Three Beautiful Things 11-04-2024: (A Milestone), Family Dinner Prep, Easy Dinner, Fascinating Conversation

*I meant to note this milestone yesterday.  My post on Monday was my 6,600th entry on this blog, reaching back to October, 2006.

1. It was my job today to spiff things up around the house. Debbie and I hosted family dinner. 

Things were in pretty good shape and Debbie made dinner preparation very easy for us: some time ago she prepared pans of chicken enchilada casserole, so we thawed one out for today and all I had to do was heat it up. 

2. Dinner was very simple. I mixed margaritas using a store bought mix. Christy brought tortilla chips and salsa and guacamole. Carol made a Mexican cabbage salad -- I think she invented it! And we dove into the casserole. 

It all worked really well.

3. Our conversation tonight took a fascinating turn when Carol told us about reading Thomas Moore's book Care for the Soul and read a passage to us about what a dead end revenge is, especially in contrast to love, written by Richard Rohr. Paul is reading Wendell Berry's novel, Jayber Crow and his thoughts about that book took us into stimulating directions about all sorts of subjects, most of them related to how we understand living a Christian life. 

Three Beautiful Things 11-03-2024: Japanese Individuals' Stories and Values, Debbie's Dinner Request, Frog's Death Prompts Jeff S. to Call Me

1. It's becoming clearer and clearer to me that as I read further into Haruki Murakami's book, Underground, that it's as much a study of Tokyo and Japanese cultural values as it is a telling of the sarin gas attack. Right now, I can't lay out in any knowledgable detail what Murakami might have us see in general, but, in the specific stories I've read so far, I've learned more about these people's devotion to their work, their home and family lives, and their attitudes about having been random targets of a terrorist attack. I don't have anything smart or insightful to write about what I've learned, only that it's been fascinating and often moving, but because of the attack itself, often frightening. 

2. Not long ago, Debbie bought a tube of polenta. I asked her what she'd like to eat it with. 

"Pork chops and roasted vegetables."

Ah! Great! 

So I sliced into lengths a couple of potatoes (I'm experimenting with eating small amounts of potatoes on occasion -- can I do this and keep my potassium levels in range?). made red onion wedges, and cut a handful of florets off of a cauliflower head. I oiled them, seasoned them with Trader Joe's 21 Seasoning Salute and roasted them. I air fried the polenta. I fried the pork chops and, while they rested, I sautéed a handful or two of sliced mushrooms. 

It turned out that this meal was just what Debbie had hoped for and we agreed: it worked! 

3. Over the last nearly forty years, one of Eugene, Oregon's most visible citizens was David Miller, rarely known by this name, but widely known as Frog. Frog made photocopied books of jokes and sold them on the streets of Eugene and at other venues, like Saturday Market. He hawked his joke books much of the time on 13th Avenue, near Kincaid street, near the U of O Bookstore. 

Frog died today. 

Jeff Steve messaged me that Frog had died, I responded, and then Jeff called me.

We talked some about Frog, but mostly we talked about the friends we hung out with back in about 1985-87 when we lived near each other in Eugene and promptly figured out that we had many mutual acquaintances both in CdA and at Whitworth College. 

Today, we talked about the present -- kidney transplant, Jeff's trip back to Ventura after coming to North Idaho, Jeff's latest time on the water in a kayak he'd spruced up -- but we also talked about the great times we had on West Broadway in Eugene and I told Jeff how those people from those days frequently pop into my memories, often randomly, and I visit with them in my head. Jeff is the only one of those old friends I ever see these days, but fortunately my memories and the conversations in my head give me the feeling that we are still in touch, still enjoying one another's company. 

Three Beautiful Things 11-02-2024: Reading in Wallace, *Underground* is an Oral History, Turkey Soup on a Chilly Day

1. Early this afternoon, I wanted to leave the house and go to a coffee shop, drink a foamy cappucino, and read, without interruption. At first, I thought I'd drive to CdA, but then I thought ---hmmmm -- I could create this experience in Wallace. 

And I was right. 

I strolled into Todd's Bookstore and Coffee. It was quiet with great music from the 70s and 80s playing at a low volume. I ordered a cappuccino (perfectly made) and a delicious blueberry muffin, settled myself at a table, and just read for an hour or so. 

I didn't see anyone I knew. I read without interruption. I found the environment at Todd's to be just right for reading and drinking coffee. 

2. I'm reading another book from the list Leah Sottile published back in July. 

The renowned Japanese writer Haru Murakami, who usually writes novels and short stories, decided to undertake an ambitious project and write a book about the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin gas attack carried out by members of Aum, a religious cult. 

If you are familiar with any of the oral histories written by Studs Terkel, then you now know the approach Murakami took in writing this book, entitled Underground,  

The book is a series of interviews. I don't know if interviews with any of the perpetrators are yet to come. So far, all the interviews are with people who were gassed or who witnessed the gassing. 

As many of you know, I survived being accidentally gassed at the Bunker Hill Zinc Plant in 1973. 

Sulfur dioxide is a very different gas from sarin, but there's enough similarity that reading these accounts brings back memories of the July day I was nearly killed and the weeks of recovery that followed.

3.  Tonight, Debbie and I enjoyed the turkey soup Debbie started to make last night. When I went to the pot to ladle out my serving, I'd forgotten that Debbie was going to top the soup with dumplings. The dumplings enhanced an already delicious soup and this was the perfect meal on this chilly and wet November evening. 

 

Three Beautiful Things 11-01-2024: Ed Collects His Winnings, Debbie Cooks Turkey Soup, I'm a Youngster Again

1. Last week, Ed and I blasted into the Spokane Tribe Casino which houses a Caesar's Sports Book, and wagered modest bets on the World Series. 

Ed bet on the Dodgers. 

He won. 

(I didn't!)

Today, we blasted back into the casino so Ed could claim his winnings and we hung out there for a while. I put on a mask and vinyl gloves, confined myself to the non-smoking room,  and spun reels with modest success. I took a break at one point and ordered a plain bagel toasted with cream cheese and a cappuccino. Very satisfying. 

It was a very fun outing. 

2. Debbie stopped in at Yoke's today and bought turkey pieces and filled our house with the savory smells of making turkey broth and then cooking a pot of turkey soup for us to enjoy on Saturday for dinner. 

I can hardly wait. 

3. I enjoy going to https://cardgames.io/cribbage/ and playing cribbage with a robot. 

Bear with me. 

It reminds me of when I was a kid and I used to go across the street where the church is now. Before the United Church built its new building, that lot was a rock field. I used to take a bat to that lot and toss rocks a little ways in the air and hit them with a baseball bat. In my head, I'd broadcast an imaginary games between the San Francisco Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers. 

The Giants in my head never lost a game. 

Now, here I am,  over sixty years later, and I still have a broadcaster in my head and as I compete against the robot.  I pretend like our best of seven match is being aired on television and viewers can look at my hands in much the same way viewers can see players' down cards on Texas Hold 'Em broadcasts. 

The broadcaster scrutinizes my every move. 

Today, I won the first three out of four games against the robot, but the robot made a stirring comeback and won the next two games. 

So, in the presence of my imaginary national television audience, we squared off and played a seventh game. 

Ha! I crushed the robot in Game 7. 

I then had fun imagining a post-match interview with Norman Chad. 

My mind went back to the title of Blood, Sweat & Tears' first album: The Child is Father to the Man. 

Three Beautiful Things 10-31-2024: Halloween Preparation, Pretend Dread, A Low Key Evening

 1. For Debbie, Halloween is always a trying day (a hell day, actually) at school and so I took on the uncomplicated task of preparing for trick or treaters. Basically, I blasted over to Yoke's, bought some Snickers, Twixts, and Milky Way candy bars all with the word FUN on the wrappers. I also bought replacement bulbs for our front porch light so that our visitors could see their way to the door. 

2. I pretended like I was dreading two things:  youngsters coming to our door and Gibbs scream barking at every trick or treater. I then took the following picture of Copper and projected my pretend feelings on him and posted it on Facebook as if Copper felt the same "dread" I "did". 

It made me happy that a few people found this picture and my dread commentary funny. Others "liked" it or "loved" it. That was fun.

3. I put Gibbs on a leash and that kept him calm. 

No scream barking. 

I'd say about twenty trick or treaters ranging from toddler to high schoolers (and maybe older) came to our newly illuminated porch and door. 

Debbie decompressed at Radio Brewing and missed most of the Halloween action here at home.  

My "dread" was unnecessary. It was a low key Halloween and after about 7:15 no one else came to our door. 

Three Beautiful Things 10-30-2024: I Finally Take Pictures Again, Stamina, Nostalgic Tofu Comfort Food

1. After a long slump, dry spell, hiatus -- after being paralyzed by a long bout with inertia, I took my camera out into the world today. 

I don't know if I've ever developed a photographic style. 

So many people from around here post so many pictures of autumn colors, waterways, and other sites that I find myself hesitating to do the same myself, especially if my pictures look pretty much like everyone else's. 

I decided today to put that concern aside. I decided I would take fewer pictures, not fall back into a former habit of taking numerous pictures, figuring something would turn out. 

Are the pictures I took today in any way unique? Is anything about them unexpected? Is there a style evident? 

I don't know.  

I'll put up a few of them at the end of this post and you can get a glimpse of how I saw things on a section of the Trail of the CdAs between Pine Creek and Enaville. 

2. My other reason for heading out on the trail was to put my physical stamina to a test -- not a very demanding test -- but I want to build up more stamina, especially if my trip to Eugene in a month works out. I enjoy walking in Eugene and I'd like to build up my strength to be able to do some strolling there (especially if the weather happens to cooperate). 

I felt pretty strong today. 

I spent about 35-40 minutes on the trail, a reasonable test, and I definitely still had gas in the tank and could have walked some more. The trail was level. That helped. 

3. Tonight I fixed Debbie and me a genuine throwback meal, an entree that goes back about forty years for me and that was a favorite of Adrienne's back in 1997 and the ensuing years when Debbie, Adrienne, Patrick, Molly, and I started our life together under one roof. 

I'm going to say it was 1984, but it might have been 1985, when I was a graduate student at the U of O, living on the stipend I earned as a grad student writing instructor. It was definitely in 1984 that I started eating as a vegetarian at home, but was more than happy to eat meat on the road -- at restaurants, if invited to someone's home, at Mom and Dad's house, and so on. 

I may not have the details of this story perfectly straight, but I'm pretty sure Christy knew that I was adapting this approach to cooking and eating at home. 

I'm not sure if it was a Christmas or a birthday gift, but around 1984 or '85, Christy gave me the cookbook American Wholefoods Cuisine by Nikki and David Goldberg, which, along with Mollie Katzen's Moosewood Cookbook, and one or two others, became my treasured guide to vegetarian cooking and dining. (In fact, I totally wore out the copy Christy gave me and a few years ago bought a new copy to replace it.)

It was also when what I now call my Tofu Awakening occurred. 

As I experimented with tofu, soft and firm, it wasn't long before the Goldbergs' recipe for Tofu Stroganoff became a favorite of mine -- and, later, became such a favorite dish of Adrienne's that on one or two of her birthdays, she requested it as her birthday meal.

On my trip to Trader Joe's on Monday, I bought a block of tofu. Late this afternoon I suddenly had the urge to go back to my early days of tofu cooking, to go back to Adrienne's birthdays (her next birthday, by the way, is coming right up), get out American Wholefoods Cuisine, and whip up a pan of tofu stroganoff.

So I did. 

What was different about this dish in 2024 than back about forty years ago when I first started cooking it?

Well, we have an air fryer and so the tofu was crisper than we've ever had it.

It turned out that today we were out of plain yogurt, but had plenty of sour cream, so our dinner didn't combine yogurt and sour cream -- and, I'd say, back in graduate school , I made this dish with yogurt only. Nancy's yogurt. 

I didn't have cooking sherry on hand, so I subbed dry vermouth and that worked really well.

Instead of noodles or brown rice, I served this stroganoff over Garofalo pasta -- and that worked really well. 

For me, this was a perfect dinner: delicious, warming, comforting and awesomely nostalgic.

My gratitude for my good fortune is immeasurable.  

Here are three of the pictures I snapped on the Trail of the CdAs:

 

Three Beautiful Things 10-29-2024: A Jumble of Pills and Masks and More, With Organization Comes Peace, Dreaming of a Shrimp Stir Fry

1. I think it's common, after a major surgery or during a prolonged illness, for people (like me!) to set up a card table to serve as recovery central. In the early weeks after I had surgery, our kitchen table was my center of operations, but Debbie and I wised up at some point and set me up with a card table in the room where I sleep and Copper spends most of his time. 

So much of my life over the last six months has centered around my transplant binder, bottles of pills, a pillbox, a thermometer, a blood pressure cuff, masks, vinyl gloves, sunscreen, sanitizer, cleansing foam, sunglasses, Kleenex, pens, scraps of paper for notes, grooming tools for Copper, books, and on and on.

Taken together, these things, thanks to my benign neglect,  have created quite a jumble on my card table. 

2. Today, I'd had enough of the jumble.

I organized all these things, along with my camera equipment,  and my efforts gave me a peace of mind I didn't realize I'd lost. 

3. These days it's no contest. 

My current favorite cooking utensil is the wok.

While I was unjumbling my card table, I began to imagine a shrimp stir fry.

With Thai wheat noodles. 

Ah! A yellow curry.

I dreamed of a small risk: I would dare raising my potassium level in my blood and cook one small cubed potato in the curry sauce. 

Red onion.

Yellow squash.

Sliced mushrooms. 

Broccoli. 

Red pepper. 

Frozen peas, a first! 

Kafir lime leaves and cilantro.

Peanuts. 

I made this sweet dream come true later on.

And, I'm happy to say: It worked! 

Three Beautiful Things 10-28-2024: Positive News at Sacred Heart, Bebopping in Spokane and CdA, I Miss Beer -- But.....

1. Rather than being pitch black with mighty rain like last Monday, today's 5:45 sky was zinc gray, affording me much better visibility as I launched the Camry, without incident, from Kellogg to Spokane. 

This morning I had blood work done and then had an appointment with the transplant team. 

After Angela drew my blood, I sauntered down to the Outpatient Health Center's coffee shop for a parmesan bagel and a cappuccino and my lab results began to pop up on my cell phone. 

Result after result looked solid to me and, indeed, when Dr. Samer Abdulkhalek arrived in the examination room, he immediately expressed that my labs looked very good. 

A couple of results were pending. 

Before long my blood will reveal whether my dosage of Tacrolimus is still right where the doctors want it and we'll know if my immune system is continuing to keep the BK virus at bay. 

If the BK virus isn't a problem, I'll have labs done in two weeks. If the virus is making a comeback, I'll do labs next week. 

I will have another ultrasound on November 25th when I return for appointments with the transplant team. 

It's been twenty-four weeks since the surgery -- about six months. 

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that my recovery and the function of my new kidney continue to progress so positively. 

2. For the first time since the transplant, today the clinic had a surge of appointments and everything was running way behind time. 

It turns out that recently the surgeons have performed more transplants than usual. 

I didn't mind the wait at all and it only had one very minor negative consequence. 

When I arrived at Great Harvest, the bakery had sold out its supply of Harvest Blend bread. It's Debbie's favorite. 

I bought a loaf of the awesome Dakota bread instead and settled in for a relaxing couple of cups of coffee and one of Great Harvest's peerless Morning Glory muffins. 

Relaxed and sustained, I dropped in at Trader Joe's for a quick bit of fun items shopping. 

I stopped in Coeur d'Alene, checked on the status of whether the technician who works for Camera Corral has made progress on my prime lens (he hasn't), purchased a Cappuccino at Starbucks, fueled up at Costco, and bought a carton Nancy's kefir, a bag of Cravens Earth and Sky coffee, and a superb bran muffin at Pilgrim's Market.

3. If this most enjoyable gallivanting around a bit in Spokane and CdA were happening pre-transplant, I'd be working a beer or two into my day, possibly trying out breweries unfamiliar to me in both cities. 

For the time being, though, I'm abstaining. 

In place of stopping for beers, I'm enjoying cups of coffee and trying out espresso drinks.

It's relaxing. 

My taste buds thank me. 

I don't have to gauge whether my driving is being in any way impaired. 

My world of coffee enjoyment continues to expand a little bit. 

Do I miss those visits to breweries and taprooms? 

YES! 

I miss the pleasure of how different beers taste. I miss the atmosphere of tasting rooms and taprooms. I miss the vibes I enjoyed while in the company of other people who enjoy craft beer. I miss yakkin' with my beer enjoying friends over a brew. 

But, as much as I miss it, right now because alcohol might interfere with my anti-rejection medicines, I'm going to play it safe, abstain, and assess this situation as I move into my next six month period of recovery, as my new kidney is more and more accepting of its new home and as my body becomes more accustomed to having had this new resident move in. 

Three Beautiful Things 10-27-2024: I Stay Home During Family Dinner, I Finish *Washington Black*, The Soul's Journey Out of Bondage

1.  As it turned out -- I hadn't planned this -- I didn't go to Christy's for family dinner this evening. Carol texted me with the news that she and Paul had both caught colds and had (or had had) sore throats. 

The message the transplant team repeats to me is that I can branch out, do more things out and about, but that I am to avoid the company of people I know are ill, especially if I can't wear a mask or establish distance from them. Since we can't eat with a mask on and since I was going to be fairly close to Carol and Paul, physically, if I joined family dinner, I didn't join in. 

I played it safe, stayed home, and enjoyed the Pert Woolum 94th birthday dinner (may Dad Rest in Peace) of Swiss steak, dinner roll, canned green beans, green salad with Sunshine Inn salad dressing, and oatmeal cookie (I had to turn down the mashed potatoes, much to my disappointment) when Debbie brought it to me at home when she, Christy, Carol, and Paul wrapped up their fun time together. 

2. I also hadn't planned on finishing Esi Edugyan's mighty adventure/fantasy/coming of age quasi-historical novel Washington Black, but I did. I joined George Washington Black, a teenager who escaped the brutal Faith plantation in Barbados and, for reasons I won't divulge, traveled to Virginia, the polar regions of Hudson Bay, Nova Scotia, London, Amsterdam, and Morocco. He confronts mortal danger, experiences romantic love, nourishes and puts into practice his prodigious talents and genius, and makes agonizing decisions at crucial moments in his young life. 

As I read Washington Black, I kept having Charles Dickens' stories pop in my head because Edugyan has a gift for creating singular and memorable characters with deft concrete and often peculiar physical details and endows these characters with manners of speaking that are, again, singular and memorable. 

In fact, I felt compelled to pull out Great Expectations during a break from Washington Black and as I read  the first chapter, I felt like Dickens and Edugyan, while not cut from the same cloth, had similar gifts of creating vivid and detailed physical worlds, unique characters, compelling and surprising plots, and great sympathy for their central characters. 

3. In 2022, Washington Black won the annual Canadian "battle of the books" contest, Canada Reads. (By the way, Esi Edugyan grew up in Calgary and studied at the University of Victoria and is now a resident of Victoria.) As part of the run up to Canada Reads, Edugyan was interviewed on a video by former Canadian Olympic swimmer Mark Tewksbury. Tewksbury would be the champion or defender of Washington Black in the competition. 

Tonight, I watched this video.

Both Tewksbury and Edugyan made salient points about the book. 

I greatly appreciated Edugyan reminding viewers that epic adventures like Washington Black's are thrilling external journeys into strange and challenging places, but that these epic journeys are always also inward journeys, journeys, she implied, of the soul. 

What's most compelling about Washington Black's travels is how they contribute profoundly to his maturity, to his psychological growth, to his leaving childhood behind and becoming an adult.

He also journeys into freedom. Even as he escapes the bondage of slavery, Washington Black continues to live in other forms of bondage within himself and he must confront those things within him he remains enslaved to as he travels from place to place, country to country, climate to climate. 

Three Beautiful Things 10-26-2024: Friendly LCC Ghosts Visit Me, Reading *Washington Black*, Meeting My Physical Needs

1. Friendly ghosts kept visiting me today. 

I have no way of knowing, with a few exceptions, if these friendly ghosts were phantoms of the living or the dead, but they had one thing in common: they were students in classes I taught at Lane Community College, starting in 1989. 

I welcomed their visits today. They took me back to memories I cherish. 

I had been a community/junior college student at NIC from 1972-74 and those two years, especially thanks to superb, generous, and very supportive instructors and academically motivated classmates, changed the direction of my life.

I suddenly realized, in late summer of 1989, when the LCC English department hired me part-time, that I could begin to extend to the students in my classes the kind kind of generosity, knowledge, understanding, and support the NIC faculty I worked with extended to me. 

I worked at LCC for twenty-five years. That entire time I continued to draw upon the influence of my experience at a two-year school (as well as my experiences at Whitworth and the U of Oregon). At NIC, I especially enjoyed being in class with students older than I was -- many were military and Vietnam veterans, others were making changes in their lives, others had come to see the value of going to school later in life.

Now, starting in 1989, I got to work with these older students as an instructor, got to do what I could to help these older students and the fresh out of high school students work together, learn from each other, come to appreciate each other. 

These friendly ghosts visited, but didn't speak to me today. 

They appeared to me looking not like they did as many as thirty-five years ago, but came to remind me that they had aged, that while some of their faces might be frozen in my mind as what they looked like decades ago, those eighteen to twenty year olds were in their fifties now, some of the older students were, just like me, seventy years of age and older (one former student, Jane King, just turned 101), and I marveled at how many years had passed and wished I could remember all of the students I'd worked with. 

I recall vividly what we studied together, what kind of writing I assigned.

But I was working with anywhere from forty-eight to a hundred and seven students per quarter.

I can't remember them all, but I sure enjoyed the visitations of the ones who floated into my memory and visited my consciousness today.

(On the mournful side, these ghosts also moved my mind to think about the fact that so many of the instructors on the English department staff that I worked with starting in 1989 have died -- and I felt once again the appreciation and warm feelings I had for them, along with my past students.)

2. Whoa! I look back at what I just wrote about ghosts and I left out a lot. I could write almost daily in this blog about the uplifting memories I have daily of the many people, still living and dead, I loved working with at Lane Community College and all of the students, too, from 1989-2014.

So why today? Why so many friendly ghosts, so many memories and loving feelings today of so many LCC staff, fellow faculty, and students? 

I don't really know.

But, these intense experiences today could have been inspired by the book I'm reading.

Esi Edugyan's Washington Black is the story of a slave in Barbados who comes under the care, as his assistant, of a scientist and abolitionist who takes Washington Black off the island of Barbados, away from the sugar cane plantation.

An adventure and coming of age story ensues, narrated by Washington Black as an adult looking back on these adventures and on his passage from youth into adulthood. 

It's a coming of age story. 

I'm about half way finished with Washington Black. 

I don't know yet how these adventures will conclude. 

But, I do know that what I call ghosts (the book doesn't) from Barbados continue to visit Washington Black, especially the ghost of a slave named Big Kit -- she was still alive when Washington Black escaped Barbados.

I wonder if reading a novel about a grown character looking back, of having figures from his past visit him through memory, also spurred my mind to invite or -- I'm thinking of the surprise ghosts -- to accept  the many friendly ghosts who popped into Kellogg today.

3. Yes. This was a largely metaphysical day.

But, I cannot live on ghosts and memories and feelings alone.

I have physical needs, too.

Today Debbie told me she'd take care of dinner and early in the day she made a comforting, thick, delicious, warming cheeseburger soup and we dipped into it all through the day. 

It was a source of great pleasure and sustenance -- and kept me grounded in the physical world, a world I frequently seem to depart from as I read, entertain ghosts, negotiate with memories, and commune with the world of spirits, both divine and of the human and animal sort.