Three Beautiful Things 04-11-2026: Magic App, Tulip Mania, Wondrous Stir Fry

 1. Surprise! Surprise! Surprise! We received a very modest check (also known as a warrant) in the mail today from the State of Idaho. We filed an overpayment of our state income taxes. I told Debbie I'd mail it to the credit union and she told me that I can make a deposit via the OCCU app. I loaded up the app and PRESTO! the app took a picture of each side of the check and in a flash the transaction was complete. 

That was a fun thing to learn -- and amazed this codger. 

2. Do you remember the Dot-Com Bubble of the late 20th century? 

Well, what if I were to tell you that Holland experienced a TULIP bubble in 1634 that popped in 1637?

It's a period known as Tulip Mania. 

Tulips had become highly fashionable, and speculators suddenly became willing to pay extraordinarily high prices for bulbs and then the whole thing collapsed, and many people suffered great financial losses. 

If it weren't for reading the "Tulip" chapter of Michael Pollan's book The Botany of Desire, I never would have known about Tulip Mania nor about the evolutionary history of the tulip and I wouldn't know as much as I know now about the concept of beauty. 

Next chapter? 

Marijuana.

3. I tend to stock the stir fries I make with quite a few vegetables. 

Debbie, however, fixed a stir fry tonight that was very satisfying and the only vegetables she used were onion and spinach. She deftly combined soy sauce, honey, ginger, sesame oil, garlic, and maybe other ingredients into a superb sauce and added Thai wheat noodles. She also made a pot of brown rice, so I savored this delicious meal, one of the only times I can remember having both noodles and rice in my stir fry bowl. 

Three Beautiful Things 04-10-2026: Apples, Burgers at the Elks, The Lounge and Ice Cream and Potato Chips

1.  Before I read Chapter 1 of The Botany of Desire today, I basically knew the following about apples: I love biting into them, they taste great with peanut butter, I enjoy apples and cinnamon (apple pies and other baked apple desserts and in a bowl of oatmeal), and that they go great, when baked, with pork chops and pork roasts. 

Now I know so much more about the apple's genetic history, the story of John Chapman, also known as Johnny Appleseed, the countless varieties of apples, how grafting works, and how the number of varieties of apples has shrunk because of which varieties sell the best in grocery stores. 

Next up in this book: tulips. 

2. Debbie and I attended Burger Night at the Elks late this afternoon. We sat with Ed and saw a host of other friends and acquaintances. As always, I thoroughly enjoyed the scene and especially enjoyed the burger. It's not a monster burger. It's not a slider either but occupies that perfect spot in burger sizing where it satisfies my hunger but doesn't leave me feeling stuffed. 

And it tastes great.

3. We dropped in at The Lounge and it was an especially great time for Debbie. She visited a couple of tables and had great conversations with different people. I didn't mingle. I was happy sitting at the bar, nursing a Bud Zero, and having a pleasant mix of quiet time and conversations with Cas and some patrons who stopped by to chat. 

As we arrived home, Debbie told me that she wished we'd stopped at Yoke's, that chips and ice cream would make this a perfect evening.

I agreed and volunteered to go over to the store and I returned with barbecue chips and salted caramel ice cream and that's how we topped off our night on the town in Kellogg. 

Three Beautiful Things 04-09-2026: Mastery of Plants, What is Appalachia?, Another Perspective on *The Italian Symphony*

 1. The Science/Nature book club at Auntie's meets the first Tuesday of each month, giving Debbie and me plenty of time to read the club's next book, Michael Pollan's Botany of Desire. Through a study of the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato, Pollan's book will explore the evolution of these domesticated plants and their relationship to the human desire for sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control.

I've read the book's introduction. I told Debbie what I thought the book was about and she reminded me of this question: Does a virtuoso violin player master the violin or does the violin master the player? 

Likewise, do humans master these plants or do their inherent qualities of sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and pleasing taste master the gardener? 

We'll see.  

2. When we lived in Maryland, I discovered and became fascinated with a podcast from West Virginia Public Radio called Inside Appalachia. I know that the Silver Valley of North Idaho is not Appalachia, but as I listened to different episodes of this podcast and as I thought back on my many viewings of the documentary movie Harlan County, USA, I saw parallels.

Recently, Debbie read a book entitled What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia. 

So, tonight, Debbie asked me to find an episode of Inside Appalachia and I did and we listened to it together. 

The episode we listened to explored the question "What is Appalachia?" and over the next hour we learned (or were reminded) that the Appalachian Range extends from north Georgia to Maine and that the cultural, economic, and political variety in these regions between Maine and Georgia make the question of just what Appalachia is a complex one that reaches far beyond the stereotypes we might have. 

This podcast episode featured interviews with people from Georgia, Virginia, West Virginia, Pittsburgh, and elsewhere and included interviews with academic scholars and local historians about the history and the implications of this squishy word "Appalachia". 

It was fascinating. 

It did not, however, lead me to think about North Idaho as much as other episodes have. 

I thought this episode locked in on uniquely Appalachian issues and realities. 

3.  Back on March 29th, Debbie and I heard the Spokane Symphony perform Felix Mendelssohn's energetic and captivating Italian Symphony. I had gone to Spokane on March 26th to hear the symphony's conductor, James Lowe, lecture on the program that included this symphony and Debbie and I listened to his pre-concert lecture on the 29th.

I thoroughly enjoyed Lowe's analysis of the Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony and this evening I wondered if Debbie might like to hear another perspective on it. I knew that the podcast Sticky Notes, hosted by Joshua Weilerstein, who makes his living as a flourishing guest conductor around the world, did an episode on the Italian Symphony. 

She didn't want to listen to this -- she wanted to listen to something on Appalachia. 

So, when we finished listening to Inside Appalachia, I listened to Joshua Weilerstein's hour long take on this symphony. It was my bedtime story. 

Musically, in terms of symphonic form, Lowe and Weilerstein had a similar understanding of this piece. 

Their interpretations of what Mendelssohn was inviting his audience to experience, however, were not the same. 

This fascinated me. 

For Lowe, each movement represented Mendelssohn's impressions of and experience in four different Italian cities: Venice, Rome, Florence, and Naples. 

For Weilerstein, the symphony was more pastoral, a way for Mendelssohn to express what he experienced in the Italian countryside, but not exclusively -- he, too, heard elements of urban life in the piece.

I thought their different ways of interpreting the symphony complimented each other. They also broadened my experience with this piece.

They definitely agreed on the most important point: it's a symphony that expresses how Italy energized Mendelssohn and inspired him to compose a symphony full of the joy of life and the vitality of beauty. 

Three Beautiful Things 04-08-2026: Bruce Larsen's Upcoming Celebration of Life, Tire Repaired, Tchaikovsky and Spinning Reels

 1. MARK YOUR CALENDARS! CELEBRATION OF LIFE FOR BRUCE LARSEN!

Today Stu, Sue, and Sally met over lunch and nailed down the date and place for Bruce Larsen's Celebration of Life:

Date: Saturday, June 13, 2026

Time: 1:00 p.m.

Place: The Kellogg Elks Lodge, 202 McKinley Ave

 

2. I wanted to go on a drive today and as I left the driveway, the light indicating low tire pressure came on (again). 

I'd had the Camry's tires checked on Saturday and, indeed, the right rear tire needed air and today it looked like it needed air again. 

I rocketed over to Silver Valley Tire and the guy who put air in the tire recommended I have the tire checked for a problem. 

Luckily, they got the Camry in almost right away and discovered the tire had a small puncture. They repaired it and I was on my way again. 

3. On my drive to the CdA Casino, I listened to Robert Greenberg's illuminating lecture on Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture. Not only did his lecture help me understand how Tchaikovsky moves his listeners through parts of the story of Romeo and Juliet, it also helped me understand how his orchestration worked to explore the play's many moods, emotions, and tensions. 

Moreover, this is one of a handful of lectures Greenberg presents in this Great Course about the historical move from the Classical to the Romantic period of classical music and this particular lecture helped clarify much of what is distinct about Romantic compositions and, for Tchaikovsky, what he pulled forward in this composition from the more formal Classical period. 

Was it a Winning Wednesday for me at the casino?

No. 

But that didn't dampen the fun I had driving, listening to Robert Greenberg, enjoying a light lunch at the Red Tail Bar and Grill, and skipping around the casino floor in search of the lucky machine I never found! 

Three Beautiful Things 04-07-2026: Several Silver Valley Stops, Debit Card Doesn't Go in Cash Slot, Stimulating Book Club Discussion

1, I spent time late this morning and on into the early afternoon taking care of things: paid the water bill; paid the City of Kellogg bill; took cardboard boxes to the dump; drove to Wallace to add miles on the Camry so I could get our wheels retorqued; fueled the car. 

Nothing revolutionary.

Nothing exciting. 

Just necessary and satisfying. 

2. Debbie and I drove to Spokane to attend the Science/Nature Book Club at Auntie's Bookstore. 

I seem to have decided that this otherwise easy and relaxing trip needed a shot of weirdness. 

I parked the car in the lot at Main and Stevens and when I went to pay for the parking pass to put on our dashboard, I put my debit card in the (unmarked) slot meant for paper currency. 

The machine ate my card. At some point later on, a parking lot employee will open up that machine and find my debit card.  

It'll be dead. 

Debbie paid for the parking pass and I called the credit union, put my lost card out of its misery, and I'll order a new one with another call Wednesday morning.

I did my best to put my careless mistake behind me so we could enjoy our bowls of curry at the Mango Tree.

3. The Book Club meeting began at 6:00. 

The people in the group were easy to be with and the discussion got better and better as our meeting progressed. 

We entered into substantial discussion about wildness in the midst of the toxic impact we humans have on land, water, and air and, in turn, on plants, fish, animals and other living things. 

The book inspired club members to refer to other books they've read (or that the club has read) and I enjoyed finding out about books I hadn't heard of and a few that I did know about. 

I thought telling the book club that I was from Kellogg was appropriate to our discussion. Not all the club members knew that Debbie and I live in a Superfund site. I know that much of the rehabilitation of the Silver Valley is from constructive human intervention: trees planted, soil replaced, slag piles removed, and so on. 

What I don't know -- and don't know if I'm capable of observing or discovering -- is whether wild plant life, damaged in the past, has made its way back the way Christopher Brown writes about this happening in the empty lot he purchased and had remediated. I don't know much about native plant life in this area, how much of it has been damaged, and what evidence one can find of it coming back to life again. 

I know that many of the trees, flowers, and other vegetation in and around Kellogg are beautiful, but not wild. 

So, I'm curious. 

Three Beautiful Things 04-06-2026: I Finish *Empty Lots*, I Didn't Watch Tonight's Basketball Game, I Didn't Watch Games 6 and 7 of the '75 World Series

1. By about 8:00 tonight, I finished the book, A Natural History of Empty Lots and its detailed and often meandering (which I enjoyed) exploration of history, philosophy, urban blight, wildness, economics, the business world, and, among much else, the fraught relationship between human beings and the natural world. 

One aspect of the book is Christopher Brown's telling the story of his vision of having a half-buried house built that is as integrated as much as possible into the natural world of the empty urban lot he purchased. His dream becomes a reality and Brown helps us see the joys and challenges of living in this house. 

I went online in search of images of his bunker house and it's a remarkable feat of architectural and ecological imagination. 

2. The book took priority for me over tonight's Michigan/UConn NCAA Men's Basketball Championship game. More than being involved with this game, I wanted to have the book finished and thought about before the Tuesday, April 7th Book Club meeting at Auntie's Bookstore in Spokane. 

Now I'm very curious what the members of this book club will have to say about this book. I have no idea where the discussion might go. 

3. Not watching the basketball game this evening reminded me of how I didn't watch Game 6 of the 1975 World Series and so missed bearing witness to Carlton Fisk's eternally famous 12th inning home run to win that game -- nor did I see Bernie Carbo's dramatic pinch hit three run homer in the bottom of the eighth inning that tied up this epic game. 

The night was October 21, 1975. I was a senior at Whitworth College and I spent that evening studying for a midterm exam coming up the next evening in the Renaissance and Reformation class I was taking from Dr. Fenton Duval. My studies took priority over, say, heading over to Rich Brock's dorm room and watching this game with him. 

I loved that course and I wanted to be fully prepared for whatever questions Dr. Duval would pose on that exam. Because it was an evening course, I also missed Game 7 of that World Series. 

I was sitting in a classroom writing my midterm exam. 

I aced it. 

Three Beautiful Things 04-05-2026: Resurrection Rice-A-Roni, Ham Dinner for Easter, Gratitude

 1.  Carol assigned Debbie and me to bring a rice dish to our Easter Day family dinner and Christy requested that we bring Do It Yourself Rice-A-Roni, a dish I've prepared several times. 

I don't know if I used a different recipe today or if I messed something up as I put the ingredients together, but after about a half an hour of cooking, at the time the recipe indicated the Rice-A-Roni would be cooked, it wasn't. 

Debbie, thank goodness, intervened and on this Easter Day we resurrected the seemingly dead Rice-A-Roni. 

Debbie also baked a loaf of egg bread, another food item that fell into the Easter Day category. 

About the bread dough, before it went in the oven, Debbie could joyfully proclaim: "It is risen." 

2. We took our rescued and resurrected Rice-A-Roni over to Carol and Paul's where we joined Carol, Paul, Christy, Taylor, Bucky, and Cosette for dinner. 

Paul prepared a vegetable plate and a cracker plate and made a white bean and pea dip for our appetizer. 

We filed into the dining area and sat down to a dinner of baked ham (Carol), a vegetable casserole (Christy), Resurrection Rice-A-Roni (ahem), and deviled eggs (Cosette). Carol served us each a tidy bowl of fresh strawberries topped with one of the Dream Whip products. 

3. I left dinner today feeling grateful that Cosette and family are doing very well; that Zoe and Molly also are doing well in their work and in the other aspects of their lives; that Carol and Paul's nieces, Taylor and Carly are both pregnant with their first babies and all reports about their lives are good. 

Adrienne sent us an Easter portrait of Jack and Eloise and they are healthy and happy in the picture and I know they, too, are doing well.

Molly also sent an Easter portrait of Olivia, David, and Ana. Just like Jack and Eloise, they look beautiful, healthy, and happy. 

Grateful indeed. 

Three Beautiful Things 04-04-2026: Basketball Wagers, Nature as Resource and Spiritual Source, We Continue to Move Into Our House

 1. Early in this college basketball season when Michigan creamed Gonzaga, I said to someone (or maybe just to myself!), "I ought to drive over to Spokane Tribe Casino and use some of my stupid money that I keep in my stupid money envelope and bet right now on Michigan to win the whole tournament." 

Of course, I didn't do it. 

And there's no guarantee that Michigan will defeat UConn to win the title Monday night. 

But, it's fun to imagine what might have happened had I turned my musing into action. 

By the way, once the brackets were set, I did make one bet on the men's tournament. Ha! I wagered that Arizona would win it all. 

Oh, well. 

(Again. Ha! My one other wager was on the UConn women's team.)

2. As I read further into A Natural History of  Empty Lots, author Christopher Brown continues to explore the enduring questions, questions in play since the Puritans settled in New England: is undeveloped wilderness land really wasted land? Or does undeveloped land have an intrinsic spiritual value? 

I've struggled within myself with this question for nearly sixty years. 

3. We moved into the house we live in back in October, 2017. 

We are not done moving in yet -- which makes me wonder if anyone ever really finishes this job! 

Debbie and I are rethinking the front bedroom (Vizio Room) and we are considering a couple of improvements to our patio. Debbie put up new curtains today in the living room. The basement is always unsettled. Is it time to switch beds between the main floor bedroom and the upstairs one? 

We'll never settle things permanently in this house, just like we never did in the other two places we lived! 

Three Beautiful Things 04-03-2026: Book Club at The Lounge, Relationships Between Books, Red Curry for Dinner

1. Debbie and I are both reading A Natural History of Empty Lots. We are both having a great experience. Debbie joined me at The Lounge shortly before five this afternoon. Ed and I had had a great hour or so yakkin' about all kinds of stuff before Debbie arrived. Debbie and I launched into a discussion of Empty Lots, as far as we've read.  The book is taking us out of our usual way of experiencing the world and challenging us to be more attentive, take charge of how we employ our senses, to be open to surprise, and to resist habitual ways of thinking and doing things as well as to resist the ways entities, especially money making ones, provide us with prefabricated responses to the world around us and how we think about it. 

2. A fun aspect of our discussion while seated at the bar was how this book calls up memories of other books we've read. For Debbie, the book connects to Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari and I keep going back in my mind to Bill McKibben's book The End of Nature and Lulu Miller's Why Fish Don't Exist. 

I'll just say that I'm fascinated much more by the disorder, not the order, of the natural world and the biological aspects of the human world. Miller's book explores this. In addition, when I first read McKibben's book in 1989 it accelerated my interest in and curiosity about the relationship between human beings and the natural world and I've read a lot of books and articles about this subject since then.  

3. Before heading up to The Lounge around 3:30, I baked a block of tofu cubed and I made a red curry sauce. Once back home, I cooked a variety of vegetables in the red curry sauce and added in the tofu along with some kaffir lime leaves. 

I prepared a pot of basmati rice, too, and once the vegetables were tender, Debbie and I prepared ourselves delicious bowls of medium spicy red curry sauce over the vegetables and rice. 

We then balanced out having eaten spicy food with small bowls of Extra Triple Fudge Brownie ice cream. 

Three Beautiful Things 04-02-2026: Urban Walking, Urban Fossils and Shark Teeth, Debbie Fixes Chicken Dinner

 1. It could be called anarchy walking. I prefer "anarchy walking" to its more high-minded name, "psychogeography". Basically, this idea challenges us, when in an urban environment, to resist walking the ways the city (legitimately) lays out for us, to resist the streets and routes that, by design, lead us to where money is transacted (shops, banks, restaurants, etc.) and seek out other routes where non-commercial surprises exist, like small swaths of wild vegetative growth, birds and animals we might not think of as city dwellers, micro-ecosystems existing in the midst of discarded concrete chunks, abandoned cars, and other examples of urban blight. We might follow Christopher Brown's lead and explore empty lots in urban areas. (As a reminder, I'm reading Christopher Brown's book, A Natural History of Empty Lots: Field Notes from Urban Edgelands, Back Alleys, and Other Wild Places.)

The aim of this kind of walking is to widen one's range of observation and to marvel at the wildness that exists and survives in unexpected places. 

2. Christopher Brown's bushwhacking in creek beds and peering closely at areas on the edges of Austin, TX that were once at the bottom of a a pre-historic sea results in him finding fossils, shark teeth, and other evidence of prehistoric animal and marine life in amongst tires, soda bottles, beer cans, concrete chunks, and other 21st century trash heedlessly cast to the ground or in the water. 

3. Christy joined Debbie and me for a delicious dinner of baked chicken, baked yams, and steamed kale. I joked and asked what kind of ice cream we'd have for dessert and Debbie laughed, bemoaned that even though she'd thought of ice cream while at Yoke's today, she didn't buy any.

Suddenly she rose up, grabbed her keys, and dashed to the Camry, barreled to Yoke's, and before Christy and I knew it, she arrived back with a half-gallon of Extra Triple Fudge Brownie ice cream, served us each a small bowl, and my evening and its culinary pleasures were now complete.