Three Beautiful Things 07-13-2026: Aging Slows Down House Cleaning, Taco Salad Deliberations, Summer Food Stories and Poems

 1. Because we were having family dinner at our house today, I needed to get at least the surfaces and the floors of the kitchen, living room, and bathroom cleaned. This kind of work goes very slowly for me as I've grown older and, true to form, it took me a few hours to complete tasks I used to be able to do in an hour. <Shrug> The key to this and other similar changes in my aging life is to accept them and work within the limitations of my ever-changing physical capabilities. 

2. Christy was the brains behind tonight's dinner. She wanted us to have a taco salad with tortilla chips and condiments along with watermelon. 

I volunteered to bring Christy's dinner plan into being.

I had some reservations about expanding upon the recipe I found to make a taco salad -- should I bake and shred some chicken thighs for the salad? Cook and cool some white rice? Include Kalamata olives? Cilantro? Since I made the salad on Sunday, should I wait to but the broken tortilla chips in the salad until today, Monday? 

To all of these questions, I responded "yes". 

It worked. 

I even received clearance from those present to make a taco salad again, should we ever decide to have another one for family dinner. 

3. We've been taking turns giving each other an assignment to complete as a way to focus our after-dinner conversation. 

For this evening, Christy assigned us to present a piece of writing about summer food or to just share a story.

I knew my approach to this assignment was out there a bit, but I think my reading of Victor Hernandez Cruz's poem, "Problem with Hurricanes" went over all right. 

Paul, Zoe, Carol, and Christy did a much better job completing the assignment.

They all talked about memories of food in the summer. Paul and his friend Rory pilfered leftovers from their church's refrigerator in Meridian. Zoe remembered food at our mother's house. Mom rewarded her for doing yard work with a Root Beer Float ice cream bar and let her eat radishes after Zoe had planted the seeds. Carol and Christy (who read a poem she'd written) both reminisced about summer food at our grandmothers' houses and food we ate during our vacation visits to Orofino. 

I'll just say that what stood out for me, while listening to them, was the memory of how much I enjoyed anything we ate or drank from the local Orofino Creamery, whether it was ice cream, half and half, milk, cream, or other delights. 

We had Butterfinger ice cream bars for dessert tonight. They were tasty and refreshing. That said, I would have loved to have served a dessert from the Orofino Creamery! 

Three Beautiful Things 07-12-2026: Walmart Run, Building a Taco Salad, Sunday's NYTime's Crossword

1. In order to really get going today, I needed to roar out to Walmart at 8:00 and pick up a curbside order so I could get to work making a taco salad for Monday's family dinner. I rewarded myself after completing this arduous pick up by purchasing a 16 oz latte at Silver Peak Espresso. 

2. I decided not to buy a taco seasoning packet and made one myself with the help of a recipe. I also decided to make a taco salad with two meats, ground beef and chicken thigh meat. I also added rice to the taco salad recipe I followed and further expanded the recipe to include Kalamata olives and cilantro. 

Oh! The black beans. The recipe called for using a can of black beans, but I quick soaked dry beans and then cooked them, continuing my return to fixing beans from scratch rather than using canned ones. I like how doing this takes me back to my formative years of cooking for myself when I was single and going to graduate school forty years ago. The bean cooking process remains the same! 

I'd never made a taco salad before today and hope what I built works. 

3.  As I think about how to end this blog post, it doesn't seem like I did much yesterday. Suddenly, a salient fact comes back to me. I completed the Sunday NYTimes crossword puzzle and that project took quite a bit of time! I enjoyed the effort and the satisfaction I felt when I completed it. 

Three Beautiful Things 07-11-2026: Solemn Memorial for Matthew Dahlberg, Love and Fatigue, Art History Book

 1. Sue Dahlberg's immediate family moved to Kellogg when we were in the eighth grade. 1967. We have been friends ever since. This past week, her 34-year-old nephew, Matthew, died from a cardiac event. He lived in the Dahlberg family home. He had taken care of Sue's dad and mom right up until they died. He also worked locally as a CNA. 

His selflessness, his devotion to serving others, was at the heart of the memorial that Stu, Ed, and I attended today in the church across the street from our house. Not one of us knew Matthew, but we all have been Sue's lifelong friends and Ed, in particular, has great friendships with Sue's daughters. 

The solemnness of this memorial service was deepened by the news that Matthew's two-year younger brother, Joshua, had been life flighted out of Kellogg (Friday night? Saturday morning? I didn't get that fact clear). He also has a heart condition. The demands of traveling from Miami, FL to Kellogg to mourn his brother was too much for his ailing heart. I'd have to think his broken heart as well. 

As I write this blog post at 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, July 12th, I haven't heard any updates on Joshua's condition. 

I learned a lot about Matthew at the service. He was energetic and intellectual, an avid video game player, a veteran of the Singapore Armed Forces (he was born in Singapore and had dual citizenship), and a gentle soul who helped comfort those in medical need both in his grandparents' home and in the Silver Valley community. 

Grief combined with deep love and respect for Matthew made this a moving gathering of Matthew's family and friends and members of the local community. 

I'm really happy that Ed, Stu, and I could attend together. 

2. I returned home worn out with sweet fatigue. 

Having had reunions with Liz and Jane on consecutive days, having met Jane's sister, Joan and Liz's husband Mike, and having attended Matthew's memorial combined to drain me in a most welcomed way.

So I worked puzzles and fell asleep working on each one and it took me from some time this afternoon until about ten in the evening to write yesterday's blog post because I kept falling asleep. 

It's all familiar. 

Maybe you know what I'm talking about when I say these two things can be true at the same time. 

1. I love people whether longtime friends in the Silver Valley and Eugene and Seattle, in particular, new friends, students when I was teaching, people at church back at St. Mary's, family, book club members and many others. 

2. Interacting with people wears me out. 

Plenty of things I love wear me out: reading, cooking, driving long distances, shopping, etc. It's just how I'm wired. 

Today, being worn out hit me pretty hard and I welcomed having a whole afternoon to rest, sleep, diddle around with puzzles and blogging, and graze in the kitchen, not making a full-blown meal. 

3. Every day or two, on Facebook Reels, a reel created by art historian Matthew Olivier will pop up. He offers analysis and interpretations of paintings and has opted to put his words into the "mouth" of a fictional British AI character, giving me, at least, the feeling that I'm being guided by a tweedy British professor. 

Today, I discovered that Olivier has a book coming out in October: The Art of Reading Art: Understanding what Makes Great Art Great. 

I've been longing to find just such a book and thanks to the magic and manipulative powers of the World Wide Web, this one popped up in my Facebook feed and I pre-ordered it today from bookshop.org and am eager for it to arrive in early October. 

  

Three Beautiful Things 07-10-2026: Remembering Jams in 2019, Friday Jam in Dalton Gardens, *Carpe Diem* Now and Then

 1. Twice in July of 2019, I went up the North Fork of the CdA River to listen to the Ole Mountain Opry, an affiliation of acoustic musicians and singers who played spirituals, country, folk, acoustic pop songs. and more. The musicians sometimes soloed, other times played in duets, trios, quartets, and maybe even quintets and sextets. The first performance I attended was at Country Lane River Resort (now Hook's Landing) and the second was behind the Prichard Tavern. 

I loved them. They reminded me of my favorite outings in Eugene when I attended the weekly Bluegrass Jam at Sam Bond's (and for a while at Hop Valley a few blocks away and earlier in the evening) and the Irish Jam at Sam Bond's. 

At Country Lane, Steve Allen, a banjo player, evidently determined I was more than a casual listener to the music, and he struck up a conversation with me and told me that some of these musicians participated in a Friday jam at the Silver Lake Mall in CdA. 

That month, I went to a Friday jam, enjoyed it a lot, but attending these jams got lost in the scattered, incoherent, ill-planned mess of my life. 

On Thursday evening, just last night, Liz informed me that the Friday jams now happen at Christ Church on the corner of N. 4th and Hanley in Dalton Gardens. 

Liz's husband, Mike, is a regular and acts as what I would call the stage manager of the jam, getting things set up, helping musicians with their mics and chairs, when needed, etc. 

I told Liz Thurs. night that I'd be at tonight's jam. Joan and Jane said they'd also come. 

It was a terrific jam. 

2. I love listening to musicians for whom playing and singing is an avocation. 

I love listening to amateurs who give amateurism a good name because they are not amateurish. 

I don't need live performances to be almost sterile in their perfection. 

I don't know if any performer tonight was flawless, but they were all dedicated, earnest, generous, skilled, happy to be making music, and uplifting to me. 

I heard several performers play familiar songs with their own style, their own vocal range, their own energy; I never once thought about the original. I focused on the performance in front of me, appreciating what each performer brought to popular songs like "Sixteen Tons", "Amarillo by Morning", "Sweet Baby James", "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?", "Paradise", or "You Fill Up My Senses", to name a few. 

I heard sentimental songs, very funny songs, songs glorifying Jesus and praising the Lord, lonely songs, songs of longing, joy, endurance, and self-delusion. 

This is my carpe diem. It's how I seize the day. I go to jams. I read. I go to the symphony. I listen to string quartets. This Wednesday I'll go to the Montvale Event Center to listen to an author I've never heard of, Kendra Langford Shaw, be interviewed about a book I know nothing about, The Pillagers' Guide to Arctic Pianos. I go to symphony lectures, exhibits at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, and watch videos on my computer created with AI featuring cats dancing to hip hop music. 

3. I like seizing the day with people, too. For the second consecutive day, Liz, Jane, Joan, and I, with the wonderful addition of Liz's husband, Mike, enjoyed dinner together. We went from the Friday jam to Capone's in Hayden and to tell stories, talk about maladies, bemoan grievous occurrences and losses in our lives, rejoice in blessings, and recall those halcyon days when we were nineteen years old and were discovering the intoxicating joy of having friends we could be ourselves with, experiencing our worldviews expanding, and starting in earnest the lifelong effort to shape ourselves and resist, as best we could,  those who would shape us. 

 

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!