1. The eclectic Saturday I created today could happen because Carol and Paul agreed to let Charly stay at their house until I return to Kellogg Sunday morning.
So, I dropped off Charly at 8 a.m. and returned home to do some writing, get cleaned up, and pack. I asked Alexis to play KPND-FM. At my Chromebook, I temporarily went down a most enjoyable rabbit hole and furthered the nostalgic old Spokane radio trip Rich Brock and I have been on for the last day or so. I found a Facebook page called Spokane Greats and Near Greats. It's dedicated to recalling people and things that happened at radio stations during the time Rich and I have been reminiscing about. Before long, I found a video posted on YouTube, made in 2014, of a reunion of KJRB dj's from back in its top 40 heyday and, lastly, I found a video on YouTube of jingles and some on-air dj talk from KNEW and KJRB (same station, new name in 1966). I had forgotten, but then it came back to me, that I when I was in elementary school and when our family visited Grandma Woolum and I listened to the radio in her upstairs apartment, I heard songs like "Downtown" and "Leader of the Pack" and other hits of the day on KNEW. Starting in junior high, I listened to KJRB.
While I was writing this morning, KPND played "Porcelain" from Moby's album Play, an album Patrick was crazy about when it came out and that I bought for him back in about 1999/2000. Sometimes, back then, when the house was empty, I would get on Patrick's IMac and do this and that online and listen to Play and I started feeling kind of crazy about this album, too. That twenty year old affection returned to me and I added Play to my Amazon music collection and played it on Alexa. (I had to access it via my cell phone app because Alexa couldn't understand my request when I said, "Alexa, play the album Play by Moby!)
Listening to Play, I was transported back to LCC and creative projects I assigned. Thanks to Moby, I remembered one student in particular, a student in one of several WR 123 sections I taught that was focused on the question of beauty, a student who took a video camera to downtown Eugene and went into alleys and to bus stops and storefronts and other places all over downtown in search of beauty. She edited her footage of skateboarders, diners, cigarette smokers, bus riders, and Kiva grocery shoppers and other things and added Moby's "Porcelain" as the soundtrack to her creation.
I was thunderstruck by her work. I don't remember the student's name, not even her face, but I remember her presentation that day, how it helped expand all of our understanding and appreciation of beauty. Old feelings of my love for helping students read about, do research into, and complete creative projects around the eternal question of beauty came back to me, and I felt a specific happiness I'd lost track of and it was Moby who helped resurrect those feelings and that happiness this morning.
2. I tossed my suitcase into the Sube and blasted off from Kellogg toward Spokane. I didn't like the way KPND was coming over the car radio, and the mix "tape" on cd that Jeff made me of the Drive By Truckers never sounded better. Their music keeps getting inside me deeper and deeper. I stopped at the Breakfast Nook around noon. I slung myself over a stool at the counter and, for the first time, ordered one of their petite breakfast plates. I enjoyed a small sirloin steak, one egg, some hash browns, and a piece of toast.
I arrived in Spokane ahead of my check-in time at the Hotel Ruby and dropped into The Onion and enjoyed a slow half pint of a wet hop hazy IPA.
The Hotel Ruby used to be the Rodeway Inn at Lincoln and 1st Avenue. The Hotel Ruby still has the Rodeway Inn's layout. Hotel Ruby's rooms were once motel rooms. They all open to the outside. Motel-style parking places are just off the street in the lot outside and beneath the two levels of rooms. Some one got the idea, I guess, that it would be fun to spiff up the old Rodeway, make it more artsy and colorful, and to open a lounge (called the Sapphire) where, I think, the Rodeway's check in area used to be. It was a superb idea.
I walked in my room and staring at me from a portrait was Marilyn Monroe. The walls are freshly painted, an off-white, a tv is mounted on the wall, and the room has what many motel rooms have: microwave, fridge, iron, hair dryer, shower, carpeting, towels, etc. I immediately lay down on the queen bed and it passed the comfort test.
As far as character and homeiness, I far prefer each of the airbnb's I've stayed in over the past few months.
But, I wanted to see what it would be like to stay in a place where I could park the Sube and leave it in the lot and not have to drive because the Hotel Ruby is so close to everything I planned to do. Not only that, it has a lounge right below my room where I could have a martini or two and be back in my room in a minute.
For these reasons, the Hotel Ruby was a perfect place to stay. The room itself, aside from the Marilyn Monroe portrait, is clean, ordinary, and functional and that was fine.
3. After resting in my room, I strolled a few blocks down to Sushi Sakai and ate sushi for the first time since Jane Hansen and I ate together at Pure in Eugene before the July, 2017 Babes with Axes show. I started with a bowl of miso soup and an order of steamed gyozas. I then ordered a spicy scallop sushi roll followed by a milder roll with crab, avocado, and cucumber with either tuna or salmon on top. As I dove into these rolls, I remembered the many times I ate sushi with Russell, in both Portland and Eugene, whether on a photo outing or both attending a union conference. I thought about eating sushi in Arlington Heights with David and Muffie and eating sushi in Eugene with Muffie, Larry, and Samantha. I recalled a sushi restaurant I went to in D. C. in 2012. I even thought about days when I'd buy a styrofoam tray of sushi at the Sunrise Asian Market in Eugene and sit in my little red Honda in the parking and eat each piece with my fingers, not willing to wait to drive home.
I still had a lot of time before tonight's concert started. I was going to have a martini at the Steelhead Bar and Grill, but I peered in and didn't see anywhere to sit, so I walked to the Sapphire Lounge and relaxed over a couple of dry martinis up with olives. The Sapphire Lounge contrasts with the nearby Peacock Lounge. It's not at all fancy, much like my room at the Hotel Ruby. But, I wasn't looking for fancy. The vibe in the Sapphire was friendly. The people seated at the bar and at tables were enjoying themselves and I enjoyed my drinks and the time to ponder.
I changed into my concert clothes and went across the street to the Fox Theater and thoroughly enjoyed listening to Whitworth University's Jazz Ensemble perform. After a set of accessible and entertaining big band jazz arrangements of compositions by Charlie Parker, McCoy Tyner, Art Pepper and others, the musicians took an intermission and the second set featured the concert's visiting artists, Cartharsis, a trio made up of trombonist Ryan Keberle (son of the Whitworth ensemble's director, Dan Keberle), bassist Pedro Giraudo, and guitarist and vocalist Camila Meza. I don't really have words for what a remarkable change in musical style Catharsis brought to the concert. Their music didn't have the immediate accessibility of the jazz ensemble, but explored beauty and emotion and a yearning for justice in ways that Ryan Keberle told us grew out of his current obsession with Brazilian music. I soon realized that Catharsis was performing a sound that was unfamiliar to me and I submitted to it, let Camila Meza's singing in Spanish and her approach to a kind of scat vocalizing wash over me. I experienced Catharsis in a way very similar to when I heard trumpeter Dave Douglas perform nearly twenty years ago in Eugene.
I enjoyed this concert -- I enjoyed the familiar and the challenge of the unfamiliar -- and I enjoyed being an audience member for the fourth time in the last month or so of a Whitworth event.
I stopped in at the Peacock Lounge afterward for martini nightcap and a guy from Portland, about twenty years younger than me, just started talking to me. He was inebriated and had a lot on his mind about politics, family, raising a teenager, working at Muu-Muu's in NW Portland, and a variety of other things. I popped a few works into the conversation here and there, but mostly I listened to him as he slurred his way through the story of his life and work and thinking. He seemed like a good guy. We never introduced ourselves. After about 45 minutes or so and once he finished his last beer, he staggered off. He was staying at the Davenport, so all he had to do was go upstairs and find his room.
I'll just recap what a superb day this was:
Help with Charly
Spokane radio history
KPND
Moby
Play
Memories of beauty at LCC
Drive by Truckers
Steak and eggs at the Breakfast Nook counter
Wet hopped IPA at The Onion
Marilyn Monroe greeting me as I entered my Hotel Ruby room
A firm queen bed
Miso, gyozas, and shushi
Sushi memories
Tanqueray dry martinis, up, stirred, olives
Sapphire Lounge ponderings
Jazz that was familiar
Jazz that stretched me
One more martini
Hearing a life story at the Peacock Lounge
Three Beautiful Things?
I was way over that today!
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