Three Beautiful Things 05-23-2022: Matinee Movie and a Martini, Negronis, Family Dinner and a Grammar Pencil Set

1. Back in 2012, when I first retired and lived in Eugene -- and I might not have this history exactly right -- a downtown movie theater with more than one screen, each room with a small capacity, opened. I remember one day I was walking home from the bus station and I noticed that this new theater complex was screening matinees through the week.

Perfect! I'm retired. I'm only teaching two days a week. I'll have many free afternoons. I can do one of my favorite of all things: go to matinee screenings of independent movies, some made in the USA, some international, some fictional, some documentary at this new theater  The theater was a mere eight blocks from our house, an easy 12-15 minute walk. 

I took frequent advantage of these matinees, my free time, and my close proximity to this theater.

Well, of course, we moved to Maryland in 2014 and, on occasion, I drove to Bethesda or took the train into Washington, D.C., and watched late morning or matinee screenings of off the beaten path movies I enjoy so much.

I don't know exactly why I haven't made viewing matinee movies at home a regular part of my life here in Kellogg. 

Today, I did it.  

I retired to the Vizio room, scanned offerings on the Criterion Channel for a few minutes and decided to watch a movie I remember being at the Bijou in Eugene about thirty-five years ago, but that I missed.

It came out in 1985. I'm not sure when it arrived in Eugene. It's a Japanese movie directed by Juzo Itami. As I decided to watch Tampopo, I only remembered that it is a movie about Japanese food -- ramen to be precise.

I love Japanese food.

I love movies about food.

I was all in.

As the movie got rolling, I was REALLY all in. Tampopo is a fascinating comedy/satire, partly poking fun at Japanese cultural preoccupations with propriety and cuisine, but also, to me, a celebration of the mirthful dimensions of food. I loved how this movie's main story was about a widowed woman, named Tampopo, who has taken over her deceased husband's ramen house and, upon being told by two truck drivers that her ramen is subpar, strikes out on a far-ranging effort to learn how to make the best ramen possible.

This story alone would have made this a splendid movie.

But, to my delight, Juzo Itami interrupts this main story several times with vignettes having nothing to do with Tampopo's story, and tells miniature stories about food. Some of these vignettes are deliciously erotic (you might have heard of or seen the movie's famous erotic egg yolk scene), pointedly satirical, sometimes funny, at times touching, even grievous, and always imaginative and scintillating. 

About halfway through the movie, I decided to go into full "Hey! I'm retired" mode. I fixed myself a martini which did just what I'd hoped it would -- it made the movie all the more delicious.

2. Debbie and I hosted family dinner this evening. I was in charge of cocktails and because we were going to have an Italian-style pasta casserole as our main meal, I fixed us each a Negroni, a combination of equal parts gin, sweet vermouth, and Campari. 

3. For an appetizer, Carol, Paul, and Molly brought over two kinds of corn chips, salsa and warm and home made queso. We yakked a lot before we went to the table for dinner about many things, including Carol's summation of a talk she heard at a hospital conference she recently attended. The speaker asserted his analysis of the scorching hot North Idaho housing market, the low number of workers, and the impact so many open jobs is having on the local economy and beyond. The housing/real estate boom was particularly depressing to learn and talk about with so many people unable to find affordable properties to buy, let alone rental properties to live in. Our area needs doctors and nurses, but, according to this speaker, doctors and nurses are discouraged by the real estate market. They can't afford housing here.

Our discussion about the economy stimulated our appetites. For dinner, Debbie prepared a spinach salad and baked a dish composed of penne pasta, roasted red pepper and garlic, Italian sausage, tomato paste, sour cream, Parmesan cheese, and herbs. She baked it in our larger Dutch oven and I loved it so much that I swear I could have eaten the entire casserole all by myself (that's an example of hyperbole 😂). Christy brought a rose (rozay) wine and a red blend. For me, the red blend paired perfectly with our main dish.

What a great family dinner! Molly, Paul, Carol, Christy, Debbie, and I had a great time together. I learned more about economics, changes at the local newspaper, and all kinds of other things. In addition, thanks to Bonnie Farmin (delivered by Carol), I have two hot bowl holders and thanks to Christy, and her recent trip to I have five pencils that comprise what's called a Grammar Pencil Set.

Four of the pencils have a corrective imprinted on it. Here's what my set reminds us all of:

1. Should have, not should of

2. Love the Oxford comma    (I do!)

3. I before E except after C

4. Alot is not a word!

The fifth pencil identifies its user as a Grammar Geek.

Christy sort of apologized that none of the pencils in my set offered to describe the difference between "lie" and "lay" nor was there a pencil distinguishing between "every day" and "everyday". 

I thought for the fun of it, I'd try one more time to explain my attitude about "lie" and "lay" and "every day" and "everyday" and try to make it clear what makes one different from the other. 

You might not want to read this -- no problem -- but I'll have fun writing this out! 

The chronic misuse of "lie" and "lay" isn't a peeve of mine -- my observation is that eventually a difference between them won't exist. I predict the same for "every day" and "everyday". The continuing misuse of these words will, in time, simply become the accepted usage.

In case you were wondering, in the present tense, "lie" is intransitive. It never has a direct object. So if you are tired you go lie down you don't lay down. If a magazine is on a table, it's lying there not laying there. 

"Lay", on the other hand, is transitive. When we improve our homes, we lay carpet, lay bricks, lay linoleum, or lay tiles. 

We don't "lay down", unless your home improvement project includes covering a surface with a bucket of pillow stuffing, that is, down.

Every day measures time. You can always put the word "single" in between "every" and "day" when it's two words. For example, I do the Wordle puzzle every day. Or, I could say, I do the Wordle puzzle every single day (or every damn day).

When "every" and "day" are combined into one word, it's an adjective. It describes something that happens regularly or is common.

We like to shop at stores with everyday low prices.

When we get dressed in the morning, we usually put on our everyday clothes. 

I know from my teaching days, that I could have gone over these distinctions every day (or every single day) in class and most students would continue to misuse these words. The misuses of these words are so ingrained that they have become a part (not apart) of our everyday ways of speaking and writing. 

So be it. 

I just like to indulge in a hopeless cause once a while and point out what's correct and what's incorrect.

It's fun for me. 

Three Beautiful Things 05-22-2022: PGA Agony and Ecstasy, More Home Improvement, I Love Small Hamburgers

 1. I love to watch major golf tournaments, but I found today's final round of the PGA Championship difficult to enjoy. Granted, I admired the way Justin Thomas more than hung in there despite starting the day seven shots off the lead and his shotmaking down the stretch and in the tournament's playoff were scintillating. He's a great champion. 

I did not enjoy, in fact, I cringed with pain, as the tournament's leader through 71 holes, Mito Pereira, bled strokes coming down the stretch and then, on the 72nd tee, executed a swing that looked like a one-legged man in an ass kicking contest and racked up a miserable double bogeyed to lose his lead. Pereira's playing partner, Matt Fitzpatrick, whom I'd thought might win this tournament, also played wobbly golf throughout the last round. Both players' inability to play well under the pressure of the moment opened the way for Justin Thomas to mount his impressive comeback and defeat Will Zalatoris in a playoff. 

I suppose I watch sports for what the ABC network in its introduction to The Wild World of Sports used to call the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. It's an emotional experience and, when watching golf, I am particularly prone to feeling the agony of watching players fail the moment and I experienced plenty of agony today.

2. Ron D.'s visit interrupted my golf viewing. No problem. He came over to listen to Debbie tell him what she'd like built as a roof structure over our patio area. Ron took measurements, assured me he could fix a small problem with our sprinkling system, and will submit a bid later in the week. 

3. The golf tournament ended. Ron had done his measuring and drawing. Evening was approaching. Debbie suggested I stop at Humdinger and grab us each a burger and an order of fries to share on my way home from Yoke's. I did. 

I have become, as I've aged, an old-fashioned burger eater. Let me briefly explain. Many contemporary grills and burger joints offer huge burgers. The patties are thick. The cooks load up the burgers with all kinds of delicious choices: various cheeses, mushrooms, bacon, peanut butter, fried eggs, cream cheese, and so on, in addition to the traditional pickles, onions, lettuce, and tomatoes. 

In the last couple or three years, I've discovered that these huge burgers leave me feeling overfed. 

I really enjoy a thin patty of ground beef, a few pickles (both sweet and dill, if available), some catsup and mustard and that's it. 

It's why the burgers at the Elks are perfect for me.

Likewise, the Humdinger's single burger is also perfect and I enjoyed my small, retro burger. I didn't feel stuffed. I felt pleasantly satisfied. 

I admit, I miss the days not that long ago when I'd order a burger with cheddar cheese and bacon and a fried egg. When that was the right sandwich for me, it was a blast to eat.

Those days, now, appear to be gone. 

Three Beautiful Things 05-21-2022: PGA's Blustery Third Round, Superb Session at The Lounge, Salmon Hash (Sort of)

 1. I enjoyed watching the third round of the PGA Championship primarily because I love watching professionals play golf. It was also uncomfortable at times. For starters, Tiger Woods tried to complete this tournament despite being in significant pain as he rehabs from injuries he suffered in an auto accident over a year ago. With the tournament's cold weather and given the fact that he played early in the morning and couldn't properly get himself physically prepared to play today, he hobbled from hole to hole, hitting mostly survival shots and was a faint shadow of himself. He managed to complete round three in 79 strokes. After the round ended, he (mercifully) withdrew from the tournament. 

It was also uncomfortable, for me, at times, to watch the players contend with the cold and the wind. I enjoy seeing players challenged, so that wasn't uncomfortable, but, being a softy, I don't thrive on seeing golfers having to contend hole after hole with frustration.

That said, in spite of the conditions, I saw some great shot making today. I was impressed with how the third round leader, Mito Pereira, bounced back from a mid-round collapse. He bogeyed four of six holes between hole number 8 and 12, but birdied three of the last six holes and moved into a three stroke lead over the struggling Will Zalatoris and the emerging Matt Fitzpatrick. 

Predictions are very difficult, but the steadiest player on the leaderboard is Matt Fitzpatrick and his consistency could be the factor that makes him the tournament's winner. (But, of course, he could fall apart and, really, who ever knows who will win these tournaments!)

2. Debbie and I went up to The Lounge around 6:00 and had a superb time. I enjoyed my new favorite combo of Miller beer and a shot of Pendleton's 1910 Rye Whiskey. We yakked with Ron Delcamp for a while and then had a great conversation with retired miner, Tom Wild. He told us stories about his work in mines here in the Silver Valley and in Montana, including the harrowing stories of his being buried in a copper mine as a teenager and losing his father in mining accident. Tom told us about his transition from being a miner to a mine inspector. We found out we don't live all that far apart from each other in Kellogg and that, in fact, Debbie met Tom's wife one night during a craft night at The Lounge. 

3. I suppose Debbie and I could have ordered Chinese food. Not only that, I learned upon arriving at The Lounge that tonight was the Bunker Hill dinner. It's an annual dinner for anyone who ever worked at the Bunker Hill. I didn't know about it. Otherwise, I could have gone over, maybe seen some fellow zinc strippers from 50 years ago, and enjoyed a chicken fried steak. But, instead, I stayed put at The Lounge and when we arrived back home, I chopped up some baby Yukon Golds, got them frying, and added some jasmine rice and frozen green beans to the pan. On the stovetop grill, I got a couple of salmon patties started, soon cut them up, put them in the frying pan, and Debbie and I enjoyed an improvised sort of salmon hash for dinner -- and it worked great! 

Three Beautiful Things 05-20-2022: Staying Calm, Martini at The Depot, Burger Night at the Elks and More BONUS: A Limerick by Stu

1. Growing old is, yes, often a challenge. But there's at least one aspect of growing old that I appreciate.

On the whole, I just don't get as freaked out and anxious about things the way I did when I was younger (just five or six years younger, in fact). 

For example, today I retired to the Vizio room to work on some tasks for the KHS Class of '72 50 year reunion and flipped on the Vizio to keep an eye on the men's PGA golf championship.

The YouTube TV app didn't work.

Before long, the Amazon Firestick didn't work either.

I didn't freak out. (I figured the worst outcome would be that I'd order a new Firestick if this one had reached the end of its life.)

I did all the things I usually do when something related to the Firestick goes on the blink.

I unattached here, unplugged there, plugged things back in, wasn't getting anywhere, looked up possible fixes online, and after about, oh, forty-five minutes, something in the Firestick kicked loose and a message came on the tv screen that the Firestick needed ten minutes to get its act together (I paraphrase) and, indeed, after about ten minutes PRESTO! all systems were back online, the YouTubeTV app worked, and I got more mailings ready to send out and watched the golf action on ESPN.

I never got anxious. I didn't curse.  My hands didn't shake. My throat didn't get dry. I didn't cough and gag. I remained calm and slowly tried out one potential solution after another and eventually all was good.  

I sure enjoy life more when I'm not agitated. It also saves a lot of energy!

2. Debbie and I might be developing an afternoon routine of heading over to the Depot around 4:00, ordering a cocktail, and having some superb conversation. I think today was the third day in a row we did this. The same woman who made me a Dry Fly gin martini yesterday was working today and we were both happy that, together, we seem to have found the gin/vermouth ratio sweet spot. I sure enjoyed my drink. Today's conversation? Even more. 

3. Debbie and I met up with Diane and her son, Matt, around 5:30 for burgers at the Elks Club. We had a great time yakkin' about all kinds of stuff, seeing a few people we know, and joining in the fun and friendly atmosphere of Elks Burger Night. After we ate, we crossed the street and yakked some more at the Lounge, another cheery and upbeat atmosphere full of people we know,  laughter,  and stories being told. We wrapped up our night on the town at Diane's house where we relaxed and continued enjoying a really fun evening with Diane and Matt. Sometimes the conversation was light and sometimes we talked about serious matters. It was all very good. 

A limerick by Stu:

Stardom is reached by who can, 

Be tops, not a flash in the pan. 

One “Pack” guy could dance, 

“Candy” singing enhance. 

And the world fell in love with this man. 

 Sammy Davis Jr. Died this day in 1988 

Three Beautiful Things 05-19-2022: Big Day for Home Improvement!, Martini at The Depot, Blissful Thursday is Packed with Variety

1. Today was the busiest day of the year at our house. We had a new heating and cooling system installed. Four guys worked on that. An electrician chipped in his efforts. Later, a fifth guy came to help cut out a couple of vents in the basement. To top it all off, Brock came by and showed us why our drier wasn't working. I'd made a simple error. The drier is back in operation again! 

My concern, going into this day, was how Gibbs, Copper, and Luna would respond to so many people working, making noise, going in and out of the Vizio room, and so on.

Gibbs was a champ. Once he and the HVAC guys got acquainted, he was calm and accepting of all the activity.

Likewise (thank goodness), Copper and Luna simply found places in the Vizio room where they felt secure -- no different than their daily routine in that room -- and showed no signs of being upset. 

2. The house cleared out around 4:00 or so after about seven hours of everyone's work getting done. Debbie and I hustled over to the The Depot to debrief a bit and talk about other details in our funny little life together. 

Until today, I had never ordered a gin martini at The Depot. The woman working the bar was a little bit tentative about mixing me one, but I figured I'll go for it. See what happens. Love the one you're with. So I ordered a Dry Fly gin martini. I enjoyed it. I also thought it could be oh so slightly improved. I asked the bartender if I could have a small taste of the Dry Fly gin straight. She poured me about a half a shot. I shared it with Debbie. Yes, I thought, I would like my second martini to have more gin, less vermouth. The bartender and I talked about it -- she told me about the recipe she'd used and we agreed it called for too much vermouth.

The second martini was more to my liking.

By the way, she prepared both martinis James Bond style: shaken not stirred. 

This was my first ever shaken martini. 

It worked. 

Maybe in the future sometime I'll ask for a stirred martini at The Depot -- or, maybe, since variety is the spice of life, I'll drink stirred martinis elsewhere and let The Depot be my home for a shaken martini.

It's all good.

3. After a couple martinis and eating the superb chicken noodles Debbie made for dinner, it was the perfect time to bring Luna and Copper into the bedroom, put my ear buds in, and spend three hours in the supine position and listen to Hard Rain and Slow Trains for an hour and then two hours of Deadish.

Because Dan has been tied up with his trip to the Bob Dylan Center's opening in Tulsa, for the third straight week he played a rebroadcast of a show from March 12, 2020.

He and Jeff were co-hosts then. When this show broadcast, the severity of the pandemic was unknown, and Dan and Jeff were eagerly anticipating Bob Dylan playing live shows in Bend and Eugene in June of 2020. Those shows never happened. (Great new, though! Dylan will perform in Eugene soon -- June 5th and in Bend on June 27th.)

This March 12, 2020 episode's title is "Dylan on Stage in Oregon". 

Dan and Jeff played Bob Dylan live at the EMU Ballroom from a show in 1999. They also played live Eugene performances of The Pixies, Gillian Welch, and Old Crow Medicine Show. I really enjoyed when they turned their attention to one of Dylan's opening acts, Hot Club of Cowtown and additional tracks of some tried and true Western Swing from decades ago. 

For me, much of the enjoyment I derive from listening to Hard Rain/Slow Trains is learning more and more what an expansive artist Bob Dylan is -- more expansive than I could ever say in this single paragraph -- but I'll say this: Dylan's love of all kinds of music inspires me to be more receptive myself to all kinds of musical styles. I first began to realize this back when I listened to Dylan's Theme Time Radio and Hard Rain/Slow Trains has further deepened my experience with the depth and breadth of music to enjoy. 

From 9-11, Jeff presented another superb show on Deadish.

Tonight it was wall to wall Grateful Dead as Jeff played about an hour's worth of music from two Grateful Dead shows performed on May 19th.

He focused the first hour on a show from 1966 at the Avalon Ballroom.  From my limited point of view, this is an early Grateful Dead show. The tunes Jeff played from this show were mostly bluesy ones. The songs were relatively short and energetic. I could hear as clearly as I ever have just how indebted the Grateful Dead are to the blues, even as they explored other styles of expression as the group evolved.

I experienced the second hour of Deadish as a kind of Grateful Dead symphony. Starting with "Terrapin Station" and the band moved through adventurous versions of "Playing in the Band", "Uncle John's Band", and into Drums as prelude to a gorgeous and tantalizingly lengthy opening to "The Wheel". Like a symphony that travels roads far away from its beginning only to return to them again, in this set of songs the Grateful Dead played a beautiful "China Doll" only to segue back into "Playing in the Band" with touches of "Terrapin Station". This series of songs from the second set were remarkably tight forays into improvisation and exploration and made for a supremely satisfying hour of the Grateful Dead simply putting on a transcendent performance. 

Three Beautiful Things 05-18-2022: Kellogg's Sparkling Laundromat, Learning About Totalitarianism, Decision Time at The Depot

1. Our dryer hasn't been functioning well and now it is undeniably on the blink. It might be a while until it can be repaired. We'll see.

I'm all right with that?

What? 

What do you mean you're all right with that?

Well, I gathered up the four loads of laundry that needed drying and took them over to Kellogg's Laundry X Press. 

I nearly needed sunglasses when I walked in.

I've gone to laundromats in Coeur d'Alene, Spokane, Eugene, London, New York City and who knows where else and without question, Kellogg's Laundry X Press at 95 E. Riverside is the cleanest laundromat I've ever been in. 

Not only that, I put the clothes to be dried in two driers and they were dry in about 30 minutes. It took me a little while to fold them and load them back into the Sube, but I was very happy with how quickly I was in, out, and did I mention the place was sparkling clean -- including the bathroom! 

2. While the clothes dried, I listened to a podcast episode on the Ezra Klein show. Klein interviewed Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Anne Applebaum. The episode's title is "What Liberal Misunderstand About Authoritarianism." 

The appeal of authoritarian leaders baffles me so I wanted to hear what Applebaum had to say.

In addition, Applebaum wrote the forward for a newly released edition of Hannah Arendt's 1951 classic, The Origins of Totalitarianism. I'm not at all conversant with Arendt's books, but I did see the movie, Hannah Arendt one afternoon back in 2013 and found the story about her reporting on the Adolf Eichmann trial for The New Yorker arresting and provocative. 

Likewise, I found the conversation between Klein and Applebaum eye opening. I learned a lot about what could be called blind spots in the politically liberal worldview. I understand better both the appeal and the strategies of authoritarian leaders better and why I found their appeal difficult to comprehend. 

Do you want to listen to this episode? You can! Just click here. 

It's hard for me to imagine that I'll read The Origins of Totalitarianism --so many books, so much music, so many movies, so little time! I will, however, keep an eye and an ear out for more discussions like the one I listened to this afternoon while the clothes dried.

3. Debbie and I have some things to figure out about travel -- who is going where and when -- and about care for Gibbs, Luna, and Copper. While we discussed these matters at The Depot, I enjoyed a pint and a half of Odell Brewing's tasty American Pale Ale. Debbie and I arrived at some conclusions. Things will go better in our household if I return from my trip to Seattle next week on Saturday instead of Sunday (or even later in the week). Debbie is going to pick up some more work in Eugene and I volunteered to take care of Gibbs, Luna, and Copper all at the same time. I offered to think of ways to make it workable for all three of them to be in the house at the same time with Debbie gone. I think I can do it. 

Three Beautiful Things 05-17-2022: Chrissie Hynde in the Lobby, Sampling West Coast Hazys, Poetry Break!

 1. I leapt into the Sube first thing this morning and blasted over the pass to CdA to have the Sube inspected and serviced. Before I left, I scrolled through the Hard Rain and Slow Trains archive and, much to my delight, discovered that back in June, 2021 Dan Mackay had broadcast an episode devoted to Chrissie Hynde. Being out of it about these things, I had no idea that Chrissie Hynde had released an album of Bob Dylan covers entitled, Standing in the Doorway. In this episode, Dan not only played tracks from the new album, he also surveyed Chrissie Hynde's staggeringly brilliant 40+ year career, playing such early tracks as "Brass in Pocket" and "Don't Get Me Wrong" and "Back on the Chain Gang". Among other delights, Dan played excerpts from Hynde being interviewed over the years and played a superb mix of live performances and studio recorded tracks. 

It's hard to imagine a more enjoyable way to wait for the Sube to be tended to. As an added bonus, while Dan's show would have been an hour long on his radio show, the podcast version runs for just about 90 glorious minutes. This worked out especially well because the guys didn't get the Sube in right at 9:00 and that gave me plenty of time to hear the entirety of this episode:  "The Great Pretender: The Music of Chrissy Hynde."

Maybe you, too, would enjoy listening to this episode. If so, just click here. 

2. I zoomed straight home after the car was done, stopping at Costco to fill up with gas. I checked in at home to see if I might pick up some groceries on my trip uptown to vote.

Debbie didn't want much at the store, but she did want me to buy, in her words, "a good hazy".

I picked up a few food items at Yoke's and then surveyed the beer cooler. None of the hazy IPAs we have enjoyed while back in New York make it out this way -- at least not to Kellogg! -- and so I thought we'd find out it the hazy IPAs from two reliable breweries, Sierra Nevada and Firestone Walker, might hit the spot.

They pretty much did. We split a 12 oz can of Firestone Walker's Mind Haze and a 12 oz can of Sierra Nevada's Little Hazy Thing and while neither beer sent us over the moon, they both were pretty tasty. 

3. Tonight Bill Davie presented another Tuesday evening episode of  Poetry Break live on Facebook. My sense is that Bill is in search of a groove -- he wants to read for about 45 minutes and present a variety of poems. He wants to read some of his own, which he did, read poems requested by his viewers, which he did, and read original poems written by viewers, which he did. I think he found a groove tonight. 

It was awesome. Bill's working out his experiences with aging in short pieces that are part journal entry part poem and reads them to us in their unedited form. He read poems by Langston Hughes and by a Ukranian poet and others by request and closed his reading with a fresh and superb poem about roses composed by his longtime friend, Mary Pecka. (It was the first time I've ever heard a poem about a rose make a reference to Iggy Pop!) 

Three Beautiful Things 05-16-2022: Saving the Porter with Debbie, Preparing for Family Dinner, A Lively Family Dinner

 1. Debbie arrived home around 2:00 after two weeks in Eugene and five tiring days of substitute teaching. She furthered my efforts to Save the Porter by bringing four Oregon brewed porters home, three of them Baltic Porters. The Baltic Porter is not an ale, but a lager. I've read that it could be thought of as the imperial stout of the lager world. Well, whether or not that's true, Debbie and I split a pint of Block 15's Ocean Man, their Baltic Porter, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. We then split a pint of the style of porter we are more used to, the ale kind, Arch Rock Porter, a silky and delicious beer. I hadn't drunk any beer since back on Saturday a week ago. I don't enjoy drinking beer, or any other alcohol, really, alone. I was happy Debbie brought me these beers from Eugene and happy we were back splitting pints again.

2. At 6:00, Christy, Carol, Paul, Debbie, and I congregated at Christy's house for family dinner. About ninety minutes before dinner, I prepared my contributions. I put two pounds of baby carrots in a bowl, drizzled olive oil over them, added some salt and pepper, and then roasted them in the oven. When I took them out, I sprinkled cinnamon over them and then covered them with a combination of melted butter and honey. 

I also fixed a batch of jasmine rice big enough to almost fill our smaller Dutch oven so that we'd have rice for tonight's dinner and leftover rice for future uses. 

3. To get started for dinner, Christy mixed us each a tasty improvised cocktail composed of different citrus infused liquors she wanted to make use of. She set out crostini and hummus and right away we launched into animated conversation about Christy and Tracy's Creative Rendezvous in Missoula and visit to the Cataldo Mission, Carol and Paul's visit to Meridian, and Debbie's time away in Eugene. Molly had had one of those days and wanted some time to herself and didn't join us. 

Somehow, these conversations detoured into a fun discussion of how we Woolum siblings got started playing instruments in summer band in elementary school and I got to use the word "trumpappy", our father's nickname for my baritone horn. 

For dinner, Christy oven baked a batch of BBQ chicken and made a corn, cucumber, spinach, and chive salad. I brought over the jasmine rice and the honey butter cinnamon carrots I prepared earlier and Carol and Paul contributed wine. 

Scattered conversation continued to animate our get together. Before long, Christy served us a strawberry shortcake dessert. 

By about 8:00 or so, I was bushed and headed home early. Happy to see me, Luna and Copper leapt on the bed and we settled into a pretty good night of rest and sleep. 

Three Beautiful Things 05-15-2022: Baseball and Being a Hostage in Iran, ZOOM Time, The Movie *Wanda*

1. While I walked "The Trail" to the high school and then returned home via Jacobs Gulch Road and Cameron Ave., I listened to a fascinating episode of the podcast, Snap Judgment. It featured Barry Rosen, the US Embassy's press attache in Tehran in 1979. He was held in captivity as a hostage for 444 days when Iranian students breached the walls of the U.S. Embassy and took control of it.

In the Snap Judgment episode entitled "Field of Dreams", Barry Rosen, now in his mid to late 70s, quietly describes what he experienced as a hostage and how his memories of baseball, especially of going to games as a young boy at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn to watch the Dodgers, helped him endure the darkness, isolation, and despair of his ordeal.

Want to listen to Barry Rosen tell his story of being a hostage and hear him reflect on the baseball's positive impact on his life in captivity and in the years that have followed? Just click here. 

2. Today was Zoom day for the Westminster Basement Study Group and Bill, Diane, Val, and I gathered via the magic of the Zoom app and the World Wide Web for an excellent conversation. We shared our perspectives on recent news stories, especially the Justice Alito draft opinion on Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization. We listened to Bill talk about not being able to play guitar and his decision to do a weekly poetry reading online instead of playing his songs each week. We Basementeers regularly discuss, without pity, how we are experiencing growing old and this most significant change in Bill's life fits squarely in that conversation. 

In our time online and in some FB conversation later in the day, we nailed down our plans to meet at Bridgit's in Chehalis on Saturday the 28th for early afternoon snacks and in person conversation. We rarely see each other in person so this get together promises to be deeply satisfying. 

3. Barbara Loden wrote, directed, and was the lead actor in the independent movie, Wanda. It first appeared in film festivals and in limited movie theaters in 1970.

Today, during our Zoom meeting, Bill talked about how most of the poetry he's been reading lately has been written by women and we discussed the value of seeing the world from women's perspectives. Our discussion reminded me of a Greyhound bus ride I took from Seattle to Spokane at the end of spring break in 1983. I read most, if not all, of Adrienne Rich's collection of essays, On Lies, Secrets, and Silence. Before reading this book, I accepted, without question, that all of us, men and women, are alike in at the level of our shared human nature. Rich bluntly and forcefully challenged this idea and confronted me, for the first time, with the idea -- the fact? -- that women experience the world differently, see the world differently, and are not, at the deepest ontological level, at the level of being, the same as men. 

So, to me, in essence, I heard Bill saying today that when he reads the poetry Mary Oliver or Adrienne Rich or Eileen Myles or Ruth Stone, he's learning about ways of engaging the world that are outside of his own experience BUT that the poems invite him into, invite him to be open to, invite him to experience and possibly even understand the world in ways different from his limited perspective. 

All of this was on my mind as I watched Wanda, on the Criterion Channel this evening (it's also available on HBO Max and for rent or purchase on iTunes -- and, possibly elsewhere).

I don't want to give away what happens in this movie.

I will, however, say a few things about it.

First, of all, I often hear people I know say that they don't enjoy a movie if they find the characters in it unlikeable. I don't think Barbara Loden wrote and directed Wanda with the purpose of inviting us to like Wanda. Nor to pity her. I would say she invites us to experience Wanda's displacement, isolation, and existential distress.

Second of all, when this movie came out, some women who reviewed it were critical of it because Barbara Loden does not develop the character Wanda as a woman for other women to model themselves after. In later years, other women commenting on the movie saw this portrayal of Wanda as a strength of the movie, saw the raw portrayal of Wanda as potently unforgettable.

Lastly, Wanda is not an uplifting movie and never pretends to be. If uplifting escapist movies take us away from the harshness of the world, Wanda is the opposite of escapist. In this movie, we move more fully into the world's harshness.

I can't imagine anyone answering the question, "Did you like Wanda?".

It's not a movie to like or dislike.

It's a movie that rejects slick production values, minimizes the importance of plot, is presented to us in a nearly documentary style (cinema verite), and opens up for us ways that movies can be powerful without aiming to entertain us or, in any way, comfort us.

Wanda sat on my list of movies to see for a long time. Tonight was the right time for me to view it. My guess is that I'll return to it again.

Three Beautiful Things 05-14-2022: Richard and Linda Thompson Day, Pork Yellow Curry, Where Are They Now?

1. In November, 1990, I'd been offered and I accepted a full time position teaching English at Lane Community College -- I'd been teaching at LCC part-time since the fall of 1989. Then, in December, as a way to celebrate this life-changing occurrence, I drove Jeff and me to San Francisco around the 27th (my 37th birthday) and we went to the 1990 run of four Grateful Dead shows at the Oakland Coliseum, peaking with the New Year's Eve show.

On the way to San Francisco, Jeff asked me if I'd ever listened to Richard and Linda Thompson. As I remember, a few years earlier I'd seen the album cover for Shoot Out the Lights lying around at Don and Per's apartment and I have a faint memory of Don thinking highly of the album, but until Jeff punched his cassette tape into the Honda's tape player, I hadn't heard it. The tape blew me away. But, for some reason, I didn't follow up -- not right away, at least.

But, later in 1991, on July 21st to be exact, my wife at the time and I buzzed up to the Northwest Service Center in Portland to hear Richard Thompson live. Richard and Linda Thompson hadn't been together musically or maritally for nearly ten years, Thompson had recorded a steady stream of solo albums, and this concert was in support of his latest release, Rumor and Sigh. 

That concert changed everything for me. For starters, it was one of the most thrilling performances I'd ever seen any musician give. As a result, I made mail orders for every recording of his I could find (except I didn't yet enter the world of Fairport Convention). Eventually, I had in my possession and played over and over again all of his recordings with Linda Thompson and all of his solo projects.

I became a fervent about going to as many Richard Thompson live shows as I could in the 1990s. I heard him at the Wild Duck, the Shedd, the Roseland Theater, the Portland Zoo, and the Aladdin Theater, multiple times at each of these venues (but, I think, only once at the Portland Zoo and once at the Shedd). 

So, when I listened to the Richard Thompson interview on Fresh Air on Friday, I returned home and realized I hadn't listened to Richard or Richard and Linda Thompson at home for years.

I no longer possess all those lps and cds I once owned. I remember pausing before I gave them away when we moved from Eugene to Maryland, but I was pretty ruthless about moving as few things as possible across the country and let go of all those recording.

But, thanks to my Echo Dot and Amazon music, I listened all day today to Richard Thompson and, even more fulfilling, to a bunch of songs by the incomparable Richard and Linda Thompson.

As I listened, as I let the music move me and let many memories sweep over me, I wondered, "Has there ever been a box set compiled of all of Richard and Linda Thompson's recordings?"

I discovered there is a boxed set out there in the world. It's called, Hard Luck Stories, 1972-1982. It includes not only tracks from Richard and Linda Thompson's several cds, but also demos, outtakes, live versions of songs, and other delights that are included in any solid retrospective box set.

Just one problem: the first pressing of this box set sold out. I did a quick search online and not one vendor I looked up has it in stock. Some are available on eBay. I'm not quite ready to make an eBay order. For now, I'm going to keep checking around.

And I'm putting out a call: I'm not sure who among the readers of this blog listens to Richard and Linda Thompson but if you happen to have this box set or if you happen to spot it at a music store like the Long Ear or Eugene's House of Records, and if you have any contact info for me, please let me know. 

I'm going to hope that sometime I can find this box set and, if I do, I'm going to hope the one I find is not one of the ones that has defective disks. Yes, discouraging as it is, a small number of those box sets were flawed. 

2. As I've said I would, today I chopped up the slices of pork roast I had left over and combined it with white onion, broccoli, baby Yukon potatoes, yellow curry paste, coconut milk, fish sauce, soy sauce, and brown sugar and made a delicious curry sauce. I boiled some egg noodles and poured some of the sauce over them for a delicious dinner. I have a good amount of sauce still in the fridge and maybe my next meal will be curry and jasmine rice. I'll see.

3. I continued my correspondence with David, my friend from our days in two theme dorms at Whitworth. Some of our discussion moved me to see if one guy we had a fun night with over beers in Akili (the dorm David and I lived in) was anywhere to be found on the World Wide Web. He was. Bob D. is a retired English professor and had a splendid career at Wittenberg University.

Our RA in Akili was Mark V. and a quick search of his name not only informed me that he is the Reverend Priscilla Wood Neaves Distinguished Professor of Religion and Politics at the John C. Danford Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis, but some YouTube videos also popped up and I listened to Mark discuss his latest book project. 

That was fun and I sent my discoveries on to David. 

Three Beautiful Things 05-13-2022: A Veera Donut Feast!, Walking with Richard Thompson, Love Those Leftovers

 1.  If you've ever dropped in at Veera Donuts in Missoula, maybe you were curious. I know I was. After all, it's a vegan donut shop. I accidentally stumbled upon Veera the last time I was in Missoula in 2019 and I don't think, until that day, I'd ever seen the words "vegan" and "donut" side by side. I wondered what a donut not made with milk, eggs, butter, or any other products derived from animals would taste like.

The first thing I noticed when I walked in was that the donuts were, essentially, works of art, beautiful looking. I also noted that each donut cost more than I was used to paying for a donut at the Lane Community College cafeteria or at Yoke's or even at Krispy Kreme. 

I don't remember which of the donuts I ordered that day, but I do remember being blown away by how sweet, flavorful, rich, and absolutely delicious the donut was. I'd never eaten a better donut. It was worth every penny and more. 

So, fast forward to this week, late Thursday afternoon. Christy and Tracy returned from their Creative Rendezvous in Missoula. I had told Christy before she left that they might enjoy dropping in at Veera Donuts.

They did drop in.

Not only that, Christy brought two donuts in a take out box over to me here at the house.

One was a Creme Brûlée and the other a chocolate-y cake donut. Christy read from her phone what all  this chocolate donut consisted of, but I can't remember it all.

I couldn't tear into these donuts right away, but once I'd eaten my dinner, I ate the divine Creme Brûlée and, once again, I couldn't believe that this sweet explosion of ecstatic taste was a donut. It paired perfectly with cold milk. 

I saved the chocolate-y donut for this morning.

I brewed a cup of coffee and bit into this gorgeous cake donut. Immediately I realized that there was no way I could eat this donut in, say, a minute or two the way I can eat a Yoke's donut.

In fact, it was so intense that I didn't finish eating this donut until after 9:00 a.m. I took my first bite at 6:00 a.m. Keep in mind, this was not a large donut, but pretty thick. But it was jam-packed with sweetness and a variety of rich flavors and was so overwhelmingly intense that I could only eat it in small bites spaced out over about three hours.

I love donuts, but I am pretty strict with myself about eating them very often. I wasn't strict about eating them often when I taught at LCC. I ate about 40,000 donuts over the twenty-five years I worked there.

I thought about how, if I wanted to, I could easily eat one or two Yoke's donuts a day.

But could I eat a Veera donut daily?

No way!

I could imagine eating a Veera donut once a week. More likely once a month. Or maybe just six times a year.

For me, it's like steak. 

Over the last several years, I've eaten no more than about four steaks in the course of a year. Lately, it's been two per year, both at the Wildhorse Resort. 

Veera's products, for me, are like the ribeye or the New York strip steak of donuts. 

2. Later in the day, I gathered myself for a walk to the high school and back home. The walk itself was enjoyable, but I significantly increased my pleasure my listening to a recent interview with the incomparable Richard Thompson on Fresh Air. Thompson's memoir, Beeswing, has just been published in paperback. Beeswing focuses on Richard Thompson's early years, his work with Fairport Convention, his early work as a solo artist, and his early years performing and recording with Linda Thompson. I loved hearing Richard Thompson talk about Fairport Convention's successful efforts to wed electric instruments and a rock/jazz rhythm section with traditional music of the United Kingdom. As I grow older, I appreciate this melding more and more and loved hearing the selections from Thompson's music making career that accompanied the interview. 

It was more difficult listening to the stories of band members being killed, first in a vehicular accident and later, after she'd left the band, the fall down a flight of stairs that killed Sandy Denny.  Thompson discussed these catastrophes insightfully and with the wisdom of a person now in his 70s. Knowing what he and his bandmates suffered through back in their much younger days was painful to hear about again (it wasn't news to me). 

3. I had a container of the lemon and olive chicken dish I made for Mother's Day family dinner in the fridge and heated it up with rice I made several days ago and it made a great dinner.  I didn't eat all of this food, so I have another serving left for a Saturday snack. I also have slices of pork leftover from the roast I prepared earlier in the week and I'll chop up those slices as protein too add to a curry sauce I'll make for dinner on Saturday. It's all coming back to me how, when I'm living alone, I always make too much food for a single meal and the benefit of my miscalculations is having several days of delicious leftovers! 

Three Beautiful Things 05-12-2022: Surprise Lunch at the Snake Pit, Walking with Bob Dylan and The Beatles, Blissful Thursday

 1. I got a call from Ed around 9:00. We had planned to meet up with Sue D. at 4:00 at the Hill Top for a beer. Plans changed! It turns out Joni was coming over from Spokane and so Joni, Carol, Wanda, Sue, Ed, and I met at the Snake Pit for lunch. Ed and Sue took a few minutes to make sure that were on the same page about their respective upcoming trips to Iceland and for the rest of the time we all yakked about all kinds of stuff, told stories, entertained each other, and enjoyed our meals. 

It was a fun surprise. I didn't wake up this morning thinking I'd see a bunch of my KHS Class of 1972 pals.

2. I had planned to take a walk before going to the Hill Top, but with the change in plans, I also had to readjust my walking schedule. Over the last year I've discovered that if I walk soon after eating, I get winded in no time flat. So, I let my lunch digest and took care of a couple or three things at Christy's house and, around six o'clock, I hoofed it up to the high school on The Trail and returned home walking south on Jacobs Gulch Road and turned east on Cameron until I arrived back at the house.

My walk was enjoyable on its own, but I enhanced my enjoyment by diving into the archives and listening to the first of two Hard Rain and Slow Trains podcast episodes focused on Bob Dylan and The Beatles. Dan Mackay created these two Dylan/Beatles episodes to coincide with the release of the Peter Jackson documentary, The Beatles: Get Back. 

Everything Dan presented was news to me. Until today, I'd never thought about Bob Dylan and The Beatles meeting each other, let alone thinking about the influence they had on each other. I'm not sure I understand their impact on one another in musical terms -- some of this discussion went over my head -- but I think I began to grasp the way they inspired one another to innovate. 

Whatever I understood or didn't understand intellectually, emotionally this episode was most satisfying and triggered some sweet feelings of nostalgia and some sweet memories. 

My favorite memory, just for the record, came back to me when Dan played "Norwegian Wood". Suddenly I was at the University of Idaho Jazz Festival (now named after Lionel Hampton). I was a sophomore at KHS and went down mainly to hear Kellogg's Lab Band (the Taco Benders), but I made a special point to listen to Lewiston's lab band. Our band teacher, Glenn Exum, had high praise for the Lewiston band's director, Eddie Williams. I'd known Eddie's son, Gary (KHS, Class of 1970) for a long time in Kellogg and I wanted to hear for myself just how good the Lewiston jazz band was. I'd heard Lewiston's pep band and it was awesome so my expectations were pretty high.

Eddie Williams' band met my high expectations and exceeded them and the one song they played that electrified me was a jazz band version of "Norwegian Wood". 

So, there I was, on The Trail, headed to the high school and suddenly I was transported to Moscow,  reliving one of my favorite Kellogg High School memories when I attended the U of Idaho Jazz Festival and heard the great Lewiston Bengal jazz band absolutely rock "Norwegian Wood". 

3. I returned home, finished the pork gravy I made the other day by pouring it, once again, over egg noodles.

As I finished dinner, it was time for another Blissful Thursday. 

Since Dan Mackay is on the road attending activities in Tulsa as the Bob Dylan Center opens, tonight's episode of Hard Rain and Slow Trains was a repeat from 2020 and featured songs that closed Bob Dylan albums. Last week, he played a show from the archives that featured album opening songs. 

I'll repeat what I said last week: I don't know Bob Dylan albums well at all. I trust that what Dan had to say about the purposes of these closing songs was accurate. For me, the show expanded my relatively new experience of listening somewhat regularly to Dylan's song and I enjoyed hearing these songs a lot.

Then Deadish came on.

I thought maybe I'd pushed a wrong button.

Instead of a new May 12th Deadish broadcast, I was hearing a repeat of last week's May 5th show.

I sent Jeff a quick email and he confirmed that he didn't know what was going on, that he'd sent a new show to the station, but someone, somehow, messed up.

Well, I especially enjoyed the Grateful Dead tunes Jeff played last week from their May 5, 1979 show in Baltimore, so I kept the show on and enjoyed them again.

In the meantime, Jeff sent me an electronic file of the show he worked hard to produce earlier in the week but that didn't get played tonight.

It reached me around 10:20 and by the time I got it downloaded and ready to play, it was too late for me to start listening to two hours of Deadish. I turned in.

(As I wrap up this blog post on Friday morning, I've also just finished listening to the "lost" 5-12-2022 episode of Deadish. It's awesome. It must be heard someday by Jeff's listeners. I'll write more about it when I blog tomorrow about Friday, May 13th.)

Three Beautiful Things 05-11-2022: Luna's Glucose Levels are Great, Walking "The Trail", Leave the Driving to Them

1. Luna cooperated calmly as I eased her into her crate and buzzed down to the vet's office. Dr. Cook wanted to check Luna's glucose levels, especially now that she's eating kidney friendly food, to make sure that the brief brush she had with diabetes hasn't returned. 

Luna's glucose levels were solid, in range, and I brought her back home both relieved and delighted upon learning that.

2. I enjoyed an afternoon walk today. My legs need strengthening so I gave them a light workout as I walked up the trail that connects the high school to the west end of Riverside and Mission. I expected to have more difficulty with walking uphill on the that trail, but I did pretty well and was encouraged that my legs held up fairly well.

3. Peter has plans to be out of town when I'm in Seattle, but Friday is clear for Mark. We wrote back and forth a bit today about meeting up and I'm stoked that I'll be able to board a Sound Transit light rail train near where I'm staying and ride up to the University District to meet Mark. If I hire a taxi or an Uber ride from the place I'm staying to the train station, I can enjoy my visit even more by just letting the Camry rest for a while. Mark promised me we'll do some strolling around the Univ of Washington once we've had lunch. It's all sounding great -- public transportation, yakkin' with a longtime friend, and walking around. I'll continue to strengthen my legs in preparation! 

Three Beautiful Things 05-10-2022: Planning My Trip, Banking, Curry and *Poetry Break*

1. It's looking more and more like when I drive Mike and Ed to SeaTac on May 26th that I'll spend two nights in the Seattle area and, after a get together during the day (I hope) in Chehalis, end up in Portland on Saturday night so I can visit Patrick and Meagan and then head home to Kellogg on Sunday. I am still piecing things together, but that looks like the general plan right now.  

2. I've needed to close out a checking account at Wells Fargo for a few weeks and delayed it out of caution in case we had one last need to use that account. Today I decided that the time was right and I hustled uptown and got that task completed and deposited the money elsewhere. 

3. I've done quite a bit of cooking lately, leaving me with a pretty good supply of leftovers. This evening, I tuned into Bill Davie's live Poetry Break webcast at 7:00 and enjoyed leftover curry over jasmine rice from last week. Soon I'm going to make another curry and slice up some of that pork I roasted on Monday and find out if I like pork as a protein in a curry sauce. I can't remember ever trying that before.

Bill's poetry reading this evening was powerful. Tonight Bill fulfilled a request to read the popular early 20th century poem, "The Highwayman"by Alfred Noyes. He also read poems by Mark Kenney, a regular listener to and commenter on Bill's online concerts and readings. Bill read some of his own work about aging. Lately, Bill has been focusing his reading (and rereading) on poetry by women and he read powerful poems by Eileen Myles, Chrystos, and Ruth Stone. 

I sure enjoy Bill's approach to giving these weekly readings. His idea to field people's request to hear poems they loved hearing as kids and to read submissions of viewers' own poetry gets us, as viewers, involved more fully in his broadcast and he compliments these poems intelligently with poems written by long established published poets, making his programs touching, powerful, and memorable. 

Three Beautiful Things 05-09-2022: Pork Roast Successful, Fixing Gravy for Noodles, The Joys of Independent Radio

 1. That pork roast I put in a marinating bag on Sunday was ready to roast today. Unsure how much the roast weighed and having read one recipe that recommended a 400 degree oven, I decided to put onion slices on the bottom of the Dutch oven, put the roast on top of it, and see what its inner temperature looked like after fifty minutes. That turned out to be the perfect amount of time. I checked the meat's temperature, it was perfect, and and so I let the roast rest for a bit and then I sliced it. I also removed and stored the onions. 

2. A shallow pool of liquid remained in the bottom of the Dutch oven. I chopped us some mushrooms and added them to the pot, cooked them, put in some of the onion I'd just removed from the pot, and added some flour, cooked that up, and then added milk and some chicken broth to make a couple of cups of gravy. Once it was finished, I cut up a few slices of the pork roast into small pieces and added them to the gravy. 

So, the foundation of my dinner tonight was ready: I boiled some egg noodles, heated up about a cup of the gravy, and enjoyed the gravy over the noodles. I thought the fennel, allspice, cinnamon, garlic, and lemon juice marinade worked really well with the pork and infused my gravy with a variety of tasty flavors.

3. I enhanced my efforts in the kitchen late this afternoon by streaming Eugene's KRVM-FM radio (krvm.org) from 5-7 and listened to Greg Carter's awesome show, Vinyl Revival. Every Monday at 5, Carter plays vinyl records from his personal collection. I loved the variety of music he played today. He had me almost right off the bat when he played Fairport Convention's "Matty Groves" and once he played Pink Floyd's "One of These Days", I knew I was in for the whole two hours. I never knew what to expect and the surprises were invigorating: Jimmy Buffet, Led Zeppelin, Traffic, Van Morrison, Eva Cassidy, Lucinda Williams, Bonnie Raitt, and much, much more. 

Once again, just like I experience when listening to Dan and Jeff on KEPW-FM, it's a deep pleasure to listen to a knowledgeable host spin records of his choice and not be bound by the demands of ratings or a mandate to play popular songs of the moment. 

I am grateful for living in a time when I can access independent radio stations on the World Wide Web and enjoy such a variety of music that doesn't follow prescribed playlists, but is an expression of the host's creativity and love of a wide range of music. 

Three Beautiful Things 05-08-2022: Olives and Marinating a Pork Roast, Cooking Chicken and Pilaf for Family Dinner, Serious Table Conversation and After Dinner Mirth

 1. It's been a while since I've had a full day in the kitchen. Today I did. I agreed to prepare three contributions for this evening's Mother's Day family dinner, helping fulfill the menu requested by Carol.

I started the food preparation on Saturday night when I made Mediterranean Spiced Olives. It was simple. I combined a mixture of drained and rinsed green and kalamata olives in a bowl with olive oil, orange zest (and some fresh orange juice), honey, garlic, thyme, allspice, salt, pepper, and some chopped flat-leaf parsley. I stirred it up, put the olives in a sealed container and the flavors melded overnight and on into today until they were served around 5:00.

I also took a brief detour from family dinner preparations and combined olive oil, fennel seeds, cinnamon, allspice, and garlic in a bowl and rubbed it over a pork roast and put the roast in a ziploc bag to marinate. Later, I added some lemon juice to the bag. I'll cook the roast on Monday. 

2. I then prepared two dishes for family dinner.

I began by assembling the ingredients for Olive and Lemon-Studded Chicken.

I had taken out the chicken parts I bought yesterday and let them reach room temperature.

I cut two white onions into slivers and poured them into hot olive oil in a Dutch oven and cooked them for ten minutes. Meanwhile, I cut the chicken thighs and breasts into bite-size pieces and, just to see what would happen, also kept a couple of fat drumsticks on hand. 

Once the onions were limp, I added garlic, saffron, cumin, and ginger, and cooked the seasoned onion slivers another couple of minutes.

I added in the chicken pieces along with chicken broth, fresh squeezed lemon juice, and a couple of cinnamon sticks, brought it to a boil, and then turned down the heat and simmered this stuff for about a half an hour.

For the last step, I was supposed to add a preserved lemon to the pot. Since I don't have preserved lemons on hand, I asked my crack research team to explore the World Wide Web for a substitute. Luckily, I put my request into the team on Saturday night and discovered that by peeling a lemon, mincing the peel and rind, putting it in a small bowl, and letting it sit overnight, I'd have something akin to a preserved lemon. 

So, I added the lemon preserve substitute and a mixture of drained and rinsed green and kalamata olives. I also removed the drumsticks, trimmed the meat off of them so no one at dinner would have to hassle with the bones. 

The Olive and Lemon-Studded Chicken simmered for another twenty minutes or so and I turned off the heat as a precaution against overcooking the chicken.

During the simmering, I assembled the ingredients for Byzantine Pilaf.

I chopped a white onion and peeled a handful of carrots and them into about quarter inch pieces. 

In a small bowl, I combined allspice, cumin, cardamon, saffron threads, and salt. 

In our other Dutch oven, I melted unsalted butter and added olive oil to it. Once it was fairly hot, I poured in the chopped onion and, once the onion was tender, I added the carrots and a few cloves of crushed garlic and cooked it altogether for another five minutes or so. 

Now it was time to add the spices, and cook the garlic, carrots, and onions for another minute or so.

I decided to use brown rice for this pilaf and poured the uncooked rice into the pot and cooked it with the carrots, onions, garlic, and spices for about a minute.

I stirred in chicken broth and added dried cherries, brought it all to a boil, covered the Dutch oven, turned down the heat and cooked the rice until it absorbed the liquid.

The (old) brown rice took longer to cook than I planned for -- way longer, in fact -- and so I gathered up the baguette and the three small blocks of cheese I was contributing, along with the olives I prepared Saturday night, and ran them out front to Tracy and Christy. They stopped in front of the house on their way to dinner.  I was grateful that, thanks to Christy and Tracy,  the stubborn rice didn't keep the rest of the family from getting started on time with the bread/cheese and olives appetizer. 

As long as I'm jabbering on and on so much about food prep, I'll add that when I packed up the two Dutch ovens in a Chewy box, I also added the not quite empty chicken broth box. I tasted the rice pilaf before packing it up and thought it was undercooked a bit. Once I arrived at Carol and Paul's, I asked Carol to confirm that the rice was still a little crunchy. She confirmed it was. I fixed it by adding more broth to the pilaf, bringing that liquid to a boil, turning down the heat, and letting the rice absorb it -- and the rice cooperated -- and so, by dinner time, the rice pilaf could no longer be mistaken for Grape Nuts or Captain Crunch.

3. We sat down for dinner. Just before we took our seats, Christy sautéed asparagus stalks. She and Tracy also brought a fresh and beautifully dressed Caesar salad. Before we dug in, Christy read aloud the menu list she'd typed up. It described some of the history and geographical origin of each of the dishes at the table. We'd all had a glass or two of the red wine sangria Paul made to go with the appetizers and now were ready to compliment our meal of lemon-olive chicken, rice pilaf, Caesar salad, and sautéed asparagus with the red or white wine Molly contributed. 

Since Monday had been the 50th anniversary of the Sunshine Mine fire and since Molly covered the ceremony for the local newspaper and since Carol and Paul attended the ceremony, conversation turned toward a discussion of May 2, 1972.

Soon, however, the discussion of mining danger got more personal and Paul told about his days working in the Lucky Friday mine and the terrifying incident he experienced when he fortunately escaped being killed by rockfall in a stope he and the miner he was helping were working. The story of Paul's escape segued into the story of the 70 foot fall Paul's dad miraculously survived in the Bunker Hill mine. With some reluctance, upon being asked, I talked a bit about my harrowing near death experience in a roaster at the Zinc Plant. 

The discussion that grew out of these stories was as serious as any discussion we've ever had at family dinner. We talked about industry in and near the Silver Valley and the dangers of mining and logging. Those of us who lived here talked about growing up with water, air, and soil pollution and we all made observations about the remarkable transformation of the Kellogg landscape in the decades that followed the closure in 1982-83 of Bunker Hill's smelting plants and mining operations. We even talked a bit about Butte. 

I then dreamed all Sunday night about mining and smelting and industrial deaths and survivors. The dreams repeatedly snapped me awake and it was a comfort to be awake with Luna near my head or chest and Copper pressed against my lower legs, reminding me of the contrast between the sweet cats who live in my present and the scenes I was revisiting in my dream visions of the past.

In time, discussion meandered away from hard metals and timber and we sauntered into the living room.

Carol and Christy received Mother's Day gift bags. Christy served us a superb orange pound cake and, as an after dinner drink, Paul poured us a moderate amount of Grand Marnier. 

What a Mother's Day! We enjoyed flavorful food, serious and illuminating conversation, and commemorated our family's mothers, honoring mothers in our past and the mothering of children and animals in the present.

Oh! And I witnessed another moment I really enjoyed! Molly cracked open a can of Icicle Brewing's Dark Persuasion, a German Chocolate Cake stout. 

I'm always looking for moments when I can demonstrate to the uninitiated that because a beer is dark, that doesn't mean it's strong or more bitter. 

So, I asked Molly to share a sip of her beer with Dark Beer Skeptic Christy.

It was like watching Mikey eat Life cereal.

She liked it! 

Even though she announced that she would probably have bitter beer face upon tasting it, she didn't! 

My mission to advocate for the wide variety of tastes in dark beers made some progress! 

I was really happy. 

Three Beautiful Things 05-07-2022: Shopping for Mother's Day, Ed and Mike and I Meet at the Lounge, I Marinated Olives

 1. With family dinner falling on Mother's Day, it's almost like a birthday dinner for Carol. She got to decide what Christy, Paul, Molly, Tracy, and I will prepare for our Mother's Day blowout. I'm going to save the details about what we are eating until I write tomorrow about the dinner itself. I will say, though, that I am in charge of the appetizer, main dish, and a side dish. I hotfooted it over to Yoke's today and bought the food I need to meet Carol's wishes (turns out I didn't get enough olives -- I'll need to make a quick trip back). Christy was also at Yoke's. She had food prep ahead of her, too. 

I had a moment at the check out stand. The checker scanned all my groceries and waited for the receipt to pop out. She remarked, "This thing sure is being slow. Must all the customers shopping for Mother's Day." We waited. We waited some more. Then she checked the debit card machine. My card was in the machine, but I was daydreaming about my fantasy baseball teams or something, and I hadn't answered the cash back question or put in my PIN. 

"Oh! I'm sorry! I'm the hold up here!" I sputtered. I apologized to the checker, the woman behind me in line, and would have jumped on the PA and apologized to God and the whole store had I needed to, but instead I blushed, answered that I didn't want cash back, entered my PIN, gathered my daydreaming self and got out of there.

2. I plopped down on a stool at the end of the bar at the Lounge and waited for Ed and Mike to arrive. As Cas and I got to yakkin' about me driving Mike and Ed to SeaTac in a couple of weeks, we exaggerated my drive into me driving Ed and Mike to Iceland so they wouldn't have to fly. This became the joke of the late afternoon. When Ed and Mike arrived, Cas told them how much they must appreciate that I would be driving them to Iceland. It was never not funny.

Ed, Mike, and I grabbed seats at the small table right behind the bar. Mike was chilled after having watched his granddaughter play soccer in the rain today, so, along with his beer, he ordered a shot of Pendleton Canadian Whiskey. I interrupted his order and said, "No. Bring us each a shot of Pendleton 1910 Rye Whiskey." Ed wanted a shot, too, so I was thrilled to introduce Mike and Ed to my new favorite whiskey. We were all impressed with its easy drinking smoothness. I like what I experience as its subtle brown sugary sweetness. We didn't throw back our shot. We sipped and savored it and enjoyed a couple of beers, too. One shot of that whiskey is my limit, but it's sure tempting to order more than one. 

We got our May 26th trip to SeaTac figured out. Turns out Ed and Mike are going to fly to Iceland after all. I'm not driving them.  Then we ordered dinner from Wah Hing. I enjoyed my house special  Lo Mein noodles with oyster sauce and my order of pot stickers and happily brought leftovers home.

3. Back home, I assembled the olives and other ingredients I needed to make one part of the Mother's Day appetizer and sealed it in a container so the olives could, as the recipe suggests, sit overnight so the flavors of the ingredients they were marinating in could meld. Details tomorrow. 

Three Beautiful Things 05-06-2022: The Writing Hours, Enjoying Debbie's Time in Eugene, Two Views: A Room and Parallax!

 1. I spent most of the morning and just past noon writing today. It took me a while to sort out the bliss of Thursday as I wrote my blog post -- all that music and all those interviews on the Criterion Channel! I like to write to Jeff on Fridays to let him know what I experienced listening to his Thursday night Deadish show and I continued a correspondence with a friend from Whitworth and had a lot to say about the last 45 years since he and I last saw each other in person! For any of you who do any kind of writing on a daily basis, you must know that experience of spilling out sentences, looking up, and suddenly realizing 6-7 hours have gone by. I experienced that (again) today.

2. For various reasons, I needed to stay home when Debbie left on Monday to go to Eugene. I enjoy Debbie's trips by vicariously experiencing things she does. It gave me a jolt of joy when she texted me today that she'd gone to Monkey's Paw, a Springfield tiki bar, with TRK and Anne to hear Brook Adams and his surf band, El Borko ¡Surf!, play. Likewise, I imagined myself being with her at Oakshire Brewing this afternoon for a meet up with Walker and Ingrid. Debbie wants to do some substitute teaching during her visit. I was relieved that the passport card I express mailed her arrived, enabling her to get the paperwork completed for the school district and very happy to learn that she'll be back in a classroom on Monday working with children and earning a little walk around dough. I'm also happy to know she'll be making some living room music. And, of course,  I enjoy knowing that she is making occasional stops at 16 Tons, both the cafe and the bottle shop/tap room. 

3. I'm not spending all my time vicariously enjoying Debbie's visit in Eugene.

This evening, I once again entered the jam-packed world of movies and interviews available on the awesome Criterion Channel.

I was going to jump right into watching The Parallax View, but when I searched for the title using Criterion's search engine, along with The Parallax View collection, a Room with a View collection popped up. Suddenly I was transported back to Eugene and a pair of movie theaters that sat where Olive Garden is now out in the Valley River area. If I remember correctly, those twin cinemas screened mainstream movies  as well as less popular movies that one might usually see at an art house. I don't know if it's true, but my memory tells me that I saw Room with a View at one of those cinemas -- and, whether I actually did or not, it is indisputable that I loved that movie.

Well, the Criterion Channel Room with a View collection contains an interview with director James Ivory, costume designer John Bright, and cinematographer Tony Pierce-Roberts. Listening to them talk about how they created Room with a View was fascinating, reawakened a dormant interest I once had in watching James Ivory/Ismail Merchant movies, and almost moved me to put The Parallax View aside and watched a sophisticated romantic comedy instead of a paranoid political thriller.

But, I resisted escaping into the shimmering world of Room with a View.

Instead I entered the dark creepy world of The Parallax View. I chose paranoia over privileged Edwardians sorting out feelings about love in Florence and the sun-splashed nearby countryside.

And here's what I experienced:

To me, The Parallax View is a political thriller that is not political. What does that mean? Well, this movie gives us no indication as to the party affiliation of the politicians who are assassinated and gives no indication as to what political views the assassins have. 

We learn, as journalist Joseph Frady digs into the mysterious deaths of witnesses to the story's first assassination, that a faceless corporation, Parallax is behind the killings. Parallax recruits and hires assassins.

I won't give away any more of the plot.

What I will say is that this movie asserts that USA corporations like the fictional Parallax function as largely amoral and apolitical entities. We never know, in this movie, who hires out Parallax's assassin services only that Parallax carries out the wishes of its clients and puts the power of its wealth and influence into guaranteeing that truth about these killings will never be revealed by investigative commissions. Never will these investigations conclude that the assassinations were the result of a well-coordinated corporate effort. The investigations will always conclude that the killers were acting alone,  unaffiliated with any other conspirators. 

It's the commercial nature of the apolitical and amoral forces behind the killings in this movie that create the paranoia, along with Parallax's dark and omnipotent uses of surveillance.  There's no right or safe side to be on. There is nowhere to hide. The money and power behind these killings don't care about political views, policy, privacy, or right and wrong. Parallax is solely concerned with satisfying clients while accruing and securing power and increasing its capital gains.  Parallax will surveil and carry out plans to kill anyone for the right price. 

The Parallax View, by the way, came out in 1974.

Three Beautiful Things 05-05-2022: Blissful Thursday is Back: Paranoia on the Criterion Channel, Bob Dylan's Album Openers, *Deadish* Goes to Outer Space and Back

 1.  I'm not quite sure why I've been absent for a while, but this afternoon I returned to the Criterion Channel and started poking around. I can't remember quite how I accidentally stumbled upon a collection of interviews focused on director Alan J. Pakula's movie, The Parallax View. The collection also included the movie. Upon my discovery, I suddenly remembered that several times I've read that The Parallax View is the middle movie of what many writers and film buffs call Pakula's Paranoia Trilogy: the three movies are Klute, Parallax View, and All the President's Men.

I watched (and blogged about) Klute back in November, 2018. I've watched All the President's Men about 90 times (it seems). I've never watched The Parallax View. 

After today, though, I'm well prepared to watch The Parallax View.

The Criterion Channel interviews dazzled me. First, I listened to British director Alex Cox (Sid and Nancy and Repo Man) talk absorbingly about the movie in relation to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and to a lesser degree, the shootings of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. Cox has studied in great detail different explanations of JFK's murder that refute the idea that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone (or even shot) Kennedy. He considers The Parallax View to be, in his words, "the best JFK conspiracy movie." 

I also listened to the other interviews in the collection. Two feature Pakula himself reflecting on directing the movie. I loved listening to Gordon Willis discuss his work as the movie's director of photography. The last interview featured John Boorstin who worked as an assistant to Pakula and did a lot of legwork to help create the scenes, including a famous montage, in which Warren Beatty is tested to see if he is the kind of person (socio/psychopath) the Parallax Corporation wants as an employee. 

Now I'm ready to watch the movie. In fact, I plan to watch the entire Paranoid Trilogy, maybe even in order. 

One movie that came up in, I think, the Alex Cox interview was the 1973 political thriller/assassination movie, Executive Action, featuring Burt Lancaster and Robert Ryan. 

I plan to watch it, too, and wouldn't be surprised if I watch other political thrillers from 35-55 years ago. I need to make a list.

2. Not only did it feel right and good to tune back into the Criterion Channel, it also felt good, right, and, in fact, blissful, to sit and listen to my two favorite radio shows tonight. 

After missing these shows the last two Thursdays (but catching up on them earlier this week), I relished sitting in the living room with Copper resting peacefully on the chair next to me and Luna at peace on the ottoman, listening to Hard Rain and Slow Trains: Bob Dylan & Fellow Travelers. Dan is back in Tulsa for events surrounding the opening of the Bob Dylan Center this week and so he didn't present a brand new show. He reached back in the archives to July 2, 2020 and played a superb show that he and Jeff hosted together. 

Bob Dylan's latest album, Rough and Rowdy Ways, opens with the song "I Contain Multitudes". Inspired by that song's title, Dan and Jeff presented "I Contain....Openers", an hour of Bob Dylan songs that opened several of his albums. Not only did I love hearing such songs as "Shot of Love", "Like a Rolling Stone", "Blowin' in the Wind", "Thunder on the Mountain", "Tangled up in Blue", "A Satisfied Mind", and others, the show helped familiarize me with several of Bob Dylan's albums, albums I have, quite honestly, ignored over the years but that now have my attention. 

3. Jeff's Deadish was a golden two hours of almost incomprehensible variety! He opened the show with selections from the first set of the Dead's May 5, 1979 show performed in Baltimore at the Civic Center. I especially enjoyed that show's "Sugaree" and always love to hear "Friend of the Devil". Jeff tried to resist, for reasons having to do with time, this show's splendid "Scarlet Begonias" ---> "Fire on the Mountain" that opened the second set and I'm really glad he decided to throw caution to the wind and play it.

I got distracted by something while Jeff played some tunes from May 5, 1967 at the Fillmore. I snapped back to attention later in Deadish's second hour when Jeff went as far into the stratosphere as I've ever hear his show go by playing music by King Black Acid. He came a little closer to earth when he played music by Sky Cries Mary. Jeff playing music by these two groups epitomizes what I cherish about his Thursday night show. Since KWEP-LPFM is low power and non-profit, since it's not beholden to ratings and advertising money, he is at liberty to take his listeners on trips into all kinds of musical territory that we'd never hear on -- well, as far as I know, on any other station. Jeff then wrapped up the show by returning to Baltimore and playing a fanciful and fun Grateful Dead version of "Dancin' in the Streets". 

It was uplifting and stimulating to once again experience the joy of Blissful Thursday with Dan and Jeff coming into our home via the internet magic of live streaming! 

Three Beautiful Things 05-04-2022: Talking With Rita, Error on the Reunion Registration Form, The Red Curry Was Awesome

1. Rita, my longtime friend and one time fellow team teacher called me this morning. She's had a couple of medical emergencies recently. She's back home now. She wanted to let me know what had happened and wanted to talk about other things we enjoy discussing. We talked for over ninety minutes about medical care, family, programs showing on PBS, the glassware she gave our family to enjoy at our family dinners, and a host of other things. This has been a very rough stretch for Rita. Please join me in hoping and praying that her condition improves. 

2. Today Sharon contacted me to tell me she noticed that our reunion registration form instructed people to send their completed form to Riverside Drive, but it should have said Riverview Drive -- a most understandable error. None of us on the committee caught it before the forms went out. I spent about an hour or so on Facebook, Facebook Messenger, and on email sending out messages about the error and asking people to please send their registration to Riverview Dr (not Riverside Dr). The good news is that while some people had already sent in their forms to the wrong address, the postal service delivered at least a few of those to the correct address. I know of at least two more mailings that we are eager to find out about. We hope those, too, will get to the right address! 

3. I made about a ton of jasmine rice today. I love having rice on hand and love to combine rice with all sorts of other things like eggs, beans, vegetables to make stir fry, to name a few examples. Today I remembered I had one can of coconut milk in the basement. I heated up some red curry paste and added the coconut milk to it. Into this mixture I added white onion, fresh broccoli, frozen green beans, and some chopped baby Yukon potatoes. I seasoned this curry with fish sauce, soy sauce, brown sugar, and and dried kaffir lime leaves. Within a half an hour, I had a bowl full of vegetable red curry over jasmine rice and it was awesome. 

Three Beautiful Things 05-03-2022: Dental Health is Great, Blissful Thursday x 2 on Tuesday, Blissful Poetry Break with Bill Davie BONUS Limerick by Stu

1. Once I hopped out of bed and fed Copper and Luna and worked the word puzzles I do every morning, I strolled down Cameron Avenue and surrendered my dental health to Kathy M. I opened my mouth, she poked around, checked my gums, cleaned my teeth, and removed my last four months of plaque build up. Turns out my dental health is solid. Kathy turned me loose and I was happy. My teeth felt smooth and clean and my daily dental care routine works.

2. I missed two Blissful Thursdays in a row on April 21 and 28. I was with Ed and Mike at the Wildhorse Resort on the 21st and on the 28th, I was busy with Debbie.  I didn't listen to either Hard Rain and Slow Trains or Deadish.

Well, I have now listened to those six hours of premier radio programming and my soul is better for it.

Dan focused his entire 4-28 show on "Blowin' in the Wind" -- this April marks the 60th anniversary of when Dylan wrote the song. Dan played Dylan performing different versions of the song and renditions of other musicians covering "Blowin' in the Wind" (Neil Young, in particular, arrested my attention). In addition, Dan played Sweet Honey and the Rock performing the slave song, "No More Auction Block" (1867). Dylan refashioned the melody of "No More Auction Block" into the melody of "Blowin' in the Wind".  Because I listened to the podcast version of this show, it ran for an hour and twenty-four minutes. I don't know what Dan edited from this version to make it fit the one hour format of his KEPW-FM show. I do know that I loved listening to this longer version, that the amount of content in this show was thrilling, and that I will listen to it again and again to comprehend it all better.

On 4-21, Dan continued his month to month exploration of what Bob Dylan was up to in 1962. The 4-21-2022 show focused on April of 1962. What most stuck with me was how Dan helped listeners understand and experience more deeply Dylan's indebtedness to the old blues musicians who preceded him. In particular, I loved hearing Bob Dylan sing one of my favorite blues tunes "Deep Elem Blues" at Gerde's Folk City on April 16, 1962. 

So, that bliss zone I usually enter on Thursdays was delayed. The bliss didn't stop with a double dose of Dylan. 

I sank even deeper into the warm waters of bliss as I listened to the episodes of Deadish I missed over the last two weeks. 

I'm not going to try to recount everything Jeff played over these four hours devoted to the Grateful Dead and to other bands in the Grateful Dead universe like Phil and Friends, Little Feat with Steve Kimock, or Bob Weir and the Wolf Bros.  

I will sum up my experience this way: it was four hours of blissful variety. It was a blast hearing the bands that emerged straight out the Grateful Dead keeping the music on the songs alive. Moreover, I loved the Grateful Dead music Jeff played. Two beauties really stuck out: "Stella Blue" and "Terrapin Station". But, what am I saying? Those "Crazy Fingers" and "Playin' in the Band" were also awesome. 

But what did I enjoy the most? Well, Jeff is not hemmed in by the money making demands of commercial radio and he can give us listeners a free form radio show without fear of some of his stratospheric decisions costing the station advertising dollars. There is no advertising! 

So in playing a huge chunk of the April 28, 1985 show performed at the Frost Amphitheater at Stanford University, he included the second set's complete "Space" and "Drums". It's so rare on a radio show to hear these improvisational explorations and I really loved it -- not only the sounds, but the way the Grateful Dead move into and out of "Playin' in the Band" while performing "Space" and "Drums".

3.  Bill Davie's struggles with physical maladies have, for who knows how long, left him unable to play his guitar. The simplest way to put it is that his hands and fingers will not do what he wants them to. 

Consequently, it's been a few months since he gave a Tree House Concert. You might remember that he used to perform them weekly.

That's the hard and bad news.

The good news is that Bill is back on Facebook Live on Tuesday evenings.

He is presenting a 30-45 minute version of Poetry Break,  a feature of his Tree House Concerts. 

I tuned into Poetry Break for the first time this evening.

More bliss. I'm telling you: MORE BLISS. 

Bill has decided to read a mixture of his writing, the writing of established poetry pros, poems requested by those who watch his show, and poems written by Poetry Break followers.

Tonight, he read some of his own poems/journal entries and focused largely on the challenges of aging and trying to accept the limitations imposed on him by his maladies.

He also read requested poems, including Longfellow's "Paul Revere's Ride" and Shel Silverstein's "Where the Sidewalk Ends". He also read a poem by Whitworth alum, Mary Pecka. Bill only read one poem by a "pro". He opened the program by reading "An American Poem" by Eileen Myles. And there was more. 

Bill's approach is ingenious. In a short period of time he opens up his own inner world to us, invites listeners to be a part of his program, thus creating connections between us, and gives equal attention to a well-established contemporary poet like Eileen Myles and a poet writing in an antiquated style like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Tonight Bill demonstrated that a poet like Longfellow, a poet we probably all encountered as kids, a poet who might be regarded as out of fashion by many, possesses a power that brought Bill, and I'm sure many of his listeners, to tears. 

Here's a limerick by Stu: 

They’re ready to help on the spot. 

To help folks in need out a lot. 

The life that they chose, 

Includes water and hose. 

And be brave when conditions are hot! 

International Firefighters Day.

Three Beautiful Things 05-02-2022: Debbie Motors to Eugene, Copper and Luna Roam, Delicious Soup and Toast

 1. Things were really hoppin' this morning around our house. Debbie packed yesterday and this morning she loaded up the Camry's trunk and headed off for a visit to Eugene. She hopes to pick up some sub work and looks forward to seeing friends and making music with friends. Two of her bandmates, TR and Laura,  live in the Eugene/Springfield area and she especially loves playing and singing and yakkin' with them. 

Debbie arrived safely in Eugene in the late afternoon. A downpour greeted her in Troutdale and sounds like it rained from Portland to Eugene, but Debbie prevailed. She is back with Anne and Poppy for what promises to be a fun visit. 

2.  Diane agreed to take in Gibbs while Debbie is gone. When Gibbs is away, Copper and Luna will play. Well, not really play. These aging cats don't play much. But, for a while, they get to enjoy the ground floor of our house, especially lounging in the living room whether it's Luna on the ottoman looking out our picture window or Copper resting in a pen Debbie set up for Gibbs, but that Copper has taken over as his. With the cats free to roam, I enjoy my time in the living room more than ever. For the next couple of weeks, I will have their company in the house's open spaces -- it's relaxing for me and seems to increase Copper and Luna's contentment. 

3. I chopped up some onion, celery, and mushroom and dumped it all into a pot of hot olive oil. Once the vegetables were tender, I poured in a couple cups of water and simmered the vegetables for about five minutes. My last move was to add a couple teaspoons of Miso paste, stir it around, and let it simmer for about ten minutes. 

My reward was a bowl of steaming and bracing Miso soup, one of my favorite things to order in Japanese restaurants and a pleasing dinner tonight. 

I complimented the soup with toasted slices of Dave's Thin-Sliced Good Seed Killer Bread, a perfect pairing. 

Three Beautiful Things 05-01-2022: Return to Zoom, The St. Rita's Mostaccioli Feed, Discussing May 2, 1972

1.  We members of the Westminster Basement Study Group have been jumping on the Zoom machine every two weeks for nearly two years. Until April, 2022, I was present for every Zoom meeting, but because of other engagements in Eugene in early April and because of family dinner on Easter, I missed the last two meetings.

It was fun to be back in conversation with Bill, Diane, and Bridgit today. We began to dream out loud about the possibility of seeing each other face to face when I travel to Seattle toward the end of the month.  (Soon I'll be emailing other friends to see about the possibility of meeting up.) In addition, Diane told us about how Bill and she have subscribed to the streaming service, National Theater at Home, and how much they enjoyed watching a theater performance of Simon Wood's two character play, Hansard, featuring Lindsay Duncan and Alex Jennings. While writing this paragraph, I took a break and watched a scene from the movie, Birdman, featuring Lindsay Duncan as a ruthless theater critic (Tabitha) and Michael Keaton (Riggan), an actor in superhero movies whose career has stagnated. It's a brilliant scene and Lindsay Duncan is devastating in it, making me really want to see her play the wife of a Tory MP in Hansard.

2. For over fifty years, the Knights of Columbus of St. Rita's Catholic Church in Kellogg have put on a Mostaccioli Feed (or Dinner). Almost every year, the dinner has been served in the St. Rita's parish hall. For Family Dinner, Carol, Christy, Debbie, Paul, and I took a week off of cooking for each other and attended the Mostaccioli Feed.

I love Silver Valley feeds. I used to love the Sunnyside and Silver King Elementary School Chili Feeds. At church, we had an annual Oyster Stew Feed. The Elks is a great supporter of feeds: the Crab Feed, a Spaghetti Feed, a Pork and Apple Feed, and, heck, I might be missing some. 

Well, this Mostaccioli Feed is a stellar event. Outside the parish hall, men of the Knights of Columbus boil the mostaccioli pasta in huge pots over outdoor burners. Inside, after paying just 10 bucks for a plate of food, we grabbed a paper plate and plastic cutlery and lined up to be served a lettuce salad, garlic bread, a hill of mostaccioli (it's like penne, but with ridges), a couple of meatballs, and red pasta sauce. At an adjacent table, we could grab a glass of Carlo Rossi Chianti. The parish hall tables at red checkered tablecloths and men circled around the room offering wine refills, cups of coffee, and cups of half vanilla ice cream/half orange sherbert for dessert.

I was telling Debbie afterward that when we attended Matt's Celebration of Life in Orofino, what I saw in the VFW Hall was a room full of stories.

That was even more true at St. Rita's today. In seeing face after longtime familiar face, whether it was former teachers, a former across the street neighbor from the early 1960s, high school friends, longtime, family friends, or people I see at the Inland Lounge, I saw countless stories this afternoon and it was dizzying.

I enjoyed our dinner a lot, not only for the food, but to also being in the company of so many people I've either known or known of for many decades. 

It was a bit like having the whole of my Silver Valley life flashing before my eyes.

3. Back home, more of the past rushed forward. Today was the day before the 50th anniversary of the Sunshine Mine Fire. A memorial will be held at the Mine Fire Memorial tomorrow, May 2. Debbie and I both had read Diane Trecker's newsletter essay detailing the what happened the day the fire broke out, May 2, 1972, and in the ten days that followed. My memories, thoughts, and feelings about the Sunshine Mine Fire are, and always have been, jumbled, difficult to articulate, and, for the most part, private. My insides shook as Debbie and I talked about the fire.  Inevitably, my experience of being nearly killed by toxic dust and gas that suddenly came in on Stan and me in a roaster at the Zinc Plant a year later came back to me. It always does when I take in accounts spoken or written by the Sunshine Mine fire survivors or when I talk about May 2, 1972. 

Three Beautiful Things 04-30-2022: Preparing for Today's Road Trip, Picking Up Cosette, Celebrating Matt's Life and Reliving Orofino Memories

 1. Big road trip to Orofino today. Before Christy and Carol piled into the Camry, I fueled the car and made a quick stop at Silver Valley Tires to have the wheels retorqued after the tires had been rotated earlier in the week. It's widely suggested to have wheels retorqued between 50 and 100 miles after a tire job and to get the Camry up to 50 miles since the tire rotation, I took a leisurely drive to Pinehurst and back.

2. Christy, Carol, and I took off for Orofino shortly after 8:30 and stopped at the remodeled Starbucks on Ironwood Drive for some caffeine and a snack. Properly bolstered, we hit the road, enjoyed traveling through the Palouse with its rolling fields of fresh green growth, and stopped in Moscow to pick up Cosette. Cosette has been hard at work managing what sounds to me like endless buffets and other group dinners at the University Inn and impressed me with her firm grip of how to deal with the challenges of her work. I frequently thought, as we drove down the Lewiston grade and up the Clearwater River, that the University Inn is very fortunate to have Cosette as an employee. She's dedicated, knowledgable, hard-working, and able to do some pretty complex problem solving in the fast-paced world of big group dinners, buffets, and catering. 

3. We arrived in Orofino for the Celebration of Life for our deceased cousin John Baugh's son, Matt, who died of a heart attack in January. We arrived at the VFW Hall and found a table and joined a fairly packed room of Matt's friends and relatives for today's ceremony. It began with Travis Mechling's tribute to Matt's zest for life, his love of cats, his passion for cooking, and his generosity and outgoing nature. As if to underscore what Travis said, we watched a slide show of Matt, in picture after picture, seizing joy and fun in his life of camping, partying, hiking, fishing, taking ATV rides, caring for cats, and enjoying the company of his many friends. Matt's son, Ryan, gave a touching tribute to his father. Then we watched two short videos, one of Matt messing around with food on a grill and another by a Facebook friend of Matt's who juxtaposed images of Matt with brief scenes from The Lord of the Rings. The ceremony ended with a handful of people accepting Travis' offer to tell a story or talk about their love of Matt. The celebration continued after these testimonies with all of us heading to the potluck table and fixing a plate of people's delicious contributions.

Carol, Christy, Cosette, and I sat at a table with our cousin Lura and her husband Lyle and with our cousin Judy and her daughter Angie. We also saw Lura's son, Mark, Matt's mother, Linda, and our late cousin John's wife Gloria. 

Before we arrived at the VFW Hall, we took a drive up memory lane -- well, a drive up Michigan Ave. -- and checked out the house where Grandma West lived, saw the structure that stands on the lot where Aunt Lila's house used to be, and drove on up to Konkolville just to see how things look up there. At one time Konkolville was a center of forest industry, but that's no longer the case. Things, to my untrained eye, looked shut down up there, looked to be in a state of decline.

On the face of it, it might seem like being away for about 11 hours was a long day. 

It didn't feel long to me. 

Christy, Carol, Cosette and I had a lot of fun yakkin' and telling stories. We were happy to be in attendance at the Celebration of Life and to learn more about Matt. We also got to catch up a bit with Lura, Lyle, Judy, and Angie. 

It's a bit overwhelming to visit Orofino, especially as I get older and remember and think about all our family visits there over the years, the family members who have passed away, and the fun times we have had over the years, whether swimming at the summer pool, catching polliwogs at Beaver Dam, gathering with family for outdoor dinners at Grandma's or Lila's, or joining together for the boisterous family reunion/Last Cousin Standing Hootenanny at Lura and Lyle's house back in July of 2010. 

What's that saying? Many bridges, much water.