1. In contrast to Monday, today was a much slower day. Meagan and Patrick got their things gathered and hit the road around 10 a.m. and arrived safely in Portland at the end of a rainy drive.
We had a terrific time together -- Patrick and Meagan are comfortable here spending time doing what they enjoy, whether Meagan is reading or Patrick is working on a tech related project. Debbie and I enjoy turning the playing of music over to Meagan and Patrick and we get to hear stuff we would never listen to otherwise. Meagan and Patrick appreciate the food we prepare or order out for and they had a great time with everyone at family dinner on Sunday. I really enjoyed our conversations, too. We covered a lot of ground over the weekend whether talking about family news and history (not about Woolum things), Patrick and Meagan's hopes for their life in the years to come, Debbie's work, my medical situation, and other topics.
2. When Debbie arrived home, pretty happy with how her day went, I told her that I wanted to take a break from cooking. Preparing family dinner had been a blast, but between the food preparation and the clean up, it was a big task. Likewise, I loved cooking hot wings on Monday, but I didn't want to cook more tonight. Luckily, we had plenty of leftovers from family dinner -- crackers, cheese, salami, Cincinnati chili sauce, and the fixings for Cincinnati chili itself.
So Debbie and I grazed.
I enjoyed another bowl of Cincinnati chili. The sauce continues to age well. I thought it tasted even better tonight than on Sunday.
In addition, I was grateful that we didn't use many dishes tonight. I think by Wednesday morning, I can be all caught up on cleaning up and putting things away after our Sunday and Monday blowouts!
3. One of the songs Meagan played on Sunday evening was Marty Robbins' "El Paso". We listened to both Robbins and the Grateful Dead perform it.
I knew that Bob Dylan wrote about "El Paso" in his recent book, The Philosophy of Modern Song.
I have the book downloaded on Audible.
Dylan's commentary on this song is a wide ranging riff on the history of cowboy songs, mythical traditions of death and darkness, and an illuminating biography of Marty Robbins, his grandfather, songs, stories, and truth.
I've listened to this chapter of Dylan's book about five or six times now and if I'm ever going to even approach fully grasping what he has to say about "El Paso", I will need to listen to the song several more times, read and reread the lyrics, and listen to Dylan's dense reflections on the song another five or six times.
Debbie and I listened to this chapter this evening. It inspired Debbie to talk about how and why the musical qualities of this song will sometimes live in her mind for two or three days at a time -- for reasons Dylan didn't touch upon.
Because I later mentioned Dylan's mighty chapter in his book on John Turrell, Debbie and I talked about the movies Incident at Oglala and Thunderheart.
I jokingly quipped that if we weren't careful, we'd be watching All the President's Men again.
Debbie said, "Let's do it!"
We knew we wouldn't get very far into the movie before we needed to turn in, but we wrapped up our evening of leftovers, Marty Robbins, Bob Dylan, "El Paso", and movies about Oglala nicely by watching a chunk of All the President's Men.
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