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. 

 

Three Beautiful Things 09-26-2026: Spokane Symphony Replay, What Have I Missed?, Vanishing Birds and Animals

 1. Last Sunday I left the Fox Theater wanting to go back in, sit down, and hear the entire Spokane Symphony program again. I knew, however, that Spokane Public Radio station's KSFC 91.9 would play the entire concert again today at noon. 

I tuned in. I listened to the entire concert again. I absorbed much more of the music than I did a week ago and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. 

2. Maybe I've mentioned in earlier posts that until I cracked open The Dog Stars, I had never read a post-apocalyptic novel before. Peter Heller's book is turning out to be such a compelling exploration of love, loyalty, friendship, death, survival, memory, and other human experiences that I'm beginning to wonder if I've missed out on some good material by not checking out books, movies, and television shows in this genre. 

3. Debbie paid some visits uptown late this afternoon. Before she left, she said she asked me to find a podcast for us to listen to when she returned. 

I found an episode in the podcast The American West entitled "John James Audubon and Vanishing America". I chose this episode because we had both recently read Kenn Kaufman's book The Birds That Audubon Missed for book club and wanted to hear what retired University of Montana professor Dan Flores had to say about Audubon. 

The podcast episode ended up focusing on Audubon's deep dismay that so many birds and animals were being killed, often indiscriminately by settlers throughout the USA. Entire species of birds, for example, the passenger pigeon, were rendered extinct and other birds and animals were decimated to near extinction. 

Like so many of the books we are reading in the Science/Nature book club we have joined, Flores examines the relationship between humans and the non-human world of nature, why humans have seen themselves as having license to kill birds and animals (and often do it cruelly and voraciously), and how Audubon (and Henry David Thoreau, among others) grieved the loss of so much life, beauty, and variety in our world. 

Three Beautiful Things 09-25-2026: Grooming Riley, The Lounge, Debbie Rocks the Kitchen (Again)

 1. Yesterday it was Gibbs. Today it was Riley. I taxied Riley to the groomer and picked him up about three hours later and he looked and smelled great! 

2. Ed swung by around 3:00 and we blasted up to The Lounge and spent about an hour relaxing, yakking, and doing a little planning for our departure to Pendleton on Tuesday morning. 

3. I treat myself well and am content with my day-to-day life when Debbie is away. 

That said, Debbie prepares food that far exceeds my very modest imaginative powers in the kitchen.

Like today. 

She made a curried chicken and apple salad. Its ingredients and blend of flavors and textures blew me away. She also made a terrific batch of hummus that tasted great with the salad. Together, they made me very happy. 

Three Beautiful Things 09-24-2026: Gibbs Gets Groomed, Mortality, Take an Interest

 1. I picked up a clean and spiffed up Gibbs from the groomer today. 

2. I don't know much about post-apocalyptic fiction (or movies). But reading The Dog Stars and the thoughts the main character Hig has about his life before the book's pandemic struck and about his life now with few people left in the world is making me think that having a keen sense of our mortality inspires us to self-examine, determine what in life matters most to us, and do the best we can to love others. 

3.  Debbie and I had a long conversation this evening about the variety of books we've read over the past several months, how joining the Science/Nature book club has helped shape some of our reading and the questions we ask of ourselves and about the world, and how we read and think about books. So has attending Northwest Passages evenings in Spokane. 

I thought back to all those years I taught English and how I tried to impress on students the fact that an important aspect of an education is learning now to take an interest in subjects and ideas. Often students would resist essays or books I assigned, telling me they weren't interested in what the book/essay was about. I would respond, "Try taking an interest." Why? I thought an education was about expansion. 

Well, in my retirement (it's been twelve years since I last taught a class), I'm following my own instruction and have taken an interest in new things:  empty lots in Austin, TX, rivers in Ecuador, India, and Canada, how plants satisfy our desire for sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control, the history of mosquitos, the long history of Earth's moon, discovering species of birds, the medicinal qualities of plants, a fictional world of hunting for lost pianos in the Arctic, Josh Brolin's memoir, and more. 

I do my best to put aside the question of whether I like a book and focus more on these questions:  What is the nature of the world of this book? What is the writer inviting me to learn about this world? Is this book changing how I experience and understand the world I perceive myself to live in? 

All of the books I've referred to in this post have taken me into unfamiliar worlds and have changed how I experience and understand things. 

Talking about this stuff with Debbie was a terrific way to bring an end to our day. 

Three Beautiful Things 09-23-2026: Coffee at Mountain Gem, Coffee Cake Delivery, The World of Disney is Really Wide and Deep

 1.  I drove Christy uptown this morning for a 9:00 appointment. While she was taking care of her business, I strolled up Main Street to the Mountain Gem Coffee Bar to give it a try. It's a cozy interior and there's a seating outside on the south side of the building. I opted to drink my latte indoors on a stool, resting my drink and my book (The Dog Stars) on one of the wooden bars affixed to the wall. 

I especially enjoyed reading this book. It's lyrical. The narrator, Hig, is a poet and the language he uses to describe and tell tales about his life of survival in the aftermath of a pandemic that has devastated most of the human population is rhythmic, not flowery, but musical. I like that he cites poets like William Stafford and Li Po. Hig's loyal companion in this post-apocalyptic landscape is his dog, Jasper, and I'm getting attached to him. 

2. Debbie subbed at Pinehurst Elementary School today. She had a great day. She baked a coffee cake to have put out in the teachers' lounge, but she forgot it. So when Christy was done uptown and Carol came over to drive Christy to PT in Christy's car, I borrowed Carol's car and delivered the coffee cake -- and Debbie happily reported to me when she arrived home that the staff loved the cake. 

3. As I thought might be the case, Debbie decided to stay home this evening after a day of work.

I drove to Spokane alone to attend tonight's Northwest Passages' evening with Disney imagineer Joe Rohde. He's touring with his new book, Floating Mountains. 

It was a perfect evening for me, given what I enjoy in my life, namely learning about things through reading or attending lectures that I know next to nothing about. 

For starters, I've never been that interested in all things Disney. 

I know almost nothing about the Disney company. Aside from being aware of longtime animated characters and having seen some older Disney movies and knowing that Disney is the majority owner of ESPN, I am ignorant about Disney theme parks and other Disney ventures. 

That changed tonight. 

Joe Rohde's work with Disney started at least forty years ago and tonight I learned about ventures, like Animal Kingdom and the Hawaiian resort hotel, Aulani, that Rohde has been in a leader in conceptualizing and bringing into being. 

Joe Rohde's intellectual prowess fired me up. I wasn't expecting this evening to be a deep dive into theories of creativity, the power of collaboration and the near non-existence of individual genius in all walks of life, the desirability of dissent, the indispensable value of the world of nature, the vital importance of the experience, intelligence, and wisdom of indigenous people (much like in the book I just finished: The Plant Hunter), aesthetics and how we perceive reality (and how art shakes us out of those perceptions), and more. 

For me, Joe Rohde's ideas and experiences connected to books our book club has discussed, to Japanese haiku, to ideas Spokane Symphony conductor James Lowe has presented about aesthetic theories, and, most delightfully, to discussions Debbie and I have had over the past twenty-nine years about creativity, the collaborative efforts, including dissent, of Babes with Axes, and so much more that Rohde discussed. 

I really couldn't retain all that I heard tonight.

Thankfully, these Northwest Passages interviews are saved on YouTube and I look forward to replaying what Joe Rohde had to say, possibly several times.