Three Beautiful Things 09/29/2021: Fog and Wind and Beer, Beer and Yakkin' in Duluth, Veggie Burgers at Fitger's

1. If you've been following this blog since Debbie and I left Valley Cottage, NY on September 16th, you might have noticed that Debbie and I decided before departing NY to make this return home a tour of dog friendly breweries along the upper tier of the USA. We've arranged our trip so that we can enjoy matinee beers. Every brewery that welcomes dogs does so with outdoor seating and we have been enjoying the mild weather -- only one stop was not mild.

That one stop was today. 

As we continued our drive west through the gorgeous Upper Peninsula of Michigan and as we crawled across the scenic north of Wisconsin, the temperatures were in the high 60s and low to middle 70s.

But as we closed in on Superior, WI, we entered a fog bank. The temperature dropped about 10 degrees and a light but noticeable wind kicked up.

Being intrepid beer samplers at dog friendly breweries, we decided to put a few more clothes on and brave the fog and wind and try some beers in the yard behind the Cedar Lounge Taproom of Superior's Earth Rider Brewery. 

We started on a wobbly two person table and I thought I could smell another dog's crap nearby, so we moved to another table in the taproom's back yard and that worked much better.

 Our flight had nice variety: a Russian Imperial Stout, a double hazy IPA, a "regular" hazy, a blueberry cream ale, and a pilsner. We finished sharing the flight and Debbie had a larger pour of the double hazy IPA and I had a 10 oz pour of Earth Rider's Raspbecrushed, a tart raspberry wheat ale. I enjoyed it a lot. I am enjoying wheat beers more all the time and liked how this beer delivered on the raspberry flavor with no sugary quality. It was very pleasing.

2. We finished our beers, dashed to the Camry to get warmed up, and decided to try Bent Paddle Brewing in Duluth. 

It was a sound choice. The outdoor seating was on a balcony that was protected from the wind and weather was a bit more sunshiny in Duluth than Superior. 

We ordered another flight with good variety -- an ESB (Extra Special Bitter [which is not a bitter beer]), a black ale, combining porter and stout with oats, a cream ale with sea salt and lime zest, an IPA called Hopmosa, and one other beer I don't recall.

As Debbie and I got to bs-ing about our beers and our trip, a Russian guy who works for Microsoft and loves to explore the great outdoors of the USA overheard us and jumped into our conversation. Later, he left his table to do something, came back and a couple had taken it over, so he joined us and we talked about the great cultural diversity in Russia and he urged us to travel to St. Petersburg and told us about his mom coming to the USA to visit him. 

While we yakked away, Debbie drank a full pour of the Hopmosa IPA and I enjoyed a glass of the Black Ale. 

We had a blast.

3. We ended with dinner at more of a restaurant than a brewery -- but they do brew their own beer. Fitger's Brewhouse is part of a multi-establishment culinary Fitzger bonanza in Duluth and the Russian guy had recommended we try their wild rice burger at the brewhouse. 

I did and I liked it a lot. Debbie had a Portabella mushroom sandwich.  

Eating outside at a table on the street as the sun was going down on a rapidly cooling day meant that we got kind of cold again. The food, though, was pretty good. I drank part of a golden ale that I thought was excellent, but I had had enough beer and left much of the pint undrunk.

Gibbs enjoyed all three places and it's fun how many people stop at our table to ooh and aah over what a handsome (okay, cute) dog he is and it leads to some fun conversation.

Three Beautiful Things 09/28/2021: Many Colors Across the UP, Fun Stop at ByGeorge Brewing, Street Beers in Marquette

 1. We started the day with a gorgeous drive across the Mackinac Bridge and into the Upper Peninsula. We stopped in at Straits State Park, drove around a bit, and took a short hike. Everywhere on the Upper Peninsula the leaves are beginning to change colors, the landscape sometimes dotted, sometimes awash in orange, vermillion, and yellow.  We could enjoy these views of the leaves because we drove on state roads, -- almost exclusively two lane roads.  At several points we had spectacular views of Lake Superior and its bays, sometimes rewarded with the autumn leaves reflected on the water's surface. 

2.  As we neared our destination of Marquette, MI, we made an awesome stop at ByGeorge Brewing in Munising, MI. The guy pouring beer was low-keyed and very friendly and I had a  great conversation with him and his one customer at the bar. Out on the patio, Debbie and I had more fun conversation with three Yoopers. We didn't talk about anything special, but had fun swapping stories about dogs and our travels. One of the guys has family in Livington, MT and urged us to tell them hi if we ran into them. 

Debbie loved her pour of Sexy Dad Bod X-tra double IPA, a huge hop bomb weighing in at 9.1% ABV and full of all kinds of flavor. I took one sip of it so I wouldn't spill the beer as I walked it outside and it hit my tongue about five different ways. It was remarkable. I couldn't drink a beer with that much alcohol content and opted for ByGeorge's Somewhere Between 'Eben and Epic' Classic Pilsner. It was a Czech pilsner and caught me off guard with its, to me, unusual maltiness. I gladly adjusted to its uniqueness and enjoyed this fascinating beer more and more the deeper I dove into my glass. 

Oh! Debbie and I loved ByGeorge's glassware and bought a couple of barrel shaped pint glasses to take home! 

3. Once in Marquette, we figured out that our best bet for a dog friendly brewery was Ore Dock down on Spring St. We ordered a flight and the only beer of our flight I really enjoyed was Ore Dock's porter. Debbie enjoyed the IPAs and other samples more than I did and she decided to have a couple of half pint pours of their rye IPA called Gnomenclature. I was very happy with the two half pints of porter I ordered. The outdoor seating at Ore Dock was in front of the tasting room, on the sidewalk, close to the street. It was fun watching citizens of Marquette on their bicycles and skateboards. Others were jogging and plenty of people were on foot, strolling into Ore Dock for a beer or appearing to hustle home after a day of work. Many of the beer drinkers outside were old codgers like ourselves -- we see this often as we stop in at breweries across the nation, especially because we are enjoying matinee beers. 

We finished our afternoon and evening in Marquette by driving over to Thai House. I went in and ordered us a Thai House curry with tofu and an order of Pad See Ew with chicken, both medium spicy. The restaurant was overwhelmed with orders. Our food took about 45 minutes to come out. No big deal. We also took it I stride that the restaurant was out of wide noodles and that our Pad See Ew had to be made with something like Pad Thai noodles. (There was also a sign on the door announcing the restaurant had to close early. I'll bet they were running out of product. It seemed to be a very popular place today.) We hustled our food back to our room and it was fun to eat Thai food again. I hadn't eaten any since leaving Kellogg. 

Three Beautiful Things 09/27/2021: Goodby Lake Michigan, Beer in Petoskey, Party in Paradise

1. We departed the lake place and hit the road for North Michigan, with Carp Lake, just south of Mackinaw City our destination.

2. Just shy of our destination, we stopped at the splendid Petoskey Brewing. I enjoyed a lighter beer,  a Kolsch. Debbie went for a New England style IPA. We were enjoying our beer on the outdoor patio, the lower one, and a couple strolled up. The woman immediately took to  Gibbs and in the course of showering him with praise and goo goos, she and her husband and Debbie and I fell into conversation. They were around our age. They are Michigan lifers and they gave us about 100,000 great ideas for touring the Mackinaw City, Mackinac Island, and the Upper Peninsula. I'd have loved to do just a fraction of all they told us about -- made me wish we were spending a month in North Michigan and the UP rather than a couple of days. 

3. Arrived at our airbnb, a converted motel, called Pure Paradise Resort. We settled in and soon I drove about 4 miles down highway 31 to William's Marathon Grocery and Liquor Store, a cramped, dimly lit convenience store with gas pumps and booze. I purchased a fifth of Tanqueray, a scrawny lime, ice, and a bottle of tonic water and for me and Debbie. The Paradise party was on. 

Before long, Debbie called to a bar a short ways down the road, Clyde's Place, and ordered me a burger and a buffalo chicken salad wrap for herself. We partied on, talked about a million things and relaxed until it was time to go to sleep. 

Three Beautiful Things 09/26/2021: Some Higher Education Discussion, Travel Adjustment, Big Dose of Norm Macdonald

1. Before Madhura and Danielle left the lake house to return to Chicago, we had a fun discussion about education and I enjoyed their interest in what I had to say about what I see as the purposes of education -- it's fun to discuss self-examination and other such topics with people who also see higher education, not as a career training, but as a time to exercise and discipline one's mind, to explore galaxies of ideas and ways of understanding one's self, life, and the world. 

2. Debbie and I changed our travel schedule a bit. Originally, in order to arrive at a Michigan yarn/fiber establishment Debbie has known about for years, since it closes at 3 p.m., we would have had to leave the lake place pretty early. We decided not to leave pretty early Monday morning and Debbie said she'd rather strike the yarn store from our plans.

3. Over the last several days, I've been watching a lot of videos of Norm Macdonald. I've watched his appearances on Conan, David Letterman, and other talk shows and some of his work on Saturday Night Live. I've also enjoyed listening to the many tributes people in the entertainment world recorded after Norm Macdonald died on September 14th. 

I'll just say that for much of Norm Macdonald's career, I watched very little television. I was vaguely aware of Norm Macdonald's stellar reputation. I've enjoyed watching all these videos, enjoyed the almost dada quality of Macdonald's story telling, his quick wit, and his fearlessness. 

Three Beautiful Things 09/25/2021: Questions About Animals and Humans, Burn Em and a Sunset, Madhura Prepares an Indian Feast

 1.  I decided that today I would listen to the last two chapters of The Soul of an Octopus, come hell or high water, and I did it. I enjoyed Sy Montgomery's many stories and, even more, I enjoyed her high regard for and enthusiasm about the octopus. That was on the one hand. On the other hand, it bothered me that so much of Sy Montgomery's experience with the octopuses was in the New England Aquarium where the octopuses were in captivity. She also wrote about diving in the Caribbean and in waters near Polynesia to observe octopuses in the wild. So, the book got me thinking a lot (more) about  human relationships with animals and, how, in a perfect world, I want us humans to just leave these animals alone. I know what I just wrote is fraught with contradictions -- how else might we learn about these animals? how else could I experience the pleasure of seeing the movie, My Octopus Teacher? And how about Gibbs? Copper? Luna? 

I'm not a polemicist -- I can't see these questions as anything but really complicated and I have no answers. I do, however, have feelings -- and, at times, while reading this excellent book, I was uneasy reading about octopuses housed in barrels, reading about one octopus's escape from its tank and the consequences of that, and about the annual Valentine's Day event at the Seattle Aquarium called, "Blind Date" -- an event that features people packing into the aquarium to watch two octopuses who have never met mate. The organizers of this public viewing of procreation get the crowd warmed up by playing Barry White and Roberta Flack singing soulful romantic get in the mood songs. 

2. This day kicked into high gear this afternoon with the arrival of Danielle and her friend Madhura and, later, for a short period of time, Danielle and Madhura's friend also named Danielle.  Brian also arrived.  Then things kicked into an even higher gear when nephew Billy and his wife, Casey, arrived. 

Brian was eager for anyone who wanted to join him to go to a brewery down the road called Burn 'Em. I joined Brian, Billy, and Casey for this outing and it was awesome. We sat at picnic table outdoors. I ordered an IPA called Familiar Drugs because it feature the Idaho 7 hop, the very hop that makes Radio Brewing's single hop beer 43 For Me so tasty. After we'd been at Burn 'Em for a while, Debbie popped in -- Danielle's friend Danielle needed to return to Chicago and dropped Debbie off at the brewery. 

We had a robust time drinking beer, telling tales, laughing, and reminiscing. When we decided to leave, Brian realized that there was a very good chance that if we went straight to a turn out spot near his lake place, we might see an astonishing sunset.

He was right.

The lake and the sky were reddish orange, vibrating with beauty, and we could see the Chicago skyline also burnished in the golden glow of this sunset. Brian snapped this picture. The colors had faded a bit by the time we organized this shot and the skyline is just out of this shot (no problem)  -- but, I hope you get the idea that we saw a spectacular scene here.

Left to right: Me, Casey, Billy, Debbie

3.  We returned to the lake place and Madhura, with Danielle as her sous chef, was assembling and cooking an aromatic Indian eggplant and okra curry, combining a homemade curry powder supported by mustard seed, coriander, turmeric, bay leaves, cumin, cayenne pepper and other spices. Madhura also made an Indian soup, rasam. 

I was absolutely transfixed watching Madhura cook. I planted myself just to the left of the stove and watched and oohed and aahed as Madhura heated spices in oil in a pan to add to both the curry and the rasam and assembled and added other ingredients to her masterpieces. I took every chance I could to smell these dishes as they simmered away, grateful for the bliss of simply enjoying their aromas.

Danielle made a batch of brown rice and when Madhura told us dinner was ready, we each dove into the rice, spooned the eggplant and okra curry over it and also ate the rasam over rice. 

It was an awesome dinner and Brian, Billy, Casey, Debbie, Danielle, Madhura, Debbie, and I had an invigorating time yakking, praising Madhura's cooking, and enjoying one another's company.

Three Beautiful Things 09/25/2019: Ears Cleaned Out, Shopping at Al's, Learning More About Our 4 Wheeled Computer

1. I hopped in the Camry first thing this morning and blasted down to the Franciscan ExpressCare facility in Michigan City, IN, got checked in, and saw a DNP who instructed one of the nurses to flush out my ears, get that ear wax off my ear drum, so I could hear well again. It worked.

2. Later in the day, I dashed over to Al's Supermarket, another Michigan City establishment, and shopped. Nothing momentous happened. I put nuts and chips and toothpaste and shaving cream and other items in my cart and a checker scanned them. Another employee bagged my groceries while I paid and returned back to the lake place in Long Beach, IN.

3. Our new Camry is a four-wheeled computer and after I dinged around today, I can ask Alexa to do stuff in the car and I can check my phone and find out all kinds of info about the Camry.  I guess this is all good. The Sube is sure simpler. 

Three Beautiful Things 09/23/2021: Lounging Around, Yarn and Transient Brewing, Dinner at Tapistry Brewing

1. When I was younger, if I were visiting somewhere out of town, I always thought I needed to take full advantage of being away and do as much stuff as possible.

That seems to have changed.

For much of the day today, when I wasn't writing in this blog, I pretty much lounged around, rested, read stuff about our new car, and tried with the application of ear wax softening drops, to get my ears unplugged. Since three of four days of using these drops and trying to flush out my ears with a syringe hasn't worked very well, I'm going to go to an Urgent Care clinic first thing Friday morning and get a pro to help me be able to fully hear again!

2. About a half an hour away in Bridgman, MI, there's a yarn/fiber store Debbie wanted to visit and three breweries in town.

It was getting toward late afternoon when Debbie and I piled into the Camry and headed east.

Upon arrival, Debbie dashed into the yarn store and I went two doors down and visited Transient Artisan Ales.

Transient brews a lot of different beers, has a good collection of bottles of their stuff, and a bunch of cans, too. 

I'm always up to try any tasting room's lager, so I ordered 10 oz of Transient's Chesnut Cask Aged Lagger, a helles lager. The idea of it being aged in a chestnut cask intrigued me. I thought the beer had some interesting flavor, but I wanted it to finish a bit stronger and I like more mouthfeel than this beer has. 

Debbie arrived and I went for a much bigger beer and ordered 5 oz of Koopa, a peanut butter barrel aged stout. If I remember correctly, it weighed in at about 11% ABV, so I was careful with it. This beer worked much better for me. The peanut butter wasn't too forward, the beer had a slightly salty quality, and I enjoyed its level of booziness. And, alas, it felt heavier in my mouth and I liked that a lot.

Before we left Transient, we bought three pint bottles to go: It's All Relative, an imperial porter (not sure I've ever had an imperial porter), a VERY imperial stout with vanilla, coffee, and maple syrup called Kentuckley (14.5% ABV), and Rye Lagger, another helles lager brewed with rye and aged in a chestnut cask. In the recent Great American Beer Festival, this beer won a bronze medal in the Wood and Barrel Aged Beer category.  The very friendly and helpful woman who helped us navigate Transient's beers was really pumped about this prize -- and her enthusiasm persuaded me to buy it and give a try back at the lake house.

3. We went across the street to have a bite to eat and try another beer at Tapistry Brewing. I'm always in search of a porter I really like. Back on St. Patrick's Day and again in late June, I ordered the Knot Tree porter at MickDuff's in Sandpoint and I loved it and I've been eager to find another porter I love as Debbie and I make our way across the USA. At Tapistry, I ordered a five ounce pour of their Peck's porter. I found it serviceable, but wasn't moved to order another. I thought its finish petered out.  I did, however, very much enjoy my smoked turkey sandwich, dressed with mango pepper jelly and truffle aioli, that also contained Muenster cheese, served on toasted sourdough bread. Debbie ordered very tasty wasabi pork tacos and she enjoyed an Imperial IPA called Enigma. 

Back at the lake house, Debbie and I split our last bottle of Warlock, Southern Tier's exquisite imperial pumpkin stout and then we cracked open, and split, the very intense imperial porter from Transient, a beer packed with toasty flavors and a bit of licorice and featuring a fairly intense booziness. This beer's taste improved quite a bit for me as I let in warm, so I drank my short pours very slowly and came to enjoy it a lot. 

Three Beautiful Things 09/22/2021: Staying Put, Sy Montgomery Dives, Ecstatic Experience

 1. It turned out that Debbie wanted to stay in and rest on this blustery day in Long Beach, IN. I did the same. We had a very quiet day. Possibly we'll feel more like going out into the local world tomorrow.

2. I continued to listen to Sy Montgomery's book, The Soul of an Octopus. In today's chapters, Montgomery dives into the underworld of the Caribbean Sea. She narrates her ecstatic experience as, for the first time, she observes and interacts with octopuses (and other marine life) in the wild, rather than in an aquarium. Montgomery's nearly hallucinatory experience underwater contrasts with the inevitability that spending time with octopuses in captivity leads to experiencing their death. Seen in human terms, octopuses have a short life span. Thus, Montgomery faces the emotionally draining reality of growing close to certain octopuses and grieving their loss when they die. 

3. When I posted a picture of Brian, Debbie, and me on Facebook and wrote about imagining being back in the classroom discussing Lulu Miller's book, Why Fish Don't Exist with imaginary students and expressed my wish that Rita and I could have assigned this book in our composition/philosophy class twenty-five or so years ago, I heard from some students and today I loved responding to them, inviting them to keep in touch if they'd like to.  I'll admit it. Reading Mark's and Carolyn's and Alex's praise of the work we did together and reading Teresa's wish that she could have studied philosophy with me and Rita uplifted me, brought back a torrent of great memories of working with each of these students. Each of them, Mark, Carolyn, Alex, and Teresa made my work at LCC fulfilling and invigorating, helped me experience the epitome of the many joys I frequently experienced working with students. 

When I return to visit Eugene (I wish this could be soon), I can see Mark. He's a chef with a thriving catering business.  Teresa teaches elementary school in Nome, AK. Carolyn will be teaching a 200 level PSYCH course in the spring in Arizona (not sure, but I think at Yavapi College at the Verde Valley Campus). Alex has moved to Las Vegas and is returning to college to finish a degree. 

Hearing from these former LCC students and sharing the Westminster Basement and Zoom time with former students, now great friends, from Whitworth fills me with happiness and affection. I love being retired, but being able to remember and experience the best of what I loved in my work makes me ecstatic -- I thought of this ecstasy as I read Sy Mongomery's euphoric descriptions of when she first dove underwater into octopus habitat. She in the Caribbean, I in this lake house were both transported into a rare and rapturous realm of existence. 

Three Beautiful Things 09/21/2021: Mapping the Way Back Home, Octopus Stories, Tree House Concert #60

1. It makes me happy that Debbie has taken charge of mapping out our route back to Kellogg. Right now, if we follow the plan currently on the table, we'll leave Long Beach, IN on Monday and head in a north and easterly direction to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We'll be there for a couple of days, make our way to Duluth, and then in about four hour stretches of driving make our way across North Dakota and Montana, staying in towns like Fargo, Minot, Glasgow, and Great Falls, places we've never stayed before.  

Thanks to Christy, Paul, and Carol's willingness to continue to spend time with, feed, and care for Copper and Luna, we've extended our trip a bit and plan to be in Kellogg on Oct. 4.

2. I dove back into the world of animals today and returned to Sy Montgomery reading her loving book, The Soul of an Octopus. Up to the point where I left off today, Sy Montgomery blends writing about her research into octopuses and animal consciousness in general with stories about her own experiences with octopuses at the New England Aquarium and about staff and volunteers she meets and develops friendships with.  I enjoy Montgomery's digressions away from the octopuses as we learn more about these staff and volunteers; I also enjoy how Montgomery often ties these digressions back to the octopuses, whether by substantiating insights or describing more fully the relationships between the humans and the octopuses. 

In other words, through its first four chapters, I am experiencing The Soul of an Octopus as a warm book, its warmth enhanced by Sy Montgomery's warmth as its reader on the audible edition I'm listening to.

I have a few hours to go to finish this book. I think I'll be at the lake house by myself for much of the day on Wednesday and that should give me a chance to reach the book's end.

3.  I was one of a handful of people this evening who listened to Bill Davie's 60th Tree House Concert from outside the Pacific Standard Time zone. Even though I've been online now for nearly twenty-five years, it can still feel miraculous to be about 2100 miles away from Bill Davie's studio/study/Tree House and experience him performing his songs live.

I know, both from listening to Bill on Zoom and from our private correspondence, that he's been struggling mightily with chronic and debilitating pain, sleep deprivation, and the anxiety of not knowing exactly what's going on in his body. 

But, as he puts it, the best analgesic for his maladies is to perform music and read poetry for an hour every Tuesday on Facebook Live.

Tonight Bill opened with a great song, "The Man with the Two-Headed Heart" and played other soulful songs, like "Candlelight" and "The Only Magic I Know". Right smack in the middle of his seven song set, Bill entered into the manic, surreal, high energy realm of his music, reached back to the Phobia Robes album, and played "Go" -- a song that reminds us that "insanity's a weapon for the modern urbanite" and features Bill soaring into a wondrous riff of scatting. This is a demanding song and Bill had the look of a runner having just finished running the 400 meter hurdles when he finished, but he nailed it, recovered and moved on to play quieter and more introspective songs to close. 

Bill turned to what he called "comfort food", to poems by Donald Hall from his volume, The Happy Man, what Bill called "poems that taste good" for tonight's poetry break. I wish I had the table of contents of his book in front of me. Bill read a section of the book and I don't recall the section's title, but the poems were ruminations upon driving cars, baseball, and a long-ish poem about the life of an inherited rifle. It was a powerful break and set up Bill's closing songs beautifully. 

Three Beautiful Things 09/20/2021: I Loved This Book!, The Classroom in my Mind, Dinner (and a Picture) at Greenbush Brewing

1. I spent a good portion of this restful day finishing the book Why Fish Don't Exist by Lulu Miller on audible. The book troubled, frightened, fascinated, stimulated, enchanted, informed, and delighted me. On the face of it, Lulu Miller's book is an exploration of the life of biologist, taxonomist, and founding president of Stanford University, David Starr Jordan. Jordan's life was a combination of high achievement and a disturbing conviction that the world and its inhabitants comprise a hierarchy of greater and lesser beings, a conviction that inspired his views on eugenics, inspired him to support weeding out "unfit" bloodlines by sterilizing unfit women. 

But, really, as Lulu Miller explores, especially in the world of biology, what Wallace Stevens calls, "blessed rage for order", what she's really primarily focused on is the chaos of creation -- the very teeming, ever changing, bountiful disorder and variety and diversity of the natural world that Charles Darwin wrote so compellingly about. Many -- how about most? -- of us assume that there is an order built in to creation. I know that I've been exposed countless times to the idea that God created an order in the world. Lulu Miller explores order, not as implicitly hard wired into the world, but as a human creation. We humans are the categorizers, the namers, the system makers, the taxonomists. We impose order onto the world and, of course, come to see these categories, systems, arrangements, and so on as truth itself, as real.

Lulu Miller explores how these categories and hierarchies we humans create and give our assent to keep us from seeing things as they really are. It's the dandelion effect. If we categorize the dandelion as a weed to be destroyed, we miss the other truths about the dandelion: they have medicinal properties; they can be woven together into crowns; they can be play things for children and adults; they can be transformed into a liqueur (known a dandelion wine). The dandelion is a chaos of possibilities. Our ability to see the wonder implicit in dandelions and the countless other plants, animals, and minerals of nature is stymied largely by our "blessed rage for order", our unending drive to categorize.

If any of this sounds interesting to you, I'd like you to read Lulu Miller's book and find out why fish don't exist -- why the category we assign to underwater, scaly creatures with gills is a bogus one. I can sort of sum it up for you, but reading this book is a lot more fun. As it turns out, as evolutionists study different fish more closely, many of these underwater creatures, under their skin, have more in common with other animals than they do each other. For example, internally, the lungfish has more in common with a cow than with a salmon, making it inaccurate, bogus even, to refer to both the lungfish and a salmon as both being "fish".  The millennia long evolution of species has not been orderly. It's been a glorious, astounding, miraculous mess -- and I very much enjoyed plunging into it with Lulu Miller as my guide.

2. As I finished reading Why Fish Don't Exist today, I found myself wishing this book had been available back when Rita Hennessy and I taught composition and philosophy together at Lane Community College. This book could have enhanced our study of ethics (how do eugenicists justify sterilizing women?), epistemology (how do we arrive at knowledge and what is knowledge?), and metaphysics (what is the nature of reality?).  But, alas, I am left with congregating groups of imaginary students in my head and enjoying imaginary discussions with them and reading their imaginary papers. It's not so bad.

3. We are currently staying at Debbie's brother's Brian's lake place just a block from the shore of Lake Michigan. Today Brian told us goodbye, set off for another of his homes in the Chicago suburbs, but he stopped off to play some Mississippi Stud at a local casino here in Indiana. He won about 1200 dollars and texted Debbie that he wanted to take her and me out to dinner.

So, Brian returned and we headed east about a half an hour away to a brewery we have been to before, Greenbush. We were seated. I ordered a five oz pour of their Vienna lager and later another five oz pour of their porter. For dinner, I ordered gumbo, a mildly spicy broth stocked with shrimp, sausage, and chicken along with onion and red pepper, topped with a scoop of white rice. 

Brian also insisted that we order food to go to eat on Tuesday. So, I decided to get a large order of mac and cheese topped with beef brisket. 

Did we have fun? Well, I think this picture our server so kindly snapped tells you we enjoyed ourselves a lot!

Three Beautiful Things 09/19/2021: Breakfast at Randy's Diner, Superb Zoom Talk, Early to Bed

1. We settled into a quiet and restful day today at the lake place on Lake Michigan. Brian and I went down the road a little ways to Randy's Diner, a converted self-serve dog wash place, and grabbed a picnic table outside. I hadn't had a big diner style breakfast out since March 2020 and it was fun to order a crispy country (chicken) fried steak, gravy, hash browns, fried eggs, and a biscuit. After breakfast, Brian took me on a short drive along the shore near his house. The street was teeming with middle aged and older people walking dogs, taking walks, and jogging. The demographic here is nothing like Kellogg, so it was kind of fun to observe in their houses, cars, and exercise gear a little bit of how people who can afford to live on Lake Michigan present themselves. The lake itself is slowly rising, causing selected beaches to be closed and causing some anxiety for those whose homes are near the shore, overlooking the water. Debbie had told me earlier that the beach a block or so from Brian's house is not nearly as big as it has been in the past. 

2. Around noon (CST), I jumped on Zoom and had great conversation with Bill, Diane, Bridgit, and Val. We talked a lot about current events -- especially, the Texas abortion law and our confusion surrounding cultural appropriation. Bridgit asked us all what books we were reading and I enjoyed talking a bit about eels and octopuses and how my thinking about human beings has been influenced by reading books about animals. Diane's reading has been, in part, in preparation for her retirement which is about eight or nine months away and we talked at some length together about retired life, its pleasures and joys and also the many unknowns retirees face that are not only financial, but also include figuring out one's purpose in life when one no longer has a job. 

We learned more about the procedures Bill has been through, trying to figure out what's causing him general pain and swelling in one of his feet. We also learned more about Val's graduate studies and about her trip to Bend to see if she and Dave V. could secure more business for their business, Bluerub; we also learned that Bridgit got her study arranged and organized, a task that had been hanging over her like Damocles' sword, but thanks to help from Noma, the job is now done.  

We had a superb time and our conversation lasted for nearly three hours. 

3. Brian fixed Debbie, Danielle, himself, and me a really good grilled chicken thigh dinner with corn on the cob and other grilled vegetables. After eating, I realized that I hadn't slept very well the night before because my inflamed toe kept waking me up. After dinner, and after drinking a whole can of Apex Predator farmhouse ale, a short pour of Warlock Imperial Pumpkin Stout, and a couple of short ryes, I realized I was really tired and I went to bed really early.

My big toe had become less and less inflamed as the day went along and didn't bother me at all in bed and I enjoyed getting back much of the sleep I'd lost the night before. 

Three Beautiful Things 09/18/2021: Get Out Fast, Arrival at Lake Michigan, Icing My Angry Toe

 1. Every once in a while, when traveling, we stay in a bad room and our Friday night room at La Quinta (dog friendly) in Erie, PA was one of the worst ever. So, this morning, we gathered out things as quickly as possible and hit the road. 

Today was our longest drive of the trip so far as we crossed Ohio and entered Indiana and headed north a short ways to Long Beach, IN, a town on Lake Michigan where Debbie's brother has a house.

Debbie and I enhanced the drive's enjoyment by listening to much of an audiobook: The Book of Eels, by Patrik Svensson. My interest in eels grew out of reading Lucy Cooke's terrific and witty book, The Unexpected Truth About Animals. Lucy Cooke devoted one of her chapters to the eel and Svensson not only writes a more expansive study, he also weaves many passages of memoir into his book, giving it more depth. We didn't quite finish the book. I'm enjoying it a lot. 

We arrived in Long Beach, IN around 2:00 (CST) or so, found the house key, brought in our stuff, and settled into the screened-in back porch for some fresh air and relaxation.

2. Our niece, Danielle, and Debbie's brother, Brian, arrived after a few hours and we cracked open beers from a local brewery, Burn 'Em (I enjoyed a farmhouse ale) and, later, I tried another farmhouse ale that Danielle had hoped I'd like, Apex Predator from Off Color Brewing in Chicago. I liked it a lot.

It was a good evening -- lots of catching up on family news, good beer -- in short, a jolly time.

3. Every once in a while, my right big toe acts up.  (Three different doctors have tested it and told me it's not gout.) It gets angry. It gets inflamed. It hurts. As I was packing up to leave Erie, I thought I might have tweaked this toe in a way it didn't like, and, sure enough, as I drove across Ohio, the swelling got underway.

In a perfect world, I would have been able to ice my toe right away, but I had to wait until we arrived at the lake and then I began a regimen of ice on, ice off, ice back on again.

As I write this blog post, on Sunday morning, I'm ready to resume the icing. I got through the night pretty well, with some moments of pain waking me up, but not many.

I think it's getting better already. 

Ice is a miraculous healer. 

Three Beautiful Things 09/17/2021:Gawking at Niagra Falls, Camry Evades Collision, Southern Tier Was Perfect

1. Debbie and I headed out of Geneva, NY and pointed the Camry toward the Niagra Falls State Park, looking forward to seeing the mighty cascades in person that we've seen in pictures and on television so many times.

We arrived and immediately saw that more than a state park, it's a theme park with souvenir vendors, tickets to buy to ride a boat right up to the falls or ride a trolley around the park or walk up on a huge observation tower. 

We just wanted to see the falls and I'd say that in order to enjoy and appreciate their grandeur, I had to block out all the stuff I described above. We walked to a trail that offered some views and the falls put big smiles on our faces. I was able, for a short time, to block out all the structures, vendors, signs, and other non-natural features of the park and I enjoyed feeling a sense of wonder.

We didn't stay long. It was starting to get hot out and whatever experience of nature we might have been looking for was pretty limited -- and we experienced our limited engagement with the natural grandeur of the falls and headed back to the car.

2. Back on my birthday on December 27, 2017, I got to split a Creme Brûlée (on the house) with Debbie at Radio Brewing.  As I wrote back then, eating that dessert took me back to October 17, 2011. I'd just begun trying out a bunch of craft beers and that day I drank an unforgettable Creme Brûlée stout brewed by Southern Tier Brewing of Lakewood, NY.  The brewery's name became kind of legendary to me -- I never dreamed that one day I'd visit it.

Debbie has also had great experiences with Southern Tier beers and so we left Niagra Falls and embarked on a two hour or so drive to Southern Tier's brewery. 

We were about 40-50 minutes from the brewery when we left the freeway and travelled on a series of state and county highways. We passed through a series of handsome towns, all featuring small old churches. At many spots along the way we saw roadside stands selling produce and flowers. It was all pastoral, very lovely.

But, as I was coming straight down hill on one of these roads, a car pulled out into a country intersection. Hmm, I thought in an instant. That driver does not see me. I slammed on the brakes. The tires squealed. The driver seemed frozen and the car didn't move. I swerved around the other driver by going into the lane meant for cars heading toward us. Luckily, no cars were in that other lane. It was a frightening 10 seconds or so, but no harm done. I righted the Camry, returned to our lane, and continued our drive to Southern Tier.

3. Southern Tier has a large tract of property behind its brewery with picnic tables scattered across its hugeness. This area features a stage and after we'd been there about an hour, a couple of guys who call themselves Acoustic Jukebox played a mix of original songs and lots of covers - songs by Steve Miller, the Eagles, Tears for Fears, and others.

Debbie and I ordered a flight blending hazy IPAs with Imperial Pumpkin Stout and a raspberry wheat ale.

Then we ordered a second flight, this one filling in some gaps, including a sample of Pumpking Ale brewed with cold press coffee.

We enjoyed every beer we sampled and also very much enjoyed our food. I had a cheeseburger with a side salad dressed with bacon balsamic dressing and Debbie enjoyed her grilled cheese Panini and had the same salad.

We lingered for quite a while, letting the beer work itself out of my system, and enjoying the music, the gaggle of thirty-something parents with a matching gaggle of energetic kids, kids who had all kinds of room to run around and play. It was a great scene -- people of all ages, staff happy to please us, mild temperatures -- in short, a perfect brewery stop. 

Three Beautiful Things 09/16/2021: The Box Arrived!, Hopshire Farm Brewery, Off the Interstate

 1. The box arrived! I have clothes! I have a duffle bag! Immediately, I tore open the box, opened the duffle bag, packed my things, and within minutes I was ready to hit the road. Before long, we did.

2. We headed north and west without a plan. We just knew we wanted to arrive somewhere within a couple of hours of Niagra Falls.  We knew we wanted to stop at a brewery. Debbie went online and located Hopshire, a farm brewery near Dryden, NY. She also decided Geneva, NY would work as a place to spend the night and reserved us a room. 

Hopshire was just the brewery we were looking for! It's a farm brewery set on a gently sloping hill with generous outdoor seating -- picnic tables scattered up and down the slope and far and wide. The temperature was mild. We found shade. And to top it all off, Hopshire offered a variety of tasty beers. 

We ordered a flight of five samples:

Haze in the Hollow a hazy IPA

Beehave a honey ale

Shire Ale a Scotch ale

Dragon Ash a porter

Near Varna a big American IPA

We relaxed, soaked in the the pastoral setting, finished the flight, and ordered 10 oz pours of the honey ale and the Scotch ale and shared them both.

3. Once we got off the interstate to wind our way to Hopshire, we were on state and county roads. We encountered a couple or three horse-drawn Amish carriages coming down the highway on the opposite side of the highway. I loved driving in this region of rolling hills, broccoli looking trees densely covering hillsides, and seeing one barn and silo after another.

Soon, we were in the Fingers Lake area without really realizing we'd done it. 

Geneva, NY is on the shore of Seneca Lake which we haven't really gotten a very good look at because we arrived after dark. 

For the record, I'll just say we made a misstep today.

We stopped in Seneca Falls, NY at a tap house for a bite to eat. The building was cool, an older brick structure. It was clean with very friendly service. We took a seat outside where we were very comfortable, but our food was lousy -- I never think or say that -- and the lager I ordered was really mediocre.

Oh, well. 

In all of our travels over the last several years, this is only the second time we've struck out badly at a place. 

Three Beautiful Things 09/15/2021: Waiting for My Clothes, Kohl's and Snacks, Softly Spoken Magic Spells

 1. Last Wednesday, I mailed a box to Adrienne and Josh's house in Valley Cottage with a bunch of clothes and a duffle bag in it so that I could fly to NYC and take four trains to the Nanuet station without lugging a suitcase around. When I mailed the package, the guy at the PO told me it would arrive in New York on Tuesday, Sept. 14.

It didn't arrive.

Okay.

I hoped it would arrive today, Sept. 15th.

The mail deliverer arrived.

No package.

Hmmm. Good thing we didn't have solid plans that couldn't be messed with!

So, I scoured the World Wide Web, trying to find a way to track the package without the receipt that has the tracking number on it.

No luck.

I pondered. I thought about my habits. I often take things out of my pocket at home and put them on the small table beside the bed in the bedroom -- or on the end table beside the chair in the living room I sit in to write and read.

Possibly the receipt from the Post Office with the tracking number was in one of those places. 

Possibly I didn't throw it away.

I emailed Christy and Carol and asked them, when it was convenient, to see if I did, in fact, leave that receipt on the bedside table or the end table.

I got a text from Christy.

It was a photograph.

Christy found the receipt! OMG! I was flabbergasted!  

I did, in fact, leave that receipt on the bedside table. She found it and texted me a photo of it.

I went to usps.com, submitted the tracking number, and found out that on today, Sept. 15th, my package had arrived in Jersey City, NJ and was now in transit to its destination.

I am 95.3982648736278563% certain that the package will arrive, two days late, on Sept. 16th, opening the way for me to pack the duffle bag, put it in the car with the other things, and for Debbie and me to hit the road and start our crawl across the USA back to Idaho.

2. Today, Wednesday, I was wearing the same shirt and pants I put on Sunday when I left Kellogg. That's right. I've been wearing the same outer shell on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and much of Wednesday. Debbie and I went to Kohl's and I bought a new shirt and a pair of short pants. That done, we went to Pearl River and each had a glass of beer at Defiant Brewing before going to a store called A Matter of Health where we stocked up on nuts, chocolates, licorice, crackers, and other snacks to sustain us on the road. 

3. We ended our outing at Growler and Gill and for the first time since February 5, 2017 I drank a glass of the divine Softly Spoken Magic Spells Imperial Hazy IPA brewed by Single Cut Brewing, located in Queens, NY. I loved sipping this juicy bomb again and Debbie and I had a long far reaching and deep conversation about a variety of things on our minds. I finished the one beer and ordered a short pour of a very different beer, one from Belgium, the great St. Bernardus Abt 12, a really tasty Quadrupel. I hadn't had a Belgian beer for many months and I loved the old feeling of being transported back to the Bier Stein in Eugene, joining friends from St. Mary's Episcopal Church for one of our Belgian Blowouts. 

Three Beautiful Things 09/14/2021: Sleeping In, Idaho License Plates Arrive in Kellogg!, After Beer and Burgers -- Bill Davie

 1. Upon arrival at Josh and Adrienne's and then after partying with Debbie until 2:00 a.m. I'd been up and at 'em for close to 20 hours since rising and shining at the Ramada Inn Monday morning. 

This morning, I slept in until 11:00. 

2. I haven't written much about the license plates for our new car. Debbie bought the Camry in New York and registered it in Idaho, the exact right thing to do. This was back in early July. The Toyota dealer in Blauvelt, NY sent the paperwork to the Idaho motor vehicles people and the Idaho agency were to send our new license plates to Kellogg. Debbie and I agreed either I would put the plates in the box of clothes I would ship to Valley Cottage or I would carry them in my backpack to New York. 

July came and went. No plates.

August came and went. No plates. 

Every day, right up until Saturday, Sept. 11th, the last day I was in Kellogg for mail delivery,  I dashed to the mail box, like a kid rushing to the tree on Christmas morning, hoping the plates arrived.

No plates.

Today, Debbie said we were going to drive down to Blauvelt. Somehow she had overpaid for the registration and a small refund check awaited us.

So, we headed south to Blauvelt, picked up the check, and headed to AAA in Nanuet so I could buy a road toll tag (transponder), allowing us to blow through the EZ Pass toll areas without paying cash. 

As we left AAA, in a flash of her reliable genius, Debbie proclaimed we were going to the District 96 Beer Factory next for a couple of matinee ales. 

We got settled in at our table on the patio and I checked my phone for messages.

Christy had texted me.

OMG!

The license plates arrived in Kellogg! 

Yeehaw! We'll catch up to our plates when we arrive home -- in the meantime, we have a document affixed to our rear car window that assures the world that our Camry is registered, we have a license plate number, and that the plates are on order. 

So, now if my box of clothes arrives on Wednesday (it was supposed to arrive on Tuesday), we will be set to hit the road and start our leisurely crawl back to Idaho.

3. By the way, the beers at District 96 were awesome. Having drunk the smooth juicy high-powered quad IPA Nuclear Option the night before, I decided, today, to drink lighter beer. I was just a little bit conflicted. When we leave New York, we'll be leaving behind the great Hazy IPAs available here, so shouldn't I order the hazy every chance I get?, but I wanted to see if District 96 brewed great beer in other styles.

They do!

Boy howdy do they. I ordered a half liter of El Hefe, their creamy easy drinking Hefeweizen, featuring just the right notes of clove and banana. It was, to me, brewed in a way that made it a close cousin to a saison.

Next I tried District 96's Circle Back, their crisp, beautifully balanced pilsner. It was light, refreshing, and most pleasing. As a bonus, it paired very well with the fries and side of truffle aioli dip sauce we ordered.

Back at Josh and Adrienne's, we ate the perfectly grilled burgers Josh cooked and I loved the apple and blueberry crisp Adrienne baked, topped with a splash of heavy whipping cream (not whipped).

I ended the day by tuning in to Bill Davie's Tree House Concert #59. Bill opened with "Comfort", a gem that goes back to around 1985-6. If there is such a thing as a test of time, "Comfort" passes it with honors. It's a great song about looking back at being young and aimless and "immortal in a limited way" and where, as youth, comfort lies. Bill sang an even earlier song about wanting to go electric and also performed songs from more recent recordings. 

At the poetry break, Bill read poems by Richard Hugo, William Stafford, Jack Gilbert, and Mary Oliver -- and maybe others -- what he called a "greatest hits" collection and, honestly, I wondered if he could have chosen a more powerful set of poetry.  The poems were earthquakes and their tremors continued to shake inside of me for hours after the concert ended. 

Three Beautiful Things 09/13/2021: Pants Stay Up at TSA, Listening to Sy Montgomery and Lulu Miller, Train Rides and a Party

 1. Last week, I didn't get the process started in time to acquire TSA Pre-Check. I was a little nervous going through security this morning because I was wearing the same pair of khakis that fell to my ankles as I went through TSA at the Newark Airport back in June. 

But, this morning, my pants didn't fall down at TSA. 

And my flight to NYC went pretty well, even though it was a day of delays. The delays didn't cause me to miss my connection to JFK at SeaTac and the delays at SeaTac and the wait for a gate at JFK didn't matter because I wasn't on a time schedule in New York. 

2. While up in the air, I listened to the beginnings of two books on audible: Sy Montgomery's Soul of an Octopus and Lulu Miller's Why Fish Don't Exist. Having watched the bewitching and moving movie, My Octopus Teacher led me to want to read Sy Montgomery's book and the first three chapters I listened to today helped deepen and broaden my love for octopuses. I love to read any accessible book that delves into animal intelligence, animal consciousness and that's exactly what Sy Montgomery does in her book. Lulu Miller's subject is human. Why Fish Don't Exist is a biographical study of the biologist, David Starr Jordan and I found the early chapters absolutely absorbing. 

3. Once off the plane at JFK, I made my way to the AirTrain for a short ride to Jamaica Station. I then bought a ticket on the Long Island Railroad to Penn Station and found the right train immediately. The train made no stops between Jamaica and Penn Station so I arrived there in no time at all. At Penn Station, I made my way to a New Jersey Transit ticket agent and purchased a ticket to Nanuet with a transfer at Secaucus. I found the right train immediately and, at Secaucus Junction, with a little help from an agent, found my way to Track H and waited about 45 minutes for the train to Nanuet to arrive. The train to Nanuet made eleven stops between Secaucus and Nanuet so the ride was just under an hour long.

I got off the train and within minutes, Debbie drove to where I was waiting in our new Camry. I piled inand she drove me to Josh and Adrienne's house.  

Once we arrived,  Debbie cracked open a pint can of District 96's Nuclear Option, a remarkable quadruple IPA with an ABV of 14%. 

I've never drunk a beer that disguised its high alcohol content like Nuclear Option. It was smooth, barely a trace of bitterness. It's not boozy, either. It's loaded with tons of Citra hops and is creamy, juicy, and unbelievably tasty and easy to drink. 

Debbie had prepared curry for dinner and saved me out a bowl. 

I didn't want to eat the curry until after I'd drunk the Nuclear Option -- I didn't want my taste buds to try to process the complexity of Debbie's curry over rice at the same time they were going nuts over the beer.

I enjoyed my dinner and then Debbie and I started drinking gin and tonic and we talked until about 2 a.m.  Two or three times I refreshed my gin and tonic with gin only, foregoing the tonic, and Debbie and I did something we hadn't done since June: we had a party. 

Three Beautiful Things 09/12/2021: Leaving the House Fresh, Sitting Still, Great Vegan Meal

 1. I didn't do it very quickly or efficiently, but I got things as cleaned up as I'm capable around the house over the last three or four days. I created towers out of cat food tins and I changed both of the litter pans. I tried my best to leave things easy for Paul, Carol, and Christy as they work together to take care of Copper and Luna in my absence. 

2. Christy, Carol, and I drove to Spokane and visited Manito Park. My favorite time in the park lasted about fifteen minutes when I simply sat still in the Japanese Garden and enjoyed the calmness of its ponds and the placid ducks gliding from place to place.

3. Christy has been wanting to thank Carol and me for our help making Everett's Celebration of Life happen and tonight she treated dinner at Allie's Vegan Pizzeria and Cafe. I started off with a can of Montucky Cold Snack, a crisp, cold, and refreshing lager beer. I then dove into my falafel rice bowl, a delicious meal and I accepted Christy's offer to enjoy a slice of her veggie pizza. 

Christy and Carol then dropped me off at the Airport Ramada Inn so I could rest up and sleep a few hours before taking the shuttle to the airport at 4 a.m. 

Three Beautiful Things 09/11/2021: Women's Final, Great Sour Beer, More Preparation

1. I was eager to watch the women's championship match of the U.S. Open this afternoon. Both players, Emma Raducanu and Leylah Fernandez, as teenagers, both unseeded in the tournament (in fact, Raducanu had to play three qualifying matches to get in) had been playing with great spirit and talent. Because they'd never competed in a Grand Slam final before, it was nearly impossible to know how they would respond to playing in such a huge match in New York City before a large stadium of people and with such intense media interest surrounding them.

They played beautifully. Although Raducanu swept the match, 6-4, 6-3, the contest featured great shot making from both players, a handful of swings in momentum, and both players' joy and fearlessness. I couldn't say exactly what gave Raducanu her edge. From my amateur perspective, she played with a bit more sharpness, seemed fresher than Fernandez, and she seemed to be the player more often on the offensive, applying more pressure. 

It was fun to watch both players. They have a full range of shots, are imaginative, are capable of working out difficulties as they arise during a match, and are stubborn, strong-willed competitors.

Honestly, as a sports fan, I watch certain contests wishing both players could win -- I definitely felt that way today. 

2. While watching the tennis, I went on a bit of a beer drinking adventure. For months, since Meagan and Patrick  brought them to the house, I didn't think I wanted to drink these two bombers of sour ale that have been chilling in the fridge.

Today, I decided to give drinking them and a try and it was awesome.

First, I slowly worked my way through Iron Goat's Blackberry Apricot Sour, a fruited golden ale. I loved the fruit flavors and the beers mouth puckering qualities, but even more I enjoyed the great mouthfeel of the golden ale. Sometimes sour ales can have the same texture as wine, but I like it when they are a bit heavier in the mouth and this one was just that and a pleasure to drink

Next, I cracked open my bottle of Block 15's Turbulent Consequence, Cherry Pit. It's a beer brewed in the classic lambic style, aged in barrels for two years. 

It, too, was an awesome beer. I loved how the natural sweetness of the cherries played off of the sourness of this beer, making each sip a wonder. 

I only had one brief moment of sadness as I drank these beers. I enjoy drinking beer with other people much more than drinking it alone.  I would have really enjoyed the company of another person who enjoys sour beer today -- but I don't know anyone, especially not locally. 

Oh, well. I had some really fun times in Eugene drinking sour ales with others, especially during the May 3, 2014 Wild Ale/4th Anniversary blow out at 16 Tons. I've never had another beer tasting experience like that one -- I think 70 different beers were available that day, served in small tasters -- and I was in 7th heaven.

3.  I rested up after the tennis and the beer and then returned to getting the house ready to leave. I moved Copper and Luna's litter pans and dry food feeder up to the main floor, gave the basement floor one last sweep, and got some laundry going. On Sunday morning, I have a few tasks to do on the main floor and then everything should be in good shape to pack my backpack and take off in the afternoon with Christy and Carol. 

Three Beautiful Things 09/10/2021: Cleaning the Basement, Djokovic and Medvedev Advance, More Trip Talk

1. I made a ton of progress today cleaning up the dust in the basement. I also filled up a garbage bag, vacuumed Debbie's space, and moved glass jars to a more suitable shelf. I have a bit more sweeping ahead of me and I'll clean both litter boxes, change the litter, and bring the boxes upstairs. I'll return them to the basement when Debbie, Gibbs, and I return home. 

2. In men's U.S. Open action, the first match featured Daniil Medvedev sweeping Felix Auger Aliassime in straight sets, 6-4, 7-5, 6-2.  Medvedev was the picture of consistency and his unwavering, sometimes suffocating return of serve and terrific service game visibly wore down Auger Aliassime who, by the third set looked demoralized and worn out. 

In the next match, Novak Djokovic earned his ninth career trip to the U.S. Open finals in his career by defeating Alexander Zverev, 4-6, 6-2, 6-4, 4-6, 6-2. 

This match was epic. It featured some of the longest and most dazzling rallies of the tournament, rallies in which both players dug in, stubbornly returned shot after shot, often with a stunning variety of angles, spins, and imaginative returns. 

When Zverev won the fourth set, his serve seemed in indomitable shape and, in our texting about the match, Byrdman and I agreed that Zverev has seized momentum going into the fifth set.

But, then, Djokovic did what makes him tennis' premier player.

Somehow, he elevated his game and, at the same time, it appeared that the magnitude of entering a fifth set against Djokovic rattled Zverev's composure. Djokovic served and dominated the first game and then turned around and broke Zverev's serve. As he does so well, Djokovic then applied full court pressure, holding serve in the third game and once again breaking Zverev's service in the fourth. 

As expected, Djokovic held his serve in the fifth game and his 5-0 lead looked insurmountable. 

But, Zverev gathered himself, held serve and then broke Djokovic's serve, and, trailing 5-2, had another service game. This time, however, for the third time in the set, Djokovic broke Zverev's serve and secured the match.

I'll be in Spokane having fun with Christy and Carol on Sunday afternoon and will miss the final.

And here's what I'll miss: Novak Djokovic will be playing Daniil Medvedev not only for the U.S. Open Championship, but, if he wins, he will have won all four major tennis tournaments in a calendar year, a feat last accomplished by Steffi Graff in 1988 and, on the men's side, last achieved by Rod Laver in 1969. 

Should he win, he would join Steffi Graff as the only two players to win the Grand Slam on three different surfaces, clay, grass, and hard court. 

Should he win, Djokovic would claim his 21st victory in a major and surpass Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal to become tennis history's leader in major wins on the men's side. Margaret Court remains the overall leader in major wins with 24. 

Needless to say, Sunday's match is of mammoth importance in tennis history and to complete the Grand Slam and take the lead in men's major titles, Djokovic will have to defeat Medvedev who is the tournament's #2 seed and the world's second ranked player.

Perfect, isn't it?

Number one must defeat number two in order to secure an incomparably lofty place in the history of men's tennis. 

I'll look forward to Byrdman texting me updates while I'm on Sunday's sibling outing! 

3. I talked to Debbie a couple of times today and our travel itinerary is still up in the air. We had a couple of breezy, no pressure, what the hell conversations about possibilities we've discussed in the past and added new possibilities to the conversation. Every option we discuss is excellent and, no matter what we finally decide, we plan to enjoy scenic variety and beauty and visit breweries and tap houses across the USA, especially those friendly to having Gibbs join us. 

Three Beautiful Things 09/09/2021: Writing About Luna and Copper, Teens Rule the U.S. Open, No Plan

1. I felt like Fyodor Dostoevsky today as I spent a few hours writing a detailed document for Christy, Carol, and Paul about Copper and Luna. I know I could have just written "feed them twice a day, keep their water fresh, and scoop the litter pan", but I wanted them to know what my experience with Luna and Copper has been the last couple of months and what that might mean for their care. 

I got a little carried away. 

2. Two factors contributed mightily to my enjoyment of the semi-finals of the Women's U.S. Open tennis tournament today. 

First, over the course of the hours I tuned in, I slowly drank three cans of Rogue's Honey Kolsch and with each glass I poured myself, I began to taste flavors I hadn't paid much attention to before. The best I can do to describe my experience is that underlying its floral elements and that wonderful hit of honey was an earthiness. I enjoyed how this earthiness complemented that bit of sweetness and contributed to the beer's balance. 

Secondly, the winners of today's matches, both teenagers, played brilliant tennis and did so with fearless verve. 

As the first match got underway, it looked like the older, more experienced, and more physically powerful and imposing Aryna Sabalenka was going to crush Leylah Fernandez. With powerful serves and forehand winners, she won 12 of the set's first 13 points and roared out to a 3-0 lead which soon became 4-1.

Remarkably, the inexperienced Fernandez, 19 years old, made adjustments on the fly. If, at first, she was put on her heels by Sabalenka's powerful serves and strokes, she seemed to adjust to them and she started throwing a variety of shots Sabalenka's way, seeming to frustrate her opponent. Then, at a crucial juncture (was it the 5th game?), Fernandez, serving as if she had nothing to lose, blasted four aces, two of them unbelievably on second serves. She was back in the match and, coming from behind, won the first set tiebreaker.

In the second set, Sabalenka seemed a bit more relaxed than in the late stages of the first set and powered her way to a 6-4 win.

The conclusion of the third set was painful to watch. Sabalenka lost her nerve and when she needed to hold serve, down 4-5; she double faulted twice in row, lost the game, set, and the match. 

In the next match, the even younger Emma Raducanu, 18, also faced an imposing opponent, the hard serving Maria Sakkari. Before even entering the 128 player field at the U.S. Open, Raducanu had to win three qualifying matches. Once in the field, she's been on a tear. She's won every set, mowed down every opponent, and, today, she completely flummoxed Maria Sakkari, winning the match 6-1, 6-4 in a match void of any real tension or drama regarding the outcome. 

Emma Raducanu is the first player in the history of Grand Slam tennis to reach a final as a qualifier. 

Saturday's final between Leylah Fernandez and Emma Raducanu promises to be both epic and unpredictable. Having watched both women play today, I know I have no idea what to expect, aside from one inevitability: both players will bring great enthusiasm and electricity to the match -- we tennis fans also hope that they will also bring their best tennis and entertain us with an exciting and nail-biting match.

3. If you want to know well ahead of time what is going to happen in your life, then you don't want to work things out with either me or Debbie!

Today, Debbie and I talked on the phone about what we might do when we depart Valley Cottage next week and begin our trip back to Kellogg.

We ruled out going to Canada and that's firm.

Otherwise, I'd say we won't know until we are together next week whether we'll tour New England, go to Niagara Falls, head west immediately for Debbie's brother's lake place on Lake Michigan, or so something we haven't even thought of yet. 

One thing is fairly certain: we will not be able to say, "Well, things didn't exactly go according to plan" since, as of now, there is no plan!

Three Beautiful Things 09/08/2021:Cleaning the Kitchen, Djokovic Triumphs, Covers on Deep Tracks

1. The kitchen surfaces look better. The inside of the refrigerator is cleaner. Most of the counters are spiffed up. I have things packed up to go to the basement. The stovetop is clean and so is the refrigerator's outer surface. I have some counter cleaning left and the kitchen floor.

Then I'll move on to the basement, living room, bathroom, and bedrooms.

I'm trying to make the house as clean as possible for Debbie's return.

2. I broke away from house cleaning around six o'clock and watched Novak Djokovic methodically and surgically wear down Matteo Berrettini in four sets. In a grueling first set that lasted an hour and seventeen minutes, Berrettini broke Djokovic's service in the set's 11th game and won the set 7-5, but it was a Pyrrhic victory. Two factors made it so: first, Berrettini expended a lot of mental and physical energy winning the set. Djokovic is in exquisite physical condition and expends energy efficiently. Losing the first set actually began the match-long process of Djokovic wearing Berrettini out. Second, as he always seems to do, Djokovic absorbed information about his opponent in the first set, seemed to let what he learned sink in at the break between sets, and translated what he learned into how he played Berrettini for the rest of the match, resulting in his 5-7, 6-2, 6-2, 6-3 victory -- in fact, I'd say that after the first set it was a crushing victory, dominant one. Djokovic's precision and relentless return of shot after shot by Berrettini demoralized his opponent. Djokovic won this match both physically and emotionally. 

Now, on Friday, Djokovic's faces the 2021 Olympic gold medalist, the player who defeated him in the semis in Tokyo, Alexander Zverev. Zverev has won his last 16 matches and so brings a ton of momentum and confidence into this standoff with Djokovic. 

3. It's been about nine years since we last subscribed to SiriusXm radio and I've enjoyed getting listening to their channel, Deep Cuts, again. On occasion,  Deep Cuts goes "undercover" and the channel's hosts play songs that other than the original artists have covered. I wish I'd written down some of the cover tunes I heard today -- I remember they were songs by Bob Dylan, JJ Cale, Joni Mitchell and others and the covers that intrigued me most were performed by folk rock groups -- I'm not sure I heard any Fairport Convention today, but I heard Renaissance and others that gave familiar songs a very unfamiliar sound.   

Three Beautiful Things 09/07/2021: Shipping My Clothes, No-Recipe Chowder, Honey Kolsch and Musical Euphoria

1. When I fly into NYC on Monday, I'll be taking four different fairly short train trips in order to arrive at Nanuet, where Debbie will pick me up. I know how to get around in each station. Three of them will involve escalators, buying a ticket from a machine, and some walking. I decided it would all go more smoothly if I didn't have a suitcase to lug/roll around. So, today, I finished packing a box with my clothes and a duffle bag and I shipped them by UPS to Josh and Adrienne's house. The box should arrive on Tuesday. Now all I have to carry in the airports and the train stations is a backpack.

2. I'd say that over the past nearly forty years that I've been doing a lot of (not gourmet) cooking for myself, I've been very reliant on recipes. But, since Debbie purchased and mailed to our house the book No-Recipe Recipes by Sam Sifton, I've become a wee bit more imaginative and confident that I can whip up some meals without a recipe.

Today, I thawed out a container of crab stock. Later on, I chopped an onion and a few stalks of celery and cooked them for a while in olive oil. I took a handful of frozen shrimp out, put them in the pot and thawed them and cooked them until pink with the onions and celery. So they wouldn't get too tough, I removed the shrimp and set them aside. I added flour to the onion and celery, seasoned the mixture with Old Bay seasoning, salt, and pepper, let that cook for a while, and then poured the stock over the mixture. I thought I was doing really well as the onion and celery boiled away in the stock and suddenly remembered I had intended to add potatoes to this dish. So, I quickly chopped up some little Yukon golds, got out another pot, and boiled the potatoes, drained them, and added them to the original pot. Before long, I added in the remnants of a pint of heavy cream I'd bought a week ago and added whole milk. I returned the shrimp pieces to the pot.

I succeeded. I cooked up a pretty good batch of shrimp chowder without a recipe.

Later, I looked at the fish chowder entry in No-Recipe Recipes. It recommended starting with chopping up bacon and cooking it or melting a chunk of butter in the pot (or both).

I'll keep that in mind next time around.

3. I prepared to make this chowder by creating a half an hour or so of mild euphoria for myself.  I bought my first ever six pack of Rogue's Honey Kolsch at Yoke's, poured myself a glass, and, also for the first time, I listened to Pink Floyd's 1970 album, Mettle. As the album got underway with the instrumental "One of These Days", I realized I'd heard it at one or more of the Pink Floyd tribute band concerts I've been to and I enjoyed flashing back to those shows and the same thing happened as I listened to "Echoes".

By the way, Rogue's Honey Kolsch hit the spot for me. The honey makes it the sweetest Kolsch I've ever tasted and I enjoyed the many floral dimensions of this beer as well. It's not over the top sweet, but the sweetness asserts itself enough that next time I drink a can, I'm going to put on Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass's version of "A Taste of Honey"! 

The euphoria continued at 7 p.m. when I tuned into Bill Davie's 58th Tree House Concert. As the concert started, I was also watching a U. S. Open tennis match between Felix Auger-Aliassime and Carlos Alcaraz. I muted the sound on the tennis match, was enjoying Bill's early bird special, his great energy, and his getting his concert underway when the tennis match suddenly ended because Carlos Alcaraz had a leg injury that was too painful for him to play. 

So I turned the sound on the tv on really low to find out why the match ended and listened to Bill at the same time!

Before long, I muted the tv again and enjoyed Bill's selection of songs, that he seemed to be managing his physical difficulties well, and his reading of some of his recent poetry and a smattering of the great Philip Levine's poems. 

It was a good afternoon and evening for experiencing euphoria! 

Three Beautiful Things 09/06/2019: (RIP Michael K Williams) Walk Uptown, Family Lunch, Robert Altman and Novak Djokovic

Note: Before I get to the more obviously beautiful things of Sept. 6th, I want to say a word about Michael K. Williams. Williams died today, at age 54, in an apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. 

I know Michael K. Williams played other roles. It's my loss that I've only seen him play Omar Little. 

I spent significant time today mourning his death and did so by going to YouTube and watching numerous clips of Michael K. Williams in his role as Omar Little in The Wire. If you've watched The Wire, you know that Omar Little was a ruthless killer with a moral code he lived by; he understood that everyone, gangsters, drug dealers, cops, lawyers, you name it, were all, in the own way, in the game. He tells a corrupt lawyer from the stand in court how they are both in the game: "I got the shotgun. You got the briefcase." Omar Little stunned viewers the first time he kissed his boyfriend. His love for Honey Nut Cheerios charmed me. Omar Little's complex character worked because of the life Michael K. Williams endowed him with. It was thrilling to watch as Williams brought to life the sensitivity, ruthlessness, emotional depth, intelligence, moral compass, and simple pleasures of Omar Little. 

1. For some unknown reason, I don't enjoy walking east from the house on Cameron Ave and I don't enjoy walking south on Hill St from the four-way stop to about Bunker Ave.

It's dumb.

But, it's enough of an impediment to me getting back into a walking habit that once again today I parked the car at the Kellogg City Park and started my walk from there.

I headed east on the Trail of the CdAs and left the main trail and followed a spur that heads uphill to an area behind the old YMCA building. I make my way to McKinley Ave. and walked on up Main St. to just past Radio Brewing and then walked back though the uptown area to the corner of McKinley and Hill, walked down the hill with Teeters Field to my right, and strolled over to The Bean where I bought an everything bagel with lox, cream cheese, capers, and onion. 

This walk took me just under a half an hour to complete. I walked uphill and tested my occasionally sore knee by walking downhill (my knee didn't hurt) . I surveyed both the new businesses trying to gain traction uptown and the empty spots where nothing is happening. 

2. Christy, Carol, Paul, and I met on Christy's deck for lunch soon after I returned home. We hadn't joined together for dinner on Sunday, so this was our family dinner for the week.

I've been pretty much out of it over the last week. I asked Christy and Carol to catch me up on the past week's events.

We talked, then, about a wide variety of things: friends recovering from illnesses, the aftermath of the fires up the river, Riley's new harness and his improved behavior, book sale this week at the library, Carol and Paul's entrepreneurial plans, Debbie's and my unformed plans for returning to Kellogg, and more.

It was a mild, sunny afternoon on Christy's deck and a lot of fun to yak together and get caught up.

3.  I spent some time in the Vizio room late this afternoon and on into the evening.

I decided to end, for the time being, my DVD subscription to Netflix, but I had one more DVD to play and return.

So the second thing I did in the Vizio room was pour myself a pint glass-sized gin and tonic and thoroughly enjoyed watching Robert Altman's 1982 movie version of Ed Graczyk's play, Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean.

I first saw this movie in Portland with Jenny, a friend from the U of Oregon I've completely lost touch with, and one of the pleasures of this movie is remembering not only how blown away I was by the movie, but also how much fun I had with Jenny. 

The movie has stuck with me over the years.

It takes place in a single setting, a rundown Woolworth's store in McCarthy, Texas and the occasion of the story is a 20 year reunion of the Disciples of James Dean upon the anniversary of his death, and moves fluidly between events in 1955 and those in 1975.

I hate to give away details of stories when I write about movies and I'm not going to give away the (to me) astonishing things that happen in this film.

What I can say is that the story is built around long held illusions different characters have lived by over the years. And, I don't mind saying that a character who left McCarthy many years ago returns for the reunion and begins to peel back the layers of self-deceit that have shaped these characters' lives.

The illusion shattering character is played beautifully by the remarkable Karen Black and she's joined by an ensemble of characters played brilliantly Sandy Dennis, Cher, Sudie Bond, Kathy Bates, Marta Heflin, and Mark Patton. 

When I love a song or a movie, it's almost never for objective reasons, almost never because I've applied some set of standards to the song or movie and determined whether it met those standards or not.

So, my love for Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean is rooted to a significant degree in what was going on my life when I saw it.

In January of 1983, I taught a four week course at Whitworth called "The Family in American Drama" and it was a mighty success, thanks largely to the openness of my students and their willingness to dig into the literature as well as their own family experiences.

American playwrights throughout the 20th century, at least through the 1970s, were obsessed with the way illusions shaped the American family, both individual illusions and illusions family members bought into together. 

In Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, for example, Martha insulates herself from difficult truths about her life by living by illusions she's created (what Prof. Clark Griffith called the Grade B movie in the character's mind). When, in the play's final act, her husband George pierces through the illusions to the truth Martha can hardly bear, the play's creator, Edward Albee entitles this act, "The Exorcism". 

Albee portrays exorcising self-deceit as painful, but ultimately liberating. 

His insight, and similar insights found in other plays we studied that month, invigorated me and I brought that invigoration to the movie theater when I saw Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. So when I loved seeing this movie, I was also loving being friends with Jen, the espresso coffee we enjoyed together afterward when we discussed the movie, and the exhilarating time I'd had in class in January exploring the very ideas portrayed, to my surprise, in the movie. I was loving being in 1983 Portland, spending time with Terry and Nancy Turner, anticipating a trip to Powell's bookstore, and the other pleasures of being on a short break from my work in Spokane. 

This is why I could never be a music, film, or literary critic. I cannot, nor do I try, to separate my personal experience from the song, movie, or book I'm writing about. So if someone asked me, well, apart from the good feelings you had about Jen, Portland, and that Jan term class, do you think Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean is a good movie?

I couldn't say. 

I love the cast, the performances, the concept, the directon, the movement of the movie and it's all tied together with the excitement I felt when I was twenty-nine years old and I felt that excitement again as I watched the movie tonight, thirty-eight years later, the excitement of all the things going on in my life that I loved when I first saw this movie. 

So when I teared up tonight, was it Karen Black's acting that moved me? Was it the fragility of Sandy Dennis' character? Was it the pain Cher's character finally allowed herself to feel? Or was I longing to be back in an art movie house in Portland in 1983? Or back having the time of my life as a young instructor at Whitworth College?

I can't sort that out.

Don't really need to.

Before I watched the movie, Byrdman had texted me that Novak Djokovic dropped the first set of his fourth round match with newcomer, 20 year old Jenson Brooksby. "What???" I said to myself and settled in to watch the rest of the match.

The second set was epic. It turns out that while the 6'4" Brooksby is not a powerful player -- the speed of his serve is especially pedestrian -- he's very mobile, a terrific counter puncher, meaning he was getting to and effectively returning a ton of Djokovic's shots. The two played one of the most entertaining games I've  ever seen in the second set, a test of both players' nerve, stamina, and patience, that lasted twenty minutes, took 24 points to settle, and ended in Brooksby breaking Djokovic's serve. 

That game, while it seemed like a high-water mark for Brooksby at the moment, turned out to be the beginning of his downfall. He expended a lot of energy to win it. Djokovic immediately answered by breaking Brooksby's serve and the match's momentum shifted in Djokovic's favor. From that point forward, Djokovic continued to wear down Brooksby and soon it was clear that Brooksby couldn't compete with Djokovic over the long haul of the match and it was over in four sets.

Three Beautiful Things 09/05/2021: ZOOMing History, Patty Ice Triumphs, Rice and Vegetables and Egg

1. This morning the Westminster Basement Study Group met on ZOOM. We missed Colette and Bridgit, so Val, Bill, Diane, and I shouldered forward on our own and our discussion was exciting and stimulating.

I've initiated conversation in our salon for the last few months by making some prepared remarks about the literary genre of comedy, but, last time we met, we drew that study to its open-ended conclusion. We'll continue to return to it, but it won't be our focus.

Today, we went back to what we did for months in our discussions -- we just jumped in and started talking about whatever came up.

Val triggered a fun and in depth discussion of the nature of the study of history. Val is currently enrolled in an online graduate program at the Univ of Nebraska-Kearney in history, working toward a master's degree.

She is reading a book on historiography,  Thinking About History by Sarah Maza. Along with English, I majored in history at Whitworth and, looking back, I wish I had taken a course in historiography because as I've grown older, my interest has been as much in how history is explored and presented as much as in what we learn from history.

The how and what of history are inseparable, really, because what a historian understands history to be and what methods the historian employs in studying it shapes, then, the historian's presentation of history.

In our conversation, as we focused on the question of just what we mean when we talk about history, we all agreed that in many (but not all) of our history courses, the focus was on leaders, great events, and the story of nations -- especially the USA.

Today we talked about how history can also be told by the study of a wide variety of things like, say, artifacts or by studying things people do -- like work, cook, recreate, etc. -- and, that to bring history alive, historians often draw upon the methods of fiction writing. In fact, the more we talked, the more we realized that much of the history we read (or watch on film) is a kind of competition between different people's stories of what happened and the competing interpretations of those stories and that, if we are observant, we can see, as current events unfold and are reflected upon, we see conflicts arise centered on whose story will eventually become the dominant narrative. 

This discussion led us (and I didn't steer us this way!!) to Shakespeare.

In October, we Basementeers will be discussing the first season of The Hollow Crown, a BBC adaptation of Shakespeare's second tetralogy of history plays, Richard II, Henry IV, parts 1 and 2, and Henry V.

One of the questions we'll definitely discuss is the great difference between history, as told by Shakespeare, and history as we know it in the post-Enlightenment age of social science. 

I'll leave it that. 

I'll pick up this thread again in October when the Basementeers' discussions about Shakespeare and history get underway.

Oh! For some reason, our very stimulating discussion about history and Shakespeare and the power of narratives made me thirsty for some late morning beer. 

I gave in. 

For the first time in my life, I cracked open a stubby bottle of Full Sail's Session Hefeweizen. It was a perfect 11:00 a.m. (or so) beer. It was light, but not shallow. I loved the texture of this Hefeweisen. Its mouthfeel was full and pleasurable and it tasted great -- so great that I enjoyed a second. I could have downed a third, but then I'd be out of Hefeweizens and I decided to let discretion be the better part of valor and stopped at two.

2. In fact, upon ending our ZOOM session, when I headed into the Vizio room to watch the final round of the Tour Championship golf tournament, I drank no more beer. 

I wanted to give this final round of golf of the PGA season and the competition for the FedEx Cup my full attention.

Similar to a week ago, at the BMW Championship, when Patrick Cantlay and Bryson DeChambeau separated themselves from the field and competed one on one until Cantlay won on the sixth playoff hole, today, Cantlay and the world's top-ranked player, John Rahm separated themselves from the other golfers and competed head to head as this tournament concluded.

Although the contrast between Cantlay and Rahm wasn't quite as pronounced as the difference last week between Cantlay and DeChambeau, they do play different games. Rahm is a powerful player who also is imaginative and deft creating shots around the green. 

Cantlay is powerful enough, but Rahm outdrove him on nearly every hole. Consequently, once again this week, we got to see Cantlay's skill at striking slightly longer irons into the green. But, even more, we got to see Cantlay's calm control of himself when in trouble.

For example, on the 15th hole, a par 3, Cantlay's tee shot wandered to the right and landed just short of the hole's water hazard. Rahm hit his tee shot on the green and left himself a makable birdie putt. Cantlay gathered himself, hit his second shot close to the pin and made his par putt. Rahm missed his birdie.

Then, on the 17th hole, Cantlay once again lost a tee shot to the right -- at first it looked like he had hit it far right. But, his shot struck a tree and ricocheted in a favorable direction and he had a clear shot to the green, albeit from a difficult lie in the rough's wiry Bermuda grass.

From the rough, Cantlay hit a wayward shot well left of the green and his ball lay on a sketchy patch of turf again.

Meanwhile, Rahm drove into the middle of the fairway and hit a splendid second shot on the green and, again, had a very makable putt for birdie.

Cantlay's third shot didn't reach the green and was tangled in thick grass on the green's edge. He managed to chip out of this tough lie to within about six feet of the hole. 

If Rahm were to make his birdie putt and if Cantlay were to miss his bogey putt, Rahm would make up three strokes on this hole and his two stroke deficit would become a one stroke lead.

But, Rahm's putt slid by the hole. He parred it.

Cantlay, true to form -- his new nickname is "Ice Patty" -- sank his bogey putt.

He managed to only lose one stroke to Rahm and headed into the 18th with a one stroke lead.

On the par 5 18th, Rahm hit a monster drive, in perfect position to reach the green in two.

Cantlay, under great pressure, responded by hitting his longest drive of the week. It was straight, landed past Rahm's shot, and left him in an even better position to reach the green in two.

Rahm then struck a laser that nearly hit the pin, but rolled just off the green.

Cantlay answered with a splendid six iron that left him twelve feet shy of the pin.

Rahm had to chip his shot for eagle and his masterful attempt eased past the hole.

Cantlay, then, had two putts to win the title -- and he executed them.

Man, I had fun watching the close of this tournament, fun made even more enjoyable by having Byrdman and TATurner on hand for our exchange of insightful and witty text messages.

3. Was it possible that this great day of intelligent conversation and scintillating golf could get even better?

Well, I would say it could have -- if we'd had Sunday family dinner. 

But, we took today off, and so, if I were to keep the momentum going, I was on my own.

To be honest, I didn't quite succeed! 

This day peaked out at about 3:00, but no problem.

I very much enjoyed sautéing a small chopped onion, adding fairly finely chopped cauliflower and broccoli to it, adding a clump of leftover jasmine rice to that, cooking it all up, and adding, in the end, a broken egg. Once the egg cooked, I put this quasi-stir fry in a bowl and seasoned it with Bragg Liquid Aminos.

I loved this dinner -- not as much as ZOOMing, not as much as the two Hefeweizens, not as much as the golf, but I loved it and felt nourished as I spent the rest of the evening relaxing with an acrostic puzzle or two. 

Three Beautiful Things 09/04/2021: Saturday in the Park, Dr. Sardonicus at The Lounge, Travel Dreams

1. Things in my oddball little pandemic life here in Kellogg go even better than usual if I get out and walk. I didn't get out much at all in July and on into August because of the brutal heat combined with the smoky conditions. Once the conditions calmed down, inertia set in. Maybe that's a fancy word for laziness.

Well, whatever the reason for not getting out, I broke the spell today. I drove over to the Kellogg City Park, looked at the work being done to restore the Scout House, strolled on down to what I call the Little League field and recalled the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat (1963-66), and then walked down the Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes to where there's a spur that goes uphill to behind the museum. I walked east on McKinley, turned north and walked down the Hill Street hill, and soon I was back to the Sube again. 

It felt good and this route felt like a good way to get myself going before I feel like returning again to the Health and Wellness Trail over by the high school.

2. I have said it a million times, but I guess I'm going to say it again. I don't like the local Covid numbers I check daily at the Mayo Clinic, so I am back to exercising what they call an abundance of caution about where and when I go places here. 

It being Labor Day Weekend and knowing that things are usually pretty slow any way at the Inland Lounge when it opens at 3 p.m., I popped in to see Cas and enjoy some ice cold Miller beer, the Champagne of Beers. 

I was right. Things were very quiet in the Lounge. I had a great time talking about baseball and music with Cas, highlighted by Cas playing two cuts on the e-Jukebox from Spirit's superb album The Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus: "Nature's Way" and "Mr. Skin". 

3. Debbie and I got on the horn this evening and batted around more ideas of just what kind of traveling we might do when we leave Cottage Valley and make our way back to Kellogg. It's fun to think about going places we haven't been before and working out what's possible. 

Three Beautiful Things 09-03-2021: Buried Treasure, DJ Marty Stuart, 1981 Top 40

1. For many years, before he died in 2017, Tom Petty recorded Buried Treasure, a weekly radio show for SiriusXm. I'm very happy that SiriusXm is maintaining the Tom Petty channel and today I tuned in to an episode of Buried Treasure.  

The only real similarity of Buried Treasure to Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour (also broadcast on SiriusXm from 2006-09) is the staggeringly eclectic taste in music and depth of knowledge both Petty and Dylan possess. 

Today the Tom Petty Channel aired Show #071 which was originally broadcast on April 17, 2008. 

Highlights of the show for me? "You Keep Me Hangin' On" by Vanilla Fudge. "Jump Into the Fire" by Harry Nilsson. "War" by Edwin Starr. "Spoonful" by Howlin' Wolf. "Deportee" by The Byrds. 

But, best of all, I enjoyed the wit and mirth of Tom Petty himself.

2. After Buried Treasure, I listened to a regular Tom Petty Radio feature, Tom Petty Radio Guest DJ.

I listened to Marty Stuart take over the controls for an hour and it was divine. Not only was it thrilling to hear a musician of Marty Stuart's stature proclaim that Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers was, in his estimation, the best rock n roll band of all time and not only was it thrilling to hear Marty Stuart break down and discuss Tom Petty's genius as a song writer, it was also thrilling to hear the cuts Marty Stuart decided to play. 

I have trouble keeping up with the wide world of music! There's so much out there! Until today, I didn't know Marty Stuart was a member of a band called The Fabulous Superlatives. During his DJ stint, Marty Stuart played a recording of the Superlatives playing a dynamic, fiery, imaginative version of  "Runnin' Down a Dream". As he introduced it, I wondered how they would cover Mike Campbell's exquisite guitar solo and, oh! my! did I ever get an answer as Marty Stuart ran away with it on his mandolin. 

I also thoroughly enjoyed the story Marty Stuart told about how Johnny Cash came to record the song "Rusty Cage". Stuart then played Johnny Cash singing "Rusty Cage" backed by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Marty Stuart. Hearing Stuart's story and then the song within the context of this hour of songs curated by Marty Stuart invigorated me. 

3. Later in the afternoon, I decided, for no really good reason, to listen to the countdown on the Classic Rewind Channel of what the channel's listeners voted as the top 40 albums/cassettes forty years ago in 1981.

1981 was a most memorable year in my life, a mixture of difficulty and rupture at home -- my wife and I began our separation which led to our divorce several months later -- and of successful work at the University of Oregon.

But, as I listened to this countdown, nothing took me back to 1981. I didn't connect any memories or feelings with Journey, Sammy Hagar, Triumph, Rush, Foreigner, Pat Benatar, etc. or the Eric Clapton or Santana music on this countdown. 

I'm not sure what I thought I might connect with as I decided to listen to this countdown.

I got I guess what I'd call a kick out of listening to this music -- a lot of it was very melodramatic, some of it almost operatic, and other songs were boisterous anthems to the world of rock n roll itself -- I'm thinking of "For Those Who Love to Rock (We Salute You)", "Jukebox Hero", and "There's Only One Way to Rock". 

I might have been listening mostly to music from the 70s in 1981. I might not have been keeping up very well with what was contemporary that year -- or, it's possible, I was listening to music released in 1981 that was different than the listeners of the Classic Rewind channel. 

But, whatever I was listening to, if it was songs on this 1981 Top 40 Countdown, they didn't make an impact on me forty years ago. 

But, I think other stuff did. 

Three Beautiful Things 09/02/2019: Dental Spa, Prichard Tavern After Surveying Fire Damage, Back to Grateful Dead Nights?

1. I started off the day at 7 a.m. at the dental spa. I am indescribably grateful that dentistry is so much less painless than when I was younger. I've been under hygienist Kathy's care for several years now -- even before I moved to Kellogg, while living in Greenbelt, I saw her when I visited Mom. Under Kathy's care, I've taken better care of my dental health and today was a breeze: my teeth are clean and I don't have any problems. It was a relaxing and encouraging forty-five minutes in the dentist chair. 

2. Ed swung by and we headed over Dobson Pass, on up Beaver Creek Road, and headed to and little past Murray. We surveyed, as best we could from the car, the fire damage up the river. We could clearly see how close the fires came to where people live and to businesses up the river and we got a pretty good idea of how the fires traveled. 

Today, things up there were calm, beautiful really. It was remarkable to me that things were so chaotic just a short time ago. Yes, the charred trees, the irregularly blackened landscape, and the smoke rising from spots that are still hot were evidence of what's been going on, but, today, it was a sunlit, fairly cool, and calm day upriver. 

After tooling around for a while, Ed and I stopped, as planned, at the Prichard Tavern, one of my favorite spots in North Idaho.

Aside from one guy planted at the end of the bar, the place was empty, but soon a couple of high-charged partying women in their twenties waltzed in and started downing hard liquor. The bartender was a peer of theirs and Ed and I got a kick out of their profane stories, reckless and careless attitudes about all sorts of things, and couldn't help but think back to days when we were in our twenties and could be a little more reckless and carefree ourselves.

But, more than these loud, f-bombing, entertaining youth was good at the Prichard Tavern.

I drank a couple of perfectly chilled bottles of Miller Genuine Draft and ordered a fully loaded, perfectly cooked Blue Cheese and Bacon hamburger with fries. It was an awesome lunch. I beamed all through it. 

Ed and I finished our food, told the bartender how much fun we'd had, tipped her as well as we could given the cash we had on hand, and headed downriver, on back to I-90, full of good cheer and knowing we'd just had another memorable visit to the Prichard Tavern. 

3. When Debbie bought our Camry back in July, it included a trial subscription to Siriusxm radio. I was a devoted listener to Siriusxm for nearly ten years when we lived in Eugene -- I had it available in the Honda and I had an indoor satellite radio as well. Today, I went online and subscribed so that we'll have satellite radio beyond the expiration date of the free trial and I linked our subscription to our Alexa app and so I can listen to satellite radio at home, too. 

I might go back to doing something I really enjoyed back in Eugene: listening to the Grateful Dead channel while I sleep at night. I've always enjoyed listening to the Grateful Dead as a lullaby and if I keep their music on during the night I sometimes have trippy Grateful Dead dreams and sometimes a song I really love, like "Scarlet Begonias" or "I Know You Rider" or, if I'm really lucky, a spacey "Dark Star" will come on and urge me to stay half awake and half asleep and enjoy them in a slightly altered, mildly euphoric, natural state.