Three Beautiful Things 01-23-2026: The Suite, Bach's Cello Suites, Yakkin' at The Lounge

 1. By listening to the lectures that comprise the music course I downloaded into my audible library I'm learning a ton about music forms: the concerto, oratorio, fugue, cantata, and more, with many more to come. I've listened to twenty of these forty-five minute lectures and still have twenty-eight to go. 

Right now, I'm in the midst of learning about dance music from, let's say, the 18th century. It's what's known as the Classical period of classical music and unlike the previous period, the Baroque, Classical composers like Hayden, Mozart, Beethoven and others put much more emphasis on recognizable and memorable melodies in their compositions, whatever form their music took. 

During this period in Europe, dancing was very popular and composers had several dance forms to work with and integrated these dances into the larger structure of their compositions. 

One of these larger forms is the suite. Spokane Symphony music director James Lowe talked about the suite in the lecture of his I attended about nine days ago. I learned that the suite is a compilation of different dances, each different dance a movement within the suite. 

So, for example, this past weekend, the Spokane Symphony performed Leonard Bernstein's "Symphonic Dances from West Side Story". It's a suite made up of the several dances in Bernstein's musical and features the different sounds and rhythms of the cultures portrayed in this musical. 

2. So, now let me move back in time from the 20th to the early 18th century, from Leonard Bernstein to J. S. Bach. 

I last visited London forty years ago. 

It was my third trip there and I had learned that I enjoyed going to classical music concerts as well as theatrical plays that I didn't know much about. 

I enjoyed being out of my element and being surprised. 

One evening I attended a performance of Bach's Cello Suites. 

I'd never listened to them before. 

I was out of my depth that evening, but the music made a very positive impression on me. 

About twelve years later, Rita Hennessey and I, as part of our team-taught course in Philosophy and English Composition agreed to include in our course a series of six films entitled, Inspired by Bach. 

Each film featured Yo-Yo Ma playing one of the six suites that make up the Cello Suites. 

Each film also focused on how the film's suite could be enjoyed in relation to another art form. The films focused, in order, on nature and garden design, architecture, dance, film making, Japanese Kabuki dance, and ice skating. 

These films and Yo-Yo Ma's discussions with each of the six directors significantly expanded my enjoyment of the Cello Suites. 

But a key element of the Cello Suites hadn't yet sunk in. 

It hadn't sunk in a few years later when Debbie and I went to St. Mary's Episcopal Church to a performance of the Cello Suites by a University of Oregon professor. 

So what was missing? 

What do I know now that I didn't know then?

I didn't realize that each suite consisted of six movements, a prelude and then five dances. I wasn't paying attention to how Bach composed a different prelude for each suite and then presented different music for each of the repeated dances. 

Here are the names of the six movements of each of the six Cello Suites:

1. Prelude

2. Allemande

3. Courante

4. Sarabande

5. A mixture of dances

6. Gigue

The Great Course lectures are teaching me the specifics about each of these dances as musical forms. 

I know that as I learn more about these musical forms and as I listen to these Cello Suites more often, my appreciation and enjoyment of them will expand.

And, who knows, maybe I'll discover that a cellist from somewhere will give a concert somewhere not too far away and I'll be able to hear Bach's Cello Suites performed again. 

3. If you read through all of that and are still with met, I thank you. 

My day wasn't all suites and minuets and musical textures. 

Ed and I met up at The Lounge this afternoon. Before Ed got there, I yakked with Harley and Candy for a while about the Elks Taco Feed and the pleasures of the Elks sponsored hoop shoot that is about to move from the local to the district level. 

As a way of being able to laugh about his treatment for prostate cancer, Ed likes to make jokes about the hormone pills he takes, the hot flashes he experiences, especially at night, and likes to act like the therapy has made him want facials and other luxuries usually associated with women. 

He gets a lot of mileage out of these jokes and I think they've helped him maintain a positive attitude throughout his treatment and I'd like to think his positive outlook has helped his treatments be so successful. He's come through all of this doing very well. 

Ed regaled us with a few of those jokes at The Lounge this afternoon! 

Three Beautiful Things 01-22-2026: Medicare Annual Wellness Exam, Apple Fritter and Lemon Almond Scone, Spokane Symphony and Sha Na Na

 1. Today was my annual Medicare exam, which means I saw my primary care person for the first time since January of 2025.  I think the fact that I have seen Dr. Bieber and the different pros at the transplant clinic so many times over the last year helped this exam go quickly and smoothly. I had plenty of data on hand measuring how I've been doing and could report on it and, as a bonus, I crushed the memory test and the clock drawing exercise. 

2. I enjoy treating myself to a pastry or two and a latte after I've had any kind of medical examination or test and today I indulged in an apple fritter and a lemon almond scone at Beach Bum Bakery and brought them home to enjoy with a homemade latte. 

Wow!

3. There is no way that I can write out what I learned today listening to a few more lectures, each 45 minutes long, about how to enjoy and understand great music, but suffice it to say I will listen to Baroque music, especially J. S. Bach, with a keener ear and I'm getting a far better understanding of the Classical Era of concert music than I've ever had before. 

I don't know if others who love music have strong preferences regarding different eras of music, but I don't. These lectures are helping me better understand why I have been almost instinctively moved by classical music of all eras, an experience that began in the fall of 1972 at NIC when I secured inexpensive student tickets from our choir director, Rick Frost, from time to time and went to Spokane to hear the Spokane Symphony. 

During that fall of 1972 I heard the symphony live at the Fox Theater and I also heard Sha Na Na at the Coliseum one nights and Santana another and so began my epicurean love of nearly all music. 

What I've really enjoyed about getting older is that some uninformed prejudices against some kinds of music have melted away and I really enjoy music now that I disdained, with unearned smugness, when I was younger. 

Like disco. 

Let that sink in! 

Three Beautiful Things 01-21-2026: Everything I Want in Life!, My Uptown Kellogg Pleasures, Stir Fried Beef

 1. It's funny. Almost everything I want in life is right there on those few blocks that comprise the Garland District. Art. A movie theater. A bookstore. A bakery. A diner. An ice cream shop. If I frequented the Garland District more than once or twice a year, I'd no doubt find more. 

2. I was uptown today giving a project I'm into some attention and, fair or not, I thought how fun it would be to be able to go to a jam-packed used bookstore, sit among the stacks of books, read pages of book I'd be buying about classical music, and then walk a short ways and have some homemade ice cream. 

But, hey, we have the Elks. We have The Lounge. We have the Beach Bum Bakery. We have the Uphill Grill. And there's more. 

So, believe me, I might dream, but I'm not complaining. 

3. With a tip of the hat to those of you who read my blog post yesterday and viscerally rejected the idea of eating eggplant and tofu, tonight I stir fried chopped tri-tip with mushrooms and onions and rice left over from last night. 

I made it nice and spicy with Green Dragon Hot Sauce and a bit salty with soy sauce. 

Gibbs liked bits and pieces of my dinner, too.

Three Beautiful Things 01-20-2026: Sibling Outing to the Garland District, Lunch at Ferguson's, Murals and Used Books and Ice Cream

 1. Christy, Carol, and I do our best to clear out one day a month and go on an outing together. 

In 2026, we are going to Spokane for each of our outings and hang out and explore a bit some Spokane neighborhood or area. 

If I remember correctly, we went on three smashing sibling outings in 2025 in Spokane: we visited the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Browne's Addition, the Jundt Art Museum on the Gonzaga campus, and the Spokane Valley Heritage Museum in Opportunity. We also enjoyed meals at Frank's Diner, Indigenous Eats, and The Mango Tree. 

Today we piled into Christy's Outback and cruised up Monroe Street to Garland Avenue and the Garland District. 

Starting at Monroe Street and extending several blocks east on Garland, on both sides of the street, are a variety of businesses housed in building that have been around for decades, giving the Garland District a charm we all enjoyed. 

This unassuming and inviting district has not been gentrified. 

We liked that. 

2.  Just south of Garland Avenue is the Garland Art Gallery, on open air exhibit featuring about thirty murals. We were going to begin our visit strolling in the alley, but decided we'd rather eat lunch first and so we dropped into the venerable Garland Avenue diner, Ferguson's.

Ferguson's had to be refurbished after a fire about fifteen years ago, but it was not gentrified. Instead, the interior maintains the looks of mid-20th century diner with a linoleum floor, a dining counter with stools, and booths and tables smartly placed along the walls and windows facing the street. 

Ferguson Cafe is kind of a gallery/museum too with pictures and other artifacts on the walls portraying the history of the cafe and of the way scenes from three different movies were shot here: Vision Quest, Why Would I Lie, and Benny and Joon.

I had dined at Ferguson's when I worked at Whitworth over 40 years ago and Kathy, Mary, and I had dinner there in 2019 one night before playing trivia at the Bon Bon Bar located inside the Garland Theater building. 

I enjoyed the food on those visits and to my delight I very much enjoyed my jalapeno burger and fries with a cup of delicious everyday black diner coffee. 

3. After lunch we strolled through the open-air art gallery and over to Book Traders, one of those great used bookstores with thousands of books packed efficiently into a narrow long building, filling shelves and boxes on the floor and stacked in piles in some spots on the floor. 

I bolted straight to the music section and found a book titled, Listen to the Music. It's crammed with essays about orchestral works composed by Bach, Vivaldi, Brahms, Beethoven, and many many more. While Christy and Carol browsed, I found a chair and started reading the book's essay on Brahm's Fourth Symphony, learned all kinds of things in a short amount of time, and closed the book and bought it when it was time to leave. 

Time to leave, yes, but not time to leave the Garland District. 

If you've been on Garland Avenue any time over the last several decades, you know there's a building on this street constructed in the shape of a milk bottle. 

It's Mary Lou's Milk Bottle, yet another wonderful space standing up to the inevitable encroachment of franchise eateries and gentrification in US cities. 

Mary Lou's makes their own ice cream and I devoured a heavenly single scoop of salted caramel ice cream in a dish. 

It was the perfect way to wrap up our visit to the Garland District. 

One more thing: our father, Raymond Harold "Pert" Woolum divided his high school education between John Rogers High School on E. Wellesley in the Bemiss neighborhood not far from Hilyard. 

So we drove by his alma mater (Class of '48) to see how it's been renovated and to pay a kind of homage to our dad. 

Then we returned to Kellogg. 

Three Beautiful Things 01-19-2026: "Deteriorata" at the Cockroach Castle, Learning More About Classical Music, Tofu and Eggplant -- Yeah I Know!

 1. Liz posts a lot of great stuff on her Facebook page and she came through again by presenting the poem, "Desiderata". 

The poem immediately brought to my mind the National Lampoon parody entitled, "Deteriorata". 

Two Kellogg guys, Robert Larsen and Bruce Alldredge, rented an apartment in a wobbly building close to the North Idaho College campus, a place they nicknamed Cockroach Castle. 

In the spring term of 1973, I hung out a lot with Bruce and Robert and before long was also hanging out with Liz and Jane in and around the Castle along with other friends. 

The Castle was my cultural hub that semester. We listened to all kinds of music, read (Bruce and Robert also wrote) poetry, pontificated freely with one another about Richard Nixon, religion, and a wide range of other topics we had passionate and ill-informed (ha ha -- so what!) opinions about. 

We also read National Lampoon.

And it was by way of Bruce and Robert that I first heard "Deteriorata" read aloud and it completely killed me off and contained lines that we quoted to one another (Rotate your tires) and that never failed to make us laugh. 

So, when I saw Liz's post of "Desiderata", I messaged Liz and Jane and wondered if they remembered the parody poem. 

They did. 

And that led to all three of us being transported back 53 years and taking some time to revel in how much we loved the Castle, Bruce's van, The Purple Pig, and the wonderful times we had together for those few months until the semester ended. 

As a nineteen year old, being with these friends at the Cockroach Castle was the first time in my, albeit, young life that I felt absolutely uninhibited with peers. 

These were the most accepting and open people I'd ever known and I thrived on our times together, whether at the apartment, shooting stick at the Fort Ground Tavern, dancing to Free's "All Right Now" as we closed down the Steinhaus, or buying a dollar pitcher of Lucky Lager beer for each hand at the Rathskeller to celebrate the Knicks' NBA Championship victory over the Lakers. 

I know now that I came out of high school feeling confused and insecure and it was great to pontificate, party, read poems, and be someone I'd never been before and revel in the accepting embrace of my friends at the Castle.  

2. I spent much of today doing my best not only to understand, but to absorb all that Professor Greenberg had to say over the course of four lectures about opera, oratorio, and the cantata. I can't even being to write it all out in this blog post, but I will say that learning more about the oratorio and then listening to a thrilling excerpt from Handel's Messiah and finding out the role of the cantata in Lutheran worship and hearing excerpts from Bach's Cantata 140 moved me, made my belly shake like a bowl full of jelly. 

3. I returned to two foods I love today by preparing a tofu and eggplant stir fry over white rice and seasoned with soy sauce and Sichuan chili crisp  It worked. The sodium of the soy sauce and the heat of the chili crisp played off of each other just the way I hoped they would. And I have more of this simple food in a container to eat again in the next day or two. 

Yeah == I know you probably can't imagine eating tofu and eggplant. All I can say is that they float my boat......

Three Beautiful Things 01-18-2026: Leonard Oakland on the Wireless, Intro to Opera, Magnificent Family Dinner

1. If I weren't so scatterbrained and, at the same time, single focused, I would have figured out a long time ago that I can listen to Leonard Oakland's Sunday morning classical music program from 10-12 on Spokane Public Radio's classic music station, KSFC. I would have figured out there's more to the world of classical music on the radio than SiriusXM's Symphony Hall.

Leonard was an English professor for decades at Whitworth. I took a course from him and I looked to him for guidance and inspiration when I taught at Whitworth. 

Today I finally got my head on straight, figured out how to stream KSFC, and listened to Leonard's show. I loved hearing his voice again, experiencing his mind at work, listening to his comments about the music he played, and relishing his music selections. I also deeply enjoyed when he took a short break from playing music and read Billy Collin's superb poem, "Forgetfulness". 

I must, now, whenever possible, and that should be almost all the time, listen to Leonard Oakland's program on Sundays. I cherish the thought. 

2. I put on Lecture 11 of the Great Courses series I'm listening to. It, along with Lecture 12, focuses on opera in the Baroque period. It was during this period that opera was invented.  I got the gist of the lecture, but I fell asleep during it (I like to nap) and so I'll go back and listen again. Professor Greenberg shares his unbridled enthusiasm for opera, repeatedly arguing that it is the most complete form of musical expression, combining instrumental and choral music with dramatic storytelling and theatrical spectacle, bringing together sophisticated music and stagecraft in service to rich and powerful human emotion. 

3. We had a terrific pasta and meatball dinner tonight at Carol and Paul's house. We began with Christy's perfect appetizer, Carpaccio.  Alongside the penne, sauce, and meatballs Carol prepared for dinner, we enjoyed the green salad I brought and the fresh homemade bread Carol baked. I honestly wanted to sit for hours and eat countless helpings of everything. I love pasta meals like this. 

I really can't even begin to list all the different things we talked about tonight, but subjects ranged from the Seahawks and the Zags to The Scarlet Pimpernel. It was fun bouncing all over the place and we topped off the evening with a piece of the yellow cake with vanilla frosting that Carol baked. 

Three Beautiful Things 01-17-2026: Being Unnoticed, A Day of Serious Listening and Learning, Debbie Played It Smart

 1. When it comes to volunteering, it makes me very happy to find ways to help out when I can be pretty much unnoticed. The Elks food pantry makes this possible for me -- at least it did again today. 

2. I decided to devote much of today to listening to the Great Course on learning how to listen to and understand great music. When I was going to college at Whitworth and the U of Oregon, I always enjoyed learning about the Protestant Reformation and what practices of the Roman Catholic Church that movement was protesting and what, over many years, the movement did to reform not only doctrine and church governance, but the experience of worship and the ways it urged individuals to search their conscience and not rely on the Church to do that for them. 

That short paragraph I just wrote doesn't account for how messy the Reformation was nor does it account for Protestant abuses that I find historically repulsive and find disturbing as I see them continue into the present. 

BUT, what I hadn't thought a lot about before today was the Roman Catholic influence on music, what its purpose is, what the Church regarded as appropriate and what wasn't, nor had I thought a lot about how Protestant reforms affected the composing and producing of music. 

So many intellectual, spiritual, philosophical, and ecclesiastical developments that began to emerge in the 16th century matured in 17th century and beyond thanks to the Enlightenment or The Age of Reason. This blending of the spiritual, scientific, and rational, this trust in the authority of reason (almost always with God right in the middle of it all) helped a creative and precise and deeply pious mind and imagination of someone like J. S. Bach flourish and helped give us the exuberant creations of the Baroque Period, not only in music, but in other arts and sciences, too. 

What I just wrote falls far short of elaborating upon all I learned and thought about today, but, hey!, this is a blog not a seminar paper! 

3. I'm not quite sure how severe the winter weather was today along the route Debbie drives when she goes from the Diazes in Woodbridge, VA to Adrienne's house in Valley Cottage, NY. 

What I do know is that a day or two ago Debbie saw the winter weather coming today and drove up to Adrienne's yesterday and so didn't have to make her way north in the winter weather today. 

I am relieved she made things easier for herself by driving yesterday and that she has settled in at Adrienne's where she'll hold down Adrienne's fort and look after Jack while Adrienne travels to Virginia with Ellie next week on a business trip. Thankfully, Ellie will stay with the Diazes during the day while Adrienne is busy with work. 

Three Beautiful Things 01-16-2026: Debbie's Check Arrived! Three Month Later!, I Loved Eating a German Chocolate Scone, Taco Night at the Elks Club!

1. Debbie submitted the paperwork back in October to receive her Idaho state pension money in a single payment. Now, keep in mind, when Debbie bought her new Corolla in New Jersey, it took a few months for something in the machinery of auto titles, registration, and license plates to get unstuck and for her to have them in hand. 

Similarly, something, a typo?, an error in code entry?, Thai curry stains on the paperwork?, something got the processing of the paperwork for Debbie's pension money held up.

Today, however, three months after she put in her request, Debbie's pension check arrived and I mailed it to her in Valley Cottage, New York (where she arrived today). 

Luckily, on Wednesday, the process of extending the life of her expired driver's license only took a part of a day.

Everything's cool on that front. 

Everything's cool with the car. 

I have the Corolla's title in Kellogg. 

Debbie has the registration and license plates with the car. 

And everything's cool with her pension check. 

It's in the mail. 

This is all a relief. 

2. When I went uptown to mail Debbie her check, I also stopped in at the Beach Bum Bakery. Rebekah recently introduced a German chocolate scone into her bakery case. At family dinner Sunday, we had a discussion about the divinity of German chocolate cakes and BOOM! now a German chocolate product was available for me right uptown. 

Back home, after a quick check on the food pantry and shopping at Yoke's, I sat down and as slowly as I could, I blissed out on the chocolate and coconut splendor of this German chocolate scone. 

I am developing quite a list of products I love at Beach Bum Bakery and I hope this scone will continue to be available from time to time. (What else do I love? New York bagels. French bread, chocolate chip cookies, ginger molasses cookies, oatmeal raisin cookies, rye bread, apple fritters, sunshine muffins, rustic sourdough bread, and I know there's more. I also haven't even had a chance to sample many of Rebekah's wonderful creations. I will continue to do so.) 

3. I don't know if it was the first time ever, but I am pretty sure toght's Taco Night at the Kellogg Elks was the first one held there in the last 8-9 years since Debbie and I moved here. 

The turnout was excellent and Tamie and her volunteer helpers set up an excellent taco bar with hard shells, soft shells, ground beef, refried beans, Mexican rice, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, olive, sour cream, chips, and salsa. (I might have missed something.) Margaritas were for sale. It was really helpful having a volunteer ready to serve the shells and the other items to go in them and it worked out great for each diner to select their own toppings. 

Since my transplant, I've decided not to risk the harm alcohol might do in combination with some of my medications. Being dry opened the door for me to have Coca Cola with my tacos and I realized tonight, if I hadn't realized it before, that Coca Cola is my very favorite beverage to drink with tacos (and burgers, too). 

A bunch of us swarmed across the street to The Lounge for some more social time and we did just what we used to watch the old people do when we were younger: we headed out the door and home before the clock had a chance to strike seven o'clock! 

Three Beautiful Things 01-15-2026: My Trip to Spokane Today: Listening to a Great Course on Music, Spokane Symphony Lecture, Bloodwork at Sacred Heart

 1. I was eager to blast off from Kellogg this morning and rocket over to Spokane. I had decided over the last several days that I didn't think I could drive and listen to Lonesome Dove at the same time because the book has required a lot of my concentration. 

I wondered, though, how I'd do driving while listening to my audible copy of a series of lectures from the Great Courses series entitled, How to Listen to and Understand Great Music, 3rd Edition. The lecturer is Robert Greenberg, a superbly credentialed professor, a scholar in multiple areas of music history and musicology. 

As I pulled out of the driveway this morning and made my way to I-90 and eased my way onto the Interstate, I discovered listening to these lectures in the car was going to work splendidly. 

And so, on my way to Spokane and on the return trip to Kellogg, I learned much more than I had ever known about some basic vocabulary for talking about concert music, the role of music in ancient Greek and Roman cultures, and, as I pulled into the driveway upon arriving back home, I was nearing the end of Greenberg's discourse on medieval music. 

2. Debbie and I are members of the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture (also known as MAC) and when I read a recent newsletter describing what's happening there in January, I read that today the Music Director of the Spokane Symphony. James Lowe was giving a noontime lecture on the Symphony's program being performed Saturday and Sunday. 

James Lowe will be conducting this program and it will feature Leonard Bernstein's Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, Paul Creston's Fantasy for Trombone, and Sergei Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances. 

I needed to go to Spokane for a specialty blood draw at Sacred Heart. I could drop in any time during the day, so I had decided I would attend the lecture and then have the bloodwork done. 

The lecture stirred me up emotionally and stimulated me intellectually. 

I thoroughly enjoyed how James Lowe explained what these composers had created in these masterpieces and how he played excerpts from Bernstein and Rachmaninoff with images of the scores of those excerpts on a screen for us to both listen to the music and see it written out. 

The Creston composition will feature the Spokane Symphony's principal trombone player, John Church, as soloist. I think the plan had been for Church to play some excerpts from the Fantasy for Trombone today, but he arrived a bit late, hadn't had a chance to properly warm up, so couldn't play. He did, however, tell us about his history with this piece and why he loves it so much and told us about his instrument and explained how he creates vibrato on the trombone. 

If I decide to go to see the Spokane Symphony perform Saturday evening, I'll be writing a bit about it. 

It all depends on how I feel on Saturday about driving from Spokane to Kellogg in the January darkness and possible fog. 

3. One of the things I enjoy about all these blood draws is working with phlebotomists I'm familiar with. Today Angela drew my blood. I've been working with her off and on since May of 2024. Back then, Sacred Heart ran a lab in the same building as the transplant clinic. The hospital closed that lab a year ago and now I go across the street from the clinic to the hospital itself. 

No problem. 

Angela is friendly and efficient -- so much so I was able to check in, have my blood drawn, and return to the parking payment kiosk in under 30 minutes, so my parking was free! Ha! 

Seeing Angela reminded me of when I was going for blood draws weekly, a time I enjoy thinking back upon because things were going so well. 

And they continue to to well. 

The tests today will provide information as to whether my body is showing signs of rejecting my new kidney. 

These tests had great results three months ago and also at intervals before that. 

I hope the good news continues. I'll know in the next 7-10 days for so. 

These specialty test results always come back slower than my other tests. 

Three Beautiful Things 01-14-2026: Winning Wednesday with Ed and Jake, What! My ID is Expired?, Renewing My Driver's License in Wallace

1. Ed and I rendezvoused with Jake at the Rose Lake Conoco station where I parked the Camry and we packed into Jake's new Toyota Tacoma and blasted off to Winning Wednesday at the CdA Casino. 

We had a great time. I came out a little bit ahead on the machines. I enjoyed eating Buffalo Wings and a garden salad for lunch. It was a lot of fun being with Jake and Ed throughout the morning and early afternoon. 

I hope we'll join up and do this more often. 

2. I had one odd and fortuitous experience at the casino. 

As a club member, I always swipe my card in one of the kiosks and check my player points and see what modest benefits the casino has granted me. 

Today, however, when I swiped my card, I got a message telling me that my ID was expired. 

That message didn't make any sense to me, so I hotfooted it over to the Player Club counter and asked about it. 

A very enjoyably sassy woman working next to the woman helping me overheard my question and said, "Ah! Someone's just had a birthday!" 

I was still puzzled about the expired ID message and thought maybe nowadays my player card ID had to be renewed every year around my birthday. 

So I handed the woman helping me my driver's license. 

She said, "Do you have your temporary license papers?"

I didn't know what she meant and she told me my driver's license expired on my birthday. 

Oh. My. God.

I didn't even think about my driver's license on or around December 27th and said something lame and elderly sounding about how I thought it expired in 2026.

No harm done. I just couldn't use the kiosk. 

But the first thing I thought of was that Debbie's license had also expired, hers six days before mine. 

I texted her. 

She contacted the state DMV in Boise and they worked with her to transmit paperwork to and from Virginia and she got  an and can renew when she returns to Kellogg. 

3. So, upon arriving in Kellogg, I stopped in at the house to check the mail and make sure all was in order and then I headed up to the Sheriff's office in Wallace. 

I hadn't been there since the Dec. 26th shooting.

The security measures in the aftermath of the shooting are temporary. There were about five people ahead of me, a person being served, who could be in the lobby where licenses were issued, and four of us waiting our turn in a chilly little area just outside the lobby. Only one person at a time could be in the lobby -- but, the lone employee at the counter didn't like seeing us in the cold little room and told us we could all come in. Kindness trumped the rules. 

I arrived at the office figuring it might be a slightly inconvenient wait, so I was in the right frame of mind to patiently wait my turn. 

The woman working the counter was lovely and made the short process of renewing my license most enjoyable. 

So, thanks to a CdA Casino kiosk message, Debbie and I are set -- me for four years, Debbie with a one year extension, but her plan is to renew her license as soon as possible when she returns to Kellogg.  

Three Beautiful Things 01-13-2026: Nurse Jenn Updates My Post-Transplant Treatment Plan, I Find Hidden Notes, Newt Is Growing Up

1. Today Nurse Jenn from the Transplant Clinic messaged me. All my test results from Friday's labs are in and she told me that my numbers looked stable and that I should only make one change in in my pillbox. We've been fiddling around, in a good way, with my dosage of the magnesium supplement I take, seeing if we could lower it and if I could, in turn, increase my magnesium levels through the food I eat. 

Today, Dr. Poudyal decided I should take two more pills a day than I have been.

She also decided that I could have labs drawn once every three months, a significant change after many weeks of weekly, bi-weekly, and, more recently, monthly labs. 

I'll have labs drawn in February in advance of my February 19th appointment with Dr. Bieber. He comes to Smelterville that day. 

Then I won't have bloodwork done again until May in advance of my May 11th appointment when I see the transplant team on the second anniversary of the transplant. 

I'm also having more specialized labs drawn at Sacred Heart every three months, labs that cannot be done at Kootenai. I'll go to Spokane for one these batteries of tests this week on Thursday the 15th and will have them done again in early May one the same day I have the standard labs done that I mentioned in the previous paragraph. 

I will be very happy if the rhythm of my post-transplant treatment and monitoring becomes defined by bloodwork every three months with office visits scheduled as needed.  

2. Once I put that small pile of notes, written on carefully cut rectangles (around 5" x 4") scraps of papers in a basket with other things I put out of sight for family dinner, for a couple of days I might as well have dropped them into a twenty foot deep empty well. Not only were they put away, they were hidden and I'm terrible at finding hidden things. 

Today, though, I felt like I'd scored a tie breaking World Cup goal when I found them. They are back out in the open again, a reference to consult for words that have not been Wordle solutions, reminders of things I need to get done, and listing daily tasks like feeding Gibbs and Copper, taking my pills every 12 hours, and other things that, as important as they are, I am skillfully and expertly capable of forgetting. 

3. In the first part of Lonesome Dove we see, through the perception of a greenhorn named Newt, two herds of horses, one going north, the other south, collide into one another and create a stir of chaos and confusion before sunrise that makes useless every means Newt has of knowing what's happening in front of him. It's a coming-of-age event in Newt's life, one that challenges his romantic imaginings of what it would be like to round up horses (or cattle) and move them across the north Mexico terrain into the south of Texas. This one event does not form Newt into a full adult, but it's an early start of that process. 

Larry McMurtry's sharp attention to sensory detail and his plain spoken and poetic language in this passage is consistent with what makes his prose style as arresting to me as the novel's story.