Three Beautiful Things 01-18-2025: Projects, Invigorating Family Dinner, Day 3 of Joy

1. Today Patrick and Debbie worked hard all day on projects. Debbie's keyboard is set up so that she can do more sophisticated recording, instrumentation, collaboration, and other things. They are working on transforming the bedroom in the basement into a guest room. They also rearranged the furniture in the living room according to a plan Patrick devised and one that Debbie is very happy with. 

2. Carol and Paul hosted family dinner tonight. Christy isn't feeling well and stayed home. So seated around the table were Carol, Paul, Molly, Patrick, Debbie, and me.

Carol made a flavorful and mild pumpkin curry in her crock pot and she put together a very delicious cabbage salad. I sautéed garlic and red onion in sesame oil in a pot and then added water, sesame oil, and brown rice. I also roasted raw almonds in our cast iron skillet. I put the rice in a baking dish, covered the rice with the almonds, and this simple rice dish accompanied the pumpkin curry. 

We had superb and sustained discussion of what it means to be human, what it means to be an animal, what it means when we regard things as sacred, how the early Christian church had to distinguish itself from Greek philosophy, especially Platonism and Gnosticism, the concept of soul, and the relationship between written texts, of any kind, and us as readers. Books appeared. Paul and Carol read passages from Wendell Berry and Thomas Moore. By the time we began to disperse, the word of the night was "invite" (or "invitation"). 

In the best sense of the word, this was an intense discussion and we were all fired up and stimulated as we wound down the evening and family dinner came to an end. 

3. I posted my Day 3 image of something that brings joy to my life. I took this picture in Eugene in March 29, 2014. It's part of my Holding Hands collection, which also includes street photographs of people with their arms around one another. I feel joy for having captured this particular moment and for the way these two are helping each other out as they cross a vacant street (8th, maybe?) on a showery blustery day -- a day, by the way, in which I snapped a few other pictures focused on umbrellas.