player and some discs to the hospital and she just knew that it would help me heal and boost my spirits to listen to the great album, Freedom and Rain recorded by June Tabor and The Oyster Band. And she was right. That album, along with others, helped transport me slowly and surely out of my post-ICU weakness and confusion into strength and a clearer understanding of what had happened to me.)

The other song I performed required the audience to accept me singing a woman's song and to accept me singing the words "smell my perfume". 

Over forty years ago, I became enamored with Joan Armatrading, especially her bold and assertive song, "Drop the Pilot". Singing that song during daydream karaoke gave me a way to sing words I would never say, devise a plan to take a lover away from another person that I would never think of to do, and to pretend my roots are Caribbean. 

On this fantasy island of karaoke, it worked! 

3. So what on earth set me off to go down baseball nostalgia boulevard and sing my guts out at imagine that! karaoke night. 

Must have been the Bud Zeros at The Lounge. 

Ed and I met up at The Lounge around 3:30 for a relaxing hour of yakking, story telling, and looking ahead to major events, like the Elks Crab Feed, awaiting us in the future. 

Or maybe cooking up that last small chunk of salmon and eating it with the last of the couscous set me off, inspired me to check out the theme music from "This Week in Baseball" instead of listening to Mozart on "Exploring Music". 

I don't know what sent me away, but spending some time in 1977 baseball land and singing like a boss at karaoke was sure fun. 

Three Beautiful Things 01-01-2026: Symphonies Wander, Our Annual Prime Rib Dinner, Pub Trivia

 1. To be honest, I just hadn't given much thought to symphonies over the past seventy-two years. They would come on the different classical music radio stations I've listened to over the years and I enjoyed them playing in background as I drove a car or went about my business at home. 

I think I've had a small breakthrough, though, in developing an appreciation for this art form. 

Symphonies wander. 

Much like novels which can move easily from setting to setting, travel in time, and, in the course of exercising this flexibility, experiment with point of view, language, and with the genre itself, I've begun to hear the same sort of wandering, exploration, and experimentation in symphonies. 

I'll leave it at that for now, except to say that I've been much more receptive to the multiple aspects of symphonic music over the last few days as I've given into the wandering in the movements of these compositions. 

2.  Our family decided a few years ago to have our holiday prime rib dinner on New Year's Day. We used to have it closer to Christmas -- even on Christmas Day,  

Tonight's dinner was thoroughly delicious. We started with a simple shrimp cocktail that Cosette and Taylor assembled and before long paraded to the dining table where the perfectly seasoned and tender, juicy prime rib Carol roasted was accompanied by Zoe's terrific chopped salad (I think Saphire helped her), Christy's perfectly baked Hasselback potatoes with a smooth white sauce, and Carol's flawless Yorkshire pudding. I contributed a mundane pickle and olive plate, compliments of jars purchased at Yoke's Fresh Market. 

3. As our fantastic dinner wound down, Carol hushed the table and announced that she wanted us to divide into two teams and play Pub Trivia. By some randomizing method, Christy, Taylor, and I became one team and the other was Paul, Carol, and Cosette.  The best part of the game was that Christy, Taylor, and I all contributed answers and in our collaborative effort we answered quite a few questions correctly. It was a lot of fun. 

Three Beautiful Things 12-31-2025: I Correct Yesterday's Post, Symphony Marathon, Salmon and a Simple Dessert

1. I made a mistake in yesterday's blog post and now I'd like to correct it. Soon I'll go back to the original post and correct it there. 

When I looked at the long vowels in the "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" line in Macbeth, I wrote that the line had six long o sounds. It doesn't. It has six sounds of agony, but the "mor" of "tomorrow" is more of an "awh" sound. He alternates between "awhhh" and "ohhh", sounds of pain. 

My point about rhetorical punctuation stands, but I didn't describe the music of Macbeth's despair well. 

2. Why would I pretty much stay home all day on New Year's Eve? 

At 3 a.m. today, SiriusXM's Symphony Hall channel set in motion a symphony marathon to close out 2025. The marathon is hosted by JoAnn Faletta and then sometimes Martin Goldsmith and sometimes Preston Trombly. As I write this post nearly eighteen hours after it started, the marathon continues. 

The marathon features symphonies composed by Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and Mahler. 

I have listened, sometimes with a partial ear, to as much of this marathon as possible, but I haven't come close to hearing every note, let alone each symphony.

I've heard enough music and listened to enough commentary, especially by JoAnn Faletta, to come to a better understanding of the symphony form, a deeper appreciation of the great variety of each composer's work, and a love for how different each of these composer's work is from the others. 

3. Salmon, white onion in rings, and mushrooms on a bed of couscous. 

It was a simple and satisfying dinner for New Year's Eve followed by a small dish of French Vanilla ice cream and one half of a chocolate chip cookie from Beach Bum Bakery. 

Three Beautiful Things 12-30-2025: Wanting to Do Two Things at Once, I Add to the Problem, Breaking the Rules of English

 1. On two occasions today, I wished I could divide myself into two persons, temporarily. For quite a while now since Debbie went back East for extended family visits and to be of help, in her absence, Gibbs has begun to velcro himself to me more often. If I'm sitting in the living room in a chair with Gibbs on my lap or pressed against the outside of my thigh, I can't be with Copper. 

Around midday today, I decided to take a nap and Copper joined me. He pressed against my lower legs for a while, then made his way north to around my shoulders, careful not to initiate contact (heaven forbid) but lay close enough to me that I could pet him and rest my hand on his midsection and feel the vibrations of his purring. 

If only I could have (temporarily) become two of me and been with both Copper and Gibbs at once, I think it would make all three of us happy. 

2. I am slowly working my way through Lonesome Dove by listening to it on audible. It's about thirty-five hours long. 

Today, I added to this problem of only being able to do one thing at a time when I ordered an audible copy of The Great Courses: How to Listen to and Understand Great Music. This course is about thiry-six hours long. 

If I could divide myself into two of me, one of me could be in the bedroom with Copper listening to Lonesome Dove and the other one could be in the living room with Gibbs either listening to classical music on the radio or learning more about music by listening to the Great Course I downloaded. 

Instead, since I can't divide myself, I have to divide my time. 

And opt.

3. Deborah and I have been friends since we first met at Whitworth just over fifty years ago.

We've had running conversations ever since, whether it was the European Enlightenment when we were in the same class taught by Dr. Duvall or the ins and outs of the Chaplain's Office where she worked for a year after she graduated and where I worked the following year, or about football teams, our kids, books, movies,  travel, what our views of current events are, and a long list of other subjects. 

We don't see each other face to face often, but on occasion what I write in this blog moves us to discuss things by texting or sometimes discussing things by email. 

I've been writing off and on lately about what I observed in how people speak and write English. 

I hope I haven't sounded frustrated. Yes, I do experience misuse of language as hearing a wrong not sung or played, but I'm more fascinated by these misuses than frustrated by them. 

I also hope I haven't made it seem like it's young people who employ odd capitalizations, confuse "every day" and "everyday", write or say "me and the kids" instead of ""the kids and I". 

Just in the last week I've read sentences written by people I used to teach with who hold doctorates in English make such mistakes. No one is immusne. Besides, I don't spend much time around young people. I spend most of my time around people my own age who were taught proper English and often don't employ it. 

No problem. 

I'm observing, noting, seeing trends, not judging. 

I thought a lot today, after a wonderful exchange with Deborah, how, when it comes to writing, writers use both prescriptive grammar, usage, and punctuation and they also use rhetorical grammar, punctuation, and usage. 

Prescriptive grammar, usage, and punctuation follow the rules of English. 

Rhetorical grammar, usage, and punctuation break the rules for effect. The effect might be emotional. It might be to create an effect of another kind.

I'll bet you a spin or two on the In Search of the Holy Grail machine at the CdA Casino that I come back and write more about this subject another time. 

For now, I'd like to trot out one of my favorite examples of Shakespeare breaking the rules of punctuation for rhetorical, in this case, emotional effect. 

By Act V, Macbeth is broken. If you don't know the play, trust me. 

He's in a state of despair. 

He takes a moment in Act V to take us, as audience, into his confidence, and express this despair in his final soliloquy. 

In his despair, Macbeth experiences time as a slow moving, burdensome slog. We can feel how wearisome time feels to Macbeth in a single line from this soliloquy, one of the slowest wails of despair I've heard or read in literature. 

It's simple. 

Macbeth, drained of feeling, drained of hope, drained of purpose moans:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

On the level of music, this line is what someone like Beethoven or Mozart would describe on his sheet music as Largo, the very slowest tempo in music. It's the long vowel sounds that slow down this line and in these long vowels of the repeated "tomorrows" we can hear the "Awhh, Ohhh, Awhh, Ohhh, Awhh, Ohhh" of Macbeth's agony. 

Shakespeare slows down this line even more with his use of rhetorical punctuation. He inserts commas after each "tomorrow". 

An English teacher not tuned in to the emotion of this line would prescriptively remove those commas. 

The rules of punctuation say they aren't needed. The two "and"s, by rule, sufficiently separate the "tomorrows" from each other.   

But Shakespeare employs the commas rhetorically to further slow down the line and to further magnify Macbeth's feelings of hopelessness. 

Because I enjoy this stuff and it's my blog (!), I'll probably trot out some more examples of how not doing what our teachers taught us to do in our writing can lead to some of the most powerful and effective writing of all. 

Three Beautiful Things 12-29-2025: Basic Questions, Looking Back with Stu and Roger, Solace and Culinary Pleasure in the Kitchen

 1. On Christmas Eve, when I listened to The Festival of Lessons and Carols on KUOL-FM, I learned about a website called Your Classical (www.yourclassical.org) and on Sunday evening I went over there and poked around. I was especially curious about the website's podcasts and felt drawn to one called Classically Training. The host, Aerin O'Malley poses in these podcasts as a person who knows little or nothing about classical music -- she presents herself as undergoing training to learn more -- and so those of us who are just beginning to swim in the deeper end of the classical music pool have an ally in Aerin O'Malley who interviews a new expert guest each episode and asks them the most basic questions. 

I jumped ahead to the podcast's fourth episode Sunday night entitled, "Sonatas and Concertos and Preludes, Oh My!". O'Malley's guest is Valerie Kahler, a classical music radio host and a cellist and singer. Kahler's life has been steeped in classical music. 

In a mere fifteen minutes, Kahler helps her audience understand what we gain as listeners of classical music if we have some understanding of terms like symphony and concerto and she talks a bit about these two genres of classical music and what makes them unique from each other. 

It's all starting to slowly sink in for me and I'll keep taking in more of what this vast universe of pleasure and genius has to offer. 

Maybe you'd like to listen to the podcast episode I mentioned above. If so, just click here. 

2. I had a couple good sessions of yakkin' today with lifelong friends. Stu and I yakked on Messenger about some of his challenges today where he lives and we also tried to remember just what happened in our 7th grade basketball season. I had to admit that I remember next to nothing about that short season. I know our games were all in the Silver Valley. Stu thinks we went undefeated. I like that idea, but I don't remember. I couldn't even say with certainty who our starting five was! 

Rog and I talked a bit about 7th grade basketball, too, and how our coach that year had severely underestimated Roger's abilities, but rather than sulk about it or pity himself, Roger went to work proving the coach wrong and moved right up the team's ladder to being one of our team's dynamos. 

He had a similar thing happen one day when a herd of us youngsters descended upon the Little League field to divide up into teams and play some fun sandlot baseball against one another. Roger remembers being among the last players selected to go on a team, but, he didn't get his dauber down and succeeded in proving to the other guys that he was a guy who knew his way around the game of baseball and made solid contributions to the team that finally selected him. 

I enjoyed Roger's stories a lot and also enjoyed how much fun it was to play pick up games, no matter the sport, and not rely solely on organized leagues to both have a blast together and hone our skills. 

3. I was stoked today knowing I had two terrific sources of leftovers to eat for lunch and dinner. First, at midday, I finished the soup I made with the chicken we didn't use at our Christmas Caesar salad bar combined with pork dumplings from Trader Joe's and a potpourri of vegetables. 

Last night, I stir fried a cubed block of super firm tofu with a variety of vegetables and splashed soy sauce all over my wok full of great food and then heated it all up with Trader Joe's Green Dragon Hot Sauce. 

I ate about half of what I prepared and I finished off the rest of this most satisfying stir fry tonight, but didn't add hot sauce. 

Both nights, I especially enjoyed the tofu. Not only was it delicious here at the end of 2025, but cooking with tofu took me back to happy days in a micro kitchen in a small basement apartment on W. Broadway in Eugene where I made a strong commitment to cooking, not only because I enjoyed it, but because cooking with beans and tofu and pasta and homemade tomato sauce and vegetables helped me live well on the modest stipend I earned while teaching as a grad student at the U of O. 

I didn't cook with a wok back then, starting really in late 1984. I had pans and pots I'd bought at thrift stores and learned that with inexpensive cookware it's really crucial to learn how to control the heat under these pots and pans. 

One of the fun details about those years in the 1980s was living without a car. I bicycled or walked everywhere and, luckily, since I didn't live in the hills of Eugene and because Eugene's streets accommodated bicycles pretty well, I managed beautifully without a car.

Moreover, I lived near terrific neighborhood grocery stores. I could always get what I needed for a few days of meals into one or two bags at either the Kiva or Frontier Market -- and occasionally the Red Barn -- and either put them in a backpack while bicycling or in paper bags to carry if I was walking. 

I was really mixed up about a lot of things in the 1980s and I needed the solace I found in learning how to cook vegetarian meals, discovering how delicious they were, and having one aspect of my life that I always felt good about and always felt successful. 

Man. 

All I had to do Sunday night to do some fun time travel was stir fry tofu, red cabbage, celery, snap peas, mushrooms, and sweet peppers and serve it to myself over a bed of basmati rice. 

I like feeling that part of being in my early thirties again. 

Those were confusing years with tumult, uncertainty, and anxiety. 

Luckily, I found solace in the kitchen where I always felt good about what I was doing. Unlike so much of the rest of my life, when I was in that tiny kitchen, I was not riddled by self-doubt, fear, bouts of reprimanding myself, and pretending I was doing just fine. 

What a relief. 

Three Beautiful Things 12-28-2025: A Book of Classical Music Devotions, Beach Bum Bakery Stop, Back to *Lonesome Dove*

 1. Christy gave me a book for Christmas entitled, Year of Wonder:Classical Music to Enjoy Day by Day by Clemency Burton-Hill. It's structured like so many devotional publications like Our Daily Bread or The Upper Room, but rather than invite readers to devote a part of each day to a Bible passage and prayer, Burton-Hill presents a different piece of classical music to listen to each day and she provides short, accessible background information and some quick commentary. 

I couldn't wait until January 1st to start reading this book, so I jumped right in. 

The first thing I did was go to Spotify and see if Year of Wonder playlists are available. 

They are. 

So I added the January playlist to my library. 

I then listened to the January 1 selection, the Sanctus from J. S. Bach's Mass in B Minor, an uplifting, really celebratory way to start the new year. 

I couldn't resist jumping ahead to January 2nd which featured an Etude in C Major, Opus 10, No. 1 by Frederic Chopin.  Etudes are sets of exercises for the piano, but Chopin's transcend the genre. Yes, they presented great challenges to piano students working to improve their technique, but Chopin took them far beyond being mere technical exercises and endowed them emotion, and, in Burton-Hill's words, "melodic inventiveness and harmonic richness."

This single piece, only about two minutes long, staggered me and so I did what any reasonable staggering person would do: I played piano compositions by Chopin much of the day. 

2. After being closed for two weeks, today Beach Bum Bakery opened up again in the morning. Rebekah had posted that French bread would be ready around noon, but GOOD NEWS! She had a steady stream of customers this morning and the good business set back her baking schedule. 

So, no French bread, and, no problem. 

I bought a loaf of Rustic Sourdough, toasted some soon after I returned home and it was awesome. 

3. I suppose if I really wanted to blather on for about 1500 words or so, I could explain why I put Lonesome Dove down a few months ago and never got back to it. (It had nothing to do with the quality of the novel.)n

Well, today, I decided to bear down and pair my PC laptop with my wireless speakers in the living room using Bluetooth and finally play the audible file of the book I downloaded in October, being read by Will Patton, and get myself back into that south Texas world again. 

I also realized I needed to start Lonesome Dove over again. 

Great decision. 

The musical quality of Larry McMurtry's writing didn't sing to me earlier in the year as I read the book to myself, but hearing it read aloud, whew!, it's a lyrical evocation of life in a hot, dry, unsentimental world with few comforts or pleasures. 

But these characters have some dreams. 

Three Beautiful Things 12-27-2025: Staying Home, Icelandic Breakfast (Sort Of), Catching Up with Debbie

 1. Having a birthday two days after Christmas -- and for our family my birthday is also one day after Christmas -- leaves me in need of rest and time to myself. If there were a movie theater in the Silver Valley, I would have gone to a movie today. I've done some great movie viewing in the past on December 27th. About six years ago, December 27th was a workable day for a bunch of us guys who grew up in Kellogg to get together in Spokane for lunch and what really made that work for me was that I went to Spokane the day before, enjoy oysters, bourbon, and trivia with Kathy and Mary, and stayed in an airbnb. I was rested and refreshed when I saw all the guys. 

But, rather than list more fun days I had out and about on birthdays past, I'll just say that today I stayed home and had a most enjoyable day of rest and relaxation, of cinnamon tea,a repeat of the whole Messiah, and a dinner out of the wok. I had leftover rice, pork dumplings, and Caesar salad bar chicken and I combined with onion, mushrooms, and yellow squash to make a terrific bowl of food topped with soy sauce and Green Dragon Hot Sauce. 

2. I didn't eat breakfast until around noon. I fried some bacon and then I heated up a container of leftover Icelandic caramelized red potatoes, added mushroom slices, and created a scramble with two eggs. 

3. Debbie and I had some catching up to do and talked for at least an hour late this afternoon. I told her all about our great Christmas Day get together at Carol and Paul's and our perfect light dinner later at Christy's. I also reported on yesterday's Icelandic Christmas dinner and how good the food was and how fun it was for us all to be together.  

Debbie told me about movies she's seen and about what it's like worshipping at Pohick Church, an Episcopal Church established in Loring, VA in 1732. It was George Washington's home church and, among other interesting things, the church has box pews, enclosed areas with benches on three sides of the box. Debbie told me she'd send me better pictures than she has before of the box pews and maybe of the sanctuary itself. 

Alas, Debbie's Idaho license plate didn't arrive today as estimated and, as proof that the delivery gods do not favor either one of us, the Amazon box she had sent to me was also delayed and didn't come. 

Three Beautiful Things 12-26-2025: Morning at Home, I Failed Once and Then Succeeded, Icelandic Christmas Dinner

1. Even though our Christmas Day activities were low key, I needed to take a break from Christmas related activities and so I stayed home this morning rather than join the rest of the family at Paul and Carol's to welcome Cosette, Taylor, Bucky, and Saphire when they arrived and I missed the breakfast and gift exchange that followed. 

It turned out that the rest was good for me and the time alone gave me the opportunity I needed to get caught up on my writing, complete my usual morning routine, and, by early afternoon, head down to the veterinarian's office to pick up pills for Copper. 

2. Our family focuses on the food and traditions of a different country every year at Christmas time.

This year, we focused on Iceland and Carol created a menu of a cocktail, appetizers, starters, a dinner, and dessert with after dinner drinks. 

Carol assigned me to make caramelized potatoes which looked simple on paper, but I had a rough time making this dish for a while, but recovered and delivered. 

I had never caramelized sugar before and my first go around failed because I had the heat in the electric frying pan on too high. I ended up with chunks of hard candy. 

I simultaneously created a double boiler and tried to melt down the hard caramel rocks and I also started the process over again. 

This time I melted the sugar at a lower temperature, added the butter and kept the temperature low, and, as a result, I came much closer to making what the recipe called for. 

I boiled the red potato pieces about an hour or so earlier, so they were dry and ready to be caramelized. 

I put the potato pieces in the pan with the melted sugar and butter mixture and pretty much succeeded in covering all the pieces with sweetness. 

I checked my rock hard candy melting project and some liquid caramel was available and I poured it over the potatoes, too, and tossed the rest of the rock hard candy nuggets into the trash. 

I was done with it! 

3. I'm not going to list every Icelandic offering that family members set out tonight, but I'll give you a pretty good sense of what we enjoyed. 

We started with appetizers that included rye bread that Cosette baked, lox, a variety of cheeses, skyr, Iceland crackers with a long name, and other tasty foods. 

The center of our dinner was a lamb shoulder roast with rosemary and garlic paste and a red wine sauce. The dinner also featured Carol's Icelandic soup with a long name and Zoe's Icelandic bread with a long name, Christy's almond rice pudding, the potatoes I brought. 

We retired to the living room for a dessert tray of sweets Sue Dahlberg purchased in Iceland on one of her visits and liquid refreshments. 

Three Beautiful Things 12-25-2025: Gift Exchange, Cooking Chicken, Salad Bar at Christy's

 1. Carol and Paul hosted a morning gift exchange at their house, accompanied by a simple breakfast featuring a fruit salad Christy brought and everything bagels that I brought along with cream cheese. Other Christmas sweets, cookies, chocolates, and other treats rounded out the board. 

Christy, Zoe, Paul, Carol, and I took our food -- and I took a cup of coffee -- into the living room and we all had the pleasure of seeing what each of us gave to the others and had the pleasure of enjoying what we received. My gifts to family members were electronic, so they would be arriving in the afternoon in their email inboxes. 

2. Back home after our morning get together, I got out the electric frying pan and cooked up two thin chicken breasts and four thighs. After they'd cooled down, I cut the meat into cube-ish pieces to take to Christy's for our get together at 5:00. 

3. Our five o'clock gathering featured a Caesar salad bar with lettuce, salmon, chicken, anchovies, green olives, Parmesan cheese, dressing, and other options to add to our salads. Zoe made a delicious loaf of focaccia bread. Carol had poured out a bowl of nuts and bolts as an appetizer and Christy set out Christmas cookies for our dessert, including oatmeal cookies, a kind of cookie I love. 

I was still pretty pumped nearly twenty-four hours later from having listened to the Lessons and Carols and the Messiah. I might have gotten a little carried away talking about them and might have carried on a bit too much about the world of Protestant churches, wondering why there are so many non-denominational churches and what makes them distinct from one another. 

But, i guess this part of our Christmas conversation didn't occupy the entire night and we had fun talking about other things, too. 

Three Beautiful Things 12-24-2025: Christmas at 72 Years Old, Lessons and Carols at Home, *Messiah* at Home

 1. On Saturday, I turn 72 years old. 

Today, on Christmas Eve, I spent time contemplating what Christmas means to me and what I experience at this time in my life during the Christmas season. It feels to me like both well-meaning people and commercial entities urge me to feel the excitement and wonder I felt as a child at Christmas. I hear people talk about feeling the Christmas spirit, and I've lost track of just what that is. 

I'm going to write more on down the page of this blog post about The Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols I listened to this evening, a broadcast from King's College Chapel at Cambridge University in England. 

For now, I want to draw upon one feature of that service. 

Rachel Portman served as the Commissioned Composer for this service. She chose what the choir sang and she also composed a song for the service. 

She set Thomas Hardy's poem, "The Darkling Thrush" to music. If you'd like to read the poem, go here: The Darkling Thrush | The Poetry Foundation

The speaker of the poem looks out over a desolate frigid winter landscape as the afternoon wanes, seeing signs of brokenness and dying before him. 

Suddenly, an aged, frail, gaunt, tiny thrush breaks the bleak silence with a joyful evening song.

The thrush, according to the speaker, has "little cause for carolings" and yet fills this gray, chilly landscape with ecstatic song, a song the speaker experiences as "some blessed Hope". 

As I age, Christmas becomes more and more solemn to me. 

I'm not a Grinch. I wish people a Merry Christmas. I participate in gift exchanging. 

But, it's not really a holly jolly time for me. 

The birth of Jesus brings a light into a world of darkness, but Jesus doesn't extinguish the darkness. 

The light of the birth of Jesus only has meaning to me as I examine and explore the darkness in which his light shines. 

Much like the narrator of "The Darkling Thrush", I spend time contemplating bleakness, the deep and dreamless sleep, the dark streets, not just the hope, but the fears of all the years. 

Then when I see the light, much like when the narrator hears the thrush sing, it has substance. I see what that light is always up against, what the light guides us to resist. 

In his gospel, John instructs us that the darkness does not comprehend the light. 

What a vital insight! 

The opposite is not true. By the light, we not only can, but must comprehend the darkness so that we are light in the world, doing all we can not to add to the darkness. 

That's why, as I grow older, Christmas can only be a time of light if I also experience it as a season of dark. 

2. Because I so enjoy listening to Colleen Wheelahan host radio programming on Symphony Hall (SiriusXM Ch 78) and on WUOL through my Louisville Public Media app, as an added benefit, I learn about all kinds of programming on these stations. 

I miss living where an Episcopal Church is only 5-20 minutes away, so today I wondered if I could have some kind of a Christmas Eve Episcopalian experience here in our living room. 

Well, as it turns out, both of the classical music stations I listen to were each broadcasting a Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols service from the King's College Chapel at Cambridge University in England. (Okay. Technically this isn't Episcopalian, it's the Church of England, but they are very similar and are part of the same worldwide Anglican Communion.)

I tuned into the Symphony Hall offering at 5 PST and what they broadcast was all carols. The music and the singing were gorgeous, but, spiritually, I was hungry to hear the biblical lessons read. 

Ah! At 7 p.m. my hopes were met! 

Through Minnesota Public Radio, radio station KUOL broadcast the 2025 Lessons and Carols service from Cambridge in its entirety with music, singing, and readings. 

This was just what I wanted and needed. 

Hearing passages, beginning with Genesis and ending with John's "In the beginning was the word" nourished me and so did the choral music interspersed between the readings and those occasions in the service when the entire congregation sang. 

Over at yourclassical.org, a sound file of this service will be up through the holiday season (for those with a free account) and I will almost certainly listen to it again and from that website I downloaded a PDF file of the service which has all the words of the prayers, readings, and hymns and so I can have this visual record forever. 

3. The Symphony Hall channel made one more very meaningful musical experience available at 9 p.m. which added to the wisdom of my decision to stay home alone on Christmas Eve and experience this evening on my own terms. 

I first heard the Messiah when I was a boy scout and our troop helped people park their cars in and around the newly built United Church building because a great crowd of people came to the church to hear the combined church choirs of the Silver Valley and a small orchestra present the Messiah. 

I don't know if they sang the whole oratorio or, because it was around Easter time, if they sang selections. What I do remember is that I heard a harpsicord for the first time, loved it, and have ever since. 

At NIC, at the end of fall quarter my sophomore year, our choir sang selections from the Messiah, a thrilling experience.

As the many years passed after that, I joined in a few Messiah sing alongs in both Spokane and Eugene and loved it whenever we put on a cd of the Messiah at home. 

So, this evening, after listening to the two different presentations of Lessons and Carols, I listened to the entirety of the Messiah and experienced its story beginning with the prophecies of Isiah through to the Resurrection and Ascension. 

As I creep toward turning 72 years old, I got to enjoy Christmas Eve in contemplation, as an Episcopalian, as one who loves classical music, and in uninterrupted solitude -- aside from a demand on occasion from Gibbs to tend to his needs. 🐕🐶

Three Beautiful Things 12-23-2025: The Prolific Colleen Wheelahan, Alley Cats in NYC, The Solemnity of Christmas

1. It's not enough, I guess, that Colleen Wheelahan hosts a six hour classical music program on SiriusXM from M-F. Out here in the west, that show comes on at 3 a.m. I try to catch snippets of it between stretches of sleep every morning and am often awake for its last hour or two. 

And it's not enough that she then hosts another classical music radio program at WUOL at 3 p.m. PST for three hours and is back on WUOL on Saturday mornings.

It would seem that having two radio programs isn't quite enough for her either. For Jane Austen's 250th birthday, on SiriusXM's Symphony Hall channel, she produced and hosted "A Jane Austen Musicale" with two guests, great interviews with them, and took us into both the music and social history of Jane Austen's times. 

Today, on WUOL, Colleen Wheelahan produced and hosted a second Jane Austen program. It's titled "A Jane Austen Christmas Musicale" and for an hour Wheelahan presented passages from Austen's novels and letters, explored the Christmas music Austen most likely heard performed (some of which she might have played on the pianoforte herself), and imagined what a Christmas Day was likely like for Austen and her family and neighbors. It was, as she promised, an immersive experience. 

And that's not all. At least once a week, Colleen Wheelahan writes an essay and publishes it on her Substack account entitled "Classically Colleen". Her essays are insightful, sometimes whimsical, and often include either playlists of classical music that she makes available on Spotify, or she posts a series of individual songs, also linked to Spotify, that are either subjects of her writing or that help substantiate a point she is making. She's a clear, intelligent writer, a good story teller, and has a wide-ranging knowledge of music, literature, other arts, and, as it turns out, football. 

I discovered Colleen Wheelahan when I decided to listen to classical music on SiriusXM when I was making medical trips to Coeur d'Alene and Spokane earlier in the year. Her voice on the radio and her introductions to the selections she played impressed me so much that I began listening to her programming at home and before long discovered that she works for two radio stations and keeps an active Substack account. I can't always listen closely, but from Monday to Firday, her shows play for nine hours a day in our house. 

Satellite radio. Streaming radio. Writers on Substack. Like raindrops on roses and whiskers o kittens, these are a few of my favorite things in our wireless world. 

2. So on my Facebook page, I get quite a few Reels. 

I enjoy watching the people who make a ton of money making videos of themselves spinning reels in casinos and I enjoy watching clips of poker tournaments. 

Lately, another source of fun, another favorite thing has popped up. 

I get videos of a woman interviewing AI generated cats in an alley in NYC. 

There's Donny Meatball, Big Tuna, Carmine Whiskeretti, Mittens Malone, Frankie Two Paws, and a host of other cats along with a racoon an occasional dog, and lots of stories about catnip, milk, dumpsters, epic battles, love affairs, and other sagas from the world of the cats' alley. 

Here's an example THE TALES OF TONY AND THE NYC ALLEY CATS 🐈‍⬛

What the heck -- here's another The Alley Turns on Big Tuna 🔥

3. I know that this post solstice time of year with the promise of ever growing light on its way is a time of celebration. I know that Christmas Day is day of celebrating light coming into a dark world. 

For some reason, as I've aged, Christmas has become an increasingly solemn time. It night be that as I age, I feel the seriousness of the darkness more all the time. 

I'm grateful for the promise of light and I feel that, too. 

Today, I was glad to be alone all day, glad I never left the house. 

These two classical music stations I have on all day long right now play seasonal music I'm familiar with and they introduce me to a lot of winter music that is new to me. 

What makes the artistry of so much of this music impressive to me is that the dark and the light are both present in the music. 

Being alone, with no one talking or being busy with things, I can listen to this music with the only distractions being the furnace coming on or Gibbs wanting to go outside or come back in. 

I don't always listen closely -- I read, work puzzles, straighten up the house, prepare food, but the music is always there and I experience the solemnity and beauty of what's dark simultaneously with the promise and joy of emerging light. 

Three Beautiful Things 12-22-2025: License Plates Off to Virginia, Classical Holiday Music, Great Nuts and Bolts and Cookies

1. Going to the post office isn't that big of a deal usually but today was a little different. I mailed Debbie her license plates, license plates she's been trying to get her hands on since August. If all goes well, they'll arrive in Virginia on Saturday. I really hope all goes well. That would be a splendid turnaround in this mystifying saga that would make the head of Gilgamesh spin. 

2. The two classical music stations I listen to day and night are increasing the amount of holiday music they play which means I'm hearing Christmas symphonies, excerpts from The Messiah, choirs singing gorgeous arrangements of hymns and carols, thrilling brass ensembles, and other selections taking me beyond what I ever knew was out there. 

3. With the arrival today of a package from Jack and Eloise, now I have two different batches of nuts and bolts to snack on (Carol made the other one) and a couple of very tasty cookies. I love cookies and normally I try to keep myself from eating too many, but over the last couple of days, I've unlocked the stable and let the horses of my cookie eating appetite run a bit wild. 

Three Beautiful Things 12-21-2025: One of the Sweet Spots in My Life, Simple Family Dinner, Lots of Good Yakkin'

 1. If you've watched it already, please don't tell me anything about it. I want to see the next movie in the Knives Out franchise, Wake Up Dead Man with as uncluttered a mind as possible. I probably better watch it today, on Monday! 

So why do I even bring up this movie?

Its release on Netflix takes me back to 2019 when I experienced a sweet spot in my life, a time that I wished could have continued for a long time, but it didn't, in large part because of the uncertainties about the coronavirus 19 (Covid). 

This fun and sweet time in my life began on October 16, 2019 when I accepted an invitation from Mary Chase to meet at a Pizza Pipeline on North Division to play trivia with her and Kathy Brainard. 

Sometimes Linda Lavigne and I went over to Spokane together, and what ensued for me were multiple trips, sometime more than once a week, to play trivia at a variety of venues. 

Sometimes others joined our team and every one of those trivia outings was a blast.

We did more together than play trivia. Mary and Kathy introduced me to Luna, a wonderful restaurant in south Spokane. Kathy and I attended a Gonzaga women't basketball game together. The three of us went to see Knives Out together and Mary invited us to her house for cocktails afterward. 

With the arrival of the new year, 2020, most of our trivia playing happened at the Riverbank Tap House at the Northern Quest Casino in Airway Heights. 

Our last trivia outing was March 11, 2020. 

This sweet spot in my life ended. 

So, when I watch Wake Up Dead Man, no matter what I think of the movie, it will take me back to those nearly five months of spending time with Mary, Kathy, and Linda, playing trivia, getting to know each other better, and having one of the most enjoyable periods of time I've ever experienced. 

2. Christy, Carol, Paul, and I agreed a couple of weeks ago that we'd keep our December 21st family dinner as simple as possible. 

We succeeded. 

We dined on appetizers and Christmas sweets tonight: summer sausage, pears, cheese, butter candle bread, nuts and bolts, and a delicious variety of cookies, candies, and other treats. 

3. We enjoyed lively conversation as we dined. We dug into some Kellogg history. We talked about living in a divided country. We talked about aging and the feelings of uselessness that can come with growing older. Today was Debbie's 75th birthday and I updated the others about what's happening in her life these days. We also discussed power outages and generators. Again, it was a lively evening!