Three Beautiful Things 07-09-2026: Cockroach Castle Reunion at Daft Badger, Heavenly Mediterranean Wrap, Crossword Relaxation

 1. During one of the very happiest periods of my life in the spring of 1973, while a student at NIC, I spent a ton of invigorating time with a circle of friends, friends with whom I felt more free than I had ever felt in my young life, maybe my entire life. Most of our time together occurred at an apartment near campus in a building we called the Cockroach Castle (since razed). 

At 1:00 this afternoon, at Daft Badger, I met up with two of Castle friends, Liz and Jane, and Jane's twin sister, Joan. 

Jane and I have seen each other several times since we found each other on Facebook quite a while ago.

Liz and I had not seen each other for fifty-two years. 

We packed a lot of premium yakking into our lunch -- we talked about the present, grieved the loss of Bruce and John, wondered what had happened to other people we knew back then, and marveled at what a glorious time we had at the Castle. 

That short period of time established the direction of my life in ways I revel in to this day. The impact was more far-reaching and liberating than I could have known when I was nineteen, but I see it blessings clearly today.  I'm a bit secretive about what I experienced, not knowing who would really understand. 

Jane and Liz understand, though, and what a joy it was, at least in spirit, to be together back in the Castle again. 

2. I really had to block out of my mind today that Daft Badger brews such awesome beer. It's great living with a successful kidney transplant, but my discussions with the kidney pros have convinced me to leave alcohol alone.

That said, this week's food special was gloriously delicious. I'll quote the Daft Badgers own description of it: "The Chicken Souvlaki Wrap is loaded with Mediterranean chicken, hummus, tzatziki, crisp greens, cucumber, onion, tomato slaw, and feta, all wrapped up in a warm tortilla." 

I ordered an old favorite, the Arugula Salad, as my side and this food elevated the experience of being with Jane, Liz, and Joan from merely heavenly into a stratospheric realm of heavenly I had not previously imagined! 

No beer.

No problem.

Not with a Chicken Souvlaki Wrap so generously presented that I ate half in the pub and the other half later that evening at home -- with my awesome brown rice and vegetable salad, topped with Kamala olives and feta cheese. 

3. No War and Peace today. 

When I returned home and after I enjoyed my Mediterranean wrap and salad, I relaxed with the very challenging Friday New York Times crossword puzzle and with help, as always, from the dictionary, managed to finish it over about an hour and a half. 

Three Beautiful Things 07-08-2026: Fiction and Nonfiction, How We Read, Brown Rice Day

 1. My perspective on fiction and nonfiction changed mightily when I read an essay by Northrup Frye in which he explained that nonfiction tells us what happened and fiction tells us what happens. 

I'm enjoying how Leo Tolstoy combines nonfiction and fiction in War and Peace. In the war sections of the book (at least so far), he draws upon what actually happened in a series of battles between the French and the combined forces of Russia and Austria.

More compelling, though, is when he moves his attention to what's happening in the hearts and minds of two of his central characters, among others, when they are subjected to the violence of war. 

We see what happens when two young, inexperienced, naive soldiers are in battle and confront the very real possibility of death. One of the characters, Andrei, thinks about how being in battle has the potential to make him a hero. Another, Nikolai, hero worships the Russian emperor Alexander and so what happens to him in battle is that he loves the emperor so much that he considers it an honor to possibly die for him. (This short summary leaves out a lot more of what happens to these characters under the stress of warfare.)

Tolstoy doesn't pass judgment on these (or other) characters. In fact, he writes about their inner lives and describes what happens in a way that I experience as objective and committed to the truth of what these characters are about, free of commentary or evaluation. 

2. When I took breaks from reading War and Peace today, I thought about the book club I attend. 

It turns out that on the whole, I've become as interested in what I'm learning about how and why people read as I am about their comments about the books themselves. 

Now, no one says right out "this is how I read" or "this is why I read", but their comments about the book always reveal how they read and often reveal why they read. 

I'm learning from this group (and from video clips I see online in which readers evaluate and recommend books) that many readers read books with expectations. 

A common comment readers make goes something like this: "I expected the book to be more of a (fill in the blank)" or "I didn't expect the book to (fill in the blank)", "I was disappointed because I thought this book was going to (fill in the blank)". 

I admit it. For the last several years, I've been reading books in my own little world with almost no interaction with anyone who is also reading the books I've been reading. 

I've been out of touch with other readers and so listening to other readers talk about how they read has led me to examine how I read. 

I might write more at another time about how I read, but I do know that I don't read with expectations. I focus more on trying to understand what the writer is inviting me to understand. This inquiry leads me to also think about the book's structure, the writer's writing style, and these elements of the book contribute to the writer's purpose and what I'm being invited to experience and understand.  

For example, I'm reading Josh Brolin's memoir From Under the Truck as my bedtime reading. 

Brolin wrote this book, at least in the early parts of it, in a fragmented, nonlinear style, jumping back and forth between vignettes from his boyhood/teenage years and his adult years. 

From the get go, even before I started reading this book, I did not expect it necessarily to read like other memoirs I've read. I didn't expect anything. My approach to reading has left me receptive to being intrigued by his approach to memoir writing.  I'm reading it without judgment, trusting that as I get deeper into it, I might arrive at a better understanding of why he wrote this book this way. I'm enjoying each fragment, each short story. The question for me goes something like this: "Why did Brolin write the book this way? What did he gain by taking this approach?"

And, of course, I might not figure it out and I'll be left feeling intrigued and possibly puzzled. 

Can I live with that? Accept that? 

You bet. 

3. I fixed a pot of brown rice and combined part of what I cooked with a variety of vegetables, olives, and feta cheese to make salad I'm enjoying a lot. I also used some of this rice in a different way, combining it with leftover chili. I melted a slice of sharp cheddar cheese on a tortilla, scooped the chili and rice on to it, folded it over and had a simple and delicious dinner. 

Three Beautiful Things 07-07-2026: Book Club at Auntie's, A Welcome Book Club Surprise, Chili Omelet at Home

 1. I'll begin with this month's meeting of the Science/Nature Book Club at Auntie's Bookstore in downtown Spokane. 

I wrote some of my experience with this month's book, Our Moon, in this blog. It had to do with the Wallace Stevens poem "The Snowman" and the idea of nothing, which led me to the Tao de Ching and its exploration of being/non-being. 

I admit it. 

I kept my mouth shut at today's meeting about my experience with this book. I didn't know how to keep my comments brief. I didn't know how to share my experience without reading the Stevens poem and the chapter from the Tao that were on my mind all through the book. 

So I listened to what others liked about the book, the few mild criticisms people shared, and, to be honest, couldn't help but think how much my experience reading Our Moon felt like it was coming from left field, that it was weird. 

I didn't feel like being different so I decided to blend in and that turned out to be fine with me. 

2. Just as our meeting was getting started, a woman who had not been at the April, May, or June meetings (the three I've attended) walked in and a jolt of excitement shot around the table as people greeted her and welcomed her back. 

At first, she didn't look familiar to me, but when she made a comment about the book early in our discussion, I recognized her voice.

Do any of you reading this remember when, back in February, I went to the Gonzaga Symphony and I wrote about a member of the Spokane Symphony randomly sitting next to me and how much I enjoyed our conversations before the concert and at intermission?

That's who came to the meeting. 

When our club's discussion wrapped up, she and I briefly chatted, confirming that we had sat next to each other at that concert, and agreed that the upcoming symphony season looks very exciting. 

3. If you flash back to my blog post for June 12th, you might remember that I met high school classmates at Nosworthy's in Coeur d'Alene and went kind of nuts because I enjoyed my first ever chili omelet so much. 

I made a batch of chili for dinner Monday and this morning I decided to see if I could make a chili omelet that might be at least decent. 

First, though, I had to read up a little bit on how to make an omelet and the instructions sunk in.

I heated up a half cup of chili. Then after beating two eggs and pouring them into the cast iron skilled, I cooked the eggs as instructed, tried to determine the right moment to put the chili on one half of the egg circle, took the plunge, and, as best I could, folded the egg circle in half.

I have some work to do on making an omelet that is pleasing to the eye.

But, I'm happy to say that while my homely omelet wasn't much for looks, it tasted good and provided the nourishment I needed to slowly read more of War and Peace and not eat again until I ordered a pre-book club cheeseburger and fries at the Park Inn across from the south side of Providence Sacred Heart. 

Three Beautiful Things 07-06-2026: Bean Pleasure, Steak and Chili, Little Library at the Gazebo

 1. I once had a fairly long period of time in my life starting a little over 40 years ago when I regularly soaked and cooked beans of several varieties and turned them into refried beans, soups, chili, enchiladas, and other dishes I enjoyed a lot. 

When I made baked beans for our 4th of July dinner, I used a combination of canned beans and dry beans, soaked and cooked.

An old thrill came back. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed working with dry beans and I'm ready to return to an old and nearly forgotten pleasure. 

2. When I fixed those baked beans, I ended up with a container of cooked/canned beans I didn't need for the baked ones.

Today, I decided to make chili and I thought of my dad. 

Had he been in the kitchen today and had he seen me cut up a ribeye steak into chunks for chili, he would have growled, "That's a good way to ruin a good steak."

Respectfully, I disagree. I also disagreed when he claimed that Aunt Lila "ruined a good steak" when she used sirloin steak to make Swiss steak. 

My answer to Dad: "It's a good way to improve a batch of Swiss steak or a pot of chili."

And it was. 

I cooked up a simple chili, not an award winning creative one, seasoned with cumin, paprika, and chili powder and every bite I took that had a chunk of ribeye steak in it was heavenly. 

By the way, so was the bacon I included in this chili. 

Now my question is: can I manage to fix myself something like a chili omelet? Or will it be more like a chili scramble?

Either way, chili + eggs = awesome in my funny little world of enjoying food! 

3. The first copy I bought a few months ago of Jess Walter's book Beautiful Ruins got wet and the water moderately warped the second half of the book. 

It's probably dumb, but I prefer reading undamaged books.  

So I ordered a new copy of Beautiful Ruins from Better World Books. 

It arrived today. 

I needed a few things from Yoke's and before going to the store, I drove to the Kellogg City Park's gazebo because Christy knew that it used to have a little library (a place where a person can donate and also take books home for free). 

The gazebo's little library is there, so I donated the moderately damaged Beautiful Ruins and noted that the little library was almost empty. Right now, Debbie and I have decided to keep books in the house. Several weeks ago, I unloaded the several boxes I had packed to donate to Better World Books and returned them to our shelves. 

Now, however, if I decide to move a book (or books) along, I'll make a donation at the little library at the gazebo. 

Three Beautiful Things 07-05-2026: Domestic Duties, Reading, Enhanced Hamburger Soup

 1. An urge started to build inside me to go to Montana today, but then I looked at the kitchen, the floors in our house, laundry that needed to be done, and I pushed back the urge and took care of domestic chores. 

2. I paced myself and spiffed things up for a while, then read another section of War and Peace, and then went back to sweeping, picking up, and cleaning counters, and . I tucked a nap or two in there, too. 

3. I still had leftover hamburger soup from a few days ago. I also have leftover beans that I didn't use when I cooked baked beans. I added a bunch of those beans to my soup and it made it an even better soup! 

Three Beautiful Things 07-04-2026: Slow Baked Baked Beans, Holiday Family Dinner, Slowly Reading Surreal War Scenes

1. Friday evening, I used the quick soak method and then cooked a batch of Great Northern white beans. I combined the white beans with cans of kidney and black beans. The red, white, and black beans yielded up four cups of bean liquid and into this liquid I whisked molasses, brown sugar, salt, pepper, ginger, and dry mustard. I placed chopped white onion on the bottom of a well-oiled Dutch oven, poured the beans over the onions, added the four cups of liquid, and then topped it all with chopped bacon. 

I set the oven at 250 degrees and began the 7-8 hour process of slow cooking these beans. 

I was ready to go to bed around 11:00 or so. I turned off the oven with the beans inside, figuring they would continue to cook somewhat even as the oven't heat diminished. 

First thing I did this morning was check the beans, turn the oven back on, and let them continue to slowly cook, checking on them every ninety minutes or so. 

I wanted the beans to be less liquid-y, so, early in the afternoon, I removed the lid and slowly and surely the beans thickened and when they were at the consistency I desired, I turned off the oven and set the beans on the stove to cool. 

About an hour or so before going over to the Roberts' for dinner, I slowly reheated the beans on the stovetop and transferred them into a bowl and put a lid on it. 

Friday evening, when I added the brown sugar/molasses mixture to the beans, I thought the beans tasted way too sweet. 

By the time the beans had slow cooked for many hours, the sweetness mellowed out considerably, so much so that at dinner last night, I wanted the presence of molasses in these beans to be more pronounced. 

But, Christy and Tracy both said they liked the beans. Carol accepted my offer when I asked her if she wanted some leftover beans. Christy also accepted my offer of leftover beans in spirit, but said her fridge didn't have room for a container of beans. (I just heard from Christy. She and Tracy want some of my beans for their Sunday dinner! 💪)

I've got to create more opportunities to fix baked beans and see if I can more masterfully create the flavor in reality that I imagine as I dream about how I'd like the baked beans to taste. 

2.  We had a great dinner at Carol and Paul's house on the patio. In the Spirit of '76 (I guess) we enjoyed slow cooked bbq brisket on a bun, grilled in the husks corn on the cob, potato salad, slow cooked baked beans, fresh fruit salad, and, for dessert, slab cherry pie with cherry ice cream. 

We had a full table of people at the table.  In addition to the usual family dinner attendees (Paul, Carol, Christy, and I), today we were joined by Paul and Carol's student (and local thespian) Lucille, Paul's mother, Pat, the Barnes family (Taylor, Cosette, Saphire, and Bucky), and Christy's guest this weekend, Tracy. 

3. Slow cooked brisket.

Slow cooked baked beans. 

My slow reading of War and Peace slowly progresses. 

I read an anonymous writer's comment today that the battle scenes of Volume 1, Part 2 featured Leo Tolstoy's mastery of "gritty realism". 

The thing is, though, whether the war story is Catch-22, The Things They Carried, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Red Badge of Courage, Apocalypse Now, Platoon, or any of the many more novels, movies, or poems about war, gritty realism always gives way to the realm of surrealism. 

Surrealism features what's going on in the unconscious mind, often dreams or nightmares, and the touchstones for perceiving reality we rely on in everyday life give way to the logic of dreams. The battle scenes in this section of War and Peace are surreal, nightmarish. None of our usual ways of functioning seem to apply: moral codes disappear, compassion gives way to callousness, enemies who taunt and joke with each other during a truce then turn around and kill each other, some characters see the violence and bloodshed of the battlefield as self-serving opportunities that can burnish their reputations, give them the chance to considered heroic in ways they dream of. 

Because the scenes of battle tend toward surrealism, they are difficult sometimes to follow. In much the same way that our dreams are fragmented and put apparently disconnected things into connection with each other, the same happens in battle and it can be confounding and even fatiguing to read.

But worth it! 

Three Beautiful Things 07-03-2026: Birthday Breakfast, Slow Cooking Beans, Battlefield Chaos

1. As a way to kick off the celebration of Carol's birthday, Christy, Carol, and I ate breakfast at the Brooks Hotel in Wallace. I don't really know the story of the Brooks Hotel, but I did hear the word "remodel" and I thought I heard "new owners", but whatever the story, it's a handsome, well-appointed cafe and we all enjoyed our orders a lot. I ordered a half order of biscuits and gravy. The biscuits were so light and the gravy so well made that I could have eaten a full order and probably not been uncomfortably full. 

2. Carol assigned me to bring baked beans to our 4th of July family dinner. The baked bean recipe I decided to use was easy to assemble and the pot of beans stays in the oven for 7-8 hours. I started the oven baking tonight and after about three hours or so, turned off the heat and left the beans in the oven. I'll get back to more oven baking in the morning. 

3.  As the second part of Volume 1 of War and Peace moves forward, combat breaks out and, on purpose, Tolstoy writes about it and describes it confusingly. Yes. I struggled to picture exactly what was going. I realized that Tolstoy was creating in my mind as a reader something approximating the chaos and confusion of these battles between the French and the Russians and Austrians. Taken together, the booms, smoke, cannon balls shaking the ground, the bursts of rifle fire, adrenaline, the sight of wounded soldiers, and more make it nearly impossible to know what's going on, which side has an advantage, and what to do next. 

It's chaotic, confusing, frightening. 

It's not a heroic or romantic picture.  

Three Beautiful Things 07-02-2026: Rereading, Bean by Bean, The Balm of Aging

 1. Back in my teaching days, I used to (futilely?) encourage students to read the essays or books I assigned both forward and backward. I also encouraged students to reread what I assigned. 

I understood then and understand now the difficulty of doing this. I know when I read, the impulse I always feel strongly is to move forward, enjoy the book, contemplate it, and move on to a new one. 

I have found, however, that when reading War and Peace, I have to turn the encouragement I gave my students onto myself. 

I need to reread, as it turns out, large chunks of what I've read once in order to keep characters straight (even as I take notes) and to get the storylines straight. 

Today I went back and reread about fifty pages of war effort storytelling, with focus on two characters I had met in the early chapters of the book. 

Tolstoy introduced Nikolai Bolkonsky and Andrei Rostov in the early chapters of War and Peace in aristocratic social settings. Silly settings. 

But in Part 2 of Volume 1, these two young socialites are no longer attending soirees. They are part of the Russian/Austrian war effort in conflict with Napoleon's French troops. 

I'm learning how they respond to this new world outside the cocoon of elite Russian society, elite society which is, by the way, available to them in the war effort among some of the military bureaucrats. 

2. Over ten years ago, maybe even fifteen, Adrienne gave me a cookbook of bean recipes entitled Bean by Bean. I opened this terrific cookbook today in search of its baked bean recipe and I think I'll use it to guide my effort to bring tasty baked beans to our 4th of July family dinner. 

3. Out of the blue this evening, Jeff Steve called and we had a terrific conversation about a lot of different things including how for both of us aging has meant being relieved of suffering from the past, suffering, in my case, that dominated my life at one time and that I, for one, thought would be with me forever and that I have no contact with today. What a relief. 

Three Beautiful Things 07-01-2026: Dictionaries Arrive in the Mail, I Need to Do Some Rereading, Sweet and Spicy Hamburger Soup

1. If for some reason I have to have a book quickly and can't get to a bookstore that day, I'll order it from Amazon. I don't remember the last time this happened. 

My online book buying sources are Better World Books and Bookshop, both dedicated to good causes. I also like to order online from Auntie's Bookstore and pick the books up in their store. Last month, I went to the store itself and purchased the thick Russian novels that will be the "big books" part of my summer (and maybe into the fall) reading project. 

Today the two books I recently ordered from bookshop.org arrived. 

I ordered American Heritage's hard cover desk dictionary because I have grown weary of looking up words on my phone while reading. I like having the feel of the dictionary in my hands, but, ha ha!, so far the words I've needed to look up while reading War and Peace didn't make the desk dictionary cut, so I had to go online anyway!  

Oh, well...

The other book that arrived is also a dictionary, one that Bridgit posted about on Facebook several times in the past.

It's The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, a collection of words invented by its author, John Koenig. Koenig, having noted that we have all kinds of experiences in life that we do not have words for, creates words for these experiences. 

He presents each word, an explanation of what his invented word means, an etymology of what Greek, Latin, or other words he drew upon to create these words, and how to pronounce it. 

Here's an example that caught my attention because I just finished reading the book Our Moon which is about the infinite spatial reach of the universe. 

The word:  galagog

John Koenig's definition:  n. the state of being simultaneously entranced and unsettled by the vastness of the cosmos, which makes your deepest concerns feel laughably quaint, yet vanishingly rare. 

Etymology: From galaxy a gravitationally bound system of millions of stars + agog, awestruck.

Pronounced "gal-uh-gawg." 

2. The second part of Volume 1 of War and Peace moves to the conduct of war, first in Austria. I got about fifteen chapters into this part of Volume 1 and I've decided that since I'm not under any time pressure to finish this book and since I don't have a paper due on it next week (ha ha), that I'm going to reread what I read today. Names of characters and names of places are unfamiliar to me and I think rereading these chapters, with the help of some summaries posted onliine, will help clarify things and get details more securely planted in my mind (which is not as sharp as it was when I was younger). 

3. Spicy and sweet soup! That's what I like these days! Tonight I improvised and created a hamburger soup of white onion, zucchini, celery, mushrooms, and to make it sweet, included a generous amount of corn kernels and carrots. I gave the soup a quiet bite of spiciness with a moderate amount of red pepper flakes. I salted it, peppered it, and added a small amount of Braggs Liquid Aminos. 

I'm a lucky guy. 

I still have leftover bean and rice salad in the fridge along with at least another bowl of this pleasing hamburger soup. 

Eating mostly salads and soups at home is working for me in a big way! 

Three Beautiful Things 06-30-2026: I'm Hooked on *War and Peace*, Reading Without a Calendar, Trader Joe's and Quiet Patriotism

 1. Leo Tolstoy divided War and Peace into four volumes and an epilogue. Each volume has 3, 4, or 5 parts and the epilogue has 2 parts.

Today I finished the first part of Volume I. It's very early in the book, but as I see it so far, Tolstoy gradually and masterfully opens his story wider and wider, moving the story from family to family and place to place. The novel begins in Petersburg, moves to Moscow, and Volume ends in a country estate called Bald Hills. 

At some point, it will move to war. 

I'm hooked. 

The drumbeat of the coming war is out of sight and cannot be heard, but it's very much on the minds of the aristocrats Tolstoy introduces in this first part of Volume 1 and as the characters discuss their points of view about Napoleon, Tsar (or Emperor) Alexander, and about Russia's place in the western world, I find myself wondering how much they really know, how much of their talk is misinformed, how much certain characters are bloviators more than reliable commentators, and how this war is going to affect these protected, elite, and privileged aristocrats. 

I might be totally wrong about where this book is going, but I thought I'd write out what I'm wondering and see, later on, if my questions are legitimate. 

2. I keep thinking. as I progress in reading this book how glad I am that I'm not reading it for a class. 

Well, that's not totally true. I'd love to be reading this under the direction and guidance of a professor of Russian literature. 

What I'm glad about, though, is that my reading is not at all guided by the calendar. I don't have to have some number of pages read by some deadline, I am not reading this book with exams or paper writing in mind, and what and how I read this book will not be graded. 

All those years that I was employed as an instructor, I spent an inordinate amount of time fantasizing about working with students with no calendar and no grades. The fantasies were folly, of course, but the first thing I thought about when i retired was that I had some number of years ahead of me to read for the sake of knowledge, enjoyment, and relaxation. No syllabus. No grades. It's been blissful. 

3. I focused my shopping trip to Trader Joe's late this afternoon on buying ingredients for soups and leafless salads and on having frozen chicken tenders and raw shrimp on hand for stir fries. I bought two treats for myself, too: a pack of dark chocolate and almond bars and a quart of Cookie Butter ice cream. 

As the checker scanned my groceries, she asked me what I was going to do on the Fourth of July. 

"Hide." 

Then I corrected myself. "Well, I'm having dinner with family, but then I think I'll go home and wrap myself in an American flag and hide in the basement." 

She replied, "That sounds good." (The customer is always right!)

As I started to walk away at the end of our transaction she smiled warmly and said, "Well, have a good Fourth -- and enjoy your hiding."

"You, too," I replied. "And I will." 

Okay. 

I confess. 

I exaggerated. 

I won't be on the cold cement floor of the basement in the fetal position with Old Glory as my cocoon. 

But I hope my point was clear. 

I'm a quiet patriot. 

After our family dinner, I'll be committed to keeping Gibbs and Copper company in case the rockets' red glare and bombs bursting in air bother them for the first time ever. 

And I'll quietly contemplate the USA coming into being.