Three Beautiful Things 07-28-2026: Encouraging, Discouraging, Fry Pan Dinner

 1. Today Christy reported that her physical therapy session was encouraging. Positive. Great news! 

2. In the book Is a River Alive?, Robert Macfarlane has explored the degradation of rivers and forests brought about by mining in Ecuador and the damage to urban rivers by heavy industry in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India (birthplace of Harriet Potter). In the third part of his book, which I moved more deeply into today, he explores the way hydroelectric projects in Quebec threaten the life of the Mutehekau Shipu River. I will probably finish this book by Friday, giving me time to think about its content and admire the beauty of Macfarlane's prose, sometimes written as poetry. 

3. In a large pan, I browned ground turkey and added rice, zucchini, broccoli, cauliflower, and mushrooms. I enjoyed the flavor of the meat and vegetables so much, i didn't add any seasoning. 

Three Beautiful Things 07-27-2026: Kalamata Olive Hummus, Mediterranean Wraps, A Stable Day

 1. I wrote yesterday that I didn't want to get into what I did on Sunday to start getting food ready for this evening's family dinner. I like to surprise Carol, Paul, and Christy. 

On Sunday, I made a small batch of Kalamata olive hummus topped with diced sweet red pepper. I'd never heard of olive hummus, but when the recipe popped up during a search, it sounded fun and delicious. And simple. All I had to do was combine chickpeas, Kalamata olives, olive oil, and tahini in the blender and mix it all together. I didn't have any garlic on hand. I could have added that. 

2. Why did I make hummus? 

Back on July 9th, Liz, Jane, Joan, and I enjoyed a Cockroach Castle reunion at Daft Badger and I ordered a Chicken Souvlaki Wrap and I wanted to try to approximate it at home. 

I didn't succeed. Why not? Well, I relied on my faulty memory and thought that the Daft Badger special was called simply a Mediterranean Wrap. I didn't look back at my blog entry about the wrap, so, from the get go, I was not preparing a Chicken Souvlaki Wrap. 

Next time. 

What I did make worked pretty well and here's what comprised this sandwich. 

I warmed up a burrito sized flour tortilla -- actually three of them. Carol wanted her dinner not to include the flour tortilla. No problem. 

I began by spreading Kalamata olive hummus on each tortilla. 

Earlier in the day, I made and chopped up a batch of Greek yogurt with lemon juice chicken. 

I topped the hummus with chopped Greek yogurt chicken. 

I had an unused purple cabbage on hand and topped the chicken with chopped cabbage rather than buy romaine lettuce. 

Earlier, I had also made a simple tomato slaw: sliced cherry tomatoes, diced cucumber, and chopped red onion dressed with a small amount of red wine vinegar and olive oil. The slaw topped the cabbage. 

I didn't add olives because of the olive hummus.

I did, however, add chopped artichoke hearts and the last ingredient was crumbled feta cheese. 

I had watched a YouTube video that instructed me how to roll up a wrap and I did an adequate job. 

I combined all the leftover ingredients I mentioned above in a bowl along with white rice and that became Carol's flour tortilla-free dinner. 

We started our family dinner with a fun cheese: Smoked Gouda with Bacon. Carol made her always delicious Norwegian crisp seed crackers to eat with the cheese. 

I purchased a pint of really fun Black Raspberry and Chocolate Chip Gelato for dessert. 

3. Christy's condition was stable today. It's an improvement that she can rise out of a chair or from bed and stand, doing both with the support of the walker. She can get around by sitting on the walker's seat and scooting herself around (the walker has four wheels). 

Three Beautiful Things 07-26-2026: Pain Subsides, Food Prep, Barack Obama and Eloise

 1. Christy's pain subsided some today. That's encouraging. 

2. I had fun in the kitchen today doing some preparation for Monday's family dinner at Carol and Paul's. I want the food to surprise Christy, Carol, and Paul, so I'll write about this preparation more after we've had dinner. 

3. One of my very favorite places to visit in Washington, D. C. is the National Portrait Gallery and today Adrienne took Eloise there. Debbie sent out a terrific picture of Eloise next to the portrait of Barack Obama in the museum's awesome "America's Presidents" permanent exhibition. 

Three Beautiful Things 07-25-2026: A Break, Dog Food, Another Omelet

 1. I'm taking a break from updating Christy's situation. I'll return to posting about Christy when we have a clearer understanding of what's going on and what's next in her treatment. 

2. I delivered an order of dog food over to Carol and Paul's house. I hope Riley will appreciate that! 

3. I fried some bacon, cooked some mushrooms, and then beat two eggs and cooked an egg circle. At the right moment, I put the bacon and mushrooms on top of the circle, added some halved cherry tomatoes and pickled jalapeno peppers and folded one half of the circle over the other. 

It was a decent dinner omelet. 

Three Beautiful Things 07-24-2026: Update on Christy, Yakkin' at The Lounge, Hybrid Food

 1. Here's what I think -- if I'm wrong, I hope my mistaken point of view is harmless. The MRI and X-rays Christy had done on Thursday were necessary. They were painful. I think the procedures resulted in a setback. Today Christy was in pain and only with a lot of effort could she stand up after she'd been sitting. She's had a very difficult and painful time since she left radiology. 

Carol and Paul invited Christy and Riley to stay at their house so they could help her out, much as they did after Christy's second knee replacement. Christy and Riley headed over there early this evening. 

I'm available for anything Christy, Paul, and Carol need me to do. 

I'm relieved and very grateful that Christy is staying at Carol and Paul's for many reasons including help getting around, food preparation, care for Riley, and conversation -- to name a few. 

It's really a good thing that we all live in Kellogg. 

2. Around 3:30, Ed and I met at The Lounge on the eve of Ed's "Christmas in July" birthday and had a very good time yakkin' about all kinds of stuff, including his massive knowledge of upper leg injuries after his terrible accident nearly twenty-five years ago when he fell off the Tall Pine roof. He has a total understanding of what Christy is going through with thigh/hip pain and expressed serious empathy. 

In addition, I hadn't seen Seth for quite a while and I enjoyed talking about his job in Arizona, his remarkable Meta smart glasses, and how much we are enjoying this season's competitive fantasy baseball leagues. 

3. I got out the wok today, but I didn't exactly make a stir fry.

Instead, I heated up oil and acted like I was making a stir fry by cooking a couple of chicken tenders, white onion, celery, carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower. 

On another burner, I fixed egg noodles. 

I added chicken broth to the food I'd sizzled in the wok, drained the noodles, added them to the broth and the sizzled food, and enjoyed a chicken noodle soup with soy sauce that turned out to be a stir fry and soup hybrid. 

It worked! 

Three Beautiful Things 07-23-2026: Hip?, Motherships, Soup

 1. I hope this is true. I think the doctors got enough information from Christy's MRI and x-rays to determine that it's her hip that's causing the pain. I'll leave it at that until this early diagnosis gets confirmed and until a treatment plan emerges. 

2. The details are boring, so I'll just say that I thought my outdated and well-used cell phone was crapping out, but, by late afternoon, things were working well again, leading me to think the problems lay with either the Google or the Microsoft mothership (or both?), not inside my aging phone. 

3. I had fun whipping up a simple bacon bean soup, combining pinto and white beans with onion, zucchini, celery, and carrots (and maybe another vegetable or two I don't remember). I seasoned it lightly and tried to let the flavor of the beans and the vegetables carry the flavor load. 

Three Beautiful Things 07-22-2026: Resurrection -- Twice, Weird Salad Timing, Beer and Motorcycles and Makin' Movies

1. I finished Part II of Is a River Alive? and throughout this chapter on industrial impacts upon rivers in Chennai, Tami Nadu, India I thought again and again about the Coeur d'Alene River running through Kellogg and about the harsh impact upon waterways in Appalachia of Mountaintop Removal Mining. 

Even more, I kept thinking about Harriet Potter, a sweet street dog whom Debbie's friend Hannah adopted when she lived in India. Hannah needed help with the process of transporting Harriet Potter from India to Portland, OR, and, without getting into the details of it all, I'll just say that Harriet Potter lived with us in Greenbelt, MD for a few days before I took her to Dulles where she flew off to Portland to reunite with Hannah and her other animals. 

Why Harriet Potter? When I read, in Part II, Yuvan Aves' description of detritivores, those creatures like millipedes and dung beetles, who transform, in Yuvan Aves' words, "the shit of life into something valuable", and when I read how these creatures became a metaphor for Yuvan Aves for those who transform suffering and adversity into something positive, I couldn't stop thinking of Harriet Potter.  

You see, Harriet Potter had a long scar down the surface of her spine, a scar from where someone poured hot oil on Harriet Porter. It's a burn scar. 

For me, Harriet Potter came to embody the detritivore ethic. She turned that hot oil cruelty into sweetness, making her irresistible for Hannah to take her in after Harriet Potter gave birth to a litter of puppies in the hallway outside Hannah's apartment door. Harriet Potter wouldn't let Hannah turn her back into the street. She kept returning to Hannah and I'm going to say that Harriet Potter knew that Hannah was the right person for her and the sort of person who would find a home for each of Harriet Potter's new born puppies -- which Hannah did. 

As I read Part II of Is a River Alive?, I realized that I didn't know the name of the city Hannah lived in, the place where Harriet Potter once roamed the streets. 

I texted Debbie. 

Holy Toldeo! 

Hannah and Harriet Potter lived in Chennai. 

So does Yuvan Aves. It is in Chennai where Yuvan Aves landed, having escaped as a teenager from the cruelty of the beatings and other forms of torture he suffered at the behest of the fists and weaponized objects of his stepfather. 

Somehow Yuvan Aves turned cruelty into sweetness, as did Harriet Potter. 

It feels mystical to me that I had such strong feelings about Harriet Potter as I read this chapter, only to learn just before finishing it that I was reading about the city of her birth, of her torture, and her rescue.

 I was reading about one and remembering another resurrection: Yuvan Aves' and Harriet Potter's. 

In Chennai.

2. I made a simple salad: rotini, a variety of vegetables, and pinto beans. In my bowl, I topped this salad with Trader Joe's Toasted Sesame Salad Dressing. 

It's weird. 

I got tired of lettuce salads and started experimenting with grains, beans, pasta, and who knows what else before news began to spread about the outbreak of cyclosporiasis.

Go figure.

3. Before I go to sleep at night, I read several pages of Josh Brolin's memoir. It's entitled From Under the Truck and if Josh Brolin wanted to show his readers that he has lived a rough and tumble life, he's succeeding! 

Three Beautiful Things 07-21-2026: Death Into Life, Korean Sushi, Pills

 1.  Back to Is a River Alive? 

The writer Robert Macfarlane's international explorations of rivers moved in Part II to the southeastern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. 

Macfarlane meets up with Yuvan Aves, a naturalist, natural world advocate, and fellow writer with whom he's been in correspondence for several years. 

From their opening conversation and with the help of a dictionary, I learned that a daemon is an attendant spirit, an inspiring force. 

Right away, upon meeting, Macfarlane asked Yuvan Aves this question: "What is your daemon, the creature with whom you feel the most affinity?"

Aves pondered this question and said three living beings come to mind. 

His first daemon fascinated me. 

It is the millipede. I'll quote Aves: "The millipede is a recaster of meaning and matter, you know. It turns the shit of life into something valuable; takes it in, absorbs its harm, transforms it. Turns death into life, waste into compost, endings into beginnings." 

The millipede is a detritivore -- so are red ghost crabs, cockroaches, maggots, and dung beetles. 

Aves calls these under-appreciated, much-despised group of species "cleaner-uppers". 

Aves is inspired by the millipede and the other detritivore to do all he can to convert suffering or adversity into something positive. 

Macfarlane goes on to detail that Yuvan Aves embodies this detritivore ethic. As a boy and early teen, until he ran away, Aves suffered regular beatings and other cruelty from his stepfather and, having escaped, and got miraculously enrolled in a residential high school. Over time as a teenager, he converted his trauma into becoming a compassionate and gracious young man. His story astonishes and moves me. He grew into a deeply caring young adult, quick to be of service to other people, rivers and other bodies of water, and to animals, snakes, insects, and other living beings. 

2. I didn't know it, but maybe you do! A kimbap is a Korean seaweed roll, very similar to sushi.

A few months ago I saw a package of kimbap among the frozen foods at Trader Joe's and tonight I prepared and ate them. Trader Joe's calls these morsels Korean tofu and vegetable seaweed rice rolls. 

I enjoyed them. 

I also think I could have done a better job heating them up on the stovetop. If I purchase Trader Joe's kimbap again, I'll try to remember what I bungled slightly today and do better next time. 

3. I picked up pills for Christy today that will sedate her for her rescheduled MRI that will happen first thing Thursday morning. Once she and her doctor and PTs know the results of the MRI, they'll be better able to tailor her physical therapy to the specific nature of her injury -- and the MRI results will also reveal whether she is, in fact, suffering from a rectus femoris tear. It's what her doctor thinks is causing Christy's pain and limited mobility. 

Three Beautiful Things 07-20-2026: Being Alive, Quinoa, Welcome Back Brenda Peterson

 1. The book Is a River Alive? has me rethinking what "being alive" means for a river that is not the same as what it means for a human. This is a brain scrambler. I'm so used to thinking of being alive as an individualistic concern. But how about if the world of nature is alive in ways that cannot be understood in a human being centered way, that is not individualistic but is relational. I'm far from having this concept nailed down, but this book is helping me think about rivers, the natural world of birds, animals, forests, and so on in expanded ways and I'm enjoying thinking about the idea of being alive with the natural world as the model for aliveness, not us, not humans. 

2. Today I discovered an unopened package of Trader Joe's Tri-Color Quinoa in a cupboard and visions of a leafless salad with pinto beans danced in my head. So I made just that and plan to augment it later with a wider variety of vegetables and add more beans if it seems right. I made a dressing of olive oil, fresh squeezed lemon juice, and a touch of honey. It all worked, but I will be looking for ways to improve it. 

3. Today I reread Brenda Peterson's essay from about thirty-five years ago entitled, "Living by Water." It appears in her book of the same title. As I read it again after all these years, I remembered how Peterson drew upon the Tao de Ching to elaborate upon the wonder of water, how it is at once gentle and nourishing as well as powerful and destructive. Central to her short essay, too, is the connectedness of all things. 

I've been sorting out, trying to remember what all I read back in my late thirties and early forties that makes what I'm reading now in Is a River Alive? seem familiar. 

Returning to Brenda Peterson's essays has turned out to be a good start in my efforts to remember back and recall what I've read and thought about over the decades regarding the natural world. 

(Hmmm. . . I'm wondering if Brenda Peterson's essay introduced me to the Tao, and, more specifically, Stephen Mitchell's translation of it. It's very possible.)

Three Beautiful Things 07-19-2026: Beans, Road Trip to Harrison and Memory Lane, Classroom in the Camry with a Casino Break

 1. Those Great Northern white beans I cooked Saturday? I added about half of them to the sausage soup I made. Terrific. White beans have a creamy texture and I liked how they complimented the soup's spicy sausage and its host of vegetables. 

2. Early this afternoon, I hit the road.  

As I closed in on the Rose Lake exit, I decided to take it and drive down Hiway 3 and enjoy the views of the Chain Lakes and the other scenic features of this drive.

As I neared the turnoff for Harrison, I decided to take it and go to the Harrison Creamery and Fudge Factory.  It was packed and might have been the happiest place on earth! (Well, almost as happy as Spain's locker room after their World Cup victory.) Lots of children had huge smiles as generous adults (parents? aunts? uncles? grandparents?) fulfilled their wishes for scoops in a bowl or on a cone. 

The youngsters working the counter maintained their cool and filled every order with good cheer while efficiently moving things along. 

As I stepped outside to enjoy my strawberry milk shake, I realized that I enjoy the Harrison Creamery for the scene, for the multitudes of adults, teens, and children happy to be eating ice cream and grateful for the large, shady deck adjacent to the shop. 

It reminded me of some of my favorite sessions at breweries back when I could drink craft beer. I enjoyed really busy breweries and brewpubs in Eugene, Portland, Spokane, Coeur d'Alene/Hayden, Maryland, Washington, DC, New York, and across the USA as Debbie and I went on our dog friendly brewery tour in 2021 with Gibbs. These places were full of happy people enjoying the beers' great flavors, people who were often happy to engage in conversations that always turned out to be fascinating. 

3. I left Harrison, returned to Hiway 3. and then hopped on to Hiway 5 in St. Maries. My driving today was made all the more enjoyable as I listened to Great Course lectures on 19th century Russian classical music and then to lectures on the early days of modern classical music featuring fascinating material on Debussy, Stravinsky, and Schoenberg. 

I interrupted my classroom in the Camry by waltzing into the CdA Casino for a fun session of spinning reels and left the casino with exactly the same amount of money in my wallet I walked in with. 

That was fun. 

In Coeur d'Alene, I fueled the Camry and stopped in Pilgrim's long enough to buy some dry bulk garbanzo and cranberry beans and some spicy buffalo wings cheddar cheese along with a couple other things, returned to being a pupil in the car, and headed back to Kellogg.