Three Beautiful Things 01-02-2025: Family Reunion, I Delighted Leah Sottile!, Back to Timothy McVeigh

1. Debbie sent Christy, Carol, and me several pictures today, helping us see what a joyous reunion Debbie, Adrienne, Patrick, and Molly have experienced and how happy our grandchildren seem to be to see one another and be in the company of the family as a whole. 

I haven't experienced FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). 

I've experienced KOMO (Knowledge of Missing Out)! 

That hasn't been a bad thing -- not when I see what a happy occasion this reunion has been. 

I'll add that some time ago, Patrick and Jack began working together through electronic communications to help Jack build a computer. 

Now, with Patrick and Jack being in one another's company, they've finished this project and Debbie sent us pictures of them working together and connecting the computer to Adrienne's internet connection. 

I look forward to Debbie's return to Kellogg, but, at the same time, I wish her time with the family all being together could last longer and that it were simpler to make happen more often. 

2. As I've written several times on this blog, Portland free lance journalist Leah Sottile, back in July, posted on her Substack a list of books she admires in response to the New York Times' list of the top 100 books of the 21st century. Out of my admiration for Leah Sottile's podcasts and writing, I decided to read every one of the fourteen books she listed. I am almost finished with book number twelve, leaving me with two to go.

Today, I remembered that several days ago I'd received a notification email that Leah Sottile had posted a new article on her Substack. I subscribe to her Substack account and I checked out her latest piece entitled, "Some Very Good Writing". 

In it, she reminded readers of her July book list and she put a footnote at the end of this reminder paragraph. 

I read the footnote. 

It referred to me! 

Leah Sottile wrote: "It couldn't delight me more that one subscriber, Bill, has turned the book list into his personal reading list. Folks, be like Bill. Read more books."

I had commented a few months ago on one of Leah Sottile's Substack articles that I decided to read all of the books on her list. That's how she found out I undertook this project. 

I am happy to have delighted Leah Sottile. 

As I told her, reading her list of books has been unnerving, challenging, stimulating, and chilling. 

Now I look forward to reading the articles she listed in her latest article, "Some Very Good Writing". 

I also look forward to her next book coming out: it's an investigation of the New Age movement entitled Blazing Eye Sees All: Love Has Won, False Prophets, and the Fever Dream of the American New Age. 

3. I drove to Gladstone and Eugene and back again in the first part of December. Upon arriving home, I seem to have become caught up in other things and then I started watching Poker Face and I fell out of my reading routine. 

Today I returned. 

I picked up where I left off about a month ago in the book, American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh & the Oklahoma City Bombing.

Today's reading chilled me, not only because it detailed the logistics and the unimaginable carnage of the bombing itself, but it detailed the cold rationality Timothy McVeigh drew upon to carry out his mission.

It haunts me to read stories of people who possess the gift of superior intelligence and employ their intelligence in the pursuit of violence and destruction, fueled by obsession and a narrow and intense commitment to a particular ideology.

The killings at Ruby Ridge and at Waco and McVeigh's deep disillusionment with the U. S. military and his experience as a soldier in the Gulf War combined to fuel Timothy McVeigh's anti-government obsessions.

He wanted to pay the federal government back for the deaths and injuries its agencies had brought about and he had come to believe that doing so, by engineering a huge, unforgettable act of destruction, would trigger a widespread anti-government revolution. Timothy McVeigh either hoped or believed that once people understood why he blew up the Murrah Federal Building, that it would be the start of a movement to end, by whatever means, government tyranny and build up liberty.

The bombing did not have this widespread effect (although it did inspire a fraction of our population). 

The book then chronicles McVeigh's arrests, his indictment, and I put the book down later tonight,  still deep in Timothy McVeigh's trial. 

Three Beautiful Things 01-01-2025: Surprise! Surprise! Surprise! And EARLY!, Zucchini Saute and Couscous, *Poker Face* Features Actors "Of a Certain Age"

1. Christy's birthday is January 9th. 

Commonly, our nieces, Zoe and Cosette, come to Kellogg for the holidays, but are long gone by the time Christy's birthday rolls around. 

We already had a New Year's Day Almost The Whole Family is in Town prime rib family dinner planned tonight. 

Two or three days ago, Carol sent me a text announcing that since our nieces (her daughters) were still in town, we would have an EARLY surprise birthday party for Christy. 

It worked! 

Christy arrived for family dinner, kind of wondering why everyone else was already there, but also preoccupied with her potato dish needing more time in the oven and with handing out prizes/awards for the gingerbread house contest. 

So when she saw that the dining area was festooned with streamers and balloons and a Happy Birthday sign hung on the wall and when she heard us all cry out, "Surprise!" as she made her way from the living room toward the kitchen, we caught her way off guard! 

We had a superb Family New Year's Day Surprise Birthday dinner: a shrimp cocktail appetizer, and then prime rib, Yorkshire pudding, roasted potatoes, green salad, fruit salad, a sautéed zucchini dish, and happy spirits all around the table.

Toward the end of dinner, Carol turned on the television and played a video Debbie made in New York  with the Diaz family, Langford family, and Patrick and Meagan singing "Happy Birthday" to Christy. 

What an evening! 

Gingerbread house awards. Carol created a birthday Mad Lib. We all contributed words to it and giggled at the result. Carol also created a game called "Is Christy Younger or Older Than . . . ?" and gave us twenty-five people, events, and other things and we all wrote down our guesses -- Is Christy younger or older than Ron Howard? Than G. I. Joe? Than the Slinky? And so on. I often don't enjoy games, but I enjoy trivia-ish games and this one was terrific. (I also enjoy Sorry!)

2. Carol assigned me to cook a vegetable side dish for tonight's dinner. 

I got out my new electric fry pan, heated up some olive oil, and then sliced up a red onion (and my left pointing finger), cooked the onion for a while, and then added and sautéed slices of zucchini and yellow squash with crushed garlic, tarragon, Trader Joe's 21 Seasoning Salute, Everything but the Bagel Seasoning, also from Trader Joe's, and the fresh juice of a half a lemon. 

When this had all cooked up, I thought the vegetables alone needed stretching, so I did the easiest possible thing: I cooked up a pot of couscous. 

So, my sautéed zucchini dish became sautéed zucchini on a bed of couscous dish. 

It worked! 

3. Back to back episodes of Poker Face (Season 1, Episodes 5-6) feature women actors, S. Epatha Merkerson, Judith Light, and Ellen Barkin) in their very late sixties and early seventies.

I love how the creators of Poker Face cast them. 

In episode 6, Ellen Barkin's character, Kathleen Townsend, an actor who is all but washed up, tells her former television acting partner, Michael Graves (played by Tim Meadows) that older women in movies and television go from being Mom to senator to dementia patient.

That line of Kathleen Townsend's was a cagey way for us, as audience, to be ironically informed that women, as Townsend puts it, "of a certain age" would not be confined to being Moms, senators, or dementia patients in Poker Face. 

They play profane, embittered, scheming, dangerous criminals, driven by long held grievances, a hunger for revenge, and, in Kathleen Townsend's case, greed. 

From my point of view, there was nothing stereotypical about them and these characters gave Merkerson, Light, and Barkin the opportunity to exercise the breadth and depth of their enormous acting abilities and strike real fear in the characters around them in these episodes and in me as a viewer. 

My enjoyment of watching older actors in movies or on television began long before I became old myself.

One (of many) examples stands out. 

In 1981 in Portland, I believe at the Bagdad Cinema and then again the next year in Eugene at Cinema 7, I saw Lee Grant's stunning work as the director of the Tillie Olsen story made into the movie Tell Me A Riddle, featuring Melvyn Douglas and Lila Kedrova as an elderly husband and wife who have become distant from one another, but, in the course of the movie, close the gap between them.

I've got to watch it again. I know I've seen Tell Me a Riddle again since 1982. I also know it's been quite a while. 

Three Beautiful Things 12-31-2024: Slow Spiffing Up, Christy's Delicious Meatloaf, S. Ephatha Merkerson and Judith Light Frighten Me and I Calm Gibbs Down

 1. I'm slow.

Today I worked to get the kitchen spiffed up by clearing counters and much of the kitchen table, taking care of dishes, sweeping, accounting for my many bottles of pills that I've taken in the past and am not taking now, and so on.

I realized that being slow doing these sorts of things also means that it helps me get them done by staying home. 

I'm lousy at rushing. 

So, today, knowing that I wouldn't be leaving the house, I slowly and at a relaxed pace, with no rushing, finished a lot of tasks around the house and enjoyed doing them. 

Slowly. 

2. I was happy, however, to be interrupted by visits from both Carol and Christy.

Carol dealt with Copper's litter box -- this is so huge since I'm forbidden from doing it. 

Christy dropped off an indescribably delicious meatloaf she just finished cooking.

She made two loaves and gave one of them to me. 

She found a recipe for a meatloaf without any tomato product in it and it was so delicious that it was all I could do not to scarf the entire thing in one sitting. 

I restrained myself and look forward to continuing to enjoy this meatloaf over the next couple of days. 

3. After dinner and a little more clean up, I thought I'd watch more episodes of Poker Face. 

But, the episode I watched this evening was so intense, I just needed to sit/lie with it for the rest of the evening.

It's crucial to the ongoing storyline of Poker Face to know that, at least so far, every new episode begins with Charlie Cale in a different location working a new job. 

In this episode, she's employed somewhere as a janitor in a retirement home. 

In this blog, I wrote, after seeing the movie Conclave, how much I enjoy seeing older actors work.

This episode featured two legendary longtime veterans of stage, screen, and television: S. Ephatha Merkerson and Judith Light -- and, come to think of it, a third, K Callan. 

I don't want to give any plot details away about this episode.

I'll just say that it made me laugh, scared me, so much I was shaking, thanks in large part to the brilliant acting of Merkerson and Light. And Callan.  

In addition, my growing affection for Natasha Lyonne's work as Charlie Cale increased, as did my affection for Charlie Cale herself. 

I'm sure that after a good night's sleep, helped along by my having watched about thirty minutes or so of The Big Lebowski before I dozed off, I'll be ready for episode 6 of Poker Face on New Year's Day! 

(It also helped me settle down, before watching the Dude, to sit up with Gibbs for over an hour to help calm his excitement. In front of our house, on the south side of Big Cameron Avenue, two law enforcement officers with the blue and red lights of their two cars flashing the whole time, processed an arrest [I assume] and one of the officers stayed with the pickup of the perpetrator, whom I never saw, until a tow truck arrived to take it away. I put Gibbs on his leash and sat up with him so he'd stop manic barking. Once the officers and the tow truck left, Gibbs was fine and quiet for the rest of the night. Copper was unmoved by all of this.)