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.