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!