Three Solemn Things 02-26 & 27-2026: Bruce to the ER, Visiting Bruce, Another Complication for Bruce

1. On Wednesday, February 25, around 10:30 p.m., Stu forwarded a text to me that he had received from our KHS classmate and lifelong friend. Bruce reported that in November, a biopsy revealed that the malignant melanoma, which had been in remission for many years, was back. He had two rounds of immunotherapy in mid-January and early February and at some time he caught a cold and it just kept worsening until on February 17th he went to the Valley Hospital ER in very tough shape. 

He's been in the Critical Care Unit ever since, but as you will read in a few minutes, on Friday or Saturday, he's being transferred to Deaconess Hospital in Spokane. 

2. Stu visited Bruce on Thursday morning with the idea that he and Bruce could have a talk about how Bruce felt and so on. 

That did not prove to be the case. 

Stu didn't know that Bruce was having a very difficult time breathing, that he could barely speak, nor did Stu know how tired Bruce is. He didn't expect Bruce to be out of it much of the time Scott was there. 

Scott and I worked to get the word out to our classmates and other of Bruce's friends just how seriously ill Bruce had become, with special emphasis on the fact that his cancer treatment was suspended and that the main concern was his respiratory difficulties. 

Today, Scott and I both visited Bruce. 

We both were glad that when Scott spoke to him, Bruce snapped awake and recognized us and looked happy to see us. Stu made some wise cracks about funny things from the past and while Bruce couldn't laugh out loud, it was clear from the look on his face that he enjoyed Scott's quips. 

On the other side of what we saw, Bruce had very little energy today and his breathing continues to be shallow and difficult. He managed to get some words out, but talking is very hard for Bruce. 

I came away from our visit feeling solemn about Bruce's condition.

I also came away very impressed with Sally's devotion to caring for Bruce. Bruce and Sally have been together for nearly 28 years and I could see how committed they are to one another and I thought I could see Bruce's gratitude for how Sally has been at his side for as many hours as possible during his time in the hospital.

3. As I was driving home from Cd'A after having the Camry serviced and eating lunch at Capone's, I pulled off in the chain up area at the bottom of the east side of the 4th of July Pass.

I knew some text messages had flown in.

Sally informed Scott and me that Bruce's kidney numbers were low and that he would be transferred to Spokane's Deaconess Hospital, I just learned, tonight (Friday). 

In light of this, she asked both of us not to visit Bruce. We both had plans to visit him on Saturday, Scott in the morning and I was going to be there in the afternoon. 

I left the chain up area and drove straight to the Inland Lounge and joined Jake and Ed at the bar where we talked about the serious matters at hand and enjoyed laughing about funny and wild stuff about Bruce in the past, the deep past and the recent past. I'm thinking of the golf lessons Bruce gave Terry Turner in Ed's Wildhorse Resort room just a year or two ago. I missed the lessons, but those who saw it agree: it was an epic Lars performance! 

Three Beautiful Things 02-25-2026: I Join Ed and Stu for Coffee, More Symphony Preparation, Macaroni Worked in the Soup

 1. Stu had a mission to accomplish this morning in the Silver Valley. Ed accompanied him.  They completed their task. They invited me to join them around 9:15 at The Beanery and we had a great time chewing the fat over coffee drinks of one kind or another. 

2. Today, I repeatedly played Robert Schumann's Manfred Overture. I'm entirely unfamiliar with it and want it to sound as familiar as possible when I hear the Spokane Symphony perform it Saturday night. I've gained much more familiarity with Clara Schumann's Piano Concerto and Brahm's First Symphony, both of which are also on Saturday's program, but I'll continue to listen to them, too. 

Getting ready to go to a symphony concert is, for me, the opposite of watching a movie.

Before I watch a movie, I don't want to know anything beforehand. 

Before I go to an orchestral concert, I want to know as much as I can learn about what's going to be performed. 

3. Macaroni in a curry soup?

I've had some leftover macaroni in the fridge for a couple of days. Tonight I planned on eating the shrimp curry soup I made a couple nights ago and thought why not see how the macaroni works in it.

After all, I love shrimp, love curry, and love macaroni. 

Turns out it was a happy marriage.  

Three Beautiful Things 02-24-2026: Brunch at Bruncheonette, Paintings of Butte at Whitworth, Fun Shopping and Delicious Ice Cream

1. I loved living in Maryland, but those three years, of course, keep slipping farther and farther away and I sometimes wonder if all of my memories are trustworthy. 

For example, did I keep reading about restaurants that served shrimp and grits? I know I never ate them in Maryland, or any other state along the Atlantic Ocean, but I kept thinking I ought to.

Today, I'm happy to say, I did it! I ordered shrimp and grits and I loved them. 

A little context: Christy, Carol, and I went on our monthly outing to Spokane today and I was in charge of today's activities.  

We made one essential group decision. I had two main activities in mind and wondered if Christy and Carol would like to have breakfast first and then go to our next activity or begin with the art gallery and then eat lunch. 

It was unanimous: breakfast first.

Actually, we had brunch first on W. Broadway, just off of Monroe St, at Bruncheonette. 

It's low key, simple medium-sized restaurant with daring and creative food choices and a full range of cocktails. 

I wondered, should I try Tamale Waffles, Chorizo Breakfast Tacos, Smoked Brisket Hash, or maybe Chicken and Waffle? 

My answer: none of the above. 

I ordered Shrimp and Grits. 

The shrimp were Cajun spiced accompanied by Andouille sausage, red peppers, and onion served atop a bed of creamy cheddar grits. I also ordered a side of two scrambled eggs and another side of toasted brioche with honey butter and strawberry jam. 

I loved this meal and decided to extend it into the evening by not eating all of my shrimp and grits, but bringing some home in a small container. 

That was smart. 

Christy enjoyed her Carrot Cake French Toast and Carol was very happy with the Roasted Veggie Scramble she ordered. 

I think we'll continue to try different restaurants on our monthly outings to Spokane, but it sure would be tempting to keep returning to Bruncheonette and work our way through more of the menu.

You can check out the menu here: Spokane Brunch Menu | Voted #1 for Brunch! | Downtown Spokane

2. We ate our brunch at a leisurely pace and then crawled up Maple St, Country Homes Blvd. and Wall Street, with a detour on Mountain View Lane, where my first wife and I lived fifty years ago, and on to College Road and made our entry into the Whitworth University campus.

I've been spending a lot of time over the last year or so exploring truths expressed non-verbally, primarily through visual art and instrumental classical music. `

Today, we visited the Lied Center for the Visual Arts, a most handsome facility,  at Whitworth and looked at Kelly Packer's paintings of Butte, MT in the Bryan Oliver Gallery. Accompanying most of the paintings were lines of poetry composed by her husband, Adrian Kein. 

Her paintings, to me, worked in two ways.

First of all, the painting represented the world of everyday houses in Butte as any one of us might see them. 

The structure of the houses, the things in the yards like trailers or a mini-trampoline, were all recognizable, as were power wires, street lights, slanted roofs, chimneys, awnings, and other details.

But the color schemes of these paintings did not represent what we might think of as photographic reality.

Packer painted yellow yards, pink sidewalks, multi-colored house exteriors and multi-colored windows, purple clouds, and used other unexpected colors to paint things otherwise familiar. 

How did I experience these unusual, vivid, and beautiful color schemes? To me these were the colors of dreams, longings, memories, hopes, disappointment, aging, and other elements of life in Butte expressed not in words but in the ways colors can help us feel different emotions, hopes, dreams, and grief. 

In other words, in much the same way as music, Kelly Packer made external what we experience internally. 

Were there one-to-one relationships between certain colors and certain emotions?

I don't think so. 

I did my best to let the paintings work on me in whatever way they did, trusting that the sadness I sometimes felt, the humor I experienced at other times, or the joy of possibilities that also hit me was genuine. 

I didn't wonder if my responses were right or wrong. 

3. After a stop near the intersection of Nevada and Hawthorne to drop off Christy's charitable donations, we buzzed to CdA and extended our outing a bit. 

Christy fueled her car at Costco. 

We did some shopping for fun and staple items at Trader Joe's. 

We then ended our day of fun visits at Panhandle Cone and Coffee in Midtown Coeur d'Alene. 

I crave ice cream all day, every day.

I resist these daily cravings and rarely buy ice cream for home and try to steer clear of places that serve ice cream.

Today, however, it was my idea to go to this teriffic ice cream shop in CdA and I thoroughly enjoyed my single scoop of ice cream that I've forgotten the exact name of, but it had "salted" and "peanut butter" in the title (I think). Christy was very happy with her Salted Caramel and Brown Butter Cookie ice cream in a waffle cone. Carol opted for a cup of green tea, in keeping with her current dietary plan. 

What an outing! Delicious food, some peering into our past, fascinating paintings, relaxing shopping, and a sweet conclusion. 

I am very happy we agreed to make our 2026 monthly outings centered on exploring and experiencing different aspects of Spokane. 

 

 

 

3. Christy had brought multiple bags of donations that we dropped off at a Goodwill near Hawthorne and Nevada and then we swooped into Coeur d'Alene for a fuel stop at Costco and some shopping at Trader Joe's.

We ended our Sibling Outing at Panhandle Cone and Coffee in Midtown Coeur d'Alene. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-23-2026: The Kenny Easley Story, I've Never Done A Lot of Things -- But This Week . . . ., Shrimp Curry Soup

 1.On Sunday I listened to Jeff Pearlman's podcast episode on Seattle Seahawk Hall of Fame inductee the late Kenny Easley. 

Kenny Easley died recently. 

I could make a long list of what Kenny Easley and I do not have in common: as a young athlete he was fast, quick, cerebral, passionate about football, and one of the best to ever play the safety position. 

We did, however, have one commonality: he did and I do deal with living with a kidney transplant because of Chronic Kidney Disease -- and in his case, kidney failure. 

His case was radically different from mine because he played football and the physical punishment and pain he experienced led him to take massive amounts of ibuprofen, a drug that can cause, especially in high doses, kidney damage. 

His failing kidneys forced him to retire at 28 years old in 1987 and fortunately he received a kidney transplant in 1990.

In telling Kenny Easley's story, Pearlman emphasizes the neglect Easley and other players experience while playing with injury, illness, and pain and how Easley responded to this neglect after his transplant. 

As it turns out, he also explains, without knowing it, why about ten years ago or so I quit watching football, a move I feel no self-righteousness about, that I would expect no one to join me in (football games can be riveting and very entertaining), and that had nothing to do with my kidney disease.  

I simply couldn't enjoy watching a game that was causing its players so much pain and serious injury.

When I quit watching, I didn't know a thing about Kenny Easley's story, but it is the next of many stories that moved me to make my decision. 

("Wait a minute!" you might be saying. "Didn't you watch this year's Super Bowl?"

"Yes I did. I decided to put my misgivings aside and join the family dinner party that Carol planned that day and it included watching the game.)

If you'd like to watch Jeff Pearlman's podcast, it's here: The NFL does NOT want you to know why Seahawks legend Kenny Easley died

2. I'm 72 years old and I've never watched a baseball game in Wrigley Field; never climbed to the peak of any of Oregon's Three Sisters; never cooked shrimp and grits; I've never seen a play at The Globe Theater in London or heard The Academy of St. Martins in the Field play live; I've never seen a ghost, gone deep sea diving, skied, dunked a basketball, bowled a 300 game, or drunk a pint of Pliny the Younger Triple IPA. 

And it took me this long, over 72 years, and it's only happened this week, to listen to the music of Robert Schumann and Clara Schumann and I was deep into my 71st year before I began listening with any focus to Johannes Brahms. 

I don't think I'll ever see the Mona Lisa or the Egyptian pyramids, go to Augusta, Georgia and watch The Masters or break bread and shoot the breeze with David Gilmore, but I am thrilled that when I shuffle off this mortal coil, I'll know I spent very fulfilling time listening in earnest and with joy to the music of Robert and Clara Schumann and devoted hours to enjoying Johannes Brahms. 

In fact, these three will be featured at this Saturday's (and Sunday's) Spokane Symphony concerts. As I've mentioned, I'll go on Saturday and my preparation this week to hear the three compositions, one by each composer, on the program has me eager to move beyond listening to them on Spotify and listening to music experts talk about them on podcasts and hear their masterpieces live. 

3. I wasn't sure my dinner soup idea would work tonight. 

For over ten years now, I've been making curry sauce with paste, coconut milk, soy sauce, fish sauce, and brown sugar. 

Tonight, I wondered what would happen if I made this sauce and then added a cup of chicken Better Than Bullion and turned the curry sauce into a broth for a soup. 

And, I wondered, how about if I sauteed white onion and celery, poured the curry soup broth over the top of it, and then added pieces of potato, cut up cabbage, green beans, and broccoli, cooked them slowly, and when these vegetables were tender, how about if I added about, oh, eight or so shrimp?

I got my answer tonight. 

It rocked my world. 

Scratched my itch. 

Bowled me over.

Swept me off my feet. 

Jolted me. 

Amazed me. 

Astonished me. 

It worked.  

Three Beautiful Things 02-22-2026: Mortality and the Divine in Classical Music, Listening to Leonard Oakland's Program, Preparing for Saturday's Symphony

1. To declutter the living room before Family Dinner a while back, I moved the book Christy gave me entitled Year of Wonder by Clemency Burton-Hill about five feet from the table next to the chair in the living room where I sit to read, write, and work puzzles over to the bottom shelf of our tv stand. The book is a day-by-day exploration of 365 pieces of classical music. The idea is to read Burton-Hill's reflection on the daily piece either before or after playing it (or both). 

Well, when I moved that book away from the chair, I might just as well have moved it to the top of Mt. Fuji. 

Today, I recoiled when I saw the book in a pile of book under the television. 

I realized I was just over two weeks behind, so I started to catch up. 

The music I listened to and read about ranged from explorations of the Divine to expressions of human confusion and suffering. 

This session of listening and reading felt autobiographical and expressed my experience with the Divine as well as my many periods of confusion and suffering better than any words could. 

The sacred music felt just right for Sunday and I experienced awe and wonder, including feelings associated with the gravity of all of our mortality, especially as I took in, for the very first time, a piece by Stefano Landi (1587-1639) called Homo fugit velut umbra which included, when translated, these lines: "We die singing, we die/playing . . .yet die we must./We die dancing, drinking/eating . . . yet die we must."

2. I started my day of listening in earnest when Leonard Oakland's weekly Sunday classical music show came on KSFC 91.9, the Classical station on Spokane Public Radio. I'm not sure, but I think lately Leonard has opened each show with brass music -- like the Canadian Brass or the Empire Brass -- and he did so again today, to my delight. I also very much enjoyed hearing Vivaldi's Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra No. 2. 

All of his selections were exquisite, but, as I write week after week, the greatest pleasure I derive from Leonard's Sunday program is hearing his voice and his mind at work, still strong, just as it was when I first heard him teach and speak over fifty years ago at Whitworth. 

3. I didn't listen to classical music every minute of the day -- I did eat and launder  bedding and check the weather in Valley Cottage, NY to see if I could get some idea of how the big storm in New York has hit Debbie and Adrienne's family. 

But, I did begin a focused project of music listening this evening. 

On Saturday, I'll be joining Kenton Bird and Gerri Sayler and Anne Franke, another person I knew and worked with back in my days at Whitworth, for dinner and a Spokane Symphony concert. 

I like to be familiar with the music I hear at symphony concerts, so tonight I listened twice to Robert Schumann's Manfred Overture. I'll listen to it more and I'll get familiar with Clara Schumann's Piano Concerto in A Minor. 

I'm somewhat familiar with the program's third offering, Brahms' Symphony No 1 in C Minor, but I'll listen to it more and I'll listen to Joshua Weilerstein's podcast episode on this composition over at Sticky Notes. If you'd like to hear his presentation, here's the link: Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast: Brahms Symphony No. 1

Three Beautiful Things 02-21-2026: Family Dinner Crab Feed, "What a Dump!", Delicate Balance: My Sleep and Gibbs' Needs

 1. Lately, most of our family dinners have been on Sunday, but this weekend we met on Saturday because it's the weekend of the Elks Crab Feed. I drove up to the Elks around 3:30 and purchased our crabs and Christy, Paul, and Carol arrived at 5:00. 

Christy brought a superb crispy fresh Caesar salad, Romaine lettuce with Parmesan cheese over the top and we had the choice whether to add croutons (awesome croutons) and anchovies (I loved anchovies on mine) and whether we wanted Caesar (my choice) or Italian dressing. 

Carol brought fresh and delicious ciabatta bread seasoned with terrific herbs. 

Our crab was fresh, tender, moist, and delicious and we had a great time cracking, pulling, making noises of satisfaction, and talking about a wide array of topics. 

2. I admit it. 

I'm self-conscious about how the house looks when I host family dinner. This is only a problem because I regard myself as a lousy house cleaner. I gave the sweeping, vacuuming, cleaning of surfaces, spiffing up of the bathroom, and clearing up of the piles of papers and books and other things I like to have out in plain sight a strong effort, but I look at the areas I've cleaned and always think the job could be done better. 

No one hassles me these days about how crummy I spiff things up, so this sense of falling short is coming from within me. 

Luckily, when Christy, Carol, and Paul arrived, not one of them drew upon the movies and said in their best Bette Davis (Beyond the Forest) or Elizabeth Taylor (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf) voice, "What a dump!". 

3. Here's what else is on me. 

First of all, the good news. Sleeping later than I used to has helped improve the mild vertigo/dizziness/lightheadedness/brain fog I've been waking up with over the last eight months. 

But, there's another complicating factor. 

His name is Gibbs! 

Now, for me this is sleeping in: Saturday morning I didn't get out of bed until about 8:45. 

I discovered that Gibbs had needed to go out earlier.

I could tell from the quantity of what he voided that he'd been holding his solid and liquid waste for a long time. 

He rarely goes in the house, by the way. 

So, I need to continue to get the sleep I need and also I need to do whatever it takes to make sure Gibbs goes out back in a timely manner. 

Gibbs and I can work together and make this work! 

He's a very good boy. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-20-2026: Recorded Marches Return to My Life, Tax Returns Accepted, Friday Afternoon at The Lounge

1. Leonard Oakland played two or three marches at the end of his classical music show this past Sunday. A day or two later, Preston Trombly played a march on his show. 

I hadn't heard marches played on classical music radio before and it uplifted me. 

Why?

Hearing these marches transported me back to when I was a youth and, through the Columbia Record Club, our family possessed an LP of marches called The New Andre Kostelanetz Wonderland of Sound: Star Spangled Marches. 

From the time that album came through our front door on through high school, if I had the house to myself, from time to time I played these marches and would watch myself in a mirror we had in the living room conduct Kostelanetz's orchestra. 

I loved playing marches in band, loved the baritone horn parts in these marches, and loved hearing them played on this LP. 

So, hearing Leonard Oakland and Preston Trombly play marches on the radio made me wonder if our family still has the Star Spangled Marches in its possession. 

I texted Carol, our family archivist, and she looked at the LPs archived in hers and Paul's basement and lo and behold, yes!, we have the album. 

I don't have a turntable, though. 

But, no need to mope around about that. 

There's YouTube! 

Someone uploaded this album being played, with the great pops and hisses our vinyl LPs made, on YouTube and it won't be long until I play the album, let it get me fired up, and, who knows? -- I might resurrect my orchestra conductor fantasy from when I was a boy and a teen! 

Want to check it out? Here's the link: The New Andre Kostelanetz – Wonderland of Sound Star Spangled Marches

2. I like to file our income taxes as early as I can for no other reason than I don't enjoy having that task hovering over me when I put it off. 

I dutifully started a Taxes 2025 folder and as each income report came in the mail, I put it in the folder. 

But Debbie's W2 from the Kellogg School District never came, so earlier in the week, Debbie called the district office and I went over and picked up a copy of it. 

So today I got them done and before long I got that most welcome message from both the federal government and Idaho's: Return Accepted.

3. Taxes filed, the two Bud Zeros I drank when Ed and I met at The Lounge were especially refreshing. It was a good hour at The Lounge. Seth and Cas were talking baseball when I arrived and I got in on a little bit of it. It was Wallace Day at The Lounge and so I got to yak a little with Rob Gillies and Don Beehner, baseball teammates from the American Legion days. Doug Y. wanted to know what was new in the Sunnyside neighborhood this week -- he asks me this on Fridays -- and I could only report that a logging truck that had spilled its load and was parked up by McDonald's on Wednesday. 

I got caught up on the timetable for Ed's cancer treatment. He's getting close to having a pill treatment come to an end at the end of April. It's good news. This treatment has been effective and has been a source of ongoing discomfort for Ed. He continues to push through it, but it'll be good not to have to push himself when this therapy concludes. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-19-2026: (Valerie Saari's Obituary) Gibbs Gets Groomed, Great Appointment with Dr. Bieber, Learning More About Music

A brief prologue: Our beloved KHS Class of 1972 classmate Valerie (Saari) Young died on February 7th and today her obituary appeared at the Yates Funeral Home site. Her Celebration of Life will be held on March 21st from 1=3 at the Blackwell Hotel, 820 E. Sherman in Coeur d' Alene. Here is the link to Valerie's obituary:  Obituary information for Valerie Joyce Young

And now, today's blog post: 

1. We should all have a place to visit in our lives where someone is as glad to see us as Robin is glad to see Gibbs at Mutley Makeover. 

I think in his own canine way, Gibbs picks up on the boisterous welcome Robin gives him and he is happy and excited to be at the groomer. 

I always feel good leaving him with Robin. 

And, when I returned to pick up Gibbs up a couple hours or so later, he was leaping nearly as high as my waist, happy to feel clean and groomed and happy at the prospect of returning home. 

For Gibbs, it's all good. 

2. Dr. Bieber, the nephrologist I see at Kootenai Health (he comes to Smelterville once a month), is  much more low key than Robin. 

When I walked into the exam room, he didn't say anything like, "Oh! Billy, Billy, Billy! It's sooo good to see you" in a special voice reserved for his patients. 

No, Dr. Bieber got right down to business and I told him that when I get up in the morning, I continue to feel -- well, I don't know exactly what to call it - dizzy? foggy brained? light headed? groggy? wobbly? 

This sensation is not as strong as it was last summer and into the fall. Back then, I sometimes couldn't walk straight and the sensations in my head would last much, sometimes most, of the day. 

I used to try to be out of bed in the morning between 6 and 7 o'clock, but it's helped this problem to sleep longer in the morning until about 8 or 8:30. 

Dr. Bieber thought it might also help if I reduced the dosage of one of my meds. 

I'll try that. 

It would be fantastic if this experiment works, even though these sensations have not kept me from doing the things I want and need to do, I'd be very happy to feel clear-headed first thing in the morning. 

Now the awesome news: as Dr. Bieber and I reviewed my lab results, he not only told me how happy he was with them, he said he couldn't imagine me doing much better. 

Most of my numbers are stable, others have improved (cholesterol and protein in my urine), the viruses they always check for are negative, the tests I've taken to assess rejection risk have shown me to be not at risk, and my tacrolimus levels are right where the docs want them. 

Everything looked great. 

I see the transplant team in Spokane in mid-May for my 2nd anniversary check up. 

I'll see Dr. Bieber a couple of weeks after that so that he and the transplant team and I are all on the same page. 

I might very well be moving toward the promised land of labs every three months, Dr. Bieber every six months, and the transplant team once a year. 

Dr. Bieber was all smiles as we wrapped up our short and most positive appointment. 

I was so happy I drove straight to Silver Peak Espresso and bought myself a 16 oz triple latte. 

3. I listened to couple more Great Courses lectures today and it's starting to sink in what made Beethoven such a titanic figure in the development of classical music and I'm beginning to understand the impact he had on composers who came after him and formed what we now call the Romantic Period. 

I learned how composers, following Beethoven's lead, put self=expression ahead of writing compositions within the demands of forms they had inherited and figured out ways to make these compositions coherent while working outside of traditional structures. 

I learned more about Schubert and The Elf King, a gorgeous piece of program music.

I learned more about Chopin devoting himself to miniature compositions and the intricate beauty of his etudes, preludes, nocturnes, and other genres. 

I'm not sure I'll ever be able to take in and remember all the technical details about structure and form that Professor Greenberg covers in these lectures, but I'm learning more about music history and the genius of one composer after another, making the time I'm committing to listening to this course a most worthwhile undertaking -- in fact, it's a source of joy, just the kind of learning and enjoyment I had hoped I'd give myself over to in my retirement. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-18-2026: Early Morning Snow -- Should We Stay or Should We Go?, Easy Drive to Airway Heights, Spinning Reels and Eating Lunch

1. Big day today. 

Ed, Jake, and I all laid modest wagers on the Seahawks and our plan was to go to the Spokane Tribe Casino today and pick up our winnings. 

Then play. 

When I woke up around 7:00 this morning, nearly the first thing I did was check if anyone had posted on the Facebook group called 4th of July Pass Info/Discussion. 

At this hour today, people who'd been on the pass strongly recommended other drivers to stay home.

They reported jack-knifed semis and blocked lanes. One guy described it as a sh*t show. I texted Ed and then he called me to say Jake wanted to keep our plans, 

Ed agreed. 

He thought things would improve soon. 

I trust their experience and knowledge and had no problem agreeing that, yes, we would go. 

2. Before talking with Ed, I checked the sidewalks in front Christy's house and mine. 

I decided I wanted to shovel them, so I told Ed that I'd arrive at his place once I shoveled our sidewalks and I knew I also needed to take care of Gibbs and Copper and remember to take my morning pills.

I got everything done, arrived at Ed's shortly before 9:00, and we piled into his pickup and drove to Rose Lake Junction where Jake awaited us at the gas station on down Highway 3. 

Indeed, by now, the freeway was free of snow. 

Any semis that had been jack-knifed were no longer in sight. 

We had an easy drive to the casino.

3. We arrived and immediately cashed in our winning tickets. 

I beelined straight to the coffee stand for a big latte and a thick slice of banana bread with nuts. 

I then hopscotched around the casino floor, masked and wearing vinyl gloves, and enjoyed playing games that were new to me and revisiting old favorites. I enjoyed the suspense, the ups and downs of winning and losing I almost always experience. 

Around 1:00 the three of us met in the sports bar area and, like the last time we visited this place, I enjoyed a smashburger with Swiss cheese and a salad's worth of tomato, lettuce, and onion piled on it. I also enjoyed my fries. 

We messed around for about a half an hour after lunch. 

I had fun childhood memories wash over me as I played the Casper the Friendly Ghost machine and even managed to hit a wheel spinning bonus. 

Fun time. 

Easy drive back to Rose Lake and on to the Silver Valley.

None of us had big winnings to brag about, but no one came out of the casino wearing a barrel either. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-17-2026: Torn: On the One Hand and On the Other, Comforting Shrimp Stir Fry

1. I was torn between two things today: I wanted to drive to Whitworth University and hear Kelly Packer talk about her paintings of Butte, see the paintings, and read the poems accompanying the paintings, written by her husband, Adrian Kien. Christy, Carol, and I will go see this exhibit on Feb 24 and I thought hearing Kelly Packer's 5:30 talk would be illuminating and something I could share with my sisters. 

2. On the other hand, I was tired. 

I'd be going to Spokane with Ed and Jake Wednesday morning. 

I didn't know if I really wanted to drive from Spokane to Kellogg again in the dark. 

I stayed home. 

I rested. I started a kitchen cleaning job. I enjoyed Gibbs on my lap. I created a list of places Christy, Carol, and I might go for breakfast on Feb 24 and sent out that list. Copper and I listened to the beginning of a lecture on Beethoven. 

I went to bed early, disappointed not to hear Kelly Packer, but glad not only for the rest, but for the fact that our February Sibling Outing next week will include a visit to this exhibit. 

3. I also comforted myself with a delicious shrimp stir fry that included onion, celery, broccoli, mushrooms, spinach, chicken gyoza potstickers, and basmati rice. 

Such warming and delicious food took some of the edge off of my disappointment. 

I'm sure glad the occasional Thursday symphony lectures I enjoy take place at noon. 

I know if Kelly Packer's talk could have been earlier in the day, my energy would have been better and I would have gone for sure. 

It's all good. 

I could, but I simply don't push myself to do everything I want to. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-16-2026: Worship in London, Lab Results Look Promising, Anniversary Family Dinner

1. It filled me with joy to learn that Adrienne and Jack worshiped at Westminster Abbey on Sunday. 

2. Unless I'm forgetting something, I think all of my lab results from Friday are in and I'll be heading to my appointment with Dr. Bieber on Thursday optimistic that he'll tell me that the results show both stability and some improvement. 

3. We celebrated Taylor and Cosette's second wedding anniversary this evening. It was a special family dinner. Christy organized it around sirloin steaks that Paul cooked and in addition to the steaks, we started with shrimp cocktail and, for the dinner itself, I contributed a green salad, Carol fixed a very good potato dish, and, for dessert, Christy brought a strawberry swirl cheesecake. 

Bucky seemed grateful that his mom and dad got married and joined in the celebration by demonstrating that he can walk and by eating the different food items placed on his highchair tray. 

It was a fun evening full of conversation about a wide array of topics, both serious and jolly. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-15-2026: Christy's Flavor Packed Granola, Leonard Oakland Played Marches, Enhancing Saturday's Soup

1.  The granola Christy made at home and put in my Valentine's Day gift bag was loaded with flavor. I especially enjoyed the raisins, dried fruit, and walnuts. 

2. I listened to Leonard Oakland's classical music program on Spokane Public Radio at ten o'clock and the rousing conclusion of his show featuring "I Love a Parade", "Col. Bogey March", and "Strike Up the Band" came as a rousing surprise, not what I thought I'd hear after two hours of Beethoven, Baroque music, and other, to me, more expected classical pieces. 

3. I thought I'd see what it would be like to add Trader Joe's Chicken Gyoza Potstickers to the Chicken Thai Noodle soup I made yesterday and they were an awesome addition. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-14-2026: Gibbs Joins the Spokane String Quartet, About This Blog, Chicken Vegetable Noodle Soup

 1. I met the appointment I had at noon today to listen to Spokane Public Radio's program "Concert of the Week". This show features recordings of local and regional live concerts. 

Today, the featured concert was from Sunday, February 8th when the Spokane String Quartet played at the Fox Theater. 

The quartet opened with Haydn's String Quartet No. 66 in G Major and then played Bartok's String Quartet No. 1 in A Minor. The spirit and emotional content of these two pieces stood in contrast to each other, with the Bartok quartet being a much more solemn and melancholy piece.

The concert closed with Robert Schumann's String Quartet No. 1 in A Minor. 

Soon after this composition got underway, the quartet became a quintet: the fifth member was Gibbs, adding his protective barking to the more melodious sounds of the two violins, viola, and cello. 

Gibbs was protecting me from Christy who was delivering a bag of Valentine's Day sweets to me and next door neighbor Jane and, I think, Jane and Christy conversed for a while and Gibbs had to protect the house from the potential danger of spoken human conversation. 

Gibbs seemed under rehearsed. 

He also seemed to want to pull Schumann into the 20th century when composers experimented more and more with dissonance and irregular rhythms and tempos. 

But, the string quartet wasn't in the mood for Gibbs' avant garde contributions and I think that very dirty look from the cellist might have shut Gibbs up. 

2. Fellow Whitworth alum and forever friend Deborah and I texted back and forth today about posterity. She has written two books via Storyworth about her life, values, family, interests, pet peeves, travel, hopes. She had a set bound for each of her grandson's, hoping that at some point in their lives they would be curious what their grandmother thought, valued, and experienced. 

She asked me if I had considered doing something similar with my blog. 

I haven't. 

But her question got me thinking about what this blog has become to me. 

kellogg bloggin' and I will celebrate our 20th anniversary in October. 

I'd say that even though I've never come right out and said so, that this blog has been about what I was doing day to day while struggling with mental health problems until they miraculously vanished in mid-2009; it's been about my day to day life while living with Chronic Kidney Disease and then being listed for a transplant; in 2020 and on into 2021 it became a COVID blog, documenting how I kept my life meaningful and fulfilling while living very cautiously, mostly indoors, especially during the worst of the pandemic; more recently, I've hoped readers would see that I'm documenting how I've been living with a kidney transplant and all that come with it; and, finally, since 2018, when Debbie took a long term sub job in Eugene and then for months long stretches when Debbie has been helping family back east, this has been a blog about living alone for months at a time. I've been determined all this time, even when alone and quarantined (my choice), to make the most (or close to the most!) out each day and write about it. 

I have come ardently to believe that this positive writing, whatever its quality and whether or not it's interesting to others, has contributed mightily to the success I've had living on an even keel and enjoying so many things in my life, especially over the last, oh, eight years. 

By the way, one of the sources of great pleasure and happiness in my life from about 2011 until the transplant in May 2024 was drinking a wide array of craft beers in a most enjoyable variety of places. 

I miss that. 

But, thank goodness, hard as it might be to believe, there's more to life than beer! 🍻🍻🍻

3. After all, there's soup.

Last night, I had fun making a chicken and Thai wheat noodle soup.

I began with bacon. Once it had fried in the Dutch oven, I pushed it up the side of the pot and cooked chopped onion, celery, red pepper, chopped carrot, and a few chicken tenders. Later I added chopped zucchini and sliced mushrooms and when these ingredients had cooked up to my satisfaction, I added a quart of chicken broth, two packages of Thai wheat noodles, and frozen chopped spinach. 

I salted the soup, let it cook very slowly for a half an hour or so and ladled it into a bowl and added a few shakes of liquid amino. 

The vegetables and noodles worked great. The soup's warmth was a great comfort, as was the chicken. 

Christy gave me a bag of peppermint-y cookies, along with granola and a sweet chex mix, and the cookie was a perfect dessert. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-13-2026: Blood Draw and Stable Numbers, Will Vincent Van Gogh Help Me Keep Track of My Checkbook?, Burgers at the Elks

1. Unlike yesterday morning, today I unfolded myself slowly to a sitting position on the edge of the bed at 6:45 a.m. and gave myself a little pep talk, creaked liked the rusted Tin Man to my feet, brushed my teeth, ran a brush through my hopeless hair, and talked myself into getting on the ball and driving to CdA for labs. 

I let Gibbs out, put food in his dish and Copper's, filled a water bottle, gathered up the other things I needed and at just after 7:30 I blasted down Cameron Ave, merged onto I-90, and continued to wake up as I drove over the 4th of July Pass, into Coeur d'Alene, and eased into a parking spot at the lab. 

I'd been fasting for twelve hours and once I was in the waiting room, I could see the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow: soon after the blood draw and peeing in a cup, I'd be seated at a window, having made my order at the titanic Big Blue Coffee Co., and I'd be eating a heavenly chocolate chip croissant and drinking a velvety 16 oz latte. 

All that happened but the really gratifying payoff was still to come. 

A couple hours or so later, my lab results started parachuting into my phone and I am thrilled to say that from my non-professional, amateur nephrologist point of view, the numbers looked solid and stable. I rode the wave of joy I felt receiving that news on through the rest of the day. 

2. I didn't leave Cd'A right away. I had a few things to do: I fueled the Camry at Costco; I made some delicious purchases at Trader Joe's; I went through the car wash at Squeaky's; I drove home. 

I discovered yesterday that I have either misplaced my checkbook in the house or else it fell into the wastebasket near where I write out checks and is now in a plastic garbage bag deep in landfill somewhere. 

I had no problem determining what checks were unwritten in the book of checks I can't find and called the credit union and put a stop payment on those checks just to be on the safe side. 

Soon after that, a small parcel arrived on the porch. 

It was my new checkbook cover. 

My checks will now be in a cover decorated with Vincent Van Gogh's The Starry Night. 

My hope is that Van Gogh's bold colors and shapes will make my checkbook stand out in the midst of all the other mundane colors and shapes in the area where I pay bills and make it less likely that I won't be able to find it. 

3. Nancy, Ed, and I met at the Kellogg Elks tonight for burgers. It was a relaxing and fun time. We saw some longtime friends. We had superb conversations. And, the real topper? The burgers were awesome and I thoroughly enjoyed the fries. We strode across the street after dinner to The Lounge and had more fun. I saw Becky for the first time in ages. We had fun yakkin' with Bob. Men flew at high speeds on a tiny sled down a steep, curvy ice course on the television. 

Oh! And, by the way, after I returned home from CdA, Debbie called and we got to spend some time yakkin' and not figuring anything out. It's good we're both used to not having things figured out and can move forward not knowing what we're doing. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-12-2026: No Blood Draw Today, Updates from Debbie and *People* Interviews Our Niece, Tofu is Faithful and Came Through Again Today

 1. It's blood draw time again. I have an appointment with Dr. Bieber a week from today and, ideally, I would have gone to Coeur d'Alene this morning and had it done. 

I need to be finished with these blood draws by no later than about 9:00 a.m. because I can't take my 8:00 meds until the blood draw is completed. 

Haven't I explained this in other blog posts?

Starting in about July of 2025, I began waking up every morning with a mild headache and most mornings I was unsteady on my feet and my mind was foggy. These symptoms always diminished as the day progressed and didn't keep me from doing the things I needed to do: cook, feed Copper and Gibbs, shop, drive to CdA for blood draws and Spokane for appointments and specialty blood draws there, nor did these symptoms stop me from having fun on Winning Wednesdays! 

I did, however, discover at some point, that everything went better if I slept a little longer in the morning than usual.

For quite a while, it was my habit to be up and an 'em around six in the morning, sometimes a little later. 

That wasn't working any longer and it has helped me a lot to sleep until 8 o'clock or so.  

This morning I woke up around 7. It would have been a great time to get up, take care of Gibbs and Copper, and head to CdA.

I knew, however, I needed more sleep and I didn't get up until about 8:30 or so -- too late for labs. 

Therefore, I'll go to CdA tomorrow, no matter what! 

2. My need for more sleep turned out to be fortuitous.

Just as I was sitting on the edge of the bed, petting Copper, and clearing the cobwebs out of my head, Debbie called. 

She updated me on what's going on in her world, which I always appreciate learning, and I let her know that I was dong much better than I had been over the weekend. 

Adrienne and Jack will be away, starting Saturday, so for the following week she'll be taking care of Elloise and the dog and two cats of the house. 

Later in the day, I discovered, just as Debbie texted me about it, that our niece Allison is featured in a People online story. She just gave birth to her second baby and she had posted a video on Tik Tok about her postpartum meal prep -- 72 hours' worth of food. 

Someone at People saw the video. People reached out to her and the article is up. It's right here. 

If you follow this link, keep scrolling down. You'll see the video, a handful of pictures, and the story, about twenty paragraphs long. 

3. I hadn't had the wok out for a while. Today, I took a break from fixing soups and because I had tofu in the fridge, I fixed a vegetarian stir fry.

I tried something a little different in making this stir fry. 

I fried the tofu first and once it was lightly golden, I went to work on the white onion, celery, sugar snap peas, green beans, mushrooms, and yellow pepper. I also cooked a batch of basmati rice. 

Eating this stir fry, it made me very happy to know that my forty-two year relationship with tofu is secure and that tofu always comes through for me, even if I am neglectful and forget for months at time to buy some and bring it home. 

Tofu is faithful. 

Tofu is always in my corner. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-11-2026: Getting Out Again, Lunch and Reels, Dream Pop Group Luna Takes Me Back to LCC

 1. Driving to Spokane yesterday, navigating the night driving just fine, and feeling so much better being out and about than I had felt at home inspired me, on the spur of the moment, early this afternoon, to drive to the Coeur d'Alene Casino and enjoy lunch and spin some reels for an hour or so and drive back home. I felt great the whole time. 

2. I ate a simple and very satisfying lunch: beef stew, garlic bread, and a half a garden salad. I then had a fun time playing a variety of machines (low stakes, as always) and managed to come home with a little more money in my wallet than I left with. I did what I can to protect myself and others against illness. I masked up and wore vinyl gloves while on the casino floor. 

It was all very relaxing and I had an easy drive home. 

3. With some intensity, I've been listening to classical music daily, usually for hours at a time, and I've been listening to a lecture series, doing my best to learn how to listen to and understand this magnificent music. 

Today, I took a day off. 

I returned to a LoFi subgenre sometimes called Dream Pop and listened to one of my favorite albums, Luna's Bewitched. The subjects of several of the songs are low energy slackers. They actually remind me of some of the guys I got to know, especially at LCC, in the classes I taught starting 35+ years ago. Nice guys. Mellow.  Non-committal. Wanting to get along, enjoy music, play hacky sack, toss frisbees, smoke weed, eat shrooms, go to shows, play around a little with ideas in class, but, all in all, pretty much coasting. They were chill. Those with dogs treated them very well. 

Sometimes some of these guys would drop out and then reappear again and, in many cases, something clicked. They'd become hungry for something more than chillin' and slackin' and started to add some seriousness to their lives.  

They taught me a lot, without knowing they did, about being young, male, and a bit at bay -- cagey enough to find ways to get by -- get food, fuel, weed, digs, cds, cassettes, into shows -- and I found myself not wanting to set them straight with proclamations about "when I was your age", but actually you know, I envied them a little bit. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-10-2026: Marshalling Energy, Unexpectedly Superb Conversations, The Concert

 1. Today, for about eight hours, I fervently hoped that I would feel energetic and well enough to drive to Gonzaga University to attend this evening's Gonzaga Symphony. I ate a huge breakfast. I rested. I napped. I did all I could to charge my inward batteries.

I succeeded. 

By about 4:00 or so I felt a surge of confidence that I could make the drive, be awake enough to enjoy the concert, and return home safely. 

My confidence was warranted and I arrived plenty early to the Myrtle Woldson Performing Arts Center, purchased a snack, drank a bottle of water, and found the seat I had purchased for this concert. 

2. My good fortune increased when the woman whose seat was next to mine asked me if I was connected to anyone playing in the Gonzaga Symphony.

I replied, "No. I just love music. How about you?"

She replied, "No. I play violin in the Spokane Symphony."

It was about ten or fifteen minutes before the concert began, and we had a superb conversation about the Spokane Symphony's program on Jan 31, books, theater, Shakespeare, music, movies, Slings and Arrows, and other stimulating and fascinating topics until the conductor strode to the podium. 

We visited more at the intermission, making this a most unexpectedly satisfying evening. I thoroughly enjoyed these two conversations completely focused on the arts and nothing else. 

We didn't learn a single thing about each other on a personal level, aside from learning about books we'd read, music we'd listened to, movies we'd seen, and a little bit about our professional lives -- mine as an instructor, hers as a musician. 

So rare. 

3. I loved the concert. 

The orchestra was, at least to me, huge, and most of the musicians were students, joined by some professional musicians to help fill out sections that needed them. 

I enjoyed the youth of this orchestra and enjoyed their verve and spiritedness as they played Mozart, Mussorgsky, and Saint-Saens. All three compositions, The Overture to Don Giovanni, Night on Bald Mountain, and Danse Bachanale, were energetic, fun to listen to (and must have been fun to play), and made the first half of the concert full of vitality and energy. 

The second half of the concert delivered not only profound vitality, but exquisite virtuosity. 

It featured one of the world's very finest violinists, Gil Shaham, as the violin soloist in Brahms' gorgeous Violin Concerto in D Major. 

I'd love to be able to describe Gil Shaham's command of the violin and his enthusiastic playing of Brahms' masterpiece, but I don't have words. 

All I can really say is this: over the week or so preceding this concert, I listened repeatedly to this concerto on Spotify. I wanted to gain some familiarity with it -- I'd never listened to it before -- and those many listenings paid off as I was able to follow the concerto fairly well and anticipate a bit of what lay ahead as the piece progressed. 

I felt especially profound job being in a concert hall, hearing this concerto live. 

I shook inside hearing Brahms' concerto filling the concert hall. The live orchestra in support of Gil Shaham's masterful performance made the whole experience rich, full, and gorgeous and I simply did not want this concerto to end. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-09-2026: I Live With a Mild Common Cold x 3

 Debbie read in my blog that I was living with a low level common cold and asked how I was doing. 

I answered:

1. No coughing. 

2. Infrequent sneezing and nose blowing. Breathing passages almost 100% clear.

3. Low energy. 

So, the most ambitious thing I did today was unload and load the dishwasher about three times, taking care of the dishes I used to prep food for the Super Bowl. 

Otherwise, I fed my cold, took a few naps, listened to music, worked puzzles, and read some articles. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-07-2026: Fatigue, Fixing Food for the Super Bowl, Seattle Wins and So Do I!

 1.I'm tired. I'm going to keep this one short. I've been living with a minor common cold the last couple of days: Some coughing, sneezing off and on, never quite reached sore throat level, but mostly I've been wanting to rest and sleep. 

2.I did my best to marshal enough energy to make a Greek Salad Layered Dip and chicken wings, both buffalo and naked, to take to our Super Bowl family dinner. I struggled in the kitchen with mismeasurements, dropped utensils, and a tired back, but I completed my assignments and Paul, Carol, and Christy all said they enjoyed what I made. I was anxious since I seemed to be sleepwalking while I cooked. 

3. I enjoyed what the others made: flourless crackers, spinach artichoke dip, buffalo chicken dip, vegetable plate, deviled eggs, and whatever else I've forgotten. 

It's been ten years since I've watched a Super Bowl. It, too, was a family gathering. Debbie and I watched Denver defeat Carolina with Molly and Hiram. 

So, even though I've lost interest in football, it was fun being with Christy, Paul, and Carol. I've always enjoyed strong defensive efforts by teams, and today, Seattle certainly scratched that itch. 

I also enjoyed winning the wager I laid down Wednesday and look forward to returning to Spokane Tribe Casino to pick up my $143.50! 

Three Beautiful Things 02-07-2026: Spokane Public Radio Appointment Listening, Preparing to Cook Tomorrow, A Sustaining Soup Tonight

1, On the weekends now, when I can, I have two appointment radio listening times, both on Spokane Public Radio's classical music station. 

On Saturday at noon, the station airs a program called "Concert of the Week" featuring a recorded version of a local classical performance from the previous week. 

Today, the featured concert was the symphony performance I attended a week ago at the Fox Theater.

Listening to it today moved me again. I enjoyed taking all of the music more deeply into myself. 

I also appreciated the power of having heard the concert live, in person. 

The music itself resonated in the Fox Theater powerfully, at times making me feel like I was in a cathedral. That particular experience couldn't, nor would I expect it to, be duplicated in our living room with the music coming over mediocre speakers. 

The other appointment listening for me comes on at 10:00 Sunday morning. It's Leonard Oakland's two  hour program called. "Morning Classical with Leonard Oakland". 

I was a student of Leonard's at Whitworth and during the two years I taught full time at Whitworth (nearly forty-four years ago) he was the chair of the English Dept and an important mentor to me. 

We were also friends. 

So, yes, I thoroughly enjoy Leonard's choices of music and enjoy his poetry moment. 

I also enjoy hearing his voice, experiencing his mind at work again, and having the double pleasure of enjoying him in the moment and being transported to my days in his company  at Whitworth decades ago. 

2.  I lost interest in football about ten years ago or so. I enjoy making an ah what the heck wager on the Super Bowl like I did on Wednesday, but each year I no longer plan on watching the game. 

But, Carol is in charge of Super Bowl Sunday's family dinner and she decided to assign us all Super Bowl snack food to bring and we'll have the game on with the option of watching it or not while we nosh away.  

She assigned me to bring chicken wings and a Greek dip, so I spent some time today making sure I have party wings on hand (I do) and then filling out an order at Walmart to include items I need to make the dip. 

It will be an easy food prep day tomorrow and I look forward to enjoying our food and seeing how I respond to being in the presence of a football game again. It's been quite a while! 

3. When I was checking out our party wing supply in the basement freezer, I looked at quarts of turkey stock/broth Debbie had made and decided I would make a soup with one of the quarts tonight. 

I decided that the broth would be the only meat in the soup and that I'd like the vegetables to be in larger chunks than I usually fix.

So, I thawed the turkey broth. I cooked chopped white onion and celery together and then added sliced mushrooms and before long I added the broth/stock, chopped russet potatoes, and pretty good sized chunks of carrots. 

I salt and peppered the soup, let it cook until the vegetables were tender, ladled myself a bowl, and decided I'd like the soy goodness of Bragg's Liquid Aminos as another seasoning. 

That worked. 

The soup worked. 

It warmed me as I live with a low grade cold. 

I've been eating a lot of soup lately and it's definitely feeding my body and my soul. 

That works, too. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-06-2026: Quick Stuffed Pepper Soup, An Hour at The Lounge, Debbie Called and Sent Me Pet Pictures

 1. I had one red pepper stuffed with cinnamon, cumin, and cloves seasoned ground lamb along with onion, garlic, roasted slivered almonds and basmati rice left over from Sunday's dinner and I made a terrific soup with it. It was simple. I sauteed chopped onion and celery and added some sliced mushrooms. I took the stuffing out of the stuffed pepper, put the stuffing on top of the onion, celery, and mushrooms and then chopped up the pepper and added it to the sauté pan. 

In a pot, I fixed chicken Better than Boullion and when it was all combined and nearly boiling and when the ingredients in the sauté pan were ready, I combined everything in the pot and let it slow cook for a while. 

I was especially happy with the wealth of flavor the cinnamon, cumin, and cloves gave this soup and loved how the vegetables and meat worked together. 

2. Before dinner, I enjoyed a relaxing session with Ed at the Lounge. He'll be a volunteer official at the Elks' Idaho State Hoop Shoot in Wallace tomorrow and has a fun Super Bowl party planned with Darren, Erica, and other family in Post Falls. 

I found out today that our family dinner will be at least loosely connected to the Super Bowl and so we are all bringing snacky foods to munch on and we'll at least keep an eye on the football game. 

3. Debbie and I talked some more today. It was a great visit just chatting about comings and goings in Valley Cottage and I enjoyed reporting how much I enjoyed the Northwest Passages event I attended last night in place of the phantom symphony. 

Debbie sleeps in a room in Adrienne's basement and two animals, the cat Hazel and the dog Huckleberry like to join Debbie. Tonight Hazel, the cat was with Debbie until Huck entered the room. 

Debbie took a picture of each of them and texted them to me. 

They are lovely animals. 

I loved seeing those pictures.    

Three Beautiful Things 02-05-2026: I Came to the Symphony Five Days Early, I Stayed for Tonight's Event, Wow! What a Stimulating Accident!

1. I do not do well with the last minute. If I can, I'll arrive at movies early, finish my cooking for family dinner early, come to the airport really early, and so on. In that spirit, I arrived at Gonzaga University around 6:15 for tonight's 7:30 Gonzaga Symphony performance. 

When I arrived, the scene around the Myrtle Woldson Performing Arts Center puzzled me. 

The parking lots were nearly full. 

More people than I expected were strolling into the building.

Once in the lobby, the number of people hanging out and the number of people walking into the performance hall to be seated gob smacked me. 

I took out my phone. 

I opened my Google Wallet. 

I checked my ticket. 

I laughed at myself. 

I arrived for the symphony concert several days early. 

The Gonzaga Symphony will play on February 10. 

My sometimes confused -- maybe addled? -- mind was at it again. 

2. I asked a person wearing an official looking pair of slacks, vest, and name tag on a lanyard what was happening this evening. 

"It's a book event," she answered and when I joked that I had come early for the symphony, she chuckled and said, "Well, why don't you go over there and buy a ten dollar ticket and attend. It's supposed to be very good."

So I did.

Then I realized what I'd stumbled into. 

Tonight was the next in the Spokesman Review's series of conversations with authors called Northwest Passages. 

I attended two Northwest Passages events in 2025, I'd seen publicity for tonight's event, but I'd forgotten <clears throat> that it was tonight. 

So, I purchased a bottle of water, found a seat, and prepared to listen to Spokane writer Jess Walter interview David Guterson, the author of Snow Falling on Cedars, about his new novel Evelyn in Transit. 

3. I can't remember <clears throat> ever having my sometimes scrambled mind work in my favor so well. 

I loved this event.

Jess Walter interviewed David Guterson with wit, intelligence, insight, and generosity. 

He led Guterson to talk about his book as if they were members of the ideal book club.

Guterson discussed his lifelong engagement with the eternal questions of life: What is the meaning of life? What is a well-lived life? How do we make our way as flawed persons in a fallen world? I understood his low-key, humble, unassuming ponderings to be spiritual, existential, and ongoing. He asks questions of himself and the world we live in not looking for answers, but as a way of continuing to search, to dig, to remain open to possibilities, self-revision, and surprise. And he works to keep it light. Guterson discussed that he is careful to compliment the seriousness of his writing with humor, hoping that his readers will never think he is imposing either certainty or a way of seeing the world upon them, but is opening the way for readers to join him in his searching, through the stories he tells. 

To my utter delight, Guterson and Walters discussed the inseparable relationship between the characters and worlds they imagine and bring to life and the music of their language, how the music of their language, that is, their writing style, changes to meet the demands of the characters they develop and the worlds these characters inhabit. 

If you'd like to read a summary of Guterson's novel, a quick online search can take care of that. 

Before too long, this program will be available on YouTube along with most of the other Northwest Passages programs, including when Kenton Bird discussed the book about Tom Foley he co-wrote with John C. Pierce. That event is here:  Northwest Passages: Kenton Bird, author of "Tom Foley, The Man In The Middle"

Three Beautiful Things 02-04-2026: A Fortunate Comeback, Reservations, Preparing for the Gonzaga Symphony

 1. Three times a year, Ed and I head over to the Spokane Tribe Casino to put down modest wagers on the Super Bowl, March Madness, and both of the NCAA basketball championship tournaments. I won a wager in 2025 by betting on UConn's women's team. 

Sometimes others who like to wager and play machines join us. One year it was Buff and Darren. Today, it was Jake. 

I had a very relaxing, fun, and even a delicious day today. Once I laid a bet on the Seahawks to win on Sunday, I scrambled over to the coffee stand and ordered a terrific latte and a most pleasing thick slice of banana bread with nuts. 

Then I hit the machines and they humbled me. After a while, I'd spent the money I brought to play with. 

I hadn't heard from Jake or Ed and figured they must have been doing better and I decided to take a chance. I decided to go from playing to gambling. I withdrew some added bank from an ATM machine. 

My luck reversed. 

After a while I got a text from Ed that he and Jake were in the sports bar area.

I figured it was time for lunch. 

And guess what! I dug myself out of the hole I'd been in and was now actually ahead.

My decision to throw a little caution to the wind, luckily, panned out.

My smashburger, fries, and zero alcohol Heineken beer all tasted especially good in light of my comeback and good fortune! 

2. Speaking of casinos, today, the guys and I who join up twice a year for two or three nights at the Wildhorse Resort and Casino in Pendleton were able to nail down dates for this spring's trip. That casino has become a very busy place and we couldn't get rooms in late March or early April. But we learned rooms were available at the end of April and so we will make our trip then. 

Right now the resort has one tower hotel and are in the process of building a second. 

Good thing! 

It looks like there is plenty of demand to make having two hotels a worthwhile development. 

3. I didn't just wager, play machines, and book myself a Wildhorse room today. 

I also bought a ticket to hear the Gonzaga Symphony play on campus on Thursday, Feb. 5th. 

The concert will close with legendary violinist Gil Shaham as the featured soloist joining the symphony for a performance of Brahm's Violin Concerto in D Major. 

As I've mentioned before, I started listening to classical music in the 8th grade by repeatedly listening to George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue in my upstairs bedroom. I also loved listening, on that same album, to his American in Paris. 

So from way back then, in about1968, to the fall and winter of 2025 into 2026, I had paid little attention to Johannes Brahms. 

Therefore, this evening, I've begun to do my best to familiarize myself with Brahms' Violin Concerto in D Major in preparation (maybe anticipation is a better word) for (of) the concert at Gonzaga. 

I'll listen to this concerto some more at home before I leave for Spokane and I'll listen to it some more while I drive over. 

It's a stirring concerto and the other compositions are also full of vitality. 

I'll hear: 

Mozart Overture to Don Giovanni

Mussorgsky Night on Bald Mountain (You might remember this piece from the movie Fantasia.) 

Saint-Saens Danse Bacchanale 

Three Beautiful Things 02-03-2026: Dental Cleaning, Talked with Debbie, Slowing Down

 1.  Without a trace of irony or sarcasm in my voice, let me say that I started the day on a high note. I strolled down the street to the dentist's office. Today's cleaning went beautifully. There were no problems with my teeth. I had the pleasure of having my mouth feel sparkly and fresh. 

2. Debbie called and I had an uncomplicated tax question for her and she updated me on how the first three weeks of February are shaping up for her and Adrienne's family. We shot the breeze about this and that, very enjoyably. This morning that started off so positively got even better, thanks to this phone call.

3. I slowed down my listening to The Great Course I'm taking to learn much more about listening to and understanding classical music. I listened again to Prof. Greenberg's first lecture on Beethoven's 5th Symphony. I might go back and listen to this lecture yet again. The lecture I'm trying to absorb focuses on the first movement of the Beethoven's Fifth. 

Beethoven composed the first movement in sonata form and as Greenberg presents his analysis of this most famous first movement, he draws upon terminology that he explained in a previous lecture. It's all new to me, words like exposition, development, recapitulation, cadence, and others. I'm trying to become more familiar with these terms and gain a deeper appreciation for how Beethoven follows the demands of the sonata form and how he bends the form, improvises, and composes music being more faithful to his own self-expression than to the form itself. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-02-2026: It's a CD Set!, Big News in the World of Wordle, I Created a Fun and Tasty Soup

 1. Upon closer inspection today, I discovered that the discs I bought from Better World Books were not DVDs. They are CDs. Ha! Now I can listen to the lectures about understanding music by either clicking on my audible app or putting a cd into my Blu-ray player. I guess I'll keep the CDs around in case audible buys the farm one day. 

2. I decided quite a while ago when playing Wordle not to use words that had already been solutions. Every morning, I created a tab that opened up a website featuring a list of all past Wordle answers. I vetted all my guesses using this list. 

Today, word came across the ticker tape of the World Wide Web that, starting today, Wordle will start reusing past solutions to be solutions again. I assume recycled solutions will pop up irregularly. 

No problem. I'll enjoy playing this version of Wordle just as much as when the game didn't repeat answers. 

I just need to always keep in mind that sloving on the sixth guess is a win and continue in my mission not to judge myself if I don't solve the puzzle quickly and need as many six tries. 

3. I had leftover chicken soup in the fridge that had no chicken pieces. Last night, I didn't have enough filling for six peppers, so I stuffed the sixth pepper with some of the surplus basmati rice I cooked. 

I decided to make a soup combining the chicken soup, leftover rice I put in a container last night, and the steamed red pepper, sliced, that was filled with plain rice. I put the pepper's rice in the soup, too. 

I seasoned the soup with liquid aminos.

It worked and made me think I might invent a soup using the one stuffed pepper I still have, one stuffed with the lamb mixture I made for family dinner last night. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-01-2025: Fixing Lamb Stuffed Bell Peppers, A Delicious Family Dinner, Gonzaga Symphony on Thursday

1. Last Sunday, Christy's plan (hope?) was to serve shepherd's pie at family dinner. Its featured meat is lamb. When she found ground lamb at one of the stores, she concluded it was too expensive and so she bought ground beef and we had cottage pie. 

Debbie bought a pound of ground lamb several months ago and I have repeatedly seen it in our freezer. Had I known Christy could have used it last week, I would have donated it to the family dinner fund (ha ha -- there isn't such a thing). 

Instead, I decided as tonight's host that I would make something with the lamb and decided Mediterranean stuffed bell peppers would be good. 

I thawed out the frozen lamb.

I chopped a white onion and minced four garlic cloves and cooked them for about five minutes. 

I added the lamb and cooked the aromatics and the lamb together until the lamb browned. 

I finished cooking a pot of basmati rice and soon I added ground cloves, cinnamon, and cumin along with two chopped tomatoes and tomato paste and golden raisins and toasted almond slivers to the lamb, onion, and garlic mixture. 

After the lamb cooked for about five more minutes, enhanced by the above ingredients, I added the rice to the stuffing. 

I cut the tops off the peppers and pulled out the seed and other stuff inside and then stuffed the peppers with the meat, aromatics, tomatoes, and other ingredients.

I placed the stuffed peppers in the bottom of the Dutch oven, poured water in the bottom, and put it in the oven, lid on, for about 45 minutes at 375 degrees. 

2. Christy brought a delicious Carpaccio for an appetizer and Carol made a Greek salad to go with the stuffed peppers. Our focus was Mediterranean and we succeeded through our shared effort to produce a very good meal. 

After tweeking our family schedule for the next couple of months a bit, we enjoyed talking about books and learned news about some people around the Silver Valley. I couldn't stop myself from saying a few things about last night's concert. Paul talked about plans for the fall production at the theater (I don't know if the fall play is public knowledge so, for now, I'll hold it in confidence). 

I hadn't made stuffed peppers before and was happy my idea to make them in a Mediterranean style worked out. I wanted classical music to play during our time together, but I didn't want to have on surging symphonies or blazing concert. 

Instead, I put on a playlist of Mozart's piano sonatas, and this music provided a tranquil and virtuosic backdrop for our time together this evening. 

3. At 10:00 this morning, Leonard Oakland hosted his two hour classical music program. At some point, he announced that the Gonzaga Symphony will be playing at the university on Thursday evening. The program will feature violinist Gil Shaham, unknown to me until Leonard's announcement about the concert, and now I know he his highly regarded and is a Grammy award winner. 

I'll be there Thursday as long as nothing comes up to prevent me from going. 

I'm especially stoked that Gil Shaham will be featured as the soloist for Brahm's Violin Concerto in D Major. The rest of the program looks great: Mozart, Mussorgsky, and Saint-Saens. 

Three Beautiful Things 01-31-2026: Soulful Soups and Spirits, Jess Walter on the Music of Language, A Concert of Contrasts

1. When I need to drive into downtown Spokane, I have a much easier and enjoyable time if I arrive while it's still light. I had a ticket to tonight's scintillating Spokane Symphony concert and I arrived in the vicinity of the Fox Theater well in advance of the concert -- in daylight. 

I easily found parking on Jefferson near the Railroad Alley and, as I expected, in order to pay for my parking, I needed to use my phone, follow online instructions, and type in credit card information. 

The late afternoon light helped me succeed. 

My spot was just a couple of blocks from the theater and just a block from Soulful Soups and Spirits where I would eat a light dinner. 

The last time I visited S. 111 Madison, I was with Patrick and Meagan and we enjoyed drinking cider together at what was then the One Tree Cider tasting room -- now relocated to its production warehouse just east of Division/Ruby at 125 E. Ermina. 

I very much enjoyed the bowl of tomato basil soup accompanied by a house salad I ordered. Unfortunately, I arrived between when Soulful Soup ran out of bread and when their next batch would be coming out of the oven and be cooled off enough to slice. 

No problem. 

I'll try their bread next time and I'll treat myself to a different soup and, over time, try as many of their soups as I can. 

2. Even though I went to the lecture on Thursday for this concert, I wanted to hear whatever the conductor had to say in his pre-concert lecture tonight. 

Spokane writer Jess Walter was going to be narrating the guide to the orchestra as the concert's finale and he and Conductor James Rowe had a fun and insightful conversation about the similarities between music and language, whether spoken or written. 

I've spent a bit of time on this blog writing some of my thoughts about the musical nature of language and the terrific comments Jess Walter made helped reassure me that my comments were at least in the ballpark! 

3. In his Great Course lectures, How to Listen to and Understand Great Music, Professor Robert Greenberg frequently returns to the point that many, if not most, classical composers structure their work around contrasts, whether contrasts in tempo, feeling, key signature, instrumentation, or other elements of a musical piece. 

I thought tonight's program featured very enjoyable contrasts between the different compositions. 

William Walton's opening piece featured a full orchestra playing lush and full-throated reimaginings of melodies originally composed by J. S. Bach.

The Fox Theater then started to feel like a church or a cathedral as the Spokane Chorale sang the Thomas Tallis piece that became the foundation for two small orchestras, one in the balcony, as they played Ralph Vaughan Williams' deeply emotional and spiritual reworking of Tallis' melody into his Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. Without a break, the smaller orchestra moved right into Paul Hindemith's mournful Trauermusik, a composition Hindemith wrote in six hours the day after the death of King George V for the BBC Orchestra to play the next day to express the grief of the nation. The Spokane Chorale then immediately deepened the sense of us being in a house of worship by singing Bach's "Vor deinen Thron tret' ich hiermit" or "I humbly come to your throne,/O God! and humbly beg you:/Do not turn your gracious face away/from me the poor sinner."

When the chorale ended its performance, the house lights went out and I felt like I was in a Compline service. The hall was absolutely silent and we all entered into a meditative, even prayerful, state and after a bit it became appropriate to applaud this moving series of soulful compositions. 

Then another contrast took shape as the second half of the program was much lighter.

It opened with Grace Williams' Fantasia on Welsh Nursery Tunes and the concert came to a fun and a stirring end as the orchestra played Benjamin Britten's The Young Person's Guide to Orchestra and we heard Jess Walter reading his reworking of the original narration, making it a Pacific Northwest guide. It was great fun as each section of the orchestra came to represent a different part of the northwest. 

If you'd like to hear this concert, it will be replayed on KSFC-FM radio next Saturday, Feb. 7 at noon. You can stream KSFC by going to spokanepublicradio.org and clicking on the All Streams box and picking SPR Classical.