Three Beautiful Things 06-20-2026: Organize, Nothingness and Emptiness, Existentialism in My Life

 1. Three boxes arrived today with dog food, toothpaste, toothbrushes, a portable litter box, bottled water, a travel soap dish, and flashlight. A few more things will arrive tomorrow. Then all I have to do is decide how to organize things and I'll wrap up this project. 

2. Rebecca Boyle opens her book Our Moon, with a description of the moon's nothingness: no air, no life, no color, and so on. We humans, however, project much upon this nothingness: our dreams, hopes, ambitions, curiosity, imagination, and so on. 

As I read more deeply into this book, I keep thinking about Wallace Steven's poem "The Snow Man". It in the poem's speaker looks upon a bleak winter landscape of "pine trees crusted with snow" and "junipers shagged with ice" and concludes that "being nothing himself, beholds/ Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is." 

Boyle's book opens with the "nothing that is" the moonscape, but as the book develops and she examines the creation of the moon, the rocks astronauts brought back, the role of the moon in shaping our sense of time, the moon's role in ancient religions as an embodiment of divinity, and a host of other things, she examines the "nothing that is not there". 

Thinking about "The Snow Man" and the moon transported my thinking to Chapter 11 of the Tao de Ching, which is a meditation upon emptiness:

We join spokes together in a wheel,

but it is the center hole

that makes the wagon move. 

We shape clay into a pot,

but it is the emptiness inside 

that holds whatever we want. 

We hammer wood for a house,

but it is the inner space

that makes it livable. 

We work with being, 

but not being is what we use. 

In short, the nothing that is there and the nothing that is not there.  

3. Ever since I was introduced to existentialism in the fall of 1973, just a few months after the Zinc Plant accident I've mentioned (many times) before, I've restlessly entertained the possibility that we humans come into the world empty, as being nothing, undefined.  This is the core tenet of existentialism. Existence precedes essence. We are not essentially anything.  

The Tao de Ching is helpful here. We are, in other words, like the hole in the wheel, the emptiness of the cup, or the inner space of the newly built house. The existentialist asserts that we are frighteningly free. We bear an enormous responsibility to make meaning out of our lives, to meaningfully turn emptiness into purpose, a responsibility that can lead to feelings of anxiety, dread, even nausea. We resist this freedom. Rather than make meaning ourselves, we let forces and influences outside of ourselves create meaning for us. We surrender our freedom and responsibility to dictate who we are and what life's meaning is. 

I'm not sure when I started reading Our Moon that I expected a book about the moon to lead me to thinking so much about these ideas about what it means to be a human being, but, as they say, here I am! 

 

Three Beautiful Things 06-19-2026: Home Work, Lunar Effects, Sausage Soup

 1. After a curbside pickup of groceries at Walmart, I stayed home today and worked on getting things in order around the house: laundry, kitchen cleanup, refining my preparation in case of an evacuation, and more. It doesn't make for a riveting blog post (zzz), but working on these tasks matters a lot! 

2. I'm learning more and more about the moon's impact on our lives here on earth as I slowly read Our Moon by Rebecca Boyle. The moon and the tides, over a nearly incomprehensible amount of time, slowly and incrementally affected how certain marine creatures evolved into land creatures. I bring this up because I read and hear people comment about what's natural and unnatural, usually asserting that natural means unchanging and to deviate from some sense of what is original, say, in humans, is unnatural (and immoral). 

But the reading I've been doing as a member of the Science and Nature book club and other reading I've done in the past (I'm thinking of Lulu Miller's Why Fish Don't Exist), convinces me that what is natural is change, is mutability, is flexibility and that what is unnatural is the idea of permanence in nature.  Humans, plants, animals, climate, bodies of water, the speed of Earth's rotation, the distance between Earth and the moon have all changed over the eons and the ways that this constant change, however gradual or quick, come about are complex and I'm learning more about the moon's influence upon life on Earth.

3. As I set my mind to fixing myself some dinner tonight, I suddenly remembered that there were two sausages in the fridge. I'd been thinking about making a bacon, bean, and vegetable soup, but I put that idea aside and began to imagine a sausage soup. 

It didn't really tax my imagination much. I sauteed white onion and celery along with the sausage and soon added zucchini, mushroom, frozen corn, and frozen green beans to the mix and poured what I had left in a box of beef broth over it all and cooked it slowly for a while. 

At first, I didn't season the soup. I wanted to see if the combination of these ingredients, especially the sausage, would be tasty enough and they were. 

All the same, I'd been reading about evolution and the importance of the emergence of amino acids to how living beings developed and so, with that on my mind, I added some Bragg Amino Liquid to the soup. It tasted great with the Amino Liquid and without and led me to hope that I'll remember in the future to fix myself a pot of sausage soup again. 

Three Beautiful Things 06-18-2026: Gold Run Fire Update, Evacuation Prep Continues, Rotini Salad

 1. Thursday's news from the Gold Run Fire between Big Creek and Elizabeth Park was good.

Most, not all, evacuated residents of Big Creek and Elizabeth Park could return home. 

The fire did not grow, at least not significantly. 

Firefighters completed a fire line around the entire perimeter of the fire. 

It's about 20-22% contained. 

Crews continue the hard work of securing and strengthening fire lines and monitoring hot spots. 

2. If some time in the future, law enforcement orders us to evacuate our home, I'll already have in the trunk a first aid kit, blankets, pillows, dried fruit, granola bars, almonds, and bottled water. Today I ordered a portable litter pan for Copper, food for Gibbs, bathroom stuff beyond what we use every day, an extra flashlight, and a few other things that we'll also keep in the trunk. 

I'm going to strategically place in the house other things like three days' worth of clothes, electronics, cords, portable phone charger, and important documents, making it so we can put our hands on them immediately if we need to make a quick exit. 

3. Having decided to fix myself salads not using lettuce, I gave Carol and Paul a head of lettuce thinking their rabbit Bunz would enjoy it, but Bunz might share with Carol and Paul. 

I made a rotini salad today that included black beans along with fresh vegetables. I dressed the salad with basil pesto, a new thing for me, and, oh yes, it worked. 

Three Beautiful Things 06-17-2026: Evacuation Preparation, Learning from Science, All is Change

 1. I started the mostly simple task today of preparing to evacuate our house if we receive such an order ever.  I've made a master list of things to pack and Debbie and I, communicating across the vast USA, have been discussing items we always want in the trunk of the car, ranging from dried fruit and nuts and granola bars to blankets, pillows, and sweatshirts.

A fire update:  as of 10:00 a.m. on June 18th: the evacuation notice for Big Creek and Elizabeth Park is still in effect and being evaluated. 

The fire is about 20% contained. Wednesday was a cooler day. That helped. Thursday looks to be warmer and the fire crews will be looking for increased activity within the fire's perimeter. 

Approximately 247 are assigned to the Gold Run Fire. 

2. I'm reading our next book club selection, Our Moon. I'm being strhetched by this book, as I was by previous books, because I am not well-informed about the details of history as seen through the lens of different branches of science.  The previous books we read expanded my knowledge and understanding of evolution (I didn't understand everything I read) and Our Moon is expanding my knowledge and understanding of different explanations regarding how the Earth and moon came into being and how their gravitational forces affect each other and how planet Earth is also affected by the gravitational pull of the sun and other planets. 

I know I'm not understanding everything I read in this book, but I sure enjoy going outside the areas of study that shaped my professional and continue to inform my personal life.  Not being well read in the world of science and having a lot to learn about the world of nature made joining this book club a great idea. 

3. Although I don't have a studied understanding of science, I'm enjoying the overlap I see between scientific study and my experience with literature and world religion.  Right now, I'm thinking particularly of Shakespeare (and when I think of Shakespeare my mind also goes to Buddha and to the Tao de Ching).

Science, Shakespeare, Buddha, and the Tao are all primarily concerned with mutability, that is, the everchanging nature of reality. 

Scientific study examines the objective evidence of how the moon's orbit fluctuates, how its gravitational force effects tidal changes and has an impact on Earth's climate, among other things. For Shakespeare, the moon was a central metaphor for mutability because night after night, the moon appeared different than it had the night before. Moonlight also served as a metaphor for how dimly we actually understand things, as if when it comes to perception and understanding, we live in a world more dimly lit by the moon than the more brilliant light of the sun. 

Buddhism is grounded in the precept that all is impermanent, subject to constant change. 

Likewise, the Tao teaches that everything is in a state of flux. 

Just one example of the centrality of mutability in the world of science: the theory of evolution is an explanation of species adapting to change, surviving, not by remaining static or original, but by changing in order to continue living in the everchanging world. 

The book Our Moon has the associative region of my mind cooking with gas. 

 

One Beautiful Thing and Then Things Get Dangerous Nearby When a Fire Breaks Out 06-16-2026: Good News for Ed and a Trip, Fire a Few Miles Away, Power Restored at 11:00 P.M.

 1. Today started with a mixture of good news and difficult news and as the day progressed, the news became darker and more dangerous. 

This morning, Ed called me with good news. He had just seen his urologist and the blood work he had done last week looked good. That was a relief. 

Soon thereafter, Carol and I heard from Christy that the pain in her leg was such that she had to pull out of our planned sibling outing to Spokane. No way were Carol and I going to go without Christy and so we canceled today's trip and we'll see if we can work out another date in June.

(It turned out to be fortuitous that we didn't go to Spokane. A very serious fire broke out in the Beacon Hill area. We had planned a visit to Hilyard, just west of the fire, and really had no business going on a pleasure trip to that vicinity. If you haven't seen the news or heard about it, it's a devastating fire.)

I knew Ed was most likely free after his doctor appointment so I called him and he agreed that it would be fun to go spin some reels at the CdA Casino. 

And it was. 

Neither of us had much luck, but we had fun playing machines, had great conversation going down and returning home, and enjoyed a delicious lunch at the Red Tail Bar and Grill. 

2. Toward the end of our stay, we both received alerts on our cell phones about the Beacon Hill fire just east of Spokane.

Strong winds blew all the way on our return trip. Both of us knew that a red flag warning about fires had been issued in the morning, but let me tell you what we didn't know. 

After dropping Ed off around 3 p.m., I pulled into the driveway and pushed the garage door opener and nothing happened. At first, I thought the garage opener needed fresh batteries, but once I walked in the house, I realized we had no power.

A message arrived on my phone from Avista telling me power would be restored around five.

Then, I found out from Stu that a fire had broken out nearby, a few miles east of Kellogg, south of the freeway, in the hilly region between Elizabeth Park and Big Creek. 

3. I learned the power outage was a safety measure carried out by Avista. 

I learned the sheriff ordered residents in Elizabeth Park and Big Creek to evacuate. The fire was travelling east and the sheriff put Osburn under a Be Ready order. 

The fire grew to over two hundred acres. 

I kept tabs on it via the Watch Duty app. 

Debbie called me, knowing that the power was out and that a fire was burning east of Kellogg. 

We talked. 

The winds subsided. 

The temperature got cooler, coming down from the mid-70s to the 50s, maybe even the 40s. 

Avista determined that it was safe enough to end the blackout,

Avista turned our power back on at 11. 

As I write this blog post on Wednesday morning at about 10:30, the fire has grown some and it's now 10 percent contained after hours of being 0 percent contained. 

There's not much wind this morning and it's cooler out today that it was yesterday. 

I'll be back this evening or tomorrow on this blog with an update. 

Three Beautiful Things 06-15-2026: I Finished *Lonesome Dove*, Mortality and Loss and Emptiness, Another Couscous Salad

It's almost midnight on June 16th. About an hour ago, our power returned after an eight hour power outage brought about by Avista's precautionary blackout after a fire broke out east of Kellogg on a red flag warning day. (Avista is our utility company.)

1. Tonight I finished reading Lonesome Dove. Maybe I'll have reason in a later post to write more about it, but for now I'll just say I found it a story of decisions and consequences, physical endurance, regret, failures, successes, violence, hatred, and love. It's about displacement, riddling its readers from beginning to end about whether there's such a thing as having a home in this world.  

2. It's also about mortality and loss and emptiness. The inner emptiness these displaced characters often feel is made physical by the open spaces they encounter in southern Texas before they drive cattle to Montana,  confronting the spaciousness of the Great Plains. The characters have to wrestle with mortality as several characters die in this book in a variety of ways, some of them detested and others deeply loved. 

3. I seem to be tired, temporarily of lettuce salad. After making couscous salad yesterday for family dinner, today I made another one. I changed it up a bit. I used black beans instead of chickpeas. I included black olives and the last of the Trader Joe's olive tapenade I had on hand. I dressed this salad with basil pesto and olive brine and I didn't have cucumber on hand, so I used zucchini.  I had used all my cherry tomatoes in Sunday's salad and didn't go to the store to replace them.

It worked. 

Three Beautiful Things 06-14-2026: Revisiting Saturday's Celebration of Life, Death in *Lonesome Dove*, Family Dinner

 1. Saturday's Celebration of Life left me happily wrung out today.  I'd been anxious about this gathering, it was an emotional afternoon, and, while I love being with people, especially friends I've known my whole life, doing a lot of socializing makes me tired. I've written about this quite a bit. It comes from being a more introverted than extroverted person. I don't have bad feelings about being with a lot of people, but afterward I need time to myself and need to deal with fatigue. The fatigue hit me today and I had a fairly slow Sunday. 

2. At a very important juncture in the cattle drive, which is at the center of Lonesome Dove, a character essential to the success of the book's cattle drive gets killed. 

The other men on the cattle drive have great affection for this character and grief saturates the entirety of the crew. 

My guess is that readers of Lonesome Dove also have great respect and affection for this character and, for me, at least, it raises the question as to why Larry McMurtry would write his getting killed into the story's plot. 

I don't know yet. 

I do know that losing this character creates a huge gap in the operation of this cattle drive to Montana. It means that less capable men are going to have to step up and do the jobs this character did. 

It means, as often is the case in great stories, that this character's death, I would think, will become a test for the mettle of the men on this drive and I will be reading with curiosity to see how or if the cattle drive succeeds with him gone. 

I'm guessing here, but while readers might get attached to characters, authors can't be guided in their storytelling by their readers' affections. The plot and what the author feels it demands has to determine what does and doesn't happen. The plot in Lonesome Dove has been, through the 700+pages I've read, a complicated series of tests of a variety of characters in a variety of situations. Some characters have been killed and my response, at least, was good riddance. And sometimes the killing of these characters was a test that the characters who did the killing had to face and had to decide what to do. 

As I read the last just over 100 pages of this book, I'm eager to see what tests lie ahead and how the surviving characters respond to them, especially in the absence of the character they just grievously lost. 

3. Carol had announced to us that we'd be having grilled chicken for family dinner tonight and she assigned me to make a salad. 

I decided to make a Mediterranean couscous salad that blended couscous, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes, cilantro, parsley, and basil. I also added a tin of Trader Joe's chickpeas with cumin and parsley and the juice of a whole lemon. 

It worked. 

So did the chicken breasts topped with pineapple and a slice of Swiss cheese that Paul grilled. So did the lemon rice side dish Christy brought. So did the bacon and butter green beans that Carol prepared. We had some pickled items to start and Carol served homemade limoncello for dessert. 

I ate a Hershey chocolate bar. 

We read to each other again tonight. Paul assigned us to bring something we enjoyed reading as elementary school students. 

I didn't have any childhood books on hand, like the Hardy Boys, but I was an avid reader of baseball game recaps and box scores as a kid. 

So, on the NYTimes Time Machine I found the write up of the game on July 3, 1966 when Atlanta's Tony Cloninger, a pitcher, blasted two grand slam home runs against the Giants. I read the write up sixty years ago in the Spokesman Review before I delivered the Review on my paper route. I was so shocked by Cloninger's achievement and that it had happened against my beloved Giants, that it seemed a good recap to read aloud, even if I had to do so from a Times article and not the Review. 

Christy read a passage from a book she loved sixty years ago entitled The Velvet Room. It moved her to fantasize and dream about finding a room in an abandoned mansion line with a velvet curtained room featuring bookshelves fully stocked with books where the story's main character could escape the indignities of the Great Depression and be by herself and read, read, read. 

Carol read a Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle story featuring a girl who wouldn't take a bath and woke up one morning with radish plants growing out of the dirt that had caked on her arms and face during the time she refused to bathe. Mrs. Hitzel read our third grade class a bunch of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle stories and Christy also read them to her students at Pinehurst Elementary School (and others?). 

Paul didn't have a copy of the book that enchanted him as a child, but he told us all about David and the Pheonix and his love for reading books when he was a youngster. 

Three Beautiful Things 06-13-2026: An Afternoon of Celebrating the Life of Bruce Larsen (1954-2026) in Three Parts

 1. At the request of Stu and Sue and with Sally's blessing, I served as the host/master of ceremonies for today's Celebration of Life for Bruce Larsen. I was much more nervous about hosting this celebration than I was when I officiated services for Aunt Lila, Mom, Everett, or Don Knott primarily because the other services were more traditional. I had a podium to stand behind. I didn't have to hold the microphone. Those who attended were sitting in neat rows and it was all familiar to me. 

Today's gathering was more informal. I hoped it would go all right. (It did!)

So, I came to the Lodge about an hour before things got underway and I made sure that the microphone was working and that I could hold the microphone, speak into it, and scroll the text on my tablet all at the same time. I find it easier to read from a tablet when I don't have a podium (as was the case when I officiated weddings for Scott and Cate, Julie Fether, and Taylor and Cosette) and I discovered, much to my relief, that I could hold the mic, speak, and scroll at the same time (I can also walk and chew gum) and so that helped calm my nerves. 

2. The turnout for celebrating of Bruce's life was terrific. The room was nearly full. Over two dozen members of the KHS Class of '72 were in attendance, along with other people from Bruce's life in Kellogg.  Sally (Bruce's soulmate and partner for over 27 years) was well supported by her son and an excellent showing of people who came over from Spokane/Spokane Valley where they were Bruce and Sally's friends. 

We spent most of our time this afternoon socializing while enjoying drinks from the bar and a fine spread of food provided by Kellogg's own establishment, Nocturn. 

We took a break from socializing and I kicked off a time of tributes and a toast at 1:15 by reading a condensed version of Bruce's obituary and then opening the floor to anyone who wanted to speak about Bruce. Lifelong friends Terry Turner, Scott Stuart, and Ron Jacobs reflected on Lars' life as did a great friend of his from the Spokane area, Dan Love. 

I then read Roger Pearson's superbly written tribute to Bruce, a terrific encapsulation of Bruce's life as a youngster in the uptown Kellogg neighborhood he lived in, at Lincoln School, and at the YMCA. 

Roger wrote a great story about Bruce and Terry Turner the night Idaho State defeated UCLA in the 1977 NCAA men's basketball tournament and brought his tribute into the 2020s with a touching account of two rounds of golf, including playing with Bruce in a tournament in Oregon which turned out to be the last time Bruce and Roger saw each other. 

I ended this part of the afternoon with a toast to Lars and then the whole room broke back into socializing and enjoying reunions and taking pictures, including one of about two dozen members of our high school graduating class. 

3. Many of us crowned this great afternoon of being together by heading straight across McKinley Ave. to The Lounge. 

The good vibes continued as groups of friends yakked with each other at tables and others yakked in smaller groups at the bar. I went back and forth between one of the tables and the bar and even found a little bit of time to yak one to one with Cas. 

I remained faithful to my post-transplant decision not to drink alcohol, but I'd say today was the most challenging non-alcohol day in the two years since the transplant. I would have loved to have joined my friends for a beer or a cocktail (although drinking a Bud Zero worked just fine) and I would have enjoyed enhancing my relief with a shot or two of Pendleton Rye or a can of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, relief that things went so well and that my low-grade anxiety about this day had disappeared. 

But, you know, I really do want the medication I take to ward off organ rejection to work unimpeded more than I want to drink alcohol and it's always good when I leave The Lounge to know I'm driving unimpaired.  

Three Beautiful Things 06-12-2026: Breakfast at Nosworthy's, Burger Night at the Elks, Chillin' at The Lounge

 1. With Bruce Larsen's celebration of life happening on Saturday (Kellogg Elks, 1:00), Roger flew into Spokane on Thursday and Stu organized a breakfast at Nosworthy's in Coeur d' Alene. A great group of guys from the Class of '72 sat around the table: Jake, Ed, Mike, Roger, Stu, and I. 

I've been reading people's comments online lately about how much they love chili omelets.  Nosworthy's prides themselves in serving awesome omelets, so I ordered their Blazing Saddle, a chili and cheddar cheese omelet. I'm sold. I will not only look for a chili omelet whenever I go out for breakfast, I'm going to work on making my ugly but tasty homemade omelets with chili and cheddar cheese. 

We finished eating, but we weren't finished yakking so we sat at tables in the outdoor dining area and shared more stories and praise for Bruce along with some other subjects and this post-breakfast time together put a cap on a great time together. 

2. By this afternoon, Terry and Nancy Turner and Don Windisch and Jeri Robinson arrived in town and PRESTO we had a full table of longtime friends at the Elks' Burger Night. Ed and Nancy, Terry and Nancy, Don and Jeri, Diane Hogan and Dennis Gravely, Mike, and I launched into more fun yakkin' and getting caught up with each other. 

3. The party moved across the street to The Lounge and the good times continued. It was a blast to relax, tell more stories, get caught up on news, and simply enjoy friendships, most of them, for me, having started over sixty-five years ago. 

Three Beautiful Things 06-11-2026: Final Touches, A Developing Love Story?, Back to the Wok

 1. I worked more on what I'll say and read at Bruce Larsen's Celebration of Life (Saturday, June 13th at 1:00 at the Kellogg Elks Lodge) and I think I'm done. Now all I need to do is practice reading from the tablet while holding a microphone. I'll find something around the house to sub for a mic. 

2. I'm not absolutely certain, but, to me, the opening chapters of Part III of Lonesome Dove strike me as the makings of a love story which gives this multi-dimensional novel yet another way to explore complications and complexity. 

3. I had fun fixing a tofu and vegetables stir fry with basmati rice. I hadn't had the wok in action for a while and not only was the food preparation enjoyable, my dinner was really good. 

Three Beautiful Things 06-10-2026: Preparing for Bruce's Celebration of Life, Deeper into *Lonesome Dove*, Memories of Pearl River, NY

 1. I spent much of the day preparing for my role as the MC of Bruce Larsen's Celebration of Life and sending out and posting reminders that the celebration is this Saturday, June 13th at 1:00 at the Kellogg Elks Lodge. 

2. When I wasn't thinking, writing, and editing, I made a ton of progress reading Lonesome Dove. I like the way Larry McMurtry sets up coincidental meetings between characters and the way those meetings move different plots of the novel along and how these meetings confront different characters with difficult choices to make and also trigger memories of past relationships and encounters between these characters. This book is, in part, about the way the past never disappears and carries weight that characters carry and wrestle with frequently. 

3. Even though my beer drinking days are over because of the ways alcohol can interact with the immunosuppressants I take to prevent rejection of the kidney I received, I enjoy it a lot when Debbie is in New York and texts me about a beer she is drinking and where she's enjoying it. Today she texted me from a brewery that used to be called Defiant, but is now Gentle Giant, in Pearl River, NY. 

I used to love going there with Debbie, especially because we always seemed to fall into fun conversations with whomever served us and they had smoked snacks that we liked a lot. 

So, knowing that Debbie was in that building, near the Pearl River railroad tracks, not far from a knitting shop she really likes, brought back fun memories and I could even imagine the taste of the beer I enjoyed there and the tasty snacks! 

Unlike the characters in Lonesome Dove for whom the past is often a weight upon their souls, going back to this past time in Pearl River lightened me, had me yearning to be back at this brewery with Debbie again.