Three Beautiful Things 05-29-2026: Enjoying Spokane, Loved the Palouse Highway, Birthday Shopping at the CdA Casino

1. I drove Debbie to the airport and then dilly dallied around Spokane a bit. 

I had gotten the idea in my head that Spokane's Maxwell House served breakfast and when I strolled in about an hour before opening time, a very friendly and eager to help guy behind the bar told me they open at 11:00 and don't serve breakfast. He gave me some very good suggestions for places to go (Swinging Doors, Bruncheonette, Elliot's). I thanked him and decided to go to the Wall Street Diner where I had last dined about fifty years ago when it was the Wall Street Cafe. 

I finished my Fiesta Scramble and headed down to the MAC where about nineteen European paintings I want to see are on exhibit, but today was also the first day of the museum's Artfest and I decided I didn't want to navigate the festival to get to the museum or go in search of a parking place. I'll go back on Tuesday in the afternoon before 6:00 book club and view the paintings then. 

I drove downtown to Auntie's Bookstore. I've been thinking about buying War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, and The Brothers Karamozov in hardback, but I examined the paperback copies at Auntie's and decided to buy them. I could only get the hardback copies online and decided not to mess with that and buy the books right there in front of me at Auntie's. 

2.  I had an errand to take care of at the Coeur d'Alene Casino and decided to go there on a route I thought would work but I wasn't sure. I stubbornly decided not to accept the always available help of my Maps app. Instead, I drove up Grand Blvd, turned west on 29th, and then right on Southwest Blvd. Southwest ended at Freya and I headed south, hoping I'd come to an intersection with the Palouse Highway. 

I did! 

I turned in a westerly direction on the Palouse Highway, stayed relaxed, and lo and behold what I thought would be true was! The Palouse Highway took me eventually to Highway 27 and I headed south and west, through Freeman and Rockford and coasted into the parking lot of the casino. 

That drive along the Palouse Highway and on to Rockford and the casino was a gorgeous combination of evergreen trees and farmland covering rolling hills. It made me very happy not only that I tried this route, but that I succeeded in getting to my destination relying on my memory of having looked at hard copy maps and didn't solicit the help of my map. 

3. I've delayed posting this entry on my blog because it involves the gift I purchased at the CdA Casino for Nancy Hanson in celebration of her surprise 70th birthday party on May 30th and I'm hoping she's opened her card from Debbie and me -- it has the gift in it -- by the time she gets to this post. But, if this post gives the gift away before she opens it, so it goes. I tried to delay long enough! 

At the casino, I spun reels for a while and left the casino with the same amount of money I went in with -- so I played all that time for free! I also went to the Red Tail Bar and Grill and enjoyed a bowl of beef stew with a half a garden salad and ordered a chocolate sundae for dessert. I was on Cloud 9. 

On my way out of the casino I took care of the errand I mentioned earlier.  For her 70th birthday I bought Nancy Hanson a seventy dollar gaming ticket, hoping that when she puts it in a machine that she'll turn those 70 birthday dollars into 700 or 7,000 dollars of winnings! 

Wouldn't that make her 70th birthday unforgettable! 

Three Beautiful Things 05-28-2026: Morning Blood Draw, A Trader Joe's Run, *So Far Gone* Covers A Lot of Ground

1. Yes, the lab I go to for blood draws at Kootenai Health was under heavy demand from a small horde of geriatric patients like me ready to get poked and surrender urine samples. The staff in that lab, though, are peerless in their efficiency. They also exhibit grace and kindness under pressure. None of us had to wait long (I happen not to mind waiting) which made me happy primarily because I was eager make my deposits, take my pills, and dash to the coffee stand to break my fast with a latte and chocolate croissant. 

Oh! I thought the results looked as good as the tests I had done about a month ago. 

2. I really like many of Trader Joe's dips, spreads, and dressings and bought several largely in preparation for Debbie's departure on Friday. I also bought oatmeal. peanut butter, ground turkey, hamburger buns, nuts, dried fruit, and other staples for when I'm living alone to supplement the meals I cook for myself. 

3. I stayed up past midnight and finished Jess Walter's So Far Gone. 

It's not a long book, but it has a lot going on in it. It examines the impact of going off the grid on the inward life of one character; it explores family, relationships within the family, the rifts that develop, and explores the messy and confusing nature of familial love and the ways family members hurt one another and raises question about whether familial pain can ever be overcome; I think it's a book about different expressions of masculinity, and in one storyline, explores how something like cowboy/militia masculinity coupled with Biblical literalism and the idea that we are in the midst of spiritual warfare can be a volatile and violent combination. 

This might be the first novel I've read that I thought could be called a Covid novel. Characters in this book carry non-medical and ongoing effects of the pandemic:  disillusionment, grievances, scars, and more that shape their lives. 

It's also very often a funny book, making it a rich blend of humor, violence, suffering, vengeance, loyalty, and courage. 

Three Beautiful Things 05-22026: I'll Wait, Surprise! Labs on Thursday, I Switched to *So Far Gone*

 1. In the next handful of days, I am going to finish The Mosquito, go back and reread parts of it, and listen online to a lecture Timothy C. Winegard, its author, delivered before I post about this book again. I made an honest and totally forgivable mistake in my post on this book yesterday and, even though I know things can be looser in a blog, I'd like to be more certain that I'm getting things right about mosquitoes and humans before I make my next post. 

2. A person from Kootenai Health called me today to remind me of my appointment on June 4 with Dr. Bieber and told me that I needed to have labs drawn in advance of that appointment. This message came to me on voicemail. 

Hmm.

I thought Dr. Bieber had told me the last time I saw him that the labs I had drawn on May 4 for my May 11th appointment at the transplant clinic would work for our June appointment. 

So I called Dr. Bieber's office to make sure he wants labs drawn again. 

He does. 

No problem. 

I'll dash to CdA and have blood drawn right away on Thursday morning. 

3. I posted a correction/clarification this evening of what I wrote about The Mosquito on my May 26th post. 

As it grew close to time to go to bed, I decided to put The Mosquito aside and read an easier, thoughtful, and more entertaining book: Jess Walter's So Far Gone. 

What a great choice. 

It's kind of a wild story, at least early on, with fascinating characters, a kind of bonkers storyline appropriate for the bonkers 2020s, and a riveting combination of danger and hilarity. So far, the story has moved me to feel afraid in some scenes and laugh out loud in others. 

It's been a while since I've read what, for me, is a page turner.  I'm enjoying that this one is set in a remote area north of Spokane, in Spokane itself, in Grants Pass, OR, and on a Christian militia compound in a remote area of Bonner County, Idaho. 

At the center of the story are two precocious and very likable children and I'm rooting hard for them to have everything turn out all right for them --  either because of or in spite of the very flawed adults in their lives. 

A Clarification of Item #2 of My 05-26-2026 Post

 I want to clarify what the book The Mosquito has to say about slaves at the time of the Civil War and what was thought in the 19th century to be, as Abraham Linclon put it, "their impenetrable genetic defenses to mosquito-borne disease". 

In fact, Lincoln's Surgeon General, William A. Hammond, as quoted by Winegard, asserted that "it was a well-ascertained fact" that Africans were "less liable to the affections of malarious affection than the Europeans". 

When I read these statements yesterday, I took them as fact, but I should have waited to finish the chapter on the Civil War before I wrote in my 05-26-2026 blog post that slaves were generationally immune to mosquito-borne diseases. 

You see, toward the end of the Civil War chapter, Winegard writes about freed slaves becoming soldiers and about their malarial rates. 

I won't go into great detail in this post, but suffice it to say that African-American soldiers did suffer illness and death from malaria, leading Winegard to state the following: "The scientific stereotype of African immunity to mosquito-borne disease was discredited."

At times like this, when not only I have I made a mistake, but have given life to harmful stereotype, I am glad that it's commonly understood in the world of blogs that because bloggers often post while in the process of learning something or working our an idea, blog posts are prone to needing correction and clarification. 

So here's mine, humbly submitted. 

More clarifications might be coming. I'm confused about immunity and other things and will be rereading parts of this book seeking clarification. 

 

Three Beautiful Things 05-26-2026: Back to the First Days of Three Beautiful Things, The Civil War, Northwest Passages with Craig Johnson

 1. Today I suddenly wondered how many other people who had been posting daily (or near daily) Three Beautiful Things were still at it. I started posting Three Beautiful Things on November 11, 2006, following the lead of Clare Law whose blog, called Three Beautiful Things, I had found one day while space truckin' in the once thriving blogosphere. 

Clare went on a hiatus in 2014, but she didn't take down her blog and her blog included a long list of links to other blogs that featured Three Beautiful Things, including kellogg bloggin'. 

Today, I visited Clare Law's blog (it's here) and discovered, to my delight, that back in 2020, Clare Law resumed writing Three Beautiful Things again. 

She also remade the look of her blog and she no longer posts the list of other writers posting Three Beautiful Things. 

But, thank goodness, her blog is archived.  I can go back and read, from time to time, posts I've missed over the last several years. 

Clare Law writes her three beautiful things in brief sentences or sentence fragments in what I regard as being in the spirit of the haiku. She brings flashes of her day alive, moments, and I love her approach. 

As my writing of Three Beautiful Things evolved, I took on an approach closer to a short essay, sometimes very short stories and, for any number of reasons, I enjoy having this almost twenty-year-old record of family life, observations, thoughts, photographs, events, and other aspects of my life. 

Rediscovering Clare Law's blog moved me. 

I am immeasurably grateful to her. 

She introduced me to a source of happiness and fulfillment that has invigorated me and buoyed my spirits for two decades. 

2. It's been fifty years since I completed Prof. Homer Cunningham's course, The Civil War. I double majored at Whitworth in history and English and thoroughly enjoyed both emphases of my undergraduate studies. Fifty years after completing this course, I wish I had a clearer memory of what Prof. Cunningham focused on over the semester. I know that he required that we each read a book beyond the course syllabus and make an appointment with him to discuss it. I read selected letters of Abraham Lincoln. Those letters gave me insight into Lincoln's internal struggles, intellectual brilliance, and complex Christian faith. 

I'd like to find that volume of letters again and see if Lincoln wrote about the crippling effects of mosquito transmitted disease on the Union troops and the folly of military leaders who led troops into swampy lands and fetid marshes swarming with mosquitoes. 

I'd also like to see if in any of these letters Lincoln wrestles with emancipating slaves, opening the way for freed slaves to fight for the Union army, providing the Union army with soldiers who had developed generational immunity to malaria, immunity passed on to them in their family life lines in their home countries, making them very valuable soldiers (in the same way they were very valuable laborers). 

I don't remember reading about this question in the fall of 1975, but I certainly read about it today in Timothy C. Winegard's book, The Mosquito. 

3. The joy of this day kicked into a higher gear when Debbie and I traveled to the Garland Theater in Spokane for another Northwest Passages event. 

Tonight, Craig Johnson, the author of the (so far) twenty-two Longmire western crime drama books, which were also the basis for the A & E television series Longmire, was the featured author. 

I haven't watched a single moment of the television series Longmire nor have I read a single word in any of Craig Johnson's novels. 

Debbie watched the television series, but has not read any of the books. 

So. 

Why would I want to go to this event? And why would Debbie? Why would we want to sit in a good-sized audience of enthusiastic and knowledgeable readers of Craig Johnson when we hadn't read his books at all? 

I've attended four Northwest Passages events, two featuring writers I had familiarity with (Jess Walter and Leah Sottile) and two whose work I didn't know at all (David Guterson and Willy Vlauen). 

All four events invigorated me and expanded my view of and understanding of writing, reading, and of the world I live in. 

Northwest Passages is an ongoing series of evenings, put on by The Spokesman Review that focuses on one writer's release of a new book and that writer sits for an interview conducted by a person connected with the Spokesman Review. 

I trust this series. So does Debbie. We've decided that we will go to every one of the Northwest Passages evenings whether we have heard of the writer or not and we will trust that it will be both fascinating and stimulating. 

Craig Johnson was both.

And he was entertaining, warm, generous, engaging, funny, well-read, and multi-talented. 

His new Longmire novel is The Brothers McKay and get this: it's inspired by and patterned after Fyodor Doestoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamozov which Craig Johnson read over the course of about a week when he was fourteen years old and then, as was the custom in his family when he finished a book, had a long talk with his father about what he thought of it. 

Craig Johnson was quick to make sure we knew that The Brothers McKay would not be the philosophical novel that The Brothers Karamozov is. But his book develops a similar storyline. 

Sixty-five year old Craig Johnson runs a ranch in Wyoming. He built his own house there. He is very much a working rancher who shovels manure out of stables, tells his horses about what he wrote the day before, and recently completed a job requiring him to shove two and half tons of rock out of a truck to fill in some kind of an opening in the ground. (He was still sore tonight.)

He has a keen sense of his fiction writing process, of how he keeps his title character Walter Longmire fresh, how he endows Longmire with intelligence, courage, and deep flaws. 

I left the Garland Theater (where years ago I saw All the President's Men, Rocky, The Goodbye Girl, and An Officer and a Gentleman among others forty to fifty years ago) shaking my head.

What am I going to do?  

Sunday night, Paul inspired me to want to read Crime and Punishment. 

The chapters of The Mosquito dealing with Napoleon made me want to read War and Peace. 

Craig Johnson has me jonesin' to read The Brothers Karamozov

And I continue to work on finishing Lonesome Dove. 

Can I read them?

Will I? 

Well, I've got a pretty good stretch of days coming up when I'll be home alone and it's possible that I'll just hunker down with massive novels. 

And read them! 

Stay tuned. 

Three Beautiful Things 05-25-2026: Troubling History, Salmon Dinner, Debbie Leaves Soon

 1. The chapters of the book The Mosquito that I'm reading now are focusing much more on the years following the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. It's emphasizing the United States' expansion westward, its war with Mexico, an imperialist undertaking, and the forced relocation of indigenous people in the southeast to west of the Mississippi -- you might know this cruel injustice as the Trail of Tears. 

The mosquito and its lethal role in transmitting disease continues to occupy the focus of this book, but these recent chapters have had me thinking about the human drive for power, territorial expansion, heartless economic development, and the long-term impact of these wars, displacements, forced labor, and imperial ambitions. I'm perplexed by Napoleon's ambitions, the cruelty of Andrew Jackson's policies, the United States' seizing and annexing of parts of Mexico by force, and other acts of aggression and acquisition that have shaped so much of the world's history. This has been on my mind even more than the mosquitos. 

None of this history is new to me, but often the facts of it sit in the back of my mind and The Mosquito has catapulted this history to the front. 

Next up will be the Civil War.

2. Christy joined Debbie and me for a simple and delicious salmon dinner. I enjoyed the fish and the carrot salad and brown rice that accompanied it. Christy, Debbie, and I continued discussions from last night's family dinner by talking more about books and addressing the ongoing thorny question of how we can best live our lives. 

3. Off the top of my head, I can't list everything fun that Debbie and I have done since she returned to Kellogg in March. We've attended lectures, symphony performances, a string quartet concert, gone to the MAC in Spokane, enjoyed tasty meals at home, done some rearranging of our household, and more. 

Over dinner tonight, Debbie brought out her calendar and talked about flying to Chicago this Friday, going to our niece's party to celebrate her daughter's first birthday, spending time in Cincinnati with Patrick and Meagan, and heading east to New York for at least a couple of months. 

I am 100% in support of Debbie doing all she'll be doing this summer. Not only that, I get along just fine on my own and I'll continue to seek out invigorating things to do this summer 

It's all good.  

I MEAN THAT! 

At the same time, I'll sure enjoy Debbie's return when we will resume going on cultural safaris, having great discussions about books, music, and a host of other subjects, and exploring what else we can do in North Idaho and Eastern Washington to expand our horizons and feed our inner lives. 

Three Beautiful Things 05-24-2026: I Needed a Day Off from Mosquitoes, Greek Family Dinner, Reading Passages to Each Other and Discussing Them

 1. I have probably mentioned that the book The Mosquito is a study of the mosquito as a major contributor to world history in the human realm. The world history Ronald C. Winegard consistently focuses on is the ambitions of countries, city-states, and other entities to expand their empires and colonize undeveloped regions around the world. 

These ambitions rely on military aggression, in armed conflict. 

The book unveils the vital role the mosquito and the way they spread fatal diseases has played in these wars, battles, and skirmishes. 

It's all fascinating and serves as a vivid reminder of role biology and ecology have played and continue to play in the history of the world. 

It's all fascinating, sobering, and unnerving and today I needed a break from it all gave my reading of this book a rest. 

2. Carol and Paul planned and hosted a superb family dinner today. We met at chez Roberts at 5:00. We started with an appetizer I made called Mediterranean Cauliflower. I marinated the florets of a single head of cauliflower in mixture of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and a variety of dry herbs. I then roasted the florets and combined them in a bowl with chopped tomatoes, feta cheese, and Kalamata olives. 

Carol and Paul prepared the main course: grilled Chicken Tzaziki and Feta Fries accompanied by Dad's Greek Salad. Carol also prepared a small bowl of Tahini and Garlic sauce and another of Tzatziki. 

Christy baked Kourabiedes for dessert, a tray of Greek butter cookies popular in Greece at Christmas. 

3. Debbie had mentioned at some point in time that she'd like each of us to bring a quotation/passage from a book we are reading or have read to dinner, read it aloud, and let discussion among us arise out these readings. 

Carol went with this idea tonight and it was a smashing success. We talked about kindness, biology, the vastness of the universe, storytelling, compassion and empathy, generosity toward one another, churches, Biblical questions, and more. Here's a list of the books that sparked our inquiries, stories, explorations, and listening: 

I read from The Mosquito by Timothy C. Winegard. 

Debbie read from The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles.  

Christy read from My Friends by Fredrik Backman.  

Carol read from Braving the Truth by Rachel Held Evans. 

Paul read passages from two books: The Many Worlds of Logic by Paul Herrick and sentences from Joseph Frank's introduction to Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. 

Every passage stimulated thoughtful discussion, raising many more questions among ourselves about life and living authentically and mindfully than we answered. 

Three Beautiful Things 05-23-2026: Mosquito Commemorations This Summer?, Mashed Carrots. Yorktown Memories

 1. After reading the chapters on the American Revolution in the book, The Mosquito, I wondered, as the USA celebrates the 250th anniversary of declaring independence, if anyone is planning to commemorate the role of the mosquito in decimating British troops and making USA victory possible (along with help from the French and Spanish and other factors). 

2. Debbie imagined a mashed carrot dish and gave fixing it a very successful whirl. She boiled carrots, mashed them, added butter and half and half, and spiced them up with a couple of chopped poblano peppers. She might have salted this dish, too. I don't remember. 

Bottom line: it was out of sight. 

3. Reading today about the rebels' decisive and war changing victory at Yorktown in 1781 called up fun memories, took me back to March of 2017, when Debbie and I spent a couple of nights in Yorktown, paid Jamestown a visit, sampled excellent beers in the Yorktown area, visited a Revolutionary War museum in Yorktown, and enjoyed a great dinner at a restaurant called Fat Tuna Grill and Oyster House. Mom had given us money for our birthdays a few months earlier with instructions to enjoy a dinner out on her, and did we ever enjoy bourbon, oysters on the half shell, gorgeous, sweet shrimp, and tender calamari. 

We didn't know it at the time that we'd be moving to Kellogg in September of 2017.

Over that weekend, I was feeling very happy that we'd made this great trip and looked forward to more excursions south of Maryland. Before this, all of our trips had been north to New Jersey and New York or out to Indiana and Illinois. I'd traveled by myself to Massachusetts. 

We made the right decision to move to Kellogg, but rereading my blog posts about our weekend in Yorktown tugged at my nostalgic heart and I dreamed about returning to the East Coast for fun trips again. That might happen. In the meantime, though, I'll focus on what's here in the Silver Valley and the Inland Empire in my present and see how things in the unknown future work out. 

Three Beautiful Things 05-22-2026: I'm Not Much of a Storyteller at The Lounge, My Current Life is Great -- Few Stories Though, The Mosquito in the New World

1. What I'm about to write is simply true and I'm fine with it -- in fact, there's nothing I can do about it. 

For year upon year upon year, especially after I graduated from Whitworth fifty year ago, I lived my life involved in a college, a community college, and a university until I taught one last writing course in 2014. My life was largely shaped and defined by the world of higher education. 

I enjoyed these years immensely -- I enjoyed reading and learning, enjoyed yakkin' with fellow students and fellow instructors. While, yes, I experienced disappointment by not achieving all I thought I wanted to, even in my failures, I came away from my studies having thought more deeply about big questions that matter. Most important, I always enjoyed working with students in the classroom and in conferences with them individually. 

One thing that did not emerge from those approximately thirty-five years of making a living doing what I loved was a bunch of stories I could regale friends with at The Lounge or at parties and reunions these days in Kellogg. 

This afternoon, Ed and I got together at The Lounge for a beer and he told me the story of getting his brakes fixed in Boise on a great trip he and Nancy and the Derbyshires took to enjoy Idaho waterfalls earlier this week. Later he told a series of five or six (or more?) stories about his friend in the logging world, Kingfish. The stories involved boats, a trailer, a forged medical card, and more. They were all fun to listen to and funny. They gave Debbie and me a vivid picture of what a character Kingfish was, and reinforced what I knew to be true from past stories: Ed thought the world of Kingfish. 

Ed isn't alone in having stories to tell about working in the woods, adventures with vehicles, snowmobile outings, hauling rock, asphalt, and other materials, being friends with colorful guys, and more. These stories abound at The Lounge, at the Elks, and in other social settings. 

Other friends of mine have hilarious stories to tell about wild days 45 to 50 years ago of doing crazy stuff on road trips, at music festivals, in canoes on local rivers, at Quinn's Resort, and elsewhere. 

2. While friends in Kellogg were doing memorable things that make for gripping and hilarious tales to tell, I was studying. 

I worked for a school year on Whitworth's Chaplain's Office staff. 

I taught writing. And literature. And other subjects. I wrote stuff. I presented papers on occasion at conferences. 

I got involved in theater.

I went to jam band, Grateful Dead, folk, jazz, and other live music concerts and behaved myself -- no stories there! 

I joined Debbie's family and became a stepfather. 

And even though I had been married twice before, I don't have any stories to tell -- no "bitch from hell" tales, no complaints about my ex-wives, or anything else that would grab people's interest at The Lounge or at other gatherings. 

Nothing to make people laugh. 

The things I do now aren't very story worthy either: book club at Auntie's Bookstore, symphony concerts in Spokane, a successful kidney transplant that's had little drama, going to hear writers talk about their books in Spokane, reading all the books on Leah Sottile's book list a few years ago, enjoying the Northwest Museum of Art and Culture in Spokane, lectures in Spokane, taking care of Copper, and so on. 

And that's no problem. 

My friends who have great tales to tell give me the pleasure of not only laughing, but of vicariously experiencing work, jobs, and crazy escapades I never did myself and colorful North Idahoans I never knew. 

I am invigorated by the pleasures in my life and I'm accustomed to experiencing and enjoying them within myself, with Debbie, and at family dinner. 

Once in a while I'll enter into conversation with someone at a concert in Spokane, like when a first violinist for the Spokane Symphony and I fell into great conversation about music and movies when we had seats next to each other at the Gonzaga Symphony back in February. 

I'm also learning about how different people read and what their thoughts are about matters related to science and nature in the book club we recently joined. 

It's all good. 

3. I walked into The Lounge today knowing that Cas and I would have a lot of fun reviewing the past few weeks of action in our fantasy baseball leagues. I also knew that I had questions for Ed about his trip to the waterfalls and the car trouble I'd heard he'd had on this trip and I had questions about when his procedure on Tuesday was happening and whether he needed a ride that morning to Post Falls. (He doesn't. Nancy will take him over.)

My day, however, had been enjoyable, but unusual, not a day that would spark fun conversation in The Lounge.  

Today I read further into the book The Mosquito.

In many ways, this is a world history book that brings to light the tremendous impact the mosquito had on what we think of as human events.

Today I read more about the colonizing of the New World and how much infestations of mosquitos and the malaria they carried and fatally infected mammoth numbers of people with shaped, for one thing, economic development in the New World. 

Europeans had not developed any immunity to the diseases mosquitoes carried. 

Africans, who had lived for generations in mosquito infested areas had developed immunity. 

Therefore, the African slave market became essential to the growing of plantation crops like sugar cane and tobacco because while Europeans who were forced into planation labor succumbed to malaria and yellow fever, the slaves from Africa did not. 

This is another of this book's many examples of how the mosquito and its impact shaped a major development of world history. 

Developing immunity to malaria was known as seasoning and over time and generations, European settlers in the emerging thirteen colonies began to develop immunity, to become seasoned. 

But what about soldiers who came from Great Britain to defend the interests of the king in these colonies? They were not seasoned and, in the book's next chapter, I'll learn more about the role of the mosquito in the American Revolution. 

(The paragraphs I just wrote about this book might be rough with some inaccuracies. I'm writing from memory after a single reading, but I am confident that the gist of what I wrote is pretty much right on. If I need to make corrections, I'll make them in future posts.)

Three Beautiful Things 05-21-2026: At Least Forty-Five Years, Magnificent Performance of *The Four Seasons*, Popcorn Finale!

 1. So when did Vivaldi's four violin concertos, often presented together as The Four Seasons, first become a part of my life? Did I listen to them on an lp when I attended and worked at Whitworth from 1974-78? Or did it first enter my classical music bloodstream in 1981 when I saw the movie The Four Seasons? Or had The Four Seasons come into my life at NIC during one of my classical music listening sessions at the library? Did my trailermate John Soini have The Four Seasons on an lp? Did he introduce me to Vivaldi? 

I'm not sure. What I do know is that these four violin concertos have been alive inside of me for at least forty-five years and I've come to learn that The Four Seasons are among the most beloved pieces of music in the entire classical music canon. 

As Debbie and I were walking from the Camry toward Spokane's Cathedral of St. John, I wondered if I'd ever heard The Four Seasons performed live. In Spokane? In Eugene? London, maybe? 

I couldn't think of a time I had and excitement began to build in me as I anticipated hearing these concertos within the grandeur of the cathedral. 

2. Being violin concertos, each of The Four Seasons pieces featured Spokane Symphony Concertmaster Mateusz Wolski as each concerto's violin soloist. He played with verve through the storms and dances of each season and played with tenderness and sensitivity through the slow movements of each concerto.

I loved the playing of the 17 piece orchestra in support of Wolski. Aside from a harpsichord, the orchestra was all stringed instruments (violin, viola, cello, bass) and after the concert Debbie and I discovered that both of us had been deeply impressed with the performances of the principal cellist and violist. In fact, hearing all the lower stringed instruments tonight reminded me of how much I loved the parts Vivaldi wrote for them when I listened to recordings. Tonight the invigoration I'd felt in the past for these parts redoubled. From the pew I sat in, I had a direct view of both the principal cellist and violist and I spent much of the evening watching them, loving their work, while, at the same time, marveling at Mateusz Wolski's virtuosity. 

3. I didn't want to leave the cathedral. I sat for a while, letting the performance we'd just absorbed sink in and felt the awesome power of this English Gothic building enfold me. 

As is commonly the case, Debbie and I didn't say much on the clear easy ride home.

At one point, however, I blurted out that I thought eating popcorn at home sounded like a good idea. 

Debbie whole heartedly agreed and so we checked on Copper and Gibbs, I took my pills, and we each happily devoured a bowl of popcorn as a perfect way to conclude an evening of superb music played in a towering setting. 

Three Beautiful Things 05-20-2026: Living in the Light, Physical and Mental Illness, Living More Calmly

 1. At his request, I sent Stu a link to pictures Rick Taylor took at our Class of 72 40-year reunion. Those pictures brought memories back to me of the weekend a bunch of us spent together in 2009 in Lincoln City to celebrate turning fifty-five years old. 

2009 was a difficult year. I was hospitalized twice. Debbie's mother and younger brother passed away. There was more. 

Somehow, although I didn't know it at the time, in the spring of 2009, my dark experiences with mental illness came to an end.

It must have been about a year later that I realized I hadn't had any episodes over the past year of what Debbie and I referred to as me going into a black hole. In fact, my last such episode occurred around the time, in late March or early April of 2009, just before I contracted pneumonia and spent five days in the hospital. (I returned to the hospital for another stay not long after with a case of c-diff.)

I marveled today that it's been seventeen years since my last dark episode and I don't know why and no medical person I've talked with knows why those episodes ended after they'd been with me since high school. 

I'm grateful for these seventeen uninterrupted years of living in the light. 

2. I'm certain that another reason 2009 is on my mind is connected to my reading of The Mosquito. Medical and other sciences have advanced to the point that it's now common knowledge that mosquitos carry the malaria parasite and transfer in through bites to human beings. So far, this book has been about the staggering number of people who have died from malaria carrying mosquitos infecting them and how these massive numbers of death have affected centuries of military campaigns, the extinction or near extinction of indigenous people in the New World, and the value of African slaves who had developed immunity over the centuries and so could labor on plantations. 

This is all more complicated than I can sum up here, but reading so much about physical illness, disease, and death returned my mind to how it's fairly common for people to accept the seriousness of physical illness, but do not regard mental illness with the same kind of compassion or understanding, in part, I suppose, because mental illness is often not connected to something observable, like a bacteria or a virus or a parasite, but can, in fact, seem to have no cause at all. 

Back in my days of black hole episodes, if someone asked me, "What are you depressed about?", I wouldn't be able to answer them. These episodes often occurred when things in my day to day life were humming along just fine. 

Medications help. Therapy helps. Often I hear people talk about people experiencing mental illness as needing to be fixed. That's very difficult for me to hear, as if mental illness were an engine problem or clogged sink drain. 

3.  Yes, today thoughts of disease, illness, and the difficulties of 2009 occupied my mind, but so did my good fortune in the years following 2009. 

I think I can say, with certainty, that what I've enjoyed the most about living in the light has been how much more even my temperament is than it was for decades. I'm not prone to the mood swings I used to be. I don't lose my mind over trivial things. I'm quieter, calmer, more able to step back from situations, and much less prone to the strains of anxiety and fear. 

Back in September of 2009, I wrote a piece on this blog about needing to settle down as a classroom teacher. I compared my teaching style to the all out, go for broke style of playing tennis exemplified my Rafa Nadal and challenged myself to teach in the style of the more measured and calmer Roger Federer. 

Looking back, I think I partially succeeded, but old habits are difficult to change. 

I wanted to maintain my enthusiasm in the classroom, but, at the same time, I wanted to quiet down, be less kinetic and less theatrical. 

Over time, even after I retired, this attempt to change my approach to living life took hold. I conserved energy. I was easier on my nerves. I hope I became more predictable. 

It sure feels that way today.