Three Beautiful Things 12-06-2025: Color Me Astonished, Being JJ Cale, Restocked

 1. The phrase "color me" seemed more common when I was much younger than it is now. 

The phrase is a way of expressing some degree of amazement and to intensify the expression of a person's response to something. For example, in the 1971 Major League Baseball game in Detroit, Reggie Jackson smashed a towering home run off of Dock Ellis that struck the transformer on the roof of Tiger Stadium. 

I might have said at the time: "Wow! Color me astounded!"

I thought of that "color me" phrase this evening. I've been listening almost exclusively to classical music over the last few months and I decided this evening to play a Spotify playlist called "This is Mendelssohn". Every time a composition of his has popped up on Symphony Hall or on WUOL, it's grabbed my attention and so I thought I'd give his music some focus. 

I am especially partial to his concert overture written for Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. 

Hearing it again, seeing scenes from the play come alive in my imagination, and thinking about other Mendelssohn pieces I love, like his Violin Concerto in E Minor, somehow brought to mind that I'd heard one of the radio hosts talk about Mendelssohn having died at a relatively young age. 

So I looked it up and, yes, Felix Mendelssohn died at age 38. 

Then I had a vague memory that he was a prodigy, composing great pieces when very young. 

So, I wondered at what age he composed the mighty overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream. 

He was 17.  (Well, I could strip zinc at 17.)

Sir George Grove, the 19th century music critic and founder of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians called Mendelssohn's achievement "the greatest marvel of early maturity that the world has ever seen in music." 

This is straight talk: Color me astonished. 

2. I would have thought by the time I was nearly seventy-two years old, I would have outgrown having fantasies of being certain music performers. I mean it seems like a perfectly normal thing, as a teenager, to imagine being David Clayton-Thomas singing "You've Made Me So Very Happy" or to imagine myself being a woman in the early 1980s and seeing myself as Joan Armatrading singing, "Drop the Pilot". 

But, no, those fantasies have not faded with age. 

This evening, I took a break from Felix Mendelssohn and indulged on of my favorite fantasies in which I'm JJ Cale, laid back, unhurried, unimpressed with myself, and generously stepping aide to let other players in the band solo while we play, "Call Me the Breeze." 

3. Even though I am leading a fairly simple life here in Kellogg, I guess I'm always looking for ways to make things even simpler. 

Today, I needed another mixed pack of different pate cat foods for Copper and my salad/stir fry supply of vegetables needed replenishing, and I was nearly out of canned beans and other groceries, so I put in an order at Wal Mart and then all I had to do was drive to Smelterville and a polite and eager to do his job well guy loaded my groceries in the trunk and I returned home with almost everything I needed. 

Three Beautiful Things 12-05-2025: Figuring Out the Wollaston Name, Registration Arrives, The Lounge and Tomato Eggplant Pasta Sauce

1. I knew a few things about Johnny (or John) Wollaston before I found out back in early October that he'd died. I knew he played basketball at Kellogg High (he graduated in 1962) and at North Idaho Junior College. I knew, because a newspaper story about it was displayed at the restaurant, that he had eaten at Wah Hing for hundreds of days in a row. I knew he hung out a lot at the Yoke's deli. I knew he tried to sell things he accumulated over the years out of a store front on McKinley Avenue. I knew that every basketball game I attended at the high school, John was there. 

When I first started going to the Inland Lounge when I'd come to Kellogg from Maryland to help out with Mom, Cas, for reasons I don't remember, told me about John and when he said his last name it rang bells in my head, but I couldn't figure out why. 

Well today, Christy messaged me wondering if I'd heard Johnny died. She'd just learned about his death yesterday. I'd also sent a picture out to some fellow Wildcats of the junior varsity team John was on in high school and that had Stu and me messaging back and forth about him. 

No one ever wrote a full obit about John, but today I found the obit for his brother, Robert, who died in Texas about fourteen years ago. 

In it, I learned at least one reason why the name Wollaston rang a bell when Cas mentioned him to me around ten years ago. 

Dad tended bar at the Sunshine Inn on Friday and Saturday nights. 

His bartending partner was Paul Riep. 

Paul was married to Marcella and BINGO Marcella's first husband was John and Robert Wollaston's father, also named John. 

Dad's bartending partner and good friend, Paul, was Johnny Wollaston's step-father and I must have heard the family name mentioned around the house in my youth. 

I'm not convinced that's it. 

Slowly, surely, I plan to poke around, ask around, and see if there are other reasons why the Wollaston name sounded so familiar to me when I heard it about ten years ago at The Lounge. 

2. No need for details and I'm not sure I could recite them anyway, but the process of Debbie getting Idaho plates and registration for the Corolla she bought, what?, five months ago in New Jersey has been a fiasco. But, something in this ongoing logjam broke loose and today the Idaho registration for her car came in the mail. I called Debbie with the good news and sent the registration and license plate stickers to her in New York this afternoon. 

Now I'm waiting for her plates to arrive in the mail in Kellogg so I can send them on to her. 

3. Ed and I met up at The Lounge today and I enjoyed a couple refreshing non-alcohol Bud Zeros and had a lot of fun talking with Doug Y. and Ed. 

Ed and I were there for about an hour. 

When I arrived back home I made a tomato and eggplant pasta sauce and enjoyed it very much poured over a bowl and a half of penne pasta. 

I have leftovers and so another bowl or so of this delicious dish will be in my near future.

Three Beautiful Things 12-04-2025: Shoveling Just in Case, Gibbs and Copper and My Lap, Pizza Soon

1. The wet snow on Christy's and our sidewalks didn't concern me. It was shallow and easy to walk on. But I shoveled anyway late this afternoon out of concern that if that shallow wet snow and slush froze, it could be a bit dangerous. It didn't take, but I got my heart pumping and I got a little winded and my mind felt freer for having cleared our walks.

2. Gibbs and I have spent many weeks together in 2025 without Debbie. Without a doubt, Debbie is Gibbs' primary person. Today, though, I swear, Gibbs entered the Guiness Book of World Records for the amount of time he spent on my lap, sometimes awake, sometimes sleeping. Gibbs craves human contact and for quite a while he had held out, but Debbie hasn't returned home and Gibbs' response has been to give being on a living room chair along side me a try and now he's dialed things up to not just being beside me, but lying across my legs and not for just ten or fifteen minutes but for over an hour at a time. 

Ever since Copper moved into our house in February 2021, I've hoped he would become a lap or a chest cat, but it's not his way. He likes me to pet him or rest my hand on his back or stomach. He also likes to press himself against my lower legs if I'm on my back in bed. 

But that's it. 

No resting on my lap. No resting on my chest. 

Luna, however, was a total velcro cat. 

3. The last time I remember Beating pizza was at The Lounge when I joined other guys to watch the Major League Baseball All-Star game in July. 

Well, a pizza place in Pinehurst has just opened (or reopened under new ownership, I think) and I'm the host for Sunday's family dinner. I checked with Christy and Carol to see if going out for pizza would work for them and they replied in the affirmative. 

So Sunday around 1 o'clock, we'll blast out to Prospector's Pizzeria and give their pizza a try. 

I was way more relieved that we agreed to do this than I should have been. 

I am happy there's pizza in my future and I was really stuck regarding what to have for dinner if we had it at our house with me as host. 

Three Beautiful Things 12-03-2025: This Month's Labs Look Good, Winning Wednesday with Ed, Catching Up on Sleep

 1. I woke up this morning to discover, happily, that we were between storms in North Idaho. I piled into the Camry and felt gratitude as I hurtled on I-90 to Kingston to pick up Ed and then on to Coeur d'Alene that the roads were wet, but clear of snow and ice. 

First stop: Kootenai Health Laboratory Services. Once again, KHS grad and Moon Gulch resident Jayden took charge of drawing my blood and when I asked her, she told me how nerve wracking it had been on Tuesday to drive over the 4th of July Pass with fist-sized snowflakes falling in the dark. Today, we agreed, was much easier. 

So far, the only problem I see in my blood work is a low level of magnesium in my blood. My guess is that I'll get instructions this week to bump my dosage of magnesium supplements up a pill or two. 

Otherwise, I thought my blood work looked stable and encouraging. 

More results still to come. 🤞🤞🤞

2. Ed joined me today, not so much so he could wait for me to have my blood drawn, but because it was, as always, in the middle of the week, Winning Wednesday at the CdA Casino. 

We played with mixed luck until lunch time and I redeemed my birthday gift from the casino along with my monthly food voucher. That covered most of our lunch and I covered the rest. 

We enjoyed our food a lot. I ate five Buffalo wings with an order of fries and Ed raved about how good the beef stew, garden salad, and garlic bread tasted. 

That was it. 

We blasted back to the Silver Valley on roads that remained clear and safe in afternoon daylight. 

3. I hardly slept at all Tuesday night and into the morning and, thank goodness, I didn't have anything pressing to do when I returned home. 

So I sat in a living room chair with Gibbs on my lap and slept. 

I recovered enough to go to Yoke's for some cat food and few essentials and returned home. 

By 9:30 it was time once again for the sandman. 

Copper and I had a restful and peaceful night. 

Three Beautiful Things 12-02-2025: Shoveling Snow, Talking with Debbie, Tomaso Albinoni Takes Me Back to Mid-1990s Eugene

 1. Boots on the ground! Well New Balance shoes on the snow! Enough snow fell overnight that I sprang into action and cleared the sidewalks at our house and at Christy's. 

2. I had a very good talk with Debbie this afternoon, and a little bit with Eloise. It was most enjoyable hearing how well the Thanksgiving dinner went and the air frying the dry brined turkey resulted in a masterpiece and a dinner that featured superb food. I learned that everyone who came in from out of town returned safely. Debbie is helping Jack with his French studies. John knocked out some house projects and he put new strings on Olivia's guitar. 

3. I have Classical Music streaming many hours during the day. My music listening life is focused on Classical Music in a way it hasn't been since back in the mid-1990s. I had season tickets to hear the Mozart Players. I was a member of the Columbia House Classical Music Club and purchased many CDs through them and at Bradford's Stereo in downtown Eugene. That shop had a small, high quality selection of classical CDs. 

It's thrilling for me now, in 2025, thirty years later, when one of the programs I'm listening to on Symphony Hall or on KUOL plays one of my favorite compositions from my 1990s classical music heyday. 

This evening, out of the blue (for me at least) Peter Van de Graaf played Adagio in G minor popularly attributed to Tomaso Albinoni. 

I'm not really sure what hearing this masterpiece took me back to. When I grew flowers? Swimming at the YMCA? Listening to KWAX in the car? That CD I had that was a collection of movements all in Adagio? Movies at the Bijou? Dad dying in 1996? 

I can't pinpoint anything exactly, only the jolt I felt as this Adagio reached its thrilling climax, a climax I hadn't heard, it seemed, in ages, but has retained its power to stop everything around me when I hear it. 

Three Beautiful Things 12-01-2025: Michael Made Me Happy, Boots on the Ground, Popcorn and *Father Knows Best*

1. Hearing from Michael today uplifted me. Margaret had put him in touch with some of the things I've written here on this blog and Michael wrote me some of this thinking about mortality and brokenness and the Divine, all of which I deeply appreciated, all of which brought back to mind conversations he and I used to have in one another's offices over the years we were both teaching English at LCC. 

I need a day or two to organize what will be a most positive response to what he wrote me. I look forward to writing back. 

2. Life isn't all about thinking about loss and mortality and the Divine. 

There are property taxes to pay. 

There are winter tires to be put on the Camry. 

There are bills to tend to. 

My head might be in the sky, but my boots are on the ground. 

I take care of stuff that keeps our household running. 

I don't just ruminate.

3. And I like popcorn, popped with oil, in a pot, over a burner. 

I ate a bowl at dinner time tonight and kept it simple, adding only salt and Parmesan cheese. 

Back in grad school, I often worked on my studies at the library until nearly eleven o'clock.

I didn't have a car then and I traveled between my downtown apartment and the Univ of Oregon on my bicycle. 

I had a television with basic cable. A local Eugene cable station (KOZY) ran reruns of Father Knows Best late at night. 

So, I'd come home, pop myself a bowl of popcorn and take a break from Stuart period poetry or the essayists of the English Renaissance and put the popcorn bowl in my lap, pop open a Coke, and watch the Andersons, Jim and Margaret, and their children Princess, Bud, and Kitten negotiate the thorny challenges they faced on 607 Maple Avenue, and then always went to bed secure in the satisfaction that they got everything figured out. 

Three Beautiful Things 11-30-2025: Remembering Everett, Farewell to *Deadish*, All Good Things Must End Some Day

1. Today, Sunday, is the five year anniversary of the death of Christy's husband, Everett. When Christy reminded Carol and me that Everett had passed away shortly after midnight on November 30, 2020, I went to my blog, trusting that I had posted some details about Everett's last full day of life and what transpired that early morning of November 30th and later on that day. 

My blog post reminded me that on Sunday, November 29th, Everett was quietly surrendering his life to having it end. I wonder if Christy, Carol, Paul, and I were all thinking, as we witnessed his fragility, about how strong physically, mentally, and spiritually Everett had been for so many of his ninety years. 

Today, I once again marveled at Everett's durability when I remembered back to July of 2015 when Carol, Paul, Molly, and I helped on day one of Everett and Christy's move from near Kettle Falls to Kellogg. 

It was blisteringly hot out, for sure in the high 90s and maybe even the 100s. 

Everett was eighty-five -- that's 85 years old -- and under this thick wool blanket of suffocating heat, he worked steadily, most productively, and uncomplainingly with the rest of us to get the U-Haul truck loaded. 

Then he drove the truck to Kellogg. 

Paul, Everett, Christy, and I returned to Kettle Falls the next day for the last load of the move and, once again, Everett was mighty. indomitable. 

But, on November 29th, five and a half years later, all of that physical strength was gone, but not Everett's spiritual strength as he quietly and peacefully gave himself over to leaving this life and moving on to the glory he so strongly believed was in the next.

2. As I mentioned in my Saturday, November 29th post, Jeff Harrison sent me an email on Saturday urging me to listen to his Deadish show that aired on Thanksgiving night. Normally, Jeff doesn't ask me to be sure to listen to any one of his programs, so I wondered what music he played on this show that he thought I might be especially interested in. 

So I went to the KEPW archives, found the November 27th show, clicked the play button, and listened as Jeff opened his show by announcing this would be his last Deadish program. He simply said that after six and a half years, he decided the show had run its course. 

Jeff retired this show without fanfare. 

He had recorded this show for Nov. 20th, but because the station had a power outage on the 20th, it played on the 27th, on Thanksgiving Day. 

Jeff's music selections came from different November 20th shows over the years, beginning with Quicksilver Messenger Service and Hot Tuna and then moving to the Grateful Dead with special emphasis on the Dead's 11-20-1973 show in Denver. 

I haven't been to Eugene very often since Jeff started broadcasting Deadish six and a half years ago.

But on, what? two? three? more? occasions, Jeff and I listened to his show, which he'd recorded the previous Sunday, on Thursday evenings at his house. 

Those evenings, relaxing at Jeff's, listening to his impeccable selections, talking about the Grateful Dead, Zero, Billy Strings, and many other musicians in the Deadish universe made me uniquely happy, brought me into an experience I do not have with anyone else. 

On those evenings, I was an absorber, not a contributor. 

Jeff's encyclopedic knowledge of the Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Zero, and numerous other bands and musicians over the last 60 years who fit Jeff's understanding of Deadish is inspiring, fascinating, and, above all, fun. 

Going back to yesterday's post, one aspect of what I enjoyed so much about having coffee over the last few decades with Jeff, Margaret, and Michael is that they all can speak so freely and easily about the great stores of knowledge they have about teaching, movies, critical theory, jazz, books, other genres of music, gardening, essays, current events, history, and so much more. 

I'm wondering if on Saturday Michael, Margaret, and Jeff talked at all about Jeff's decision to end Deadish. 

I sure have been. 

Inside myself. 

3. I was going to write remembrances of unforgettable experiences I've had at Sam Bond's Garage, one of my very favorite bars and music venues in Eugene. 

Two of my Facebook friends have   posted thoughtful and sad pieces as they report Sam Bond's Garage has closed (although it looks like they'll have one more Bingo night on Dec 1). 

I'm going to publish my stuff about Sam Bond's Garage here at a later time. I want to think more, remember more, find some old pictures, and I want to see what gets posted on Sam Bond's website and Facebook account about the closing. 

So far those two sites make it seem like it's still in business, but my guess is that whoever minds these accounts simply hasn't updated them yet. 

I know a huge part of growing old is saying goodbye to places and institutions that have their own kind of mortality. 

I mean Deadish wasn't going to last forever. 

I was sad to say goodbye to one of my spiritual centers in Eugene, Sixteen Tons on 13th and High. But it wasn't immortal. 

The mighty Rogue Ales is gone. Bankrupt. Whatever others think of Rogue, for me it brewed one of the beers that I have the most happy memories of: Shakespeare Stout. On the other end of the beer spectrum, I also very much enjoyed their Honey Kolsch and I enjoyed Rogue's short-lived pub in downtown Eugene. But Rogue was not too big to fail. 

Debbie and I loved the Old Line Bistro in Beltsville, MD. It's gone. 

So is another favorite taproom of ours in Colesville, MD: Quench. 

The beat goes on. 

After all, "They say that all good things must end some day."

Chad and Jeremy were right, but I don't always like it. 

Even as I accept it.