Three Beautiful Things 03-30-2024: Hiking the Wellness Trail, UConn Decimates Illinois, Alabama Streaks By Clemson

 1. Yes, it was a bit chilly out, brisk, a bit breezy, but it was also sunny. I decided to forego huffing and puffing on machines today and, instead, huff and puff up and down the Wellness Trail overlooking the Shoshone Medical Center. After reaching the picnic table at the trail's end, I contemplated how long it might be before I could hike this relatively short trail without stopping to rest. I can't do that now, but, if the weather is pretty good and I keep coming back, how about two weeks from now? Is that reasonable/doable? 

I'll find out. 

2. UConn had looked unbeatable so far in the NCAA men's basketball tournament, but today against Illinois, they weren't really looking so indomitable in the first half. Their big center, Donovan Clingan, disrupted multiple Illinois shots inside and scored some fairly easy baskets near the rim, but UConn shot poorly from the outside. Late in the first half the game was tied, but UConn closed out the half with five points and led at halftime 28-23. 

I can't really account for what happened in the second half. 

I do know this.

UConn demolished Illinois, scoring the second half's first twenty-three points and turning what had been a close first half into a rout. 

The final score: UConn 77. Illinois 52. 

3. Debbie was at The Lounge after working in her classroom for several hours. With the UConn/Illinois game out of hand and the outcome no longer in doubt, I headed up and joined her. 

I enjoyed a bottle of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, split a combo appetizer plate from Wah Hing with Debbie, and returned home to watch Alabama stick to its offensive philosophy and defeat Clemson, 89-82. What is that philosophy? 

Well, Alabama's head coach, Nate Oats, approaches the game of basketball mathematically and draws upon imaginably detailed stacks of data and, applying analytics to how his team plays, he's determined that, to put it simply, his team's odds of winning are at their peak if his team takes only two kinds of shots: a) from beyond the 3 point arc and b) at the rim. Alabama looked shaky in the first half. I think they missed their first nine 3 point attempts. As the game progressed, though, they heated up from beyond the arc and they were able to score points at the rim. Clemson hurt themselves with foul trouble and a puzzling inability to convert free throws, but, in the end, Alabama's relentless barrage of three point attempts, put backs on offensive rebounds, and successful drives to the tin prevailed. 

Now the  indomitable UConn Huskies will play the math-driven, long range bombers and relentless into the paint penetrators of Alabama. Can UConn dominate the Rolling Tide? Or can Alabama translate its coach's obsessive attention to analytics into another scoring spree that outdistances UConn? 

We'll see on Saturday. 

Three Beautiful Things 03-29-2024: *Fresh Air* Repeat in the Fitness Center, Purdue Defeats Gonzaga, Tennessee Smothers Creighton

1. While I huffed and puffed at the Fitness Center this afternoon, I listened again to the Fresh Air interview with E. Tammy Kim discussing the State of Oregon's retreat from the ballot initiative that passed in 2020 decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of hard drugs.  Much of the growing opposition to this experiment was in response to drug use by people without housing, people living in encampments and on the streets of Medford, Eugene, Bend, Salem, Portland and other places. 

As I listened, I remembered. I've volunteered to serve breakfast on Saturdays to homeless people in Eugene. I had students at LCC who lived in tents and campers and who "couch surfed", staying for short periods of time in a succession of the living rooms of friends, acquaintances, or relatives. I lived near downtown in Eugene, frequently rode on the city bus system, and encountered the homeless any day I stepped out of our house. 

I remembered one man in particular He had been a successful builder, but lost his work when his body broke down.  His life spiraled into homelessness. He lived with his son in a tent near the Willamette River, did his homework either at the college or the public library, and needed help more than once when someone entered his tent and stole the books we were reading in the course. 

I not only have no idea how or if the problems addressed in this episode can be solved, I don't know what the solution would look like. 

2. Back home, I tuned into the Gonzaga/Purdue men's basketball game, curious to see how the improved Gonzaga Bulldogs would fare in a rematch with Purdue. Purdue defeated Gonzaga back in November, 73-63. 

I supposed for Gonzaga to win this game, they had to try to make scoring difficult for Purdue's mighty center, Zach Edey. If the Zags succeeded in this effort, they then had to either stop Purdue's outside shooters or hope they had a poor shooting game. Lastly, I thought the Zags needed their inside players to stay out of foul trouble.

Purdue was the superior team today. The Boilermakers' outside shooters were deadly, especially in the first half. Over the course of the game, Zach Edey dominated inside and the Zags' Anton Watson,  Graham Ike, and Ben Gregg all got into foul trouble, with Ike and Watson both fouling out. 

The final score was 80-68.

I am now intrigued to watch Sunday's Elite 8 tilt between Purdue and Tennessee.

3. You see, I also watched the Creighton/Tennessee tilt and Tennessee's defense, especially on the perimeter, was so suffocating that, at times, I had trouble breathing. 

Creighton fought back against Tennessee when they fell double digits behind in the second half, but along with their stifling defense, Tennessee's Dalton Knecht had a solid scoring night and their point guard Zakai Zeigler, not only was a defensive menace, but expertly ran Tennessee's offense. He accomplished the very things on offense that he and Tennessee teammates prohibited Creighton's guards from doing. 

So, after this game, right along with the post-game panelists, I wondered if Tennessee's perimeter defense can disrupt Purdue on Sunday.  Can they force Purdue to run their sets from farther away from the basket than they want? Can this disruption mean that Zach Edey might received passes in the paint a few feet further away from the basket than he's comfortable with? Can Tennessee get players other than Knecht to score? Will Tennessee defeat Purdue? 

I don't know, but I'll be intrigued to find out. 

Oh! By the way, I made five wagers at the Sports Book inside the Spokane Tribe Casino last week. 

Three of my wagers are dead: Creighton, Arizona, Houston.

Two are alive.  

Can Iowa win the women's tournament? 

How about UConn? Will they win the men's? 

These are my last two chances for a payout. . . .

Three Beautiful Things 03-28-2024: Rained Out, A Shining North Dakota Light, Fantasy Ups and Downs

1. I was all ready this afternoon to return to the Shoshone Medical Center Wellness Trail. I wanted to see how I'd do hiking it after exercising for the last few months on indoor machines. 

As I got ready to go, it started to rain. 

So, I got out my resistance band and worked out lightly at home instead.

2.  I was listening to the Clemson/Arizona game on the radio when Debbie arrived back home after several hours working in her classroom. She said she'd like to have basketball playing on the television. I'm not absolutely sure why, but it took about fifteen minutes for the Vizio and our internet service to connect with each other, but eventually they did. 

The Arizona game had completed by then, but I enjoyed watching Alabama and North Carolina race up and down the court. Alabama raced just a bit better than the Tar Heels and scored an 89-87 victory. It was fun, and, for me, unexpected, to see Grant Nelson, a kid who transferred to Alabama all the way from North Dakota State turn out to be Alabama's key player as he scored big buckets from outside and inside and played some stellar defense, especially late in the game. 

3. This is true every day of the baseball season: I thoroughly enjoy starting out every morning, even before I take on the Wordle, Quordle, and Waffle puzzles, by setting my fantasy baseball lineups and then checking in, throughout the day, to ride the roller coaster of the successes and failures of my teams. My primary goal is not to embarrass myself and I got off to a good start today in our head to head league, but my rotisserie team plunged into the dungeon of 7th place out of 8 teams.  Friday will be a new day, though, and maybe my rotisserie team will perform better and move up in the standings. 

Much of the fun of being in these leagues grows out of the unknown and experiencing day to day elation and bitter disappointments. 

Three Beautiful Things 03-27-2024: Jess Alvarenga's Unique Search for a Spiritual Home, Immigrant Women Cooks/Chefs, Oregon Reconsiders Decriminalizing Small Amounts of Hard Drugs

1. Lately, members of our family, both here and across the USA, have had discussions about code-switching, the word used for the practice of people alternating between languages or vernaculars depending on who they are speaking with. Examples of code-switching are various and multiple. Any number of people, American Indian tribal members, indigenous peoples of Alaska, African-Americans, and many others who live in one kind of ethnic neighborhood or community or another often speak one way with one another and switch the way they talk with people outside their community. 

It's common.

National Public Radio produces a regular program and podcast entitled, Code Switch. The program explores "how race affects every part of society -- from politics and pop culture to history, food and everything in between."

I've known about this program for many years, but, until today, I hadn't listened to any episodes. 

Since code-switching has been a recent topic of family discussion, I decided that while I huffed and puffed at the Fitness Center, I'd choose an episode of Code Switch and listen to it. 

Especially after listening to Sarah McCammon's interview on Monday, this episode title at Code Switch caught my eye: "A former church girl's search for a new spiritual home". 

So I clicked on it and listened to Jess Alvarenga tell her story.

She was raised in a Pentecostal church, had deep and joyous experiences with prayer, fellowship, and with having been (these are my words) slain by the Holy Ghost.

But Jess is queer. 

Her sexuality and the Pentecostal church didn't mesh. 

So, Jess went searching. 

In this episode, she interviews a dominatrix and together they talk about the spiritual dimensions of BDSM. 

At the top of this episode, the people at Code Switch made it clear that this episode would deal with sexual content that some listeners would prefer not to hear talked about. 

As I huffed and puffed and listened to Jess Alvarenga tell her story and the dominatrix tell her story and as they both discussed their spiritual journeys, they expanded my notions of spiritual experience and healing and, as it turns out, connected me back to stories and experiences some of my Lane Community College students had confided to me many years ago.

Jess Alvarenga also spent time interviewing Buddhist monks who experienced spiritual enrichment through the ingesting of psychedelic mushrooms. 

Jess Alvarenga's last interview brought her back to where the episode began, in a way. She interviewed a Berkley Pentecostal pastor, a pastor who was accepting of Jess Alvarenga as a queer woman, who moved her with his openness and loving spirit. 

Jess Alvarenga's search for a spiritual home is ongoing. 

If you'd like to go beyond my summation of this episode and listen to it yourself, just go here. 

2. I continued my exploration of Code Switch by listening to an episode entitled, "Women of color have always shaped the way Americans eat". In this episode, we hear immigrant women cooks not only discuss how they cook and how they think about cooking, we also hear about the obstacles they face in the publishing world as they work to have cookbooks they've written published. 

If you'd like to listen to this episode, it's right here -- I enjoyed how hungry it made me feel! 

3. As I went to sleep tonight, I listened to a Fresh Air interview with E. Tammy Kim. Kim wrote an article back in January for the The New Yorker about the 2020 ballot measure Oregon voters overwhelmingly passed decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of hard drugs. In this episode, Dave Davies interviews Kim about the article and the unforeseen difficulties that arose as the new law turned out to look much better on paper than it was in reality. You can listen to the interview here. 

I don't know if The New Yorker article is protected by a paywall. If not, it's here. 

Three Beautiful Things 03-26-2024: Early Morning in CdA, Recovery, Simple Spaghetti Dinner

1. Debbie and I bolted out the door soon after 6 a.m. to soar to Kootenai Health in CdA so Debbie could have a routine medical procedure done. While Debbie was going through the procedure, I went to the hospital's coffee shop and enjoyed a chocolate chip croissant and a cafe au lait, both rare treats. 

Then I experienced another rare treat! Debbie rarely wants to eat breakfast out, but, as we left the hospital parking lot, she surprised me by saying she wanted to do just that. 

We went to the Breakfast Nook and not only had breakfast, but we came home with a container of left over hash browns that Debbie plans to transform into potato pancakes. 

2. Back home, we were both bushed. Getting up at 4:30 a.m. knocked me out of my usual routine and Debbie needed to recover from her medical visit. We both took naps and lounged around the house, resting up, not asking much of ourselves.

3. I broke open a HelloFresh bag and made a simple Sun Dried Tomato Spaghetti dish that basically involved little more than cooking the pasta and making a simple sauce with sun dried tomatoes, fresh tomatoes, and a few other simple ingredients. 

We were definitely grateful that preparing this dinner was so simple and I found eating spaghetti comforting. 

I look forward to having a bit more zip on Wednesday! 

Three Beautiful Things 03-25-2024: Podcast on the Right to Bear Arms, Podcast on Public Apologies, *Fresh Air* Looks at Punk Rock and Evangelicalism

1. I enjoyed a new approach this afternoon to my listening routine while I huff and puff at the Fitness Center. I decided to listen to podcasts and began by returning to an episode of Throughline that I put on the other night when I went to bed. I slept through parts of it and knew I wouldn't fall asleep while exercising, and I was right! I stayed awake for the entire episode entitled, "The Right to Bear Arms". In each episode, Throughline ventures to look at different questions with an historical perspective, working to develop a throughline from points in the past to the present. 

"The Right to Bear Arms", for the most part, tracked the history of the Supreme Court's rulings on firearm ownership and how, in 1977, the National Rifle Association's focus shifted from being an organization largely concerned with responsible gun ownership and gun safety to a political one, to advocating for the loosening, if not the elimination, of restrictions on firearms possession. 

The Supreme Court also shifted. For many years, the court's rulings on the right to bear arms focused on the opening of the amendment and the relationship between gun ownership and a well-regulated militia. More recently, however, the Supreme Court has focused its rulings more on the second half of the amendment, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

Want to listen? Just go here. 

2. I still had more huffing and puffing to do and tuned into a second podcast from Throughline. It focused on the proliferation of public apologies in recent years. The episode explored three different cases. It looked all the way back to the Salem witch trials. It then moved to the 20th century,  examining German Chancellor Willy Brandt's spontaneous and silent falling to his knees while visiting a 1970 memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, an act of public contrition for the horrors Germany perpetrated upon Warsaw. Its third chapter detailed Bill Clinton's repeated apologies for his affair with Monica Lewinsky. 

The podcast also explored the practice of restorative justice and began and ended with a criminal who decades after he was incarcerated honestly confronted the atrocious nature of his crimes and wrote letters of apologies to the victims, never knowing if the victims received or read the letters. 

Just as I listened twice to Throughline's episode on the right to bear arms, and will return to it, I plan to listen to this study of apologies again and continue to wrestle with whether, in any way, the harm we do to one another can be alleviated by apology and what impact apologizing has on us when we have perpetrated harm on others. 

Interested? Click here. 

3. I knew I'd be getting up much earlier than usual on Tuesday morning to drive Debbie to Coeur d'Alene for a routine medical procedure, so I went to bed much earlier than usual and listened to two episodes of Fresh Air. 

The first featured Ann Marie Baldanodo's interview of Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker,  the two founders of the feminist punk rock band, Sleater-Kinney, to discuss Sleater-Kinney's latest album, Little Rope, and to look back over the last thirty years since Sleater-Kinney emerged as what Rolling Stone called the best American punk band ever. 

You can hear this interview here. 

Then I listened to a second Fresh Air interview, another I will return to again.  

Tonya Mosley interviewed NPR Politics Correspondent, Sarah McCammon about her recent book, The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church.

Immediately, in this interview, Sarah McCammon's intelligence and generous spirit struck me as making her an ex-evangelical (or exvangelical) I could listen to. She reminded me in one important way of the comparative religions scholar Karen Armstrong. Debbie and I traveled to Portland years ago (pre-kellogg bloggin') to hear Karen Armstrong lecture on worldwide Fundamentalism. Central to her lecture was her insight that Fundamentalism rejects, on the whole, modernity. Sarah McCammon separated from the evangelical church, in part, because of its rejection of modernity -- one example would be a rejection of a modern approach to science, including evolutionary theory as well as more modern understandings of, say, the age of our planet. 

In this way, my listening to the podcast on the right to bear arms and to Sarah McCammon's interview about her spiritual development converged. As the podcast on the right to bear arms drew to a close and focused on the current Supreme Court, the discussion turned to Constitutional originalism, the idea that legal text should be interpreted based on the original understanding at the time of the text's adoption, not in terms of how society and technology and other aspects of modern life have changed over time. To me, at least, originalism is a kind of rejection of modernity, of change. 

I puzzle over this conflict between change and resistance to change, between modernity and resisting modernity all the time. I seek sane voices that examine the resistance to modernity and try to understand this resistance better, even as I embrace (for the most part) modernity and change.  

You can listen to Sarah McCammon being interviewed here. 

Three Beautiful Things 03-24-2024: Making Lemon Couscous, Draft Day at The Lounge, Citrus Family Dinner and Stories from 1999

 1. Right away this morning, after finishing my puzzle and blogging routine, I fixed my contribution to tonight's family dinner. Christy assigned each of us to make a citrus dish and asked me to make a rice or grain offering. I decided to make lemon couscous, using Israeli pearls. First I roasted the couscous. I then zested two lemons and juiced them. I heated up some olive oil and added minced garlic and took it off the heat when it became fragrant. Into the pot with the garlic I added three cups of chicken stock and the lemon zest and lemon juice along with the roasted couscous pearls. Once the liquid boiled, I turned the heat on low, put the lid on the pot, and then roasted a handful of almonds. 

When the couscous were done, I realized I'd put too much liquid in the pot. I strained the extra liquid, put the couscous in a bowl, topped the couscous with the almonds I'd roasted, and further topped the dish with orange segments. 

2. I fixed this dish in the morning because I spent much of the afternoon at The Lounge with Cas, Ginger, Seth, and my laptop. Today was our fantasy baseball draft day. Four of us were able to meet at The Lounge for a draft day party. The other four members of our leagues couldn't make it. 

It was fun watching each other make our draft picks. We all participate in two fantasy leagues and during the break between the two league drafts, pizza arrived and the draft party also became a fun and delicious pizza party. 

A couple of people have asked me how I think I did -- did I draft solid teams?

I have no idea.

I'll find out how I did once the Major League Baseball season swings into full action and see if either of my teams compete very well.

3. The citrus blow out at family dinner was a success. Debbie made little citrus kabobs on toothpicks, combining a piece of orange, a little chunk of cheese, a mint leaf, and a dab of blackberry preserves. Carol contributed a mandarin salad from Betty Crocker. Christy fixed orange glazed chicken thighs. For dessert, Christy baked a lemon pound cake and served it with limoncello. 

We talked about a lot of things as we dined, including what we plan to do with Copper and Gibbs if/when I have transplant surgery. We also reminisced about those harrowing days in November of 1999 when I contracted bacterial meningitis and Christy, Everett, Mom, and Carol all traveled to Eugene, arriving about the time I was released from the ICU. We'd planned a family weekend on the Oregon coast over Veteran's Day. That didn't happen. But a lot of other stuff happened at the hospital and tonight a lot of stories emerged, many of them things we could laugh at all these nearly twenty-five years later. 

Three Beautiful Things 03-23-2024: Tires Switched, Happy Birthday Tona!, Yakkin' at The Lounge

 1. It's kind of a crazy thing to feel so elated about, but here I am. 

At about 7:15 this morning, I drove the Sube down the street to Silver Valley Tire. All our spring/summer/fall tires were in the back of the Sube. 

I walked home, revved up the Camry, and blasted it to Silver Valley Tire.

Two hours or so later, the tire changers completed their job. I brought both cars home. I loaded the winter tires into the garage.

Our cars are outfitted for the spring, summer, and fall until the snow and ice returns later in the year. 

And I'm elated. 

2. Ed swooped by, picked me up, and we attended Tona's surprise 70th birthday party at the Elks. 

It was awesome. 

The turnout was superb. Tona beamed as one person after another embraced her, wished her a Happy Birthday, and yakked with her for a while. 

3. As the party drew to an end, Ed and I strolled across the street to The Lounge and enjoyed a couple beers. Before long, Debbie joined us and we yakked about toasted cheese sandwiches, tomato soup, homemade bread, and asphalt, among other things. Ed had to take off and Debbie and I switched gears and began putting ideas and possibilities on the table for what the rest of 2024 might look like -- always wondering, is there a kidney transplant in our near future? 

Three Beautiful Things 03-22-2024: Afternoon in Coeur d'Alene, Chillin' at The Lounge, *Landslide* and the Ascent of Jimmy Carter

 1. Debbie and I blasted over the 4th of July Pass for an afternoon in Coeur d'Alene, each doing our own thing. Debbie had a salon appointment and I fueled up at Costco, sauntered up and down the aisles of the warehouse, and did some more sauntering at Pilgrim's. I always have fun shopping and Debbie's left the salon happy and with fun stories about conversations she had, especially about Bigfoot. (That was unexpected!)

2. Back in Kellogg, we dropped in at The Lounge. We shared Wah Hing's Appetizer Combo Plate. Ryan popped in, plopped down next to me, and we talked about the NCAA men's basketball tournament and his high hopes for his alma mater, James Madison, to defeat Wisconsin. Turns out they did. Ryan also showed me a picture of his new inflatable fishing vessel and described the fun he recently had putting it in at Steamboat on the North Fork. He didn't catch any fish, but he had fun being on the water. 

3. I didn't realize it when Debbie and I started listening to the podcast, Landslide, but all of its episodes have not been released yet. They are coming out, one at a time, on Thursdays. 

Well, yesterday, the episode, "Ordinary Man" dropped and we listened to it tonight. The podcast shifted focus from the conflicts in the Republican Party in 1975-76 to a surprising development in the Democratic Party: the rise of a politically astute, obscure former governor from Georgia, Jimmy Carter. 

Once again, listening to this episode took me back to Whitworth in the spring of 1976 and the theme dorm I wrote about earlier. 

Our 20th Century History class tracked the daily/nightly news with great interest as Jimmy Carter won the Iowa caucus, after having campaigned in the state for many months leading up to it, something no candidate had ever thought to do before. Likewise, he had campaigned hard for months in New Hampshire and he won that primary.

Frank Church and Jerry Brown challenged Carter later in the primary season with some success.

Carter secured the Democratic Party's nomination to run for president, though, when George Wallace, who had run against Carter and lost to him in the Florida primary, released the delegates he'd won to Jimmy Carter.

Carter's bona fides as a conservative governor of Georgia swayed Wallace to support Jimmy Carter. 

At the same time, Carter's support of civil rights earned his the support of Andrew Young and many African-American voters. 

I am looking forward to how this podcast presents the 1976 election between Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford. 

In 1976, Gerald Ford won every electoral vote in the West and the Rocky Mountain states. Yes. He won Washington, Oregon, California. He won Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and more. 

Carter, on the other hand, won every state in the South, including Texas. He won Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina -- but he lost Virginia to Gerald Ford. Carter also won New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, but Ford captured New Jersey and Connecticut. 

How will the podcast Landslide explain these mind boggling results?

We'll tune in the next two Thursdays to find out! 

Three Beautiful Things 03-21-2024: With the Radio On, Reagan and Ford and the Podcast *Landslide*, Subaru Gratitude

1. It does mean that if I were to discuss team's playing in the NCAA men's basketball tournament, I would not be able to hold teams up to the eye test. Today, I didn't watch any games. I listened to two games on my Sirius/XM app. Listening to the University of Oregon Ducks steadily pull away from and defeat the South Carolina Gamecocks made my session at the Fitness Center all the more enjoyable. Back home, for a while, I tuned into Gonzaga's flattening of McNeese State. 

At some point, I might turn on the Vizio and watch some action, but I enjoy listening on the radio a lot. I can put my ear buds in, have a private listening experience, and experience the drama with my ears and imagination, which is stimulating. Listening on the radio offers me more flexibility, too. I can exercise, work on other tasks, and, if I drive the Camry, enjoy the games while in the car. 

2. Debbie and I have been listening to a fascinating podcast, Landslide. It chronicles the emergence of Ronald Reagan as the animating force of what was known in the mid-1970s as the New Right, a conservative political movement that Reagan helped energize with his appeals to law and order, his warnings that the United States was becoming a second-rate power in the world, and his steady admonitions that US citizens' freedoms were eroding, that the government was overreaching and needed to be reigned in. He seized upon U.S. plans to relinquish control of the Panama Canal as further proof of growing US weakness in international matters. 

The episodes we listened to this evening focused on the 1976 Republican Party primaries. Early on, Gerald Ford looked like he would dispatch Reagan handily, but conservative organizations outside of Reagan's campaign team blitzed North Carolina with a blizzard of direct mail appeals and a repeated thirty minute Ronald Reagan television ad. The mailings and Reagan's ad were aggressive and emotional, focusing not so much on dry policy issues like the economy, but on grievances: the rise of the women's movement, gun control, school textbooks, racial integration (especially busing), school textbooks, and the fear that the United States was, as Reagan repeated, the number two power in the world. 

Listening to these episodes took me back to my senior year at Whitworth. I was a member of a theme dorm. About eighteen of us lived together in a small dorm, all enrolled in a 20th Century History course that met in the lounge of our dorm late in the afternoon -- on Tuesdays and Thursdays, maybe?  Professor Jim Hunt was the faculty member in charge of the course. We had a television in the lounge and we all watched the national nightly news together and discussed what was happening. Much of the news coverage focused on two things: the emergence of Jimmy Carter in the Democratic primaries and the very testy state primary battles between Reagan and Ford. 

Our discussions after the newscasts, our further conversations in the dining hall and in and around our dorm rooms stuck with me and that summer I paid close attention, especially, to the GOP Convention. The wrangling that went on that week, the sharp divisions in the GOP, and the indelible mark Reagan put on the Republican Party, even as he lost the nomination, all came back to me this evening.

Most of all, I could see that what has happened and is happening politically in this period of time in which Donald Trump is so prominent is not history repeating itself, but is a continuation of a movement that gained strength and momentum when Ronald Reagan challenged President Gerald Ford for the GOP nomination in late 1975 and on through to the summer of 1976.

3. Debbie and I bought the Sube the last weekend in April in 2004. When I returned home from the Fitness Center today, I noticed that in twenty-five miles, the Sube's mileage will hit the 200,000 mile mark. I brought this up with Debbie this evening and we had a nostalgic conversation about what a great and reliable car the Sube has been and continues to be (fingers crossed). We've crossed the USA several times in the Sube. It has rocketed up and down the New Jersey Turnpike. It was a source of cool transportation, thanks to its air conditioning, when Molly suffered burns in the summer of 2004. That simple fact was a life saver. And, now, the Sube gets us around the Silver Valley, sometimes to CdA, and we hope it'll give us many more miles of reliability. 

Three Beautiful Things 03-20-2024: Filling Out Brackets Irrationally, Taking a Day Off, Fixing Greek Bowls for Dinner

1. Sharann (Turner) and Doug Watson run a fun NCAA men's basketball tournament bracket contest every year.  Doug is the Commissioner. His contest rewards participants who successfully pick lower seeds to defeat higher ones. Today, I entered three brackets in the pool. I have concluded that unlike the basketball experts whose analysis I read and unlike many friends of mine, I do not have an analytical mind when it comes to basketball. I've decided to stop pretending like I do. I watch games for the pleasure of watching players make plays and for the drama of the competition. I'm lousy at analysis and forecasting. 

Therefore, I take different approaches to filling out tournament brackets. Which team is geographically the western most? Which teams, for irrational reasons, have inspired me to feel sentimental about them?  Who do I, again for irrational reasons, wish would win? I don't follow these whimsical criteria one hundred percent of the time, but I have given up on even trying to reason out my picks. 

I'll just have fun seeing what happens and I'll keep my fingers crossed that one of the wagers I made at the Spokane Tribe Casino pans out.

2. Since November, when I started going to the gym(s), I've also been reading this and that about exercising and working out. One thing that comes up repeatedly is that a person should occasionally take days off, should rest. I've pretty much ignored this advice. I suppose my thinking has been that I'm not exercising vigorously enough to need a day off here and there. 

Today, I was fatigued. I felt sleep deprived. My legs, especially, seemed to be demanding a day of rest.

So, that's what I did. 

I shopped a bit at Yoke's, got some laundry done, did a few things around the house, but mostly I rested and every time I sat down, it seems, I fell asleep. 

I'll return to the Fitness Center on Thursday. I hope to feel refreshed and invigorated. 

3. Parent-teacher conferences started at Pinehurst Elementary this afternoon. Debbie arrived home from work at 7 o'clock. I kicked up my energy and broke open a HelloFresh bag and made us a dinner called Greek Goddess Bulgar Bowl. I really don't know why HelloFresh gave this meal a divine name (!), but it was a good meal. 

I roasted chickpeas and shallot slices. I fixed a pot of bulgar. I combined cucumber, tomato, shallot, feta cheese, and dill with a vinaigrette and made a fresh tasty salad.  I put a swipe of hummus along the inside of each of our bowls and then, in sections, dished out the chickpeas, salad, and bulgar. I enjoyed the harissa powder that seasoned this meal along with the different textures provided by the fresh vegetables, the almost crunchy chickpeas, the smooth hummus, and the fluffy bulgar. 

Three Beautiful Things 03-19-2024: I've Completed the Rehab Program, Making Wagers, Debbie Cooks a Delicious Dinner

 1. I made my last visit to the Kootenai Health Pulmonary Rehabilitation Program today. It was my 36th workout at this facility. I came home with a Certificate of Completion and, I'm happy to say, much praise and encouragement. My work in this program succeeded. I increased my exercise capacity significantly and I've lost weight. I began this program with a six minute walk and I did another one today. That went very well. The staff at the rehab gym were friendly, encouraging, and knowledgeable. Now, I'll have to continue to work out at the Fitness Center in Smelterville and rely more on myself for monitoring my vitals and for encouragement and inspiration. 

2. Ed and I met near the Ironwood Square Starbucks and blasted over to the Spokane Tribe Casino to lay down a few (sure to unsuccessful) wagers. I made four wagers on the men's tournament (UConn, Houston,  Creighton, and Arizona -- three of those picks based on sentiment) and a sentimental wager on Iowa in the women's tournament. We then hung around the casino and spun some reels and I enjoyed a refreshing glass of 10 Barrel Apocalypse IPA. 

It was a fun afternoon. Neither of us had much good luck, but we relaxed and enjoyed ourselves and we hope at least one of us will need to return to cash in a winning ticket! 

3. Back home, Debbie took over the kitchen tonight and roasted onion, chopped yams, and slices of jalapeño and cheese chicken sausage served with jasmine rice. As much as I love to cook, especially when it means fixing dinner for Debbie so she can relax after work and not have to think about food preparation, it was fun and a welcome and delicious change of pace to enjoy this dinner that she prepared. 

Three Beautiful Things 03-18-2024: Remembering Mojo Nixon, Elizabeth Cotton and Shooter Jennings, Chickpea Burgers

1. I traveled down a different road today on the Sirius/XM app, a road I will return to often. I explored the Outlaw Country channel, beginning by going to the archives of Steve Earle's show, "Hardcore Troubadour" and listened to his show memorializing Mojo Nixon. Over the years, from time to time, I listened to Mojo Nixon's regular weekday show on Outlaw Country. His persona on air was wild and his music selections were always spot on. Mojo Nixon died on February 7, 2024. He was aboard the Outlaw Country Cruise, docked in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Steve Earle was also on that cruise. 

On this episode of his show, Earle talked at some length about Mojo Nixon's psychobilly rock career and departed from the kind of music he usually plays on his show and featured Mojo Nixon performing an array of his songs, including "Elvis is Everywhere", "Debbie Gibson is Pregnant with my Two-Headed Love Child", "Don Henley Must Die", and others. Steve Earle also paid reverent tribute to Mojo Nixon's presence as an Outlaw Country program host. For many listeners, Mojo Nixon was the heart and soul of this channel and his death left a void that will be filled, but Mojo Nixon's energy, passion, and love for Outlaw Country music will never be replicated. 

2. In the past, I've also listened to Elizabeth Cotton's show, "Apron Strings" and returned to it today while I huffed and puffed at the Fitness Center. I enjoy Elizabeth Cotton's enthusiasm and wry sense of humor and listening to her again was a pleasure. 

About, oh, let's say 18-19 years ago, I was fiddling around on Napster and somehow stumbled on Shooter Jennings' song, "4th of July" and it riveted me. It reinvigorated my interest and love for country rock music -- or outlaw country music. I'm grateful for this song. It triggered my pursuit of other artists in this genre. 

Well, Shooter Jennings also has a show on Outlaw Country, "Shooter Jennings' Electric Rodeo" and I spent much of the rest of the afternoon listening to one great song (many new to me) after another and now I have yet another radio program to call up, especially when I'm in the mood to listen to music that blends country and rock, great song writing with both acoustic and amplified instruments. 

3. I had fun tonight busting out a HelloFresh bag and cooking Curried Chickpea Burgers with Potato Wedges. The potato wedges were easy to bake and I departed from the recipe by seasoning them with Old Bay Seasoning. To make the burgers, I mashed a small box of chickpeas and added curry powder, chopped green onions, dill, tempura batter, and water and made patties that I fried. I also made a tangy sauce combining mayonnaise, vinegar, apricot jam, mustard, and turmeric from the bag and then, on my own, I added yogurt. I toasted and buttered the buns, put sauce on them, plopped the patty on, and topped it with a tomato slice. 

It was a somewhat messy burger, but tasted great! 

Three Beautiful Things 03-17-2024: Top 40 Songs of March 1968, Preparing Family Dinner, A Superb Discussion

1. Stu recommended that I tune into '60 Satellite Survey on the Sirius/XM app. Each week, the host, Dave Hoeffel, goes back to specific week in the 1960s and plays that week's Top 40 songs. So, Saturday night, I went to sleep listening to his show focused the week ending on March 16, 1968. 

If you'd like see this Top 40 list, just click right here. 

I finished listening to this episode while I burned calories at the Fitness Center.

I found this list's wide range of music styles remarkable as Dave Hoeffel guided his listeners through it. 

Artists as different from one another as Sly and the Family Stone, Roger Miller, Petula Clark, 1910 Fruit Gum Company, Otis Redding, and The Bee Gees helped comprise this Top 40 list and I listened to songs as widely different from each other as "Love is Blue", "The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde", "Spooky', and "I Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)".

I'll admit it. I was expecting a Top 40 list of March 1968 to include The Beatles, Steppenwolf, The Rolling Stones, and other groups I think of as epitomizing the music of the late 1960s. 

But, nope. During that week ending March 16, 1968 more people were buying The Mills Brothers, The Lettermen, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, the Delfonics, and others than the classic bands I expected to appear on this Top 40 list. 

2. Debbie and I hosted tonight's St. Patrick's Day family dinner. We had decided a while back not to serve corned beef and cabbage and eventually decided that I would made shepherd's pie. Yoke's doesn't carry ground lamb, so I used ground beef. The pie was simple to make. I started by boiling about three pounds of potatoes while also cooking up chopped onion, zucchini, carrots, celery, and garlic. When the onion was tender, I added the ground beef. Once the beef was browned, I added flour, ketchup, tomato paste, and beef boullion, and frozen corn kernels. I mashed the potatoes while the meat/vegetable mixture cooked down and thickened. After I sprayed oil on the inside of our cast iron dutch oven, I transferred the meat/vegetable mixture to it and topped it with the mashed potatoes and baked it for a half an hour. 

I didn't season this shepherd's pie. No salt. No pepper. No herbs. No spices. The natural flavor of the ground beef and vegetables and the addition of the tomato paste and ketchup, in my opinion, didn't need further enhancing. 

For an appetizer, I sliced Dubliner cheddar cheese, Debbie sliced a cosmic crisp apple, and we put out Carr's crackers. 

I served Emeralds for our cocktail, a blend of Jameson's Irish Whiskey, sweet vermouth, orange bitters, and lemon peel.

We capped off our dinner with Bailey's Irish Cream.

3. I am not at liberty to write about what Paul, Carol, Zoe, Molly, Christy, Debbie, and I spent a healthy portion of the evening discussing. I would, however, like to write for my own record of the evening that I thought it was a superb discussion, unquestionably one of the very best and most satisfying we've had over the last six to seven years of eating together as a family. 

Three Beautiful Things 03-16-2024: Hooked on Exercising Indoors, Preparing for Sunday's Family Dinner, Chicken with California Rub

1. Warming temperatures, blue sky and still I exercised indoors at the Fitness Center this morning. It went well, although, I admit, I would have worked out longer if I'd arrived earlier and if the facility didn't close at noon. But, I burned a decent number of calories on the cardio machines and got in some fairly good work on a couple of resistance machines.

2. I'm responsible for food and drink preparations for our family dinner on St. Patrick's Day. I don't care to reveal what I'm going to fix (not corned beef and cabbage, by the way), but after a trip to Yoke's and the liquor store today, I have the food and drink I need fix our meal.

3. Today I used the California rub Christy gave me to cook with a while back and baked a packet of party chicken wings with boiled potatoes and steamed broccoli. What were the ingredients of this California rub? Strawberries. Lemon peel. Cilantro. Thyme. Turned out to be a delicious seasoning for tonight's chicken.  

Three Beautiful Things 03-15-2024: Nearly Empty Fitness Center, Kierkegaard on the Value of Walking, Paninis for Dinner

1. Today the clouds and fog burned off and, by this afternoon, Kellogg enjoyed temperatures nearing sixty degrees. It started to feel a bit like spring outside.

For a short while today at the Fitness Center, I was the only person exercising. I had to chuckle at myself for not being outdoors. I rely on these cardio machines to tell me how many calories I've burned and how much time I've been on the machine. I enter this information into an app I use to track my calorie consumption, how many calories I burn, and how much time I spend exercising. At some point, I suppose, I'll get back to walking and hiking out of doors and hop on my bicycle again. Today would have been a good day for it. 

2. For the first time since I rejoined the Fitness Center back in November, its internet service went down today. It wasn't a big deal, but it did mean I couldn't listen to another episode of "The Jukebox Diner"on my Sirius/XM app. After listening to Bach for a while, I changed gears and clicked on my audible.com recording of the book Songlines.

I have become enamored with the book's chapter entitled, "From the Notebooks". In it, Bruce Chatwin records a series of his notebook entries. Some of the entries in this chapter seem random, but many of them are focused on Chatwin's deep interest in the nomadic life, in human restlessness, on the value of travel, and of how important it is (and has been historically) for human beings to stay, in one way or another, on the move. 

I particularly enjoy this entry in which Chatwin quotes from a letter composed by the 19th century philosopher/theologian Soren Kirkegaard: 

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it . . . but by sitting still, and the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. . .Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right. 

3. Back home, I fixed messy fried zucchini, sun-dried tomato, mozzarella cheese paninis for Debbie and me, dressed with a mayonnaise, sour cream, plain yogurt, and parsley sauce. I roasted russet potato slices as a side. This was our second HelloFresh meal of the week. I think it's the second time I've made these sandwiches. Neither time did I feel like I quite got it right, but, alas, they tasted pretty good. 

Three Beautiful Things 03-14-2024: "Jukebox Diner" at the Gym, Four Versions of "You're No Good", Delicious Italian Vegetable Soup

1. A couple of weeks ago, I finally downloaded the Sirius/XM app on my phone. This morning, Stu and I were chatting and he told me how much he enjoys listening to Lou Simon's show, "Jukebox Diner" and so today, at the rehab gym, I took a break from Bach and Iron Butterfly and horn bands and listened to about the first hour of Lou Simon's latest installment of this show. Lou Simon plays a wide range of pop music from the fifties forward, provides a lot of background information about performers, songs, and record albums, and he takes phone calls and also responds, on air, to emails and text messages. 

2. "Jukebox Diner" made my workout today even more fun. I continued listening to this episode when I returned home and especially enjoyed it when Lou Simon played four versions of the song, "You're No Good" -- he began with Betty Everett's version, then played the Swinging Blue Jeans cover, moved on to Linda Ronstad's most famous rendition, and wrapped it up with Van Halen's 1979 track (it kind of blew me away). 

Lou Simon's show reminded me a bit of a Grateful Dead call in show called, "Tales from the Golden Road". Both programs feature callers who are eager to share trivia, talk about experiences they've had listening to music live (especially true on "Golden Road"), and to ask the host questions. Like Lou Simon, the "Golden Road" hosts, David Gans and Gary Lambert are patient with the callers, often let them ramble on about stuff, and turn whatever they have to say into something positive. I don't know if Lou Simons ever does interviews, but Gans and Lambert do.

3. I popped open a HelloFresh bag for tonight's dinner and it turned out to be mighty delicious. We'd never had their One-Pot Italian Vegetable Soup before and it was simple to prepare and both tasty and comforting. It's a tomato based soup with onion, carrots, kale, and Israeli couscous, seasoned with a packet of Italian seasoning. It's a soup I could make without the HelloFresh bag. I just hope I can remember to do so some time. 

Three Beautiful Things 03-13-2024: Getting Stuff Done, Bach and *Copia*, Copper Is In Good Health!

1. I got down to business today and did laundry, paid bills, got my monthly blood draw at the hospital for the kidney transplant program, and, later in the afternoon than usual, worked out at the Fitness Center. 

2. While I worked out, I listened once again to Bach's Brandenburg Concertos and let all of its glorious, uplifting musical lines energize and uplift me. I thought a lot about the rhetorical trope copia, or plenty. When employed in writing, copier is a way at getting at the truth of an idea or the reality of things through unfolding its many dimensions, of exploring a subject in detail. Bach's compositions swim in copia as he explore themes, variations on those themes, and as he composes points and counterpoints in his music. It's what I love about Shakespeare. He was devoted to copia and creates ambiguity in his characters and ideas not by withholding detail but by exploring them in great detail, leading him so unfold contradictions, opposites existing side by side, and stimulating complexity.

3. For those of you on Copper watch, I have good news. Dr. Cook called me today and his blood work looked terrific. Dr. Cook recommends that I have Copper's teeth cleaned. He and I talked about the risks of Copper being under anesthesia and the doctor is confident the risks are minimal for Copper. It's a mystery why Copper meows (or to use Dr. Cook's term, vocalizes) overnight as much as he does. My hypothesis? Copper was once a stray cat and stray cats tend to be more active at night. Without Luna around to keep Copper company at night, I think he wants to be active. My guess is that he has a drive to be outdoors. I tried letting him go outdoors a couple of years ago, but I didn't like where he roamed to in our neighborhood so I keep him indoors. If only he would stay in our yard . . .  

Three Beautiful Things 03-12-2024: Working Out to a Vivid Bach Memory, Building a Vegetable Stir Fry, I Take Copper In for His Annual Exam

1.  I arrived at the rehab gym in CdA still a bit road weary from my weekend travels. I scaled back my workout just a bit. It turned out to be a wise move. 

I had put Spotify's "Best of Bach" on the Camry's sound system to help keep me calm as I drove from Seattle to a gas station I stopped at several miles after getting over Snoqualmie Pass. 

I had Bach on my mind after listening to Iron Butterfly last week. Today, I decided to listen to Bach's Brandenburg Concertos while I worked out. 

My mind wandered back to 1986. I was in Portland. So was one of my favorite friends at the time, Craig T. As I remember, and I could very well be mistaken, the Portland Film Festival was getting underway and featured the world premier of Woody Allen's movie, Hannah and Her Sisters. Craig and I luckily snagged two of the last seats left in the theater. 

In one of the movie's scenes, Lee (Barbara Hershey) and Elliot (Michael Caine) are alone while Frederick (Max Von Sydow) and Dusty (Daniel Stern) go into the basement to look at Frederick's oil paintings. Elliot has been recommending music for Lee to listen to and poetry for her to read. After Frederick and Dusty leave the room, Lee pulls out a Bach album she's recently purchased and plays the second movement of Bach's Harpsichord Concerto No. 5 in F Minor. 

This moment in the movie transfixed me. When I returned to my apartment in Eugene, since I didn't have an LP with the Harpsichord Concerto on it, I played what I did have: my collection of the Brandenburg Concertos. 

When I hear the Brandenburg Concertos, I can't tell one of the six concertos from another. I get so engrossed in their beauty that it doesn't matter to me if I'm listening to the first, fourth, sixth, second, fifth, or third. I love them. I'm the same way when I listen to the Grateful Dead channel on Sirius/XM. A song will come on, I'm engrossed by it, but I cannot for the life of me remember its title -- unless it's a song whose title is repeated in the lyrics. Same with Pink Floyd. Their song titles, especially from Dark Side of the Moon, escape me, but as I listen to their music, I often find myself transported to another world. 

2. The Nancy's yogurt Debbie and I enjoy is unavailable in the Silver Valley. So is Nancy's kefir. I went to Fred Meyer after I worked out to pick up yogurt and kefir and I suddenly felt an irresistible urge to buy some produce, too, so I could make a vegetable stir fry for dinner. 

Back home, later in the afternoon, I chopped a white onion, several stalks of bok choy, some broccoli, and a zucchini. I stir fried these vegetables along with some sliced mushrooms. Before stir frying, I made a stir fry sauce combining soy sauce, water, sesame oil, rice vinegar, minced garlic, ginger powder, honey, cornstarch, and red pepper flakes. As the vegetables cooked, I put all the brown rice left over from last night's dinner into the cast iron skillet and warmed it up and once the vegetables were ready, I combined the rice and vegetables in one pan. (Note to self: purchase a wok!) I then topped the rice and vegetables with several stalks of chopped raw green onion.

I seasoned the stir fry with the sauce.  Debbie and I agreed: this dinner worked! 

3. Just before fixing dinner, I took Copper to the veterinarian for his annual check up and vaccinations. I'll get the blood work results by phone later, but, as of now, Dr. Cook says Copper's heart and lungs sound healthy, she feels good to his hands, his weight is stable, and he seems in good shape. Copper is about thirteen years old. I'm hoping the blood work supports Dr. Cook's optimism. 

Three Beautiful Things 03-11-2024: Driving Home from Seattle, (Re)Listening to *Songlines*, Simple Salmon Dinner

1. As far as having my things gathered, I was ready to bolt out the door about an hour before I actually left the Grove West Seattle Inn, but I didn't want to drive in the dark, so I waited until daylight began to break. I knew I would experience some congestion merging onto I-5 and onto I-90, but I don't mind traffic congestion, especially because I wasn't under any time pressure at all. If it's going to be congested, all I ask is that all of us drivers behave ourselves. That happened. Drivers were patient, worked within the congestion, and so it wasn't at all stressful driving out of Seattle. 

I'd read that snow might begin to fall on Snoqualmie Pass around 11:00 a.m. I made sure to drive over the pass before the possible snow came. The roadway was clear of snow and ice. It was foggy, but I managed the limited visibility without any problems. 

2. Going to Seattle and coming back, I listened to approximately the second half of Bruce Chatwin's Songlines. It was a challenge to keep up with his book while driving, especially as he ruminated, with the help of copious numbers of sources he'd read, on such topics as human aggression, humans in relation to weaponry, different theories of species evolution, human restlessness, the significance of desert lands, and many other meanderings, all while telling the story of his experiences in the bushland of Australia. 

I've finished this book, but I'm not done with it. I'll be going back, rereading parts I listened to, sorting things out, and marveling at Chatwin's breadth of knowledge and interests and at his remarkable story telling ability.

3. I knew when I arrived home that Debbie had bought a salmon filet for us to split. I seasoned it with butter, rosemary, and butter and I combined yogurt, sour cream, garlic, and water to make a garlic sauce. 

I also cooked a pot of brown rice. I then sautéed a white onion, added frozen green beans and corn to the pan, and once those ingredients were ready to eat, I added brown rice and garlic to the mix.

The garlic sauce tasted great on the salmon and I also dressed my vegetable and rice side dish with it and enjoyed it a lot.  

Three Beautiful Things 03-10-2024: Recharging My Energy, Songs of Bill Davie, Post-Concert Trance

1. I treasure the time I spend in big cities whenever I get the chance to pay one a visit. That said, I also have a limited amount of energy to spend driving, riding, walking, gawking, drinking, dining, and enjoying the amenities of, say, Seattle, and I used up quite a bit of that energy on Saturday -- I was out and about for over twelve glorious hours!

So this morning, I poured myself one cup of coffee after another, worked on word puzzles, ate the generous portion of the Taste of Africa dish I didn't eat last night (it was a terrific breakfast), lounged around and got cleaned up.

I recharged my batteries. I got refreshed. I slowed things way down.

2. The primary reason I made this trip to Seattle was so I could attend a benefit concert to raise money for the Multiple Sclerosis Society. Bill Davie and I have a long friendship, extending all the way back to 1977 and over these years I've heard him perform his songs in multiple venues in Washington and Oregon, hosted two of his concerts in my home in Eugene, and I tuned in Tuesday evenings when he was able to perform online -- you might remember his Treehouse Concerts.

Bill has had MS for about ten years. He can no longer play the guitar. 

One of his fellow musicians, Mike Buchman, had a brilliant idea. 

To keep Bill's music alive and to raise money for the MS Society, he organized the concert I attended today. It featured twenty musicians, all longtime friends and acquaintances of Bill's (oh! and one duo featured his nephews), each performing one of Bill's songs. The concert ended with the entire company of musicians joining together, with Bill singing lead, to get the audience to sing along and perform Bill's song, "Where Will We Go?"

The concert stirred and moved me. I marveled, not only at the superb performances, but at Bill's mind boggling range of songs, the vast variety of rhythms, moods, explorations, styles, and insights that drive his catalog. Bill's songs can be tender, loving, surrealistic, pointed, funny, and fun. They are expertly crafted, full of surprises, and always engaging. 

I'm writing this blog post on Monday evening. 

Earlier today I drove back to Kellogg from Seattle and the long stretches of I-90 helped stretch my mind.

My mind wandered back to the spring of 1974. I was enrolled in a Modern Literature course at North Idaho College. We'd been assigned to read poems by W. B. Yeats.

Yeats visited me today somewhere, say, where Moses Lake is, and he kept repeating to me his two lines at the end of his poem, "Among School Children":

        O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,

        How can we know the dancer from the dance?

I suddenly realized that for the over forty years that I've been listening to Bill Davie perform, Bill and his songs were unified to me. He was his songs. His songs were Bill. For me, the way his hands moved, the way his songs took over his body, his facial expressions, his stories, wise cracks as a performer, were all inseparable from his songs. How could I know the singer from the song? I couldn't. Bill the singer and Bill's songs formed a unity.

This afternoon that unity did not exist. 

I heard Bill's songs, but not Bill the singer, the performer.

It was a profound experience. 

The songs suddenly had a new life, infused with the power of other singers and players, and every one of those songs vibrated with fresh vitality and vigor.

Yes, I missed being able to watch Bill perform them. I love witnessing the unity of singer/writer and song.

But without Bill to animate those songs, hearing those songs performed by twenty other musicians, gave me an even deeper sense of how strong Bill's songs are, that other dancers can dance them, other singers sing them, and his songs' power drives these other performers to convey their brilliance in ways I hadn't imagined before. 

3. After this stirring and moving two hours or so of absorbing Bill's songs, I wanted time to myself. Peter and Kris, two longtime friends from Whitworth whom I got to sit with during the concert, had other engagements that evening.  I was content to leave the concert hall, wind my way through the Alaskan Way Viaduct Replacement Tunnel, across the West Seattle Bridge, and back to my room to relax, stare, think, remember, feel gratitude, rest, and let the beauty and emotions of what I'd just experienced wash over me, trusting that I was not alone, somehow knowing that the performers and the other 150 people in the audience today were, no doubt, in their own ways, also in some kind of trance along with me. 

 

Three Beautiful Things 03-09-2024: Breakfast with Peter and Mark, Afternoon in Seattle with Hugh, Mediterranean Dinner at Petra Bistro

 1. What a day! 

It started at 8:30 this morning when I wound my way to the Alki Cafe where I joined my longtime Whitworth friends, Mark and Peter, for breakfast. We fell immediately into easy conversation for the next, oh, about two and a half hours, talking about the very things that have occupied our conversations for nearly fifty years now: books, music, our heady days being formed and inspired at Whitworth, professors and friends we knew and loved in the Whitworth days, spiritual matters, Whitworth events (like the Easter Vigil) and a bounty of other topics. I was hungry for this kind of conversation, to tap into the profound impact my years at Whitworth had on me and to bring that impact into the present, knowing that for all three of us what we learned and experienced at Whitworth is not simply a source of nostalgia, but continues to shape and influence how we live our lives now. 

2. The invigoration continued when Hugh Crozier rolled up to the Grove Inn around 11:30 and we headed into Seattle. We headed straight to the Hatback Bar and Grille, grabbed a stool at the bar, and began our afternoon of stimulating conversation, beer sampling, and a good time roaming at the Pike Place Market. At the market, we enjoyed a pint and stellar conversation at Old Stove Brewing. We wandered over to Mee Sum Pastry where I devoured a steamed BBQ Pork Hombow (my first hombow ever). We then went to a produce stand, a meat market, and to other lively vendors and shops and Hugh filled the shopping list he brought. 

I loved being at the Pike Place Market. I loved being a part of a sizable crowed of shoppers and visitors, loved seeing people from all over the world, loved the sensory stimulation, especially the intoxicating blend of smells, whether of the variety of food cooking, spices, fish, or the many other sources of variety and pleasure. 

3. After our indulging our senses at the market, we headed south to Renton. We made a stop at the Hop Garden pub for a quick beer and continued our conversations. Then we blasted over to Hugh's house where he put his groceries in the house and his wife, Carol, joined us.

We rocketed back downtown to the Petra Bistro, a handsome Mediterranean restaurant, and enjoyed a superb dinner. 

We started with an appetizer tray of falafel, dolmathes, olives, hummus, baba ghanouje, and labnie, accompanied with warm pita bread. 

I ordered a terrific chicken dish called Taste of Africa, a chicken breast served with charbroiled vegetables,  sautéed garlic, onion, and tomatoes, seasoned with a variety of the bistro's house spices. All of this was served on a bed of rice topped with garlic sauce. 

Petra Bistro's portions were both delicious and generous and after just a single dolmathe, a ball of falafel, and some pita bread, I was full just halfway through my meal. 

I sure look forward to continuing to enjoy this food on Sunday. 

Let me repeat: what a day! 

For me, today embodied exactly what I love to do whenever I get to travel.

I spent many hours with lifelong friends.

I enjoyed a day spilling over with stimulating conversation.

I got to enjoy a sample of  the vitality and vigor of the energy of Seattle.

I sampled some delicious beer. 

I got to eat food unavailable to me in my day to day life in Kellogg. 

What a day! 

Three Beautiful Things 03-07-2024: Good Work Out, Simple Dinner, Getting Packed

1. I worked out with a bit more vigor today in CdA and continued my discussion with Claudia about how much I need to eat before working out to keep my energy levels strong. 

2. I made a simple pasta sauce and let it simmer for a few hours this afternoon and Debbie and I enjoyed a simple and delicious dinner.

3. I compiled a check list of things to pack for my trip to Seattle and got my bag almost completely ready to go. 

Three Beautiful Things 03-06-2024: Iron Butterfly and J. S. Bach, Private Pleasures, Porcini Mushroom Risotto

1. Was there ever a song that invited more rhythmic tapping on school desks and car dashboards than Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida", as many of us used our fingers, pencils, or the palm of our hands to hammer out its famous drum solo? 

I thought about the ubiquity of this drum solo this afternoon as I listened to "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" while I worked out at the Fitness Center in Smelterville. What drummer in what garage band in about 1968-70 didn't take on Ron Bushy's drum solo to advance their skills?

That said, as I listened to the album, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, today, I realized that its lasting impact on my enjoyment of music had almost nothing to do with the drum solo.

From the get-go, it was Doug Ingle's organ playing that enchanted me on this album. Ingle's dad was a church organist. Even as a teenager, I could hear the church organ influence in Ingle's organ parts. Moreover, I remember that somehow listening to Iron Butterfly always called up the music played on the tv program, The Munsters. 

I'm realizing as I go back to these albums of my teenage years that they all helped me be receptive to different kinds of music as I got older.

Thanks to Iron Butterfly, I was receptive later on to the compositions of J. S. Bach, starting with, but not limited to, Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. I suppose the feel of sacred music I could hear in Doug Ingle's organ parts and the fact that Bach's compositions were often for sacred settings might have been the contact point between the music of a psychedelic rock band and a Baroque composer -- I don't really know -- but I'm grateful that Iron Butterfly was more than just a trippy band to me.

Iron Butterfly was my gateway into the wonders of listening to J. S. Bach.

2. When I work out at the Fitness Center, I enter a bubble. I go into a world all of my own where I exercise, listen to music, and pay attention to the associations the music triggers in my mind.

It's a continuation of the way much of my music listening over the last fifty-five years or so has been private. 

Yes, I've listened to plenty of music, and thoroughly enjoyed it, with friends in all kinds of settings.

But, I also have a long history of music listening that I kept to myself, never talked about, that I enjoyed in private.

It began in my upstairs bedroom with the George Gershwin album I've written about before.

Today, I called up the Symphony Hall channel on my Sirius/XM app and suddenly I was back in the North Idaho College library. My habit there -- and I continued this practice in the Douglass Room at the U of Oregon Library -- was to check out headphones and check out a classical album featuring an individual instrument -- say, the bassoon or the oboe or the clarinet or the harp -- and familiarize myself not only with the possibilities of these instruments, but with composers like Handel, Bach, Vivaldi, and others. 

Yes, at the time, while at North Idaho College, I got fired up listening to Uriah Heep, the Allman Brothers, Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, The Moody Blues, Free, and any number of other bands -- and I shared my excitement with friends whether at the Steinhaus, the Student Union Building, at the Cockroach Castle, or in the trailer John S. and I rented.

But, I never did bust into the Kopper Keg in Kellogg, pitcher of Lucky Lager in hand, and enthuse to my friends at the buddy bar about the great Harp Concerto by George Handel I'd listened to that week.

Nope. 

That was a private pleasure. (Owed, oddly enough, in part, to Iron Butterfly.)

And it was different. Being different was good in private, not so good socially. 

3. When our niece Zoe gave me a jar of World Market Porcini Mushroom Rissoto mix for Christmas, I thought, WOW! This looks really good. I brought it home and made the big mistake of putting it away because once it was out of sight, it was also out of my mind.

Today, thinking I'd make a pasta dinner, I was looking in our kitchen for any packages of pasta that might be upstairs and Glory Hallelujah!, I spied the jar of Porcini Mushroom Risotto mix. 

Perfect.

Preparing the risotto was very simple and Debbie and I were both nearly giddy with how great it tasted. 

We had some leftover chicken from last night and a little broccoli and these leftovers paired perfectly with this very delicious Porcini Mushroom Risotto. 

If we want to purchase this mix ourselves, we'll either have to go to Spokane or order it through World Market online and my guess is that one day we'll do just that. 

Thank you, Zoe! 

Three Beautiful Things 03-05-2024: Overcoming Agitation, My World Looked Better, Simple Chicken Dinner -- As Requested

1. I arrived at the rehab gym this morning in a mildly agitated state. I'd forgotten to take my daily medicine. The drive to CdA was not icy or snowy, but messy -- lots of water, other vehicles (through no fault of their own) throwing gunk on the Sube's windshield. There were no parking spaces on the north side of Ironwood Drive at the Kootenai Medical Center. I was running a bit late anyway because I'd fallen asleep in a chair before I left Kellogg. As I thought it might be, my blood pressure was quite a bit higher than usual during my check in.

My hope was to find some calm working out on the aerobic machines and working with hand weights.

I did. 

Santana's Abraxas helped. 

So did pumping my legs and arms and striding on the treadmill.

I ended my time in the gym with a good talk with staff person Claudia about increasing my carbohydrate consumption in the morning before working out. I've focused on protein, but we agreed that I need more of the kind of fuel carbs provide before exercising. 

I can do that. 

2.  By the time I drove home, I-90, especially the 4th of July Pass, had dried out significantly. 

I arrived home in a much calmer condition. 

My blood pressure was much lower. 

I checked the oil and windshield wiper fluid in the Sube -- things were in good shape. 

We needed a few things at Yoke's and as I strolled the aisles, I was all but free of agitation.

My insignificant little world looked much better. 

3. I baked chicken thighs and legs for dinner. I steamed broccoli. I fried a mess of baby Yukon golds with white onion and mushroom slices. 

Last night, Debbie asked me to fix a simple chicken dinner for today and I did just what she asked. 

I kept it simple. 

She told me dinner was perfect. 

Now my earlier agitation was completely defeated! 

Three Beautiful Things 03-04-2024: The Lasting Power of "I'm Your Captain", My Creative Edge?, Hawaiian Pizza

1. I purchased Grand Funk Railroad's album, Closer to Home, during either my sophomore or junior year in high school. I can't remember why I bought it, but as I've been thinking about albums that shaped my musical taste and how my mind works, Closer to Home popped in my head today. I listened to it while working out. 

One song on this album moved me, transported me into a meditative state. It was as if I temporarily left the world of my high school bedroom and took residence in world of almost pure memory, thought, and feeling. The song was "I'm Your Captain (Closer to Home)". 

Suddenly I was not only listening to the song, but I was also watching the final moments of the concluding episode of a multi-part story on the television program, Lassie. Lassie had strayed from home. As viewers, we experienced Lassie's adventures and the heartbreak that Timmy and his parents, Paul and Ruth suffered with Lassie missing. The story came to a climax, as I remember, when Timmy gave up, sure Lassie would never return home, and went to a spot at the bottom of a hill with a shovel to bury Lassie's toys.

Timmy heard barking. He looked up. As the Lassie theme song began to swell, Lassie came running over the top of the hill and into Timmy's arms. 

I cried as hard as I've ever cried in my life.

But that wasn't the only emotional memory "I'm Your Captain (Closer to Home)", with it's repeated lines, "I'm getting closer to my home" called up in me.

The song also transported me to Oz. I felt again the aching of Dorothy who only wanted to return home again, repeating again and again, "There's no place like home . . . There's no place like home."

I think of all the different ideas and story structures I worked with over the many years I taught English, the one that mattered most to me, whether in Shakespeare's plays, the novel The Color Purple, Homer's Ulysses, and many other books, movies, and poems, was when a story centered on separation from home and then a return, of separation from loved ones and the power of reunion. 

Today in the Fitness Center, I couldn't remember the last time I listened to Grand Funk Railroad's album Closer to Home. 

The feelings, however, of their song about being separated from home and drawing closer to being home again, were fresh today. I was sixteen years old again in my bedroom. I was five years old again watching Lassie, watching The Wizard of Oz. I was in my late twenties again, teaching the plays of Shakespeare for the first time, trying to convey to my students the power of reunion, say, in The Winter's Tale, paralleling Leontes and Hermione's reuniting with Timmy and Lassie's or Dorothy and her family's. I was in my forties and fifties again, teaching the Literature of Comedy, joining my students in reading stories and watching movies of reconciliation, of returning home, hoping it would help them see that one of the things I loved about baseball was that it was a game of leaving home then trying to get back again. 

So, this album didn't have the musical impact on me that others I've been writing about did. 

It had a deep emotional impact that shaped my vision and understanding of literature and movies and what I see as of ultimate importance in life itself. 

2. I was especially receptive to this experience at the Fitness Center today because a few hours earlier, Peter Blomquist had emailed me a single question: "What's your creative edge right now?"

I'm not sure I understand this question, but I decided to answer it by telling Peter that lately I'd been spending my daily workouts listening to albums from high school that laid the groundwork for my eclectic tastes in music today. Peter asked a series of follow up questions, which I answered at some length. All that writing -- much of which also has appeared in this blog -- had loosened up my mind, opened the way to have such a panoramic experience listening to Grand Funk Railroad. 

3. Lucky for me, Debbie didn't eat all of her pizza at the Fainting Goat Sunday. I got to have some of her slices for dinner tonight. The pizza intrigued me. It was a Hawaiian pizza, but unlike every other Hawaiian pizza I've ever eaten, this one used barbecue sauce. It surprised me. It threw me off at first. And I loved it! It was delicious and stimulatingly creative. 

Three Beautiful Things 03-04-2024: I Owe Rod Stewart Much Gratitude, Sunday Crossword with Copper, Superb Dinner at The Fainting Goat

1. During my senior year at KHS, as I've written, two albums staggered me with their inventiveness and invigorating tracks: Chase's first self-titled album and Santana's Abraxas. 

Today I realized that a third album, released in 1971, had a quieter, possibly less obvious, but a long lasting impact on me: Rod Stewart's Every Picture Tells a Story.

I listened to this album today while I exercised. 

First, an admission. I judgmentally shied away from Rod Stewart when his songs seemed to turn more disco, I guess in the late 1970s. 

Consequently, I nearly forgot about Every Picture Tells a Story. 

What a shame.

Today I realized that I'd forgotten, if I ever realized it fifty+ years ago, that Every Picture Tells a Story is an accomplished anthology of musical styles. 

In it, Rod Stewart glides between tracks that are blues and gospel inspired, others that have acoustic and folk instrumentation and sensibilities, with tinges of country sounds, and at other times Rod Stewart sings some pretty raucous rock and roll. 

I know that during my senior year of high school, the album's most popular song, "Maggie May", was my favorite. I also remembered being haunted by Stewart's riveting cover of Tim Hardin's "Reason to Believe", loving that Rod Stewart and Rare Earth both recorded scintillating covers of The Temptations' masterpiece, "I'm Losing You", and I really had never paid much attention to the beauty of the mandolin before hearing Rod Stewart's "Mandolin Wind". 

In about 1987, I began listening to folk music, much of it better described, I suppose, as singer/songwriter music. I went to numerous live shows, including performances by local singer/songwriters in the Eugene/Corvallis area. I became enamored with acoustic instruments and, after going to hear The Seldom Scene in 1988 at the WOW Hall in Eugene, fell head over heels for bluegrass and string band music. 

Today I realized that the love I developed for acoustic music, starting in 1987, actually had its origins in Rod Stewart's Every Picture Tells a Story, but I didn't do anything about it back in 1972 and on into my college years. Today, relishing the sounds of the mandolin, steel guitar, pedal steel guitar, and acoustic guitar on this album and the quality song writing of this album (especially "Reason to Believe"), it puzzled me that it wasn't until about fifteen years later that I really began to listen to copious amounts of dobro, mandolin, fiddle, acoustic guitar, steel guitar, pedal steel guitar, and other such music. In many ways the break outs in bluegrass music, along with listening to improvisational jazz, laid the groundwork for my developing affection for the Grateful Dead, the Jerry Garcia Band, Zero, and other rock n' roll and psychedelic jam bands. 

I fatigued my legs in the Fitness Center today after time on the treadmill and the NuStep machine.

I hardly noticed, though, as the gratitude inside me grew for the slow developing impact Every Picture Tells a Story had on my eclectic tastes in music, on the wide range of what I enjoy hearing. 

2. Where to go from here? Had my day hit its peak of invigoration before 12 o'clock noon, thanks to this stellar Rod Stewart album?

Well, kind of, but not entirely.

The Sunday NYTimes crossword puzzle awaited me and I spent much of the afternoon joining Copper in the bedroom, working this puzzle, napping, and hoping to help Copper feel some relaxation and contentment.

3. Then, shortly before 4 o'clock, Debbie and I blasted east on I-90 to Wallace where we met with Christy, Paul, and Carol for family dinner. Carol and Paul performed in a matinee show at the Sixth Street Melodrama. Christy attended the show, but Debbie and I have become more protective of our time and energy on Sundays and opted to only go to dinner.

We ate at the Fainting Goat in Wallace. 

I hadn't dined at the Fainting Goat. 

My impressions were all positive.

It's a small restaurant and wine bar, but, somehow, felt spacious at the same time. 

Our server seated the five of us in the back of the dining area near the Fainting Goat's definitive brick oven.

Other people were in the room, spread comfortably apart. We could hear each other talk easily and, speaking for myself, I was very comfortable with where we were seated. 

The Fainting Goat has a short cocktail menu and Debbie, Christy, and I all ordered an Old-Fashioned. I loved this drink. I don't know what bourbon the Fainting Goat pours, but it was perfectly assertive with the sweetness of the simple syrup taking its rightful place in nearly imperceptible support of the bourbon. The Fainting Goat served the Old-Fashioned with an oversize single ice cube that kept the drink perfectly chilled and never watered down. 

I've cut way back on alcohol consumption over the last two or more months. Absence had made my taste buds grow fonder. The bourbon tasted perfect to me. 

I ordered a Greek salad topped with crispy chicken and a bowl of French onion soup. The salad was fresh, crisp, and I enjoyed the basil vinaigrette. 

But, the soup. 

Wow! 

The soup. 

I loved the soup. 

It featured a sherry laced beef broth, caramelized onions, garlic croutons, and a blend of Provolone and Gruyere cheeses, melted, in the brick oven, on top of the broth and onions. 

For me, this French onion soup was the platonic ideal of what I have imagined the perfect onion soup to not only taste like, but to feel like in my mouth. 

Upon returning home, Debbie exclaimed, "My pizza was really good! Why aren't we going to the Fainting Goat once a week?"

Debbie brought home left over pizza which we'll share for our Monday dinner.

As far as returning with some regularity to the Fainting Goat: I'd love to do that! 

Three Beautiful Things 03-02-2024: Snow Shoveling and Back to *Abraxas*, Seattle Plans Solidifying, A New (and Perfect) Dinner Combination

1. I knew, deep down inside, and from information online, that this morning's snowfall on the sidewalks would melt off by this afternoon. Nonetheless, I decided to shovel our sidewalk and Christy's. The snow was wet and heavy, but not deep. Shoveling accelerated my heart beat. It winded me a bit. I was finished in under fifteen minutes. It was solid pre-workout exercise.

I dialed up Santana's Abraxas again at the Fitness Center this morning. I'd had an ecstatic experience on Friday listening to this album and wondered how it would sound to me a day later. 

Even better. 

Yes.

Even better.

Yes, Carlos Santana's lead guitar work is the heart of this band. Its soul. The life blood nourishing Santana's heart and soul is the vigorous rhythm section, bass, drums and percussion, and Greg Rolie's splendid vocals and keyboard work. 

More than once, I thought to myself: this album has some of the most perfect passages of music I've ever listened to. 

2. Mark Cutshall called me this afternoon, Hugh Croier and I exchanged emails, I heard from Peter Bomquist yesterday, and Diane Schulstad and I concluded a two day conversation on Messenger. 

The upshot?

A schedule is emerging. I've got a solid idea of who I'll see when in Seattle starting this coming Friday and it all looks awesome. 

3. This afternoon I was suddenly hungry for chickpeas and jasmine rice. I bolted to our basement pantry and, as I reached for a can of garbanzo beans, I noticed a can of Margaret Holmes Tomatoes, Okra & Corn. 

Aha! 

I knew just what to do.

I chopped a white onion, cooked it until soft, added three cloves of finely chopped garlic, and then poured the can of Tomatoes, Okra & Corn and a can of chickpeas into the frying pan. While these ingredients simmered, I made a pot of jasmine rice. 

I topped a layer of rice with the garbanzo beans, tomatoes, okra, and corn, sprinkled some Braggs Liquid Aminos over it and satisfied the yearning I'd had for just such a meal.

Later, I combined orange wedges, a chopped Cosmic Crisp apple, slices of strawberries, and a small handful of blueberries with Nancy's plain whole milk yogurt, a perfect fruit salad to round out my dinner. 

Three Beautiful Things 03-01-2024: Copper's Restless Night, Santana Put My Mind in Overdrive, Fried Egg Atop Leftover Curry

1. Overnight, starting about about 2:30 a.m. or so, Copper became restless. I fed him. I tried petting him. He wanted something more -- meowed repeatedly -- and I don't know what it was. I began to think that he wanted me to get out of bed, be in the living room, as if he wanted us to be out there together while Gibbs was upstairs. I had an up and down few early morning hours trying to help Copper relax, and so, around 10:30 or so, I went into the bedroom, joined a much more contented Copper, and took a nap, a nap I sorely needed if I were going to head to the Fitness Center today.

2. Ah! The nap worked.  

Around 2:00, I headed to the Fitness Center. I almost returned to Chase for the third workout in a row, but I suddenly remembered that, along with the horn-rock bands, I had another obsession my senior year at KHS.

It was with Santana. The album was Abraxas.

Going back to these albums stirs up a few high school memories -- memories of the pep band playing "25 or 6 to 4" or "Get It On" or memories of having some free time in boys choir class and playing Abraxas on the music room sound system.

Mostly, however, during that senior year, I experienced my love of Chase and Santana by myself, playing Abraxas and Chase over and over for the pure pleasure they gave me.

I was thinking today, as I pedaled away on a recumbent stationary bike, that in one huge way my love of Santana began with with Chicago's first album and the track entitled, "I'm a Man". On that track, not only does the band turn drummer Danny Saraphine loose to play a riveting drum solo, but the track also features a variety of other percussion instruments.

Abraxas blew me away, from the start, with its variety of percussion parts, echoing, in my mind, what I'd heard in "I'm a Man", and opened the way for me to become enthralled with the percussion music I encountered when I moved to Eugene. I loved the local marimba band, Shumba, spent long periods of time, the handful of times I went to the Oregon Country Fair, listening to percussionists jam at a the Drum Tower, did the same listening to and taking pictures of percussionists at the Saturday Market drum circle, and loved whenever I heard steel drummers play.  

I also loved Carlos Santana's versatility. Looking back, I now realize that Santana's flights into sublime jamming on this album helped lay the groundwork for my deep enjoyment of the Grateful Dead nearly twenty years later. 

I look back to 1971-72 and the following years and I wonder if there were people at KHS or at NIC or at Whitworth who were listening to the Grateful Dead -- or going to shows. I sure didn't know who they were -- and we didn't listen to music together. 

The people I listened to music with socially, whether at parties or in cars equipped with 8 track tape players, were listening to Credence Clearwater Revival, the Beatles, Deep Purple, The Guess Who, Chicago, Neil Diamond, and other more commercially successful bands that created the soundtrack for much of the fun I had with others back then.

But I didn't know that in the same way that Santana opened up songs to improvisational jamming (like their track "Black Magic Woman") or the way Rare Earth jammed a nearly twenty-five minute version of "Get Ready" that another band, the Grateful Dead, was going deeper and more adventurously into improvisational jamming than I could have imagined. I might not have been ready for the Grateful Dead in 1971-1987. I'll never know. 

All that thinking and remembering in addition to the pleasure I felt listening to Abraxas today made the time I spent pushing, pulling, pedaling, and huffing and puffing go by in a flash.

3. After that workout and those flights into memories and thoughts about how some of my taste for music developed, what was left to do today?

Well, I continued to try to firm up when I'll get to see whom when I go to Seattle in a week.

I also cooked up a batch of chopped bok choy with some sliced mushrooms and then added the left over chicken curry I fixed last night and warmed it all up before adding a container of left over basmati rice and Debbie and I enjoyed this tasty dinner for the second night in a row.

I had a little fun with my bowl of chicken curry. I fried an egg and plopped it atop my rice, chicken, curry sauce, and vegetables. 

For me, it worked. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-29-2024: Horn-Rock Group Chase Invigorates Me, A Fun Curry Dish, I'm Going to the *Songs of Bill Davie* Benefit Concert in Seattle

1.  All through my senior year at KHS, I became obsessed, along with Chicago and Blood, Sweat & Tears, with Chase, another horn-rock band featuring stratospheric trumpeter Bill Chase, three other supersonic trumpet players, bass guitar, keyboard, electric guitar, drums, and the vocalist Terry Richards. Their first album was simply called, Chase. It featured the popular hit, "Get It On" -- which was not only top 40 material, but became a favorite of the Kellogg High School pep band, a song that fired up my basketball teammates and me when they played it during our warmups. 

Today, I time-traveled back to those months in 1971-72 when I listened obsessively to this album and let it motivate and drive me while I worked out at the rehab gym.

Not only did the driving rhythm section and the bright, pulsing trumpeters get my adrenaline pumping, but I relished the vocal stylings of Terry Richards, his versatility to energetically push pulsating songs forward and his gift for slowing things down and singing like a balladeer. 

As I've written before, I have no interest in ranking these horn-rock bands. I realize that Chase never cut another album that was as successful as their debut. Band leader Bill Chase was killed in a plane crash in August, 1974. The band Chase had a short life. 

But this one album, Chase, made an indelible impact on me over fifty years ago and as I listened to it twice today in the gym, the joy and pleasure and invigoration of Chase's work has not diminished one bit. 

It might have grown. 

2.  Several months ago, Debbie and I went on a shopping safari in Spokane. We popped into Trader Joe's at one point and Debbie bought a packet of Tikka Masala Curry Sauce.

Last night, Debbie remembered that we had this sauce and suggested that it would taste good with chicken.

I agreed.

So, late this afternoon, I cut an onion into rings and cooked them in a large frying pan along with bok choy that Debbie had chopped up a day or two ago and added in a few lime kaffir leaves.  I also steamed a mess of broccoli. Once the onion and bok choy had softened, I added slices of chicken breast to the pan, cooked it through, and then added the steamed broccoli and the curry sauce. I also cooked a pot of basmati rice.

I wanted this curry to be a bit spicier, so I added a modest amount of red pepper flakes, and I added some fresh squeezed lime juice I had on hand. 

I let it all simmer.

I put rice in the bottom of two bowls, topped it with the curry sauce, and Debbie and I agreed that it worked and with what was left over, we'd have it again on Friday for dinner.

3. On Sunday, March 10th, a bunch of singers and songwriters in the Seattle area will get together at 3 o'clock and perform a benefit entitled, Songs of Bill Davie. Bill was diagnosed with MS around ten years ago. For several years, he was able to play his guitar despite the impact of the MS, but can't any longer. 

As a tribute to his decades of songwriting and performing and as a benefit for the National MS Society, this group of Seattle musicians will perform a combination of their own songs and covers of a selection of Bill's songs. 

Today, I reserved a room in West Seattle for the nights of the 8th, 9th, and 10th so that I can attend the benefit (which Bill will MC) and see friends and have some time to hang out in West Seattle and elsewhere. 

It promises to be a fun weekend.