Three Beautiful Things 01-30-2023: Keeping the Cardboard Out of the Garage, Top Notch Family Dinner, Yakkin' with Debbie

 1.  I waited around the house for a while in case Brock called to say he could look at our washing machine. Early in the afternoon, I texted him and learned he had to stay home today. No problem. I gathered the big pieces of cardboard that held a couple pieces of furniture that Debbie is assembling along with three or four bags of packing material and made a quick trip to the Transfer Station. 

Honestly, every time I load up the Sube and dispose of stuff, keeping the garage pretty much cleared out, I feel mild ecstasy. 

2. Paul, Carol, Molly, Debbie, and I invaded Christy's house this evening for a superb family dinner. Christy planned our menu, drawing upon recipes from Erin French's recipe book, The Lost Kitchen. It turns out that Erin French has an inspiring biography and runs a unique restaurant, called The Lost Kitchen, in Freedom, Maine and Christy gave a brief talk about Erin French's philosophy of cooking, how she runs her restaurant, and her creative ideas for connecting her enterprise with other farmers and small businesses in the area where she lives.

We started dinner what I would call appetizers -- olives and crackers -- but Erin French calls them "nibbles", so we did, too! I used an Erin French recipe to mix George Dickel rye whiskey, sweet vermouth, maple syrup, and aromatic bitters in a carafe and we all enjoyed a Maple Manhattan. 

The heart of our dinner was the meatloaf Christy prepared and the parsnip mash she fixed. I contributed an approximation of Erin French's Root Cellar Slaw, a combination of grated beets, carrots, and purple cabbage dressed with Macerated Shallot Vinaigrette. We all enjoyed the way the meatloaf and the sides complimented each other. For dessert, Carol baked gingerbread in what I would call the form of a sheet cake and she made a salted caramel whipped cream topping to sit on the gingerbread.

Our conversations tonight were especially far-ranging. Christy told us about the KHS Class of 73's 50th year reunion plans. Their committee met on Sunday. We decided to participate in the Elks Crab Feed this year by purchasing four dinners to go and having a crab dinner at Carol and Paul's house on Friday,  February 17th. We also talked about growing up in and living in the Silver Valley, a fascinating topic that stretched us into talking about Leah Sottile's podcasts and the number of anti-government people who have settled in North Idaho and in Christy's former stomping grounds, Stevens and Ferry counties. 

3. Debbie and I returned home from family dinner and started to watch an episode of Perry Mason but, believe it or not, we weren't in the mood. We turned it off and, until it was time for Debbie to go to bed, continued the stimulating discussions we'd been having at family dinner. I will admit it. Having a great discussion with Debbie is better than any episode of Perry Mason!

Three Beautiful Things 01-29-2023: Desk and Lightroom, Shrimp and Rice Dinner, TV Mysteries and the World Poker Tour

 1. Debbie and I put my new little desk in the Vizio room. I went online and looked at larger monitors for my Windows laptop. I taught myself more about Lightroom. I am working toward coming out of hibernation and taking/editing pictures again.

2. I knew we had shrimp on hand. I knew we had rice. I found a recipe for lemon garlic shrimp and rice. All I had to do was melt some butter, put minced garlic in the butter for a minute or two, dump a couple cups of jasmine rice on top of the butter, and saute the rice until it began to snap, crackle, and pop.

My next move was to add a combination of mostly chicken stock and some water to the rice along with the juice of a lemon and some seasoning salt and lemon pepper. Once the rice had most absorbed the liquid, I put the raw shrimps on top of the rice, put the lid back on the Dutch oven, and when the shrimp were pink, I folded the shrimp into the rice. I let this dish stand for about five minutes and then Debbie and I dug in. I thought this simple meal was pretty good, especially after I squeezed more lemon juice on my servings and added some Bragg Liquid Amino.

3. Debbie and I returned to the Columbo zone while we enjoyed our lemon garlic shrimp rice. Tonight's episode featured George Hamilton and I chuckled, remembering when his tanning obsession was a feature of Doonesbury years ago. In addition, Leslie Ann Warren appeared and Debbie and I sang about ten seconds of the song, "In My Own Little Corner" from the 1965 CBS TV movie production of Cinderella. 

By the way, Columbo nailed George Hamilton's arrogant hyptonist murdering character. 

After we watched a couple of excellent episodes of Perry Mason, Debbie turned in and I fired up Pluto TV and watched some WTP poker, not so much for the poker -- although that was fun -- but mostly because I enjoy the play by play commentary of  Mike Sexton (RIP) and Vince Van Patten so much. They know poker, enjoy each other, and are fun to listen to. It had been a long time since I tuned into WTP Poker on Pluto TV. It was a blast tonight. 

Three Beautiful Things 01-28-2023: Pork and Vegetables in the Dutch Oven, A Shirley Dickel or . . ., Murder Mysteries and Beavers and Oysters

 1. Temperatures dipped. I stayed indoors. I thawed a chunk of pork. In the middle of the afternoon, it was ready to cook. First, I salted it and let it sit for a while so the salt could have its impact on the meat. I then sprinkled the meat with a generous amount of Trader Joe's Ajika Georgian Spice Seasoning Blend, a mixture of medium hot red chili peppers, garlic, coriander, fenugreek, and marigold (yes! marigold!). This seasoning blend is more tasty spicy than hot spicy. I'd never tried it before and (spoiler!) it worked. I then complimented the Ajika Blend with a moderate amount of cinnamon. I heated a puddle of olive oil in one of our Dutch ovens and seared the top, bottom, and one side of the pork, each side for five minutes. 

In the meantime, I cut half a white onion into slices and chopped the rest.

I removed the pork, poured out the hot oil, returned the pork to the pot, added a moderate amount of water, covered the pork with onion slices, covered the Dutch oven, and put the meat in the oven at 350 degrees.

After about fifty minutes or so, I took the meat out and added carrots, baby Yukon golds, broccoli, and celery to the pot, and returned it to the oven.

I wish I were more exacting about how long the pork cooked, but at some point I checked the vegetables. They were done. Debbie wasn't home from a trip to Yoke's and The Lounge just yet, so I turned the heat down to 220 degrees and returned the meat and vegetables to the oven.

Debbie arrived home, The pork was perfectly cooked: tender, moist, full of flavor. The broccoli was a little mushy, as was the celery, but the potatoes, onions, and carrots were perfect. 

Next time, if I remember (ha!), I'll add quicker cooking vegetables to the pot later, but, the thing is, I am almost always winging it in the kitchen, I have a poor memory regarding what I've done before, I am NOT in the habit of making notes, so each time I fix something like I did tonight, it's almost as if I've never cooked it before.

Good thing I'm not a restaurant chef where customers want consistency. 

Consistency in the kitchen is not my forte. 

But, the food I prepare usually turns out pretty good.

2. I enhanced my enjoyment of cooking tonight's meal by fixing what could be called a Shirley Dickel or a Dickel Temple. I mixed George Dickel Rye Whiskey in a glass with fresh squeezed orange juice and splash of grenadine. I don't know if this cocktail enhanced my cooking skills, but it was a fun and tasty experiment. Next time, if I remember (ha!), I'll add some bitters to this drink.

3. You'd think that since Debbie did not work with antsy third graders all day today and, instead, assembled my new desk, spent chunks of quality time with Gibbs, and held court over a couple gin and tonics at The Lounge that we wouldn't need to fall into our relaxing routine of watching Columbo and Perry Mason this evening.

If you thought this, you were mistaken.

Right as rain, as we dined on our pork and vegetables dinner, we dialed up another episode of Columbo and then watched Perry Mason figure out two murders, one involving the discovery of greenbacks in an old house and the other involving the murder of creepy sexual predator. 

We ended our evening on a different note, possibly a unique one.

Today I became interested in the website, The Conversation. It features written articles and a weekly podcast.

To close out our evening, we listened to a discussion of the ecologically sound engineering practiced by beavers and oysters. 

Listening to this podcast transported me back to when I read Ben Goldfarb's book, Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter.

They matter because their contributions to ecosystems are restorative.

So are the contributions of oysters.

I wish we, as humans beings, would let these creatures do their work, be the ecological engineers they are by nature and instinct. 

Three Beautiful Things 01-27-2023: E.B. White at the Laundromat, Listening to Kathleen Belew, Eating Chicken While Crimes Are Solved

 1. I'm not fully satisfied with how our washing machine is working. The repair man will visit early next week. Today I decided to go to Kellogg's laundromat and I had an awesome time. Hardly anyone else was in the house and I immediately loaded three washing machines and before long loaded two dryers. 

While the machines ran, I settled into reading a slim book by E. B. White, Here is New York. It's really a long essay, a meditation on what New York City looked like to White in August of 1948. By this time in his life, White had moved to Maine and so his observations of New York City are those of a writer who once resided in the city, but was now an outsider, an outsider with many memories and a keen sense of which of New York City's attributes had endured and what changes had transpired.

E. B. White is one of my favorite writers, as is his stepson, Roger Angell, who died in May of 2022. He was 101 years old. For years, Angell wrote essays about baseball for The New Yorker and I loved these pieces and loved the books he published that collected them. 

The book I read today as my sheets, trousers, socks, and shirts were being washed and spun was published in 1999 and featured a new introduction by Roger Angell, a tender and insightful meditation upon his stepfather and his relationship with New York City.

I didn't quite finish this book before it was time to take my laundry out of the dryers and fold it and take it home.

I can't say that I have a long term relationship with Manhattan, but I know I love going there, love having a bagel with cream cheese, love dropping in for a beer at O'Hara's,  love walking its streets, love its energy and the mammoth scale of its buildings and parks, and love meeting friends -- Ed, Mike, Melissa, Eric, Scott, or Mary -- and roaming Manhattan together.

And I loved roaming today with E. B. White. There's a word -- I can't remember what it is -- but it means to feel nostalgia for a place you've never been. Well, I've never been to New York City in 1948, but E.B.White succeed in moving me to long for it, to wish I could go back to it, even though I've never been there. 

I had much the same experience when I read essays by Joseph Mitchell. Mitchell, too, wrote for The New Yorker and produced detailed essays about Manhattan, especially the Lower East Side. It took me hours to read Mitchell's work and this slim volume of E. B. White's was a condensed version of the kind of writing Mitchell did and made my time at the laundromat not only productive, but a great pleasure.

2. Today I discovered a podcast produced at The University of Chicago called Big Brains. I found it via an online search. I wanted to find out if Kathleen Belew, a scholar of the white power movement in the USA, had appeared on any podcasts. She did. It was back in 2019 and she talked about her scholarship on Big Brains. The Kathleen Belew episode was only about twenty-five minutes long. Belew talks fast (I need to listen to this episode again). She packs a lot into a short period of time. 

I was intrigued by her assertion that the white power movement gained a lot of traction in the years following the Vietnam War when a small percentage of disillusioned veterans returned home and became involved in white power meetings, helped devise strategies, and participated in acts of protest and violence. In addition, Belew pinpointed 1983 as a watershed year in the white power movement. It was in 1983 that the Aryan Nations compound near Hayden Lake, Idaho hosted the Aryan World Congress, a conference that Belew asserts significantly energized those involved in white power groups and actions. 

I wanted to listen to Kathleen Belew as a follow up to listening to Leah Sottile. Belew is a scholar, a professor at Northwestern University. She spends long hours diving into archives, researching in preparation to present papers and to publish books of a more scholarly nature. Sottile is a journalist. I am going to try to come to some understanding of how Belew's scholarship and Sottile's journalism compliment each other, if they do, and try to understand better what makes both of their efforts so valuable.

3. Debbie called me around 4:00 or so and asked me to fix chicken for dinner. I said I'd be happy to, especially if she'd stop at the store and buy some chicken. We didn't have any on hand.

She did. I baked chicken thighs and fixed some broccoli and we enjoyed a simple dinner while Columbo nailed a car salesman played by Robert Vaughn for committing murder on a cruise ship. Not exactly The Love Boat! 

We then watched Perry Mason untangle a complicated case involving an aqueduct, a drunk driving accident, real estate, a construction company's scam, and murder. 

It left me breathless as Perry Mason would not be fooled and got right to the heart of who did what and nailed the murderer. 

Three Beautiful Things 01-26-2023: More on My Life with Rita, Small Salmon Dinner, Our Routine Continues

 1. Yesterday, when I wrote about my last days with Rita Hennessy, I didn't include how Rita and I became friends. 

Back in 1993, I agreed to join Rita and team teach courses in Philosophy and English Composition. We met with our students three days a week in two hour sessions and our team taught courses were wildly eclectic. We not only read standard texts in ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics, but we also explored how philosophy could be understood through the study of poetry, novels, personal essays, movies, the insights of Carl Jung, the lectures of Joseph Campbell, world religions (particularly Buddhism and Taoism), the spiritual traditions of Native people, acting, and visual art. The arc of Rita's classroom instruction always bent toward integration and our students brought the connections between multiple ways of seeing the world alive through writing scripts, acting, art projects, essays, writing poetry, and a variety of other creative ways of wrestling with the world's copious philosophical ways of understanding right from wrong, the nature of knowledge, the nature of reality, and more.

Rita and I were small town kids. I grew up in Kellogg. Rita grew up in eastern Montana (the name of her hometown has slipped my mind). Somehow, our small town origins gave us an intuitive understanding of each other, including the intoxicating experience we both had when, as college students, the arts, literature, history, and our love for learning electrified us.

Our teaching partnership at LCC ended in the fall quarter of 1999 when Rita retired.

Teaching as partners established our friendship. In the years after Rita retired, our friendship deepened. We collaborated on a handful of teaching projects while she was teaching part-time at Portland Community College. Once she moved to Creswell, I visited Rita every time I came to Eugene from Maryland and after I moved back to Kellogg. We enjoyed food together at the Creswell Bakery. We had long talks about our families, our questions regarding God and prayer and living a spiritual life, about philosophy and philosophers, and about teaching. We never stopped reflecting on what we thought worked best to help students learn and never stopped talking about the ways we worked to bring the best we could out of our students. It was all connected: to both of us, teaching was itself central to our spiritual and philosophical quests. 

2. Debbie and I enjoyed a small filet of salmon and a spinach salad for dinner. Simple and fortifying.

3. We continued our routine of gin and orange juice and episodes of Columbo and Perry Mason. I don't know how long this routine will last, but, for now, it's a perfect way for Debbie to wind down after working with energetic third graders all day and it's a fun way for us to spend the evenings together. 

Three Beautiful Things 01-25-2023: RIP Rita Hennessy, February Will Be Medical Month, I Finished the *Bundyville* Podcast

 1. I learned early this afternoon, when Linda Perkins called me with the news, that Rita Hennessy died on December 2. The day Rita died, snow fell in Creswell. Linda helped Rita into her wheelchair and Rita sat in front of her living room window and watched the snow fall. 

As Linda told me this story, I wondered if the snow falling transported Rita back to her days growing up in Montana. I wondered if the snowfall called up in her mind passages from one of her favorite books, Gretel Ehrlich's The Solace of Open Spaces, a collection of meditations on living in Wyoming. Rita and I began our friendship thirty years ago. We had countless conversations about the power of beauty. Maybe Rita simply surrendered herself to the beauty of the snow falling.

Whatever Rita was thinking as the snow fell, she died peacefully. She was at home. She was in the company of people who loved her, people who had helped her stay home as she slowly died over the last several months of her life.

When I was in Eugene back in early November, I visited Rita three straight days on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, November 4th. 5th, and 6th. On Friday, she had called me while I was having lunch with Dale, Roger, and Terry at BJ's at Valley River Center in Eugene. Rita was distressed. She kept telling me that she thought this might be her last day. I had planned on visiting Rita that evening, but I changed my plans and hurried to Creswell as soon as my friends and I finished lunch.

Rita was in a distressful situation when I arrived, one that I prefer not to write about in any detail. She instructed me to call Linda Perkins to come over and the two of us helped Rita. I left to return to Eugene for a coffee date with Margaret, Jeff, and Michael with the promise that I would return on Saturday.

I returned. Rita was worn out. She stayed in bed during my visit. She asked me to read to her, to bring with me some writings I thought she might enjoy. The most positive and uplifting books I could think of were Aimee Nezhukumatathil's World of Wonders and Ross Gay's The Book of Delights. 

Once Rita slowed down my speed reading aloud (!), the pieces I read to from these books really hit the spot. She was unfamiliar with both writers and their work delighted her and prompted her to tell her own stories, stories inspired by what I'd read.

When I saw Rita on Sunday, she was in her kitchen fixing herself lunch. Rita's physical energy impressed me, especially after she'd been so desperate on Friday and worn out on Saturday.

Rita and I talked about big ideas, discussed huge unanswerable questions. We'd been talking like this for thirty years and so our Sunday lunchtime discussion was a continuation of discussions we'd been having for decades. We talked about prayer. We exchanged our thoughts about the nature of God. We returned to discussions we've enjoyed for years about David Hume. Rita hobbled as she moved between the kitchen and her dining table. Preparing herself the small meal she ate for lunch turned out to be a drawn out process because of her physical infirmities. But, mentally, intellectually, and spiritually, Rita was as sharp and energized as ever.

When it came time to leave, I asked Rita to do all she could to stay alive until I returned to Eugene around December 4th or 5th. I was planning to return to Eugene for Linda Schantol's retirement party on December 7th. She told me she'd do her best. I told Rita I loved her. We embraced. I said goodbye.

When the time came for me to travel to Eugene, I contracted a virus that kept me down for nearly two weeks. I didn't make the trip. 

Had I been able to travel to Eugene, I would have missed Rita by two or three days.

She died on December 2. 

My many years of friendship with Rita ended just as they began back in 1993. 

We sat at a table. 

There was food. 

We talked about God, prayer, and philosophy. 

And teaching.

Our last conversation completed the circle of our friendship. 

2. Renee from the transplant center called today. She wanted to verify that, if I were to have transplant surgery, Debbie would be my primary support person. I confirmed that and she said that when I meet with the transplant team on Thursday, Feb 2, the team wants Debbie to be there, too. Debbie accompanied me when I had my first full day of appointments and meetings with the Univ. of Maryland transplant program in Baltimore. But, Debbie was away, in Eugene and then New York, the two times I've had meeting with the Spokane Sacred Heart team. 

This time, she'll be able to join me and we can both talk to the transplant team.

Quite a Feb. is shaping up.

Sacred Heart for a scan of my kidneys and blood work and meetings on Feb 2.

Colonoscopy in Kellogg on Feb 14.

Heart tests and chest x-ray in Coeur d' Alene on Feb 21.

3. Today I finished listening to the second season of Leah Sottile's podcast, Bundyville. The second season didn't focus on the Bundy family, but widened the net to examine other like minded people. After spending time trying to figure out a house bombing, followed by the bomber's suicide, in Panaca, NV, Sottile turned her attention to the Inland Northwest. She reported on communities and activities in Stevens County, WA, on the Spokane Valley pastor and politician Matt Shea, on the small town of Marble, WA (in Stevens County) and a couple, the Birds, the center of power in Marble. After reporting on the bomb a Stevens County man left in a backpack (and that was discovered before it detonated) at the Spokane Martin Luther Day parade in 2011, Sottile returned to the story of the Panaca, NV bombing. 

She concluded the podcast with questions about right wing extremism, its future, and the future of the USA.

Listening to these two seasons unnerved me. 

It's what made Leah Sottile's work so compelling and so important. 

Three Beautiful Things 01-24-2023: Clearing Garage Clutter, Donating to St. Vincent de Paul, Moving Deeper into *Bundyville*

1. It helps clear my head as well as the garage when I load up the Sube with cardboard and empty cans, newspapers, and plastic jugs and blast up to the Transfer Station to recycle them.  The pleasure I feel from keeping the garage as uncluttered as possible is akin to the pleasure I experience when I start the day with a glass of orange juice when I take my medicine followed by two or three mugs of half coffee and half heated up milk. 

2. Debbie purchased a rug a couple years ago to use upstairs, but it turned out she didn't like it. I took it out of the basement over the weekend, ready to put it down in the Vizio room. The rug was too big. Today, I further cleared my head and felt more pleasure when I dropped off the rug as a donation to St. Vincent de Paul. 

3. I needed a clear head and some simple pleasures today as a balance to the time I spent listening to more of Leah Sottile's podcast, Bundyville. Sottile strikes me as a courageous, tireless reporter. She and her producer, Ryan Haas, drove into a remote Arizona ghost town known as Bundyville to gain a deeper understanding of the Bundy family. Sottile and Haas also persuaded Ryan and Cliven Bundy to host them at the Bundy ranch and they gave Sottile and Haas a three hour interview. Sottile and Haas also reached militia stalwart William Keebler, who was deeply involved in both of the Bundy-led standoffs at Bunkerville and at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, and they interviewed him for three hours at a Utah truck stop Denny's restaurant. 

I have a lot of listening still to do. I'm only two episodes into Season 2.

I've drawn one conclusion, for sure. Sottile must be easy to talk to. The Bundys, William Keebler, and other people involved in the nationwide revolt against the federal government and its agencies talked openly with Sottile about how they understand the US Constitution (and for some, especially the Bundys, its relationship to being members of the LDS church), how they justify acts of violence -- whether causing bloodshed or property damage -- what they see needing to be drastically changed in the USA, and to what extremes they are willing to go to in order to bring this change about. Most, if not all, of what they want requires transforming the USA into a decentralized and largely ungoverned country, one they imagine it once was at some time in the past. 

These ideas and this vision coupled with being willing to do whatever it takes to make this revolution happen has a powerful hold on the people who see things this way. 

Three Beautiful Things 01-23-2023: All-Class Reunion Registration Update, More *Bundyville*, Simple Pleasures

 1. Early today, the original deadline still held. Early registration for the 2023 Kellogg High School All-Class Reunion (July 21-23) ended on Feb. 1. Therefore, I thought today would be a good day to update my Class of 72 email list and then send out an email to my classmates and make sure they all had registration forms. 

So, I did that. 

And, then, just after I clicked the send button, an email floated into my inbox announcing that the committee extended the early registration deadline to March 1st.

So, I sent out a follow up email updating the early registration deadline. 

2. I continued to listen to the Bundyville podcast by Leah Sottile and continue to try to understand the experience and thinking that underpins the Bundy's (and their followers') impassioned opposition to the federal government and their commitment to ideas like sovereignty and tyranny. 

3. I've been enjoying some simple pleasures this month. I start every morning in a way that not only wakes me up, but gives me pleasure. First, I take my medicine with a small glass of orange juice. Next, I heat up milk in a sauce pan and fix myself a cup of coffee that is half coffee and half hot milk. Later today, in that spirit, I fixed a simple pleasure dinner. I fixed two small salami sandwiches with white cheddar cheese and mustard, ate a small helping of potato chips, and a two small dill pickles. I poured Coca Cola over ice and enjoyed it. 

Three Beautiful Things 01-22-2023: A Sobering ZOOM Session, Lunar New Year Buffet, More PBS Documentaries and a Podcast

1. Colette, Bill, Diane, and I had a serious session on ZOOM today. I had serious matters on my mind. Listening to Masha Geesen's book, Rachel Maddow's podcast,  to Leah Sottile's podcasts, and watching documentaries about Ruby Ridge, Waco, and Oklahoma City have been sobering. Colette's father recently died and she's faced other stressful situations at home and at work because of medicine shortages. I can't speak for Bill, Diane, and Colette, but the podcasts and documentaries I've been absorbing and the difficulties Colette has been up against both with hospital care for her father and medicine shortages that affect students she works with and her daughter, leave me able to comprehending views of and difficulties in our world that I do not understand. 

I especially enjoyed one of our diversions from discussing the world's difficulties: Diane informed us of the history of the board game, Monopoly! I discovered I had about 1,000,274 misconception about the game's origin! I'm still reeling from how wrong I was about the few things I thought I knew. 

2. Carol and Paul hosted this week's family dinner. We pooled some money as a family and the Roberts made an order at Wah Hing and we enjoyed a Chinese food buffet as a way of celebrating the Lunar New Year. The variety of entrees and appetizers staggered me -- our buffet included crab puffs, egg rolls, potstickers, fried rice, prawns, different chicken offerings, other seafood, and more -- good tasty fun! 

3. Back home, Debbie decided to go to bed really early -- she continues to recover from a cold.

I decided to continue my quest to learn more about what's known as the extremist right wing movement and watched Frontline's updated version of the documentary film, "American Insurrection", released on January 4, 2022.  The movie's correspondent, A.C. Thompson, did a ton of leg work. He was in Charlottesville during the August, 2017 Unite the Right rally. He interviewed, face to face,  several people involved in demonstrations and violence. He talked to people in the Boogaloo movement, militia members, and others who voiced their commitment to overthrowing what they experience as the tyranny of the U. S. government by way of violent revolution. The two days at Charlottesville were almost like a rehearsal. Their efforts intensified during times of Covid restriction and in response to Black Lives Matter marches and demonstrations. Their commitment to violence climaxed at the U. S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. 

I listened intently to every interview. I could comprehend what I heard, but I can't pretend to understand. 

I took a break, for a while, from the subject of these ideologies and this violence and turned my attention to an hour long documentary, Dick Cavett's Watergate. In the immediate aftermath of the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters, Dick Cavett was one of the only persons on television, whether news people or talk show hosts, who took the break in seriously and talked with guests on his show about it. As time progressed, he became increasingly involved in questioning guests about the scandal. This documentary encapsulates Cavett's work, highlights some of it, and features interviews done in around 2014 in which different people like Bob Woodward, John Dean, Carl Bernstein, and others look back on the story and reflect upon it with perspective gained with so much passing of time. 

When I finally settled down and went to bed, I started listening to another podcast by Leah Sottile. She created it in conjunction with Oregon Public Broadcasting and Longreads and it's a two season exploration of the Bundy family called Bundyville. I didn't get too far into it before I fell asleep. I plan on listening to this when I'm awake and see if I can further comprehend the deep current of anti-government emotion and action that exists in the USA. 

Three Beautiful Things 01-21-2023: *Two Minutes Past Nine* -- Another Leah Sottile Podcast, Learning More About 1990s Violence, Johnny Cast on *Columbo*

1. A while back, I decided it was time to upgrade the Vizio room a bit. I decided I'd like to get one piece of furniture out, move a bookshelf from the south wall to the north, and put a small desk in the room. The room also needs a rug. 

Today, I made progress. While I shuffled things around and thought about other improvements, I listened to another podcast written and narrated by Leah Sottile. A couple weeks ago, Debbie and I listened to her series on the Pacific Northwest people who burned a number of structures and SUVs to punish entities they saw as doing great harm to forests and animals. That podcast is entitled, Burn Wild. 

Before I listened to that podcast's eight and a half episodes, I was vaguely aware of Leah Sottile. I knew she had just published her book, When the Moon Turns to Blood. (No doubt I'll have more to say about this book later.) I knew she had written about and created a podcast on the Bundy family. The more I read about her, the more I understood that her work as a free lance journalist is devoted to writing about groups and individuals committed to anti-government projects, often white supremacists, often uber nationalists and fervent Christians. (The Burn Wild project, however, explored extremism in the environmental movement.)

So while I was figuring out the rearrangement of the Vizio room, I decided to listen to Leah Sottile's 11 episode podcast, Two Minutes Past Nine, focused on the life and radicalization of Timothy McVeigh and on his April 19,1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, OK. 

2. Until today, I'd never taken the time to look back and see the whole picture of either Timothy McVeigh or the bombing and its aftermath. I had a vague, but not very precise, sense of how the standoff between Randy Weaver and federal agents on Ruby Ridge back in 1992 had angered McVeigh; likewise, I was only vaguely aware of the violent impact the standoff between federal agents and David Koresh and the Branch Davidians, and the burning of the Mt. Carmel complex, had on Timothy McVeigh.

So, after the podcast concluded and after Debbie left with Gibbs to enjoy time with Diane, I watched a ninety minute PBS documentary, Oklahoma City and then an hour long PBS documentary, Ruby Ridge. 

I was trying to further comprehend the ideological basis for the way the standoff at Ruby Ridge became a seminal event and a rallying point for the far right. Likewise, because Oklahoma City devoted a good chunk of time to the standoff and fire at the Mt. Carmel compound outside Waco, TX, I got the details of that event straight in my mind (for the time being) and saw more clearly than ever how Timothy McVeigh was moved to violence by what happened that day. (McVeigh carried out the Oklahoma City bombing on the first anniversary of the April 19, 1994 fire at the Mt. Carmel compound.)

3. By the time I finished listening to about three hours of podcast material and watched two and a half hours worth of documentaries on white supremacy, separatists, anti-government groups and individuals, the Christian Identity movement, and militias across the USA and by the time I finished listening to the impact of the book, The Turner Diaries, my mind reeled.

I need to change gears and give my attention to this reality in USA life a rest.

So, Debbie arrived home and we watched an episode of Columbo that featured Johnny Cash as the primary guest star, and this story's murderer. 

I don't think I'd ever seen Johnny Cash play a character in a movie or tv show before and I thought he was terrific in this episode. I especially enjoyed his character acting like the Skipper on Gilligan's Island when repeatedly, when being questioned, he referred to Columbo as "little buddy". 

Three Beautiful Things 01-20-2023: The Movie *Helvetica* and My Memory, Things Melt Away, Luna the Predator

1. Our son (my stepson), Patrick, has been involved in graphic design, among other things in his profession, either in college or in his work, since 2002. In 2007, a documentary movie came out entitled Helvetica. It's an exploration of the typeface (or font) called Helvetica and delves into the many perspectives typographers and graphic designers have about this particular font and about typeface and design in general.

I had watched this movie back in 2007 and seeing it again today, just over fifteen years later, my response was similar.

It's a fascinating plunge into an aspect of our lives we encounter almost non-stop. Almost everything we interact with has words on it, has been designed, and whether we know it or not, we are responding to the typeface and to the ways images are arranged.

As I watched Helvetica, both times, it absorbed my attention and stimulated my thinking.

But, like so many things I read or watch, I understood it in the moment, but soon the information seems to vanish and I can't repeat what I learned.

This phenomenon came up a week ago when Eddie Butler left his spot at the end of the bar at The Lounge and came down to ask me what I knew about the difference between rye whiskey and a Canadian blend. I said a few general things, but I also told him that when I go online and read up on whiskey, I understand what I'm reading, it makes sense while I read it, but, before long, it's gone and I can't repeat it. 

It's the same way with movies. I'll watch a movie, really enjoy it, and not long afterward, unless I look it up, not only have I forgotten the movie's details, I've often forgotten the title. 

When I was younger, every movie I ever saw imprinted itself in some detail on my mind and memory and I had little trouble accessing titles and details.

Those days are gone.

2. In fact, after we continued our routine this evening of watching an episode of Columbo and a couple episodes of Perry Mason, Debbie remarked that she wasn't looking forward to the time when we had no more episodes to watch. I told her that I could go back and watch episodes over again because once a certain amount of time has passed, watching the episode again would be as if I'd never seen it before. 

The details melt away. 

3. Every once in a while, Luna turns predator during the night and attacks my hand, scratching and biting it. This happened early this morning. Luna's occasional mistaking my hand for a rodent or a bird puzzles me. I respond by getting up, cleaning my wound with soap and water, and putting Luna in the Vizio room and turning on the heat in there. I'm not punishing Luna. I am protecting my sleep. With Luna in the other room, I'm not lying in bed, half awake, half asleep, wondering if Luna will attack my hand again.  I always know that when we are reunited in the morning, Luna will act as if nothing happened. I return the favor. As soon as she can, Luna leaps on me, affixes herself to my chest, purrs deeply and contentedly, and we are back to our best selves again. 

Three Beautiful Things 01-19-2023: Jumping on Our Taxes, Party Time with Kandinsky and TV Shows, Diane Gave us Creamy Lemon Butter Chicken

 1. For years, especially when I was working, I was terrible about procrastinating during tax season and often didn't get my returns filed until months after the April deadline. This is no longer true. Now, as soon as some tax record arrives in the mail, I enter the data immediately and today I went one step further and looked up my Oregon state pension tax record before it came in the mail and entered that information. I'm still waiting for a few more records to arrive. I'm hoping to have our taxes filed before the end of the month and, however they come out, it'll be a relief to have that task completed.

2. Debbie arrived home from work feeling better than she has all week. Friday is a grading day for teachers, so she'll be on site at Pinehurst Elementary School, but her students will stay home. So, even though she'll be working, it won't be as demanding and, with things slowing down a bit, it'll be a chance for Debbie to have a more restful Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I hope she'll fully recover from this virus that began its visit early in the week.

Debbie and I had a restful and fun evening. We began our party by mixing cocktails: Debbie was drinking George Dickel Rye Whiskey with fresh squeezed orange juice and I used Minute Maid orange juice out of the carton and mixed it with gin.

We continued our party by listening to another episode of the podcast The Lonely Palette. A few months ago, Debbie introduced her students to paintings by Wassily Kandinsky and we listened to Episode 38, focused on his painting known as "Untitled" (1922).  As she does so reliably, with good humor, encyclopedic knowledge, and great insight, Tamar Avishi brought to life the Bauhaus movement and German Expressionism and placed Kandinsky's work within this context. 

We then turned to some less demanding entertainment and watched Jack Cassidy in one of his guest star turns on Columbo, an episode in which he rids himself of a writer played my Mickey Spillane. Cassidy's portrayal of an egotistical, condescending book publisher was superb as was Lt. Columbo's dogged detective work that succeeded in nailing Cassidy's character.

We also watched a Beethoven-themed episode of Perry Mason. As always, it looked like Perry Mason's client could never escape the charges she faced in court, but Perry Mason saw through a few things and worked out exactly who was responsible for the murder of a classic piano performer and teacher. 

3. Tonight I dove into the meal Diane so generously brought to our house Wednesday night. 

Diane fixed Creamy Lemon Butter Chicken, a beautifully prepared chicken cutlet accompanied by Israeli couscous and sliced zucchini disks, all brightened with lemon and seasoned with just the right amount of Tuscan Heat Spice. 

I enjoyed the chicken and zucchini a lot and I really loved the Israeli couscous, one of my very favorite foods of all time! 

Three Beautiful Things 01-18-2023:Am I Fit for Transplant?, Delayed Dinner and Chicken Soup, Robert Culp and Gilbert Gates

1. Tara, the transplant nurse coordinator, called me today, wondering what I learned from Dr. Bieber when I saw him last week. I told her things hadn't changed. Then I asked about whether I could remain listed as "inactive" on the transplant list. It sounds like I can. Tara told me that the program has decided to monitor inactive list members more closely and so I will be heading to Sacred Heart on Feb. 2 for blood work and possibly, that day, some other tests. I think I'll get to meet Tara. I wonder if I'll get to talk with the social worker again (I've enjoyed this) and, likewise, whether I'll meet with the financial person (another enjoyable appointment in the past). 

I'll be tested for some other things off site - we hope at Shoshone Medical Center, but I might need to be tested in Coeur d'Alene.  In the past, I've had pulmonary testing done in CdA and a heart test performed in Spokane Valley. We'll see.

So, starting Feb. 2, I'll have a stretch of time to busy myself being poked, imaged, velcroed with wires, and tested in other ways. It's not a terrible process, but one I'm always grateful to complete.

2. Out of sheer generosity, Diane brought Debbie and me some dinner tonight. Debbie will eat some it for lunch at school on Thursday and we'll decide when Debbie gets home whether she'll lunch on the rest of it on Friday or if we'll polish off  Diane's food Thursday night. 

Tonight, at dinner time, Debbie, who is not feeling well, didn't have an appetite. 

Unrelated to Debbie's appetite, I had, earlier in the day, cooked the carcass of a small chicken in a quart of boxed chicken stock. I then boiled a handful of frozen boneless chicken thighs, removed them when they were thawed and cooked, and added the stock I'd made earlier to the broth I created with these boiled thighs.

Once the thighs cooled off, I put them in the augmented chicken stock and added chopped onion, carrot, baby Yukon golds, and celery along with some frozen green beans. I seasoned this uncooked soup/stew with salt, pepper, garlic powder, marjoram, oregano, and thyme, brought it all to a boil, turned the heat way down and let the vegetables slowly cook until tender.

I enjoyed a bowl of this soup/stew. Soon Debbie decided she'd like to try it and when she said it was "really good", well, I felt a surge of joy.

3. I'm enjoying this evening routine of watching Columbo and Perry Mason. Especially on these days that Debbie is working while not feeling a hundred percent, she finds these shows restful and a great way to clear and relax her mind. 

Tonight, guest star Robert Culp played the arrogant, elegant, intellectual, highly organized cold-blooded murderer, a perfect foil to disheveled and scatterbrained persona Lt. Columbo presents himself as. Columbo might act the fool, but he's far from it and watching him spar, in his own way, with Robert Culp's character and figure out a way to exploit the character's own brilliance and expertise was exquisite, deserving of a chef's kiss.

All I'll say about the Perry Mason we watched is that for Della, Paul, and Perry -- and for Lt. Tragg -- it was an evening out at the circus, but believe me, once Perry dug his teeth into the murder he witnessed under the big tent, he did not clown around and he stunned the court room with how he figured out who actually committed this episode's crime, apparently with the greatest of ease.

Oh! One other thing. The other episode we watched featured a guest appearance by Stephen Talbot whom I immediately recognized as Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver's longtime pal, Gilbert Gates. Stephen Talbot always knocked it out of the park as Gilbert and continued his masterful ways in this episode! 

Three Beautiful Things 01-17-2023: *Slow Burn*: The Clinton Impeachment, Good Ole Jackie Cooper, Getting Bill Clinton Elected in 1992

1. Last night/very early this morning, I listened to the first two and about half of the third episode of Season 2 of the podcast, Slow Burn: The Clinton Impeachment. Today, needing another day of rest to help rid myself of this mild virus that's been visiting me, I listened to the rest of Season 2. Because the impeachment itself grew out of Independent Counsel Ken Starr's years long investigation of the Clintons, during which he learned that President Clinton and an intern, Monica Lewinsky, had been having an affair,  parts of the podcast focused on Monica Lewinsky and her colleague, Linda Tripp, who secretly recorded confessions Lewinsky entrusted to Tripp (Tripp turned these recordings over to investigators). The series also delved into the Clinton's past in Little Rock and the scandals that dogged them before news broke of Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky (Whitewater, "TrooperGate", the allegations of Paula Jones, the death of Vince Foster, "TravelGate", and others). 

Another episode explored the growing emergence and influence of conservative Evangelical Christians in political life in the 1990s and this movement's scathing treatment of Bill Clinton. 

The episode I found most arresting was the one exploring how Clinton forced feminists and the women's movement to struggle with the ways that Clinton, on the one hand was their ally in terms of policies, proposed legislation, and his inclusion of women in his administration, while, on the other hand, his patterns of alleged predatory exploitation of women embodied precisely the very abusive behavior the movement was working to eliminate. How could these contradictions between Clinton's admirable political advocacy for women and his deplorable behavior in his private life and as an administrator be reconciled? Slow Burn didn't pretend to offer an answer to that question, but presented a variety of points of view from several feminists. 

The last episode, episode 8, delved into the Juanita Broaddrick's accusation that Bill Clinton raped her in her hotel room in 1978. It's an ugly, horrifying story. This episode unfolds how Clinton's alleged assault remained secret for so many years, how it came to the attention of of Congress during the impeachment process, and the caution prominent media sources exercised in deciding, at the time of the impeachment, whether to tell this story.

2. Debbie arrived home just as Slow Burn ended. She's also shaking off a mild virus and told me she'd like to go to bed earlier than usual tonight and would like to get started earlier with watching some Columbo and Perry Mason.

So that's what we did.

The Perry Mason episodes were intriguing and surprising. I especially enjoyed the Columbo episode with Jackie Cooper as the show's guest star. Time and time again, as I watched Cooper play the role of a candidate running for a senate seat, I thought, "This guy is a real pro! Solid! A great actor!" I don't remember evaluating his work when I was a kid and saw him on The People's Choice and on Hennessey, but this evening I thoroughly enjoyed his work as a duplicitous, vain, egotistical, murdering politician.

3. I know that I watched the documentary movie, The War Room, not long after its release back in about 1993. It's part of the current Criterion Channel collection of movies listed under the title, Cinema Verite. It is, in fact, a documentary without voice over narration that follows the Clinton for President campaign from just before the New Hampshire primary all the way to Clinton's victory in 1992. Much of the movie focuses on the campaign's Director of Communications, George Stephanopoulos, and a charismatic consultant on the campaign team, James Carville. The movie spends much of its hour and a half showing us meetings of the campaign team, congregated in "the war room" and we see how they are developing messages, pushing back against criticisms of Clinton, figuring out how to exploit George H. W. Bush's weaknesses as a candidate, and developing television ads and other spots in order to get Clinton elected.

This movie was much more about the aggressiveness, agility, quickness, commitment, ingenuity, and youth of Clinton's core campaign team members than about Clinton himself.

I suppose, though, that this campaign team reflected the traits that made Clinton himself so successful as a political candidate. In their aggression, quickness, commitment, ingenuity, and youth, Clinton's campaign team might very well have been collectively playing out the same political strengths as Bill Clinton himself.

Quite a contrast today: Slow Burn investigated the compulsive, indulgent, narcissistic, even self-destructive and exploitative dimensions of Clinton's character while The War Room presented the charismatic, intelligent, and attractive aspects of Bill Clinton that moved a small army of young campaigners to devote endless hours of effort to getting him elected. 

Three Beautiful Things 01-16-2023: Taking it Easy, Comfort Food for Debbie, *Slow Burn* Podcast -- Clinton's Impeachment

1. I learned several years ago when, on two occasions, I ignored being ill and tried to push through it and worked hard, acting as if I were stronger than illness. Both times, I ended up in the hospital. Since that time, I haven't messed around with feeling ill, no matter how mild. So, Saturday evening and on into Sunday, as I developed a cough, felt fatigued, and started sneezing, I took it easy, napping and just not doing much.

Today, I felt better. but I've learned over the years that when I feel better, that's when I really need to take it easy. 

Therefore, I decided to stay home from tonight's All-Class Reunion Committee meeting, a disappointment.

2. Debbie came home feeling fatigued and a little bit sick and asked me to go to Yoke's and bring her home some chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy from the Yoke's deli. This meal comforted Debbie, made her very happy, and she went to bed early after we watched an episode of Perry Mason.

3. Rather than reading myself to sleep, I've decided to go to sleep listening to audio files. I downloaded the book, The Agony and the Ecstasy, a book I loved reading for Dr. Duvall my senior year at Whitworth. I fell asleep, but enjoyed what I heard.

I woke up a little later and couldn't sleep.

I decided to listen to Season 2 of Slow Burn. Debbie and I listen to Season 1 a few years ago. It investigated the 1972 break-in at the Watergate Complex and the aftermath, leading to Richard Nixon's resignation. 

Season 2 of Slow Burn explores the impeachment of Bill Clinton. In the episodes I've listen to so far, the focus has been divided between Bill Clinton's history of scandals (Whitewater, Travelgate, the death of Vincent Foster, and others) and his relationship with Monica Lewinsky and the feds investigation of her role in their affair. 

It's a fascinating and unsettling podcast -- and a good one to listen to when I can't quite get to sleep late at night. 

Three Beautiful Things 01-15-2023: A Milder Virus, A Controversial Book, Perry Mason Tested to the Max

1. The good news is that when I started sneezing and coughing and feeling a bit achy Saturday night and on into today, everything was much milder than it was back in November/December. I helped myself a lot by taking two naps this afternoon with nurse Luna attached to my chest, comforting me. 

2. Today I finished listening to our Audible version of Mosha Gessen's 2020 book, Surviving Autocracy. I'll just say that I found the book illuminating. It's the kind of book I decided long ago that I wouldn't discuss online or write about in any detail in my 3BTs blog posts. Gessen's work is controversial and I am almost always dissatisfied with discussions of controversial material online. If you'd like to know more about Mosha Gessen or more about Gessen's writings, Gessen is prolific and easy to learn more about online. 

3. Debbie had returned home from a visit with Christy just as Gessen's book reached its end. It concluded and we agreed that an episode of Perry Mason would provide a change of pace. In the episode we watched tonight, Perry had to sort out the fact that when an 18 year old heiress's mother died, two men came forward, each claiming to be the long estranged father of the the heiress. Add to this confusion the fact that someone murdered Trudi's elderly cousin and I'd say the complexities of this situation tested Perry Mason's skills to the max. Perry, with the help of Della and Paul, was up to the task. 

Three Beautiful Things 01-14-2023: A Coma with Luna, Chillin' at The Lounge, Wah Hing Paired with Perry Mason and Lt. Columbo

1. Some time after 12 noon today, with Luna planted firmly on my chest, purring deeply with contentment, I fell into a deep a restorative sleep. I didn't move. Luna didn't move. We were connected not only by mutually satisfying physical contact, but my our mutual need for more and deeper sleep after I'd been up and down throughout the night.

2. Debbie and I popped into The Lounge around 4:30 or so and bellied up to the bar for a relaxing session of yakkin with Eddie B., Jan, Ron D., Cas, and others. I enjoyed a couple of margaritas, made all the more tasty by Cas fulfilling my request that he, in the style of Derrick at Billy Mac's (may that spiritual center in my life Rest In Peace), splash a little 7 Up on top of the drink. Eddie B. and I discussed the fine points of the differences between whiskey and rye. 

Before we left, we ordered Beef Lo Mein and an order of potstickers to go.

3. Back home, we dove into our take out dinner and then settled into a relaxing night of more Perry Mason and watched Lt. Columbo get to the bottom of a murder at a winery. It was a blast watching Columbo become learned about wine and use his new-found knowledge to crack open this murder case. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-13-2023: After All These Years -- *Rashomon*, Grangeville Defeats the 'Cats, Winding Down with Mysteries

 1. I'm sixty-nine years old. I've been watching movies fairly seriously for about forty-five years. It's as astounding to me to think about the number of eminent movies I've never seen as ones I have viewed. One such movie is Akira Kurosawa's 1950 masterpiece, Rashomon. I watched it today. 

In it, Kurosawa focuses on a single story about a bandit raping a woman in the woods and the death of the woman's husband. The movie tells the same story four times so that we see this assault take place through the perception of the bandit, the woman, the dead man (told through a medium), and a woodcutter who observed what happened.

Each character's telling of the story is vastly different than the other three accounts, although all of the storytellers agree that the rape occurred and that the woman's husband is dead.

The movie opens with a priest and the woodcutter in conversation and we hear one line repeated several times: "I don't understand."

This movie is interpreted in many different ways, but everyone agrees that at its core, it's an exploration of the subjective nature of our perceptions of what happens and that understanding and knowing the truth are, at best, unreliable.  More often than not, we don't understand. 

2. I can say with reliable certainty that Ed and I booked it up to Kellogg High School's Andrews Gymnasium and watched the hometown girls squad host the Grangeville Bulldogs. The Wildcats lost tonight's tilt, 54-37. Grangeville won this game with full court pressure defense, excellent ball movement and some solid shooting, and with better players. I thought the Wildcats played hard, with determination, but they had trouble scoring. Tonight, at least, the Wildcats didn't seem to have one or two reliable players they could go to for baskets. Grangeville had at least two or three "go to" players and the contrast became more pronounced as the game progressed. 

I enjoyed the game, even though it was lopsided. I enjoyed that both teams' players exerted a lot of energy and Grangevilled had at least two players who I thought were very talented and fun to watch. 

I also enjoyed being back at the gym where I used to humiliate myself with consistently mediocre performances when I was a Wildcat. I love how much more colorful, comfortable,  and shiny the facility is now and I didn't have any painful flashbacks to my failures in this gym. I was locked in to what was happening in the present, thank goodness.

3. I returned home and Perry Mason was waist deep in a case in a small Nevada town, working to clear the name of a young man whose father had been guilty of robbery and murder in this same place. Everything seemed to point to the young man as the one who committed murder, who seemed to have followed in his father's footsteps, but with some cagey investigation and the awesome assistance of Paul Drake and Della Street, Perry Mason got to the bottom of the murder case and extracted a confession out of the actual killer. 

We ended our evening of television viewing in the world of cosmetics and watched Columbo through a lot of head scratching and moments of staring into the far reaches of the universe, nail the person responsible for the death of a chemist. For me, it was particularly fun that Vincent Price played a supporting role in this episode and, as he is so talented at doing, played the mendacity and campiness of his character to perfection. 

Three Beautiful Things 01-12-2023: Fun in the Kitchen, Perry Mason Bears Down, Columbo Figures It Out

1. I took a few minutes late this morning to ponder what I might cook for dinner. I thought about macaroni. I thought about black beans. I thought about the Fire Crack Mac at GarrenTeed BBQ. I went online in search of recipes combining pasta and black beans. 

I found a vegetarian recipe for a black bean pasta sauce and I decided to try it out, but I also decided that I would add ground beef to it.

So, I browned a fistful of ground beef in a Dutch oven, pushed the meat aside when it was done, and cooked a chopped onion and two chopped sweet red peppers until they were tender. To this mixture I added minced garlic, cumin, and oregano and let it cook until fragrant. I then folded in 28 oz of tomato sauce, a 14 oz can of diced tomatoes, and three 14 oz cans of drained black beans and brought this sauce to a gentle boil and then turned the heat down so the sauce could bubble for an indeterminate amount of time.

I taste tested the sauce after it had been simmering for about an hour and decided it needed more cumin and some salt. I added them.

Debbie arrived home and said she'd like a cocktail of gin and fresh squeezed orange juice and I fixed her one.

About twenty minutes later, I boiled a 16 oz bag of rotini. I had already chopped a bunch of cilantro and grated some pepper jack cheese. 

Debbie and I both dished a layer of rotini into a bowl, ladled black bean pasta sauce over it, and then topped the pasta and sauce with pepper jack cheese and cilantro.

I never would have thought to use pepper jack cheese for this dish if it weren't for GarrenTeed BBQ's Fire Crack Mac. Both Debbie and I loved the heat it brought to our bowl of pasta and sauce and, for us, cilantro is the perfect herb and we loved how it worked tonight.

2. For the third Gonzaga game in a row, I missed the tension and excitement of another close game decided with little time left on the clock.

Why didn't I watch the Zags?

Perry Mason! 

Rather than watch basketball, I listened to Debbie describe some of the ways she succeeded with her students today in her third grade classroom out at Pinehurst Elementary School. Every day is a challenge. Every day Debbie expends a lot of energy. Every day Debbie comes home glad that she has this job and  ready for a relaxing cocktail and the wondrous twists and turns of two or three episodes of Perry Mason.

Last night, the first episode we were watching was cut short by our part of town's three hour power outage.

So, we began by watching the episode's last nine minutes and finding out who murdered Liza, the artist, and then moved on to a couple of other episodes and watched Perry Mason methodically and ruthlessly drill down into the details of each case and extract a confession from each killer.

3. We ended the evening by taking a break from Perry Mason and watched Columbo outsmart twins, played by Martin Landau, and get to the bottom of a murder and inheritance scheme. 

Wow! It was great watching Martin Landau play two arrogant characters, giving us double the fun as Colombo seems to stumble around, as he angers different people in the story, and as he digs down into the details of the case that bother him and figures out how the murder scheme worked. Brilliant!  

Three Beautiful Things 01-11-2023: Medicare Wellness Visit, Kidney Appointment, Stir Fried Noodles at Pho Thanh

1. I leapt in the Sube and roared uptown to the clinic around 9:40 for my 10:00 Medicare annual wellness check up. I figured it would include fasting blood work, so all I did was drink seltzer water before blasting up. 

I handed P.A. Smyly a copy of the blood work results that Labcorp's benevolent sugar-winged angels dropped lovingly into my gmail inbox on Sunday and as he scanned them he recoiled.

"Your eGFR is 15?" 

He asked this with astonishment. 

Here I was, seated before him, looking to be in good health but this number on my blood work results is very low -- Stage V kidney disease, or kidney failure, begins, according to standard charts, with an eGFR of 14. (My eGFR has come in below 14 at least a couple of times.)

I replied that, yes, my eGFR has ranged between 12 or 13 and about 18 for the last few years, but that even with such limited function, my kidneys have been and continue to do their job. 

He could see that in my blood work report. For every category showing how much sodium, chloride, and other substances are in my blood, my numbers were within range, thanks to the apparently indefatigable work my compromised kidneys are doing.

I told P.A. Smyly that I would be seeing Dr. Bieber, my nephrologist, later in the day and that it's just this dichotomy that we would discuss: my kidney function is low, but my kidneys' performance is solid. 

2. So, indeed, I had a more blood drawn at the uptown clinic to get a look at how my cholesterol levels are and to make sure my prostate looks healthy. 

I bopped out of the clinic, bounced into the Sube, and instead of rocketing straight home, I stopped in at The Beanery for a scone and a cup of half Americano, half steamed milk. I then checked in at home and  vaulted into the Sube and roared over the hump to Coeur d'Alene and met with Dr. Bieber.

Dr. Bieber asked me a few questions about my blood pressure, skin, how I was feeling (I told him great!), etc. and he listened to my lungs and heart and liked what he heard.

When we talked about my blood work results, Dr. Bieber reiterated what he's said before. The fact that my kidneys are performing the way they are with such reduced function and that I feel so good is, in his word, awesome.

He reiterated that three years ago he figured, for sure, I'd be on dialysis by now, if not transplanted. He has no explanation for why my kidneys are so stable and effective. 

His assessment: let's ride this thing out and see how long your kidneys are going to stay stable. Let's hope it's a long time. 

I will have blood work done in three months. I see Dr. Bieber again in six months, with an understanding between us that if my blood pressure starts going up or if I begin to experience symptoms that I will return to see him earlier. 

3. I was hungry when I left Dr. Bieber's office. All I'd eaten was a scone. I reached the Sube in the parking lot around 2:15 or so. My goal was to drive back to Kellogg in daylight. If I stopped somewhere for a quick lunch, I would have time to reach Kellogg easily before dark.

So, I streaked over to Pho Thanh for a plate of stir fried noodles: Chow Mein with lemongrass chili beef, chicken, shrimp, and pork accompanied by a can of Pepsi.

The noodles hit the spot and I returned to Kellogg nourished, happy that I completed my day of appointments, and relieved that for at least three more months I can move forward feeling at peace about the fact that, for now, my renal health is stable and that my energy and mental health are also in good shape. 

Three Beautiful Things 01-10-2023: Birthday Dinner Redux (Sort of), The Formidable Perry Mason Team, *Barney Miller* Nightcap

 1. We had just enough baby Yukon potatoes for me to make one more mess of the lemon garlic potatoes I made Monday for Christy's birthday party. I leaned into the garlic and lemon a little harder -- glad I did -- and thought we might eat them with salmon patties. Debbie, however, wanted to finish off the leftover prime rib slices from Monday night. Great idea! 

2. I can't recite the plots of the three episodes of Perry Mason we watched tonight, largely to help Debbie wind down and relax after work. I can say this: Perry is indefatigable, Paul Drake is ready to jump into action at any given moment, and Della Street is never rattled by the discovery of a victim of murder. Combine Della's fortitude with Paul's dogged availability and Perry's fearlessness and it's no wonder he's undefeated.

3. Debbie turned in before I did and I decided to jump ahead about fifteen years, give or take, and watch a few episodes of Barney Miller. Like Taxi, like Soap, like Cheers, like WKRP in Cincinnati, and like a bunch of other shows, Barney Miller demonstrated week after week that once a situation comedy built around an ensemble of terrific actors and brought to life by excellent writers hits its stride, it's scintillating and highly enjoyable television entertainment. 

Three Beautiful Things 01-09-2023: Dump Trip, Lemon/Garlic Potatoes, Christy's Prime Rib Birthday Dinner

 1. Today the roads were free of snow and ice, making my trip to the Transfer Station easy. I loaded up the cardboard that we accumulated the last few days and the bags of packing styrofoam and it was a relief to my sense of well-being to leave them at the dump.

2. I spent time this afternoon preparing a simple dish for tonight's dinner in celebration of Christy's birthday. Dinner director Carol assigned me a potato dish and I wanted to make it as light as possible, a dish without much cheese, without sour cream or other dairy products. 

I found a recipe for lemon/garlic potatoes. I bought a small bag of red potatoes and cut them in half. I covered them with water and brought them to a boil and then let them cook slowly at a reduced heat. Once tender, I drained them and decided to cut the halves into smaller pieces. In a puddle of olive oil, I browned the potato pieces. I added three cloves of minced garlic to them once browned, let them cook for another minute, and then added lemon juice, parmesan cheese, salt, and pepper. 

That was it.

Simple.

Light.

Delicious.

3. I also mixed a batch of Old-Fashioneds, subbing fresh squeezed orange juice for simple syrup. When Debbie and I arrived at Carol and Paul's, I poured everyone a cocktail which we enjoyed while yakkin' in the living room and snacking on mixed nuts.

Carol, Paul, and Molly presented Christy with gifts. Our gift to Christy was in her email box. 

After a while, we made our way to the dining table. Carol roasted a prime rib and made a delicious Yorkshire pudding, cut into squares. Paul prepared and dressed a green salad. Molly provided three kinds of horseradish. I fixed the potatoes. Carol and Paul set out a couple bottles of wine, one red, one white, and we were unanimous in our praise and enjoyment of this splendid meal. 

We capped off dinner with the dessert Christy requested:  Esther's Orange Marmalade Cake, inspired by Jan Karon's beloved Mitford series, centered on Father Tim Kavanagh, the rector of Mitford's Chapel of Our Lord and Savior Episcopal church. I heard tonight from Christy that Father Tim loved Esther's Orange Marmalade Cake.  So does Christy! 

Carol did a great job making the cake airy and light and very delicious. Most important, Christy enjoyed her birthday cake to the max!

Three Beautiful Things 01-08-2023: Lots to Talk About!, Blood Work Looks Okay, Art History Podcast

 1. Bill, Diane, and I jumped on the ZOOM machine and yakked away for about three hours, despite a brief interruption when Bill and Diane's internet briefly crapped out.

We covered a lot of territory: movies, family dynamics, kidney disease, other health and medical topics, the podcasts Debbie and I have been listening to, a video Bill created focused on Jim Page, and more. We rocketed back in time, too. Bill's friend Wes shot 16mm footage of the cast of a play Bill was in back in high school and we looked at highlights from it. It was awesome! 

Quite an afternoon.

2. Just before this ZOOM session, the results of my latest blood work came parachuting into my email inbox. I took a deep breath before looking at them. I was determined to expect the best. 

I was relieved as I read my numbers. No huge changes. I am going to study a few of the numbers more fully, but the ones Dr. Bieber and I discuss the most are much the same as they have been over the last couple of years.

3. Tonight, Debbie and I shifted gears in our podcast listening and played three episodes of a superb podcast I discovered when we lived in Maryland. It's called The Lonely Palette and features its host, Tamar Avishai, providing superb commentary on a single work of art each episode. 

Tonight we enjoyed Tamar Avishai's readings of George Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on La Grande Jatte, Jackson Pollock's Number 10, 1949, and Piet Mondrian's Composition with Red, Yellow, and Blue.

We both loved learning more about Seraut's technique which, looking back, art critics called pointillism, about abstract expressionism, and about abstraction itself. I definitely came away from these episodes with a deeper understanding of these painters' artistic purpose and the more philosophical dimensions of their work. 

If you'd like to check out The Lonely Palette, a good place to start is right here.

Three Beautiful Things 01-07-2023: We Keep Moving In, Art Education, Meeting the Commissioner

 1. In a way, we are still moving into our house in Kellogg. We've replaced the dining table. We are trying out a new coffee table. We are looking at putting up a small cabinet in the bathroom. We continued working on all of this today, especially Debbie, who is, thank goodness, the assembler of things that come to us in pieces. My primary contribution is to break down cardboard, bag styrofoam, and take broken down cardboard boxes to the transfer station's recycling bin. 

2. Over at the watering hole we used to call the Depot but is now part of The Beanery, but might still be called the Depot (I can't keep it straight), proprietor Sarah, a former school teacher, had some children's books for Debbie. So Debbie and I dropped in and I tried a margarita made with pomagranite liqueur, triple sec, tequila, and lime juice and enjoyed it a lot. Debbie and I yakked about introducing children to works of art and artists and I remembered what a lasting impact it had on me that at Sunnyside I had teachers who showed us paintings of masters and we studied them and wrote about them. This part of my elementary education got way inside me so that one of the things I love to do when visiting a city is to go to art galleries. I thought a lot while sipping the pom margarita how much I miss being able to zip to the DC Mall and pop into the National Gallery.

3. Debbie and I enjoyed an early evening (not night) cap at The Lounge and Cas introduced me to our fantasy baseball league commissioner, Matt. As Matt and I got to yakkin', he told me that Mom was his second grade teacher, that Carol and April used to babysit him, and that he used to go to Dirty Ernie's on the December nights when Dad served Tom and Jerrys and how much he enjoyed them. 

Debbie and I yakked with others, too, before we headed home where I popped us a batch of popcorn and we finished listening to the podcast, Ultra, a sobering reminder that there's little new under the sun in the USA. It's not that history repeats itself. Things continue.  

Three Beautiful Things 01-06-2023: Gmail and Taxes, Party in Uptown Kellogg, More Episodes of *Ultra*

 1. I had sat by while the messages in my gmail inbox kept increasing and today I deleted a ton of material with still more to get rid of. I also knuckled down and set up things so that I'm ready to do our taxes. All I need is our income statements. They will start floating into our mailbox before too long. Then I can fill out the forms as soon as possible and submit them to Oregon, Idaho, and the federal IRS. 

2. Ed and I painted uptown Kellogg for a couple of hours late this afternoon. We began our rampage at the Elks. I enjoyed a burger with fries and an ice cold can of Miller High Life. Then we skated across McKinley and plopped ourselves down at the plank in The Lounge. I enjoyed a couple Champagnes of Bottled Beer. Just as we were nearing the end of our party at The Lounge, three women walked in and we scooted into other stools at the bar so they could be next to each other. The women told us a fourth friend would soon arrive, so we scooted one more stool down. She arrived and OMG! she was born and raised in Cataldo (like Ed) and Ed has known this woman since she was young. A happy reunion took place. Ed and his longtime friend yakked and laughed and reminisced for a while. Ed took a group picture of her and her friends. I finished my beer and when Ed and I left, he was ecstatic. 

Our session at The Lounge ended with Ed's pure joy! 

3. Back home, Debbie and I listened to more of the podcast, Ultra. It's gripping. The story of bringing American Fascist/Nazi sympathizers to trial and the bedlam that ensued in the court room was a huge story in the early 1940s, but has all but disappeared as our attention later became so much more focused on the US entering WWII. I suppose I had always thought that people in the USA in the late 1930s and on into the 1940s unified themselves in opposition to Hitler's authoritarian rule and to the tenets of Fascism and Nazism. 

I was wrong. 

For a variety of reasons, a significant number of US citizens and members of the House and Senate supported Hitler and worked with people in power in Nazi Germany on campaigns that involved distributing propaganda (through mailings paid for by taxpayers) and bombings, most notably, of US munitions factories. 

The ultimate goal of these Fascist/Nazi sympathizers was to overthrow the US government. 

We have two more episodes left to listen to. 

It's a sobering reminder that in case we think things that are happening/have happened in the 2020s are unprecedented or unique, by and large, they aren't. Methods, tactics, actions might have a different look, but the underlying ideologies have been a part of life in the USA forever. 

Three Beautiful Things 01-05-2023: Blood Draw, Throwback Thursday in the Kitchen, Maddow's *Ultra*

1. This morning I leapt into the Sube and screeched uptown to the clinic and had blood drawn so we can see how my kidneys are functioning. I continue to feel great. I continue not to experience the symptoms of kidney disease. I hope there's a connection between how I feel and what the numbers say about my kidney function. I hope the numbers are as stable as my general feeling of well-being continues to be. 

2. When we left Greenbelt to move to Kellogg, we gave away a lot of things: furnishings, appliances, books, and more, including our electric frying pan (we also gave one away when we moved from Eugene to Greenbelt). I haven't bought another here in Kellogg because our storage space for kitchen appliances is limited and I prefer not to have more kitchenware than the kitchen, with help from the basement, can readily contain.

A while back, I mistakenly bought a Dutch oven larger than the two we already owned. My plan had been to replace the larger of the two with this new one, but we decided to keep all three. We use Dutch ovens a lot and the new one did not present a storage problem.

So, early this afternoon I assumed the pose of Rodin's "The Thinker" and contemplated what I might fix for Debbie and me for dinner.

I had a flashback to the days in Eugene and Greenbelt of the electric frying pan.

I used to enjoy combining bacon and ground beef with a variety of vegetables, fry them up, and spice this mess of food up with some Frank's Original Hot Sauce.

Then a possibility popped in my head. 

I could use the larger Dutch oven in a way similar to how I used to use the electric fry pan.

After a trip to Yoke's, I chopped up some bacon and put it in the larger Dutch oven along with ground beef. I chopped up onion and sweet red pepper. I had chopped mushrooms on hand as well as frozen sweet corn and frozen green beans. 

The ground beef browned more quickly than the bacon cooked up, so I removed the bacon bits and continued to fry them in the cast iron skillet. I added the onion, pepper, mushrooms, corn, and green beans to the browned ground beed and later added the more fully fried bacon.

While these things all cooked away, I made a pot of jasmine rice.

When the rice was done it so happened that the vegetables were also tender and I added rice to the ground beef/bacon/vegetable combination and that was our dinner tonight.

Debbie seasoned her bowl of food with green salsa. I opted for Bragg Liquid Amino.

It all worked out great.

3. Debbie and I finished listening to all 8.5 episodes of Burn Wild and agreed it would be fun to listen to another podcast that would add to our knowledge about the world.

We agreed to give Rachel Maddow's podcast, Ultra, a try. A couple years ago we had listened to her podcast on the downfall of Spiro Agnew entitled Bag Man, found it compelling, and decided to listen to this new one. 

Neither of us knew what to expect. Almost immediately, we learned that this podcast, though careful documentation and interviews with historians, would, at least in its early episodes, be looking back at pro-Hitler, Fascist activity in the United States, both inside Congress and in a variety of US cities and communities. 

We've learned a lot in the four and a half episodes we listened to about bombing campaigns in the USA, propaganda campaigns, and how German Nazis had become directly involved with certain very willing members of the US House and Senate. 

If you'd like to check out this podcast, all the episodes are available right here. 

POSTSCRIPT: I enjoyed listening to this podcast with Debbie, but it meant that I missed a lot of nail-biting action in college basketball -- I'm thinking of UCLA/USC, Zags/USF, and Iowa/Indiana. And, UW gave UA a tussle, as best I can tell. 

I can't do everything. 

Three Beautiful Things 01-04-2023: Yakkin' with Ed and Spinning Reels, Turning Meaty Yakamein into Vegetable Soup, Crime and Punishment

1. Ed and I piled into his Camry and blasted off from Kingston to the CdA Casino just north of Worley, ID. We yakked away going down and coming back about all sorts of things -- friends, local politics, Pinehurst Elementary School and Debbie's experience there, and a lot more.  Driving conditions were superb. I had fun burrowing myself in the cocoon of the casino, spinning some reels, sticking to my budget, having a few good spins here and there, but neither Ed nor I, as they say, won big. 

2. Back home, I checked out the leftover Yakamein broth from Monday's family dinner. Mostly it was liquid with a few pieces of shrimp and beef remaining and I decided to turn it into a vegetable soup. I chopped up potatoes, onion, carrots, and some broccoli, added the pieces to the broth and slow cooked it until the vegetables were cooked through. I added the left over spaghetti to the soup and Debbie I enjoyed what was, I guess, a variation on the more meaty Yakamein.  

I loved it. I enjoyed how the sweetness of the carrots complemented the Creole seasoning. The potatoes gave the soup more gravity, more weight. I'm glad I've lived long enough to experience different uses of spaghetti -- I'm thinking of how Cincinnati Chili is served over spaghetti and how I would have never dreamed to include spaghetti in a hybrid soup like Yakamein. I wouldn't say that now my life is complete, but it's fuller! 

3. Debbie likes to have a cocktail or two when she arrives home from work. She also finds watching episodes of Perry Mason relaxing. So do I. After we'd watched three episodes, we returned to the podcast Burn Wild. I had listened to these last episodes, Debbie hadn't, and I was happy to listen to them again. 

While this podcast not only explored the stories of Joseph Dibee, Sunshine Overaker, and other people who committed acts of property destruction, acting on behalf of an anarchist effort known as the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), it also worked to dig deeper into climate change and repeatedly raised questions about how far is too far as activists protest, disrupt the flow of everyday life with direct action, stage bits of street theater, work within legal channels to bring about change, and, more rarely, destroy the property of entities they see as ravaging the earth. 

I listened to these question in earnest, listened to the multiple perspectives the podcast offered through the different people Leah Sottile and her podcast partner Georgia Catt interviewed. They talked to people whose property had been targeted by ELF (and ALF, the Animal Liberation Front) or who lived in places where fires had been set. They talked with FBI agents, other activists from the USA and UK, to Sunshine Overseer's mother, to Joseph Dibee and his attorney, Matt Schindler, and others. 

No one articulated a solution. No one deigned to present him or herself as having all the answers.

But, I found myself thinking more about incarceration and its purposes than climate change as Wild Burn came to its conclusion. 

I found myself unable to really understand punishment. 

The podcast ended with an actor reading passages from the twenty minute statement Judge Ann Aiken read when she imposed her sentence on Joseph Dibee. 

I don't want to spoil the ending of this podcast and give away Judge Aiken's decision.

I'll just say that I'm aware of two other fugitives, long with Joseph Dibee, who were connected to Eugene.  Silas Bissell and Katherine Ann Power committed crimes, escaped apprehension, and lived law-abiding and productive lives in Eugene. Among other things, Bissell was a physical therapist  (I used to see him at contra dances!) and Power helped establish an Italian restaurant I frequented in the 1990s, Napoli. Upon being apprehended nearly twenty years after their crimes, both were incarcerated, Bissell for about 18 months and Power for six years. 

Were they considered a danger to society after living nearly 20 years as peaceful citizens? Surely not. So they were not incarcerated to keep people around them safe. 

Were they in need of reform? They'd done that without incarceration.

Did they need to serve penance? As I understand repentance, it means not only being sorry for what one did wrong, it also means reversing the course of one's life, of turning one's back on the wrong one had done and living in accordance with goodness.  They'd both done that without incarceration. (By the way, the word "penitentiary" is rooted in the word "penance". This connection is gone. For decades, if not centuries, we have regarded penitentiaries as places of punishment, not penance.)

Was their incarceration meant to deter others from committing similar crimes?

Possibly. 

Authorities argue that the incarceration of ELF activists back in 2007 had a chilling effect on environmental action involving property damage. 

They might be right. 

Personally, I don't think incarcerating Bissell and Power had anything to do with keeping communities safer, reforming Bissell and Power, imposing penitence on them, or deterring others from committing crimes similar to theirs.

They were incarcerated as a form of punishment meant to satisfy those who ardently assert, "You commit the crime, you do the time." 

Period. 

It's easy to go online and see what sentence Judge Ann Aiken imposed on Joseph Dibee. 

The articles I've read highlight passages of Judge Aiken's twenty minute sentencing statement.

I've been unable to find, just yet, the full text of her remarks online. 

If I do, I'll post a link.

If you are reading this and have a link to the full text of her remarks made on Nov. 1, 2022, please let me know. 

 

Three Beautiful Things 01-03-2023: Preparing for Medical Appointments, Wah Hing Take Out, Arson and Our 1995 Divorce

 1. That time is nearing when I have blood work done, have an annual well-being check up, see the nephrologist, and check in with the transplant coordinator at Providence Sacred Heart. I'm pretty well set up for all of this after I made some phone calls today. 

2. When Debbie returned home she suggested we order out from Wah Hing. I blasted uptown and picked up Sesame Chicken, Seafood Lo Mein, and an order of potstickers. I was especially happy when Debbie declared that this food hit the spot for her!

3. I listened to the final installments of Leah Sottile's podcast Burn Wild. The entire podcast ended with the sentencing hearing of arsonist Joseph Dibee who had been a fugitive since 2005 and was captured in Cuba in 2018. It took until November of 2022 for his sentencing hearing to take place.

Because so much of what's discussed in Burn Wild occurred in Eugene, I've been on the alert for the mention of places I've been or for the mention of people I might have been acquainted with.

A meaningless connection surfaced in the podcast's last episode.

Joseph Bibee went before U.S. District Court Judge Ann Aiken for his sentencing.

I, too, once went before Judge Aiken.

It was November, 1995.

I handed Oregon Circuit Judge Ann Aiken the signed papers outlining the divorce agreement my second wife and I had reached.

With her signature, she finalized the dissolution of our marriage. 

Three Beautiful Things 01-02-2023: Preparing Yakamein, New Orleans Cocktails, More Episodes of *Wild Burn*

1. Debbie and I hosted family dinner this evening and I was eager to spend time this afternoon preparing the main dish. You see, on Christmas Day, Christy gave me a recipe book of cocktails mixed and served at Cure, a watering hole in New Orleans. Christy also gave me the ingredients to use to make three different drinks from this book. 

So, I decided we'd start our family dinner by having everyone choose one (or two, as it turned out!) of these three cocktails and then I'd serve a New Orleans entree.

I'll get to the cocktails later.

Around 1:30 or so, I got going making the New Orleans dish called Yakamein (New Orleans' Ol' Sober). It's akin to ramen or Pho and the recipe for this dish persuaded me it would be fun to make and a delicious (and unique) focus for tonight's meal.

I started by making a Creole seasoning mix by mixing paprika, salt, onion powder, garlic powder, oregano, basil, thyme, and black pepper. (If I'd wanted it to have more heat, I could have also added white pepper and cayenne pepper.)

I had taken a chuck roast weighing about a pound and a half out of the refrigerator before I put together the Creole seasoning. Now the meat was close to room temperature and I cut it up into small pieces and marinated it for about half an hour in a mixture of Creole seasoning and soy sauce. 

Once marinated, the beef was ready to be seared. Once seared, I poured two quarts of beef broth over the meat and added Creole seasoning, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, oregano, thyme, and basil. I laid off adding any more pepper, figuring if any of us wanted more heat, we could add it at the table.

This beef and broth bubbled away for an hour and a half or so. The goal is to cook the chuck roast until it's as tender as possible. While the broth simmered, I marinated shrimp in soy sauce and Creole seasoning and heated up a Dutch oven of water and, in addition, a smaller pot of water.

Once the meat was tender, I added in the shrimp. As the Yakamein continued to bubble away, the shrimp cooked and the beef continued to become more tender. 

I added six eggs to the pot of boiling water, turned the heat to medium, and cooked the eggs for ten minutes. I removed the eggs, gave them an ice bath, peeled off the shells and cut each egg in half. I was very happy that the eggs turned out just the way I wanted them, harder than soft-boiled but not completely hard-boiled.

In the Dutch oven of boiling water, I cooked a pound of spaghetti.

I also chopped up a bunch of green onions.

When the time came to serve, I put spaghetti in the bottom of each person's bowl, used a slotted spoon to take pieces of beef and shrimp out of the soup pot, ladled broth over the meat/fish and noodles and garnished each bowl with two egg halves and some green onion.

Earlier in the day, I whizzed over to Beach Bum Bakery, Kellogg's fairly new organic bakery, serving pastries, coffee, bread, tea, and other delights out of a tiny trailer on Bunker Ave, behind the Furniture Exchange.

Beach Bum Bakery sells what I would call half baguettes and I bought two of them and served them with tonight's Yakamein (New Orleans' Ol' Sober [reputed to be superb meal if one is hung over -- we didn't test this particular virtue of Yakamein tonight!]). 

Christy contributed two bottles of wine to our dinner, a red blend and a Chardonnay. 

2. About those cocktails. Christy gave me the stuff I needed to make three different cocktails:

*Union Jack Rose (Ro-zay): a blending of gin, apple brandy, Grenadine, fresh lime juice, orange bitters,  and fresh mint. 

*Pequot Fizz: a blending of fresh lime juice, an egg white, gin, superfine sugar, soda water, and fresh mint.

*Cure martini: gin, Noilly Prat dry vermouth, orange bitters, and olives or lemon peel.

Carol brought a tray of cut vegetables to enjoy with our cocktails and, as best I could tell, the New Orleans drinks went over really well.

3. Debbie went out to Pinehurst Elementary and did more preparation work for the resumption of classes on Jan 3 and while I cooked, I listened to more of Leah Sottile's podcast Wild Burn. Much of the content I listened to today focused on how the Whiteaker neighborhood of Eugene developed into the residential and philosophical center of the anarchist movement. 

I lived about five or six blocks south of the southern most edge of the Whiteaker neighborhood and enjoyed going there to hear music or for a few beers at Sam Bond's Garage, to grab a bite to eat, usually breakfast, at the New Day Bakery, or to buy some groceries on occasion at the Red Barn. 

For no good reason (that I remember), I didn't go to the places I now know were gathering spots for activists/anarchists in the Whiteaker. I never visited Icky's Tea House, don't remember ever having a cup of coffee at Out of the Fog, and, to me, Tiny Tavern had lost the charm I enjoyed when I first moved to Eugene and I only went there a couple of times. 

When I hung out in the Whitaker in the late 1990s and on into the early 2000s, I didn't think of it nor experience it as a "hotbed of anarchy". I enjoyed being in this neighborhood. It was countercultural, unique, welcoming, and, for me, relaxing. While acts of arson, protest, property damage, and confrontations of the police might have been discussed and planned in the Whitaker, these things were happening underground and for a guy like me, a community college instructor who enjoyed having a cup of coffee or a beer or buying bulk foods in a neighborhood different from anywhere else in Eugene, it was a relaxing and enjoyable place. 

I write this not to in any way downplay the destructive actions these people carried out in the 1990s and early 2000s. 

But, I wonder if people I knew who lived elsewhere and read about how several of these arsonists, saboteurs, and window smashers resided in and organized their actions in Eugene might have wondered if I was in some kind of danger.

It never felt dangerous to me to hang out in the Whitaker neighborhood. Yes, there were violent clashes between anarchists and people carrying out direct actions in Eugene, but even though these marches, actions, and clashes both downtown and at Washington-Jefferson Park occurred just blocks away from our house, we never felt threatened. 

It's fascinating to be learning more about what was happening in Eugene during this time period by listening to Burn Wild and reading other pieces I'm finding online. 

It's expanding my knowledge and triggering a lot of memories. 

Three Beautiful Things 01-01-2023: The 1960 Wisconsin Primary, Podcast Documenting Environmental Extremism, No More Bowl Games For Me

1. Debbie went out to Pinehurst Elementary to prepare her classroom for the resumption of classes on Tuesday and I checked out a new Criterion Channel collection, Cinema Verite. I decided to watch an hour long documentary, Primary. It documents John Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey campaigning in Wisconsin, working to win the April 5, 1960 primary. It was a fascinating look at how the two candidates reached out to voters, what some of the voters thought of each of them, and the respect Humphrey and Kennedy had for one another. It's a black and white documentary with very little voice over narration and works to give viewers the sense of being in the moment as we experience the campaign and election night with the candidates.

2. I've become more and more aware of Leah Sottile's work on extremism in the USA since I began to follow her on Twitter and since the publication of her book, When the Moon Turns to Blood. Much of Sottile's work has been writing about conservative extremism. In her work, however, people in law enforcement asked why she didn't also research and write/podcast about environmental extremism. Sottile accepted this challenge and has now released an eight episode podcast entitled, Burn Wild.  

Sottile interviews subjects and narrates stories about the rash of fires set in the 1990s and into the early 2000s by environmental saboteurs. You might remember when the Earth Liberation Front claimed responsibility for the burning of a ski resort in Vale, a ranger station in Oakridge, OR, a horse meat slaughterhouse in Redmond, and several other similar incidents.

Two of the people allegedly involved in these fires, Joseph Dibee and Josephine Sunshine Overaker, escaped arrest back in 2005. Dibee has since been apprehended and Overaker has not.

The podcast tells the stories of the fires. Sottile interviews people who were involved in setting them. She interviews Joseph Dibee. She asks people, including the FBI agent who has worked on her case for many years, about Sunshine Overaker. 

I listened to four episodes today and four more to go.

I'm especially interested in this story because of the close connection between the Earth Liberation Front and other radical environmental actions and Eugene, OR. In addition, one of the cases, the burning of pickups at a Eugene car dealership, came before our panel when I served on the Lane County grand jury in June, 2000. 

Sottile's podcast has been absorbing and thought provoking and has inspired me to go back and read stories published in the Eugene Weekly in late 2006 about the rise and fall/disintegration of this underground extremist environmental movement and how, for a few years, Eugene's Whiteaker neighborhood was the movement's beehive. 

You can find this podcast by clicking right here. 

3.  I couldn't help but think about how differently I spent New Year's Day today than when I was a lot younger and everything on January 1st revolved around the college football bowl games. I loved those days, especially going to Ted Turnbow's basement or traveling from Eugene up to Roger Pearson's apartment in Salem to take in all that action.

I don't miss the football, though.

I decided several years ago to stop watching football. 

I miss the get togethers I used to join in on to watch the Super Bowl or key Duck games or, as mentioned, the New Year's Day bowl games, but I've found other ways to enjoy that time and other enjoyable ways to socialize. 

My decision is working just fine for me. 

Three Beautiful Things 12-31-2022: Zags Take Me Back to the Ninth Grade, Snacks and Then The Lounge, *Perry Mason* and Looking Ahead

1. Watching Gonzaga crush Pepperdine 111-88, I flashed back to the ninth grade and the 1968-69 Kellogg Kittens (we were juvenile Wildcats) basketball season. As the Gonzaga/Pepperdine game progressed, Pepperdine tried playing some zone defense, leaving Gonzaga's guards and wings wide open for three point shots. Unguarded, unharassed, Gonzaga scored almost at will. 

The Kellogg Kittens ran a 1-3-1 offense and most of the teams we played defended us with a zone defense. My role in this offense was to roam the baseline and when Don or Steve or Roger passed me the ball I could keep the ball moving with a pass into Bruce in the key or to a guard cutting to the basket or to a guard who rotated to the side of the court I was on. My other option was to shoot from the baseline or the corner.

I think I shot a lot. I scored quite a bit, largely because I was rarely harassed or defended by our opponents. I had the experience over fifty years ago that I saw Gonzaga's outside shooters have yesterday: shooting outside jumpers while wide open and splashing a good percentage of them. 

As I grew older and joined the KHS varsity basketball team, I rarely had this experience again, didn't have the luxury of shooting outside shots largely undefended and I never adjusted very well. My three years as a KHS varsity team member were pretty much flops, except for the fact that I made friendships that have endured to this day.

2. Around six o'clock, Debbie and I blasted over to Carol and Paul's house and joined them and Zoe and Molly for chips, slices of salami, cheese, and fruit, and other finger food and sweets. Cocktails and wine were on hand, but I drank plain seltzer water, knowing that I'd be driving tonight.

Christy wasn't feeling well and took a rain check, deciding she'd be wiser to stay home and rest and take care of herself.

We had a lot of fun talking about language and past New Year's Eves and the cultural changes we've experienced and witnessed over the years. 

3. After a relaxing couple of hours, Debbie and I piled back into the Sube and rocketed up to the Inland Lounge for one drink and to wish Cas and Tracy a Happy New Year. 

We didn't stay long and returned home just as the local 9:00 (12 EST) fireworks were being set off and we settled into an episode of Perry Mason and capped off the evening with conversation about what 2023 might look like. 

It was a good way to end the evening and, I guess, end the year.

There were more fireworks at midnight. 

But we'd both gone to bed by then.