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.
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