Three Beautiful Things 02-27-2022: Reunion Project Kicks Into High Gear, Bob Dylan in My Head, Thai Curry Dinner

 1. I shifted the project for the KHS Class of 72 I volunteered to carry out into high gear today and contacted many classmates, reminded them of the reunion's dates (July 15-17), and asked whether they will come, might come, or won't be able to come. When it comes time to send out registration forms, we'll send them to the "yes" and "maybe" people and not clutter up the inboxes and mailboxes of those who tell us they can't make it.  If you happen to be reading this and haven't heard from me, if I have your email address or if I can reach you through Facebook, you will get my note. I just got started on this project today and have quite a few more people still to contact. 

Lots of bonuses today. I made some new Facebook friends. I had some really positive exchanges with different classmates. I also am starting to get a sense of what attendance might be like in July. This project is off to a promising start and I'm enjoying working on it. 

2. I know when a song is stuck in my head I'm supposed to call it an ear worm. To me, ear worm says it's maddening not to be able to get the song to quit playing. What's it called when I am happy the song keeps playing over and over? I don't know, but whatever it's called, for the last day or two I keep hearing Bob Dylan's track "Duquesne Whistle" repeating itself and I'm enjoying it.

3. I had fun fixing a green Thai curry for Debbie and me late this afternoon. I tried a couple of new things. First, when I heated up the curry paste to start, I combined it with fresh squeezed lime juice. That worked. So did thinning the sauce at the end with crab stock (rather than water or boxed chicken stock). Tonight's curry was meatless -- red and yellow mini-peppers, red potato, green beans, and spinach. Served over jasmine rice, it was a satisfying meal and I doubled the recipe so we can eat this curry sauce again one day.

Three Beautiful Things 02-26-2022: *Ikiru*The Movie --What's It Mean to Live?, Watching *Ikiru* Again with Commentary, Balance

 1. On one of the most mind boggling Saturdays ever in college basketball, featuring upset after upset after upset, I didn't watch a single second of action.

Instead, I tuned into the Criterion Channel. Once again, I listened to Bill Hader talk for two and half minutes about his experience with Akira Kurosawa's movie, Ikiru (1952). Then I watched this masterpiece.

Translated into English, "ikiru" means to live. Kurosawa's movie is a study of Kanji Watanabe, a longtime civic bureaucrat in Tokyo, who finds out he has stomach cancer and will die in about six months. This news awakens him to how he's existed as a dead man walking for most of his life and now he is determined to learn what it means to live and to act on what he learns. 

I'm going to leave my comments about the movie's plot at that in case anyone reading this post decides to watch this movie. I don't want to give anything else away. 

I will say, though, if you love the beauty of black and white film making, Ikiru is exquisitely filmed. Likewise, it's powerfully acted, with very little sentimentality. Ikiru also gives its viewers a detailed picture of post-WWII Tokyo, of the influence and impact of the USA's occupation of Japan and reforms the USA instituted.

In making this movie, Kurosawa drew inspiration from Tolstoy's novella, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, another study of a character coming to a deeper understanding of what it means to live as he dies of a terminal illness. About eleven or twelve years ago, I included The Death of Ivan Ilyich in my Survey of World Literature syllabus and I'm disappointed that I was ignorant of the movie, Ikiru. The two works would have paired beautifully.

As I watched (and, as it turns out, rewatched) Ikiru, other stories and movies sprung to mind. Certain scenes and interactions between characters brought to my mind vignettes from the Japanese series, Midnight Diner. Its treatment of the grind, of the deadening impact of office life, of the longing for something more reminded me of the Japanese movie, Shall We Dance? The movie's portrayal of paralyzed and entrenched civic bureaucracy brought to mind the movie Brazil. The movie's scenes of the suffocating office where Watanabe and his fellow bureaucrats worked got me thinking again about Herman Melville's portrayal of the stultifying environment and tedious tasks in a Wall Street lawyer's office in "Bartleby, the Scrivener". 

2. The Criterion Channel not only features the movie, Ikiru, it also features a separate selection featuring the late film scholar Stephen Prince providing superb commentary on the movie as it plays, mostly without sound. 

I decided to watch Ikiru again and listen to all that Stephen Prince had to say about the movie. Prince's discussion of Kurosawa's filmmaking techniques, his illuminating comments about Kurosawa's philosophical, social, sociological, and spiritual explorations, and Prince's broader comments about some of Kurosawa's other movies enthralled me.

I wished I were young again. 

When I was in my 20s, 30s, 40s, and maybe even my 50s, I used to be able to watch as many as four movies in the same day, used to be able to stay up past midnight enjoying films. 

This evening, though, after two viewings of Ikiru, after spending five hours with this movie, my mental energy was depleted. Yes, I was wound up, stimulated, my mind full of impressions and thoughts about Ikiru, with other thoughts about Bob Dylan as well as the Grateful Dead trying to muscle their way into my stream of consciousness. 

So how did I settle down and ease myself to sleep? 

I scooped out the clumps in Copper and Luna's litter pans, crawled into bed, and had Luna climb on my chest and Copper settle in near me, but not on me. Copper and Luna helped bring me back to earth and helped stop all the whirring and activity going on in my head.

3. Something else helped bring me down to earth. In the middle of the afternoon, Debbie took some donations up to St. Vincent de Paul's and then she read for a while at the Depot and then dropped in at the Lounge. She texted me and stopped me from making dinner because she was going to bring home Seafood Lo Mein from Wah Hing. 

Debbie returned home. I broke into the takeout box of seafood and noodles and suddenly satisfied my physical appetite along with being in the midst of feeding my spiritual and mental hunger by diving into Ikiru.

Balance. 

Delicious food. Stimulating cinema. Big questions about life. Keeping an eye on basketball scores. Scooping. Settling down with Copper and Luna. Going to sleep. 

Yes! 

 

Three Beautiful Things 02-25-2022: Alone with the Grateful Dead, 50th Reunion Project, *Rain/Trains* and the "Duquesne Whistle" Replay

 1. I had the house to myself today. Debbie subbed out at Canyon Elementary. I was one day behind in my blog and it took me all of the morning to write two posts. The Grateful Dead helped my efforts. I replayed Jeff Harrison's Thursday night Deadish show. I also wrote Jeff an email telling him (or reminding) him of the pleasure I take listening to the Grateful Dead while sleeping and the wild and wonderful effect it has on my dreams. 

2. I'm working on a project for the KHS Class of 1972 50 year reunion. It's being held July 15-17, 2022 and I am figuring out whom I do and don't have contact information for and I'd like to see if I can begin to find out which classmates are coming, might come, and not coming. My initial plunge into this project wiped me out this afternoon and I joined Copper and Luna in the bedroom and enjoyed having them close to me or on me as I fell into a deep sleep -- without the accompaniment of the Grateful Dead! 

3. On Thursday night, I thoroughly enjoyed Daniel Mckay's episode of Hard Rain and Slow Trains: Bob Dylan and His Fellow Travelers. Tonight, when I hit the hay, I put my ear buds in and listened to this episode again. It's likely that this is an episode I'll come back to often. It focuses on the first track of Bob Dylan's 2012 album, Tempest, a song I'm falling head over heels for, entitled "Duquesne Whistle". The song itself has a lot of deep history and in this episode Dan plays train songs and other tracks from way back in time that significantly enhanced my enjoyment of "Duquesne Whistle" (written by Dylan and Robert Hunter). When Dan plays the "Duquesne Whistle" track from Tempest toward the end of the show, it bristles with energy, American music history, and, for me, romance, with sweet feelings roused by the sound of the train's whistle, by the thought of one's lover being on board, and by having the whistle blow my blues away.  

Three Beautiful Things 02-24-2022: Escape to Spokane, Armload of Beer, Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead on Blissful Thursday

 1. I picked up Ed around 9:00 in the Camry and we enjoyed a day of escape. First, we descended upon the Spokane Tribe Casino -- I was making my first visit here -- and we played around for a while and enjoyed an excellent lunch at the Three Peaks Restaurant. Next we drove a couple of miles toward Spokane and dropped in at Northern Quest. I played for a while, exhausted my modest budget, and hung out in the Turf Club Sports Book, watched some ESPN, and took a nap in a very comfortable chair. Ed joined me after a while and we both bet 20 bucks on a team to win the men's basketball NCAA Tournament. We both wanted to bet on a team with medium long odds. I put 20 down on Texas Tech and Ed bet on Illinois.

2. On the way back to the Silver Valley, we stopped in at Pilgrim's Market in CdA so I could so a little stocking up on beers unavailable here in Kellogg. (Note to self: check out the beer selection one of these days at the bottle shop at Oliver's Mercantile.) I bought an armload of Imperial IPAs and a Triple IPA and I bought a couple of cans of Bombastic Fifth Anniversary for Nancy, knowing she loves stouts and hoping she enjoys this over the top beer that has slumbered in both rum and bourbon barrels. Debbie hankers for these power-packed IPAs and they come in can sizes that are perfect for her and me to split. So, for today, I put my SAVE THE PORTER campaign on hold, but it'll come roaring back before long.

3. Blissful Thursday was, once again, a source of great pleasure, a lot of learning, and deep relaxation tonight. I took my laptop into the bedroom, joined Luna and Copper on the bed, plugged in my ear buds, and spent three hours, starting at 8:00, listening to tonight's episode of Daniel Mackay's Hard Rain and Slow Trains: Bob Dylan and Fellow Travelers and then, at 9:00, to two hours of the Grateful Dead on Jeff Harrison's superb show, Deadish.

Both shows always open up new avenues in my mind. 

You see, I don't have deep and detailed knowledge about either Bob Dylan nor the Grateful Dead.

Tonight, Dan began what (I think) will be a once a month focus on one track from Bob Dylan's album, Tempest. 

Tempest was released in 2012 and so Dan is commemorating its 10th anniversary.

Not surprisingly, given my state of Bob Dylan innocence, I've never listened to Tempest. 

Therefore, Dan's deep dive into the song's opening track, "Duquesne Whistle", a collaboration between Bob Dylan and Robert Hunter.

Being a train song, "Duquesne Whistle" adds another branch to the massive family tree of American train songs. Because I don't take notes (especially while lying down with Copper and Luna) while listening on Blissful Thursday, I can't provide details of the great old trains songs nor the great Jelly Roll Morton song that Dan played as a way of not only placing Dylan/Hunter's song in its historical place, but also of helping us experience early recordings that influenced Dylan's composition of this song. 

Dan played a small handful of different versions of "Duquesne Whistle". I loved that first of all he played the musical theater version of the song from Girl from the North Country. Later he played Benmont Tech's cover, followed by another version by Ed McKendry. Late in the show, with all of this splendid preparation, we got to hear Bob Dylan perform "Duquesne Whistle" on the Tempest album itself.

Tonight, Jeff did not play a "Deadish" show -- no, it was wall to wall Grateful Dead.

By some kind of cosmic coincidence, possibly a miracle, the Grateful Dead played superb shows on February 24th back in the 1970s.

Jeff played a sample of the Feb. 24, 1973 show in Iowa City by opening with a monster jam from that night.

He then transitioned to the Feb. 24, 1974 show at the Winterland Arena and for the next hour and 40-45 minutes played gorgeous selections from that night, from a great four hour Grateful Dead show.

I went to a run of Grateful Dead shows back in December of 1990 with Jeff -- was that when he introduced me to Richard Thompson on the drive down or back? 

In 1990, I was in the midst of a decade long abstinence from alcohol and I'd never been into weed or any psychedelic drugs.

Any ecstatic experience I had at those shows, therefore, was brought on by the music alone.

I discovered during that run of shows that if I gave myself over to the Grateful Dead's music, it relaxed me, sometimes put me to sleep, and, when I did fall asleep, I had remarkably pleasant dreams.

I later was able to approximate this experience when we lived in Eugene and used to listen to Sirius/XM radio's Grateful Dead channel and move in-between waking and sleeping, between enjoying my state of mind in the waking world and returning to those ecstatic dreams when I fell asleep.

Well, tonight, I once again drifted in and out of sleep as the Grateful Dead played in my ear buds and, when I slept, mostly during a sublime "Dark Star", I floated on a magic duvet ride of pleasure and pleasant vibes, making my listening experience an exquisite trip into the music and out of my usual waking self. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-23-2022: Reunion Planning at the Hilltop, City Limits Lunch, *Stevie* and Art House Movies

1. This summer, July 15-17, 2022,  the Kellogg High School class of 1972 will be holding its 50th high school reunion. Today, Stu, Lars, Diane, and I met with the chef and manager at the Hilltop Inn in Kingston to iron out details of the dinner we plan to have there on Saturday, July 16th. I'm going to hold off on discussing those details until everything is finalized and the registration form is ready to be posted and mailed out, but today it felt like we made a significant step forward in our planning and I'm ready to start reaching out to my classmates, getting the word out about the reunion dates, and trying to get a sense of who will come and who would like registrations forms sent to them. 

2. Diane drove me to the Hilltop meeting. Afterward, because we want to buy beer from North Idaho Mountain Brewing in Wallace, I said to Diane that I thought I'd go up to City Limits one of these days, test a few beers, and see what beer would most likely have the broadest appeal for our reunion. She replied that we ought to go up there right now. I thought that was a great idea, suggested that we get a hold of Debbie and ask her to join us, and that's just what happened.

We went to City Limits. We sampled beers. We enjoyed lunch. We had a fun time yakkin'. It was a fun and delicious way to round out our work on making plans for the reunion. 

3. I returned home and before long retired to the Vizio room and finished watching the movie, Stevie.

In it, Glenda Jackson portrays the life, musings, and poetry of English poet Stevie Smith (1902-1971).

I know I mentioned in my last blog post that I saw Stevie at the Magic Lantern in Spokane sometime between 1982-84. 

Watching it again brought to mind how Spokane's Magic Lantern and Cinema 7 and the Bijou in Eugene awakened me to ways of making movies that were new to me, intellectually and emotionally adventurous, and that required of me concentration, often patience, and willingness to deal with serious subject matter in ways most (not all) of the movies I'd seen in mainstream theaters didn't.

It's hard to believe that it's been nearly 50 years since I started watching movies for reasons other than escape and fun entertainment. Yes. I do enjoy watching movies for those reasons, too, but a movie like Stevie, one that explores the music and rhythms of Stevie Smith's poetry, that portrays her lifelong relationship with the aunt she lived with for decades until the aunt died, that deals squarely with loneliness, death, longing, and eccentricity, a movie like Stevie is the most satisfying and stimulating for me.  

I find movies like Stevie -- and many of them are international movies -- both satisfying and unsettling. Many of these movies move along slowly.  For example, Stevie rarely takes us outside the flat that Stevie and her aunt live in. There's little physical action, per se, and no real plot either. Frame by frame, the movie moves slowly and more deeply into the inward life of Stevie Smith and we hear her poems, her short, often biting, most often dark, compact poems. 

Tons of serious, often dark, always probing international and American movies are available on the Criterion Channel. I learned about more of them today as I listened to two more episodes of "Adventures in Moviegoing" one featuring Bill Hader, the other, Julie Taymor. 

These interviews have inspired me to watch any number of movies. I think I'll turn next to some of Akira Kurosawa. 

It's been a while. 

I'd like to add, if anyone is still reading this!, that not all the international movies I watch or have watched are dark.

I should mention that Stevie has a number of light and endearing scenes that take place between Stevie Smith and her aunt.

I like to watch the carnival worlds of Fellini, the whimsy of some of the French New Wave movies, and other independent or international movies that are lighter, farcical, and stylish in comic ways. 

Just one problem with watching movies. I can't read books and watch movies at the same time, nor can I watch college hoops. 

Oh well. Long ago I accepted that I can't do it all.

Three Beautiful Things 02-22-2022: Adventures in Movie Going, OMG! *Hopscotch*, Glenda Jackson as Stevie Smith

1.  I retired to the Vizio room today. I've missed watching movies. I've also missed surfing the offerings of the Criterion Channel. I spent quite a bit of time looking at the vast number of Criterion collections currently available, quite a bit of time reading summaries of movies, short and feature length, that I didn't know anything about.

The Criterion channel offers an ongoing feature called, "Adventures in Movie Going". Its premise is to present an interview with persons well-known in the movie world who talks about movies that have had a lasting impact on them. 

First, I listened to Adam Arkin interview his father, Alan Arkin. Alan Arkin reached back as many as 80+ years and talked about the power of Lost Horizon and Of Mice and Men. He opened my eyes to Alec Guiness in The Horse's Mouth and reminded me of a movie from the late 80s that I've never seen, Running on Empty. In his discussion of these and other movies, Arkin disclosed his personal reasons for loving these movies, but also let us in on how he values complexity in movies, movies that peer into the grayness rather than present clearcut visions of good and evil. Adam Arkin is every bit the sharp thinker that his father is. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to their discussion and enjoyed having movies I've never seen, and in some cases, never heard of, brought to my attention.

Second, I listened to Alicia Malone interview Edgar Wright. I've only watched one of the many movies he's directed. I haven't seen Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz, but one afternoon about nine years ago, Mark Stern and I went to a matinee showing of The World's End, a movie I wasn't quite prepared for as I watched it, but that I enjoyed more and more as it settled into my mind over time. 

I've never seen any of the movies Edgar Wright discussed, but his enthusiasm for these movies piqued my curiosity. I've never seen Bergman's Persona. I've never seen, nor I had I heard of, Sapphire, Beat Girl, Black Narcissus, or The Earrings of Madame de . . . among others. It was fun to see clips from these movies, listen to Wright pinpoint their genius and their impact and influence on him, and to listen to him refer repeatedly, off the cuff, to how he has devoted much of his life to viewing and enjoying a wide range of movies. 

2. Well, it came time to quit listening to people talk about movies and to actually watch a movie and a half myself. Right now the Criterion Channel features a small collection of Glenda Jackson movies. I wasn't really in the mood for watching the sexual complexity of Sunday Bloody Sunday nor did I feel like entering into the excesses of Ken Russell's The Music Lovers, but watching Hopscotch felt just right.

I don't entirely trust this memory, but I think I saw Hopscotch sometime in 1980 or 1981 with Terry and Nancy Turner and my first wife. I remember it as part of a double feature with Starting Over (Burt Reynolds, Candice Bergman, Jill Clayburgh). 

That memory might be off, but not my memory of finding Walter Matthau and Glenda Jackson a smashing pair in Hopscotch, nor is my memory of laughing out loud many times during this movie.

Now, 40+ years later, would I enjoy this movie again? 

YES!

(Whoops! I just looked back in this blog. I watched Hopscotch on 08/22/2014. But I forgot. It was as if it had been 40+ years.)

I had a great time tonight. Walter Matthau plays a CIA agent, Miles Kendig, who has been removed from the field and assigned an office job. I'll say little more than this: the change of job is unacceptable to Kendig and for the rest of the movie he exacts revenge upon his superiors, drawing upon all of his many years of experience as a spy. Glenda Jackson plays Isobel von Schonenbert, an ex-spy and a wealthy widow. Kendig and she are longtime lovers. She is integral to the variety of ways Kendig exacts his revenge and frustrates the CIA brain trust. 

The ease, comfort, and mutual enjoyment between Jackson and Matthau was fun. Jackson's Isobel von Schonenberg is brilliant, acerbic, playful, and cultured. Matthau plays the brilliant Kendig and the number of pranks he pulls off effortlessly, almost casually it seems, and it's a great pleasure to watch how these two characters enjoy one another and turn a movie that is any many ways a spy thriller into one that is  sophisticated and sexy. It's a brilliant comedy. 

3. I then turned my attention to Glenda Jackson's portrayal of the poet Stevie Smith in the 1978 movie, Stevie. I remember going to this movie at the Magic Lantern in Spokane some time between 1982-84 and thinking, at the time, that it was a perfect example of why I love small, independent, art house movies so much.

I only got half way through Stevie tonight before deciding to hit the hay, but I'll finish it and reflect more on it -- and my love of movies like this one --  in my next 3BTs blog post.  

Three Beautiful Things 02-21-2022: Snow and Cold, Copper and Luna Get Their Annuals, Cincinnati Chili Family Dinner

 1. We woke up this morning to snow falling fast, oh, fast and a with several inches on the lawn, sidewalk, and streets.  My approach to shoveling is to get to it when the snow isn't very deep and shovel repeatedly -- for other people, their approach is to wait until the snow stops and then shovel once. 

When I started shoveling this morning, it was the deepest I've shoveled all winter and was challenging for me. But, I persisted. I finished at our house and at least shoveled pathways over at Christy's. 

2. I didn't finish at Christy's because Copper and Luna had an appointment at the veterinarian for their annual vaccinations, blood screen, and wellness exam. The also had their nails/claws clipped. I'll find out later about the blood work, but Dr. Cook was pleased with what he saw when he examined them and I had positive answers to the various questions he asked. 

Later, I finished shoveling at Christy's house. 

3. Tonight we had a fun family dinner. Debbie decided to take on the task of making Cincinnati chili. When we had Cincinnati chili back in late December with Patrick and Meagan, it was with Skyline chili  sauce out of a can (and it was delicious) that Patrick and Meagan brought with them. Debbie made sauce today from scratch and we transported the sauce, beans, chopped white onions, a block of medium cheddar cheese to grate, and oyster crackers over to Carol and Paul's.

We set out mixed nuts for appetizers and I mixed everyone either a Manhattan or an Old-Fashioned.

Paul made a smashing cabbage salad.

Christy brought a bottle of red wine and one of white. She'd read that both wines paired well with Cincinnati chili.

Out in the kitchen, Debbie set up an assembly line of Cincinnati chili ingredients.

First, we all put a layer of spaghetti in the bottom of our bowl.

We put sauce over it.

The sauce had kidney beans it it, but if we wanted more, Debbie made more beans available.

Next, was another choice, the chopped white onion.

Last, Debbie had grated a generous amount of medium cheddar cheese so that we could all pile cheese over the top of our dish.

Debbie also set out oyster crackers for those of us who wanted to put them atop the cheese.

The Cincinnati chili sauce is much more Mediterranean than the Texas-style chili so many of us are used to eating with beans. It's seasoned, along with chili powder, with allspice, anise, and other more Mediterranean spices. The sauce doesn't have whole or diced tomatoes. Rather, in making it, Debbie began by heating up tomato paste and adding water to it. 

We all loved it.

I had liked the canned sauce from Skyline a lot back in December and I enjoyed Debbie's sauce even more. One day, I will jump into the fray and make a batch of Cincinnati chili sauce, too.

Carol made a very tasty cherry pie for dessert (it was, after all, President's Day). 

We had a good time talking about the latest developments around the Silver Valley, Wordle, dog news, books for children and young adults, and a whole lot more. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-21-2022: Luxury Imperial Stout, Movies on ZOOM, Crab Chowder Feed!

1.  Early this afternoon, after getting myself cleaned up, I popped open a pint-sized can of Bombastic Brewing's Fifth Anniversary, an Imperial Stout aged in rum and bourbon barrels for a year and weighing in at 12% ABV. On Thursday, Ginger poured Byrdman and me a sampler of this mighty ale so I knew what was coming this afternoon. The Fifth Anniversary is not a balanced beer and Bombastic is proud of that fact. It pours very dark in the glass with a brief root beer looking head and feels thick and luxurious in the mouth. The rum barrels aging gives Fifth Anniversary a welcome sweetness, the bourbon aging adds booziness to the beer's profile, and I enjoyed the licorice taste that came on the back end of each sip. After pouring Debbie a sample of Fifth Anniversary, I filled one of our ByGeorge Brewing (of Munising, MI) glasses with the idea that this intense, over the top, even foreboding glass of rich darkness would last me for much, if not all, of today's ZOOM session.

2. Diane, Bill, Bridgit and I jumped on the ZOOM machine around 2:00 and talked about cats and dealing with stuff and who had seen Ted Lasso other things for a while, but before long Diane gave our yakking a fun and fascinating focus. 

Diane discovered an article online about Brett Goldstein's podcast "Films to be Buried With", here. 

Every episode features Brett Goldstein asking his guests a list of questions about their experiences with movies. Diane posed each of the questions to us and we had a lively and invigorating discussion of movies  as we answered them. If you'd like to know more about films you might select to be buried with, here is the list of questions:

What was the first ever film you saw?

What was the film that scared you the most?

What was the film that made you cry the most?

What film is TERRIBLE but you love it?

What is the film you once loved but watching it now you realise it’s terrible?

What is the film that means the most to you? Not because of the film itself, but because of the memories you have of it.

What is the sexiest film?

Which film do you most relate to?

Which film is objectively the greatest ever?

Which film is the one you’ve watched the most?

What’s the worst film you’ve ever seen?

What is the film that’s literally made you laugh out loud the most?

Answering these questions with Bill, Diane, and Bridgit exposed something about me that I already knew was true: the movies that stay in my memory, that have had the most impact, and that I care the most about were, for the most part, made between about 1967 to about 1980-4. I loved what happened in movies as the restrictions of the Hays Code (or decency code) were challenged, relaxed, and, in 1968, eliminated. 

Free of these restrictions, some of cinema's best (in my view) movies emerged: Bonnie and Clyde, The Godfather, The Godfather, part II, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Harold and Maude, The French Connection, Apocalypse Now, All the President's Men and many others.

When our session ended, I thought about how I think I need to reassess the answers I gave today and look closely at movies made, say, from 1985-present, movies that I know I've enjoyed but that don't immediately come to mind when I enter into great discussions like Bill, Diane, Bridgit, and I had today.

3.  This afternoon, Diane contacted Debbie and she had a slight post-Crab Feed change of plans in mind. Originally, she was going to make a hot crab dip with the fresh crab we had leftover from our high holy Saturday.

Her new plan was to have us bring some of the crab stock I've made in the past to her house and she and Debbie would team up to make crab chowder.

I pulled stock out of the upstairs freezer. 

Only later did I realize that I had pulled out a quart of clam stock, not crab stock. I vaguely remember steaming clams some time ago and the turning those shells into stock, but it wasn't on my mind when I pulled out the frozen quart.

But, the clam stock worked deliciously, the crab chowder was awesome, and Diane, Debbie, and I thoroughly enjoyed extending the crab feed another day --  and it won't end tonight.

We have leftover crab chowder and I have a gallon of shells to turn into more stock. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-19-2022 (A Kellogg High Holy Day): Christy Scores a Ticket!, Diane's Dogs Make Themselves at Home!, Take-Out Kellogg Elks Crab Feed Party

1. Friday, February 18th and Saturday, February 19th were two of Kellogg's most revered and celebrated High Holy Days: the Kellogg Elks Crab Feed.

This most holy of Kellogg days and most prominent of Kellogg social occasions began on a very unexpected note for our family. 

Let me explain: Stu shot me a message this morning. His daughter and grandson were staying at his home and this morning the grandson, Finnley, became ill. Stu didn't feel right about coming to Kellogg, even on this highest of holy days. He decided to stay home and help care for Finnley.

Stu also offered me his ticket if I knew anyone who might want to use it.

Well, as it turned out, Christy didn't have a ticket. 

I told Stu she'd most likely accept his offer. 

I was right.

More good news.

Ed had bought a fistful of tickets for different people and he was in possession of Stu's ticket.

All I had to do was vault into the Sube, rocket to Kingston, and have Ed hand me Stu's ticket.

I buzzed out to Ed's, got to see both Ed and Nancy, yakked for nearly an hour, and enjoyed some peanut butter bourbon poured over ice. 

It was a perfect start to this most holy of days.

2. Weeks ago, Debbie and I had decided that we wanted to exercise the take-out option at the Kellogg Elks Crab Feed and Diane also wanted to do take out. 

It was a little bit up in the air as to whose house we would eat at, but, as it turned out, Diane's floor guy stained her floors today so Debbie and I hosted the crab party.

Because her house would be inhabitable for several hours, Diane asked us if she could bring her four six week old puppies and two adult dogs to our house while we cracked and ate crab.

No problem!

So, shortly after 3:00 p.m., Gibbs' mom Chloe, the new mother, Olivia, and the four puppies (I never go their names straight) arrived with Diane and occupied the living room.

It was awesome -- well, for us humans it was awesome.

Gibbs was not as enthused. 

He was more confused.

But nothing bad happened. Gibbs hid under an end table at times, perched himself on the ottoman so he could survey the scene other times, and spent time in Debbie's lap. 

We humans, however, marveled at having these puppies at our party and very much enjoyed Chloe and Olivia joining in.

It was really fun, on this highest of holy days in Kellogg, to have our living room serve as a most hospitable dog pound for about five hours. 

3. Our take-out Kellogg Elks Crab Feed was perfect.

I picked up the crabs uptown outside the Kellogg Elks building (today it was a temple!). 

Diane brought a pasta salad.

Christy arrived.

I got out the crab cracking set of tools I bought for these high holy days a couple or three years ago.

Debbie, Diane, and Christy enjoyed a cocktail or two. I opened a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.

Before long, we were at it, cracking crab, pulling out the sweet meat, talking, laughing, having a great time.

Our take-out allotment provided us with plenty of crab and Diane took home some leftover crab with the plan of making hot crab dip at a later date.

I ended our night with a gallon sized zip lock bag full of shells to turn into stock. This makes me very happy. 

After dinner, we returned to the living room, enjoyed another drink or two, told stories, solved local and world problems, checked on college basketball scores occasionally, and had a fantastically fun party.

Our take-out Kellogg Elks Crab Feed was a blast, a total success, and, above all, supremely holy. 

Amen. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-18-2022: Satisfying Trip to the Dump, Luna's Been Restless at Night, I Listened Again to the "Stuck Inside of Mobile" Episode

 1. It turned into a comfortable, blue sky day today -- a perfect day to make a trip to the transfer station. I've been wanting to get our Christmas tree away from the side of our front porch. Carol and Paul also wanted to dispose of their Christmas tree. Christy had some cardboard I could put in her pickup with the trees and recycle.  I got all that done today. One easy trip was all it took and it was satisfying to clean things up a bit here at home and help Christy, Paul, and Carol do the same. 

2. Luna has been restless at night. On occasion, I've had to move her from the bedroom to the Vizio room after midnight just so I could sleep. I got to thinking about her restlessness and wondered if it might help her out if I spent more time with her in the bedroom during the day. I did that today and, sure enough, when I lay down this afternoon, she attached herself to me, purred long and deep, and licked me and gave me a few bites of affection. Once it was actually bedtime this evening, I hoped Luna would be more settled through the night. She was. Yes, she and Copper wanted a wet food breakfast at 3 a.m., but that's easy and eating early in the morning always helps Luna relax even more. 

I enjoyed a good night's sleep. From now on, when I do things like read books or work puzzles or listen to podcasts, instead of doing them in the living room, I'll retire to the bedroom with Copper and Luna. It's reassuring for them.

3. Last evening, on Blissful Thursday, as I've already written, I listened to Dan Mackay's hour long plunge into Bob Dylan's song, "Stuck Inside Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" on his radio show Hard Rain and Slow Trains: Bob Dylan and Fellow Travelers.

Today, I listened to the entire episode again.

As Dan conducted his guided tour through the nine verses, he left me thinking about Bob Dylan's songwriting in ways I never had before. This is a way of saying that I haven't ever thought a lot about his songwriting before -- and I can't really explain why. Somehow, over the years, I've never found a way in to Dylan's songwriting (poetry?).  But, today, Dan talked about "Stuck Inside Mobile . . ." using words like "surreal" and "absurd" and another commenter online described the song as being about an individual stuck in a purgatory. 

Since I was first introduced to the theater of the absurd back in 1974 and existentialism back in 1973, I've thought a lot about the inescapable disjointedness of human experience, the chaos we always live in and are always trying to organize, make sense of, impose order upon. 

I'm embarrassed to write what I'm about to say. I'm sure my good friends who have been savoring Bob Dylan's work for decades realized what I'm about to write years ago. But, it's common for me to be late to any number of parties, and I'm arriving really late at the Bob Dylan bash, but I'm stoked to be here.

Dan made me think, or helped me see, Dylan as an absurdist (or surrealist). The verses of "Stuck Inside of Mobile . . ." do not connect. Absurdism, existentialism, surrealism, whether expressed in paintings, plays, novels, or poems portray the disconnectedness of existence. Surrealism takes us into dreamscapes (or nightmare-scapes). 

Thinking of "Stuck Inside of Mobile . . ." as a disconnected series of short stories in a purgatorial setting made me think of the novel, Pedro Peramo, written by Juan Rulfo, and the experience of its main character, Juan Preciado, traveling to Comala, his deceased mother's home town,  in search of his father. Comala is a ghost town -- inhabited by actual ghosts and Juan Preciado confronts a number of spectral figures who exist in the purgatory of Comala. Much like the nine encounters Bob Dylan narrates in "Stuck Inside of Mobile . . .", Juan Preciado's encounters are apparently disconnected, but, in the end, they combine to portray the cruel, vicious, heartless history and deeds of the book's title character, Pedro Paramo. 

As I write this, I'm not sure what, if anything, the verses of "Stuck Inside of Mobile . . ." add up to -- unless I think of it as a gallery of pictures or stories portraying, one by one, loneliness, temptation, corruption, alienation, and other elements of the human experience that make life itself purgatorial, that make life itself absurd. 

My thoughts about this song are incomplete. No doubt they are flawed. But one of the reasons I write in this blog every day is to write about what I'm uncertain about, to expose what I'm thinking about, flawed as it might be, and have a record of my mind at work.

But, I will say this -- I'm fairly certain that Dan's work with "Stuck Inside of Mobile"  during Thurs. night's episode of Rain/Trains has cracked open a dimension of Bob Dylan's songwriting that I'd never taken the time to consider or think about before listening to this episode twice. 

I'm grateful for Dan's program and his insights and am eager to continue, after decades of being out of it, to experience Bob Dylans music and songwriting more fully and deeply. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-17-2022: Roamin' for Foam in CdA, *Hard Rain* in the Camry, Blissful Thursday Evening

1. Before my mop got too shaggy, I drove to Supercuts in Coeur d'Alene and arrived around 12:30. There was an immediate opening and I was in and out in flash.

I'd told Byrdman I was coming over and as soon as I left Supercuts, we met up at Growler Guys and immediately worked on sorting out the mind boggling, unpredictable world of college basketball.

Because I've been lying low for a while, I've slacked off on my campaign to SAVE THE PORTER.

I got back with it today, though, and ordered a pint of Revision Brewing's solid When the Night Falls porter. Yakking with Byrdman was so fun that I didn't give this beer very careful attention. I do know that I enjoyed it thoroughly. I wasn't in the mood for much bitterness and this porter pleased me with its smoothness and, as I remember, pleasing presence of chocolate (but it might have been coffee!).

Next, I ordered a half pint of a favorite beer from Breakside Brewing, the easy and pleasing Salted Caramel Milk Stout. 

Until it closed a few years ago, Byrdman and I enjoyed visiting Downdraft Brewing in Post Falls and yakking with Ginger Cantamessa, the brewery's owner and brewer. As we got to yakkin' with Ginger back then, we realized that she was married to Josh whose dad, Jeff (RIP, 06-29-2017), was my age, well-known to Byrdman, and a lifelong resident and prominent citizen of Wallace. Jeff  ran the Thrift Center grocery store in Wallace (later Harvest Foods).

Things didn't work out at Downdraft, but recently Ginger and Josh opened a new brewery in downtown CdA, Black Lodge Brewing located on Third St. between Lakeside and CdA Avenues. 

After we finished our beers at Growler Guys, Byrdman suggested we head down to Black Lodge. 

We did. The taproom was open. And, great news!, Ginger was pouring beer. 

Perfect.

Right now, as they get started, Black Lodge is pouring mostly other brewers' beer until they get their own beer is completely ready to serve. Upon arrival, we learned that Black Lodge was sold out of their own beer -- no problem -- the beers on tap were great offerings. 

I was especially happy that Black Lodge was serving one of my favorite wild ales, a throwback to the Belgian Blowouts at Bier Stein in Eugene: the mighty Duchesse de Bourgogne Brouwerij Verhaeghe, a Flemish red-brown ale that I think of as a sour ale, a most delicious beer. 

It astonished and delighted me that Black Lodge was pouring this awesome beer.

As we dove into our beers, another customer strolled in, a friendly forthcoming regular whom we soon learned is Ron Moore. We learned before long that Ron and KHS, Class of 71 stalwart, John Eixenberger, are friends and Ron called him to invite him down to Black Lodge because Byrdman was in the house.

John and Byrdman go way back and when John walked in they were very happy to see each other. They talked about a lot of things, including old times in Kellogg -- I especially enjoyed talking about Little League and Babe Ruth baseball and the great days of hoops at the YMCA. 

In the midst of yakking with Ginger, Ron, and John -- and making the acquaintance of Fred, a sous chef at Takara -- Ginger cracked open a can of Bombastic Brewing's divine 5th Anniversary Imperial Stout and poured us a taster of it. She also poured us a taster of an old ale (I didn't get the brewer's name) and it was like drinking a great slice of pie, like mince meat, and blissfully reminded me of the Block 15 Figgy Pudding Barleywine I enjoyed in January at Sixteen Tons in Eugene.

This is all to say that Byrdman and I had an awesome time this afternoon at Growler Guys and Black Lodge Brewing. If I lived in CdA, I'd be a regular at Black Lodge. I'm happy to know that two people I like a lot, Darrell Dlouhy at Daft Badger and Ginger Cantamessa at Black Lodge, both own and run breweries and I look forward to going to both places as often as I reasonably can.

2. Not only did I have an awesome time in CdA this afternoon, I had an awesome drive over and back. I drove the Camry. That meant I could listen to an episode of Daniel Mackay's Hard Rain and Slow Trains: Bob Dylan and Fellow Travelers by playing my phone through the car's sound system.

I scrolled back through the Hard Rain archive and decided to start listening to a series of episodes focused on Bob Dylan's fall tour in support of his album, Rough and Rowdy Ways. 

On my drive over and back, I listened to the episode, "Pregame". It aired on 10-28-2021, just days before the fall tour began. In this episode, Daniel puts the 2021 into historical context. With this tour, Dylan would be returning to the stage for the first time in 23 months and Dan looked back at other times in his career when Dylan didn't perform on stage for stretches of time. This episode also featured an interview with Jeff Harrison. Jeff talked about what he is looking forward to on this tour and Daniel asked Jeff to remember back to Dylan concerts he has attended over the last nearly 50 years. I thoroughly enjoyed Jeff's contribution to this episode and, later, I also enjoyed Dan's interview with Terry Gans, author of Surviving in a Ruthless World: Bob Dylan's Voyage to Infidels.  

So far, every episode of Dan's show has been superb. I know very little about Bob Dylan and I'm enjoying dipping into the Dylan universe and am overjoyed that Dan, and when I see him, Jeff, are serving as my guides.

3. If you follow this blog at all, you know that Thursday is Blissful Thursday for me.

Starting at 8:00 in the evening, KEPW-FM in Eugene (kepw.org) broadcasts Dan's Bob Dylan show for an hour and then broadcasts Jeff's show, Deadish, for two hours.

Tonight, Dan devoted his hour to Dylan's superb song, "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again". Dan played different covers of the song, guided us through the composition's nine verses, played two old tunes that Dylan drew upon when writing his song, and played the song as it appears on Dylan's dynamite album, Blonde on Blonde. 

All night long, after listening to this show, I had Bob Dylan dreams. My dreams were dominated by titles to some of Bob Dylan's songs. They just kept swimming before my eyes, as if I were being taken through a surrealistic retrospective of his entire career. Tunes played, too, but just fragments. I suppose my dreams were telling me that after decades of paying only casual attention to Bob Dylan that his stuff is starting to find its place inside me.

On his show tonight, Jeff opened by playing the Grateful Dead performing "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" on 12-31-89.

Jeff then continued his focus from a week ago on playing music by Black artists to continue to commemorate Black History Month.

He played a terrific series of Jimi Hendricks songs and, in the last hour, played an uninterrupted set of tracks from West Africa. 

Blissful Thursday blissed me out again. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-16-2022: Sweetening My Mood, Matinee Popcorn, Maker's Mark and College Hoops

 1. For much of the early part of the day, my mood and my outlook on life was out of whack because I woke up at 5 a.m. and couldn't get back to sleep. Late in the morning, I took a nap and that helped sweeten my disposition and as the day developed (with the help of two Maker's Mark over ice enhanced by Woodford Reserve Bitters), my mood improved. I was sure happy not to be stuck in a Lodi of moodiness all day long.

2. It helped me get out of Lodi to leave the house, gas up the Sube, buy a couple or three items at Yoke's, and pick up a bottle of Maker's Mark at the liquor store. But, even more, I think it helped when Debbie wondered if we could have some matinee popcorn. I do not remember the last time I popped us a couple hillocks of popcorn in the afternoon on a weekday, but that's just what I did today and my mood's ascension continued.

3. So the key to getting my head straight was simple.

A nap.

An outing. 

Some popcorn.

Some Maker's Mark bourbon with a few shakes of bourbon barrel-aged Woodford aromatic bitters added to it.

And, to top off my ascension: COLLEGE BASKETBALL!

First, hoops with popcorn.

Then, hoops with two of the aforementioned pours of bourbon and bitters.

Later, hoops with a romaine and jasmine rice salad.

The action today was really fun to watch.

I didn't see a lot of St. Johns' win over Xavier, 86-73, but it gave me hope that maybe the Johnnies can string together some late season victories and make a mark in the Big East Conference tournament in March. 

I paid much more attention to Rutgers' home tilt against Illinois. Rutgers got off to a slow start in Big 10 play, but coming into this game they had defeated three straight nationally ranked opponents and hoped to add another such victory over 12th ranked Illinois, the first place team in the Big 10.

The Rutgers' locomotive stayed on track. The Scarlet Knights pushed Illinois around, forced them into shots they didn't want to take, resulting in Illinois' poor shooting performance, and got balanced scoring themselves with four players in double figures. They secured a very strong 70-59 win. I hadn't seen Rutgers play for a while and I had no idea that their center, Clifford Omoruyi, had developed into such a springy force inside, not only freeing himself to score a variety of dunks and short shots in the paint, but snaring 13 rebounds and playing some decent defense against the Illinois strongman, Kofi Cockburn. The Rutgers defense is physical and stingy. They looked solid tonight on offense. It's a huge and very entertaining surprise. 

After Rutgers flattened Illinois, I tuned in to watch another physical and stingy defensive team, Texas Tech, play Big 12 powerhouse Baylor. Baylor's squad has suffered some costly injuries, but they are a deep team, and outplayed Texas Tech in the first half. 

But in the second half, the Red Raider defense dug in and Oral Roberts University transfer Kevin Obanor went bananas, scoring 21 points after the intermission, leading a Texas Tech surge that resulted in them defeating Baylor, 83-73. During the game, ESPN analyst Fran Fraschilla stated more than once that what he likes about Texas Tech is that their players "act unentitled". By that, he means that several of their players have come to Texas Tech from obscure programs, have played for junior colleges or small four year schools, schools without chartered transportation, top-notch facilities, superb food, and all the other amenities elite schools provide. In Fraschilla's view, now that players like Kevin Obanor and Adonis Arms have clawed their way to starting on a Big 12 team like Texas Tech, they play with gratitude, taking nothing for granted, and this attitude manifests itself in superb effort matched with what some might say is overachieving production. 

I watched Rutgers and Texas Tech win these games today and I wished both squads could play each other right away. I enjoy each team's hard-nosed style of play and would love to see how they match up with each other -- who knows? Maybe they'll face each other in the national tournament! 

Lately, I haven't been watching Gonzaga's games. Tonight, though, there I was, in the Vizio room, in front of the television, and I decided I'd watch the Zags in action.

I didn't think the result of this game was ever in doubt. Gonzaga defeated Pepperdine, 86-66. Pepperdine played much of this game with great energy. Their leading scorer, Houston Mallette, scored 25 points and Pepperdine had some flashes of really good play against the Zags. But, Gonzaga's superior talent, their speed, and their superb ball movement prevailed. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-15-2022: Refreshments in Wallace, Villanova Defeats Providence, Superb Soup

1. Debbie had some business to take care of in Wallace. Debbie completed her task and I visited Todd's Coffee and Bookstore in the Blackboard Market. I ordered a blueberry muffin and a 12 oz Americano topped off with half and half. The muffin was flavorful. I prefer denser muffins, however, to one's that are more like cake -- but, my limited experience in the Silver Valley has taught me that no matter where I order a muffin, it will be light in texture and resemble cake. I enjoyed my snack and, once I finished it, I realized that if I moved to a table near the window, the light was much better for reading and so I hopped over by the window and continued reading The Songlines.

2. Later in the afternoon, I flipped on the Vizio to watch the top two teams in the Big East, Villanova and Providence square off in Rhode Island. While the entire game was close, Villanova led almost the entire way, stubbornly defending its slim lead and time and time again when it looked like Providence might surpass the Wildcats, Villanova -- well, primarily Collin Gillespie (33 points) -- either made a crucial shot or warded off the Friars with a defensive stop. Providence scored most of their points from the field in the paint and had they complemented their inside prowess and drives to the cup with even an average number of conversions from beyond the arc, I think they would have won this game. But, alas, Providence shot their three pointers poorly and ended up losing to Villanova, 89-84. The two teams clash again at Villanova on March 1. 

3. Debbie thawed both a container of our homemade turkey stock and a container of turkey soup and made a delicious kale, turkey, and potato soup for dinner, a welcome source of warmth and comfort on a chilly day. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-14-2022: I Started *The Songlines*, Old Fashioneds, Salmon Family Dinner and a *Playboy* Story

1. I cracked open Bruce Chatwin's book, The Songlines, today and just got started reading it. I first heard about this book when I was employed at the U of Oregon Knight Library back in 1987-88. It's always been lurking in the back of my mind and Scott Shirk helped bring it to the front of my mind when he gave me a copy as a gift. I'm reading books as different from one another as I can, trying to expand my horizons, and, so far, The Songlines fits into my mission -- reading a book about Aborigines in Australia is definitely different from having read the novel, The Underground, a story set in the Silver Valley at the time of the Sunshine Mine Fire.

2. I made a quick trip to Yoke's and the liquor store to buy things Debbie needed for the Romaine wedge salad she made for family dinner and to buy Maker's Mark and Rose's Simple Syrup so I could mix Old Fashioneds for family dinner cocktails. Last week, I finished reading Stanley Tucci's book, Taste, and he includes a simple recipe for the Old Fashioned, one of his favorite cocktails. I followed it. All I had to do was put a teaspoon of simple syrup in a cocktail glass, shake some Angostura bitters in the syrup, pour in a couple shots of Maker's Mark, add ice, stir it for a minute or so, and then drop a Luxardo Gourmet Maraschino Cherry in the glass as garnish. 

It was fun to imagine enjoying an Old Fashioned with Stanley Tucci. I thought garnishing the drink with a Luxardo Cherry made a huge impact on the cocktail's flavor. We all enjoyed our drinks a lot.

3.  A while back, Carol and Paul asked that we have family dinner on Monday nights. So it was a happy coincidence that our dinner tonight fell on Valentine's Day. I am (and have been for years) a bit of a Valentine's Day grinch, so I don't really know what a good Valentine's Day dinner is. 

Christy, however, loves Valentine's Day and she was in charge of dinner tonight, so I'm assuming that our superb dinner tonight was a fit for the holiday! 

We started with the Old Fashioneds and Christy also made a fascinating appetizer called Everything Bagel Cumcumber Bits and it was, indeed, like eating an everything bagel with cream cheese on top of cucumber slice -- it was imaginative and delicious.

For our dinner, Debbie fixed a splendid and fresh Romain lettuce Wedge Salad. Christy prepared Greek Orzo to accompany the salmon she baked. The orzo and salmon were citrusy, thanks to generous amounts of lemon and lime, and also seasoned with a variety of herbs. Molly contributed a very tasty loaf of excellent bread. We drank some champagne with dinner (was that for Valentine's Day? 😅) and red wine was also available.

Carol presented a superb Mexican Chocolate Tart with whipped cream for dessert, providing a grand finale to an excellent dinner.

After dinner, we fell into conversation about great aunts and uncles on Dad's side of the family and told stories about Dit, Pink, Hattie, Esta, Esther, Mabel, and others. I really enjoyed that Christy and Carol didn't know, until I told the story this evening, that back in 1976 our Great Aunt Hattie hopped on a Greyhound bus in Tennessee and traveled to Spokane to see her sister, our Grandma Woolum. Aunt Hattie was a longtime Southern Democrat and a very proper Episcopalian. Georgia's Jimmy Carter was the Democrat's nominee for president in 1976.  Aunt Hattie was very proud of Jimmy Carter's achievement and learned that he had given an interview in a magazine she'd never heard of, Playboy. Somewhere en route to Spokane, she bought a copy of the magazine.

She read the interview.

The magazine's other content scandalized her and she assured us forcefully and in no uncertain terms, once she arrived in Spokane, that the first chance she got at a stop on the bus's route, she threw that awful magazine with all those awful pictures in a trash can.

Three Beautiful Things 02-13-2022: A 2021 Bob Dylan Retrospective, Imagine Golf Played During Dollar Pitcher Night, Pasta Dinner

 1. With the improved weather and less snow on the streets and sidewalks, the conditions are much better for taking walks. I'm hoping I switch soon to every day, but currently I'm going for a stroll every other day. It turns out my legs need a day of rest on the off days. My idea to listen to past editions of Hard Rain and Slow Trains: Bob Dylan and Fellow Travelers while walking has turned out to be a deeply satisfying decision.

I'm giving Bob Dylan's music more attention than ever thanks to Dan Mackay's podcast. I'm enjoying how Dan plays tracks from throughout Dylan's recording and performing career. Dan's commentary is informative and illuminating. 

Today I listened to the last episode of 2021, broadcast on 12-30.

Until listening today, I had no idea what had happened in the world of Bob Dylan in 2021, nor did I know that so many people connected to him in the world of music had died last year. 

Of course, I didn't take notes while walking and many of the names of the deceased are unfamiliar to me, but Dan played tracks that featured some of these musicians. (Oh! Wait! One of those who died was bassist Robbie Shakespeare. The one Dylan album I have a long history with is Infidels. I love Robbie Shakespeare's work on this album.)

I enjoyed all the music Dan played and especially enjoyed being introduced to "Key West (Philosopher Pirate)". It beguiled me. My plan is to return to it often. 

One last thing: I didn't know that Jeff Harrison had, in 2021, appeared as a guest on Dan's show. I don't remember the exact date, but I'll go back to this episode, listen again, and make note of the date of the Jeff Harrison episode. I'm eager to hear what Jeff and Dan said to each other in conversation.

2. Even those who are entirely apathetic about professional golf probably know that week after week professionals compete in a hushed environment. Tournament marshals signal for the gallery to be quiet as players prepare to hit shots off the tee, from the fairway, rough, or bunkers, and as they putt.

Not at the Waste Management Phoenix Open played on the TPC Scottsdale course. 

The tour's most raucous spectators, fueled by beer and other libations, pack themselves into three levels of grandstands enclosing the 16th hole and the players perform while the roaring never stops. This weekend I saw replays of two players acing the 16th hole. Exuberant, intoxicated spectators sprayed beer all over each other and down to the course itself and spectators threw beer cans and cups onto the course. It's crazy!

I watched the last several holes of today's final round. The tournament ended in a tie between Patrick Cantlay and Scottie Scheffler and, for the playoff, they played the 18th hole three times. It was sudden death.  Scheffler won it when, on the third playoff hole, he sank a birdie putt of about 25 feet and Cantlay missed a shorter birdie attempt. 

3. For dinner, I put some chopped garlic in hot olive oil. Once it was fragrant, I added diced tomatoes, black beans, half an onion chopped, and a hunk of butter into the sauce pan and let this cook and simmer for about 40 minutes. I boiled some penne, added some pasta water to the sauce, hoping it would help the sauce adhere to the penne. I grated some Parmesan cheese and that was our dinner tonight. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-12-2022: Kinship with a Midwest Truck Driver, A Mad Day in Hoops, Debbie Surprises Me

1. Jeff H.'s friend, Brian (whom I don't know) is a truck driver and on Thursday nights uses his cell phone to tune into Jeff's weekly radio show Deadish -- on KEPW-FM (kepw.org). This past Thursday, he couldn't listen live, but since the show is archived for two weeks, he listened to the archived file later in the night after getting a cell phone glitch figured out. I won't detail his description of driving on nasty roads from Eau Claire to Superior/Duluth nor his joy at listening to the music played on Thursday in commemoration of Black History Month. I'll just say that I was very grateful to Jeff for sending Brian's email forward to me and that I loved reading Brian's experience and loved being invited into Brian's enthusiasm for Jeff's set list, an enthusiasm I shared.

2. After watching a lot of college basketball today, it struck me how, yes, for the purposes of marketing the  conference tournaments and the NCAA tournament itself, it's effective and accurate to refer to the post season as March Madness. In reality, though, the madness of college basketball kicks in earlier than March. Today, lowly Cal traveled to Eugene and spanked the Ducks. It had looked like the Ducks were a team on the rise and they got routed. 

The struggling, but improving Butler Bulldogs bolted out to a huge half time lead against Marquette, a team that had looked like it was on the upswing, and weathered Marquette's comeback and beat the Golden Eagles. If you look to the bottom of the Big East standings, there sits DePaul in ninth place, one rung from the bottom, and at the top sits Providence. But, today, DePaul flew into Rhode Island and led Providence for most of the game, only to lose it in overtime. Rutgers is improving and surprised Wisconsin today. 

After earning a great win over Auburn earlier in the week, today Arkansas lost their game with Alabama. Tonight, USC was without their best player, Isaiah Mobley, and yet they tightened up their defense, got a monster performance out of Drew Peterson, and triumphed over UCLA, 67-64. 

It was madness today in college basketball. 

Teams like DePaul and Butler who have no chance of winning their conference or earning at-large bids into the NCAA tournament have begun to really find themselves at this late juncture in the season and are playing with determination, making life very difficult for teams who've had better seasons. That's what's fun about February madness. Lowly teams improve. Teams who've had better seasons get pushed hard, and are even defeated, by these improving teams. It's fun to flip on the Vizio, watch hoops, and have no idea what might happen in any given game. 

Well, so far, there's one team who has yet to confront much of a challenge as they play their conference schedule.

I didn't watch the game, but I know that while St. Mary's came back a bit on the Zags and reduced a double digit deficit to single digits, in the end, Gonzaga cruised to victory by a score of 74-58. 

It would be fun to watch Gonzaga play in a conference with teams strong enough to challenge them. So far, that's not true in the WCC where the Zags are undefeated and have won all of their conference games by wide margins.

3. Debbie stopped in at The Lounge either before or after a quick shopping trip at Yoke's and fell into a long conversation. She was going to be hosting Diane and Christy for an evening cocktail party and since her visit at The Lounge ran longer than she planned, Debbie purchased a surprise for the two of us.

She returned home with a take out box full of House Special Lo Mein from Wah Hing. 

What a great surprise! What a great dinner! 

Three Beautiful Things 02-11-2022: I Finished *The Underworld*, Walking with "Hello Stranger", Homemade Thai Curry

1. I finished Kevin Canty's Silver Valley set novel, The Underworld, today. It's a fictional exploration of an historic event, the Sunshine Mine Fire of 1972, and its impact on three fictional characters. While Canty gives over a portion of his novel to the mine fire and to two miners underground, much of his story focuses on his characters' lives leading up to the fire, during it, and especially in the mine fire's aftermath. These characters are Kevin Canty's creation and through them he explores the uncertainty, grief, and other emotions these characters and the mining community at large experienced after having lost family members and friends to the fire. 

2. I went out for a walk this afternoon. I continued to work my way from the present backward though the archive of Dan Mackay's brilliant podcast episodes of Hard Rain and Slow Trains: Bob Dylan and Fellow Travelers. Today, some brilliant musicians and thinkers accompanied me as I listened to the first episode of 2022 entitled, "Hello Stranger".  Daniel focused his show on songs and bits of writing dealing with strangers. He played great Bob Dylan selections. I don't have a set list, but I especially enjoyed hearing "Mississippi", "Red River Shore" and "Rank Strangers to Me" and "A Wayfaring Stranger". It was also fun to walk on Riverside Avenue here in Kellogg with Leon Russell ("Stranger in a Strange World") and The Doors ("People are Strange"). I enjoyed hearing Bob Dylan give a mini-lesson on Albert Camus and existentialism and I enjoyed Dan quoting from works by James Baldwin and Maya Angelou. 

I can't help but be grateful that just about a month ago I went over to Jeff Harrison's house for an awesome veggie scramble, toast, and coffee. I had wanted to meet that day with Margaret and Michael, too, but neither of them were free that day, so Jeff and I met on our own. As we savored Jeff's superb egg dish, Jeff  recommended that I tune in on Thursday nights to Dan's Bob Dylan show and his show, Deadish, on Thursday evening at kepw.org. He recommended this to me back in May 2019 when I stayed at his house and we went to see Neil Young together in Eugene. But, something happened. I tried to access kepw.org one evening and ran into some difficulties and I never tried again (I was stupid). But now I'm on board. Blissful Thursday is underway. And now that I've learned how to download episodes of Dan's show, I can make up for all the shows I missed over the last three years. 

That was a mighty breakfast Jeff and I shared on Jan. 15th with splendid consequences!

3. Tonight I returned to preparing a longtime favorite meal for Debbie and me. With plenty of coconut milk on hand, I heated up some Thai red curry paste in coconut oil, added a can of coconut milk, and a tablespoon each of brown sugar, fish sauce, and soy sauce to the milk and paste and dropped in a couple of  lime kaffir leaves. I fixed a batch of jasmine rice. In the sauce, I boiled potatoes, red and orange pepper, and onion. Debbie and I were really happy to be eating homemade Thai curry again. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-10-2022: Lunch at the Hilltop, *The Underground*, Bob Dylan and *Deadish* (Blissful Thursday)

1. Stu arranged for a lunch summit at the Hilltop Inn in Kingston.  Carrie and Rick Parks, Ed, Stu, and I were in attendance. Well, it wasn't much of a summit meeting -- no discussion of nuclear armament reduction or Middle East peace talks -- but it was a good time to get together with lots of serious yakking, especially about life in the Silver Valley in 2022 and looking forward as the population here increases. We also talked about Cincinnati (or Skyline) chili. That was fun. I enjoyed thinking back on the Skyline dinner we had back in December with Patrick and Meagan.

2. Now that I've read more chapters of Kevin Canty's novel, The Underground, it's clear that the unnamed fictional mine in the book is very similar to the Sunshine Mine and that the disaster sections of the book are based on the 1972 fire in the Sunshine. I'm curious to see where the story goes. Unless I'm mistaken, it looks like the novel will be as much about the mine fire's aftermath as the fire itself. I guess I'll find out as progress deeper into it.

3. After I watched the Oregon Ducks defeat Stanford, 68-60 (the Ducks' effort was uneven, but good enough to earn the win), I listened to Dan Mackay's Bob Dylan show and Jeff Harrison's Deadish show at kepw.org. 

Tonight's Hard Rain and Slow Trains was a continuation of a focus Dan started in January. This year marks the 60th anniversary of the release of Bob Dylan's first album. Dan is commemorating this diamond anniversary year by giving over an hour each month of 2022 to what Dylan was up to during each month of 1962. Tonight, of course, focused on Feb. of 1962 and the show featured Dylan performing and being interviewed and looked back at the news in February of 1962. This series, which Dan calls "A Highway of Diamonds" is fascinating. It helps listeners experience Bob Dylan's early explorations as a songwriter and performer, his penchant for borrowing tunes and songs and refashioning them, and how he treats his life as a fictional story in process. In tonight's episode, Dan played an excerpt from an interview Dylan gave to folk singer and radio host, Cynthia Gooding. In it Dylan mythologizes his life, claiming that that he'd worked at a carnival off and on over the past six years (since he was 14). In the interview, he creates an alternate reality about where he was born. It's as if the telling of his own story is hardly different from making up stories to tell in his songs. 

On his Deadish show, Jeff commemorated Black History Month by playing a wide range of African and African-American music -- and maybe more. It's difficult for me to say exactly what he played without a set list in front of me because, to my delight, he played a lot of music I was unfamiliar with. Yes, I recognized Etta James, Al Green, Miles Davis, and others, but I can't even list the names of other musicians he played because it was all new (and exciting) to me. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-09-2022: Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson, More Reunion Planning, Party at Rose Lake!

 1. As I have written before, Daniel Mackay's stellar hour long weekly radio show, focused on the Bob Dylan galaxy (Hard Rain and Slow Trains: Bob Dylan and Fellow Travelers), is archived at https://player.whooshkaa.com/shows/hard-rain-and-slow-trains-bob-dylan-and-fellow-travelers. I am unfamiliar with whooshkaa.com. Today, I did some low key fiddling around and figured out how to not only access to these episodes, but download them on my tablet so I can listen to them offline. 

This was an important breakthrough for me because I've been wanting not only to get back to taking walks again, but I also wanted Dan Mackay's show to be my walking partner. 

Today, I made that plan work and, as I figured it would be, walking while listening to Hard Rain/Trains was the perfect combination.  Dan has just over 150 shows archived -- that's a lot of walking and listening -- and I'm stoked at the prospect of enjoying many days to come listening to his shows and getting my exercise.

The show I listened to today was broadcast on January 13, 2022 and featured Willie Nelson as a fellow traveler of Bob Dylan's and it commemorated the 60th anniversary of the release of Willie Nelson's first album.

I loved this show. I loved learning about Dylan and Nelson's mutual respect for each other. I loved hearing Willie Nelson sing some of his songs -- honestly, I wondered if I'd ever heard a more perfect track than Willie Nelson singing, "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain". I enjoyed the Nelson/Dylan duets Dan played. One more feature of the show moved me: hearing both Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan sing Nelson's superb song on behalf of bought out, ruined farmers, "Heartland". 

There's more. It's a superb episode. It achieved just what I hoped it might: I admired both Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan more than ever after listening to it. Huge props to Dan for crafting this remarkable hour of music, information, and insight.

2. Joni, Carol Lee, Mitzi, and Carol Lee gathered for a little party today out at Rose Lake and they decided, on the spur of the moment, to see if they could gather some of us together for a meeting to further work on plans for this summer's KHS Class of 1972 50 year reunion -- it will take place here in Kellogg on July 15-17. 

Joni called me and we ended our call with me saying I didn't think I'd be coming out for this impromptu meeting. That soon changed though! Debbie thought it would be fun to go. Diane would be heading out from Kellogg and we figured the three of us could go out together. I was easily persuaded to change my mind. Debbie and I picked up Diane around 4:45 and headed out to Jake and Carol Lee's house. I poured myself a light Black Velvet ditch, took a seat at the table, and before long a thoughtful and cooperative meeting got underway and, before we knew it, we made some decisions, made some assignments, and made good progress toward making this reunion happen. 

3. Along with being a time that we took care of business, this evening was also a party. We had pizza, chips, other snack food, wine, beer, and liquor on hand. Jake played music with Alexa's help. It was awesome. Some of us talked business. Others talked, told stories, and enjoyed each other's company and before long, business completed, we were all having a fun and really good party. 

I left Jake and Carol Lee's very happy that I got talked out of my initial resistance to join the meeting. I was really happy that Debbie, Diane, and I traveled together and got in some excellent conversation going out and coming back. I was happy that I drank very little, ate more than enough, and that I was sound of mind and spirit to negotiate the big pot holes out at Rose Lake and drive us safely home on I-90. 

What a day this turned out to be! I walked with Dan Mackay and Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson. I gladly let myself be persuaded to attend a meeting that turned out to be a superb planning time and a spirited, jolly party. I spent fun time with a bunch of friends I've known for over fifty years. 

What a day!  

Three Beautiful Things 02-08-2022: Road Trip to Murray, Summit Meeting at Radio, Arkansas and Purdue Triumph

1. I hopped into the Sube this morning and blasted out to Kingston where Ed and I leapt into his and Nancy's road warrior Legacy (291,000 miles!) and rocketed up the North Fork of the CdA River and drove to Murray and back. We enjoyed premium car yakkin' coming and going, noted the larger amount of snow on the ground up river, and, as we did several months ago, surveyed burnt out areas caused by last summer's fires. When we head up that way, we like to stop in at the Prichard Tavern, but we discovered it's closed Mon., Tues., and Wed., so, once we got back to I-90, we roared west to Cataldo and enjoyed a beer and an order of delicious street tacos at Timbers Roadhouse. 

2. Debbie and I decided to also go out. We were going to try the Depot and see if we could sit some distance from other people, but the Depot is closed on Tuesday. We knew we could sit in an almost private area near the front windows on the south side of Radio Brewing, so we grabbed a table. I wasn't in the mood for beer and ordered an apple cobbler cider. As a cider on the sweet side and one intended to equate the experience of eating apple cobbler, it was very good. I prefer dry ciders, though, ciders that are less sweet, but as I always say, "Love the one you're with", and I surrendered to this cider's flavor and enjoyed it. 

Debbie and I started figuring out our lives over the next few months and, while not ready to go public just yet, arrived at some tentative conclusions about what we might do this spring and early summer. 

3. Because Debbie and I joined together for a summit meeting at Radio, I missed seeing Marquette's loss to UConn. I did, however, catch the closing minutes and the overtime of Arkansas triumphing over Auburn. Auburn was rated #1 in the Associated Press poll and had won their last nineteen straight games. But for those of you uninitiated to the realities of college basketball, winning on the road is difficult for these college teams. Arkansas' home court was a deafening chamber of partisan roaring tonight. Auburn's team is hampered by injuries. It looked like Auburn was tiring out, especially in overtime, but they valiantly hung in there. Arkansas, however,  converted a string of crucial free throws, defended Auburn pretty effectively, and hung on to win, 80-76.

I thought this evening's intensity would continue in the Purdue-Illinois game. For a half, it did as Illinois shot out to an early lead, Purdue came back and wrested the lead away from Illinois, but Illinois surged at the end of the first half and seized a two point lead.

Let me repeat: in college basketball, winning on the road is very difficult. Purdue's home crowd, like Arkansas', was deafening and Purdue crushed Illinois in the second half and cruised to an 84-68 win. Wisconsin also won this evening, beating Michigan State, 70-62 (ON THE ROAD!) and now the Boilermakers and the Badger sit atop the Big 10 standings, tied at 10-3. Both teams have several games leading up to their March 1st tilt in Madison. It promises to be eye-poppingly intense. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-07-2022: Tidying Up the Garage, *The Underworld*, Chili for Family Dinner

1. Debbie and I order food products and other things delivered to our house. The empty cardboard boxes start to pile up in the garage.  I like to keep the garage as tidy as possible and so today I loaded up a bunch of boxes in the Sube and took them to the transfer station and recycled them. The pleasure I derived from getting this done far outweighed the effort it required or its significance.  😂

2. Kevin Canty of Missoula wrote a novel about the Silver Valley in 1972. I'm not far in, but I've just reached a place in the story where two miners smell smoke in a mine. If it's not the Sunshine Mine, it's a fictional mine that is very similar (doesn't really matter, I guess). The novel is entitled, The Underworld and, unlike the first time I started this book, this time I will not get distracted and I'll read it to the end.

3. Christy, Carol, Paul, Debbie, and I are back into our regular family dinner schedule. For the time being, so that we can spread out, we are having our dinners at Carol and Paul's roomier house. We started by choosing between hard cider, hard seltzer, or beer and I drank a can of refreshing BrightCider from Two House in Corvallis. Carol and Paul were in charge of dinner. Carol made a delicious chili with kidney beans and ground beef. She seasoned the chili with a variety of spices including cloves. I enjoyed how it tasted both traditional (like Mom used to make!) and unique, somewhat similar to the sauce we used when we ate Skyline chili with Patrick and Meagan. Christy prepared delicious potato skins and Debbie prepared a perfect pie pan of cornbread and a tasty cabbage salad. Carol thawed out rhubarb she had cut from our back yard last year and made a delicious rhubarb pie, a tart and pleasing dessert. 

I gleaned from our family conversation last night that Christy, Carol, Paul, and Molly have all recovered from their January illnesses. Everyone's energy was good and it sounded like family members are enjoying their routines of dog care, television viewing, reading, and other normal day to day things. Molly wasn't with us this evening. She is on a trip out of town this week. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-06-2022: ZOOMing Far and Wide, Food Intersects with Everything, Tucci's Recipes

1. Bridgit, Diane, Bill, and I jumped on the ZOOM machine around 2:00 this afternoon and enjoyed a couple hours of wide-ranging and stimulating conversation. We hadn't discussed the pandemic for a while and had a very good conversation about what we observe where we live, how we are living out our lives these days, and about how our lives and people we know have been affected. We also talked about the ethics of the pandemic, especially in the medical world. Bridgit works with people in nursing homes. Her work puts her much closer to the demands the pandemic has put medical facilities under. She witnesses and feels the exhaustion.  Each of us, for our own reasons, continues to proceed cautiously.  

Earlier this week, Bill and Diane interviewed the members of Sandy Bradley and the Small Wonders Band. For quite a while, Diane has been working on a project for Victory Review (I hope I got the publication's name right!) interviewing Seattle area musicians about their first album. Sandy Bradley and her two fellow bandmates, Jere and Greg Canote, recorded their first album in about 1981-82. It was entitled Foolish Questions. I very much enjoyed learning today that Sandy Bradley has retired from music making and lives a rural life and that the Canote brothers are as full of vitality and good humor as ever. It was also fun remembering this trio's radio show, "Sandy Bradley's Potluck".  I also enjoyed remembering going to Corvallis about 30+ years ago and hearing the Small Wonders Band in a side-splitting concert of great string music, superb harmonies, and great comedy. 

We also talked about the Apple TV documentary series, 1971: The Year that Music Changed Everything. It led us trying to sort out the similarities and differences between the polarized environment of 1971 and years leading up to and following it and the polarized environment we live in now. I wouldn't go so far as to say we figured it all out, but I sure enjoyed our efforts and especially enjoyed talking about what things looked like to us back then and how they look now. 

Because of this documentary and other programming, I think today's discussion convinced me that it's time to subscribe to Apple TV! 

2. Once our ZOOM time ended, I discovered that Debbie had buzzed up to Radio Brewing to read and then dropped in at Diane's for a visit, so I settled into the solitude her absence afforded me and, by the end of the evening, finished Stanley Tucci's memoir, Taste: My Life Through Food. I don't want to give away the details of this book, but I will say this: I thoroughly enjoyed the intersections in Tucci's memoir between food, his childhood, his acting career, travel, his marriages and children, and illness. I didn't enjoy that illness has disrupted his life, but this element of suffering in his life was as much related to food as the more exciting parts in various countries and working on various projects. 

At the moment, I'm not sure what book is next, but I have many, many options on our bookshelves.

3. All through his book, Stanley Tucci writes out recipes, many of them simple, accessible, and readily doable -- by doable, I mean that the ingredients are available in Kellogg or Coeur d'Alene. Others, well, other of his recipes would be better prepared with access to better food shopping options -- like, say, a coastal town fish market. (Maybe, however, CdA's Fisherman's Market would do the trick...) I'm happy to do what I can, though, and I look forward to seeing what happens when I try to prepare some of these dishes, especially very basic pasta dishes and, if I can find the right meats, I'd love to make the ragu recipe he provides. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-05-2022: Reading About Historic Preservation, *Timpano* and *Big Night*, Discovering Keith Floyd

1.  I took a break from most things Grateful Dead related today, aside from their music playing in my head all day -- "Playing in the Band" was especially present and kept playing inside me over and over, to my delight. 

Instead of exploring the Grateful Dead, I read my homework for the next Westminster Basement Study Group Zoom meeting coming up on Feb. 7.

One of our members, Val, is working on a masters degree in public history online at the Univ of Nebraska-Kearney. Currently, she's studying historic preservation and she sent the members of our study group articles to read about preservation efforts in Greenwood, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Portland, OR and articles arguing for the value of historic preservation and how to best go about it. One article argued against it. The writer argued that preserving old homes is impractical and unwise.

Well, as far as how I see things, I enjoyed the positive articles much more than the negative one. Over the years, I've paid attention to the ways freeways, say in Spokane, Tulsa, and other cities, and new construction (or urban renewal projects) in, say in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Portland, gutted minority communities, isolated people within these neighborhoods from one another, or displaced them. More affluent neighborhoods, often predominantly white, and old buildings of importance to white communities have more often than not been more likely to be historically preserved. I very much enjoyed it when these articles addressed that disparity. 

2. Later in the evening, I returned to reading Stanley Tucci's book Taste: My Life Through Food. I had left off a day or two ago when Tucci was beginning to describe each year's Tucci family Christmas and how Christmas always meant the assembling and the baking of a labor intensive, temperamental, and ultimately heavenly dish called a timpano. Once Tucci narrated the importance of this dish in his family, he turned his attention to his role in helping write, direct, and co-star in one of my favorite movies, Big Night. That movie reaches its peak when the movie's chef, played by Tony Shaloub, decides to assemble and bake a timpano for the movie's climactic passage, the big night itself. I loved reading Tucci's memories of how the movie came about and, even more, I enjoyed finding that the great timpano scene is available on YouTube and I loved watching it again. I especially enjoyed the big moment when Ian Holm's character, Pascal, responds to how much he loves his serving of timpano. It's tempting to give away how he reacts and what he says, but I won't do it. No one should spoil that moment in the movie for another person by describing what he does and quoting his most memorable lines. 

3. Tucci's book sent me on another trip to YouTube. In one chapter, Tucci recalls his devotion as an adolescent to movies and television shows, including cooking shows. The two cooking shows that utterly fascinated him were hosted by Julia Child and Keith Floyd. I'd never heard of Keith Floyd, an animated English celebrity cook and travel guide, who, as Tucci describes him, traveled far and wide and prepared and cooked meals in all kinds of situations: in farmhouse kitchens, using outdoor fires, grilling on a hibachi over an open flame, and more. Tucci describes a particular episode he loved when Keith Floyd prepares a fish stew and a ratatouille for a party in Provence. Thanks to the miracle of YouTube, I found this episode and it was highly entertaining and instructive.

Watching programs like this episode of Keith Floyd's show, movies like Jiro Dreams of Sushi, and after reading the Joseph Mitchell's descriptions of the Fulton Fish Market in his collection, Up in the Old Hotel, I have to say that I often daydream of living near an open fresh fish market. One of the pleasures of watching a cooking show is imagining being able to fix similar meals at home.  In the Keith Lloyd episode, we didn't see him go to the local fish market, but we saw what he had purchased. His colander was stocked with a variety of small fishes. Keith Lloyd rattled off the names of the fishes -- none of them familiar to me -- and I knew right then that being able to cook the stew he prepared is impossible for me to prepare here. That's okay. It's not a problem -- but, I thought, it would be fun to have such a variety of fresh fish and other foods available nearby and be able to transform them into delicious meals like the one Keith Lloyd prepared.

I had the same wistful feeling when Tucci described visiting a cheese cellar in Italy and wrote about other Italian dishes he loves to eat in Italian restaurants (or prepare at home), made possible by the proximity the restaurants have or that Tucci has to a wide variety of pastas, cheeses, and other ingredients. 

Oh well. 

To conclude, I'd just like to record, off subject, that I enjoyed watching Arizona's win over USC, 73-62 and watching the second half of Oregon's game with Utah. Utah made a titanic comeback late in this game. The Ducks showed signs of falling apart under the pressure of Utah's frantic full court press. In the end, though, the Ducks hung on by the skin of their teeth and prevailed, 80-77. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-04-2022: Finished *Long Strange Trip*, Fajitas at Diane's, Karaoke Party

1. I spent the afternoon in the Vizio room watching the documentary, Long Strange Trip, a six episode series chronicling the Grateful Dead's origins, their philosophical views of music and what it means to be a band, their devoted following, and the band's last years before Jerry Garcia died on August 9, 1995.

At some point, possibly in a letter, but maybe in this blog, I'll try to sort out the impacts I felt watching this documentary. I can say right now that it worked best for me whenever it focused on the Grateful Dead's music and on the relationship between their early experiences with LSD and their ideas about making and performing music, about how they envisioned themselves as a band. I have never dropped acid and I have very very little experience with pot. When I was a teenager, everything I read or heard about LSD was presented in print, on television, and by adults in my life as horror stories -- bad trips, terrifying flashbacks, users jumping out of windows and from other high places (most notably Diane Linkletter, daughter of Art Linkletter -- that her suicide was LSD or drug related has been debunked), chromosome damage (also disproven), and other dire anti-drug tales.

Not once, until I was much older, did I hear about psychedelic experiences liberating different people's imagination, creativity, sense of connectedness with others, or their repressed bliss.

In this documentary, whenever the band members or other observers of the Grateful Dead returned to discussions about the acid tests of the band's early days, whenever they explained the long lasting effect that those psychedelic experiences had on the way the band members created music together, I was fascinated. I enjoyed hearing these interviewees talk about LSD in positive terms. Dropping acid wasn't a joke. Their comments didn't fit with the dark and scary stories I'd grown up with. I realized today, in much deeper and fuller ways, that this deep enjoyment I've experienced over the last twenty-five years listening to the Grateful Dead was deeply connected with (among other things) the expansive, liberating, and inspiring impacts of LSD. 

Because I don't ingest LSD and I don't use pot and because I haven't sought out other psychedelic experiences, the closest I come to experiencing a feeling of being transported, of experiencing moments free of my ego, of feeling no need to be in control is at certain unpredictable moments during Episcopal worship and when I listen to the Grateful Dead and other, to borrow Jeff Harrison's word, Deadish bands (Zero, Jerry Garcia Band, Legion of Mary, some bluegrass music, and, to move outside the Deadish realm, live Babes with Axes shows). Pink Floyd takes me there -- I wrote about such a transporting moment in my blog back in October of 2018 about a moment I had when suddenly I heard "Shine on You Crazy Diamond" coming out of an apartment in the Whitaker neighborhood in Eugene. I wrote about this ecstatic moment here. I experienced this out of my body feeling the last times I went to hear music live. It was in early March, 2020. The first night I heard the Cream tribute band, The Music of Cream, play Disraeli Gears and other hits by Cream and the next night the Black Jacket Orchestra played Dark Side of the Moon and then a series of hits from Pink Floyd. I left those shows having broken into blossom. 

Okay. That's enough. I have a lot more on my mind and on my heart. The Grateful Dead does that to me. 

2. Debbie, Gibbs, and I piled into the Sube and blasted up to Diane's house for a superb dinner of steak fajitas, Mexican rice, black beans, and tomalito. We also drank margarita. Diane's son Matt and his wife Leah as well as Diane's son, Marc helped make this a fun dinner party. After dinner, I got to go downstairs and see the four week old litter of four puppies Diane is caring tenderly for and preparing to sell. Matt and Leah have been at Diane's house for a few weeks and are helping her make progress on her mammoth remodeling job on the house she bought several months ago. Diane is overseeing a mind boggling transformation of this house from a barely livable space into what will be a gorgeous home when she finishes.

3. After dinner, we congregated in front of Diane's television, plugged in her karaoke machine and Diane, Leah, Matt, and Debbie all performed a series of songs. I declined. Lately, when I've tried to sing along with songs on the radio, my voice has been next to dead and I can't seem to carry a tune. But, now that I know these karaoke versions of songs are readily available on YouTube, maybe when I have the house to myself, I'll put on some songs I might enjoy and see if I can get myself able to do more than just croak them out.  It's a process I didn't feel like working on in front of others last night, but would like to try it out in private.