Three Beautiful Things 10-09-2026: Yakkin' Session #1 at The Lounge, Then #2, Popcorn Dinner

 1. Today kicked into gear when I sauntered into The Lounge and Harley and Candy invited me to join them. Soon Julie C. took a chair and, not long after, Ed was a part of the conversation. I got to be a part of several conversations that ranged from pumpkin donuts to priests in a van from Kansas to Richard Butler and the Aryan Nation to getting together with lifelong friends at class parties and reunions and a lot of topics in between. 

During this session of high octane yakkin', Mike Rinaldi came over and said hello to me. When we moved into the house Debbie and I now live in, Mike's family lived next door in the house Christy now lives in. I know it had been about fifty years since I last saw Mike and today's reunion was a very happy one. It turned out that Ed and Mike also had some history together back in the day in the world of truck driving and when Ed found out that Mike was now next door having dinner at Wah Hing, he dashed over and also had a happy reunion with Mike. 

Ed also shared the great news that at his oncologist appointment today, he found out his post-cancer treatment blood work looked great. He'll have labs drawn again in six months. 

2. Debbie had been out and about in Kellogg and soon dropped into The Lounge. She stopped by our table and said hello and beelined over to another table of people she often sees at The Lounge and joined in the high octane yakkin' over there. 

I was the last yakker remaining at our table as Julie left first, Ed took his to go order from Wah Hing home to Nancy, and Harley and Candy needed to get going. 

So, I've been acquainted with Becky ever since going up to Silver Mountain in 2017 with Dick and Renee for Brewfest. Renee introduced us. 

Debbie and Becky became friends and yak with Becky from time to time when we run into each other. 

Today, Becky came over to where I was sitting and I got to enjoy another session of high octane yakkin'. 

We yakked about classical music, Becky's experience as percussionist in a youth symphony in Minnesota, comedy and the Spokane Comedy Club, the world of Disney, and a host of other topics before the two of us joined (Becky rejoined) the table where Debbie was socializing and after a short while, Debbie and I headed home. 

3. I'd planned to cook some Asian-like food for dinner, but Debbie and I came to a quick agreement that a popcorn dinner would be fun -- and guess what? -- it was! 

 

Three Beautiful Things 10-08-2026: Assessing, Shopping Together, Relaxing Stir Fry

 1. Over the course of our marriage, Debbie and I have had periods of time when we needed to take stock of our finances, travel plans, the condition of our house and talk about these things and schedule meetings with professionals. 

It's time well spent and there's more to come as we do our best to realistically assess where things are and how we want to move forward. 

It really helps that we are very experienced at working together (twenty-nine years) and that we get along! 

2. Debbie and I both make shopping trips to grocery stores, but I don't recall the last time we went grocery shopping together. We had an appointment uptown today (not at The Lounge -- it wasn't open!) and shopped together at Yoke's on our way home. 

Nothing big happened, but it was a fun change of pace stocking up on some goods together and being in silent agreement about every item we bought. 

3. I cooked dinner tonight! 

Well, spontaneously, Debbie sliced a mixing bowl full of vegetable pieces, but I then had fun stir frying tofu, Thai wheat noodles, and that bowl of cut vegetables into a delicious and relaxing stir fry. 

Three Beautiful Things 10-07-2026: Conference, PT Progress, Discussions

 1. I left the nearly completely cleared off table up and it served me well during an important video conference. 

2. I texted Christy today about how her PT session went and her answer was both positive and encouraging. Great news! 

3. When Debbie was in New York, we tabled a lot of discussions about different aspects of life at home and what things we might want to do at home and about our upcoming trip to Cincinnati. Now that were together again, slowly and surely we are getting different discussions started. Today we had some of those discussions in earnest. 

Three Beautiful Things 10-06-2026: Card Table Quandary, Trash to the Curb, Cilantro Pesto

1. Do I need a card table set up in the bedroom where I sleep? For months, the card table was my pill box filling, blood pressure cuff, and record keeping station, but I no longer need such a station now that I'm over two years past having had a kidney transplant. I did some rearranging of other items in this bedroom today and remain undecided about the card table. 

It's not really a huge decision!

All the same, I'll make it before too long. 

2. The City of Kellogg collects our garbage on Wednesdays, so I went over to Christy's and took her trash bags and cardboard out to her container and rolled it to the curb. It's much safer for Christy to have one of us in the family take care of this job until she regains more mobility and energy. 

3. Debbie enjoys making different kinds of pesto and recently she made a batch using cilantro, cashews, olive oil, Parmesan cheese, and I'm not sure what else.  It's terrific and tasted great over a bowl of rotini pasta this evening. 

Three Beautiful Things 10-04-2026: Team Take an Interest, Claiming an Education, Dinner with Christy

1. Deborah and I have been friends since we met as students over fifty years ago at Whitworth. She wrote a wonderful response to what I wrote about going to Ferris High School to hear Rick Riordan and Annabelle Ho. Her parallel experience, and more involved one, took place six years ago when she joined her grandson in reading the Harry Potter series, books she hadn't been interested in but that she TOOK AN INTEREST in and enjoyed thoroughly. 

I told her, in response, that it was really fun to have a friend and companion on Team Take an Interest. 

She liked that and my guess is that we'll both continue to explore things in our life that we hadn't been interested in, but decided to pursue, to take an interest in. 

2. By the way, about forty years ago I read Adrienne Rich's convocation address at Douglass College. In it, Rich urged the students not to passively receive an education, but to actively claim their educations through questioning assumption and engaging critically with ideas in the face of contradiction. In other words, she urged students to take responsibility for their education and to experience it as a dynamic, participatory project. 

I used to read Rich's address to my students and it was in the spirit of Rich's call to action that I encouraged students who told me they weren't interested in readings I assigned to actively take an interest, to see an education as a way not of confirming ways they already saw the world, but to take an interest in ways they didn't and then decide what they thought of different perspectives or things that happened outside their own experience. 

I have no idea if this encouragement made a difference. 

I do know I had a lot of fun trying to help my students' worlds become a little larger. 

3. Mostly I rested today. I needed to recharge after traveling to Pendleton and back last week and then going to highly stimulating events in Spokane on Saturday and Sunday. 

We invited Christy over for dinner late this afternoon.

It's a good thing I had rested. 

Our dinner conversation was intense. 

We talked a lot about all that Christy went through medically this summer and continues to go through now. 

I felt the impact of the complexity of Christy's ongoing medical situation strongly this evening. 

She's experiencing multiple difficulties, all at the same time. 

It's taxing her. 

Three Beautiful Things 10-04-2026: *Americana*, Aaron Copland Twice!, Surprise!

1. Debbie and I arrived at the Fox Theater this afternoon in plenty of time to hear Conductor James Lowe and guest cello soloist Zuill Bailey give a talk about today's concert. 

Today's concert was entitled Americana and, with the exception of Tchaikovsky's Rococo Variations, the concert focused on exploring musical identity in the USA.

The cellist, Zuill Bailey, had collaborated recently with former Spokane Symphony Music Director, Eckhart Preu, on a commission to recruit five American composers of different backgrounds to each create a five minute composition inspired, however they wanted, by the Declaration of Independence. Each of the five compositions featured the cello as a solo instrument and Zuill Bailey filled that role. 

So, Bailey and Lowe discussed the process of putting these five compositions together into a single suite and previewed the emotional content of each piece. The title of the suite: Visions of Humanity. The composers:

Chanda Dancy-Morizawa, African-American

Avner Dorman: Israeli-American

Zhou Tian: Chinese-American

Enrico Chapela: Mexican-American

Mark O'Connor: Appalachian-American 

Bailey and Lowe's discussion of these compositions was fascinating and I appreciated being prepared to experience the variety of ways these composers explore humanity and the musical identity of the USA. 

2. Another great pleasure of this concert was that it opened and closed (or so we thought it closed! More later!) with compositions by Aaron Copland. 

The orchestra's performance of Variations on a Shaker Melody set a tone of beauty of familiarity of the concert. 

The final (or so we thought) piece of the concert was Copland's Suite from Billy the Kid, twenty minutes of selections from Copland's Billy the Kid ballet. 

Fitting snugly into the Americana theme was William Grant Still's warm and lyrical Mother and Child, in which Still brought together his classical European influenced training as a composer with the bluesy and jazzy root music of his life as an African-American. 

The concert program stepped out of the Americana theme for Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme, giving us another opportunity to savor the brilliance of cellist Zuill Bailey. 

3. After the orchestra finished Billy the Kid, and the standing ovations and bows by the conductor and the orchestra concluded, suddenly James Lowe reappeared and to the absolute delight of the audience, the orchestra suddenly played Stars and Stripes Forever. The audience clapped rhythmically at the appropriate places, the three piccolo players wowed the audience during their section, and as the lights came back on, the audience left the Fox Theater sporting wide grins and joy. 

Three Beautiful Things 10-03-2926: I Was With Hundreds of Youngsters, Authors Collaborate, Taking an Interest

 1. I've written this about a thousand and one times, but here I go again. 

Especially through Northwest Passages presentations in Spokane, I am attending programs about things with which I have no familiarity and listening to authors I've never (or barely) heard of. 

This evening, I joined over 800 people in the Ferris High School auditorium in Spokane to hear fantasy writer Margaret Owens interview Rick Riordan and Annabelle Oh. 

Thanks to this program, I now know that Rick Riordan is the very well-known and admired writer best known for having created the character Percy Jackson, an ADHD twelve-year-old, who discovers he is the son of Poseidson, and from that launching pad, Riordan has written several series of books. 

The primary audience for his books is young people. 

Over 800 people attended this presentation and I'd say at least 75% of the audience were youngsters ranging in age from elementary school to high school and some of the young people appeared to be just a little older than K-12ers. 

I don't remember ever being in the same place with so many giddy and excited youngsters, youngsters who listened with rapt attention when people on stage talked and who, at appropriate times, screamed like Beatles fans on the Ed Sullivan show, expressing their love of the world Riordan has created, the characters who populate this world, and the stories Riordan tells. 

And their love of reading. 

Their enthusiasm and the feeling of togetherness in the auditorium moved me. 

2. Rick Riordan is in the midst of creating another Camp Half-Blood series. He decided to take a new approach to writing the books for this series. He recruited four writers and each is working as a co-author for one book in this new Camp Half-Blood series. 

The first of these four books is now available: The Wild Zone. The co-author of The Wild Zone is Annabelle Oh. This book features a newcomer to Camp Half-Blood world named Katie King. 

We got to hear Riordan and Oh talk about their collaboration, the process of bringing The Wild Zone to life, and their enthusiasm for encouraging youngsters to read and to learn that they, too, can be heroes. 

3. Tonight brought me back to something I wrote about a little while back. I did my best in my years as a teacher to encourage my students to take an interest in things they didn't think they were interested in. Often students would tell me I'd assigned them to read something that they couldn't relate to and so weren't interested. 

I knew what they meant.

They were telling me the assigned reading was outside their lived experience. 

I'd do my best to encourage them to go beyond not being interested in the reading and to try to take an interest in it. 

That's exactly what I've been doing. 

Last night I took an interest in young people's fantasy books, something I've never had an interest in. 

Before that I went to presentations on the world of Disney (I lost lukewarm interest decades ago), a post-apocalyptic novel (way outside my interest), a novel about rescuing pianos in the Arctic (I'd never thought of that), and the world of Wyoming sheriff Walt Longmire (never watched the show or read a Longmire book). 

All of these Northwest Passages interviews/presentation stimulated me, broadened my worldview, gave me pleasure, and encouraged me to continue to open myself to new worlds of discovery and learning. 

I'll just add that when Debbie and I, in a moment of what the heck spontaneity, decided to join the Science/Nature book club at Auntie's Bookstore in Spokane, I found myself taking an interest in the restoration of a plot of land heavily polluted by toxic factories, in the history of apples, potatoes, tulips, and cannabis, in the history of mosquitos, the history of Earth's moon, rivers in Ecuador, India, and Quebec, birds, and medicinal plants. 

I don't hold things in my mind as well as I used to, but in the moment I'm reading these books, listening to these presentation, or listening to the Spokane String Quartet or Spokane Symphony, I'm enjoying myself. 

Three Beautiful Things 10-02-2026: Easy Driving, Easy Living, Back to Crossword Puzzles

 1. Ed and I had an easy travel morning back to the Silver Valley and I only missed one exit that cost us about ten minutes of time, but the recovery was pretty easy. We stopped in at Country Mercantile outside of Pasco for a quick sugared croissant and I put a little pep in my step with a latte. 

2. I arrived home to a peace and quiet. Debbie baked some chicken and I boiled some potato chunks. Easy food. Easy conversation. It's all good. 

3. I relaxed with some puzzles today. At the Wildhorse Resort and Casino, when I was relaxing in my room, I didn't work much on NYTimes crossword puzzles, so I have some catching up to do. Instead of crossword puzzles, I read The Dog Stars and, with it finished, I can now move on to a new book. I think I'll give Priyanka Kumar's Conversations with Birds a try and continue to read and learn more about a subject I know very little about. 

Three Beautiful Things 10-01-2026: I Finish *The Dog Stars*, Lunch in Meacham, Serious Yakkin' in Ed's Room

 1. I won't give away the ending to Peter Heller's The Dog Stars. I will say that after I finished it, I closed the book, lay back in my Wildhorse Resort bed, and thought a lot about the complexities of survival, the post-apocalyptic inevitability of violence, about love, the post-apocalyptic yang to the yin of violence, and ingenuity, flexibility, and adaptability. 

I also thought about poetry, especially this one by the ninth century Chinese poet Li Shang-Yin:

When Will I Be Home?

When will I be home? I don't know. 

In the mountains, in the rainy night, 

The Autumn lake is flooded.

Someday we will be back together again.

We will sit in the candlelight by the West window.

And I will tell you how I remembered you.

Tonight on the stormy mountain. 

This poem is vital to the story Peter Heller tells in The Dog Stars. 

2. Earlier in the day, Mike, Ed, Don, and I strolled into the Oregon Trail Grocery and Deli in Meacham, OR, an essential part of our routine when we get together twice a year at the Wildhorse Resort and Casino. A hard-working couple runs the place. I don't know their names, but the husband, who takes orders and serves them,  has been friendly and funny with us for as long as we've patronized the Deli and his wife is a superb slinger of the menu's food. 

I ordered a bowl of superb ham and pinto bean soup to go with a memorable Patty Melt. Everything was perfect: the ground beef coming off the well-seasoned grill, the bite and slight sweetness of the Swiss cheese, the onions grilled just right, and, the coup de grace, the robust nuttiness of the rye bread. 

The cook came out from the kitchen and let us shower her with accolades and she was laughing appreciatively as we fell over ourselves with gratitude for her impeccable work. 

3. Mike, Don, and I came up to Ed's room around 4:00. The other guys enjoyed some whiskey and I drained a cup of coffee. We had quite a session, talking about the past and the present, what we read or watch on television, the complications of family life, and what happens when people who share the same father but didn't know each other have a chance to meet up and get acquainted. 

Fascinating -- and the stories were not uncommon. I hear more and more of these tales the older I grow and Debbie's side of the family has their own to tell as Misty, fathered by Debbie's brother David, has entered into the lives not only of Debbie and me, but of David's two other adult children and has become acquainted with more and more of the family tree she just discovered she's a part of a couple or three years ago. 

Three Beautiful Things 09-30-2026: Weighty Decision, YakFest in Ed's Room, Dinner at the Plateau

1. My luck on the casino floor has been lousy, so I've stayed mostly away. That has opened up time to relax in the comfort of my hotel room to read deeper into The Dog Stars. I'm at what feels like a critical juncture in the story as Hig tries to determine if he can take off from where his plane is right now with two added passengers -- can the plane lift the weight of three people and some supplies off the ground? 

2. It's always fun during our stay at the Wildhorse to have yakkin' sessions in Ed's room. The other guys enhance the fun with a snort of whiskey or two, but I had to enhance my fun with a couple of cups of coffee since I'm not mixing alcohol with the meds I take to suppress my immune system. 

Our session featured fun stories, news updates, and, as always, lots of laughing. 

3. Don, Terry, Ed, Mike and I got together at the resort's Plateau Steakhouse for the upscale dinner we always enjoy on our twice a year visits. I tried something completely different tonight. I ordered a bowl of terrific French onion soup and a Plateau hamburger. 

The hamburger was massive, way more than I could eat. It featured two quarter pound ground beef patties, two hunks of slab bacon, tomato, and lettuce. The burger was cut in half with each half held together with a kabob-like spear. The two halves of the burger rested in a very shallow Gouda and white cheddar cheese sauce. In addition, this monster burger had an onion ring the size of my head resting atop it and it came with Brussels sprouts and garlic fries. 

We thought the Brussels sprouts came with Terry's order of rack of lamb, so he enjoyed those. 

I could only eat half of this burger, a few fries, and the onion ring. 

I'm sure I could have eaten the whole thing about thirty years ago, but not now. 

Had I consumed it all, I would have been like that guy in the old Alka-Seltzer ad moaning, "I can't believe I ate the whole thing."

It was a fun dinner and I wisely returned to my room and relaxed with a crossword puzzle and some reading before I went to sleep. 

Here we are at dinner:  

Three Beautiful Things 09-29-2026: Whitworth at Dave's Bar and Grill, Geography Brain Fog, Thai Food with Colette

1. Ed and I headed out this morning for the Wildhorse Resort and Casino shortly after 6 a.m. and made what has become our regular first stop at Dave's Bar and Grill just off Pines Road on E. Sprague in Spokane Valley. We enjoyed a hearty breakfast. 

As we wrapped up our visit, I asked our server why she was wearing a Whitworth University shirt. She replied that her son had played football at Whitworth and earned two degrees there, a bachelor's and a master's degree. Her son also worked alongside Bud Nameck, the radio voice of the Pirates, over the weekend and Nameck invited him to join him again this weekend to provide analysis and insight. 

Listening to her story was a really fun way to end our breakfast.

2. Thanks to my confusion regarding the geography of the state of Washington, Ed and I took a somewhat out of the way route to Colfax and on west to Walla Walla and south to Pendelton. Luckily, my confusion didn't mar our trip.  We enjoyed the late September landscapes and ended up making pretty good time. 

Later in the evening, I consulted a google map to try to figure out my confusion. It happened as we left Tekoa and I think I pretty much figured it out. I hope I'll remember next time how to best travel from Tekoa to Colfax with a clear and not muddled mind. 

3. Colette and I also have regular thing we do when I come down to the Wildhorse Resort and Casino.

We meet for dinner at Thai Crystal. It's a twice a year thing and we always talk about a wide variety of topics ranging from health issues to books we've read to ideas and insights we have about the natural world, human activity in the natural world, and our lives and life in general. We always converse for about three hours and inevitably continue our discussion in the parking lot, always having a few more insights or stories to wrap up. 

Once again, this was a superb get together that stimulated a lot of thought and gave me more things to investigate in the coming days and weeks. 

Upon returning to the resort/casino, I bolted to the deli for one of the treats I indulge every evening: a two scoop dish of ice cream. This evening I enjoyed a scoop of Cookies and Cream topped with a scoop of French Vanilla. 

Three Beautiful Things 09-28-2026: Blood Test, Chili, Mortality

 1. Dr. Bieber determined that I ought to lower my dosage of Tacrolimus, that is, lower the levels of this medication in my bloodstream. I made the adjustment he ordered.  Then, today, I further followed Dr. Bieber's orders and drove to the lab in CdA and had a vial of blood drawn. The results came back and the Tacrolimus level in my blood was lower and Dr. Bieber messaged me that the new level was acceptable and to continue with the new dosage. 

2. Christy, Debbie, and I swooped into Carol and Paul's house for today's family dinner -- which has, for the time being, morphed into family lunch. Christy brought pickled vegetables for a starter and then we enjoyed Carol's chili, the Trader Joe's cornbread I baked, and the clean out the crisper vegetable salad that Debbie created. 

Great news! 

We hadn't quite, in previous family dinners, eaten all the ice cream that had accumulated at Carol and Paul's and so we enjoyed the last of their stash for dessert.

3. We returned to having a topic discussion, a practice we started back in the spring, but gave a rest over the summer. Christy planned today's meal and asked us, in light of her experiences this summer and of comments I've written in this blog about The Dog Stars, to discuss mortality and how our awareness of our mortality shapes the way we live. We learned quite a bit about each other and it was good to know it's a topic we aren't avoiding, even though it's tempting. 

Three Beautiful Things 09-27-2026: Solo Pianist, Piano Trio and Piano Quintet, Whistle Punk Brewing

 1. I thoroughly enjoy these trips Debbie and I (or I alone) make to Spokane to participate in the Science/Nature book club, hear the Spokane Symphony, listen to Northwest Passages presentation, attend symphony conductor James Lowe's lectures, and hear the Spokane String Quartet. 

All of these pleasures have enlarged my understanding of the world, music, and life itself. 

Today was no exception. 

The Spokane String Quartet played this afternoon at the Fox Theater. This was either the third or fourth concert of theirs I've attended and today's was unlike any of the others. 

For starters, today's concert featured a pianist, Frank Huang. 

The concert opened with Frank Huang as a soloist, playing a stunningly difficult and emotionally complex composition by Franz Liszt entitled Totentanz. I thought the piece pushed Frank Huang to show us the full range of virtuosity with its thunderous and drum-like passages, mind-boggling stretches of rapid runs, and sudden moments of tenderness and calm. 

2. Then the concert featured not a string quartet, but a piano trio featuring, along with Huang, violinist Amanda Howard-Phillips and cellist Helen Byrne playing the Antonin Dvorak's Piano Trio No. 4 in E minor. My enjoyment of Dvorak grows out of his ways of weaving together Slavic folk tunes, dances, and marches with moments of sorrow, soaring energy, and great beauty. 

The concert's last piece featured the famous piano quintet, known as "Trout", by Franz Schubert, one of my favorite pieces of classical music. I was unfamiliar with the first two offerings of this program and very much enjoyed settling into hearing music I've been enjoying for over twenty years. 

I loved that I came to a string quartet concert and heard everything but a quartet! We heard a solo, a trio, and a quintet and enjoyed three of classical music's most brilliant composers. 

3. As Debbie and I walked back to where our car was parked, we decided to pop into Whistle Punk, one of my favorite breweries anywhere. I didn't know what their non-alcoholic offerings were, but I was confident that Debbie would enjoy whatever she ordered. And I was right! She did. And I struck gold! Whistle Punk carried n/a IPAs in cans brewed by the mighty Fremont Brewing. First, I drank a fine n/a West Coast IPA and then a dark IPA, a style of beer I hadn't drunk since the good old days of Firestone Wookey Jack IPA. 

We loved the brick-lined comfortable tasting room, the fine service of the guy who poured our beer, and the enthusiastic young dudes at the bar who talked about topics ranging from the Spokane Greek Festival to where to eat great ramen in Spokane to their admiration for old music like Credence Clearwater Revival.