Three Beautiful Things 12-27-2025: Staying Home, Icelandic Breakfast (Sort Of), Catching Up with Debbie

 1. Having a birthday two days after Christmas -- and for our family my birthday is also one day after Christmas -- leaves me in need of rest and time to myself. If there were a movie theater in the Silver Valley, I would have gone to a movie today. I've done some great movie viewing in the past on December 27th. About six years ago, December 27th was a workable day for a bunch of us guys who grew up in Kellogg to get together in Spokane for lunch and what really made that work for me was that I went to Spokane the day before, enjoy oysters, bourbon, and trivia with Kathy and Mary, and stayed in an airbnb. I was rested and refreshed when I saw all the guys. 

But, rather than list more fun days I had out and about on birthdays past, I'll just say that today I stayed home and had a most enjoyable day of rest and relaxation, of cinnamon tea,a repeat of the whole Messiah, and a dinner out of the wok. I had leftover rice, pork dumplings, and Caesar salad bar chicken and I combined with onion, mushrooms, and yellow squash to make a terrific bowl of food topped with soy sauce and Green Dragon Hot Sauce. 

2. I didn't eat breakfast until around noon. I fried some bacon and then I heated up a container of leftover Icelandic caramelized red potatoes, added mushroom slices, and created a scramble with two eggs. 

3. Debbie and I had some catching up to do and talked for at least an hour late this afternoon. I told her all about our great Christmas Day get together at Carol and Paul's and our perfect light dinner later at Christy's. I also reported on yesterday's Icelandic Christmas dinner and how good the food was and how fun it was for us all to be together.  

Debbie told me about movies she's seen and about what it's like worshipping at Pohick Church, an Episcopal Church established in Loring, VA in 1732. It was George Washington's home church and, among other interesting things, the church has box pews, enclosed areas with benches on three sides of the box. Debbie told me she'd send me better pictures than she has before of the box pews and maybe of the sanctuary itself. 

Alas, Debbie's Idaho license plate didn't arrive today as estimated and, as proof that the delivery gods do not favor either one of us, the Amazon box she had sent to me was also delayed and didn't come. 

Three Beautiful Things 12-26-2025: Morning at Home, I Failed Once and Then Succeeded, Icelandic Christmas Dinner

1. Even though our Christmas Day activities were low key, I needed to take a break from Christmas related activities and so I stayed home this morning rather than join the rest of the family at Paul and Carol's to welcome Cosette, Taylor, Bucky, and Saphire when they arrived and I missed the breakfast and gift exchange that followed. 

It turned out that the rest was good for me and the time alone gave me the opportunity I needed to get caught up on my writing, complete my usual morning routine, and, by early afternoon, head down to the veterinarian's office to pick up pills for Copper. 

2. Our family focuses on the food and traditions of a different country every year at Christmas time.

This year, we focused on Iceland and Carol created a menu of a cocktail, appetizers, starters, a dinner, and dessert with after dinner drinks. 

Carol assigned me to make caramelized potatoes which looked simple on paper, but I had a rough time making this dish for a while, but recovered and delivered. 

I had never caramelized sugar before and my first go around failed because I had the heat in the electric frying pan on too high. I ended up with chunks of hard candy. 

I simultaneously created a double boiler and tried to melt down the hard caramel rocks and I also started the process over again. 

This time I melted the sugar at a lower temperature, added the butter and kept the temperature low, and, as a result, I came much closer to making what the recipe called for. 

I boiled the red potato pieces about an hour or so earlier, so they were dry and ready to be caramelized. 

I put the potato pieces in the pan with the melted sugar and butter mixture and pretty much succeeded in covering all the pieces with sweetness. 

I checked my rock hard candy melting project and some liquid caramel was available and I poured it over the potatoes, too, and tossed the rest of the rock hard candy nuggets into the trash. 

I was done with it! 

3. I'm not going to list every Icelandic offering that family members set out tonight, but I'll give you a pretty good sense of what we enjoyed. 

We started with appetizers that included rye bread that Cosette baked, lox, a variety of cheeses, skyr, Iceland crackers with a long name, and other tasty foods. 

The center of our dinner was a lamb shoulder roast with rosemary and garlic paste and a red wine sauce. The dinner also featured Carol's Icelandic soup with a long name and Zoe's Icelandic bread with a long name, Christy's almond rice pudding, the potatoes I brought. 

We retired to the living room for a dessert tray of sweets Sue Dahlberg purchased in Iceland on one of her visits and liquid refreshments. 

Three Beautiful Things 12-25-2025: Gift Exchange, Cooking Chicken, Salad Bar at Christy's

 1. Carol and Paul hosted a morning gift exchange at their house, accompanied by a simple breakfast featuring a fruit salad Christy brought and everything bagels that I brought along with cream cheese. Other Christmas sweets, cookies, chocolates, and other treats rounded out the board. 

Christy, Zoe, Paul, Carol, and I took our food -- and I took a cup of coffee -- into the living room and we all had the pleasure of seeing what each of us gave to the others and had the pleasure of enjoying what we received. My gifts to family members were electronic, so they would be arriving in the afternoon in their email inboxes. 

2. Back home after our morning get together, I got out the electric frying pan and cooked up two thin chicken breasts and four thighs. After they'd cooled down, I cut the meat into cube-ish pieces to take to Christy's for our get together at 5:00. 

3. Our five o'clock gathering featured a Caesar salad bar with lettuce, salmon, chicken, anchovies, green olives, Parmesan cheese, dressing, and other options to add to our salads. Zoe made a delicious loaf of focaccia bread. Carol had poured out a bowl of nuts and bolts as an appetizer and Christy set out Christmas cookies for our dessert, including oatmeal cookies, a kind of cookie I love. 

I was still pretty pumped nearly twenty-four hours later from having listened to the Lessons and Carols and the Messiah. I might have gotten a little carried away talking about them and might have carried on a bit too much about the world of Protestant churches, wondering why there are so many non-denominational churches and what makes them distinct from one another. 

But, i guess this part of our Christmas conversation didn't occupy the entire night and we had fun talking about other things, too. 

Three Beautiful Things 12-24-2025: Christmas at 72 Years Old, Lessons and Carols at Home, *Messiah* at Home

 1. On Saturday, I turn 72 years old. 

Today, on Christmas Eve, I spent time contemplating what Christmas means to me and what I experience at this time in my life during the Christmas season. It feels to me like both well-meaning people and commercial entities urge me to feel the excitement and wonder I felt as a child at Christmas. I hear people talk about feeling the Christmas spirit, and I've lost track of just what that is. 

I'm going to write more on down the page of this blog post about The Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols I listened to this evening, a broadcast from King's College Chapel at Cambridge University in England. 

For now, I want to draw upon one feature of that service. 

Rachel Portman served as the Commissioned Composer for this service. She chose what the choir sang and she also composed a song for the service. 

She set Thomas Hardy's poem, "The Darkling Thrush" to music. If you'd like to read the poem, go here: The Darkling Thrush | The Poetry Foundation

The speaker of the poem looks out over a desolate frigid winter landscape as the afternoon wanes, seeing signs of brokenness and dying before him. 

Suddenly, an aged, frail, gaunt, tiny thrush breaks the bleak silence with a joyful evening song.

The thrush, according to the speaker, has "little cause for carolings" and yet fills this gray, chilly landscape with ecstatic song, a song the speaker experiences as "some blessed Hope". 

As I age, Christmas becomes more and more solemn to me. 

I'm not a Grinch. I wish people a Merry Christmas. I participate in gift exchanging. 

But, it's not really a holly jolly time for me. 

The birth of Jesus brings a light into a world of darkness, but Jesus doesn't extinguish the darkness. 

The light of the birth of Jesus only has meaning to me as I examine and explore the darkness in which his light shines. 

Much like the narrator of "The Darkling Thrush", I spend time contemplating bleakness, the deep and dreamless sleep, the dark streets, not just the hope, but the fears of all the years. 

Then when I see the light, much like when the narrator hears the thrush sing, it has substance. I see what that light is always up against, what the light guides us to resist. 

In his gospel, John instructs us that the darkness does not comprehend the light. 

What a vital insight! 

The opposite is not true. By the light, we not only can, but must comprehend the darkness so that we are light in the world, doing all we can not to add to the darkness. 

That's why, as I grow older, Christmas can only be a time of light if I also experience it as a season of dark. 

2. Because I so enjoy listening to Colleen Wheelahan host radio programming on Symphony Hall (SiriusXM Ch 78) and on WUOL through my Louisville Public Media app, as an added benefit, I learn about all kinds of programming on these stations. 

I miss living where an Episcopal Church is only 5-20 minutes away, so today I wondered if I could have some kind of a Christmas Eve Episcopalian experience here in our living room. 

Well, as it turns out, both of the classical music stations I listen to were each broadcasting a Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols service from the King's College Chapel at Cambridge University in England. (Okay. Technically this isn't Episcopalian, it's the Church of England, but they are very similar and are part of the same worldwide Anglican Communion.)

I tuned into the Symphony Hall offering at 5 PST and what they broadcast was all carols. The music and the singing were gorgeous, but, spiritually, I was hungry to hear the biblical lessons read. 

Ah! At 7 p.m. my hopes were met! 

Through Minnesota Public Radio, radio station KUOL broadcast the 2025 Lessons and Carols service from Cambridge in its entirety with music, singing, and readings. 

This was just what I wanted and needed. 

Hearing passages, beginning with Genesis and ending with John's "In the beginning was the word" nourished me and so did the choral music interspersed between the readings and those occasions in the service when the entire congregation sang. 

Over at yourclassical.org, a sound file of this service will be up through the holiday season (for those with a free account) and I will almost certainly listen to it again and from that website I downloaded a PDF file of the service which has all the words of the prayers, readings, and hymns and so I can have this visual record forever. 

3. The Symphony Hall channel made one more very meaningful musical experience available at 9 p.m. which added to the wisdom of my decision to stay home alone on Christmas Eve and experience this evening on my own terms. 

I first heard the Messiah when I was a boy scout and our troop helped people park their cars in and around the newly built United Church building because a great crowd of people came to the church to hear the combined church choirs of the Silver Valley and a small orchestra present the Messiah. 

I don't know if they sang the whole oratorio or, because it was around Easter time, if they sang selections. What I do remember is that I heard a harpsicord for the first time, loved it, and have ever since. 

At NIC, at the end of fall quarter my sophomore year, our choir sang selections from the Messiah, a thrilling experience.

As the many years passed after that, I joined in a few Messiah sing alongs in both Spokane and Eugene and loved it whenever we put on a cd of the Messiah at home. 

So, this evening, after listening to the two different presentations of Lessons and Carols, I listened to the entirety of the Messiah and experienced its story beginning with the prophecies of Isiah through to the Resurrection and Ascension. 

As I creep toward turning 72 years old, I got to enjoy Christmas Eve in contemplation, as an Episcopalian, as one who loves classical music, and in uninterrupted solitude -- aside from a demand on occasion from Gibbs to tend to his needs. 🐕🐶

Three Beautiful Things 12-23-2025: The Prolific Colleen Wheelahan, Alley Cats in NYC, The Solemnity of Christmas

1. It's not enough, I guess, that Colleen Wheelahan hosts a six hour classical music program on SiriusXM from M-F. Out here in the west, that show comes on at 3 a.m. I try to catch snippets of it between stretches of sleep every morning and am often awake for its last hour or two. 

And it's not enough that she then hosts another classical music radio program at WUOL at 3 p.m. PST for three hours and is back on WUOL on Saturday mornings.

It would seem that having two radio programs isn't quite enough for her either. For Jane Austen's 250th birthday, on SiriusXM's Symphony Hall channel, she produced and hosted "A Jane Austen Musicale" with two guests, great interviews with them, and took us into both the music and social history of Jane Austen's times. 

Today, on WUOL, Colleen Wheelahan produced and hosted a second Jane Austen program. It's titled "A Jane Austen Christmas Musicale" and for an hour Wheelahan presented passages from Austen's novels and letters, explored the Christmas music Austen most likely heard performed (some of which she might have played on the pianoforte herself), and imagined what a Christmas Day was likely like for Austen and her family and neighbors. It was, as she promised, an immersive experience. 

And that's not all. At least once a week, Colleen Wheelahan writes an essay and publishes it on her Substack account entitled "Classically Colleen". Her essays are insightful, sometimes whimsical, and often include either playlists of classical music that she makes available on Spotify, or she posts a series of individual songs, also linked to Spotify, that are either subjects of her writing or that help substantiate a point she is making. She's a clear, intelligent writer, a good story teller, and has a wide-ranging knowledge of music, literature, other arts, and, as it turns out, football. 

I discovered Colleen Wheelahan when I decided to listen to classical music on SiriusXM when I was making medical trips to Coeur d'Alene and Spokane earlier in the year. Her voice on the radio and her introductions to the selections she played impressed me so much that I began listening to her programming at home and before long discovered that she works for two radio stations and keeps an active Substack account. I can't always listen closely, but from Monday to Firday, her shows play for nine hours a day in our house. 

Satellite radio. Streaming radio. Writers on Substack. Like raindrops on roses and whiskers o kittens, these are a few of my favorite things in our wireless world. 

2. So on my Facebook page, I get quite a few Reels. 

I enjoy watching the people who make a ton of money making videos of themselves spinning reels in casinos and I enjoy watching clips of poker tournaments. 

Lately, another source of fun, another favorite thing has popped up. 

I get videos of a woman interviewing AI generated cats in an alley in NYC. 

There's Donny Meatball, Big Tuna, Carmine Whiskeretti, Mittens Malone, Frankie Two Paws, and a host of other cats along with a racoon an occasional dog, and lots of stories about catnip, milk, dumpsters, epic battles, love affairs, and other sagas from the world of the cats' alley. 

Here's an example THE TALES OF TONY AND THE NYC ALLEY CATS 🐈‍⬛

What the heck -- here's another The Alley Turns on Big Tuna 🔥

3. I know that this post solstice time of year with the promise of ever growing light on its way is a time of celebration. I know that Christmas Day is day of celebrating light coming into a dark world. 

For some reason, as I've aged, Christmas has become an increasingly solemn time. It night be that as I age, I feel the seriousness of the darkness more all the time. 

I'm grateful for the promise of light and I feel that, too. 

Today, I was glad to be alone all day, glad I never left the house. 

These two classical music stations I have on all day long right now play seasonal music I'm familiar with and they introduce me to a lot of winter music that is new to me. 

What makes the artistry of so much of this music impressive to me is that the dark and the light are both present in the music. 

Being alone, with no one talking or being busy with things, I can listen to this music with the only distractions being the furnace coming on or Gibbs wanting to go outside or come back in. 

I don't always listen closely -- I read, work puzzles, straighten up the house, prepare food, but the music is always there and I experience the solemnity and beauty of what's dark simultaneously with the promise and joy of emerging light. 

Three Beautiful Things 12-22-2025: License Plates Off to Virginia, Classical Holiday Music, Great Nuts and Bolts and Cookies

1. Going to the post office isn't that big of a deal usually but today was a little different. I mailed Debbie her license plates, license plates she's been trying to get her hands on since August. If all goes well, they'll arrive in Virginia on Saturday. I really hope all goes well. That would be a splendid turnaround in this mystifying saga that would make the head of Gilgamesh spin. 

2. The two classical music stations I listen to day and night are increasing the amount of holiday music they play which means I'm hearing Christmas symphonies, excerpts from The Messiah, choirs singing gorgeous arrangements of hymns and carols, thrilling brass ensembles, and other selections taking me beyond what I ever knew was out there. 

3. With the arrival today of a package from Jack and Eloise, now I have two different batches of nuts and bolts to snack on (Carol made the other one) and a couple of very tasty cookies. I love cookies and normally I try to keep myself from eating too many, but over the last couple of days, I've unlocked the stable and let the horses of my cookie eating appetite run a bit wild. 

Three Beautiful Things 12-21-2025: One of the Sweet Spots in My Life, Simple Family Dinner, Lots of Good Yakkin'

 1. If you've watched it already, please don't tell me anything about it. I want to see the next movie in the Knives Out franchise, Wake Up Dead Man with as uncluttered a mind as possible. I probably better watch it today, on Monday! 

So why do I even bring up this movie?

Its release on Netflix takes me back to 2019 when I experienced a sweet spot in my life, a time that I wished could have continued for a long time, but it didn't, in large part because of the uncertainties about the coronavirus 19 (Covid). 

This fun and sweet time in my life began on October 16, 2019 when I accepted an invitation from Mary Chase to meet at a Pizza Pipeline on North Division to play trivia with her and Kathy Brainard. 

Sometimes Linda Lavigne and I went over to Spokane together, and what ensued for me were multiple trips, sometime more than once a week, to play trivia at a variety of venues. 

Sometimes others joined our team and every one of those trivia outings was a blast.

We did more together than play trivia. Mary and Kathy introduced me to Luna, a wonderful restaurant in south Spokane. Kathy and I attended a Gonzaga women't basketball game together. The three of us went to see Knives Out together and Mary invited us to her house for cocktails afterward. 

With the arrival of the new year, 2020, most of our trivia playing happened at the Riverbank Tap House at the Northern Quest Casino in Airway Heights. 

Our last trivia outing was March 11, 2020. 

This sweet spot in my life ended. 

So, when I watch Wake Up Dead Man, no matter what I think of the movie, it will take me back to those nearly five months of spending time with Mary, Kathy, and Linda, playing trivia, getting to know each other better, and having one of the most enjoyable periods of time I've ever experienced. 

2. Christy, Carol, Paul, and I agreed a couple of weeks ago that we'd keep our December 21st family dinner as simple as possible. 

We succeeded. 

We dined on appetizers and Christmas sweets tonight: summer sausage, pears, cheese, butter candle bread, nuts and bolts, and a delicious variety of cookies, candies, and other treats. 

3. We enjoyed lively conversation as we dined. We dug into some Kellogg history. We talked about living in a divided country. We talked about aging and the feelings of uselessness that can come with growing older. Today was Debbie's 75th birthday and I updated the others about what's happening in her life these days. We also discussed power outages and generators. Again, it was a lively evening! 

Three Beautiful Things 12-20-2025: Language is Music, Sparky on *The Tonight Show*, The License Plates Arrive

 1. My previous post about the English language was on my mind throughout the day today. 

My thoughts were long, but I'll keep my summary of them somewhat short. 

Language is like music to me. I don't claim to be a particularly musical writer, but I respond to our language as I read it and listen to others use it as music. 

Yesterday I wrote that when I hear our language misused, I might cringe. 

I still pretty much stand by that, but it would be more accurate to say that the response I have is akin to  if I'm listening to someone play an instrument or to someone singing and they hit a wrong note. Or if I know a song, hear someone sing it, and they flub the lyrics. 

When I was a teacher, deep down inside, I wished my students could think of language as music. I tried hard to impress this idea upon my students, especially my literature students when we studied  Shakespeare or poetry. It's a tough sell. Most people experience language as a utility, not a source of music. I get it. 

With poetry, my students wanted to rush to the meaning of the poem. I tried to persuade them to regard a poem as first and foremost music (same with Shakespeare's plays and sonnets) and that often the sounds of the vowels and consonants in the words, the source of the music, would lead them to "meaning". 

Maybe you cringe a little, or recoil, if you see that someone's row of flowers in a garden is crooked or if you see a load of logs assembled not quite right on a truck or if you eat some food that's not quite seasoned right. 

That cringe you might feel goes beyond mere correctness. 

The wrong note, the crooked garden rows, the ill-loaded logs, the food that's a little off goes against the grain of your sense of beauty and you feel it in your spirit or your soul when it's off. 

So if someone says or writes, "Debbie met Walker and I at Starbuck's", I get the meaning, but the using of "I" instead of "me" is the wrong note, it's the zinnia out of place, it's the excess of basil in pasta sauce, it's the log placed in the middle of the load when it ought to be on top. 

2. I should say, as I move on, that I often have very positive experiences with others' use of language. Honestly, if someone says, "Yeah, I got home and my kid was lying on the couch, not feeling well" instead of  saying"laying on the couch", I feel the pleasure that comes with assembling IKEA furniture and having all the parts fit into place or the pleasure of hearing Bach pulling all the movements together at the end of his Goldberg Variations. It's the pleasure of having things fit together, of clicking into place. 

I was thinking today about how indebted I am to Judith/Judy "Sparky" Roberts for my sense of beauty and proportion in language and other aspects of life. We started working together on different Shakespeare projects and other non-Shakespeare performances nearly thirty-five years ago. Her attention to the beauty of language, whether in Shakespeare's plays or in sketches we wrote together, had a huge influence on training my ears and enhancing my appreciation of visual beauty. 

I wasn't much of an actor, but I got to be in four Shakespeare plays she directed and I think she encouraged and drew out of me every bit of my limited talent. 

Well, today, coincidentally, in another thread started by Richard Leebrick, Sparky invited readers of that thread to watch a YouTube video of when she and two other whistlers appeared on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. If you click on this link, you can see Judith/Judy/Sparky standing on her head, not only whistling, but narrating a puppet show. The puppets are on her feet. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieL7-MFSyHU&t=1s

3. Debbie purchased a Toyota Corolla in New Jersey back in August. Registering the car in Idaho, securing the title, and having the Idaho license plates sent to her has involved one mystifying screw up after another and I've honestly lost track which of the screw ups were with the car dealership, which were with the lender, and which were with the Idaho Dept. of Transportation. 

But, a couple of weeks ago, her Idaho registration arrived here in Kellogg. 

A little later (or maybe a little before), the title arrived. 

And, today, at long last, the license plates arrived. 

Debbie arrived today in Woodbridge, VA to spend time over the holidays with Molly's family. 

I will mail the plates on Monday to Virginia, hope they arrive before Debbie leaves Virginia in just over a week, and when they do arrive, her long mystifying registering the car in Idaho nightmare will be over. 

Everything will have clicked, fallen into place, just like when I hear someone say "Melinda and I went shopping today" instead of "Me and Melinda . . ."

😄

Three Beautiful Things 12-19-2025: Always a Teacher? Not Me, Mozart and Stalin and Salem Cigarettes, Popcorn and Gibbs

1. I was hired in the fall of 1977 to teach a college writing class at Whitworth and I taught my last such class in the spring of 2014. For a variety of reasons, I didn't teach every year between 1977 and 2014, but in the course of those years, I taught a lot of writing classes. 

Those writing classes focused on reading essays and books, demonstrating an understanding of that reading, composing essays, and learning principles of grammar and usage. 

In other words, I spent much of my adult life correcting the mechanics of my students' writing and trying to help my students learn how to recognize errors and correct them themselves. 

I never quite pushed that boulder to the top of the hill. 

I bring this up because on fairly rare occasions, someone on a Facebook or other kind of thread will take it upon himself or herself to correct other people's language errors. 

Today, one person pointed out to at least a couple of people that when they wrote "I seen" such and such, the correct way to write that is "I saw". 

Okay. 

The corrector was right. 

But to those who say to me, "once a teacher, always a teacher", I respond, "Not me". 

I feel no compusion to correct the many errors I read in other people's writing and I have no desire to be corrected myself. 

I know I make mistakes and I think I make more as I grow older. 

But I do notice the errors and, I admit, they often make me cringe, but in the larger picture, I'm not as interested in correctness/incorrectness as I am in observing the general use of English change. 

Please note I did not say "deteriorating" or "getting worse". I said "change".

I note repeated changes and have come to believe that some of the things we used to insist upon as correct, are simply going away. 

Here are a few examples: 

I saw vrs I seen. So many people, whether in their spoken or written use of English have cast "I saw" aside and replaced it with "I seen" that I think "I seen" might take over and become an accepted past tense of "I see". 

I rarely hear or read anyone use "lie" and "lay" correctly. When I do hear someone use these verbs correctly, I hear the Oregon Duck fight song go off in my head and enjoy this triumph. 

But, I think this distinction is very close to DOA, especially because not only do I see and hear people in my day to day life say "lay" when it should "lie", but some of my favorite published writers also make the same error. 

Likewise, I think we can stick a fork in the difference between "every day" and "everyday". 

This is not a spoken error but a written one and the error is always the same. 

Again and again and again, when a sign or advertisement or Facebook post or whatever should write "every day", I see "everyday". 

I guess you could say that I simultaneously cringe and shrug. 

I like to read and hear these our language used correctly. 

At the same time, I tell myself that a person using "lie" correctly instead of "lay" incorrectly isn't going to bring peace to the Middle East or help Avista get people's power back on. 

I pay attention. 

I keep track of how our use of language changes.

I'm happy I retired from needing to be a correctatron. 

I should add, though, that I have friends who want to preserve what has long been considered correct English and I love our conversations, and I greatly admire those who have a passion for preservation. 

Those of you reading this know who you are and PLEASE keep sending me memes and jokes and your own observations/gripes about the world of speaking and writing English. Thank you! 

2. I try, and often do it without trying, to learn something new every day (two words -- not everyday! Ha!). 

Today, I learned I have something in common with Joseph Stalin. 

Today, Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23 walloped me with its beauty, range of emotion, and (I think) occasional whimsy.

I also learned that Joseph Stalin loved this concerto of Mozart's and that, in fact, it was spinning on his record player when he died in his bed. 

I very much enjoy reading about and talking with others about how we are all connected. In fact, I expressed this one day at a hot dog stand. When the hot dog griller asked me what I wanted, I said, "One with everything." 

Until today, though, I'd never thought of Joseph Stalin as a soulmate, a brother, of being joined with each other in our love of this Mozart piano concerto. 

I learned about Stalin from a story Colleen Wheelahan told on one of her radio programs today and then listened as she played the concerto, clicked on my Spotify app, and played it a couple more times. 

Suddenly television ads for Salem cigarettes occupied my mind. 

I experience parts of Mozart's concerto to be romantic and I had visions of different young men and women running and frolicking in nature, maybe a forest, then a field, then, oh my God!, I began to picture scenes from advertisements for Salem cigarettes. 

Many of Salem's ads worked to create a connection between the freshness of smoking a Salem and the freshness of the country. You might remember the jingle: "You can take Salem out of the country, but, you can't take the country out of Salem." 

So here I was, sitting in the living room, sharing a chair with Gibbs, trying to deal with discovering Joseph Stalin ain't heavy, he's my brother and then having visions of a perfect looking couple having found a swing attached to a tree in pastoral setting, the man pushing the woman, and that romantic scene being portrayed as if it were connected to the way "Salem refreshes naturally". 

3. I took a break from thinking about lie and lay and Stalin dying to the beauty of Mozart and the menthol freshness of Salem cigarettes and popped myself a bowl of popcorn and wondered whether Gibbs also makes surprising and absurd associations and connections that unnerve and delight him. Or does he just want me to toss more kernels of popcorn on the floor for him to eat? 

Three Beautiful Things 12-18-2025: Let There Be Power, Taking Care of Business, Hail to the Wildcats! Plays in My Head

1. With the light coming on at my bedside and the restored power noises of things humming and chiming in the house at 4:06 a.m., I woke up and I saw that Stu had just left me a message. He was up early and wondered what was happening with me at home.  I told him and we yakked some more online.

We ended our messaging when I said I was going to go back to sleep and indeed I did. 

Before I closed my eyes, I put on Symphony Hall, knowing that Colleen Wheelahan was just over an hour into her morning program. I knew I would sleep through most of it, but I also knew that I'd wake up for small amounts of time and hear her warm voice introducing the selections she would play next and that at some level I'd be absorbing the music even as I went back to sleep. 

2. I slept a few more hours and got up to take my pills and take care of Copper and Gibbs. I made myself a warming and comforting latte and went to work catching up on blogging, a crossword puzzle I didn't do last night, and completed today's Wordle, Quordle, Connections, and Strands. 

3. I experienced a small triumph today. 

Yesterday I adjusted the garage door so I could manually open it. With the power back on, I went out to see if I could now open it with the push of a button. 

No I couldn't. 

I got on a step ladder and took a closer look at the garage door's mechanism and adjusted a lever. 

It was exactly the right thing to do.  

I'm not handy. 

At all.

So when I make something work that wasn't, when I reason my way to a solution to a small household problem, I play the Kellogg Wildcat fight song in my head, as if I'd just hit a jumper to cap off an 8-0 run that forced our opponent's coach to call a timeout and the pep band further excited the crowd I had just fired up by deliriously blasting out "Hail to the Wildcats!".   

I never did this as a Kellogg Wildcat, but this is my blog and I can fantasize about being a heroic high school athlete if I want to! 

Three Beautiful Things 12-17-2025: Whistling and Howling Wakes Me Up, Power Out Soup On, Power Restored

 1. I don't claim that the times I'm going to mention in this post are precise, but they're in the ballpark and this is a blog not a court of law! 

I went to bed Tuesday night knowing that high winds were coming on Wednesday, and I knew that on Tuesday the winds had been blowing pretty strong. 

From inside our house, we know winds are growing strong when they whistle and howl. We don't have belongings outside that rattle, no wind chimes that sing, and no trees to snap or shed branches, so I gauge wind force by the wind's own sound. 

By around 5 a.m., the whistling and howling woke me up and I knew I wouldn't go back to sleep, so I got up and did a few small things in anticipation of losing our power: I fed Gibbs, I fed Copper, I turned up the heat,  I hoped to submit my Wordle results to Christy and Carol, and I started writing a blog post. 

2. Around 7:30, Symphony Hall cut out. The lights went off. The furnace stopped. 

I reported the outage, signed up for Avista alerts, and decided to hibernate for a while and went back to bed. 

It started to look like this might be a more than three or four hour outage (I was right!). 

We have a gas range and I don't need electricity to light the burners, so I made myself a hot coffee and I began to gather ingredients to make a chicken-bean-vegetable soup, knowing that eating hot soup would help keep me warm. 

That worked. 

I kept my phone charged by taking it out to the car and juicing it up in the driveway. 

I stayed in contact with my sisters, Debbie, Stu, and Ed. 

Copper and Gibbs took everything in stride. They seemed pretty comfortable with the house temperature being at about 60 degrees. Gibbs braved a few short trips to do his business in the back yard. Copper seemed content to rest and sleep on a bath towel in the bathroom. 

3. Christy came over to fill a thermo-cup with hot water and gave me some hand and feet warmers. 

I put a blanket on the couch for Gibbs.

I went to bed much earlier than usual, having put on a hoodie, sweat pants, and heavy socks, all of which kept me comfortable. 

Copper joined me -- I guess I was better company than a towel on the floor. 🤣🤣🤣

At 4:06 a.m. suddenly the light by my bed came on. 

I heard Alexa make some kind of noise. 

The furnace kicked on. 

I could use my Sirius/XM app to put Symphony Hall on my wireless speaker. 

Stu was up early and messaged me, asking what was happening. (He lives in Kootenai County.)

I gave him the good news: power restored.

We agreed: Avista has stalwart workers. 

They do the Lord's work. 

Three Beautiful Things 12-16-2025: I Walked Three Miles When I Finished *Emma*, Happy Birthday Beethoven, No Noise Until. . .

 1. Today is Ludwig van Beethoven's birthday -- his 255th -- and Jane Austen's, her 250th. Symphony Hall played Beethoven's music all day, except for one break when the channel replayed Colleen Wheelahan's "Jane Austen Musicale". I had listened to it yesterday. I listened to it again today. 

When this program ended today, my mind wandered back to when I read Jane Austen's Emma in graduate school. I think this was in February or March of 1980. 

Primarily, what I remember was that Austen's approach in Emma to narration so excited and stimulated me that rather than take the bus from campus to where we lived three miles off campus, I walked home, my mind totally occupied with my experience with Austen's genius. 

2. I really can't catalogue in this blog post all the terrific music playing in the house today as the Symphony Hall channel played Beethoven (almost) non-stop. 

3. When I went to be tonight (Tuesday), weather conditions did not keep me from falling asleep. No whistling wind, nor howling wind either was blowing. By approximately 5 a.m. that changed considerably, as my next blog post will report. 

Three Beautiful Things 12-15-2025: "Jane Austen Musicale" in Celebration of Her Birthday, Mozart Arrests Me, Another Bacon Bean Soup

1. To pay tribute, a day early, to Jane Austen's 250th birthday, Sirius/XM's Symphony Hall channel presented a program entitled "Jane Austen Musicale" hosted by Colleen Wheelahan. The program featured two guests: pianist Jeneba Kanneh-Mason and historian and musicologist Lidia Chang.  From this program I learned that Jane Austen played the piano, she collected published music, she featured certain pieces of music in some of her novels, and wrote scenes of piano playing which were never just about playing the piano, but were also about, well, other kinds of playing. 

I also learned that Jane Austen lived in a world where the piano was considered to be the only appropriate musical instrument for a woman to play. Instruments like the flute or oboe were considered inappropriate because how a woman's mouth looked while she played and the violin was considered an offense to a woman's posture. 

It was enjoyable listening to Jeneba Kanneh-Mason play selections from Jane Austen's music collection and to the interviews Wheelahan conducted with Kanneh-Mason and Lidia Chang. 

If you happen to have the Sirius/XM app, this program is available any time. A "Jane Austen Musicale" search will take you to it. I don't know how long it will be available -- I hope for a long time! 

2.  Listening to Colleen Wheelahan's three hours of classical programming this afternoon on WUOL-FM, Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 22 arrested my attention in a way his music never has before. It stopped me from moving, moved me to stare into the distance, and prompted me to think about all the music I listen to by myself, music I never discuss, mainly because I don't know of anyone who also listens to it. But, the truth is, I'm not sure I'd really have much to say. I don't know how to talk or write about Mozart or most of the other classical music I enjoy. 

The one person I did listen to a lot of classical music with back in the mid-90s was not a musical expert either. We just enjoyed sharing tapes, listening quietly to different compositions together, going to occasional live performances, and talking about how the music struck us: some made us grieve, some uplifted us, some made us think of poems or of Shakespeare, and some of the classical music had an effect we had no words for. 

More than anything, I'd say that time in my life increased my sense of beauty, of the sublime, and right now I'm experiencing beauty more consistently listening to classical music than from any other source and I thoroughly enjoyed being surprised by a newfound deep enjoyment of Mozart. 

3. The bacon bean soup I made for dinner tonight wasn't exactly a culinary Mozart concerto, but I liked the way I used both black beans and kidney beans, the use I made of chicken broth, yellow squash,  baby carrots, cabbage, and white onion and the way I seasoned this soup with salt, pepper, and Trader Joe's 21 Seasoning Salute. 

Three Beautiful Things 12-14-2025:Gibbs is Groomed, I Fixed Turkish Rice-a-Roni, We Enjoyed a Pork Roast Family Dinner

 1. The high waters and flooding up the North Fork of the CdA River kept Gibbs' groomer at home Friday when he had an appointment. Today, however, the waters had receded enough and the weather was calm enough that Robin felt perfectly fine about driving into town. 

So, Gibbs is groomed. 

He enjoyed his time being pampered and he looks great all spiffed and trimmed up. 

2. Christy hosted family dinner tonight and assigned me to make a rice dish. She gave me a recipe which looked really good, but required more steps and more effort than I felt like exerting. 

I've made homemade, do it yourself Rice-a-Roni in the past for family dinner and I went online looking for a recipe. Lo and behold, I stumbled upon a recipe called Turkish Rice-a-Roni and it looked simpler than the recipe Christy gave me, but seemed very similar -- both dishes were, to some degree, Middle Eastern. 

All I had to do this afternoon was melt some butter, and sautee chopped onion, basmati rice, and orzo pasta and season these ingredients with a cinnamon stick and allspice. 

After these ingredients had sauteed for about five minutes, I added a chopped tomato and three cups of chicken broth. I brought it to a boil, put a lid on the pan, and simmered this mixture for about twenty minutes until the rice absorbed the liquid. 

In the meantime, I melted more butter and browned a handful of slivered almonds and then added raisins and chopped dried apricots and when the raisins and apricot plumped up, I set this pan aside. 

Once the rice was cooked, I added the almonds, dried apricots, and raisins to it along with chopped mint. I seasoned this nearly finished dish with salt, removed the cinnamon stick, put the lid back on the pan and let it sit until it was time to take this dish along with a vegetable tray to Christy's for dinner. 

3. For dinner, Christy roasted a tasty bone-in pork roast and made delicious chunky applesauce. The Turkish Rice-a-Roni went well with the pork and we topped off our dinner with a selection of really good cookies Carol brought. 

Our conversations ranged all over the place: Gonzaga basketball, the flooding in our county in the present and the past, Christmas music, versatile actors and actresses in movies, and more. 

It was really fun talking about so many topics and helped make a very satisfying meal be even more so. 

Three Beautiful Things 12-13-2025: A Day of Great Joy and Delusion in 1981, Interview with Joan Micklin Silver, Back to 2025!

 1. The summer of 1981 was memorable. My wife landed a plum internship at The Oregonian and lived with her brother's family in Portland. I passed my first (of three) doctoral exams and was taking an accelerated course in German for Reading Knowledge at the University of Oregon. I thought things were going great for both of us in our career pursuits and our marriage.

I was living an illusion. 

The happiness I felt that summer was mine alone and by December of 1981, my wife and I separated and within a year we divorced. 

But, in the midst of my delusional happiness, I made a memorable trip to Portland to see my wife. 

The best day was a Saturday. My wife put in a shift that day at the newspaper and I spent the day and evening at the movies. 

It started at the Fifth Avenue Cinema where the theater was running a festival of overlooked movies and I went to see that day's double feature, both movies directed by Joan Micklin Silver: Between the Lines and Head Over Heels, later retitled Chilly Scenes of Winter. 

Later, that day, I went to another double feature at the Bagdad Theater on Hawthorne Blvd (before it was purchased by the McMenamin brothers).

I saw a movie I'd seen, and absolutely loved, earlier in the year in Eugene, The Return of the Secaucus 7 and a movie I would return to in early 1982 in Eugene, Tell Me a Riddle. 

Between the Lines and The Return of the Secaucus 7 both tell stories about an ensemble of men and women who, like me in 1981, are in their late twenties (maybe early thirties) and are trying to navigate the worlds of teaching, politics, journalism, medicine, and drifting while also trying to figure out their love relationships, friendships, and sexual dalliances. 

Head Over Heels was also about a man and woman who'd had an affair.  The man, played by John Heard, is not only trying to come to terms with this woman, played by Mary Beth Hurt, he's crazy about, but also trying to do what he can for his aging parents. 

The last movie I watched that day, Tell Me a Riddle, took me out of the worlds of characters near my age into the world of an aged couple who've reached a crisis point in their domestic life together and in their love life. This movie was delicately and sensitively directed by Lee Grant and featured Melvyn Douglas and Lila Kedrova. 

Its conclusion so moved one woman in the theater, either in Portland or Eugene, that she bawled, like scream cried, filling the theater with the loud sound of her grief and suffering. 

2. That glorious, albeit delusional, day came back to me because I watched the short documentary, Carol and Joy, last night. Carol Kane rose out of obscurity back in 1976 when she earned a Best Actress Academy Award nomination for her work in Hester Street. 

Joan Micklin Silver directed Hester Street and the first two of those movies I saw in Portland and that led me this evening to dive into the library of the Criterion Collection to see what Joan Micklin Silver movies were available. 

The real payoff, though, was discovering that Criterion also held a filmed interview with Joan Micklin Silver from the early 1980s. 

I watched it. It reminded me that Micklin Silver had directed a short movie version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's story Bernice Bobs Her Hair for the PBS American Short Story project. 

Wow! My near future movie viewing is taking shape: 

Hester Street

Scenes from a Chilly Winter (I have it on DVD)

Between the Lines (maybe -- I've watched it a few times recently and flew through it looking at highlights this evening)
Tell Me a Riddle
Bernice Bobs Her Hair 

3. I guess you can tell that that day in 1981, which turned out to be bittersweet later in the year, was a pivotal day in my life. 

Memories of it dominated my evening. 

But earlier in the day, while living in the world of 2025, I got down to business and secured approval from Christy and Carol of my idea for our Sibling Outing on Friday, December 19th. 

I also figured out what I'm making for Family Dinner on December 14th. Christy assigned me a rice dish and I got everything I need to make it on a shopping trip to Yoke's today. 

Three Beautiful Things 12-11-2025: *Nebraska* and 1983 and 84, Burgers and Floods and Mortality at the Elks, Carol Kane and Her Mother on Film

1. Back in January 1983 and again in 1984, I taught a course at Whitworth called The Family in American Drama. We studied plays and movies that focused on stories about American families. 

I finished watching the movie Nebraska early this afternoon and experienced flashbacks to that course, still fairly fresh in my mind these forty-two years later. (It's a course I never had the chance to teach again.)

I knew then and I know now that I taught that course not only because one of my focus areas in grad school was 20th century American Drama, but because, fueled by some of the self-righteousness (not all bad) that comes with being twenty-nine years old, I was upset with how the traditional nuclear family was being romanticized by certain organizations and politicians and I wanted to teach a course that countered that idealized view of the family with what I thought were more realistic portrayals of the difficulties, tensions, and fragility of the family unit as explored in American plays and movies.

Watching Nebraska called to mind how emotionally demanding and satisfying that course was. 

I found Nebraska to be demanding and satisfying much like those plays and movies from over forty years ago. 

One focus of that course was on the power of illusions, especially when characters lived as if things they dreamed to be true really were true, even as actuality pushed back on them, often with tragic results. 

Nebraska is such a story. 

The main character, Woody (played brilliantly by Bruce Dern), becomes convinced that he's won a million dollars in a Clearing House-like sweepstakes and this illusion dominates him, his relationship with his family, and the story. 

I won't say anything else about how this story plays out.

I can say that I spent much of the movie afraid for Woody and that's why I turned it off in the late evening four days ago and waited to finish it this afternoon so that, if need be, I'd have plenty of time to recover. 

Today, as I returned to the movie, I could tell the movie's portrayal of aging, of the vulnerability of the aging characters and of the pressures Woody's aging put on his wife and this two son, was having an emotional impact on me.

I wasn't tearing up and I didn't really know how I was being physically affected by the movie's emotional impact. 

Then I found out. 

At some point about three quarters of the way through the movie, I had to pause it and go to the bathroom. 

I tried to rise out of my chair, but my legs weren't working.

That's where the movie's emotional impact struck me. 

In my legs.

They shook. 

My knees knocked against each other. 

I wobbled. 

I kept myself from falling and gave myself a minute or two to steady myself.

I made it to the bathroom, sat down again in my chair, took several steady breaths, and watched the movie to its end. 

I loved it. 

2. Woody's story was very much on my mind as I entered the Elks dining hall and took the seat Ed had saved for me at a table with Nancy, Cindy, Tim, and Jake. 

It was burger night at the Elks and the current situation on every one's mind  was the local flooding, road closures, and difficulties people were facing. 

We also talked about the number of local people five to twenty-five or so years older than us who have died over the last year. I didn't know quite a few of them but listened as my table mates made connections between these different people and who they were related to, especially who their kids are. 

We thoroughly enjoyed our burgers and topped off our time together by seizing a table at The Lounge and continuing to yak about all kinds of things. 

3. Back home, I decided to let another movie take me deeper into the experience of growing old. 

This month, the Criterion Channel is featuring a short thirty-nine minute documentary, directed by Nathan Silver, entitled, Carol and Joy, a filmed conversation with Carol Kane and her mother Joy. The movie focuses almost exclusively on Joy. She is ninety-eight years old. She and Carol live together in a cozy sunlit apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Joy gives voice lessons in her apartment, plays a lovely piano, and has two pianos in her apartment so that she and her piano duet partner can make music together. 

Joy also has a comprehensive memory of the span of her life and her accounts of growing up, yearning for independence, and achieving it in mid-life are fascinating, making it, for me, a most satisfying and stimulating short film. 

Three Beautiful Things 12-11-2025: Luxury, Brahms, The Rocket

1. My idea of luxury used to be to enjoy varieties of craft beer and to indulge from time to time in an anniversary ale or a bourbon aged ale, usually stout, and to try out breweries wherever I traveled or lived. 

I haven't drunk a beer now since May 10, 2024, the before I received a new kidney.  

Now my idea of luxury is to buy baked products at Beach Bum Bakery. 

Today I bought twelve everything bagels to freeze and I'll thaw them on Christmas Eve and they will be our breakfast treat on Christmas morning.

I also bought a loaf of dreamy French bread and a solid dense mini-loaf of rye bread. 

Rebekka had my bag all loaded up and I noticed she had one more molasses ginger cookie left. 

I couldn't resist. (Well, didn't want to!)

I ate it this afternoon with a fresh homemade latte. 

Luxury. 

2. In a relaxing way, I've been working on getting familiar with a wide range of classical music, not only to enjoy these pieces in the moment, but to develop the ability to identify compositions when they come on the radio. 

Today, I experienced a success that made me happy, made me feel like I'm making some progress. 

On one of the shows I was listening to, Brahm's 4th Symphony came on and I immediately recognized it. It was as if the Cars' great "My Best Friend's Girl" or AC/DC's" Thunderstruck" had come on. As I listened to Brahm's Fourth, I was able through much of the symphony to anticipate what was coming next, something I never could have done just two months ago. 

Recognizing and enjoying Brahm's 4th Symphony won't bring the price of beef down, but it sure brought me joy. 

3. As he does so often, Rich "Rocket" Brock, my Whitworth roommate and lifelong friend, humbled me today. I was feeling pretty sassy for having been writing this blog for just over sixteen years and having made 7000 posts, but then Rich's wife, Amy, posted a video of Rich being honored for having been a twenty-five-year employee at K=Love radio. He received a plaque on a huge stage in front of an SRO crowd. His name and picture were projected onto a huge screen. The audience went mad and someone had made a Go Rocket sign and waved it like it was the seventh game of the World Series. 

Congratulation Rich! 

I loved seeing and hearing in the audience's enthusiasm for you and in the laudatory comments made on Amy's post that you are a beloved long timer at K-Love, much appreciated and highly respected. 

YES! 

Three Beautiful Things 12-10-2025: Just Over Nineteen Years and 7000 Posts, Ed Has Labs, Good Yakkin' and Lousy Luck Today

 1. I haven't always stuck with things over the course of my life, but I can say with some pride that I have stuck with this blog. I almost gave it up about thirteen years ago, but I got back on track and never stopped. 

I've been posting here at kelloggbloggin' for just over nineteen years. 

You are reading my 7000th post. 

I don't have a lot to say in this milestone post, but, but that's how it goes some days on this blog. 

2. Today was another blood draw day, but not for me, for Ed. So we piled into Ed's Camry and whistled through the wind and the rain to his doctor's clinic where he completed his labs and I enjoyed the kick of a cup of black coffee. 

3. Blood draw. Winning Wednesday. Sound familiar? 

It was a coincidence that on this Wednesday when I didn't need labs, Ed did and the aftermath was the same. 

We headed to Winning Wednesday at the Coeur d' Alene Casino. 

As we always do, we got in some very solid yakkin' in the car and once we got spinning reels, things kind of fell apart, we had no luck and got out of there and didn't even treat ourselves to a lunch. 

It happens. 

It was kind of a hidden blessing that our lousy luck led us to go home early. 

I know I was happy to get settled in at home, stay in with the weather being so nasty, and enjoy a relaxing afternoon and evening. 

Three Beautiful Things 12-09-2025: Watching Movies with Others, Copper Has Labs Drawn, Bacon Bean Soup

 1. While I was waiting for the vet tech to take Copper back for a blood draw, in light of what I wrote yesterday about going to movies alone, I suddenly thought about all the movies I've gone to over the years with other people. I loved all of them. Christy, Carol, Mom, and I went to Mama Mia one summer and over the holidays several years ago we joined forces to watch Saving Mr. Banks. I saw many movies with Bill and Terri Trevaskis in Eugene, including one of my very favorites, Big Night. 

Sparky and I went to a lot of movies together, including earlier this year, Wicked. I still think a lot about the night Michael McDonald and I saw Ethan Hawke playing Hamlet in a 21st century Manhattan world. The Troxstar and I had a blast watching Midnight in Paris together and I thoroughly enjoyed going with Jeff Harrison to the Art House in Eugene to participate in the 2022 International Grateful Dead Meet Up at the Movies to watch the Grateful Dead's show on 04-17-1972 at the Tivoli Concert Hall in Copenhagen. 

Oh, there are many more. I can't list them all, but I've had many more wonderful movie going experiences with Scott Dalgarno, Craig Thomas, the Mauer family, Bill Davie, Diane Anderson, Kelly Doughty, Kathleen O'Fallon, Deb Akers, and many more friends over the last more than forty years. 

One thrill I'll always remember is the unexpected joy Debbie and I experienced watching Shakespeare in Love. 

So, yes, I told the truth when I said I've watched many more movies alone than I've watched with others. 

But I didn't want to leave the impression that I only enjoy movies when I see them alone and I'll just say that I can name many of the movies I've seen with all the people listed above as well as the theater we saw those movies at. 

They really stick with me. 

As you can tell, I've seen reels and reels of other movies with others -- and I didn't even mention all the movies I've watched with others starting over forty years ago in North Idaho and Spokane or the ones I watched with others  in living rooms and apartments, especially in Spokane and Eugene, nor the countless movies I've watched with students in countless classes I taught and team taught at Whitworth, the University of Oregon, and Lane Community College. 

2. Why did Copper have labs drawn today? Dr. Cook wants to test his blood a bit more often now that Copper is aging and has begun to shrink -- but only in physical size. 

His great heart, kind spirit, and gentle soul have not diminished a bit. 

3. I fried chopped bacon in the wok, added half a white onion sliced, chopped celery and carrot, and sliced mushroom. I added a can of kidney beans and some chicken broth and this turned out to be just the soup I was hungry for -- I'd been yearning for some kind of bacon and bean soup and this one absolutely worked. 

Three Beautiful Things 12-07-2025: Watching Movies By Myself, I'll Return to *Nebraska* on Tuesday, Nuts and Bolts

 1. Yesterday I wrote about two ways that Josh Brolin watches movies that made me feel like we were brothers at the soul level. 

I now realize there is another way. In addition to being primarily attuned to the impact the movies is having on him and that Brolin and I seek out movies that take us outside our selves and our limited experience, Brolin and I both almost always watch movies alone. 

Debbie and I occasionally watch movies together at home, but more often than not she's watching one selection from a streaming service on her computer and I am either not watching anything or watching something on another computer. We did have a time, however, when we watched old television episodes of Columbo and other programs together and that was a lot of fun. 

I've watched a ton of movies over the last five years or so at home alone, mainly because I've been home alone for significant stretches of time. 

Whether living alone or not, over the past forty years, the vast majority of movies I've gone to have been alone. Debbie and I had a stretch of time around twenty-five years ago when we went to movies at The Bijou together and a few at a cineplex, and I enjoyed those times, but I have also loved seeing movies alone. 

It's a freeing experience for me. Alone in a movie house, I enter a bubble and feel what I feel, think what I think, stay put for as long as I want after the credits roll, walk around when I leave the movie theater, and free of conversation and anyone else's wishes regarding what to do next, I let the whole experience sink in. Alone. 

I loved going to late morning or afternoon movies in Washington, D.C. and taking long walks around the city afterward. It was the same way in Eugene, whether I was on foot or riding a bicycle. Back in the early 90s, I sometimes drove to Portland on Friday nights or on Saturdays just to see movies in different theaters and relished the drive back to Eugene, usually at night (when night driving didn't bother me) and I could be in solitude with the movie I'd just seen. 

I sorely miss living where I'm close to multiple movie theaters. The closest ones are in Coeur d'Alene.

I miss living close to art houses, movie theaters that play the kinds of independent and international movies I enjoy most -- and sometimes vintage movies which are always a thrill to see in a movie theater. 

2. I am a different movie viewer now that I'm in my early seventies than I was when I was younger.

I used to have remarkable stamina. I would sometimes watch as many as four movies in a day, but I don't have the attention span or the emotional and mental capacity to do that now. 

I also used to be able to watch more than one darkly serious movie in a day. I had an almost insatiable appetite for exploring alienation, sadness, tragedy, and other forms of seriousness. 

Not any longer. 

For example, around 8:00 this evening, I decided to watch a movie from about a dozen years ago entitled Nebraska. It features Bruce Dern playing a cantankerous old man. He has entered into a delusion that a letter promoting a million dollar Clearing House styled sweepstakes is a letter telling he's won a million dollars. 

He believes that if he goes to Lincoln, Nebraska he can pick up his million dollars. 

I will finish this movie, but not until tomorrow. 

Bruce Dern's performance is brilliant. 

The black and white cinematography of landscapes and small towns between Billings, MT and Lincoln, NE captures the vast emptiness of this region and is an outward representation of the emptiness in the inner lives of the characters in this movie -- at least so far. 

After forty-five minutes of watching this movie about aging, dead end family life, and the possibility of this vulnerable old man being exploited, I decided I'd had enough for one viewing session and that I'd pick up the movie again tomorrow, preferably long before I go to bed. 

I never would have turned off this movie in my younger days. I would have found its truths exciting, would have contemplated the realities of aging from the safety of being a young man, and I would have been excited by the movie's gray and bleak aesthetics. 

I'm not that guy any longer. 

I needed a break. I needed to pretend like this was a two part, Monday/Tuesday television program and that I had part one under my belt and I'd enter into part two tomorrow. 

But not close to bedtime.

3. Starting about sixty years ago, our Grandma Woolum made a snack at Christmas time called Nuts and Bolts. At some point, later on, this snack came to be known as Chex Mix. Grandma's recipe was buttery, rich, perfectly salty, laced with subtle garlic flavor, and included mixed nuts, all the Chex cereals, pretzels, Cheez Its and other treats from the snack aisle. 

Mom took up the job of making Nuts and Bolts at some point and now I think Zoe is our Nuts and Bolts cook. 

Back in New York, Debbie has been fixing Nuts and Bolts. She sent a picture of her work today and I thought how wonderful that this little tradition in our family has grown beyond the Woolums and Roberts. 

Three Beautiful Things 12-07-2025: Prospector Pizza in Pinehurst, Beethoven Brings a Movie Alive, My Soul Brother Josh Brolin

1. Today it was my turn to host our weekly family dinner.

I couldn't seem to muster up the energy to come up with a menu or to get the house ready for guests. 

So, I put out a message wondering if Paul/Carol and Christy would enjoy trying out Prospector's Pizzeria in Pinehurst, a local family's recently opened business. 

To my relief, everyone was on board with my idea.

We decided to meet at 1:00 this afternoon at the pizza joint, located in what used to house Real Life Ministries in Pinehurst -- and, if I'm not mistaken, this was also where Hammock's Hardware and Baskett's Saw and Cycle was located. 

Christy and I both really enjoy Canadian bacon and pineapple pizza and Carol and Paul ordered an eight topping pizza featuring meats and vegetables. 

I do my best to enjoy pizza that isn't my preferred style. I enjoy thin crust pizza and these pizzas had a fairly thick crust. So, once I dropped my desires and willingly surrendered myself to the pizza in front of me, I enjoyed these pies. 

I also enjoyed, even I was a pain in the neck, the planning we worked on for the month of December. 

2. Two things. 

First, I don't remember the last time I watched a movie.

Second, I've been listening for several hours a day to classical music. 

So, I thought, wouldn't this be a good time to rewatch a movie about a string quartet preparing to perform Beethoven's String Quartet Opus 131, also known as his 14th String Quartet?

My answer today was a resounding YES. 

So this evening I watched A Late Quartet, a movie I had seen on my 59th birthday in 2012 in Eugene at the now shuttered cozy David Minor Theater.

Just getting Vizio warmed up again and finding the movie got my adrenaline pumping and I began to tear up as the movie got started, feeling myself back at the David Minor and knowing I was about to watch a movie that had touched me thirteen years ago.  (You can read my 2012 response to A Late Quartet, here.)

Here's a briefer summation of my experience with the movie thirteen years later.

The movie features a music professor, Peter, played by Christopher Walken, who had recruited three of his students twenty-five years earlier to join him in a string quartet they named Fugue. 

The other three musicians are Katherine Keener (Juliette), Mark Ivanir (Daniel), and Philip Seymour Hoffman (Robert). 

We learn two salient things as the movie opens. 

First of all, Peter, learns he has become afflicted with the early stages of Parkinson's disease and he tells the other three quartet members that with the help of medication he will try to play in their upcoming 25th anniversary performance, but it will be his last. 

We also learn about Beethoven's String Quartet No. 14, Opus 131 which Fugue will perform at this concert. 

Beethoven composed three late quartets and No. 14 was his last and favorite. Unlike the traditional string quartet written in four movements, No.14 has seven movements and Beethoven insisted that the seven movements be played without a break.

We learn that this creates disorder among the musicians. They have no pause to tune their instruments and so as the quartet grows and their instruments inevitably go out of tune, they must adjust to one another's progress and try to maintain order under performance conditions that militate against orderliness. 

Not only is this disorder what happens in performing the Beethoven piece, it's what happens between Daniel, Juliette, and Robert upon having Peter tell them that the quartet that's been together for twenty-five years can no longer be what is has been. 

Major tensions, having to do with their lives as musicians and in their personal lives, develop. 

It made me wonder: if I knew String Quartet No. 14 expertly, would I see this movie as having seven unbroken movements? Does Beethoven's composition move through times of upheaval and conflict in the same these characters do? Is there any parallel between how String Quartet No. 14 resolves and how the movie's story resolves. 

That I don't know.

But I do know that the movie explores the necessity of the players in a string quartet to put the good of the quartet above the desires of each individual. It means the individual players must make sacrifices of their individual ambitions for the good of the collective. 

I also know that this movie is about the relationship between technical mastery and something like perfection in relationship to expressing passion, that is, playing music with passion. 

Three key words in this movie are "unleash your passion" which, as it turns out, can be risky, disruptive, and magical, whether in the realm of performance or in personal relationships. 

In the end, I experienced this as a movie about love, about the complicated ways men and women moving into different stages of middle age experience love, how they want others to express their love to them, the place of passion in love, the interaction of love and grief, and the place of suppressing passion, possibly for the sake of the collective, however exciting that passion might be for the individual.   

Were these Beethoven's questions, too, as he completed this composition about a year before his death? 

As of now, I don't know. 

I'd like to dig into this question more, though. 

3. A Late Quartet concluded and I was disappointed that Amazon Prime cut off the movie before the credits had run, which meant Amazon Prime cut off the completion of String Quartet No. 14. 

Most movie viewers don't know that the music accompanying the credits after a movie is a postlude. It gives viewers a chance to sit and let the movie soak in and music can enhance this reflection, it can help review the movie, and it can add more dimension to what we've seen. 

In the case of A Late Quartet, the music playing during the credits was a continuation of the movie and brought the movie to its conclusion. 

I kept my calm, didn't go all movie nerd bitchy, and wondered if this movie was on YouTube. 

It is. 

I uttered a short prayer to the cinema gods that YouTube's broadcast showed the entire movie, including the credits. 

It did. 

So I rewatched the final touching five minutes of A Last Quartet and then reveled in the credits, not so much for what I could have read on the screen, but to hear this landmark Beethoven string quartet come to its completion. 

I stared for a while.

It was getting late, but I was stimulated and not ready to hit the hay. 

My favorite ongoing series of short films on the Criterion Channel is Adventures in Moviegoing.

(If you are still reading this rambling blog post, I thank you.)

Different women and men in the world of movies sit for an interview and tell us, in essence, their movie going autobiography. 

Tonight I watched the president of Criterion Collection, Peter Becker, interview Josh Brolin -- and then I listened to Brolin talk about around six movies from the Criterion Collection that were important movies for him. 

I discovered that the level of the soul, I have a brother in Josh Brolin. 

Our surface lives have next to nothing in common. 

But at a deeper level, we have at least these two things in common. 

First of all, we watch movies primarily to experience their impact, to be moved, stimulated, astonished, saddened, frightened (I don't watch horror movies though!), inspired, enlightened, invigorated, vitalized, crushed, devastated, and so on. 

For both of us, for movies to have impact, they do not have to take us into worlds we already know or are familiar with. 

In fact, both of us seek out movies that take us into worlds way different than our own -- it might be the world of another country or culture. I loved teaching World Literature because when that course covered the late 19th, 20th, and early 21st centuries, I could show my students a Mongolian movie (The Story of the Weeping Camel), a New Zealand story about Maori people (Whale Rider), and movies made in Iran, Palestine, Israel, and other parts of the world. 

To feel the joy and relief of a mother camel finally accepting the calf she has rejected, one does not have to be Mongolian; when Pai mounts a whale and leads a pod of beached whales back into the sea, one does not have to be Maori to feel and admire Pai's courage and the exhilaration of seeing these whales rescued; one does not have to be Iranian to enter into the very human stories of Iranians, whether in Tehran or in rural villages -- but, these movies did more than unfold the humanity of these different countries and cultures, they invite us into the details of daily life in these places, help acquaint us with worlds different (and in some cases similar) to our own. 

Josh Brolin feels enriched and enlarged by entering into stories and details of places and worlds not his own. I know I have been and continue to be. I wanted my students to experience that, too. 

I tried to encourage, maybe even persuade, my students to seek out movies, books, music, art, and other things that did not deal with what they already believed or already knew -- in short, what they said they could relate to. 

I thought going to school was largely about learning to get outside of oneself and one's limited experience. 

It was about trying on different perspectives, points of view, ways of seeing the world. 

I enjoyed listening to Josh Brolin talk, not as a teacher, but as a lover of movies, about these very same things: impact and seeking the unfamiliar (and feeling the impact of doing so). 

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.