Three Beautiful Things 08-30-2024: RIP Don Knott, Back to the Fitness Center, Skirt Steak Salad

1. Over the years, here at this blog, I've written many times about Don Knott. Don and I became friends when I lived uptown on East Portland not too far from where he lived on Park. I always remember that when our family moved, in 1962, from East Portland to West Cameron (where Debbie and I live now), the first guys from the neighborhood I left to come and see me were Don Knott and Elvin Hansen. 

My friendship with Don grew over the years at the YMCA, as basketball teammates, golfers together, as baseball competitors in Little League and Babe Ruth and teammates on the Silver Valley's American Legion team. We both worked at the Zinc Plant. After I moved away from Kellogg, I often visited Don when I came home to Kellogg. Starting about ten or so years ago, when Don still lived in Kellogg at Penny Lane, the patio behind his house became the gathering place of the Hall of Fame of Great Guys. 

Don moved to Lewiston and I moved to Kellogg and so I saw Don when he visited up here and I joined other members of the Hall of Fame of Great Guys for a couple of road trips to Lewiston and burgers and beers at Effie Tavern. 

About a year ago, on September 14, 2023 to be exact, Don texted me. He was in town. He and Jake were going to meet at Sam's for breakfast before playing golf. Don invited me to join them. 

That was the last time I saw Don. 

Not long after that visit to Kellogg, Don became ill. Through Stu and then through a November lunch with Don's sister Shelley, I found out that Don had contracted a very serious case of cancer and had moved to Portland where he could be close to Beth, his daughter, and could be treated at the Oregon Health and Science University. 

From talking with Stu and Shelley, the message I heard was that Don wanted to keep his medical situation as private as he could. 

Out of respect for what I understood his wishes to be, I didn't write about Don's illness on this blog nor did I send out emails to the Class of 72 reporting on his condition. Anything I learned about Don, I kept to myself. 

Today, August 30, 2024, Don died in Portland at about 6:30 a.m.

I messaged Shelley my condolences and wondered if it would be all right if I emailed the news to the people on my Class of 72 email list. At first, Shelley asked me to wait, but a little later she decided letting people know was a good idea. 

I sent out the email. I've received heart warming emails and messages in return. Stu and I have messaged thoughtfully, even reverently, back and forth about Don.

I've replayed countless things Don and I did together over the last six decades or so, remembering games we competed in, serious conversations, drunken misadventures when we were young, and what a fun and generous friend Don was for essentially my entire life. 

Terry Turner said it just right: It's a sad day in Wildcat land. 

2. I returned to the Fitness Center this afternoon and it felt great to get back on the two machines I favor and not only exercise, but to not feel any pain or discomfort in my surgery site. Every day I grow more and more confident that if the surgery site isn't completely healed, it's really close. 

3. I tried out something new in the kitchen around lunch time. I cut up the unused half of the Trader Joe's Sesame and Teriyaki Beef Skirt Steak and cooked those pieces. I let them cool and added them to a fresh and crispy green salad and thoroughly enjoyed this salad. I'm thinking that next time I do some mad shopping for unnecessary items at Trader Joe's, I'll purchase another one of these Asian flavored skirt steaks. It's versatile. 

Three Beautiful Things 08-29-2024: *The Round House* Concludes, Beauty is in the Details, Common Sense at Yoke's (I Hope)

1. When, about half way through the novel, the narrator of Louie Erdrich's The Round House reveals the identity of the perpetrator who raped his mother, I anticipated that the story would take its readers into the morass of confusion and cross-purpose that is the law enforcement and justice system on Indian reservations. 

This tangle of which agency has jurisdiction where and over whom lay in the background of the second half of The Round House, but, in the foreground, a different story emerged, directly related to the narrator and the assault of his mother. 

I won't give it away, but I can say that the narrator must wrestle with moral codes. Because his thirteen year old life is divided between them, he ponders the instruction and wisdom of ancient tribal stories and wisdom, the instruction of the Roman Catholic Church, and the legal codes of the reservation and North Dakota and the USA.

It's a lot for a youngster. 

You'll have to read the book to find out what he decides to do.

2. In Louise Erdrich's novels not the devil, not God, but beauty is in the details. For all of the ways Erdrich transports her readers into ancient spirit worlds and for all the ways she moves her readers to wrestle with contemporary philosophical questions, much of her writing is grounded in the five senses. The Round House's story occurs on an unnamed North Dakota Indian Reservation. Erdrich copiously details the physical reality of life on this reservation, the soft white bread used for baloney or peanut butter sandwiches, the frayed plastic lawn chairs used at ceremonies and powwows, the teenagers' bicycles and their levels of disrepair, the smells of smoke, mold, cigarettes, whiskey, and many more on the clothes and in the houses the narrator encounters, and on and on. 

The storylines in The Round House gripped me. No doubt. At the same time, I enjoyed saturating myself in the generous sensory details of this novel, happy, as I read, that Erdrich did not just cut to the chase, but lingered over living rooms, bedrooms, gas stations, pickups, automobiles, woods, clothing, dentures, hair, ancient tales, a church basement and countless other things and places in order to bring the world of her story fully alive. 

3. All I needed to buy at Yoke's today was milk, half and half, and dry cat food. I am probably more concerned than I need to be about having a setback as I progress in my life post-transplant --by setback, I basically mean getting sick -- catching a cold, having Covid return, getting the flu, that sort of thing. So, I continue to be cautious about going into public places. (At the same time, I have to believe my immune system is getting stronger. After all, on Saturday, August 31st, it will be sixteen weeks since the surgery. )

But, today, I figured I could grab the three items at Yoke's, check out, and avoid any close/sustained contact with anyone and be out of there quickly. 

So I didn't wear a mask.

I succeeded in getting in and out fairly fast. 

I've got my fingers crossed that the sense I put into action today was common sense. 

Three Beautiful Things 08-28-2024: *The Round House* Is Not What I Thought It Would Be!, Trader Joe's Stir Fry, Louise Erdrich Does Not Cut to the Chase (To My Delight)

1. The primary storyline of Louise Erdrich's novel, The Round House, occurs in 1988. It's centered upon the rape of Joe the narrator's mother, Geraldine, and the crushing impact of this assault on Geraldine and her family. I thought this story was going to be a procedural, but about half way into The Round House, the story reveals the assailant. Now I'm thinking the novel will develop the story of the criminal case of this assault getting mired in the complicated justice system where, on Indian reservations, the prosecution of crimes gets muddied by uncertainty about jurisdiction -- is it a tribal police case? an FBI case? a state police case? etc. -- and I'm guessing it will be further gummed up by the difficulties inherent in prosecuting sexual assault. 

I really don't know, at this point, if Erdrich's novel is headed in this direction, but I thought I'd write out my guess. I'm also guessing that Louise Erdrich will move this story into other kinds of depth that I haven't imagined. 

That's her remarkable gift as a novelist. 

2. At Trader Joe's Monday, one of my for the fun of it purchases was a Sesame Teriyaki Beef Skirt Steak.

I was eager to cook it. I had a plan in my. head of dividing the steak between Debbie and me and eating it with basmati rice and sautéed zucchini.

As it turned out, Debbie arrived home and wasn't hungry.

Garrenteed BBQ catered a mid-day meal for the school district and Debbie ate enough that she didn't want or need dinner. 

So, I changed things up a bit. 

I cut the steak in half and refrigerated the half I wasn't going to eat. 

I cut the half I held out for me into cubes.

I got out the wok and stir fried the sesame/teriyaki skirt steak,  onion, zucchini, and a bit of yellow summer squash and some fresh spinach. I'd already cooked a small pot of rice and added some of it to the wok. 

The meat was seasoned enough in the package that I didn't think I'd need to add any other sauce, but after a couple bites, I decided to add a light sprinkling of soy sauce. 

It all worked. 

I'm not sure just yet what I'll do with the other half of the steak, but I do know that I am pretty happy that I made this mad, fun, unnecessary purchase! 

3. A little more about Louise Erdrich.

The other day I remarked that of all the genres of writing, the novel is the most flexible.  

Louise Erdrich's work epitomizes this.

I have no idea what the priest, Father Travis, she introduces into this story will have to do with the second half of the novel. But, Erdrich digresses from the main current of her story to unfold that Father Travis was a U. S. Marine who survived, but was seriously injured by, the 1983 barracks bombing in Beirut. Furthermore, Father Travis grew up in Texas. As a child, his father took him to see President Kennedy in Dallas and Father Travis witnessed the Kennedy assassination. 

This imaginary trip back to November 22, 1963 came a bit after another digressive tale about a woman who was rejected by her white family at birth, taken in by an Indian family on the reservation, and who is then approached by her long absent birth mother to donate a kidney to her long estranged twin brother. 

I really wasn't expecting a kidney transplant to happen near the midway point of this novel! 

These are just two of many examples where Louise Erdrich veers off of what seems to be the main focus of her novel and adds dimension to her story and has me wondering how these apparently unrelated digressions will end up being significant to the overall arc and development of her book.

I guess this is all to say that I've read negative comments on Amazon and Goodreads about expansive, digressive, multi-dimensional novels like The Round House  (as of now, I haven't read any comments about The Round House). 

Usually these negative comments complain about such novels jumping around in time, wandering off the main story and developing multiple subplots, and causing confusion by asking us, as readers, to keep multiple characters straight in our minds. 

I understand.

Many readers just want story tellers to cut to the chase.

If you are a "cut to the chase" reader, I'd say Louise Erdrich's books will frustrate you.

But if you enjoy careful and detailed descriptions of the physical and mythological world and enjoy traveling into the somewhat recent past but also into the mythical ancient past, if you enjoy entering into the imagined lives of a whole host of characters occupying the fraught and overlapping worlds of white and Native people, and if you enjoy being challenged by ethical quandaries, religious quandaries, and stories that are neither neat nor tidy, then I'd say dive into the novels of Louise Erdrich! 

Three Beautiful Things 08-27-2024: Catching Up on Sleep, Starting Louise Erdrich's *The Round House*, Leftovers Aged Beautifully

1. I didn't get a lot of sleep either Saturday night, after driving home with Debbie from the Spokane airport, or on Sunday night when I was up Monday morning at 4:30 to get myself ready to drive to Spokane for blood work. 

So, today, I slept from time to time, cat naps, and did my best to return to a sound sleep/awake balance. 

2. As I continue to read my way through the Leah Sottile list of books, I finished Yellow Bird and decided to stay in North Dakota and read a novel from her list that is set among Ojibwe people on what I think is a reservation patterned after the Turtle Mountain Reservation, but, unless I'm mistaken, the novel, The Round House, doesn't name the reservation and I do believe the town of this story, Hoopdance, is fictional. If you know I'm mistaken, please let me know. 

It's deeply satisfying to be reading a Louise Erdrich novel again. Her first three books, Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, and Tracks were central to the philosophy/composition courses Rita Hennessy and I team taught about thirty years ago. 

As I started reading The Round House so much that I love about Louise Erdrich's work came back to me. She writes elegant and detailed prose lyrically and beautifully. She creates full characters about whom we learn more and more details that deepen our sense of their humanity and complexity. Maybe above all, Erdrich is a superb story teller, blending the difficulties, even the horrors, of Ojibwe day to day life with humor and her characters' goodwill. 

The novel's narrator is Joe, a teenager. 

In the book's first chapter, Joe and his father find Joe's mother in a near catatonic state in her car, bleeding, bruised, and traumatized. They learn she was raped. 

As the story develops, Joe is determined to do all he can, along with the adults in his life, to find the perpetrator of this attack. 

I'm about a hundred pages in and I'm gripped. 

3. I didn't realize until today, when I read Christy's Facebook post, that the entree she prepared for family dinner was a casserole. Well, she sent Debbie and me home Monday night with a nice helping of her dish and tonight I heated it up for our dinner and it tasted even better a day later. I also heated up a few leftover chicken wings from Sunday and the leftover bulgar, spinach, chickpea side dish I fixed for Monday.

Everything tasted great on Monday, but somehow, tonight, I thought the flavors of the casserole and my side dish had matured and tasted even better a day later! 

Three Beautiful Things 08-26-2024: Trip to Spokane, Reading Books and Connectedness, Mediterranean Family Dinner

1. By six o'clock this morning, I'd readied myself for a trip to Spokane to have blood work done at Sacred Heart. I don't have to go to Spokane for my weekly or bi-weekly labs, but everything, checking in, the blood draws themselves, the result reports, billing, I mean everything, goes so much easier and smoother when I drive the just over an hour it takes me to get there and do my labs. 

The added bonus, though, is the messing around I do when I'm done with my labs.

Today, I wanted to go to Auntie's Bookstore and buy more books from Leah Sottile's list I'm reading my way through, but the bookstore doesn't open until 9:00. I visit the transplant clinic next week on Wednesday. I'll go to Auntie's then. 

So, today, I blasted up Grand Blvd and cruised east on 29th until I reached Great Harvest Bread.

It was awesome: not only did I purchase another loaf of Dakota Wheat Bread, I also ordered a bracing cup of Craven dark roast coffee and enjoyed a dense, delicious, packed Morning Glory Muffin, a food item I've longed for over the last several weeks. 

After my heavenly enjoyment of this coffee and muffin, I bounded nearby to the Huckleberries grocery store in search of the seasoning, Za'atar, a key ingredient in the dish I'd prepare later for family dinner. Pilgrim's didn't have Za'atar on Sunday, but Huckleberries carried it in bulk, and so I put some in a baggy and I was set. 

I then popped across the street to Trader Joe's and did some shopping for fun, but not really necessary items. A Trader Joe's employee caught me playing air keyboard with Jim Gordon while "Layla" played over the house sound system and asked me, "Are you a musician?" All I could think to say was, "If only!"

I resisted telling her about Debbie's life as a musician and telling her she ought to go to Bandcamp and find Debbie's albums and those of Babes with Axes. I spared her that bit of rambling and just moved on to the freezer case and put a bag of pot stickers in my cart. 

Then, as I was driving back to Kellogg, I decided to make a quick stop at Barnes and Noble and see if a couple of books from Leah Sottile's list were on their shelves.

They were! 

I purchased Louise Erdrich's The Roundhouse, which will keep me located in North Dakota and I purchased a book set in Oregon and in the future. I'm assuming from what little I've read about it that Portland writer Leni Zumas's Red Clocks is dystopic. In a few days, I'll know. 

2. I finished reading Yellow Bird. 

It's a mighty book. 

Because Lissa Yellow Bird's story embodies so much of the story of the USA, I got to thinking how this is true for each of us. Lissa Yellow Bird's life is intimately connected to the history of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, to the everlasting conflict between tribes, their land, and the incursion of white people into this land and all the accompanying violence, seizing of land, governing of the land, betrayal, and ruthlessness that fuels this conflict. Lissa Yellow Bird's life embodies the larger American story of poverty, resource extraction from land, the corrupting influence of money upon all parties, white and non-white, the proliferation of drugs, addiction to these drugs, broken families, and more. As Lissa Yellow Bird digs more deeply into the disappearance of Kristopher Clarke, her story becomes connected to greed and homicide, connecting her story to the city of Spokane where Doug Carlile was murdered, the murder a result of his involvement with the Bakken oil boom on and near the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. 

In this vein, I've often thought of how my life and the lives of my siblings and friends similarly embody different aspects of the story of the USA. Growing up in Kellogg, in rural North Idaho, my story inevitably is part of the larger history of mining, labor unions, pollution, workplace danger, conflicts between industry and environmental agencies and more. My life, like all of ours, became a microcosm of other aspects of US life as I became involved in the Episcopal Church, higher education, the medical-industrial complex, enrolled in Medicare, failed twice at marriage, have become a part of the graying of America as I age,  and, over the decades, have made friends and acquaintances that expanded my awareness of life in America as they told their stories which were often radically different from my own. This was true not only socially, but in the countless stories I heard and read told by the countless numbers of students I worked with over the years, students of all ages and incredibly various backgrounds and experiences. 

Everything is connected. 

I am me and you are you and we are all together. 

Reading Yellow Bird and Ruby Ridge especially have thrust this connectedness into the front of my mind. 

3. Tonight Carol, Paul, Debbie, and I got together on Christy's deck for a Mediterranean themed family dinner. 

I contributed a simple and delicious side dish combining bulgar, chickpeas, onion, and spinach, seasoned with Za'atar and lemon juice. 

I didn't get the recipe names tonight. They'll be available later on Facebook when Christy posts her pictures and descriptions. 

I can say, however, that we enjoyed a potpourri of appetizers that Paul assembled: olives, bread, hummus, and crackers. And I do know that to prepare her superb entree,  Christy cut open chicken breasts and placed vegetables in the cut areas and dressed her dish in a Mediterranean way -- in part, with lemon juice. I know Carol brought a tomato-y and minty salad that was awesome. For dessert, Christy baked a moist and delicious Mediterranean cake and served it with vanilla and Mediterranean mint gelato. The others also drank limoncello and some pear/cognac liqueur (I think it was a liqueur), but I lost track of the after dinner booze. 

Whoa. 

Talk about connectedness.

We delved into discussing some private family history tonight and the complications we discussed were all definitely microcosms of conflicts and difficulties that are always a part of the larger picture of the American landscape, especially around questions of aging, self-created family mythologies, and the gap that always exists between the idealized idea of the American family and the messy details of what actually happens in families. 

(It was my desire to explore this gap that led me, over forty years ago, at Whitworth to create and teach a course called "The Family in American Drama". To this day, it remains one of my very favorite classroom projects in all the years I got to be an instructor.)

I'm not sure, but I think these conversations were ultimately about forgiveness. Hurtful, confusing, bewildering things happen among family members and I thought we discussed these things doing our best to understand them and in the spirit of doing our best to forgive others rather than hang on to toxic grudges and seething anger. 

Three Beautiful Things 08-26-2024: Everything's Connected, Unnecessary (But Enjoyable) Trip to Pilgrim's, Making Asian Sauce

1. On the face of it, the book Yellow Bird seems to primarily be about Lissa Yellow Bird's relentless search to locate, as it turned out, the corpse of Kristopher "K. C." Clarke, a worker on the Bakken oil fields, who was murdered. But it's so much more. It develops into a book about the history, yes, of the Yellow Bird family, and also of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, reservation politics, the dark elements of the Bakken oil boom, the psychosis of greed, the lasting impacts of generational trauma, the fraught history of the relationship between Indian nations and the U. S. Government, the heedless damage to the land perpetrated by oil extraction and related activity, and a lot more. 

I enjoy expansive books like Yellow Bird. I am almost finished with this book and relish reading the many directions it goes, its cast of countless persons, how it captures the complexity of the benefits and the detriments of the oil boom by telling multiple stories, jumping between them, not staying on a single story telling track through the whole book. 

I don't intend for what I'm about to say to be original: Yellow Bird illustrates how everything is connected. 

When I finish this book on Monday, I'll try to write a more cogent description of the multiple places and aspects of life on and off the reservation that are all connected to the complicated and complex life of Lissa Yellow Bird. 

2. I didn't need to hop in the Sube and drive to Pilgrim's Market in CdA today, but I just did. I wanted to give the Sube a spin. I also wanted to continue testing the waters of going into public places, masked, and gaining confidence that I can do more things where people are around and not necessarily get sick and endure a long, slow recovery. 

3. I fixed s bunch of chicken wings for dinner along with a stir fry and continued to experiment with Asian sauces and mixed one today that worked really well on the stir fry and pretty well on the chicken.  

Three Beautiful Things 08-24-2024: Debbie's Back in Kellogg, *Yellow Bird* -- "Literary as Hell", Lemon Pesto

1. A little before 9:00 I leapt into the Camry and soared over the 4th of July Pass and on into the Greater Spokane Valley and Spokane Proper metropolitan area and parked in the cell phone lot, awaiting Debbie's arrival from Washington, DC and the Salt Lake City. 

Debbie's travels progressed without a single setback and by about 10:45 she was in the Camry's luxurious passenger seat and, by about midnight, Debbie and Gibbs reunited. 

2. As I read the copious detail she develops and the many angles Sierra Crane Murdoch tells Yellow Bird from, my impression is that she wants to bring to life as much of the complexity of Lissa Yellow Bird's character and the realities of the oil boom on the Ft. Berthold Indian Reservation as possible. 

When Leah Sottile included this book in the book list she posted, she commented that Yellow Bird was both a work of superb journalism and "literary as hell".

To me it's Murdoch's commitment to detail and complexity and to developing several story lines simultaneously that makes her book read like a novel to me. 

The novel is the most flexible of literary genres. A novelist can transport readers in time and place, sometimes turning on a dime and can tell stories from multiple points of view, to mention just a couple of features of the unrestricted nature of the novel. 

Sierra Crane Murdoch's books moves its readers back and forth in time, tells its stories from different perspectives, and employs a variety of ways to tell this book's story. 

I enjoy all of this a lot. Yes, it requires me to be patient some times and it can be tiring, at least for me, to keep the several story lines and persons in this book straight. 

I'm good with that. It stimulates me. As does the beauty of Murdoch's writing. 

And, lastly, one of the deeply satisfying payoffs of Murdoch's commitment to detail and fullness is that Lissa Yellow Bird develops into as contradictory, complex, maddening, and admirable a character as I've ever encountered, whether in fiction or non-fiction. 

3. That little jar of lemon pesto I bought a while back at Trader Joe's tasted pretty good on the leftover Trader Joe's rice medley combined in the same bowl with some leftover Trader Joe's mashed cauliflower. I also boiled a helping of penne pasta and put lemon pesto on it and enjoyed it. 

I'll be heading into Spokane on Monday for an early morning blood draw and I'll return to Trader Joe's and see if I want to restock some of the items we've used or if I want to make some different mad, just for fun purchases. 

For me, it's a fun way to shop for food on occasion: just buy what seems fun. 

Three Beautiful Things 08-23-2024: Fitness Center Again, Oil and the Reservation, My Weight

1.  I returned to the Fitness Center today around 1:30 and, like yesterday, few people were in the facility. Once again, I took all the precautions I know to take. I wore a mask. I used hand sanitizer. I wiped down the two machines I used. 

Yesterday, I worked out for thirty minutes and I felt like I could have done more. Today, I raised the level of resistance on the Nu-Step machine a bit and huffed and puffed on it for twenty minutes. I then kept the recumbent bike at Level 1 and pedaled for twenty minutes on it. 

After 40 minutes of exercise, I didn't feel even close to being depleted and I didn't feel any discomfort in the surgery site. 

I'll keep fiddling around, searching for a sweet spot of time and exercise level. I will continue to heed the transplant team's orders that I ease into this part of my recovery and not overdo it while also trying to see just how far I can take things. 

2. While the book Yellow Bird is fundamentally about Lissa Yellow Bird's tireless (obsessive?) efforts to find the missing truck driver Kristopher "KC" Clarke, what makes Sierra Crane Murdoch's book gripping and fascinating is her in-depth exploration of the Yellow Bird family history, with special emphasis on Lissa Yellow Bird's story, her in-depth exploration of the complicated history of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation and the thorny relationship between the tribes and the U.S. government, and her reporting on  the Bakken oil boom and the impact of all the activity related to oil extraction on the land, the residents of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, and on the workers and bosses in the oil business. 

I thoroughly enjoy Murdoch's approach to non-fiction -- and I enjoy other writers who approach non-fiction the way Murdoch does. Murdoch digresses. She sets aside, from time to time, the main story of the search for Kristopher Clarke and takes us into all kinds of relevant history and background to this story and, as readers, we come to realize that many currents of US history, as well as Yellow Bird family history and Lissa's personal history, are all converging in this story of oil, murder, and Lissa Yellow Bird's search for justice in Indian country. 

3. As I've written about previously, my May 11th transplant surgery required heavy doses of fluid, all of them pumped into my body. One consequence taking in all those fluids is that my weight increased from 221 pounds to nearly 240 pounds. 

In my first consultation with a transplant dietician while hospitalized at Sacred Heart, I expressed my disappointment that I'd worked steadily from November to May to take off about thirty pounds, and much of it was back again.

The dietician was sympathetic, but firm in her response: "This is no time to concern yourself with losing weight." She went on to explain how I needed to eat in order to encourage the healing of the surgery site and what products I couldn't eat because either they were risky and could make me sick or they interacted poorly with the anti-rejection medicines. 

Okay. 

I told myself I'd do my best to follow her instructions. 

And I have. 

The transplant team, including another dietician, refined those instructions a little later on because I needed to increase the magnesium in my blood and decrease the potassium. 

That has worked out really well.

And now it's late August. 

As part of my recovery program, I weigh myself every morning. 

I'm not sure, but I think much of that fluid has worked its way out of my system. 

I'd had some moderate evidence of edema in my ankles and lower legs and, at least today, there's very little or no swelling at all -- but, I continue to wear compression socks. 

I've begun to lose weight again. 

Already, after just two days back in the Fitness Center, the exercise has helped lower my weight. This is both encouraging and motivating. 

I continue to follow the transplant team's orders. 

I'm not doing anything drastic. 

I'm pacing myself. 

I really like the idea that with exercise and some close monitoring of what I eat and drink, I might one day get back to weighing something close to what I did on the day of the surgery. 

Three Beautiful Things 08-22-2024: *Yellow Bird* and A Spokane Murder, Back to the Fitness Center, Getting Immuno-Suppression About Right

1. North Dakota. 

The Baaken oil boom. 

The Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.

Murder. 

KC Clarke.

As I started to read Yellow Bird, it suddenly struck me.

Is this story of Lissa Yellow Bird's search for KC Clarke connected to the December 15, 2013 murder of Doug Carlisle on 2505 S. Garfield Rd in Spokane? 

I was in Kellogg when the news came out on television and in the Spokesman Review that an intruder waited for Doug Carlisle to arrive home from church and murdered him, but not his wife. 

It wasn't long before news came out that this was not a random murder, but that Carlisle had been targeted. 

I remembered that the murder of Doug Carlisle was related to his business dealings with oil in North Dakota. 

Yellow Bird, the book I was starting to read, unbeknownst to me when I purchased it, was going to tell the story of Lissa Yellow Bird's search for KC Clarke. It didn't take long for me today to discover and remember that the same person, James Henrikson, contracted both Doug Carlisle's and KC Clarke's murders. 

I don't know how much Yellow Bird will deal with the murder of Doug Carlisle. 

But I do know that Yellow Bird will have me reading yet another dark tale this month that involves Spokane, whether directly or indirectly. 

Not only because I can tell already that Sierra Crane Murdoch is a superb writer and not only because the book's early accounting of tribal history and of Lissa Yellow Bird's life and the lives of her family, grounded in, but not not confined to the Fort Berthold Reservation, is fascinating, but also because I vividly recall the shock I felt when the story of Doug Carlisle's murder came out and I want to learn more about what lay behind it, I am ready to absorb myself in this book. 

2. Ever since I received a kidney transplant on May 11th, I've longed to return to the Fitness Center in Smelterville.

Two factors have stopped me from going. First, I must be cautious about contagion -- as I've written a million times on this blog. Maybe more importantly, I've had to protect the surgery site while it healed.

Now that it's been over three months since the surgery, the transplant team confirmed that my surgery site is almost surely healed enough for me to exercise again. I simply have to start slowly.

Carol, thank God, has been coming by daily while Debbie is away, to keep Copper's litter box scooped. 

Today, as she left, she casually remarked that she and Paul were headed to the Fitness Center. 

"When you get there, Carol, would you send me a text telling me how many people are in the gym?"

Carol agreed to do that.

It was early afternoon. When she and Paul arrived, six people were in the gym. When they left, only one person was there.

Great! I thought early afternoons were a slow time at the Fitness Center and Carol's messages confirmed it.

So, today, I was back to huffing and puffing on the Nu-Step machine and a recumbent bicycle. I set both machines at undemanding levels. I exercised on each for fifteen minutes. 

I felt great. No pain in the surgery area. I did all right exercising with a mask on. I even thought I could have set the machines at more demanding levels. 

I ended my exercise drought. 

I'll keep going out there, but if I think too many people are in the gym, I'll leave and return later. 

After over three months of not much exercise, it was encouraging and a deep pleasure to be back at it again. 

3. To close, a medical note. 

Right now, as I continue to move forward in my life with a new kidney, the most prominent challenge the transplant team and I face is getting the dosage of my immuno-suppression drugs just right. The team lowered the dosage of one of these drugs (Myfortic) when I contracted Covid. Every time I have labs done, the team checks to see if the level of the other immune-suppression drug I take, Tacrolimus (aka Tac), is high, low, or just about right. My Tac levels have persisted in being a bit high, so the team has been lowering my dosage of it. My labs from Monday revealed that I have a low level of BK virus in my system. Today, I got word to lower my dosage of Myfortic a bit more so that my immune system is less suppressed and can deal better with this virus. 

All of this adjusting of immuno-suppression drugs is normal post-transplant. 

I think I'm correct in saying that I need enough of these drugs in my system to keep my immune system from rejecting my new kidney, and, at the same time, we need to keep the immune system capable enough that it can do its work so some degree , say, in relation to the Covid virus and the BK. 

I'll go in for labs again next week, most likely on Monday or Tuesday, and the results will help the team see how these dosage adjustments are working out. 

I see the team again on Sept. 4, after more blood work that morning. 

 

Three Beautiful Things 08-21-2024: I Finished Egan's Book, Pork and Leftovers, Time to Go to North Dakota

1. Timothy Egan's book, which I finished today, A Fever in the Heartland has a revealing subtitle -- I guess you could call it a spoiler. Here it is: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them. 

Egan's book develops early on as a history of the Ku Klux Klan, beginning soon after the Civil War, documents its collapse under the presidency of U. S. Grant, and then tells the story of the KKK's revival in the 1920s, especially in midwestern states north of the Mason Dixon Line and out west, particularly Colorado and Oregon. 

Later on, Egan's book develops as a crime and courtroom story. The KKK kingpin in Indiana, D. C. Stephenson, lands in jail after assaulting (yet another) woman in his orbit and goes on trial.

I don't want to give away details about his brutal assault or the trial, but I will say that the trial and its outcome resulted in a sizable number of Klan members leaving the organization. 

The Ku Klux Klan all but collapsed (again), but not its worldview nor the impact of its legislative victories. Jim Crow lived on. The KKK's adamant opposition to immigration lived/lives on. The KKK's vision of Christian Nationalism lives on as do its claims of White Supremacists.

Egan's book tells the story of events that have come and gone and, at the same time, a story of continuation. 

2. Quite a while ago, I bought a pretty good sized hunk of pork shoulder at Costco and cut it up into several pieces. One of those pieces had been sitting in our upstairs freezer compartment for many months. Last night I thawed it and today I seasoned it with fennel seeds, salt, pepper, and umami and roasted it. I had rice medley and mashed cauliflower left over from family dinner and I warmed them back up and fortified the rice and cauliflower with sautéed mushrooms. 

It was a pretty good little dinner and, lo and behold, I still have pork and rice and cauliflower and mushrooms left over for another dinner on Thursday. 

3. As I've mentioned here several times, I am reading my way though the list of a dozen 21st century books Leah Sottile posted on her Substack page in response to a one hundred books list from the 21 century the NYTimes published. 

Sottile is a free lance journalist/writer. Her focus in her articles, books, and podcasts is extremism in the USA, whether she's examining New Age cults, fringe LDS groups, radical environmentalists, or the Bundy family and, in addition, Timothy McVeigh. 

Timothy Egan's book is not on her list, but Jess Walter's Ruby Ridge is. I read Timothy Egan's book as yet another book about a world view that puzzles me, as a follow up to Ruby Ridge. 

This evening, I started reading another book on Leah Sottile's list, entitled Yellow Bird. It's a true crime book written by Sierra Crane Murdoch. It's set in North Dakota on and near the Fort Berthold Reservation. To give you a sense of what Murdoch's book deals with, here's its subtitle: Oil, Murder, and a Woman's Search for Justice in Indian Country. 

The woman mentioned in the title and subtitle is Lissa Yellow Bird. 

Three Beautiful Things 08-20-2024: The KKK Grifter, The Fighting Irish, Continuing Family Dinner

1. The following content is not beautiful. 

But reading Timothy Egan's book, A Fever in the Hearland, is a great pleasure because he's a dedicated researcher and an elegant writer. If you read on, as you'll see, the content of this book is violent and unnerving. 

In the first half of the 1920s, as the membership of the Ku Klux Klan swelled in Indiana and other states in the Midwest, the region's Grand Wizard, D. C. Stephenson, had no real commitment to the KKK's agenda of pure living. The KKK, ostensibly, stood for temperance. Stephenson was a drunk. The KKK stood for sexual monogamy and its vigilantes aggressively hunted for and punished men and women having sex outside of marriage or who were unfaithful to their spouses. Grand Wizard D. C. Stephenson was a philanderer, sadistic woman batterer, adulterer, and a man who abandoned his first wife and not only openly cheated on, but nearly killed his second wife by beating her. 

He saw in the rise of the KKK a way to grift people, to make a ton of money, taking a cut of followers' membership fees, a cut of the money they laid out for robes and other KKK accessories, by commanding a generous salary, and by other means.

Grand Wizard D. C. Stephenson fed and exploited people's fears and twisted ideas about Blacks, Jews, Catholics, and immigrants, spoke persuasively about what it means to be a true America, argued for white ethnic purity as central to the idea of a true America, and succeeded wildly in attracting white men, women, and children from all walks of life into the Ku Klux Klan while he enjoyed multiple residences, a yacht, a small fleet of of automobiles, and other luxuries. With all of law enforcement under his sway, he also, despite Prohibition, enjoyed access to fine imported whiskey. He preyed upon any woman he wanted to. If she didn't consent to his advances, he tried to rape her. Sometimes the women escaped his assaults, other times not, and usually he got away with his violence. When he didn't, the fact of his assault, at least in the first half of the book, had no negative impact upon his popularity. The KKK in midwestern non-Confederate states continued to grow. 

2.  In May of 1924, D. C. Stephenson orchestrated a Ku Klux Klan attack on the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, IN. Students organized and frustrated the attack and, as a result of their determined efforts to protect their university and turn back the KKK, newspaper accounts referred to the students as "The Fighting Irish", a nickname born out this clash and that has endured to this day as a nickname, most famously, for Notre Dame athletic teams. The University officially adopted this nickname in 1927.

3. I had Greek chickpeas and eggplant with tomato and onions left over from last night's Trader Joe's family dinner blow out. This evening, I cooked a small pot of Trader Joe's basmati rice, roasted a handful of raw almonds, and topped the rice with the nuts and the chickpeas and eggplant. It was a delicious and satisfying way to make good use of the leftovers and to continue the enjoyment of Monday night's family dinner. 

Three Beautiful Things 08-19-2024: Early Morning at Sacred Heart, Trader Joe's Items for Family Dinner, Connecting Through Reading

1. I admit it. It's odd. I enjoy driving to Spokane early in the morning and having my labs done at Sacred Heart. I could have them done in Kellogg, but if I go to Spokane, the results, with one exception, are available within an hour or so -- the test that is an exception is ready in the early afternoon. No billing snafus happen.  I enjoy listening to a book on audible as I drive to Spokane. I enjoy being in the Spokane metro area where things are busy, buzzing with activity and energy. Last of all, although it didn't work out today, I enjoy going to places that feel not too risky soon after 7:30 for coffee, to buy bread at Great Harvest, and do some non-necessity shopping at Trader Joe's. 

Today, though, I drove straight back home. The results of my blood work I received in the morning were ready to view before I arrived in Kellogg. 

As I hoped they would be, the test results are stable and encouraging. 

2. Debbie arrived in Virginia on Sunday to visit Molly's family so this evening it was up to me to host this week's family dinner on my own.

Knowing this was coming, when I shopped at Trader Joe's a while back, I decided that we would have a Trader Joe's family dinner. 

As it turned out, I augmented the Trader Joe's offerings with cut up plain, sesame, and everything bagels from Beach Bum Bakery, but otherwise, everything else I served this evening was a Trader Joe's product. 

For appetizers, I served the bagels with an assortment of dips and other small bites: dolmas, hummus, Greek chickpeas with parsley and cumin, eggplant with tomato and onion.

Christy served gin and tonics and Carol and Molly each brought a bottle of wine. (Not Trader Joe's -- no problem!)

For our main dish, I fixed a Trader Joe's Santa Maria Tri Tip Roast along with mashed cauliflower and a rice medley. Both sides came out of frozen packages. 

For dessert, I put out Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Bark with Pretzels, Sea Salt, and Almonds, a delicious combination. 

I liked how my idea worked out. The Trader Joe's items were solid, pretty tasty, and it was just fun to try out a different concept, to have spent some mad money to bring it about,  and to see it through tonight. 

3. The other day when I went to The Well-Read Moose and purchased Timothy Egan's A Fever in the Heartland, the woman who waited on me told me how much she loved Timothy Egan's work, that she would read a phone book if Timothy Egan wrote it. I agreed with her, even though I've only read three other of his books (Breaking Blue will always be a favorite all-time book of mine). I told her I found A Fever in the Heartland a sobering book. She liked that word! She didn't see how her compliment made me smile because I had on a mask. But her delight delighted me. I liked the connection we made. 

Today, as I cruised I-90, I listened, as best I could, to A Fever in the Heartland, and continued to find it sobering. And puzzling. But, my experience of being puzzled by white supremacy, by advocates of a "pure America" or who assert very restrictive ideas of what it means to be a "true American" is lifelong. I continue to read books about these ways of seeing the USA and the more I read, the more puzzled I am. 

I guess I'm just not a monocultural guy, whether in a garden, a forest, or when it comes to the makeup of the USA.

Later in the day, I made another connection with a fellow reader and longtime friend, Colette Marie.

Colette let me know that she, too, had read The Cassandra and that its author, Sharma Shields, is someone she's been at Fishtrap with. Colette described Sharma Shields as a "joyful, generous teacher, facilitator, and speaker." I hope I'll be able to meet up with Colette in October when I hope to make a trip to Pendleton. I am eager to hear everything she has to say about The Cassandra. I'm thinking she has perspectives on this story that are unavailable to me and that her insights will help expand my experience with this novel.  

Three Beautiful Things 08-18-2024: I Finished Reading *The Cassandra*, I Keep Discovering Spokane Writers, Pork and Ginger Dumplings Work

1. If you were to decide to read Shamra Shields' dark and imaginative novel, The Cassandra, it might help you to know in advance that her book has vivid passages of brutal physical violence, disturbing images of maimed, burned, and disfigured victims of the force of the atomic bombs the USA dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and a painful description of the book's central character inflicting gruesome self-harm upon. herself. 

After finishing the book,  I read Leah Sottile's interview of Sharma Shields where she talks about why she explores the dark, violent, and grotesque in her work (her comments brought to my mind Flannery O'Connor). I thought her horrifying passages as well as her passages describing the novel's main character being overtaken within herself by visions featuring herons, rattlesnakes, a meadowlark, and other animals were fitting. It's a surreal novel, moving back and forth between the waking world and dream worlds, in its exploration of violence, violence this book will not let its readers regard casually or find acceptable. 

2. I vaguely remember the 1986 Montana State Bobcat basketball team coming into their conference tournament as the last place team,  storming to the tournament championship, and going to the NCAA tournament with a losing record. They faced St. John's, played a competitive game, but lost 83-74.

This all came up today because a member of that MSU team was Shann Ray Ferch. Today, Ferch is a widely published writer, working as Shann Ray. He lives in Spokane and teaches at Gonzaga, among other schools. I discovered Shann Ray today because online I found an interview he conducted with fellow Spokane writer Sharma Shields in which she discusses The Cassandra. It's been fun for me over the last couple of weeks or so to discover one Spokane writer after another and to start reading them. 

3. Last night I made a dish combining tempeh, tofu, polenta, and vegetables. Tonight I had leftovers and warmed them up and I took pork and ginger dumplings from Trader Joe's out of the freezer, steamed them, and enjoyed how deliciously they paired with the food I made last night.  

Three Beautiful Things 08-17-2024: Am I Feeling Even Better?, *The Cassandra*, Air Fryer and Wok Fun

1. It's been a remarkable and unexpected experience that I've felt good, even energetic, for essentially the whole time since the transplant surgery. Today, I sized things up a bit and realized that lately I've been feeling even better. I continue to be cautious about being around a lot of people, especially in smaller places, so to expend some of this good energy this morning, I rounded up the cardboard out of the garage and took it to the transfer station. I did some laundry. I took care of a couple small jobs in the basement. I spiffed up the kitchen. 

2. Taking care of these tasks and continuing to feel good cleared the way to sit down with Spokane writer Sharma Shields' fascinating and unsettling novel, The Cassandra. Let's see. How to say it? The Cassandra  is set in the past, the mid-1940s, and tells the story of Mildred Groves, a woman about twenty years old, who lives in two (at least) worlds: the world of everyday life working at the Hanford Research Center and the world of her visions. In these visions, Mildred sees into the future -- her future is our past, a future we know is coming.  She is seeing into the dawning of the nuclear age. 

In Greek mythology, Cassandra is a Trojan priestess who can see into the future. She warns Apollo of impending disaster and her prophecies, tragically, go unheeded. No one believes her. 

Mildred Groves is the Cassandra of this novel. I've got a ways to go in this book to find out what Mildred's fate as a seer into the future is as, I imagine, she tries to warn those around her of impending disaster. I think I already know she won't be listened to since I live in the year 2024.  I know what happened in 1945 and years following when the power of the split atom was unleashed on the world. 

3. In my ongoing effort to prepare dinners with what I have on hand, this evening I air fried tofu cubes, tempeh cubes, and polenta disks. I took each of them out of the air fryer, put them in a bowl, and dressed them with Hoisin sauce. Simultaneously, I heated up oil in the wok and stir fried white onion, yellow squash, and frozen green beans and to this combination I added soy sauce, rice vinegar, and red pepper flakes. Eventually, I added the tofu, tempeh, and polenta to the wok, cooked these things all together and then I decided to put the polenta disks on the bottom of a bowl and spoon the other ingredients on top of them. 

I wanted to see how this made on the fly stir fry would work without rice. 

I thought it worked beautifully and deliciously! 

Three Beautiful Things 08-15-2024: Fob Battery Replaced Finally, Quick Trip to Riverstone, Brief Contact with Leah Sottile and Another Booklist

1. When it comes to fixing things or replacing batteries, especially if the task requires small motor skills, I have subzero confidence. About two weeks ago, a message flashed inside the Camry informing me that my fob's battery was low. I was in Spokane. Back home, I consulted a video online demonstrating how to open the back of the fob, remove the battery, and replace it. 

I watched the video about five times over the next 7-10 days.

Today, I took the plunge. 

I watched the video again. I then replayed it, stopping at crucial moments, and did my best to imitate what the guy in the video did.

I experienced a couple of small setbacks, but, eventually I succeeded! 

I took the fob out to the garage to test it. 

It worked! 

2. I wouldn't say I'm feeling restless after spending quite a bit of time in the house since the transplant. More positively, I'm feeling like getting out a bit more while, at the same time, doing all I can to protect myself from catching any bugs other people might, without knowing it, be spreading. 

I drove to Coeur d'Alene today. I went to the Well Read Moose bookstore for a quick visit, masked. 

I have been listening to Timothy Egan's audio presentation of his Fever in the Heartland, but decided I wanted to have the book in front of me, when possible, to follow along and to be able to read back and forth, making sure I have names and other details firmly established in my mind. 

I fired up the Sube and drove to Riverstone, walked a few blocks to the bookstore, made the purchase, and came home.

I returned to the audiobook when I went to bed tonight and having the hard copy in hand confirmed that I'd made a sound decision buying the book itself. 

3. I returned to reading my way through Leah Sottile's list of great 21st century books today and started Sharma Shield's novel, The Cassandra. Over at Substack, coincidentally, Leah Sottile posted a link to a list of 21st century books published by Pacific Northwest writers. The list came out of the Spokane Public Library and, lo and behold, the writer of the list was Sharma Shields! 

Leah Sottile expressed gratitude that Sharma Shields had included Sottile's gripping book, When the Moon Turns to Blood, on her list.s

I decide to comment on Leah Sottile's Substack note about Sharma Shields' Spokane Public Library booklist. 

I thanked her for posting this extensive list of books and I told Leah Sottile that I was reading my way through her list, that I'd completed three of her recommendations and was starting the fourth (Sharma Shields' The Cassandra). 

Leah Sottile's response? She wrote, "Incredible!", expressing delight that someone (me, as it turns out) was enjoying her recommendations. 

It was fun having a brief interchange with Leah Sottile. 

If you'd like to see Sharma Shields' booklist, written for the Spokane Public Library, just click here. 

Sharma Shields' The Cassandra, by the way, is set in the mid-1940s. The main character, Mildred Groves, from Omak, WA, landed a job at the emerging Hanford Research Center, ran away from home to start the job, and so I'll be reading a Spokane author's book about a young woman with paranormal powers working to help save the world, or so she's told, at the Hanford project. 

Three Beautiful Things 08-15-2024: Practical Philosophy, East Sprague Ave as a Character, Quieting Nagging Voices

1. It's been thirty+ years now since Rita Hennessy (RIP) and I team taught courses in English composition and philosophy. 

Those heady days of working with Rita came back to me as I spent most of the day today reading (and finishing) Jess Walter's detective novel, Over Tumbled Graves. 

Back then, the introductory philosophy courses were divided into three offerings. In the fall, the focus was on ethics; in winter, epistemology; in spring, metaphysics. 

In the ethics course, we explored how we humans arrive at our understanding of right and wrong; the epistemology course focused on the nature of knowledge and how we arrive at what we think we know; the metaphysics course focused on the nature of reality, with special emphasis on the visible and invisible. 

Reading Over Tumbled Graves was like being back in those philosophy classrooms again. Detective work -- and detective novels -- are all about what's ethical and unethical in crime investigation and how far detectives are willing to push ethical boundaries and rub up against unethical deeds. 

Detective work is also about what the detectives regard as reliable knowledge and how they arrive at it. Are the senses reliable? Is profiling? Do the past practices of serial killers help in the search for a killer who is currently active? Can detectives call into question their own assumptions about knowledge they think they have? What is the impact of arrogance and stubbornness on the thinking processes of detectives? How do these very human qualities impede their search for knowledge and limit their willingness to consider a variety of approaches to figuring things out?

And, lastly, is what appears to be real, actually real? How about if what appears to be real isn't? Are the detectives open to this possibility? To what degree are they confined to a sense of their own certainty about what's real and is that "certainty" actually impeding their investigation, not moving them closer to solving the crimes? 

Jess Walter explored these sorts of philosophical questions thoroughly, through his story telling, in a very practical manner, demonstrating how questions of ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics are not merely to be puzzled over in college courses, but are at the core, yes, of the work detectives do, but also at the core of how you and I conduct and muddle our way through our everyday lives. 

2. What I'm about to write might be a little off the wall, but here goes: to me, the stretch of dive bars, adult bookstores, Chinese restaurants, sketchy convenience and liquor stores on East Sprague Ave. and the ongoing illicit prostitution and drug dealing in this neighborhood become a central character in this novel. It's as if this neighborhood has a mind and a will of its own that it imposes upon those people who frequent this stretch and upon those who would try to change it, try to eradicate the crime. This stretch of street pushes back, resists, seduces, traps, deceives, even mocks not only those who would try to change it and those who try to escape, but those whose habits and ventures keep the crime alive. 

3. I was so absorbed in Over Tumbled Graves today that almost all I did was read -- very similar to the way I spent my days with Ruby Ridge and All the Light We Cannot See. I didn't cook today. Instead, for both lunch and dinner I stretched the salad I made for family dinner by adding more rice and adding chopped lettuce to it and further dressing it with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. 

When I do this, when I spend whole days reading and not leaving the house, not doing anything else except some writing and puzzle solving, I have to push back voices in my head that nag at me to get out of the chair or off the bed and get things done. I did take good care of Gibbs and Copper today. I did keep the kitchen uncluttered. I might have snuck something else productive into my day. The truth is, though,  when I get enthralled by books*, all I really want to do is read, enjoy the solitude of it, and feel the pleasure of stimulation and appreciation -- the stimulation of ideas and insights and the pleasure reading books written beautifully gives me. 

*the same is true for movies -- if only I could do both at the same time......

Three Beautiful Things 08-14-2024: Making Up a Salad, Family/Birthday Dinner, Jess Walter's *Over Tumbled Graves*

1. I was in charge of making a salad for tonight's family dinner. I had decided a few days ago that I wanted to make a leafless salad. Originally, I was going to make a barley and white rice salad, but I made a mistake in the kitchen and to rectify it, I made a white rice and couscous salad instead. (The mistake: I took out a bag of what I thought was barley, but it was Israeli couscous. I followed the direction for making barley and a gummy, over cooked glob resulted, so I tossed it and turned to the other golden couscous I had on hand.)

I already had white rice made from my dinner Tuesday evening. Once I had the couscous prepared, I just had to decide what to chop up and put in the bowl to build a salad. I decided on the following: radishes, green onion, cucumber, red pepper, pan roasted almonds, pan-fried corn kernels, and a chopped Cosmic Crisp apple. I juiced a lemon and combined it with olive oil and black pepper for a dressing. 

I tasted this salad and concluded it lacked something, but that if Christy and Carol had some fresh herbs available and let me have some, it would enliven this salad, significantly improve it.

So, as we gathered at Carol and Paul's for dinner and Molly's birthday celebration, Christy brought me fresh basil, chives, and oregano. Carol had thyme and parsley and some chocolate mint. I spruced up the salad with their herbal gifts and, PRESTO!, these herbs improved the taste and texture and scent of the salad and my Kitchen Sink Couscous and White Rice Salad turned out to be pretty good. 

2. We enjoyed a royal feast in celebration of Molly's birthday. Paul mixed Sunrise Bellinis for a birthday cocktail (they looked great, but I stuck with water). Carol fixed a pickled food and nut appetizer plate. For dinner, Carol seasoned and Paul grilled salmon which we enjoyed with the kitchen sink salad, grilled vegetables from Carol and Paul's garden, and air-fried polenta. Carol put out a huckleberry sauce she made that could go on the polenta and/or on the salmon. 

Christy was in charge of dessert and she baked a splendid Peach Cobbler Dump Cake served with Peaches and Cream ice cream. 

We talked about a lot of things tonight: water witching, the Walker family tree, flowers and plants found in Shakespeare's plays and poems, the current situation at Nocturn, and more. 

3. When I wasn't throwing everything but the kitchen sink into a salad bowl or eating a birthday feast today, I was under the spell of Jess Walter's detective novel, Over Tumbled Graves.

This book is set in Spokane in the mid to late 1990s, much of it on that stretch of East Sprague known for dive bars, adult bookstores, Chinese restaurants, grimy convenience stores, drug dealing, and prostitution. 

Jesse Walter mailed off his completed manuscript of this book to his editor two weeks before the arrest of Spokane serial killer Robert L. Yates. It's uncanny, then, that Walter's novel about a serial killer targeting prostitutes in Spokane is eerily similar, but not identical,  to what the public learned about Yates after his arrest. 

Walter's central character in this book is Detective Caroline Marby, the lone woman on the Spokane Police Department's Special Investigations Unit. Over Tumbled Graves is the first of two Caroline Marby books Walter wrote (the second: Land of the Blind). I don't know if any others are in his future plans.

I can hardly put this book down. Walter draws complex and compelling characters efficiently. Caroline Marby is especially fascinating. His love for physical places, whether he's writing about the power of the Spokane River running through Riverfront Park or the seedy sketchiness of East Sprague or the drunken mayhem on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, energizes this novel. No single place, whether it's Pleasant Valley, Sacred Heart Hospital, places to eat and drink in Spokane, dive bars on East Sprague, or other neighborhoods in Spokane is generic. 

To top it all off, Walter is a terrific storyteller. This book is plotted imaginatively, suspensefully, and intelligently. It's divided into five parts, each part's title is the same as each of the five parts of T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land. The book's title comes from two lines in The Waste Land: "In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing/Over the tumbled graves." 

Somehow, these lines from The Waste Land make me think of the last lines of Pink Floyd's song, "Time". 

Far away across the field

The tolling of the iron bell

Calls the faithful to their knees

To hear the softly spoken magic spells. 

And, lastly, I'm not sure at all what the parallels are between the book Over Tumbled Graves and The Waste Land. I'm going to reread The Waste Land and think about it more. 

Just for the record, here are the titles of the five parts of Eliot's poem and, in turn, of Jesse Walter's novel:

I.    The Burial of the Dead

II.  A Game of Chess

III. The Fire Sermon

IV. Death by Water

V.   What the Thunder Said

Three Beautiful Things 08-13-2024: Quick Trip to Auntie's Bookstore, Starting Two New Books, Success at Costco

1. I thought it was possible that I might have blood work done in Spokane this week, so when I ordered three books from Auntie's Bookstore, my plan was to pick up the books at the store. Well, I did not need to have blood work done this week, but I decided it would be fun to drive to Spokane today and pick up the books, especially because I had just finished All the Light We Cannot See and wanted these books sooner than later. 

Two of the books, Sharma Shield's The Cassandra and Jess Walter's Over Tumbled Graves are by Spokane authors. The Cassandra and the other book I ordered, Yellow Bird by Sierra Crane Murdock, are both on the Leah Sottile book list I'm reading my way through. Like Shield and Walter, Murdock lives in the western USA. 

2. While driving, I listened to another western USA writer, Timothy Egan, read the early chapters of his book, Fever in the Heartland. I need to get my hands on a hard copy of this book. I enjoyed listening to these early chapters, but I miss a lot when I'm driving and listening to a book. In addition, I'm a forward and backward reader and this book, in its exploration of the rise, fall, and rise again of the Ku Klux Klan, introduces many historical persons whose names are new to me and, while driving, I was having trouble keeping them straight and wished I could (not while driving!) go back and forth in the book and get these people straight in my head. 

Later, in the evening, I started Jess Walter's book Over Tumbled Graves. It's a detective story set in Spokane and opens with a riveting scene that transpires in Riverfront Park and very much involves the Spokane River and falls. The book focuses on the police department's Special Investigations Unit and its sole woman detective, a fictional character named Caroline Marby. Immediately, Walter establishes her as a compelling, complex character. I'm eager to read on. 

3. I decided today to strap on my mask and buy items off a list at Costco for Carol and Paul and for our household. 

I think Costco is a good place for me to shop as an immune-suppressed transplant patient. 

It's big.

Its aisles are wide. 

It was easy to maintain distance from other shoppers. 

My primary concern was actually more psychological than physical.

I felt conspicuous being the only shopper wearing a mask and I just didn't want to deal with snide looks, eye rolling, mockery, or other signs of condescension or disapproval. 

None of that happened! 

That was a relief. 

Admittedly, I avoided eye contact with others, for the most part, but today, much like at Trader Joe's, my wearing a mask didn't seem to set anyone off. 

I am never in the mood to deal with confrontation or mockery -- unless it's the good natured kind at The Lounge or elsewhere among friends. 

I left Costco very happy that I'd had a successful shopping trip and that I was confident I didn't put myself at much risk thanks to being masked and being around other people in such a spacious warehouse. 

Three Beautiful Things 08-12-2024: Tenderness, Miniatures, Bagel Burger

1.  I finished reading Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See this evening. I know from comments I listened to Doerr make in an interview and from some reading I've done, that at one level the title refers to the wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum that human eyes cannot detect. Relative to this book, radio waves are the most relevant light we cannot see since radios and radio transmissions are central to the story. 

From that more literal meaning of light we cannot see, the title works figuratively. The novel left me thinking a lot about the light we cannot see in the innermost souls of the novel's primary characters. Against their will, these characters live in the perilous world of World War II. We cannot see the light deep within them from which courage and tenderness emanates, courage and tenderness that often contrasts with the brutality, greed, cruelty, and depravity of others in their lives and of the war effort itself. 

I'll just rattle off a few unexplained examples: tenderness is at the heart of Daniel LaBlanc's relationship with his daughter, Marie-Laure, and, in turn, deep tenderness animates Marie-Laure's love for her great-uncle, Etienne and vice versa. The boy in the novel, Werner, even as he is being indoctrinated into fascism and Nazism persists in his tender feeling for his sister, Jutta, and for his closest friend at the paramilitary academy, Frederick. His bodyguard and protector, Frank Volkheimer, is capable of cold-bloodedness and, at the same time, within him is a light we cannot see that moves him to tenderness and deep caring for Werner, a devotion that continues long after the war ends. 

2. I won't pretend to write about the countless metaphors pointing us toward this novel's exploration of the complexities of humanness and the human condition. 

One metaphor that I experienced as prominent is embodied in the miniature models Daniel LaBlanc builds of the neighborhoods he and Marie-Laure live in, first in Paris and then in Saint-Malo.

Marie-Laure is blind. Her father builds these models so that Marie-Laure can navigate her world before she goes out into it by learning the details of its topography by running a finger over the scale model her father constructed. (His efforts take us back to what I said about tenderness and how his efforts to help his daughter emerge from a light within him we cannot see.)

As I thought more about miniature things in this story, it struck me that in the same way that Daniel LaBlanc's miniature models are microcosms of Paris and Saint-Malo, so the stories of Marie-Laure and Werner are microcosms of their countries at war. Through Marie-Laure's story, we navigate the horrors of displacement, the betrayals of collaborators, the courage of resistance, the persistence of hope and belief in the miniature form of what she experiences. Likewise, we navigate the harshness of the paramilitary academy Werner enrolls in, itself a microcosm of Nazism, and not only the depravities of the war effort, but the moral dilemmas soldiers like Werner face, not on a grand scale, but through the particular and specific experiences of Werner. 

3. Last Thursday, I purchased and froze a bunch of bagels from Beach Bum Bakery. I have ground beef thawed that I'd like to make good use of and I started this evening by frying a patty, topping it with a slice of sharp cheddar cheese, and making a plain bagel burger with dill relish, ketchup, and plain yellow mustard. 

It worked! 

Three Beautiful Things 08-11-2024: War's Casualties, Beauty Is Not Extinguished, Pantry Diving

1. I spent much of today reading All the Light We Cannot See. As I read incident after incident of human depravity, the depravity of war, of the violent fascist efforts of the Nazis to impose order, purity, and submission upon Europe and Russia, I flashed back repeatedly to the movie Breaker Morant, especially J. F. Thomas' closing argument in defense of Morant and his fellow Bushveldt Carbineers as their court martial trial came to an end. Here is the section of Thomas' argument that occupies me as I read this book;

The fact of the matter is that war changes men's natures. The barbarities of war are seldom committed by abnormal men. The tragedy of war is that these horrors are committed by normal men in abnormal situations, situations in which the ebb and flow of everyday life have departed and have been replaced by a constant round of fear and anger, blood and death.

All the Light We Cannot See is, to me at least, a war novel that never takes us into the field of battle. Rather, we experience the violence of WWII in the cruelty of the German occupation of France, the elite and depraved boys' school where one of the main characters, Werner, is accepted and where he witnesses and takes part in terrible acts of brutality, and, among other things, the impact of the bombs and mortar shells upon those not killed, like the other main character, Marie-Laure, but who survive in intensely claustrophobic and isolating conditions. 

2. In this story, war does not extinguish beauty. Alongside the savagery in this story are moments, some of them sustained, of natural beauty and the beauty of music and other art forms.

The prose of the novel itself is also a source of sublime beauty -- as are the novel's philosophical ruminations. 

I am about a hundred or so pages from this book's conclusion and I have no idea how it will conclude. 

I'll know, however, some time on Monday. 

3. I'm on a low key mission to make good use of food I already have on hand in preparing meals for myself over the next couple of weeks. 

When I made my first pleasure shopping trip to Trader Joe's a couple weeks ago, I bought a jar of lemon pesto. On a separate trip to Trader Joe's, Debbie had bought a tin of quinoa wild tuna salad. For dinner, I rustled up a three quarters empty bag of penne, cooked what was left in the bag, topped it with lemon pesto and black pepper and enjoyed the salad. 

It was fun rummaging through our pantry and figuring out how to make good use of what is already here. I see a fun week ahead of continuing to do this, especially having cancelled HelloFresh deliveries for this week and next. 

 

 

Three Beautiful Things 08-10-2024: Copper and Gibbs Are Content, War Warps Everything, Air Fry/Stir Fry

1. With Debbie visiting Adrienne and Molly's families in New York and Virginia, my main concern here at home is keeping both Gibbs and Copper company. Mostly I've hoped that if I spend time in the living room with Gibbs, Copper will be all right by himself in the two rooms he goes back and forth between. 

If Copper were discontented, he'd show it in two ways: howl meowing and crapping outside his litter pan. 

Instead, during the times I left him alone, he was relaxed, content, and well behaved. 

What a relief! 

And, in addition, what a relief that Gibbs spent Saturday night in the living room and was quiet and mostly restful throughout the night. 

2.  All the Light We Cannot See continues to grip me, especially as a war novel. War warps everything. It's arresting to me, after about 200 pages or so, how Anthony Doerr explores war's distortions and soul crushing destruction mostly through the experiences of two young characters, a girl growing up in France and a boy in Germany and through the experiences of the adults in their lives. 

3. I sliced half an onion and air fried the slices. I then air fried slices of polenta. At the same time, I cooked a small pot of brown rice. Then I stir fried slices of mushroom and added the onion and polenta to the pan to keep them all warm. As the rice finished cooking, I made a sauce of Hoisin sauce, soy sauce, rice vinegar, water, garlic, and ginger. I poured some of the sauce over the polenta, mushrooms, and onion and then added a good portion of the brown rice to the pan and poured the remaining sauce over it all. 

I was especially happy with how the onion and polenta air fried and it was fun having such a flavorful sauce to enhance the rice dish. 

Three Beautiful Things 08-09-2024: Debbie Lands In Newark, Lunch at Great Harvest, First Night Alone with Gibbs and Copper

1. Finally. 

Success. 

Debbie has tried to travel this summer with mixed success. She flew to Juneau. She canceled going to Fairbanks twice. In July, she was all set to fly to Chicago, but her flight coincided with that global tech outage and the ensuing chaos, so she canceled that trip. 

Debbie had a flight scheduled today to Newark. Her flight coincided with Tropical Storm Debby (not Debbie) moving into the New Jersey/New York area. Delta notfied Debbie with a warning that the storm could disrupt Delta's flight schedules and that she should pay attention to the status of her Friday flights.

By about 11 a.m. this morning, Debbie hadn't heard any discouraging news from Delta, so I drove Debbie to the Spokane airport. Once there, Debbie dashed inside and I parked in the cell phone parking lot.

Debbie talked to a Delta employee who assured her that her flight to Minneapolis and then her flight to Newark were scheduled to proceed.

Debbie texted me that news.

I headed out. 

And, lo and behold, shortly after 9:30 this evening, Pacific Standard Time, Debbie landed in Newark and after a drive from Newark to Valley Cottage, NY, she arrived at Adrienne, Josh, Jack, and Ellie's home. 

That sound you just heard wasn't a high wind blast from a tropical storm in Kellogg.

It was my heavy sigh of relief. 

2. I decided to lollygag, dawdle, dilly dally for a while before blasting back to Kellogg. 

I drove straight to Great Harvest, not remembering if an egg salad sandwich was on their lunch menu. 

It wasn't. 

No problem. 

Instead I ordered their Pepper Bleu Roast Beef sandwich on Honey Wheat bread and sat a table in the shade outside the shop and slowly savored every bite of this delicious lunch. 

I also bought a loaf of Dakota Wheat Bread. Soon this bread will host an egg salad sandwich. 

My lunch stop was perfect. 

I felt safe in the shop. A handful of people were eating lunch and were spread throughout the store. I could eat outside in the shade. It was warm out, but not at all uncomfortably hot, so I was comfortable and I felt safe from exposure to infection. 

Yahoo!

3. Back home, I now face the challenge of keeping both Gibbs and Copper company by myself. Gibbs is nearly inseparable from Debbie. As a substitute for her, I fall far short. (No problem. I'll do my best.) Since I got clearance from the transplant team earlier this summer to be in Copper's company, Copper has been much happier and he loves being able to move freely in his area of the ground floor. 

Gibbs will now sleep by himself at night in the living room and he was quiet and content all through Friday night. If this pattern continues throughout Debbie's absence, Gibbs, Copper, and I are going to get along just fine and Gibbs will survive Debbie being away -- he will, however, for the next two weeks be at the window all through the day, looking for Debbie to return! 

Three Beautiful Things 08-08-2024: Blood Work and a Transplant Exam, A Little Shopping, Stir Fry and "Thunderstruck"

1. I roared out the door at 6 a.m. this morning for another routine trip to Providence Sacred Heart. I popped in the lab, surrendered a few vials of blood, enjoyed a blueberry scone and a latte at the coffee shop on the lobby floor, and checked in at the transplant center. 

It wasn't too long before Dr. Murad strode into the examination room. I watched as he reviewed the blood work I'd had done an hour or so earlier and he was happy with everything. We talked about a few things like flu shots and whether I should keep my dental appointment (NO!) and he concluded I am on the right course as far as medication dosages and that I don't need to come back to the clinic for another month, but I'll have labs done again in two weeks.  

Nurse Angela came in with my visit summary. She thinks my surgery site has most likely healed and that I can slowly increase my physical activity. As far as my involvement in social situations, I need to use common sense, try not to put myself in high risk situations, be protective. 

On August 10th, it will be thirteen weeks since my surgery -- enough time for the surgery site to be pretty much healed and Nurse Angela is confident that much of that initial blast of anti-rejection drugs the team firehosed into my system on May 11th has worn off. 

Things, at the moment, are moving along pretty well. 

2. I left the Sacred Heart campus and went to Great Harvest where I didn't purchase anything, took a spin through Trader Joe's and picked up a bag's worth of this and that, and stopped in at 2nd Look Books and started feeling kind of warm in the store and so I cut my visit short and pledged to myself that if I return, I'll have a list of books to look for in hand. 

3. I had fun making dinner tonight. I air fried a drained and cubed package of tofu and also got out the wok and stir fried a combination of scallions, orange pepper, yellow summer squash, mushrooms, and shredded cabbage. I added the crispy tofu to the wok and folded in the leftover Asian sauce I made for the meatballs last night and added red pepper flakes to it all. This dinner really worked! 

After dinner, tired from being up since the crack of dawn, I went to YouTube and listened to various renditions of AC/DC's electrifying hit, "Thunderstruck". I watched a few versions of AC/DC performing it live, two versions of Steve 'n' Seagulls, a Finnish bluegrass band rip on "Thunderstruck, a high school percussion band play it, and a bagpipe band called The Red Hot Chili Pipers cover "Thunderstruck". 

Honestly. 

Listening to all these approaches, I was, well, thunderstruck. 

Three Beautiful Things 08-07-2024: A Lyrical and Riveting Novel, Asian Glazed Turkey Meatballs, A Delicious Family Dinner Sends Me Home Buzzing

1. I'm astonished by the lyrical and imaginative ways Anthony Doerr tells two concurrent stories about the run up to Germany's occupation of France and the occupation itself in his novel All the Light We Cannot See. I've read about a quarter of this riveting, poetic story. It's invigorating me, awakening my love of concentrated multi-layered language, philosophical rumination, tight story telling, and the emergence and development of memorable characters, both major and minor ones. 

2. Some time in the last couple of weeks, I cooked a HelloFresh meal that included ground turkey. At Trader Joe's soon after, I bought a pound of ground turkey, not really knowing what I'd do with it. A few days ago, Christy assigned me to provide the appetizer for tonight's family dinner. 

Aha! 

I'll make ground turkey meatballs.

I did a quick search of a few recipes and immediately decided I'd prepare Asian Glazed Turkey Meatballs. 

All I had to do was mix the pound of ground turkey, egg, panko, minced scallions, minced garlic, garlic powder, salt, and pepper in a mixing bowl. I formed ten meatballs out of this mixture and baked them. 

While they baked, I combined Hoisin sauce, soy sauce, rice vinegar, ginger, garlic, water, and corn starch in a pot and cooked this mixture for fifteen minutes or so, slowly, stirring it as it thickened. 

Once the meatballs were baked, I put them in the glaze I had just cooked on the stovetop, coated them, put them in a baking dish to serve, and garnished the meatballs with sesame seeds and the green part of the scallions. 

3. These meatballs helped get a delicious dinner started. Christy slow cooked a moist and flavor-packed lemon garlic pork tenderloin atop an island of wild rice. Carol assembled a refreshing summer squash salad, exquisitely dressed. Debbie brought a table red wine and a Chardonnay. (I drank water. I'm not ready for alcohol just yet. Alcohol has never come up with the transplant team. I am abstaining because I don't like the idea of mixing alcohol with the several medications I'm taking.) 

We finished our meal in grand style with root beer floats. 

We talked about a lot things tonight. I enjoy it when I leave family dinner with unresolved thoughts  buzzing like yellow jackets in my head. I had a few things to say this evening about Jess Walter's book chronicling the history of Ruby Ridge. Earlier I'd mentioned in this blog how Walter's book seemed linked, to me at least, to Norman Mailer's story about Gary Gilmore, The Executioner's Song. 

Christy had read Mailer's book years ago and told us she remembered how Mailer's book, unlike many true crime books she's read (say, by Ann Rule), left her feeling some empathy for Gary Gilmore. I agreed. Mailer's book had had a similar impact on me. 

Christy wondered if I came away from Ruby Ridge feeling some empathy for Randy Weaver.

At the moment, I can't answer that question. 

It has my mind buzzing. 

What I can say, though, is that upon finishing the book, I did not think of Randy Weaver as a monster nor did I find him someone I looked up to as a hero. 

I'm at a loss to write precisely how I felt about him as Walter's books concluded.  I'll definitely let this question continue to buzz around in my head. 

Three Beautiful Things 08-06-2024: Ten Years Have Passed, Cooking a Fun Spaghetti Dinner, Breakthrough!

1.  It's been just over ten years now since Debbie and I sold our house, leapt into the Sube, drove across the country, lived with Molly and Hiram for a couple of months, and then settled into our apartment home in Greenbelt. Those ten years are on my mind because of that Shakespeare high I experienced on Monday when all those memories came rushing back to me. The memories are euphoric to relive, but it's all bittersweet. I knew when we moved that I would sorely miss my life with Shakespeare in Eugene, a life that began in earnest when I first dedicated myself to the study of Shakespeare's plays and poems in 1981. 

I was right. I miss those days of study, discussion, movies, putting on shows, making new friends, and everything else, socially, that came with living, in part, a Shakespeare life with people of all ages I had a lot of fun with.  

2. It's always good, when I dive into these hours of nostalgic revery, to do other things I love and get refocused. Like cook. I had a lot of fun late this afternoon making Chicken Sausage Spaghetti Bolognese out of a HelloFresh bag. The pile of spaghetti and sauce included broiled zucchini slices enhanced with Italian seasoning. Not only did I enjoy cooking this meal, but I also relished my efficiency. I whipped it out pretty quickly, did a good job juggling the three cooking tasks I had going at once making it, and I kept my cooking area uncluttered and clean while I made this dish. 

3. I start reading certain books and then don't continue usually because I get distracted by something or other. It's almost never because I don't think the book is worth reading. This past year, I finally finished the book, Songlines, after several false starts. 

Tonight, I read farther into All the Light We Cannot See than I ever have before and I think I might be ready to commit to it, fight off distractions, and dedicate myself to reading the entire book. 

It helped me to play my Audible version of the book while I read. At one time, I'd hoped this would be a book I'd listen to while driving back and forth from Spokane for appointments, but I'm beginning to think it's not a book I can listen to while driving. 

So many people I know enjoyed this book. The author, Anthony Doerr, lives in Idaho. I am kind of stoked that I think I've experienced the breakthrough I needed to read it in its entirety. 

Three Beautiful Things 08-05-2024: *Much Ado* Memories, Cooking with Shakespeare, Sharing the Vitality of Shakespeare

1. On Facebook today, I came across videos previewing and discussing this summer's production of Much Ado About Nothing at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. A rush of the sweetest memories overwhelmed me. When the movie version of this play came out in 1993, my day to day life was immersed in the plays of William Shakespeare. I was teaching a Shakespeare course at LCC, was going regularly to Portland and Ashland to see productions of Shakespeare, and I had begun doing some acting in scenes from plays and eventually was cast in a handful of full-length plays between 2005 and 2011. 

I was obsessed with the 1993 movie version of Much Ado About Nothing and returned to the Bijou Theater four or five times in the first week of its run to see it again and again and later, after it left Eugene, I made a special trip to Portland just to watch it again.

2. Today I grooved on the many memories of sharing these Shakespeare memories with people whose company I loved. Much of my disappointment that I couldn't go to Patrick Torelle's 80th birthday party in late June or Joe Cronin's celebration of life at the end of July was centered on presuming some number of these people would be at either or both occasions. 

I grooved on these memories in a way similar to playing old favorite songs while working in the kitchen.

As I prepared and cooked a Thai chicken curry dinner out of a HelloFresh bag, memories of going to Shakespeare movies and plays, being a part of all kinds of Shakespeare productions (mostly Shakespeare Showcases), working with Shakespeare's plays with students in the classroom, and thinking of the great times I've had with people I became friends with in those situations made tonight's cooking especially enjoyable. 

3. The plays and poems of William Shakespeare have made an indelible impact on my intellect and my heart over the years, having shaped key elements of my worldview and having moved me and given me great pleasure. I've enjoyed this impact the most, not in the solitude of my study, but in the company of others: students and fellow instructors, those whose company I've shared going to plays and movies, fellow company members in productions I've been involved with, and fellow beer and coffee drinkers and fellow diners I've spent time with enthusing about these plays and poems over food and drink. 

Remembering all of these joyous experiences with friends, with fellow Shakespeare lovers made this an invigorating and touching day. 

Three Beautiful Things 08-04-2024: Trying to Understand the USA, Travel Plans and Questions, Copper's Increasing Contentment

1. Bill, Diane, and I jumped on ZOOM this morning and enjoyed a wide-ranging discussion. Bill and Diane talked about the Olympics, they told me about the video tape of the Songs of Bill Davie benefit concert I got to attend last March, Great Courses Bill and Diane are taking online, and we spent quite a bit of time talking about Leah Sottile's reading list and what moves me to read books and listen to podcasts as much as I do about white power movements, events, and prominent people, especially, but not exclusively, in the western USA.  

I'm not moved by ideology. 

I am moved by trying to understand the USA. 

Making an effort to understand the USA is a bewildering,  humbling, and complex undertaking, way bigger than I can comprehend, so I try to understand chunks. 

It's the best I can do.

2. Debbie tried to travel eastward a couple of weeks or so ago and her itinerary collided with the global tech outage and Delta canceled her flights and Debbie decided not to reschedule at that time. 

Now, she's going to try again at the end of this week to travel to New York and Virginia for a couple of weeks to visit Adrienne's family and then Molly's. 

Debbie and I talked at length today about some of the logistics of her trip and of what I'll need to do to here at home, especially when it comes to taking care of Copper and Gibbs. 

No sweat. 

We also pondered when we might be able to travel together. 

It's the same (old? tired old?) story driven by how steadily or how unsteadily I regain as much immunity as I'm going to. 

For now, I'm hoping that I'll make enough progress in the next six or seven weeks to participate to some degree in the 70th birthday party a bunch of us have planned in Montana, even if I only go over for the birthday dinner and don't spend either night over there.

Since last April, I've had, along with my pals, three nights reserved at the Wildhorse Resort for the first three nights of October.

Weekdays at Wildhorse are not crowded. Wildhorse is a 100% non-smoking resort. It will be nearly five months since my surgery. In addition, when we go to Wildhorse, I always spend quite a bit of time away from the resort. 

Will I go? 

It's all up in the air. 

I always lean heavily toward caution.

I do know, though, that a return to social settings and enjoying my friends lies out there in a to be determined future. 

It's just a matter of how my system continues to recover and adjusts to this new organ in my body. 

3. In the bedroom, I have a wide, roomy closet. I leave a cloth laundry bag, collapsed on the floor.

Copper loves to lie and sleep on this bag.

With the gate/barrier up that confines Gibbs to the living room and keeps Copper and Gibbs from encountering each other, Copper has easy access to both the bedroom and the Vizio room, easy access to his litter pan, and is living his best life ever since moving into our home.

Debbie reconfigured his litter pan in a way that he loves. He not only uses it all the time, he keeps his offerings in the pan. I am trusting him more and more not to do his business outside the pan and that this part of his life is going so well indicates to me that he's very content with this arrangement we've arrived at. 

The best breakthrough came when Nurse Angela told me that being physically close to Copper was not risky for me, a reversal of what I'd been told when I first came back home. That Copper and I can be together (when he chooses to be near me!), that he can move freely between the two rooms, that he is so comfortable sleeping on the laundry bags all means that Copper is living a very good life now. 

Copper's happiness makes me very happy. 

Three Beautiful Things 08-03-2024: American Studies, Twelve Weeks In, Debbie at The Lounge

1.  Tonight I finished reading Jess Walter's remarkable book, Ruby Ridge: The Tragedy and Truth of the Randy Weaver Family. I haven't written a longer piece here at kelloggbloggin for quite a while. I used to write longer things frequently here. Walter's book, however, took me back to 1980 when I read Norman Mailer's book focused on Gary Gilmore, The Executioner's Song, an astonishing work. Both Mailer's book and Walter's strike me as examinations of elements of American life that, in part, make our country what it is. I might develop some thoughts about this later -- I'll need to get my hands on Mailer's book again, though, before I can do that. 

I can write the following now, though. To put it briefly, both books explore the intersection of individual freedom and governmental power. Both books examine violence, the roots of violence, the prevalence of firearms in American life (neither book questions the right to bear arms), and both books feature detailed reporting on the judicial system at work. Because Randy Weaver and Kevin Harris are acquitted of murder charges, Ruby Ridge doesn't explore the complexities of capital punishment -- but the prosecutors in their cases were seeking the death penalty had they been found guilty. The Executioner's Song explores the legal battles over the execution of Gary Gilmore in great detail, in a study made unique by the fact that Gary Gilmore demanded that he be put to death. 

These two stories are very different from each other, but as books that invite readers to examine American values, institutions, laws and their enforcement, legal systems, and sources of violence along with the realities of extremism and living on the fringes of American society, I think they make a compelling pairing. 

2. It's now been twelve weeks since I received a new kidney. Things have gone very well. I didn't suffer harsh symptoms when I contracted Covid about a month ago. I can feel my lower abdomen is stronger, making me think the surgical site is healing well. My chief concern right now is my level of immunity against disease and infection. My last ImmuKnow test recently indicated that I am very immunosuppressed. I hope that in the next few weeks this improves. I should learn a bit more this coming week. I'll have bloodwork on Thursday morning. Afterward, I'll meet with one of the transplant nephrologists and with Nurse Jenn. I understand that the vitals I measure twice a day at home are stable. I understand that my blood work results have been stable, with the exception of my Tacrolimus levels, but we've addressed that through a reduction of dosage. I'll talk with the team about how cautious I've been, especially since the ImmuKnow test result came in low and whether over the last two weeks my immune system might have improved. 

3. Debbie had a great time yakkin' with Cas and others at The Lounge for a couple of hours this afternoon and I enjoyed her report when she got back home. She also brought home a bag of food from Wah Hing and it was fun to dive into that for dinner. 

Three Beautiful Things 08-02-2024: Tragedy and Fallibility, Christy Treats Us to a Rack of Ribs, Cribbage

1.  The tragedies of William Shakespeare and of the Ancient Greeks have been foremost on my mind, along with the unfolding of the standoff at Ruby Ridge. In dramatic tragedy, the audience experiences a growing sense of foreboding that, inevitably, what is transpiring on stage will end in death. It's why tragedy is said to rouse in audiences feelings of fear and trembling. Death's inevitability doesn't occur because the writers are faithful to a formula dictating what "should" happen in a tragedy. Inevitable death often grows out of actions taken as a result of terrible misperceptions, often out of heightened passion -- say, anger or revenge.

All of these factors contributed to the deaths on Ruby Ridge. The Weavers and the agents of U.S. Government tragically exaggerated the dangers they posed to each other. Armed and acting on these exaggerated perceptions, it was inevitable, given the Weavers' suspiciousness and dedication to armed self-protection and given the rules of engagement the agents of the US government acted upon as they confronted what turned out to be a dark fantasy regarding the threat Randy Weaver posed, that each side would fire shots and people would be killed. 

Running throughout the tragedies of William Shakespeare and the Ancient Greeks is the idea that nothing protects human beings from their own fallibility: not badges, not fervent commitment to religious doctrine or political ideology, not the holding of an office of power, not passionate love for another, not intelligence, not anything. 

Often our fallibility is pretty harmless. We can't find our keys. We get to the grocery store and discover we left our shopping list at home. We misinterpret a spouse's words or gesture. 

But, in other situations, human fallibility can be deadly, tragic. 

That's how I see the unfolding of the standoff at Ruby Ridge. 

My question now, as I continue reading Jess Walter's book, is how are fallible people held to account for deeds they committed, acting on what they believed to be true, when, in fact, they were acting, in part, on make believe, largely inspired by pride, fear, vengefulness, saving face, and stubbornness? 

2. I had to take a few breaks today from reading about Ruby Ridge! 

Christy provided one such break, a generous and delicious one. 

She ordered a rack of ribs from Garrenteed BBQ along with mac and cheese and brought this bag of superb food over to our house. 

The three of us dug in. 

We were wowed by our meal! The meat was moist and flavorful. The sauces were delicious. And, as is always true, the mac and cheese was terrific. 

We finished our meal and moved into the cool of our air conditioned living room and had fun yakkin' until Christy excused herself to head home and get some ambitious watering done in her yards and gardens. 

3. I've also taken breaks to play cribbage online. I compete with a robot. It's relaxing. It exposes my fallibility. I win some and lose all the rest!