Three Beautiful Things 06-29-2026: Copper Undergoes Laceration Repair, Death Exposes Greed, Black Bean and Brown Rice Salad

 1. Even before fixing myself a latte, the first thing I did this morning was call the Kellogg Medical Pet Center to see if I could get Copper in to have his wound examined.

A 9:00 slot was available.

I did not expect that! 

Dr. Cook immediately sized up the nature of Copper's injury and said ideally the thing to do would be to sedate Copper, remove the flap of skin that had been hanging from where I accidentally injured him, and then stitch the wound. I had been trying to put that flap of skin back over the wound, trying to keep it in place with my amateur placement of the gauze, holding it in place by wrapping a self-sticking wrap around Copper's neck like a collar. 

Dr. Cook presented me with the option of continuing to do that, but I immediately concluded it would be best for Copper for me to say yes to Dr. Cook's "stitch him up" proposal. 

Then another stroke of luck: a cancellation opened up time this afternoon for the surgery. 

So, I left Copper at the vet and returned at 5:00 to pick him up and found out the surgery was a success and, once home, Copper took a small leap atop a towel in his favorite open suitcase and rested, as ordered, for the evening. 

2. In the very early pages of War and Peace, Tolstoy makes it clear that the aged and stroke stricken Count Bezukhov is going to die. 

The drama in this part of the story is not if he will die, no, the drama is in the jockeying, plotting, secret conversations, resentments, and other activity and feelings carried out by his survivors. 

Dickens, Trollope, and many other 19th century novelists brilliantly write whole segments of some of their novels around the sniping, greed, hypocrisy, and self-seeking, often exercised under the guise of grieving, acted out by family members and others who want to cash in on the death of one with wealth. 

Tolstoy takes us into the souls of these characters as they grub for a share of old Bezukhov's death. I'm eager to see how it all pans out. '

Reading the development of this subplot made me laugh, cringe, boo, hiss, sigh, and long for someone with a sense of common decency to step in get the parties to settle their conflicts. Will this happen? I'm going to stay tuned and find out. 

3. As I've mentioned, I've been hungry lately for other than lettuce focused salads. 

Tonight, I cooked brown rice and combined it with black beans and built a salad around the beans and rice. I chopped celery, green onion, radishes, and red pepper in a bowl and mixed in Kalamata olives, cherry tomatoes, and cilantro, and put it all together with the beans and rice. I completed this salad by adding a couple generous splashes of salsa and topping it with broken corn tortilla chips. 

I loved this salad and have a good helping or two left over.

I realized as I finished the helping I ate for diner that I forgot to include fresh squeezed lemon juice. 

I remedied that error by squeezing half a lemon over the leftover salad. 

I tasted it. 

The lemon made a huge positive difference. 

Three Beautiful Things 06-28-2026: Steak Soup, Tolstoy Learns from Jane Austen, It's the Ted Mack Amateur Hour as I Tend to Copper's Wound

1. When I open the freezer in the basement and see our small and thick ribeye steaks, I don't think about grilling them or frying them in a cast iron pan or baking them. I don't think about eating one of them with a baked potato nor do I think about having a steak fry for family dinner. 

I look at these steaks and I see soup or stew.

So, today, having thawed a ribeye, I cut the thick steak into two thinner ones and, in a Dutch oven, I fried bacon pieces with cubes of steak alone with white onion, mushrooms, and chopped celery seasoned with salt and pepper. 

While these ingredients cooked away, I turned a tablespoon and a half of Vegetable Better than Bullion paste into a quart of broth, added it to the pot along with with four chopped carrots and about half a bag of corn. 

I let this emerging soup bubble until the carrots were cooked through -- the other ingredients were in good shape -- and I added Montreal Steak seasoning and oregano to the soup. 

I also added egg noodles. For me, this was the perfect finishing touch, or, if you are a Russian aristocrat in War and Peace, it was le coup de grace. 

I enjoy cooking for Debbie and doing it when it's my turn to fix family dinner. 

That said, I enjoy the freedom of cooking for myself. I can more freely try out seasonings, use noodles instead of potatoes in stew/soup (like tonight), and feel more confident about cooking without a recipe. 

2. Here's the kind of irony I enjoy. 

Well, let me ask you, have you ever been in a social situation with someone who talks and talks and talks, never seems to notice that no one else his participating because this person is dominating the conversation, and then this same conversation dominating person says, "You know, I really like Barnaby, but he sure talks a lot." 

That's irony! 

Irony often reveals lack of self-knowledge. In the case of the non-stop talker complaining about a non-stop talker, it's not hypocristy, it's just being clueless about one's own behavior. 

Leo Tolstoy employs irony masterfully in the early chapters of War and Peace. These chapters focus on the manners, concerns, and preoccupations of the Petersburg and Moscow aristocracy. Tolstoy's use of irony exposes false confidence, shallow knowledge, little true self-understanding, and more. 

Repeatedly, these instances of irony had me flashing back to novels I've read by Jane Austen.

I wondered, did Tolstoy admire Jane Austen?

I looked into if a bit and the answer was a resounding YES. He loved Austen. 

I think she taught him a lot about moments of withering irony in a story and how they can make a reader laugh or feel fear and how these moments always succeed in revealing more about the character than the character realizes is being revealed about her (or him). 

3. Today, I became an amateur (maybe amateurish) veterinarian as a follow up to having been an amateur (no, amateurish) cat groomer. 

Friday evening, while working to remove a plug of matted fur from Copper's fur, I wounded him, just below and to the left of his chin.  

I kept an eye on the wound all day Saturday and tried with materials we had on hand to cover the wound, but I didn't have the right stuff. 

This morning I bought gauze pads, a roll of self-adhesive wrap, and cotton rounds. 

I had better success cleaning the wound with the cotton rounds and water.  I was able to clip fur around the wound, cover it with a gauze pad, and hold it in place by wrapping the self-adhesive material loosely around his neck. 

Copper has been unbothered by this whole situation. 

My attempt to clean the wound and clumsily cover it haven't fazed him. 

He definitely is not in pain.

And once my gauze/neck wraps were in place, he left them alone. 

For all of this, I've been most grateful. 

Update: It's now Monday morning. I've been to the vet. He'll perform a minor surgery and stitch the wound. I'll have Copper back home by 3 or 4 this afternoon. 

Three Beautiful Things 06-27-2026: Getting Rooted in *War and Peace*, Ed and I at The Lounge, Ahhh! Hot Chocolate!

 ** I should have noted this yesterday, but yesterday's post was my 7200th here at kellogg bloggin'. Has this blog entered War and Peace territory? 🤣🤣🤣

1. I have a notebook at my side when I read so I can jot things down to remember. My notebook is getting a real workout as I start reading War and Peace. The names of the Tolstoy's Russian characters are unfamiliar to me and the relationships within and between families is complex enough that I need to write down their names, a few character traits, and their place in this world Tolstoy is creating. 

It's slow work. I'm thirty pages into War and Peace and it's taken me about three hours or so to get this far because I've read, reread, taken notes, read endnotes, and read translations into English when characters speak in French. French, by the way, was spoken prominently in Russian elite circles. It was the language of diplomacy, aristocratic culture, and European civilization. 

What I've read so far takes place in Petersburg, a city only a hundred years old at the time of this story (the start of the 19th century).  It's named after Tsar Peter the Great and in its architecture and other cultural ways, the city reflects Peter the Great's ambitions to make Russia a European power, to undo its previous isolation from Europe, and to refine its reputation and image as a barbaric country. 

(I'm having flashbacks to the course I took in 1974 in Russian history at Whitworth and to the carefully curated image the USSR worked to convey through their remarkable pavilion at Expo 74.)

I enjoyed this slow concentrated effort to get myself firmly rooted in this book and I'm expecting that as these characters' stories develop, as they become more familiar to me, my reading pace will pick up. 

2. Ed called me mid-afternoon and wondered if I'd like to get together for a beer at The Lounge. 

I did want to and not only looked forward to getting caught up on what's been going on with Ed, but looked forward to drinking a couple of Bud Zeros combined with Bloody Mary mix. 

We had a good time and enjoyed Cas joining us from time to time for stories and good laughs. 

3. First thing this morning, I picked up a curbside order at Walmart. It included a small box of hot chocolate packets. I've been yearning for hot chocolate, but have regularly forgotten to put it on my grocery lists over the last several weeks. 

Tonight, I made myself a cup to enjoy while I worked on and completed the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle.

I was a little bit concerned that the hot chocolate might keep me from sleeping, but it didn't.

In fact, when I went to bed and returned to reading Every Day I Read, I only lasted a few pages before I conked out. 

Correction: When I first posted about Every Day I Read, I thought the title was Every Day Read and interpreted as a command. I got the title wrong. Now I have it right!

  Every Day I Read

Three Beautiful Things 06-26-2026: Blood, Sweat & Tears Again, Starting *War and Peace*, Bed Time Meditations by Hwang Bo-Reum

 1. I enjoyed the responses that came my way in the wake of David Clayton-Thomas' death and my thoughts about Blood, Sweat & Tears' second, self-titled, album. Rich Brock posted his appreciation for the song "Sometimes in Winter" and I was 100 percent with him. I thought a lot about that track while remembering my love for this album, but because Steven Katz wrote it and sang it, mentioning it didn't fit with my focus on David Clayton-Thomas and BS&T cover tunes. 

I'll just say that in high school I used to get all dew-eyed and dreamy whenever I listened to "Sometimes in Winter". 

2. It was a banner day today in my reading life. I started Leo Tolstoy's thick masterpiece War and Peace. I enjoyed how getting started reading this book transported me back to my thousands of year as a student. I needed to prepare to read it. One of the translators wrote the Introduction to this Vantage Classics edition and I read it and especially enjoyed its last several paragraphs that covered his approach to translation. 

I also, for some reason, enjoyed how slowly I'll have to read. Characters speak in French sometimes and the translations of the French are at the bottom of the page. This edition is also generously footnoted, mostly with historical explanations of figures and events Tolstoy refers to that are connected to the early 19th century's Napoleonic Wars. So I'm having to stop, read translations at the bottom of the page or read footnotes (really endnotes) found in the back of the book. 

Keeping characters with sometimes complicated Russian names straight will challenge me, slow me down. I'll take notes and frequently need to refer to the list of characters published in this edition for reference. 

With all that said, I found the early pages of War and Peace compelling, already psychologically fascinating. 

I look forward to moving forward, however slowly -- and, for unhurried me, slow is good. So is the work War and Peace will require. 

3. A while back, Debbie talked quite a bit about how much she enjoyed the Korean author Hwang Bo-Reum's book of short meditations entitled, Every Day Read.

I read that title as a mandate. Hey! Every single day! Read something! 

I couldn't sleep when I went to bed Friday night and so I started reading Hwang Bo-Reum's very short reflections on different aspects of reading. Here are a few examples: "Read Small Books", "You Don't Always Have to Finish It", "Visiting the Library". 

I read over half the book before I nodded off. 

I enjoy the simplicity and wisdom of her chapters, and it was the perfect book to read in bed, even though it didn't really help me fall asleep. It stimulated me and kept me awake! 

Oh, well. 

Three Beautiful Things 06-25-2026: *The Lucky and the Left* -- It's Not *Portlandia*, RIP David Clayton-Thomas, The Noir World of Portland

 1. I knew when I returned to Willy Vlautin's book The Lucky and the Left late this morning that, aside from eating, resting my eyes, and letting Gibbs out and back in the house, I wouldn't do anything else until I finished it. 

I was right. 

Brief  background: Along with writing novels, Willy Vlautin works as a house painter and is the songwriter and lead guitarist of the Portland retro country soul band (the band's description) The Delines. He played a similar role for several years in another band, Richmond Fontaine. 

The Lucky and the Left is a Portland novel that is not taking place in the world of Portlandia, not a story about characters living in service to the slogan "Keep Portland Weird", not a story about downtown post- George Floyd confrontations between law enforcement, demonstrators, and Proud Boys in Portland, nor is it about anything else that commonly stereotypes Portland. 

No, Willy Vlautin writes about the fading working class world of Portland, about people hanging on by a thread, with much of the story taking place in St. John and neighboring areas of North Portland. It's about house painters, a stripper, waitresses, the aisles of Safeway and Fred Meyer (not Whole Foods and Market of Choice), broken families, cans of Olde English 40s, diners, and dive bars. 

In this world of brokenness, family violence, hard work, and adolescent anger, the novel centers around a relationship that develops between Eddie, a house painter, and Russell, Eddie's eight-year-old next door neighbor and Eddie's dog, Earl. 

I'll leave it at that. If you should happen to read this book, you'll want to know as little as possible about what transpires and experience this world and these characters without spoilers. 

Physical violence didn't dominate this novel, but when it occurred, I'll just say it was difficult for me to bear.

2. Today I read the news of the death of David Clayton-Thomas, known primarily for his work as the lead singer for Blood, Sweat &Tears.

Clayton-Thomas first appeared with Blood, Sweat & Tears on the band's second album, titled simply Blood, Sweat & Tears. 

When I bought and listened to this album in the summer of 1969 (it was released in 1968), its blending of rock, blues, jazz, gospel, and, briefly, classical music gave me a deep pleasure I'd never felt before. 

In junior high, I had bought at least one Al Hirt album (Honey in the Horn) and had collected several Herb Alpert albums and so I'd already developed a love for trumpet driven music, but nothing I'd heard prepared me for the instrumentation of Blood, Sweat & Tears in support of the incredible vocal range and stylings of David Clayton-Thomas. 

Now, fifty-eight years after the release of Blood, Sweat & Tears, two of its features stand out to me, two things I never could have said about this album when I was fifteen years old. 

First, the album opened and closed with "Variations on a Theme by Erik Satie". These two tracks were adaptations of French composer Erik Satie's 1888 composition for piano entitled, "Trois Gymnopedies."

Those classical music tracks transported me, at fifteen years old, into a dreamy world of beauty and wonder. I know now, that along with George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" and "An American in Paris", these two tracks became my gateway into classical music, a love I pursued more purposefully in my college years as I attended the Spokane Symphony for the first time, listened to classical albums in the library with headphones at North Idaho College, and began to purchase and play classical music albums. 

This impact of Blood, Sweat & Tears came back to me today. I had Symphony Hall on the radio as I read The Left and the Lucky and the great classical guitarist Christopher Parkening came on the air playing Erik Satie's "Trois Gymnopedes". Listening to him delivered me back to the other worldly experience Satie gave me, via BS&T in 1969 and also took me back to when used to listen to Parkening play Bach on the guitar on an LP I bought on a whim, never having heard of Parkening, at the Whitworth College bookstore. 

Secondly, I didn't think much about this when I was fifteen years old, but now I know that David Clayton-Thomas was a brilliant interpreter of songs other artists had recorded. At fifteen, I didn't know that, say, when The Turtles recorded Bob Dylan's "It Ain't Me Babe" or when Vanilla Fudge recorded The Beatles' "Ticket to Ride" that this was known as one artist covering a song first done by another. 

Now, all these decades later, I've come to love listening to cover versions of songs and three of Clayton-Thomas's covers stand out to me on the Blood, Sweat & Tears album. 

In no particular order, here they are, three songs that Clayton-Thomas and BS&T borrowed from other musical traditions and genres and made their own.

"You've Made Me So Very Happy" was first recorded by Motown's Brenda Holloway in 1967 and Clayton-Thomas and the band manage to pay homage to the Motown sound while also transforming this song into a work of their own. 

"And When I Die" was written by the great singer-songwriter Laura Nyro when she was 17 and was recorded in 1966 by Peter, Paul and Mary. Later on, Nyro recorded the song herself. Both versions are beautiful. Mary Travers takes the vocal lead in the first version and Laura Nyro sings the song solo in her version. I listened just now to the it recorded live at the Manhattan folk club, The Bottom Line. 

The Blood, Sweat & Tears version brings a new power to this song with the instrumental arrangement and David Clayton-Thomas, like Peter, Paul &Mary and Laura Nyro, sings it with soulful power while taking it out of the folk and acoustic blues realm and into a realm of jazz and blues that has its own power. It's unforgettable. 

Now, all these years later, I think the gutsiest cover on this album is of the iconic Billie Holliday's song "God Bless the Child". A part of me says, whoa, bro, leave Billie alone! But I'm glad Blood, Sweat & Tears didn't leave this song alone. To me, they open the song in church and then it begins to swing a bit and the great feel David Clayton-Thomas has for this song takes it over. But, the goose bump moment comes for me at 3:10 with the jazzy breakout of piano, trombone, trumpet, and saxophone solos. Then back comes Clayton-Thomas and someone brought a harmonica to church and as the song winds down, we are back in the pews again and guys take us out of this song with the same kind of worshipful sound they played to bring us in. 

Really. The more I think about it, this album might have had more impact on my future love of multiple genres of music than any other, especially when I was in my teens. 

RIP David Clayton-Thomas (1941-2026). 

3. Back in April, not knowing a thing about Willy Vlautin, Debbie and I went to the Bing in Spokane to hear him interviewed by Jess Walter. 

The interview is archived with the other Northwest Passages presentations on YouTube.

I listened to this interview again tonight, having finished The Left and the Lucky. 

The interview reminded me that Willy Vlautin set out to give this story a noir feel. He wanted to create a world in the shadows of Portland, a world of brokenness, instability, potential and realized violence, and of cigarettes and alcohol. He also wanted to leaven this noir world with decency. He succeeded. All of these dark elements co-exist with certain characters who are good -- as the novel develops, I wondered: will the darkness or the decency prevail? 

I found out. 

Three Beautiful Things 06-24-2026: Spontaneous Trip to Worley, I Visit the House of Happiness, Reading Willy Vlautin

1. I needed to take care of some of my life's loose ends and spent time this morning tidying up the kitchen, filing papers, looking for and finding a document I thought I'd lost, putting clothes away -- that sort of thing. 

Around 1:00 or so, I decided I needed to get out of the house. I hadn't been to Winning Wednesday for a while at the CdA Casino. I made a spur of the moment decision to head that way. 

I drove to CdA, fueled up at Costco, and headed down to Worley. 

Spinning reels was not a disaster nor did I come out ahead. 

I hadn't eaten all day when I arrived, and after spinning reels for about an hour or so, I went to the Red Tail Bar and Grill and enjoyed a mushroom Swiss cheeseburger with fries. 

Lately, I've been enjoying jalapeno peppers with different food items and wished this burger had peppers on it, so I asked for hot sauce and I dressed my sandwich with catsup, yellow mustard, and one of the hot sauces my server brought out. 

Great move! 

I guess I'm going through a spicy burger/spicy food phase in my dotage. 

2. I left the casino around 6:00 or so and in CdA I stopped by the house of happiness, Panhandle Ice Cream. 

The women serving ice cream and even making the occasional espresso drink managed the throng wanting ice cream with grace, friendliness, and genuine smiles. Their calm, focused, cheerful, efficient manner impressed me! 

I ordered a single scoop of Salted Caramel Brown Butter Cookie ice cream in a dish and I loved it. 

3. I stepped away from the happy bunch of people coming in and out and found a table a ways away from the door and the smiling adults and children talking and laughing over ice cream just outside the shop. 

I sat at a table with ice cream and a book. 

I continued reading Willy Vlautin's latest novel, The Left and the Lucky. I started it last night. 

Right away, in very few pages and by employing spare language and vivid details (Rollos, Frosted Mini-Wheats, Lean Cuisine, shopping at Fred Meyer and more), Vlautin establishes the world of this story. He introduces us to a stressed single mom who works a night shift, has moved her family in with her frail mother, finds out her fifteen-year-old son's girlfriends is pregnant, and has a second grade undersized son who wets the bed, rarely speaks, and gets bullied by his older brother. 

I know the story is set in Portland and, as of now, I think it takes place in the St. Johns neighborhood. 

I'll correct this observation later if it turns out to be inaccurate. 

This book is quite a change from Lonesome Dove and Our Moon, but not a huge change from the Willy Vlautin book I finished not long ago, The Horse. 

Three Beautiful Things 06-23-2026: Earth and Moon, Moon and Science and Money, Evacuation Project Essentially Finished

 1. Today I finished reading Our Moon. The last two chapters focused on the Apollo program and beyond. These chapters looked at how the rocks the astronauts brought back to Earth have helped scientists better understand the geological history of the moon, which, in turn, informs our understanding of the geological history of Earth. 

Rebecca Boyd also focused on the impact seeing Earth from outer space had on the astronauts and the kind of perspectives seeing pictures of Earth from so far away could potentially have on us here at home, with emphasis on how borderless Earth looks from afar and how nearly unimaginably miniscule Earth is in relation to the vastness of the space it occupies. 

2. But for entrepreneurs, wealthy people like Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, the moon is not valuable for the geologic history it helps us understand nor does it have the spiritual value it has held for millennia for cultures worldwide.  

No, it's a place to colonize, mine, and exploit. 

The merging of science and scientific discovery with the development of wealth always complicates things. 

The moon is no exception. 

3. If we were to be given a READY evacuation order, after today, we are ready. If we were given a SET order, we could have the car loaded in under ten minutes and then we'd be ready to GO. 

I have a couple of small things still to attend to -- things we'd be fine without -- but, on the whole, this project I've been slowly working on is in very good shape. 

Three Beautiful Things 06-22-2026: Time Boggles My Mind, Family Calendar in Place, Next Day Pleasures

 1. As I read more of Our Moon, it's mind boggling (but completely understandable) to me that for approximately 299,550 of the about 300,000 years that humans have existed, it was widely assumed and accepted that Earth was the center of the universe. I have been trying to imagine a 300,000 year timeline and trying to picture how miniscule the about 450 year old age of modern science is on that timeline. I'd love to come up with an analogy along the lines of "a drop in the ocean", but I don't have one just yet. 

What incredible breakthrough it was, thanks largely to the telescope, when scientists and others began to see the universe's incomprehensible vastness and how overwhelmingly true it is that Earth is not at the center. Punishing backlash ensued, especially early on, because this knowledge of the universe called so many age-old understandings, both religious and scholarly, of the Earth's place in the universe into question. 

2. Debbie, Adrienne, Jack, and Eloise have a lot going on in New York, Carol, Paul, and Christy have a lot going on here in Kellogg, and, well, I have a Book Club meeting on July 7th, so Christy spearheaded the creation of a family Google calendar so we can all know what each other is doing. 

It took me a while to get the hang of how this shared calendar works, but with Christy's help, I figured it out and I'm happy that I can refer to it and know when everything from a used book sale to garden tours to Paul and Carol staying at the Davenport Hotel for their 40th wedding anniversary to what's happening in Valley Cottage and more is happening. 

3. I took pleasure today in being able to extend Sunday evening's family dinner another day. The seafood pasta Christy fixed aged really well and I very much enjoyed eating it cold; Christy's garlic bread was also very tasty on the second day as was the pastaless Italian salad I prepared. Yes, I would have enjoyed a next day helping of apple crisp with caramel ice cream, but no problem. Being able to eat the leftovers I had on hand uplifted me. 

Three Beautiful Things 06-21-2026: 100 Percent Containment, Emptiness As a Good Thing, Movie Soundtracks After Family Dinner

 1. As I write this post at 9:30 on Monday morning, I just read an update on the Gold Run Fire, between Elizabeth Park and Big Creek. The fire is 100% contained. The operation is winding down and many crew members along with equipment can return to their home units. Monitoring will continue and Avista crews can now enter the burn site and repair damaged poles and wires. 

2. Now, about Sunday. 

I took a break from the moon today. I did, however, continue to think about emptiness and how necessary it is. I thought about how when we empty ourselves of ego, fixed ideas, the intrusions of the past, and other ways we fill our inner life, then we can be receptive to what the present moment brings us. 

I agree with Hugh's comment to me that my life is full of friends, family, acquaintances, and blessings, but, paradoxically this cup of mine that runneth over must also be emptied to make room for the blessings, experiences, new things to learn, new ideas, and so on that will, no doubt, come my way today. 

It's a paradox for sure. We don't want our lives to feel empty, but, as the Tao de Ching calls to our attention, we need the emptiness of the cup or of the newly built house in order to fill our cups (mine is filled with a latte right now!) or bring our houses to life.

By the way, we have common ways of talking about the perils of fullness when we say someone is "full of crap" or another is so "full of herself (or himself)". 

Right?

3. Our family dinner this evening definitely had our cups running over with delicious food and lively conversation. 

Christy hosted and created tonight's dinner. She asked Paul what he'd like as a Father's Day dinner. He requested a seafood pasta dinner and so Christy fixed a superb linguine with shrimp, clams, and scallops main course accompanied with Italian garlic bread and I brought a leafless, pastaless Italian salad blending zucchini noodles, marinated artichoke hearts, Kalamata olives, cherry tomatoes, green onion, both red and orange sweet peppers, cilantro, and Parmesan cheese. I dressed the salad with the artichoke marinade and olive brine. (That worked for me -- hope it worked for the others!)

Carol baked an apple crisp for dessert and I got to recommend ice cream to go with it. Carol, understandably, didn't find any turtle ice cream in town, but I recommended caramel swirl as a Plan B and she brought both a salted caramel swirl and a cold brew coffee and caramel ice cream.

Christy assigned us to each bring a song or a track from a movie soundtrack that we like and to explain how the music connects with the movie. Here's what each of us played for the others:

I played the theme from the 1988 Italian movie Cinema Paradiso. 

Carol played Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" from Wayne's World.

Paul played Cat Stevens singing "If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out" from Harold and Maude.

Christy played the wedding version of the nuns singing, with orchestral accompaniment, "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria" from The Sound of Music. 

It was fun talking about movies and music in addition to other topics (yes, including the moon!). 

Three Beautiful Things 06-20-2026: Organize, Nothingness and Emptiness, Existentialism in My Life

 1. Three boxes arrived today with dog food, toothpaste, toothbrushes, a portable litter box, bottled water, a travel soap dish, and flashlight. A few more things will arrive tomorrow. Then all I have to do is decide how to organize things and I'll wrap up this project. 

2. Rebecca Boyle opens her book Our Moon, with a description of the moon's nothingness: no air, no life, no color, and so on. We humans, however, project much upon this nothingness: our dreams, hopes, ambitions, curiosity, imagination, and so on. 

As I read more deeply into this book, I keep thinking about Wallace Steven's poem "The Snow Man". It in the poem's speaker looks upon a bleak winter landscape of "pine trees crusted with snow" and "junipers shagged with ice" and concludes that "being nothing himself, beholds/ Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is." 

Boyle's book opens with the "nothing that is" the moonscape, but as the book develops and she examines the creation of the moon, the rocks astronauts brought back, the role of the moon in shaping our sense of time, the moon's role in ancient religions as an embodiment of divinity, and a host of other things, she examines the "nothing that is not there". 

Thinking about "The Snow Man" and the moon transported my thinking to Chapter 11 of the Tao de Ching, which is a meditation upon emptiness:

We join spokes together in a wheel,

but it is the center hole

that makes the wagon move. 

We shape clay into a pot,

but it is the emptiness inside 

that holds whatever we want. 

We hammer wood for a house,

but it is the inner space

that makes it livable. 

We work with being, 

but not being is what we use. 

In short, the nothing that is there and the nothing that is not there.  

3. Ever since I was introduced to existentialism in the fall of 1973, just a few months after the Zinc Plant accident I've mentioned (many times) before, I've restlessly entertained the possibility that we humans come into the world empty, as being nothing, undefined.  This is the core tenet of existentialism. Existence precedes essence. We are not essentially anything.  

The Tao de Ching is helpful here. We are, in other words, like the hole in the wheel, the emptiness of the cup, or the inner space of the newly built house. The existentialist asserts that we are frighteningly free. We bear an enormous responsibility to make meaning out of our lives, to meaningfully turn emptiness into purpose, a responsibility that can lead to feelings of anxiety, dread, even nausea. We resist this freedom. Rather than make meaning ourselves, we let forces and influences outside of ourselves create meaning for us. We surrender our freedom and responsibility to dictate who we are and what life's meaning is. 

I'm not sure when I started reading Our Moon that I expected a book about the moon to lead me to thinking so much about these ideas about what it means to be a human being, but, as they say, here I am! 

 

Three Beautiful Things 06-19-2026: Home Work, Lunar Effects, Sausage Soup

 1. After a curbside pickup of groceries at Walmart, I stayed home today and worked on getting things in order around the house: laundry, kitchen cleanup, refining my preparation in case of an evacuation, and more. It doesn't make for a riveting blog post (zzz), but working on these tasks matters a lot! 

2. I'm learning more and more about the moon's impact on our lives here on earth as I slowly read Our Moon by Rebecca Boyle. The moon and the tides, over a nearly incomprehensible amount of time, slowly and incrementally affected how certain marine creatures evolved into land creatures. I bring this up because I read and hear people comment about what's natural and unnatural, usually asserting that natural means unchanging and to deviate from some sense of what is original, say, in humans, is unnatural (and immoral). 

But the reading I've been doing as a member of the Science and Nature book club and other reading I've done in the past (I'm thinking of Lulu Miller's Why Fish Don't Exist), convinces me that what is natural is change, is mutability, is flexibility and that what is unnatural is the idea of permanence in nature.  Humans, plants, animals, climate, bodies of water, the speed of Earth's rotation, the distance between Earth and the moon have all changed over the eons and the ways that this constant change, however gradual or quick, come about are complex and I'm learning more about the moon's influence upon life on Earth.

3. As I set my mind to fixing myself some dinner tonight, I suddenly remembered that there were two sausages in the fridge. I'd been thinking about making a bacon, bean, and vegetable soup, but I put that idea aside and began to imagine a sausage soup. 

It didn't really tax my imagination much. I sauteed white onion and celery along with the sausage and soon added zucchini, mushroom, frozen corn, and frozen green beans to the mix and poured what I had left in a box of beef broth over it all and cooked it slowly for a while. 

At first, I didn't season the soup. I wanted to see if the combination of these ingredients, especially the sausage, would be tasty enough and they were. 

All the same, I'd been reading about evolution and the importance of the emergence of amino acids to how living beings developed and so, with that on my mind, I added some Bragg Amino Liquid to the soup. It tasted great with the Amino Liquid and without and led me to hope that I'll remember in the future to fix myself a pot of sausage soup again. 

Three Beautiful Things 06-18-2026: Gold Run Fire Update, Evacuation Prep Continues, Rotini Salad

 1. Thursday's news from the Gold Run Fire between Big Creek and Elizabeth Park was good.

Most, not all, evacuated residents of Big Creek and Elizabeth Park could return home. 

The fire did not grow, at least not significantly. 

Firefighters completed a fire line around the entire perimeter of the fire. 

It's about 20-22% contained. 

Crews continue the hard work of securing and strengthening fire lines and monitoring hot spots. 

2. If some time in the future, law enforcement orders us to evacuate our home, I'll already have in the trunk a first aid kit, blankets, pillows, dried fruit, granola bars, almonds, and bottled water. Today I ordered a portable litter pan for Copper, food for Gibbs, bathroom stuff beyond what we use every day, an extra flashlight, and a few other things that we'll also keep in the trunk. 

I'm going to strategically place in the house other things like three days' worth of clothes, electronics, cords, portable phone charger, and important documents, making it so we can put our hands on them immediately if we need to make a quick exit. 

3. Having decided to fix myself salads not using lettuce, I gave Carol and Paul a head of lettuce thinking their rabbit Bunz would enjoy it, but Bunz might share with Carol and Paul. 

I made a rotini salad today that included black beans along with fresh vegetables. I dressed the salad with basil pesto, a new thing for me, and, oh yes, it worked. 

Three Beautiful Things 06-17-2026: Evacuation Preparation, Learning from Science, All is Change

 1. I started the mostly simple task today of preparing to evacuate our house if we receive such an order ever.  I've made a master list of things to pack and Debbie and I, communicating across the vast USA, have been discussing items we always want in the trunk of the car, ranging from dried fruit and nuts and granola bars to blankets, pillows, and sweatshirts.

A fire update:  as of 10:00 a.m. on June 18th: the evacuation notice for Big Creek and Elizabeth Park is still in effect and being evaluated. 

The fire is about 20% contained. Wednesday was a cooler day. That helped. Thursday looks to be warmer and the fire crews will be looking for increased activity within the fire's perimeter. 

Approximately 247 are assigned to the Gold Run Fire. 

2. I'm reading our next book club selection, Our Moon. I'm being strhetched by this book, as I was by previous books, because I am not well-informed about the details of history as seen through the lens of different branches of science.  The previous books we read expanded my knowledge and understanding of evolution (I didn't understand everything I read) and Our Moon is expanding my knowledge and understanding of different explanations regarding how the Earth and moon came into being and how their gravitational forces affect each other and how planet Earth is also affected by the gravitational pull of the sun and other planets. 

I know I'm not understanding everything I read in this book, but I sure enjoy going outside the areas of study that shaped my professional and continue to inform my personal life.  Not being well read in the world of science and having a lot to learn about the world of nature made joining this book club a great idea. 

3. Although I don't have a studied understanding of science, I'm enjoying the overlap I see between scientific study and my experience with literature and world religion.  Right now, I'm thinking particularly of Shakespeare (and when I think of Shakespeare my mind also goes to Buddha and to the Tao de Ching).

Science, Shakespeare, Buddha, and the Tao are all primarily concerned with mutability, that is, the everchanging nature of reality. 

Scientific study examines the objective evidence of how the moon's orbit fluctuates, how its gravitational force effects tidal changes and has an impact on Earth's climate, among other things. For Shakespeare, the moon was a central metaphor for mutability because night after night, the moon appeared different than it had the night before. Moonlight also served as a metaphor for how dimly we actually understand things, as if when it comes to perception and understanding, we live in a world more dimly lit by the moon than the more brilliant light of the sun. 

Buddhism is grounded in the precept that all is impermanent, subject to constant change. 

Likewise, the Tao teaches that everything is in a state of flux. 

Just one example of the centrality of mutability in the world of science: the theory of evolution is an explanation of species adapting to change, surviving, not by remaining static or original, but by changing in order to continue living in the everchanging world. 

The book Our Moon has the associative region of my mind cooking with gas. 

 

One Beautiful Thing and Then Things Get Dangerous Nearby When a Fire Breaks Out 06-16-2026: Good News for Ed and a Trip, Fire a Few Miles Away, Power Restored at 11:00 P.M.

 1. Today started with a mixture of good news and difficult news and as the day progressed, the news became darker and more dangerous. 

This morning, Ed called me with good news. He had just seen his urologist and the blood work he had done last week looked good. That was a relief. 

Soon thereafter, Carol and I heard from Christy that the pain in her leg was such that she had to pull out of our planned sibling outing to Spokane. No way were Carol and I going to go without Christy and so we canceled today's trip and we'll see if we can work out another date in June.

(It turned out to be fortuitous that we didn't go to Spokane. A very serious fire broke out in the Beacon Hill area. We had planned a visit to Hilyard, just west of the fire, and really had no business going on a pleasure trip to that vicinity. If you haven't seen the news or heard about it, it's a devastating fire.)

I knew Ed was most likely free after his doctor appointment so I called him and he agreed that it would be fun to go spin some reels at the CdA Casino. 

And it was. 

Neither of us had much luck, but we had fun playing machines, had great conversation going down and returning home, and enjoyed a delicious lunch at the Red Tail Bar and Grill. 

2. Toward the end of our stay, we both received alerts on our cell phones about the Beacon Hill fire just east of Spokane.

Strong winds blew all the way on our return trip. Both of us knew that a red flag warning about fires had been issued in the morning, but let me tell you what we didn't know. 

After dropping Ed off around 3 p.m., I pulled into the driveway and pushed the garage door opener and nothing happened. At first, I thought the garage opener needed fresh batteries, but once I walked in the house, I realized we had no power.

A message arrived on my phone from Avista telling me power would be restored around five.

Then, I found out from Stu that a fire had broken out nearby, a few miles east of Kellogg, south of the freeway, in the hilly region between Elizabeth Park and Big Creek. 

3. I learned the power outage was a safety measure carried out by Avista. 

I learned the sheriff ordered residents in Elizabeth Park and Big Creek to evacuate. The fire was travelling east and the sheriff put Osburn under a Be Ready order. 

The fire grew to over two hundred acres. 

I kept tabs on it via the Watch Duty app. 

Debbie called me, knowing that the power was out and that a fire was burning east of Kellogg. 

We talked. 

The winds subsided. 

The temperature got cooler, coming down from the mid-70s to the 50s, maybe even the 40s. 

Avista determined that it was safe enough to end the blackout,

Avista turned our power back on at 11. 

As I write this blog post on Wednesday morning at about 10:30, the fire has grown some and it's now 10 percent contained after hours of being 0 percent contained. 

There's not much wind this morning and it's cooler out today that it was yesterday. 

I'll be back this evening or tomorrow on this blog with an update. 

Three Beautiful Things 06-15-2026: I Finished *Lonesome Dove*, Mortality and Loss and Emptiness, Another Couscous Salad

It's almost midnight on June 16th. About an hour ago, our power returned after an eight hour power outage brought about by Avista's precautionary blackout after a fire broke out east of Kellogg on a red flag warning day. (Avista is our utility company.)

1. Tonight I finished reading Lonesome Dove. Maybe I'll have reason in a later post to write more about it, but for now I'll just say I found it a story of decisions and consequences, physical endurance, regret, failures, successes, violence, hatred, and love. It's about displacement, riddling its readers from beginning to end about whether there's such a thing as having a home in this world.  

2. It's also about mortality and loss and emptiness. The inner emptiness these displaced characters often feel is made physical by the open spaces they encounter in southern Texas before they drive cattle to Montana,  confronting the spaciousness of the Great Plains. The characters have to wrestle with mortality as several characters die in this book in a variety of ways, some of them detested and others deeply loved. 

3. I seem to be tired, temporarily of lettuce salad. After making couscous salad yesterday for family dinner, today I made another one. I changed it up a bit. I used black beans instead of chickpeas. I included black olives and the last of the Trader Joe's olive tapenade I had on hand. I dressed this salad with basil pesto and olive brine and I didn't have cucumber on hand, so I used zucchini.  I had used all my cherry tomatoes in Sunday's salad and didn't go to the store to replace them.

It worked. 

Three Beautiful Things 06-14-2026: Revisiting Saturday's Celebration of Life, Death in *Lonesome Dove*, Family Dinner

 1. Saturday's Celebration of Life left me happily wrung out today.  I'd been anxious about this gathering, it was an emotional afternoon, and, while I love being with people, especially friends I've known my whole life, doing a lot of socializing makes me tired. I've written about this quite a bit. It comes from being a more introverted than extroverted person. I don't have bad feelings about being with a lot of people, but afterward I need time to myself and need to deal with fatigue. The fatigue hit me today and I had a fairly slow Sunday. 

2. At a very important juncture in the cattle drive, which is at the center of Lonesome Dove, a character essential to the success of the book's cattle drive gets killed. 

The other men on the cattle drive have great affection for this character and grief saturates the entirety of the crew. 

My guess is that readers of Lonesome Dove also have great respect and affection for this character and, for me, at least, it raises the question as to why Larry McMurtry would write his getting killed into the story's plot. 

I don't know yet. 

I do know that losing this character creates a huge gap in the operation of this cattle drive to Montana. It means that less capable men are going to have to step up and do the jobs this character did. 

It means, as often is the case in great stories, that this character's death, I would think, will become a test for the mettle of the men on this drive and I will be reading with curiosity to see how or if the cattle drive succeeds with him gone. 

I'm guessing here, but while readers might get attached to characters, authors can't be guided in their storytelling by their readers' affections. The plot and what the author feels it demands has to determine what does and doesn't happen. The plot in Lonesome Dove has been, through the 700+pages I've read, a complicated series of tests of a variety of characters in a variety of situations. Some characters have been killed and my response, at least, was good riddance. And sometimes the killing of these characters was a test that the characters who did the killing had to face and had to decide what to do. 

As I read the last just over 100 pages of this book, I'm eager to see what tests lie ahead and how the surviving characters respond to them, especially in the absence of the character they just grievously lost. 

3. Carol had announced to us that we'd be having grilled chicken for family dinner tonight and she assigned me to make a salad. 

I decided to make a Mediterranean couscous salad that blended couscous, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes, cilantro, parsley, and basil. I also added a tin of Trader Joe's chickpeas with cumin and parsley and the juice of a whole lemon. 

It worked. 

So did the chicken breasts topped with pineapple and a slice of Swiss cheese that Paul grilled. So did the lemon rice side dish Christy brought. So did the bacon and butter green beans that Carol prepared. We had some pickled items to start and Carol served homemade limoncello for dessert. 

I ate a Hershey chocolate bar. 

We read to each other again tonight. Paul assigned us to bring something we enjoyed reading as elementary school students. 

I didn't have any childhood books on hand, like the Hardy Boys, but I was an avid reader of baseball game recaps and box scores as a kid. 

So, on the NYTimes Time Machine I found the write up of the game on July 3, 1966 when Atlanta's Tony Cloninger, a pitcher, blasted two grand slam home runs against the Giants. I read the write up sixty years ago in the Spokesman Review before I delivered the Review on my paper route. I was so shocked by Cloninger's achievement and that it had happened against my beloved Giants, that it seemed a good recap to read aloud, even if I had to do so from a Times article and not the Review. 

Christy read a passage from a book she loved sixty years ago entitled The Velvet Room. It moved her to fantasize and dream about finding a room in an abandoned mansion line with a velvet curtained room featuring bookshelves fully stocked with books where the story's main character could escape the indignities of the Great Depression and be by herself and read, read, read. 

Carol read a Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle story featuring a girl who wouldn't take a bath and woke up one morning with radish plants growing out of the dirt that had caked on her arms and face during the time she refused to bathe. Mrs. Hitzel read our third grade class a bunch of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle stories and Christy also read them to her students at Pinehurst Elementary School (and others?). 

Paul didn't have a copy of the book that enchanted him as a child, but he told us all about David and the Pheonix and his love for reading books when he was a youngster. 

Three Beautiful Things 06-13-2026: An Afternoon of Celebrating the Life of Bruce Larsen (1954-2026) in Three Parts

 1. At the request of Stu and Sue and with Sally's blessing, I served as the host/master of ceremonies for today's Celebration of Life for Bruce Larsen. I was much more nervous about hosting this celebration than I was when I officiated services for Aunt Lila, Mom, Everett, or Don Knott primarily because the other services were more traditional. I had a podium to stand behind. I didn't have to hold the microphone. Those who attended were sitting in neat rows and it was all familiar to me. 

Today's gathering was more informal. I hoped it would go all right. (It did!)

So, I came to the Lodge about an hour before things got underway and I made sure that the microphone was working and that I could hold the microphone, speak into it, and scroll the text on my tablet all at the same time. I find it easier to read from a tablet when I don't have a podium (as was the case when I officiated weddings for Scott and Cate, Julie Fether, and Taylor and Cosette) and I discovered, much to my relief, that I could hold the mic, speak, and scroll at the same time (I can also walk and chew gum) and so that helped calm my nerves. 

2. The turnout for celebrating of Bruce's life was terrific. The room was nearly full. Over two dozen members of the KHS Class of '72 were in attendance, along with other people from Bruce's life in Kellogg.  Sally (Bruce's soulmate and partner for over 27 years) was well supported by her son and an excellent showing of people who came over from Spokane/Spokane Valley where they were Bruce and Sally's friends. 

We spent most of our time this afternoon socializing while enjoying drinks from the bar and a fine spread of food provided by Kellogg's own establishment, Nocturn. 

We took a break from socializing and I kicked off a time of tributes and a toast at 1:15 by reading a condensed version of Bruce's obituary and then opening the floor to anyone who wanted to speak about Bruce. Lifelong friends Terry Turner, Scott Stuart, and Ron Jacobs reflected on Lars' life as did a great friend of his from the Spokane area, Dan Love. 

I then read Roger Pearson's superbly written tribute to Bruce, a terrific encapsulation of Bruce's life as a youngster in the uptown Kellogg neighborhood he lived in, at Lincoln School, and at the YMCA. 

Roger wrote a great story about Bruce and Terry Turner the night Idaho State defeated UCLA in the 1977 NCAA men's basketball tournament and brought his tribute into the 2020s with a touching account of two rounds of golf, including playing with Bruce in a tournament in Oregon which turned out to be the last time Bruce and Roger saw each other. 

I ended this part of the afternoon with a toast to Lars and then the whole room broke back into socializing and enjoying reunions and taking pictures, including one of about two dozen members of our high school graduating class. 

3. Many of us crowned this great afternoon of being together by heading straight across McKinley Ave. to The Lounge. 

The good vibes continued as groups of friends yakked with each other at tables and others yakked in smaller groups at the bar. I went back and forth between one of the tables and the bar and even found a little bit of time to yak one to one with Cas. 

I remained faithful to my post-transplant decision not to drink alcohol, but I'd say today was the most challenging non-alcohol day in the two years since the transplant. I would have loved to have joined my friends for a beer or a cocktail (although drinking a Bud Zero worked just fine) and I would have enjoyed enhancing my relief with a shot or two of Pendleton Rye or a can of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, relief that things went so well and that my low-grade anxiety about this day had disappeared. 

But, you know, I really do want the medication I take to ward off organ rejection to work unimpeded more than I want to drink alcohol and it's always good when I leave The Lounge to know I'm driving unimpaired.  

Three Beautiful Things 06-12-2026: Breakfast at Nosworthy's, Burger Night at the Elks, Chillin' at The Lounge

 1. With Bruce Larsen's celebration of life happening on Saturday (Kellogg Elks, 1:00), Roger flew into Spokane on Thursday and Stu organized a breakfast at Nosworthy's in Coeur d' Alene. A great group of guys from the Class of '72 sat around the table: Jake, Ed, Mike, Roger, Stu, and I. 

I've been reading people's comments online lately about how much they love chili omelets.  Nosworthy's prides themselves in serving awesome omelets, so I ordered their Blazing Saddle, a chili and cheddar cheese omelet. I'm sold. I will not only look for a chili omelet whenever I go out for breakfast, I'm going to work on making my ugly but tasty homemade omelets with chili and cheddar cheese. 

We finished eating, but we weren't finished yakking so we sat at tables in the outdoor dining area and shared more stories and praise for Bruce along with some other subjects and this post-breakfast time together put a cap on a great time together. 

2. By this afternoon, Terry and Nancy Turner and Don Windisch and Jeri Robinson arrived in town and PRESTO we had a full table of longtime friends at the Elks' Burger Night. Ed and Nancy, Terry and Nancy, Don and Jeri, Diane Hogan and Dennis Gravely, Mike, and I launched into more fun yakkin' and getting caught up with each other. 

3. The party moved across the street to The Lounge and the good times continued. It was a blast to relax, tell more stories, get caught up on news, and simply enjoy friendships, most of them, for me, having started over sixty-five years ago. 

Three Beautiful Things 06-11-2026: Final Touches, A Developing Love Story?, Back to the Wok

 1. I worked more on what I'll say and read at Bruce Larsen's Celebration of Life (Saturday, June 13th at 1:00 at the Kellogg Elks Lodge) and I think I'm done. Now all I need to do is practice reading from the tablet while holding a microphone. I'll find something around the house to sub for a mic. 

2. I'm not absolutely certain, but, to me, the opening chapters of Part III of Lonesome Dove strike me as the makings of a love story which gives this multi-dimensional novel yet another way to explore complications and complexity. 

3. I had fun fixing a tofu and vegetables stir fry with basmati rice. I hadn't had the wok in action for a while and not only was the food preparation enjoyable, my dinner was really good. 

Three Beautiful Things 06-10-2026: Preparing for Bruce's Celebration of Life, Deeper into *Lonesome Dove*, Memories of Pearl River, NY

 1. I spent much of the day preparing for my role as the MC of Bruce Larsen's Celebration of Life and sending out and posting reminders that the celebration is this Saturday, June 13th at 1:00 at the Kellogg Elks Lodge. 

2. When I wasn't thinking, writing, and editing, I made a ton of progress reading Lonesome Dove. I like the way Larry McMurtry sets up coincidental meetings between characters and the way those meetings move different plots of the novel along and how these meetings confront different characters with difficult choices to make and also trigger memories of past relationships and encounters between these characters. This book is, in part, about the way the past never disappears and carries weight that characters carry and wrestle with frequently. 

3. Even though my beer drinking days are over because of the ways alcohol can interact with the immunosuppressants I take to prevent rejection of the kidney I received, I enjoy it a lot when Debbie is in New York and texts me about a beer she is drinking and where she's enjoying it. Today she texted me from a brewery that used to be called Defiant, but is now Gentle Giant, in Pearl River, NY. 

I used to love going there with Debbie, especially because we always seemed to fall into fun conversations with whomever served us and they had smoked snacks that we liked a lot. 

So, knowing that Debbie was in that building, near the Pearl River railroad tracks, not far from a knitting shop she really likes, brought back fun memories and I could even imagine the taste of the beer I enjoyed there and the tasty snacks! 

Unlike the characters in Lonesome Dove for whom the past is often a weight upon their souls, going back to this past time in Pearl River lightened me, had me yearning to be back at this brewery with Debbie again. 

Three Beautiful Things 06-09-2026: Camry in Good Health, Reading While Waiting, Existentialism in *Lonesome Dove* (and Conversation Killing!)

 * My crack research and fact-checking team informed me that I made a mistake in my June 8th blog post and urged me to correct it. I taught Brit Lit at the U of O in the spring of 1986, not 1985. 

1. I took the Camry in today for a 60,000 mile service job and the guy at the service counter gave me two bits of good news. First, everything checked out great. Second, he told me, "You are taking very good care of this car."

2. This service job took a little over three hours and it was the best three hour waiting period I can remember thanks to the novel Lonesome Dove. For three hours of uninterrupted time, I absorbed the trials, camaraderie, heartbreak, brutal violence, cruelty, bravery, devotion, and other aspects of this epic story. 

The novel serves as a way of illustrating why the question, "Did you like it?" is nearly impossible for me to answer about a book, a movie, a piece of classical music, or other works of art. 

I do not like the violence, brutality, and cruelty that takes place at certain times in Lonesome Dove. 

I do, however, understand its necessity in telling this story truthfully. The novel portrays a world of ruthlessness as well as a world of admirable human persistence and endurance, of men working together to drive the cattle, protect one another, and to survive the difficulties of life on the Great Plains. 

So, yes, I read passages today that I wish hadn't happen and that I did not like. 

I read other passages that moved me, that made a deep impression on me, and that I did like very much. 

So, the question I ask myself as I read is not, "Do I like this book?", it's more along the lines of "How is this book affecting me, what feelings is it stirring in me, what's it making me think about, what is its impact?" 

3. A good example of the book having a deep impact on me is Chapter 65. It features July Johnson trudging by himself across the emptiness of the Great Plains. The emptiness of the landscape correlates with his own inner feelings of emptiness, his questioning not only if life as any meaning, but if it's worth living and whether he should end his own life. 

His ruminations upon emptiness and meaninglessness are at the core of existentialism and Chapter 65 is a profoundly existential chapter -- and echoes other existential passages in Lonesome Dove. 

(Note: This is the third novel in a row, the first two being So Far Gone and The Horse, that deal with the spiritual, mental, and emotional weight of isolation and loneliness -- more existential exploration.)

Reading this chapter took me back to Lou's Broken Wheel on East Cameron Ave. in Kellogg. I don't remember if it was our Thanksgiving break or the Christmas break, but it was 1973 and Roger Pearson, Steve Jaynes, and I were nearing the halfway point of our sophomore year of college. 

The three of us were enjoying a beer or a cocktail and getting caught up on what was happening for each of us at college. I know Steve was at the Univ. of Idaho. Roger was either at Linfield or had transferred to the U of Idaho. I was at North Idaho College. 

I, not having yet understood my ability to kill a conversation, told Steve and Roger that I was really into existentialism. 

And I was. 

The questions and explorations of the existential fiction I was studying at NIC were especially poignant to me after nearly being killed in July of 1973 in an accident at the Zinc Plant. 

Steve and Roger went silent. 

I suddenly realized this was not good cocktail/what did you do this fall at school talk at Lou's Broken Wheel. 

We changed the subject and went back to talking about more comfortable things (thank goodness). 

And now, nearly fifty-three years later, I still have the potential to be a conversation killer in social situations, so when I'm asked what I've been up to, I don't talk about going to the symphony, listening to lectures, attending a Science/Nature blook club in Spokane, reading the variety of books I enjoy, existentialism (for God's sake!) etc. and find other ways to answer that question that fit the social situation better. 

It's not a problem. 

And, in these social situations, I learn a lot I don't know about regarding what's happening in Kellogg and Shoshone County and what's going on with the different work forces in the Silver Valley. I hear stories about people's cruises, their logging history, truck driving, military service, restaurants, who has passed away recently or is in poor health, road trips, and a lot of other things that expand my world. 

I do my best, though, by remembering that evening back in 1973 at Lou's Broken Wheel, not to be a wet blanket, a conversation killer.  

I do my best not to be too different. 

Three Beautiful Things 06-08-2026: Coconut and Pineapple and Shrimp Slaw, Copper's Vet Visit, Tonight's Family Dinner

 1. For some unknown reason, I've fallen away from consulting cookbooks to prepare meals. As a possible first step toward getting back to doing some recipe cooking again, I got out America's Test Kitchen's book, The Complete Small Plates Cookbook. 

I was the host of this evening's family dinner and assigned dishes from this book (more on this in #3). 

I assigned myself a recipe entitled, "Shrimp Tostadas with Coconut and Pineapple Slaw". 

The ingredients of this recipe piqued my interest, but I didn't want to serve tostadas. 

My original idea for an alternative was to make shrimp and slaw rice bowls, but once I made the slaw and cooked the shrimp, I didn't see any need to serve them with rice and so I served this tostada topping as a salad. 

All I had to do was combine lime zest, lime juice, and coconut milk and add it, along with pineapple pieces, to a coleslaw mix I bought at the store. I strayed away from the recipe and added feta cheese crumbles to the coleslaw. I then cooked a pan of shrimp in coconut milk and lime juice, let the shrimp cool, added it to the slaw, and, once again, strayed from the recipe by topping the slaw with cilantro. 

The recipe called for jalapeno peppers, but our family is a house divided when it comes to heat in our dishes, so I put out a jar of pickled jalapeno slices for those of us who wanted heat to add to the slaw. 

My creation worked! 

2. Today was Copper's routine wellness exam with Dr. Cook. As I very well knew, Copper is losing weight and his weight loss has accelerated over the last few months. 

He's eating. And he's losing weight. He's down to 11 pounds now and just a couple of years ago he weighted as much as 19 or 20 pounds. 

Otherwise, Copper is doing well -- his heart sounded good, he is able to jump up on my bed, and as Dr. Cook examined his eyes and ears and felt his stomach, no problems jumped out at him. 

I asked Dr. Cook to give me an estimate of how long Copper might have before he passes away. 

Dr. Cook cautiously answered me by saying that if the weight loss continues, he might not last more than 6-10 months but was quick to say that we never really know. 

We are uncertain about Copper's age, but figure he's around seventeen years old, give or take. 

I decided not to have Dr. Cook do deeper investigation into what might be causing the weight loss.

I decided Copper and I will ride out this last stage of his life together and that I won't disturb his peaceful life with poking and probing and other interventions. 

3. We gathered for family dinner this evening at chez Woolum/Diedrich at 5:00. To start, I put out mixed nuts and Christy and Paul enjoyed an orange vodka and tonic cocktail and after some conversation about gardening and other topics, we dove into our small plates dinner. 

I assigned Carol to make a traditional Greek salad loaded with tomatoes, cucumber, feta cheese, onions, and more called Horiatiki Salata and Christy made the small plates cookbook's version of Texas Caviar, known also as Cowboy Caviar around here. 

We enjoyed these dishes and everyone also seemed pleased with my decision to serve Ginger Molasses cookies from Beach Bum Bakery complimented with vanilla ice cream for dessert. 

We started doing a new thing a couple of weeks ago. The family dinner host not only assigns what food each of us is to bring, the host also gives an assignment that leads each of us to bring something to read to the others and these readings give us a source of conversation and discussion. 

I gave this assignment for today: read a passage of prose that has the properties of poetry and that you consider poetic. 

Carol read a wonderful passage from a Barbara Kingsolver essay, "Memory Place". You can find this essay in Kingsolver's book, High Tide in Tuscon. 

Paul read a fun and fascinating article from the book Success with Words on the etymology and social background of the word rub, focusing to some degree on what Hamlet means when he says, "ay, there's the rub!"

Christy read a passage from a meditation by Kate Bowler entitled, "On Anti-Blessings" (did she read the entire meditation? I'm not sure.). Bowler's piece appears in a book that Suleika Jaouad wrote that includes her own reflections and those of 100 other voices, focusing on memory, fear, love, and rebuilding entitled The Book of Alchemy. As an added bonus, because the book emphasizes the value of keeping a journal, each short essay ends with a prompt meant to spark self-discovery through journal writing. 

I reached back to the spring quarter of 1986 when I taught the Survey of British Literature at the University of Oregon and read a passage from Mary Lavin's haunting and poetic short story entitled, "The Green Grave and the Black Grave".

Debbie initiated this idea of bringing passages or poems to read to family dinner and it's been awesome. 

Three Beautiful Things 06-07-2026: All Day Reading, Introspection, The Summer of 1992

 1. With breaks now and then, I spent almost the entire day reading Lonesome Dove and am increasingly gob smacked by how adroitly Larry McMurtry expands this story, introducing new characters, intersecting story lines, and creating fresh conflicts and frightening dangers. All the while, he keeps moving us deeper and deeper into the inner life of these characters, unfolding their memories, doubts, sources of trauma, guilt, regrets, pleasures, and more. 

2. One of Lonesome Dove's prominent characters, ex-Texas Ranger Captain Woodrow F. Call, is introspective. He often separates himself from the rest of the cattle drive crew in the evening and finds a quiet place to be alone and contemplate things. 

In the part of the book I read today, Call can't keep back his memories and regrets and disappointment in himself as he thinks about Maggie, a prostitute who was strongly attracted to Call and Call did not respond to her feelings, nor has he owned up to the strong possibility that he fathered Maggie's son, Newt, now seventeen years old and a part of the book's epic cattle drive. 

I stopped reading and meditated quite a while upon this sentence from Call's inner thoughts: "[Call] wondered if all men felt such disappointment when thinking of themselves."

3. Having a nearly all-day reading session like today transported me back to the summer of 1992. I had that summer to myself and for one stretch I read books almost non-stop. I was especially enthralled by Robertson Davies' brilliant Deptford Trilogy and read it with such vigor that I barely ate. I also read Brideshead Revisited, introduced myself to the hilarious stories of P. G. Wodehouse, and read more, but the titles escape me these thirty-four years later. 

My reading spell was broken when I took off from Eugene in August and drove to Kellogg the long way around via Eastern Oregon, Boise, Sun Valley, Stanley, Salmon, and on into western Montana where I visited Wisdom, Butte, and other towns that were settings for Richard Hugo poems. I accidentally discovered upon arriving in Bozeman that Leo Kottke and David Lindley had a concert that night and it was among the best shows I've ever been to. 

As I drove, I listened to the entirety of Bill Moyers' interviews with Joseph Campbell entitled, The Power of Myth. Mile after mile I was blown away and then, starting in 1993, these lectures became a central part of the classes Rita Hennessy and I taught together as a team for about three and half school years. 

I arrived in Kellogg for the KHS Class of 1972 20-year reunion, one of the very best parties I've ever been to and drew the summer to a close in September by spending eight days in Cambridge, MA, staying with Craig and Jill Thomas, and, among other things, seeing a baseball game in Fenway Park. 

What a summer that was! 

I'll keep reading, as best I can, as if it's July 1992 again. I doubt I'll do a Richard Hugo road trip this summer, but we'll see. And I know, in August, I'll enjoy another reunion with members of the Class of 1972 as we celebrate that this year the members of the Class of '72 have or will turn 72 years old. 

Three Beautiful Things 06-06-2026: Party for Beverly Jacobs, Cockroach Castle Reunion Planned, I Finished *The Horse*

 1. When Al Callahan eulogized Beverly Jacobs at the Kellogg Elks Lodge this afternoon, he made it clear that today's gathering was not a memorial, not a funeral, not even a celebration of life: it was a PARTY!

The room was packed with family, relatives, and friends and, indeed, the mood was upbeat and those attendance enjoyed the socializing, drinks from the bar, and the buffet table. 

As the party wound down, I popped over to The Lounge to lament our respective fantasy baseball woes with Cas and joined a table of friends who had come over from Beverly's party. The good cheer and upbeat vibes that began at the Elks Lodge carried over to the way people enjoyed each other at The Lounge. 

2. Liz, Jane, and I were great friends at North Idaho College and spent many lively and fun hours with Robert and Bacco (sp?) at their apartment in what became the cultural center of our lives, the Cockroach Castle. 

I haven't seen Liz since 1973 or 74. I have seen Jane as recently as about four years ago. 

But, this evening, we made a plan to have a reunion in July, along with Jane's twin sister Joan, at the Daft Badger for lunch.  It promises to be a joyous occasion! 

3. I returned home from The Lounge and immediately resumed reading Willy Vlautin's book, The Horse. 

This novel is about the tribulations, terrible decisions, and acts of love over the course of Al Ward's life.

In many ways, it's a study of the ravages of alcoholism and the terrible weight that isolation presses upon the human spirit. 

Al Ward is a guitarist and a respected and sought after songwriter who plays with a long string of ultimately doomed bands, some of whom play the casino lounge and bar circuit and some who tour well outside the confines of the Reno area. 

When Al Ward's great uncle Mel dies, he bequeaths a mine holding to Al in a remote location about four hours out of Reno. In his sixties, Al moves to the mine and lives in a rundown assay shack, writing songs, drinking tequila and beer, eating cans of Campbell's soup, and taking a daily walk. 

Out of nowhere one day, an old, blind, and scarred horse arrives, stands near the assay shack, and doesn't move, no matter the weather or anything else. 

The novel moves back and forth between, on the one hand, Al Ward reliving painful memories of suffering he endured at many stages of his life, of his long-standing addiction to alcohol, the handful of music successes he enjoyed as well as the many times bands disintegrated, the love he experienced at times, and the scores and scores of songs he composed over the past fifty years, and, on the other hand, his struggles as to what to do about this aged horse who came into his life. 

I spent the rest of Saturday, after the party, finishing Willy Vlautin's book, with occasional breaks to eat crackers, popcorn, and ramen and to work in spurts on the New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle. 

Three Beautiful Things 06-05-2026: Took It Easy Today, An Hour at The Lounge, A Bagel Dinner

1. Even though the visit was short and the news good, my visit with Dr. Bieber left me worn out. 

Yes, I did go uptown to pay bills and I did buy bagels and a Sunshine Muffin at Beach Bum Bakery, and yes, I did pick up a few items at Yoke's.

Then I napped on and off in the afternoon.

2. 3:30 rolled around and I blasted to The Lounge where Ed and I enjoyed a couple of beers and yakked about this and that. I saw Butch and Brian Moore. Cas and I did a quick rundown on our fantasy baseball fortunes. After an hour and a couple Bud Zeros, Ed and I both headed home. 

3. I sure enjoy toasting an everything bagel, spreading a layer of cream cheese on each half, topping the cream cheese with Olive Tapenade, and topping it all with hot pickled Jalapeño peppers. Just that one bagel prepared this way made a most satisfying dinner tonight and I accidentally drank a non-alcoholic IPA, Elysian's Easy Dust. 

Three Beautiful Things 05-04-2026: A Welcome Break Over the Summer, Chance Encounters, Debbie's Having a Good Visit

1. On my way to the clinic in Smelterville, I figured when Dr. Bieber walked into the examination room that he'd be in a cheery mood. 

And that he was.

As I reported last week in this blog, my labs looked solid to me and, thank goodness, to Dr. Bieber, too. 

My parathyroid number was a little high and Dr. Bieber told me to take a Vitamin D pill a couple times a week and we'll see if that brings down the number. 

Otherwise, it's clear that after two years, this new kidney is functioning very well, is at home in my abdomen, and things are going very well. 

Dr. Bieber wants to see me in three months and for the first time in at least two years, I get to enjoy a three month stretch with no blood work, no dental visits, no dermatology visits, no appointments at all (well, Copper has a check up at the vet on Monday, June 8th).

Every appointment I've had over the last two years or so has been a positive experience. 

My blood draws have been, too. 

Every professional I've seen has been easy to talk with, attentive to my questions, and consistently encouraging. 

All the same, I look forward to this break. 

2.  As I moved past page 300 today in Lonesome Dove, all of the traveling characters experienced chance encounters. Roscoe meets a feisty woman living alone as a farmer; Joe and July meet an insect expert turned evangelist; the cattle drive encounters water moccasin snakes; Elmira gets to know more about one of the men on the whiskey boat she's boarded as her means of escape from her life in Fort Smith.

All of these chance meetings deepen the story, unfold more about the characters, and have me increasingly absorbed in this epic novel. 

3. Debbie sent pictures from Cincinnati that uplifted me. Patrick, Meagan, and Debbie dined at a French restaurant and she sent a couple more pictures of views from the hills of Cincinnati looking at the moon and capturing a tender moment Patrick and Meagan shared. 

It not only makes me very happy to see Debbie enjoying her visit, I'm also very happy that Patrick and Meagan's decision to leave Portland and move to Cincinnati is working out so well. 

Three Beautiful Things 06-03-2026: Dental Cleaning, I Called Debbie, Reading Update

 1. I took a one block leisurely stroll to the dentist's office today and left with clean teeth and no problems to concern me. 

2. I called Debbie upon my return. She filled me in on Saturday's party in Roscoe, Illinois and about the relaxing time she's having in the Queen City (Cincinnati) with Patrick and Meagan. It's good to know her trip is going smoothly and that I could report that things are peachy here at the homestead. 

3. Right now, my main reading focus is back on Lonesome Dove in the daytime and once I finish the next day's NYTimes crossword puzzle in the evening.  I'm thoroughly enjoying how Larry McMurtry plots this novel as he moves between different places to develop the storylines of different characters, stories which are all happening simultaneously. I've kind of lost track. Right now I think it's a quadruple decker story, but maybe I'm shortchanging the number of stories he's got running at the same time. As the plots develop, the characters deepen, and the book, engrossing from the start, becomes more so. 

I read Willy Vlauten's The Horse when I go to bed. It's fascinating story about Al Ward, a man in his sixties, who is living in an old assay shack in a remote locale in Nevada (much like Rhys Kinnick did in Jess Walter's So Far Gone). Al looks back on his past life as a country music guitar player in various small casino and bar bands and song writer (he continues to write songs in his hermitage) and the sketchy encounters he had with different characters in the underworld of Reno. 

The novel includes a horse. This part of the book is a mystery to me right now and I'm curious to see how it shapes up. 

Our next book club selection is Our Moon and it's calling out to me to get started reading it. I just might see how it works to have three books going at once, but I might wait until I finish The Horse which is under 200 pages. I might finish it in the next day or two. 

Three Beautiful Things 06-02-2026: Paintings at the MAC, Lunch and a Surprise at Indaba, Book Group Discusses *The Mosquito*

 1. I decided to make an afternoon of it over in Spokane before our Science/Nature book group met at 6:00. My first stop was the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture where I wanted to see a new exhibit of European paintings from 1500-1900 called An Eye for Detail. I enjoyed this exhibit, especially the eyes of the subjects of the portraits and some of the humor in the different paintings. 

Most of all I enjoyed the contrast in style between the paintings in this exhibit and those in a larger room of James Lavadour's paintings in his show called Land of Origin. The European paintings were of recognizable subjects, painted in a more naturalistic style. Yes, some of the European paintings exaggerated their subjects by distorting faces and other features, but the scenes and portraits closely approximate what we would see if were at the different places or saw the person portrayed in the picture. 

By contrast, Lavadour's paintings do not represent what our eyes see when we look out over an Eastern Oregon landscape. Rather, the paintings are emotional renderings of these landscapes, focused much more on how the landscape might make us feel or on the emotional and mythological histories of these places. 

The European paintings give us the pleasure of seeing perspectives of scenes and persons familiar to us. (I can tell that's a brothel. I can tell that's Venice. I can tell that's a classroom. That's a man. That's a woman.) 

Lavadour's paintings invite us to feel danger, awe, reverence, and other subjective experiences, to think of landscapes as sources of emotion, not necessarily as sites of external beauty. 

2. I cruised N. Monroe. I'll go to Chowderhead another time once I've nailed down the relationship between apps on my cell phone and parking places! Zozo's was closed. So I returned to Kindred for a Korean beefsteak sandwich and a house garden salad. 

I headed south on Monroe to Indaba Coffee to review parts of The Mosquito in preparation for tonight's book group meeting. I enjoyed a latte and it turned out that a guy seated a few yards from me was someone I first met at Whitworth about fifty years ago when I was a senior and he was a freshman. It was Bruce Hafferkamp. I had seen Bruce in Spokane at a Shadle Park basketball game in 2017 and again in Kennewick at a Shadle baseball game in 2019 (he was the athletic director at Shadle Park High) and it was terrific to see him again and have a quick and solid conversation and an exchange of phone numbers. 

3. Members of the book group seemed to agree that The Mosquito was much more of a history book than a science or nature book. Pretty much everyone appreciated the history, but members wished he'd delved more deeply at certain junctures into the scientific aspects of the mosquito itself and other related topics that Winegard mentioned but left underdeveloped or unexplained. 

I saw the points these group members made and agreed. 

I didn't say anything about how I thought this was a fascinating nature book, especially since I think of human beings as part of nature, not outside it. In The Mosquito, we learn how mosquitos seriously and fatally affected humans who came into the mosquito's domains, but we also learned how humans affected mosquitos -- humans transport mosquitos and create breeding grounds for mosquitos by clearing land, compacting soil (creating standing water after it rains), collecting water in barrels and other containers, and in other ways. By trying to eradicate mosquitoes with insecticides (like DDT), humans also contribute to the resilience of mosquitoes as they develop resistance to these poisons. 

After attending this group for three discussions of three different books, my imagination and understanding has been most deepened by each book's examination of the relationship between humans and the soil, water, plants, animals, and insects of the non-human world of nature.

And, yet, we humans act as if we live apart from and are superior to the soil, water, plants, animals, insects, live as if they are not us, and we tend to value them for how we can use them, manage them, and/or control them, whether it's salmon, wolves, beavers, wetlands, apples, tulips, potatoes, cannabis, whales, eels, mountain lions, and more, all of which I've read books about, books which all deal in one way or another with human hubris and mercantile ambition. 

I'm left with questions, lots of questions, about human behavior and motivation, not only in humans in general, but my own behavior and motivations regarding nature, too. 

 

Three Beautiful Things 06-01-2026: Debbie is in The Queen City, *Lonesome Dove* Thickens, I'm Reading *The Horse* During *Dove* Breaks

 1. Debbie, Patrick, and Meagan arrived in Cincinnati. Patrick and Meagan's apartment has a balcony that overlooks the Ohio River and northern Kentucky and Debbie sent Christy, Carol, and me a short video and a couple of photos of the remarkable view.

By the way, it's always good news when a road trip is successful. 

2. I'm moving more deeply into Lonesome Dove and more characters, more conflicts, and more possibilities for storylines to cross are developing. I'm enjoying how McMurtry has plotted his novel so far. 

3. I've decided that I want to read a thick book at the same time I'm reading a shorter one. Last night, I started the smaller book that I will read alongside Lonesome Dove. After hearing Jess Walter interview Will Vlauen at a Northwest Passages evening a month or so ago, we bought Vlauen's latest book, The Left and the Lucky, but right now I'm reading another book we also bought, his novel The Horse. I'm a few pages in and I'm hooked. 

Three Beautiful Things 05-31-2026: The Control of Nature, A Whopper of a Family Dinner, We Understood the Assignment

1. With a feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction, I finished The Mosquito this evening. I'm not quite sure I can sum up what I learned from this book or what affected me most strongly -- which is to say I learned a lot and was rattled by much of what I learned about the mosquito, disease, evolution, genetics, world history, and the persistent effort of humans to control nature and how these efforts can seem successful and then often turn out to be futile or to have harmful unintended consequences. (I'm thinking at the moment of how DDT seemed to be the answer to eradicating mosquitoes, but the mosquitos adapted, the DDT became impotent, and the aggressive use of DDT turned out to have terrible consequences. as Rachel Carson examined in her transformative book, Silent Spring). 

I'll go to Auntie's Bookstore on June 2 and see what the members of the Science and Nature book group have to say about The Mosquito. 

2.  This morning before doing much else, I made a rice salad for this evening's family dinner. I already had a batch of rice in a container in the fridge and I decided I had enough good ingredients on hand that I didn't have to go to the store for anything else. So I put the rice in a salad bowl and added raw almonds, dried apricots, dried cranberries, red pepper, cucumber, Kalamata olives, feta cheese, tomato, fresh squeezed lemon juice, and olive oil.  It worked. 

I walked into Christy's house not really knowing what we were having for dinner, only that I completed my assignment to bring a salad. 

The dinner was terrific, built around a theme of spring flavors or, put another way, spring tonic foods. 

We started off with the perfectly delicious appetizer Zoe prepared: baked prosciutto-wrapped asparagus. 

Christy fixed a very tasty main dish: baked chicken breast with spring vegetables -- what spring vegetables, you might ask, did Christy bake? Radishes! Green onions! Pea pods! Cucumbers! Green beans! She made this potpourri of items zesty with lemon juice and dill. 

Carol added more zest to our meal with a side dish called Vibrant Greek Lemon Rice. That's a good name for it! It was vibrant! 

Using rhubarb snagged from our back yard, Christy made a very delicious baked rhubarb crisp and coupled it with a scoop of Oregon strawberry ice cream. 

3. Following Carol and Debbie's lead from a week ago, Christy gave us an assignment for tonight: we understood the assignment and each brought and read a favorite poem. 

Paul read two poems by e e cummings: "pity this monster, manunkind" and "next to of course god america i". 

Carol presented an Advent poem by Madeline L'Engle: "Love Incarnate Birth". 

I read a Lisel Mueller poem: "Brendel Playing Schubert".

Christy loves Judith Viorst's writing and read a poem of hers in honor of the life she lived with Everett: "The Pleasures of Ordinary Life". 

Zoe didn't bring a poem, so Paul read a sonnet he'd written to/about her several years ago. 

These poems ignited a lot of discussion and stories about all kinds of things philosophical, personal, educational, financial, theological, historical, biblical, and more. 

I left dinner stimulated and beginning to wonder if I'll come up with an assignment when I host family dinner next week . . .  stay tuned. 

Three Beautiful Things 05-30-2026: SURPRISE!!, Post-Party at The Lounge, Ah! So It's the Mosquitoes

1. The miracle to me -- and many others -- was that the secret never got out to Nancy, despite this party being planned and publicized starting five months ago! 

But, Nancy Hanson and her daughter arrived at the Elks Lodge around 3:00 and the many people gathered there erupted with a hearty SURPRISE! and Nancy had to step outside, gather herself, and walk back in as the celebration got underway in full force. 

It was a great social occasion. For those of us from the KHS Class of '72, it was a welcome opportunity to see one another.  

Partiers dove into the food laid out on tables near the kitchen and everyone had fun visiting and just feeling the good vibes of celebrating Nancy's 70th birthday. 

2. I wandered across the street to The Lounge and yakked with Cas for a while and before long Jake, Carol Lee, Tim, and Cindy strolled in we all shot the breeze at a table and after a while Ed and Nancy and an entourage of family and friends arrived, sat at another table, and the post-party party was on. 

The celebration vibes continued to build! 

3. Earlier in the day, I read another chapter of The Mosquito and I'll just say that thanks to microbiologists like Louis Pasteur, the development of the microscope, and other advances in science in the 19th century, scientists discovered that malaria and yellow fever were caused not by swamp air, but were transmitted by certain species of the mosquito. 

This was a huge breakthrough. 

Three Beautiful Things 05-29-2026: Enjoying Spokane, Loved the Palouse Highway, Birthday Shopping at the CdA Casino

1. I drove Debbie to the airport and then dilly dallied around Spokane a bit. 

I had gotten the idea in my head that Spokane's Maxwell House served breakfast and when I strolled in about an hour before opening time, a very friendly and eager to help guy behind the bar told me they open at 11:00 and don't serve breakfast. He gave me some very good suggestions for places to go (Swinging Doors, Bruncheonette, Elliot's). I thanked him and decided to go to the Wall Street Diner where I had last dined about fifty years ago when it was the Wall Street Cafe. 

I finished my Fiesta Scramble and headed down to the MAC where about nineteen European paintings I want to see are on exhibit, but today was also the first day of the museum's Artfest and I decided I didn't want to navigate the festival to get to the museum or go in search of a parking place. I'll go back on Tuesday in the afternoon before 6:00 book club and view the paintings then. 

I drove downtown to Auntie's Bookstore. I've been thinking about buying War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, and The Brothers Karamozov in hardback, but I examined the paperback copies at Auntie's and decided to buy them. I could only get the hardback copies online and decided not to mess with that and buy the books right there in front of me at Auntie's. 

2.  I had an errand to take care of at the Coeur d'Alene Casino and decided to go there on a route I thought would work but I wasn't sure. I stubbornly decided not to accept the always available help of my Maps app. Instead, I drove up Grand Blvd, turned west on 29th, and then right on Southwest Blvd. Southwest ended at Regal and I headed south, hoping I'd come to an intersection with the Palouse Highway. 

I did! 

I turned in a westerly direction on the Palouse Highway, stayed relaxed, and lo and behold what I thought would be true was! The Palouse Highway took me eventually to Highway 27 and I headed south and west, through Freeman and Rockford and coasted into the parking lot of the casino. 

That drive along the Palouse Highway and on to Rockford and the casino was a gorgeous combination of evergreen trees and farmland covering rolling hills. It made me very happy not only that I tried this route, but that I succeeded in getting to my destination relying on my memory of having looked at hard copy maps and didn't solicit the help of my map. 

3. I've delayed posting this entry on my blog because it involves the gift I purchased at the CdA Casino for Nancy Hanson in celebration of her surprise 70th birthday party on May 30th and I'm hoping she's opened her card from Debbie and me -- it has the gift in it -- by the time she gets to this post. But, if this post gives the gift away before she opens it, so it goes. I tried to delay long enough! 

At the casino, I spun reels for a while and left the casino with the same amount of money I went in with -- so I played all that time for free! I also went to the Red Tail Bar and Grill and enjoyed a bowl of beef stew with a half a garden salad and ordered a chocolate sundae for dessert. I was on Cloud 9. 

On my way out of the casino I took care of the errand I mentioned earlier.  For her 70th birthday I bought Nancy Hanson a seventy dollar gaming ticket, hoping that when she puts it in a machine that she'll turn those 70 birthday dollars into 700 or 7,000 dollars of winnings! 

Wouldn't that make her 70th birthday unforgettable! 

Three Beautiful Things 05-28-2026: Morning Blood Draw, A Trader Joe's Run, *So Far Gone* Covers A Lot of Ground

1. Yes, the lab I go to for blood draws at Kootenai Health was under heavy demand from a small horde of geriatric patients like me ready to get poked and surrender urine samples. The staff in that lab, though, are peerless in their efficiency. They also exhibit grace and kindness under pressure. None of us had to wait long (I happen not to mind waiting) which made me happy primarily because I was eager make my deposits, take my pills, and dash to the coffee stand to break my fast with a latte and chocolate croissant. 

Oh! I thought the results looked as good as the tests I had done about a month ago. 

2. I really like many of Trader Joe's dips, spreads, and dressings and bought several largely in preparation for Debbie's departure on Friday. I also bought oatmeal. peanut butter, ground turkey, hamburger buns, nuts, dried fruit, and other staples for when I'm living alone to supplement the meals I cook for myself. 

3. I stayed up past midnight and finished Jess Walter's So Far Gone. 

It's not a long book, but it has a lot going on in it. It examines the impact of going off the grid on the inward life of one character; it explores family, relationships within the family, the rifts that develop, and explores the messy and confusing nature of familial love and the ways family members hurt one another and raises question about whether familial pain can ever be overcome; I think it's a book about different expressions of masculinity, and in one storyline, explores how something like cowboy/militia masculinity coupled with Biblical literalism and the idea that we are in the midst of spiritual warfare can be a volatile and violent combination. 

This might be the first novel I've read that I thought could be called a Covid novel. Characters in this book carry non-medical and ongoing effects of the pandemic:  disillusionment, grievances, scars, and more that shape their lives. 

It's also very often a funny book, making it a rich blend of humor, violence, suffering, vengeance, loyalty, and courage. 

Three Beautiful Things 05-22026: I'll Wait, Surprise! Labs on Thursday, I Switched to *So Far Gone*

 1. In the next handful of days, I am going to finish The Mosquito, go back and reread parts of it, and listen online to a lecture Timothy C. Winegard, its author, delivered before I post about this book again. I made an honest and totally forgivable mistake in my post on this book yesterday and, even though I know things can be looser in a blog, I'd like to be more certain that I'm getting things right about mosquitoes and humans before I make my next post. 

2. A person from Kootenai Health called me today to remind me of my appointment on June 4 with Dr. Bieber and told me that I needed to have labs drawn in advance of that appointment. This message came to me on voicemail. 

Hmm.

I thought Dr. Bieber had told me the last time I saw him that the labs I had drawn on May 4 for my May 11th appointment at the transplant clinic would work for our June appointment. 

So I called Dr. Bieber's office to make sure he wants labs drawn again. 

He does. 

No problem. 

I'll dash to CdA and have blood drawn right away on Thursday morning. 

3. I posted a correction/clarification this evening of what I wrote about The Mosquito on my May 26th post. 

As it grew close to time to go to bed, I decided to put The Mosquito aside and read an easier, thoughtful, and more entertaining book: Jess Walter's So Far Gone. 

What a great choice. 

It's kind of a wild story, at least early on, with fascinating characters, a kind of bonkers storyline appropriate for the bonkers 2020s, and a riveting combination of danger and hilarity. So far, the story has moved me to feel afraid in some scenes and laugh out loud in others. 

It's been a while since I've read what, for me, is a page turner.  I'm enjoying that this one is set in a remote area north of Spokane, in Spokane itself, in Grants Pass, OR, and on a Christian militia compound in a remote area of Bonner County, Idaho. 

At the center of the story are two precocious and very likable children and I'm rooting hard for them to have everything turn out all right for them --  either because of or in spite of the very flawed adults in their lives.