Three Beautiful Things 11-28-2024: A Boisterous Thanksgiving, Preparing for Dinner, "I Take Comfort in That" -- The Stranger

1. Ours was a boisterous little house today, filled with energy, love, countless discussions and conversations, and a delicious Cornish game hen Thanksgiving dinner and a post-dinner party that wrapped up around 1 a.m. when Debbie and Misty, the last two merry makers still awake, called it a night. 

2. Debbie was tired today. She'd had parent conferences all day Friday, taught her students on Monday and Tuesday, with more conferences after school. She drove to Spokane, happily, to pick up Misty on Wednesday, and their joyful person to person meeting happened and continued as they arrived in Kellogg and brought me into the fold of their developing friendship/aunt/niece relationship. 

My job on Wednesday and Thursday: take care of many of the logistics and food preparation and other arrangements for our family's Thanksgiving dinner.

So I did, with Debbie giving me help along the way. 

I stuffed the celery, prepared the crackers and olive tapenade, dressed the kale and sweet potato salad, helped Debbie lengthen our dinner table with the addition of our card table, opened wine bottles, mixed the Ocean Spray cranberry juice and vodka cocktails, halved the Cornish game hens, and maybe some other things. Debbie roasted the asparagus. She brought dishes we needed up from the basement after ironing the tablecloth. She thanked me repeatedly for doing what I did, giving her time to rest and to continue conversations with Misty and to help make dinner happen by doing some really helpful tasks. 

3. Patrick and Meagan arrived mid-afternoon. They brought wine, orange cranberry bread, brown butter Rice Krispie bars, and cookies from an awesome Mexican bakery in Portland.

Later they went over to Christy's to help transport Christy's several contributions to our dinner: a Tastes of Thanksgiving cake with whipped cream, several Cornish game hens, a wild rice and other grains-based stuffing, huckleberry wine, red Solo shot glasses and cinnamon vanilla whiskey so we could toast Everett after dinner, her tripod, dinner rolls, Trader Joe's pumpkin butter, and possibly other items that have slipped my mind. Earlier Christy brought over Thanksgiving napkins and two floral arrangements set in real pumpkins. 

Molly arrived a little later with multiple bottles of wine, guaranteeing that there would be something for everyone!  And there was! 

(I bore witness to the others drinking a cocktail, enjoying wine, and drinking in honor of Everett. On the doctor's advice, I continue to abstain from drinking alcohol.)

It all worked out beautifully. After toasting Everett we gradually made our way into the living room and I can hardly begin to sum up the many subjects of conversation that took place -- but, I can say that the conversations were fascinating, charged with goodwill, and packed with things we learned from one another. 

My favorite words in The Big Lebowski come from The Stranger (Sam Elliott). After hearing the Dude say, "The Dude Abides", The Stranger turns to the camera and says, "The Dude abides. I don't know about you, but I take comfort in that."

I just wrote that the Thanksgiving conversations in our little house were fascinating, charged with goodwill, and packed with things we learned from one another.  

I don't know about you, but I take comfort in that. 

Three Beautiful Things 11-27-2024: Meeting Misty, Cleaning and Cooking, T. McVeigh Break

1. Debbie zipped over to the Spokane International Airport and, right on schedule, Misty arrived. Debbie and Misty arrived in Kellogg a little over an hour later and we spent time getting acquainted. Debbie and Misty have spent a lot of time on the phone. Misty and I were having our first conversation. 

It was awesome.  I learned a ton -- fascinating discussions! 

I'm eager for our time together over the next two and a half days. 

2.  I had a great day doing some food preparation for Thanksgiving and spiffing up the house in preparation for Misty's visit and for hosting Thanksgiving dinner. A good busy and productive day.

3. Because of all of this Thanksgiving preparation, I've had to take a break from reading the book about Timothy McVeigh, so that's why I haven't written any updates lately. So, for those of you who have expressed appreciation for my updates, first of all, thank you, and, second of all, I'll get back to the book before too long. 

Three Beautiful Things 11-26-2024: Homemade Morning Glory Muffins, Celery Stuffing, Stir Fry for Dinner

1. I experienced unexpected and stubborn lower right leg pain Monday night into Tuesday morning and in my groggy state around 3 a.m. I suddenly remembered that my new kidney can tolerate Tylenol and that I had a bottle on the table next to my bed. 

I downed a couple of tablets and, quickly, the pain subsided. It didn't return all day. 

So I slept in and was kind of slow getting to my projects for today, but, by early afternoon, I figured out what ingredients I needed at Yoke's, shopped, came home, and had a lot of fun baking nearly two dozen Morning Glory muffins. 

2. While those baked and once I put things away, I made the stuffing to put in celery sticks for our Thanksgiving appetizer. I'm hoping I won't get kicked out of the house because I didn't make this stuffing the way Mom did, but I like the results of the recipe I used and I think this different kind of stuffed celery will be just fine.

3. Debbie had an after school parent conference and the parents got delayed and so she didn't arrive home until after 6:00 or so. 

But, when she walked in the door, she discovered that I had a really good stir fry ready to eat, staying warm in the wok. I had air fried a block of tofu. I heated up a packet of Trader Joe's Thai Wheat Noodles. I stir fried a half a red onion, red pepper slices, a crown of broccoli, mushrooms, snow peas, cabbage, spinach leaves, yellow squash, and maybe other vegetables, and added a generous amount of fresh basil leaves. 

We each added whatever sauce we wanted to our individual helpings. 

This dinner worked -- and then some -- it was superb. 

Three Beautiful Things 11-25-2024: A Good Morning at Sacred Heart, Oddball Sentimental Attachments, Superb Evening with Debbie

1. I roared out of the house around 5:45 this morning and arrived at Sacred Heart in Spokane rarin' to go! I began with bloodwork, all of which turned out stable and totally satisfactory, then I ventured down to radiology and, once again, under the sure direction of Sarah, submitted to an ultrasound exam of my bladder and my new kidney, and then met with Dr. Murad. 

Dr. Murad wants to follow up in mid-December on some tests I had done earlier, so some time after I return from Eugene, I'll have labs done. Unless something spooky comes up in those labs, Dr. Murad decided he didn't need to see me in person again until the end of January. That's two months out. I was told in the beginning it would go this way. Two or three visits in the first week or two, then every two weeks, then once a month, and eventually ever two, three, and then six months. 

My recovery seems to be right on schedule. 

After Dr. Murad left the examination room, social worker Helen Hedges dropped in for a visit. 

From the very beginning, in the fall of 2018, of being a patient in the Sacred Heart transplant program, I have enjoyed talking with Helen Hedges. We had an especially good talk today about Misty coming to Kellogg for Thanksgiving and about my plans to go to Oregon next week. 

Soon after Helen Hedges and I finished our conversation, I was discharged. 

2. I'm a sap. 

I readily admit it. 

I enjoy developing sentimental attachments to people and places. 

I've made my frequent trips to Spokane all the more enjoyable by developing sentimental attachments to Great Harvest, the Trader Joe's on 29th, and, less frequently, Auntie's Bookstore. 

Usually, after going to Sacred Heart, I blast over to Great Harvest for a morning glory muffin and coffee.

Today, however, it was time for lunch when I strolled into the bakery, so I ordered a Pepper Bleu Roast Beef sandwich on Dakota bread and I bought a loaf of Great Harvest's white bread and their honey wheat bread. 

Yes, I could have then left Spokane and shopped at Trader Joe's in CdA.

But, I haven't yet developed a sentimental attachment to the CdA store, but I have sentimental feelings about the Trader Joe's on E. 29th -- and, on the pragmatic side of things, I was fairly certain parking would be much easier at the Spokane store. 

It was and I bought a modest number of items intended to make us all a little happier and thankful on and around Thanksgiving! 

I actually have pleasant (and sentimental -- yikes!) feelings attached to fueling up at Costco and so I filled up the Camry and then bought an armful of produce at Pilgrim's Market along with some bacon.

Then it was time to return to Kellogg. 

3. Upon returning home, I was bushed. Debbie texted me that she ate the lunch she'd packed late in the day and didn't need dinner. So, I grazed. I also cleaned the produce I purchased today.

Debbie arrived home, happy with the many conferences she'd had with parents or other of her students' caretakers on Friday and late today. 

We had a long and superb discussion about Debbie's job this school year and about Misty and the powerful fact that she came into our lives seemingly out of the blue and how happy and moved we are that we'll meet her in person and have Thanksgiving together. 

(If you need a reminder, over forty years ago, Debbie's now deceased brother, David, fathered a child in Alaska. That child, Misty, grew up not knowing that David was her biological father, but discovered, earlier this year, through ancestry.com, that he was. She called Debbie. Out of that phone call Debbie and Misty have become close, talking frequently on the phone. Debbie had planned to visit Misty in Fairbanks in June, but those plans got canceled because of Covid and fires and smoke near Fairbanks. But now it will happen: Misty will fly into Spokane on Wednesday, join Debbie, Patrick, Meagan, Christy, Molly, and me for Thanksgiving dinner, and we'll all get to visit with each other in person.)

Three Beautiful Things 11-24-2024: The More I Learn . . , Marinated Chicken, The Turning Itself is Wicked

1. It's 8:30 p.m. on November 25th. Normally, I would have written this blog post in the morning, twelve hours ago.

But, I was out the door at 5:45 this morning, rocketing to the Sacred Heart Medical Center where I had blood drawn and tested, an ultrasound of my bladder and the kidney I received, and I talked with Dr. Murad about my morning labs and the ultrasound. 

More details tomorrow -- but because of post-Sacred Heart be-popping around, I didn't return home until around 4:00 this afternoon. 

And now I'm blogging about Sunday.

I spent much of the day reading more deeply into the contradictory, complicated, and increasingly obsessive life of Timothy McVeigh.

I thought back to one of the riddling experiences I've had over the years with the plays of Shakespeare. 

I thought about Macbeth, one of Shakespeare's most violent and obsessive characters. 

I remember how the more the play revealed about Macbeth, the murkier my understanding of Macbeth became.

Shakespeare creates ambiguity, not by withholding details, but by piling them on, unfolding more and more of Macbeth's many dimensions.

I'll write more about this later, but as I learn more and more about Timothy McVeigh's life and how his thinking expanded and shifted and he sharpened his sense of purpose, the more mysterious he becomes to me. 

No, I don't think he's a Shakespearean tragic hero at all, but I also don't think you can reduce his character or his turn to terrorism to a few simple reasons. 

Nor do I think this turn was predictable. It might look, looking back, inevitable, but I don't think it was predictable. 

2. So earlier in the week, I made an eggplant sauce to serve over pasta. Today, Debbie marinated chicken party wings in a tamari sauce and baked them along with roasting thick onion slices and she reheated leftover pasta with leftover eggplant sauce and sautéed zucchini, all in one cast iron pan, and, taken together, these very different food items worked together beautifully as a great dinner. 

3. St. Augustine wrote ". . . when the will abandons what is above itself, and turns to what is lower, it becomes evil --not because that is evil to which it turns, but because the turning itself is wicked."

I think the book I'm reading about Timothy McVeigh could be titled, The Turning. I don't know if one can pinpoint the moment when McVeigh began turning from a principled man, a man of strong convictions and high ideals, to a man who abandoned higher ideals and turned to performing a violent act of mass killing in the name of ideals. But it's what he did and as I read more, I'll write more about McVeigh's turn to unimaginable destruction and murder, to acting out his convictions in such a horrific way,

Three Beautiful Things 11-23-2024: Trail and Error, Timothy McVeigh Goes to War, Salmon and Asparagus

 1. I had fun today making Debbie and me cups of espresso and heated/frothed milk. I'm learning a bit more all the time about how the moka pot works. I have some work to do regarding proportions of espresso to milk. So far, when the espresso comes out of the moka pot, it's a bit too bitter for me to enjoy straight, so, over time, I'll work on seeing if I can make it less bitter. The heated/frothed milk, however, cuts the bitterness and our cups of, what?, latte? cappuccino? have been enjoyable, but I think maybe I have been using a bit too much espresso -- trial and error.....trial and error. 

2.  Were it not for my decision to read the entirety of the Leah Sottile booklist I've mentioned several times, I never would have read American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh & The Oklahoma City Bombing. I'd read about McVeigh in other books and I listened to the entirety of Leah Sottile's podcast on the Oklahoma City bombing, and I thought I was done.

But, here I am, learning more and here's my next installment reviewing what I read today.

I've mentioned, possibly in passing, that Timothy McVeigh was a scrawny kid when of school age and he got picked on, got bullied. 

At least two aspects of his character developed out of this experience. 

First, predictably, he hated bullies. He hated seeing the weak being pushed around by the strong. 

Second, he empathized with and was quick to take the side of underdogs, whether humans or animals.

So, as a soldier, McVeigh felt conflict within himself. 

On the one hand, he loved the discipline, the weaponry, and the physical and mental challenges of life in the Army. 

On the other hand, he hated that the USA involved itself militarily in the affairs of other countries. In fact, he regarded the US government as a bullying force.

But, McVeigh obeyed (most) military orders and even though he hated that the US was sending soldiers to fight in the Gulf War, he was able, in part, to justify fighting in the war because he regarded Saddam Hussein as the epitome of a bully.

McVeigh hated to kill and when he killed two Iraqi soldiers, it haunted him. 

He would have much rather confronted Hussein, the bully himself, and put a bullet between his eyes.

The poverty and the carnage he saw that the Iraqi forces and Iraqi people suffered shook McVeigh to his core. 

One of the orders he disobeyed was that he covertly helped out some impoverished Iraqis he came across. In one instance, he dipped into his squad's supply of food and gave a healthy amount of it to a family he encountered on a roadside. 

As I ended my reading session, McVeigh had returned to a hero's welcome in the USA and was about to begin the process of trying out to be a member of the US Army's Special Forces, a dream he'd had for a long time. 

I also read that we, as readers, were about to witness a turning point in Timothy McVeigh's life. 

3. Whenever Debbie pops into Grocery Outlet, she always comes home with delicious food. Today she bought a couple portions of pre-seasoned salmon and some very thin stalked asparagus spears. She baked the salmon and roasted the asparagus, creating a simple, nourishing, and very delicious dinner. 

Three Beautiful Things 11-22-2024: My Coffee World is Bigger, Timothy McVeigh's Late Teens, Photos of Copper

1. Today the moka Italian stovetop espresso maker and the milk frother I ordered arrived. 

I read instruction manuals and watched demonstration videos and began to get a handle on how these appliances work. 

I'll just say that the most important detail I've learned so far is to make the espresso coffee with the moka's lid open so that as the coffee begins to come out of the chimney of the pot's upper chamber, I can either reduce the medium low heat or take it off the heat completely. 

Doing this, as I understand it, helps keep the espresso from either being too bitter or having a burnt taste. 

The decision that lies before me with the frother: Do I prefer foamy frothed milk or less foamy heated milk? I could also make unheated frothy milk. 

Trial and error lie ahead! 

2. I've been referring to him as Timothy McVey. 

Blast it! 

His last name is McVeigh. 

From this point forward, I will be correct . . . . 

In my post yesterday, I referred to Timothy McVeigh's life from childhood to high school graduation as his formative years -- but I might have gotten ahead of myself. 

A huge shift in McVeigh's life occurred after he graduated from high school.

One part of this shift was actually a continuation. 

His grandfather, Ed McVeigh, had introduced Timothy McVeigh to rifles and rifle shooting when McVeigh was a youngster. Firearms excited McVeigh. He enjoyed shooting inanimate objects and the challenge of becoming more and more proficient at hitting targets. 

After high school, Timothy McVeigh voraciously read, first of all, gun magazines. He spent much of the money he made working at Burger King on buying more and more firearms, in part because he also absorbed writings on threats to freedom, protecting and defending freedom (especially the 2nd amendment), and survivalism. 

He also read books and was especially influenced by The Turner Diaries, a 1978 novel written by William Luther Pierce (under the pseudonym of Andrew Macdonald), a white nationalist. The novel is set in 2099 and depicts the violent overthrow of the U. S. federal government, including a truck bombing of the FBI building, and the systematic extermination of non-whites and Jews. 

McVeigh worked as an armed driver of an armored car, began to see more of the world outside the small rural western New York area he grew up in, and decided to join the army.

He wanted to be an infantry soldier. The Army's copious supply of weaponry excited him and he became a dedicated, hard working, and ambitious model soldier.

As I put down the book American Terrorist and went to sleep, McVeigh had just arrived in Iraq and I'm about to read about his experience as a soldier in the Gulf War. 

I am thinking that yesterday when I referred to McVeigh's life from birth to high school as his formative years, I misused the word "formative". His views of the world and his sense of idealism around freedom, honesty, integrity, and the corrupted state of the world, particularly the USA, really took shape in his late teens and early twenties. 

3. I took a break from Italian coffee and Timothy McVeigh this afternoon and tried to create a sufficiently lit environment in the room Copper and I occupy together to possibly shoot some decent photographs of Copper. I thought my success was mixed.  Here are a couple of examples. See what you think:

Three Beautiful Things 11-21-2024: Expanding My Coffee Prep at Home, T. McVeigh's Formative Years , Debbie Brings Dinner Home

1. After I bought some groceries at Yoke's, I visited three stores locally where I thought I might find a stove top espresso pot -- also called a moka.  I struck out at Tractor Supply, Ace Hardware, and Walmart. (I did purchase a portions dinner plate at Walmart -- nearly six months after one of transplant dieticians pointed out such a plate might help me eat more balanced meals and help me serve myself more reasonable food portions. It's never too late, I guess!) 

So, with espresso on my mind, I stopped at Silver Peak Espresso, ordered a cappuccino, returned home, and ordered a moka, a milk foamer, and a couple of espresso cups online. I'm looking forward to having some fun times diversifying my all important coffee drinking life at home. 

2. Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck wrote in a chapter covering about thirty-five pages a carefully researched account of Timothy McVeigh's childhood and adolescence. Nothing stood out as remarkable. He matured into a resourceful teenager, a computer whiz, a hard worker, a rural kid who enjoyed cars and rifles. His parents separated and divorced. He lived with his hardworking and dedicated father and spent a lot of great time with his father's father. He had sex. 

The young Timothy McVeigh loved animals, hated to see animals be injured, killed, or die. He was a scrawny youngster who learned how to deal with bullies and developed a lasting empathy for underdogs, for anyone he felt was being taken advantage of or overpowered by individuals or by entities, like government agencies. 

My sense in reading this opening chapter was that Michel and Herbeck wanted to point out that very little in McVeigh's growing up years signaled that he would become an anti-government terrorist.

From other reading I've done and programs I've listened to about McVeigh, I've learned he was deeply affected, unsettled by his experience in the military and his tour of duty in the Gulf War. 

I look forward to reading what Michel and Herbeck have to say about how McVeigh's thinking and outlook was affected by and during his years of military service.  

3. I was all ready after my shopping trip to Yoke's to stretch a container of homemade chicken soup concentrate into a dinner for Debbie and me. 

Then Debbie fired off a text message: "I'll bring home dinner."

I should have seen this coming. 

Debbie enjoys winding down at Radio Brewing on Thursdays after school and she often brings us home food. .

The dinner was terrific. We split a mushroom and Gouda cheeseburger along with pasta salad and a nifty portion each of Muligitawny soup. 

It worked! 

Three Beautiful Things 11-20-2024: Entering the World of Timothy McVeigh, Sunday Scribblings Again?, Eggplant Pasta Sauce

1. The next book I'm reading from Leah Sottile's list is American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh & The Oklahoma City Bombing. The author's, Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, earned the trust of McVeigh and in April of 1999 he talked to them for about 75 hours. He told his story. McVeigh (nor anyone else) was compensated financially for his cooperation and McVeigh had no rights of approval. He confessed to the bombings. He told his story. Michel and Herbeck also interviewed about 150 people ranging from childhood friends to the psychiatrist who testified in McVeigh's defense at trial as they researched McVeigh's life and the bombing itself.  

I've just started this book. 

Michel and Herbeck are establishing that McVeigh's western New York small town family is unremarkable. 

If they write about something out of the ordinary in McVeigh's growing up years, I'll convey it in this blog. 

2. I used to write short essays on this blog. 

Some of those pieces were in response to prompts Christy, Carol, and I gave each other as Sibling Assignments. Others grew out of prompts from a project that ended about eleven years ago called Sunday Scribblings. 

I've begun to go back and look at prompts the two women who ran Sunday Scribblings used to give us participants. 

I don't know if I'll follow through, but after Sidnee messaged me, asking about my writing routine, it got me thinking that writing those somewhat longer than 3BTs posts all those years ago was fun and that I might enjoy returning to being guided by the old Sunday Scribbling prompts. 

3. When we lived in Greenbelt, Maryland, I got on a really enjoyable eggplant jag.

I loved (yes loved!) going to the Greenbelt Co-op or to Mom's Organic Market in College Park and picking out eggplants. 

I have returned to repeating this eggplant extravaganza by shopping at Pilgrim's Market whenever I'm in CdA -- mostly on my way home from kidney maintenance at Sacred Heart. 

Today, I decided to do something with the eggplant that I purchased at Pilgrim's over the weekend.

I wondered if I could find a recipe or figure something out combining eggplant and pasta.

Well, thanks to the magic of the World Wide Web, I found a very simple recipe for eggplant pasta sauce.

It intrigued me. 

So, I chopped up red and white onion and cubed the eggplant. 

I did something I've never done before: I boiled the eggplant cubes for about five minutes while I sautéed the onion.

I added the boiled eggplant cubes to the onion, in the wok, and sautéed them together for another couple of minutes or so.

I then set up the blender, transferred the onion and eggplant into the blender, added some half and half, and blended it. I added a little eggplant water to the emerging sauce to thin it out a bit.

I tasted it. 

The only seasoning I'd used was salt and pepper.

Then I experienced a revelation -- not quite divine, but a good one!

This sauce would taste even better with clams.

I opened a can of clams, poured the juice into the sauce, poured the sauce into a storage container, and sprinkled the clams over the top of the sauce. 

Upon Debbie's arrival, I heated the sauce, boiled some Garofalo pasta, and set out some shaved and grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese.

It worked. 

I mean it REALLY worked! 

Three Beautiful Things 11-19-2024: Longtime Friends and Longtime Anxieties, Heritage's Nurse Practitioner Goes the Extra Mile, Steak and Roasted Vegetables

1. Over the last two or three weeks, I initiated contact with two longtime friends who had been silent (one of them for two years). I was concerned about their well being and had some (unfounded) anxiety about whether I'd done something to alienate them.  I also contacted a friend who was worried if I'd decided to end contact with him after I failed to respond to an email. We are back on track again and I will see him when I travel to Eugene. 

I've resumed correspondence and contact with all three of these friends. The two friends I had the unfounded anxiety about have, indeed, been dealing with health problems. I understand so much better why I hadn't heard from them and I'll be able to spend time with one of these friends when I visit Eugene, but not the other because of his struggles with health. 

I'm relieved that these three friendships are intact, that it's clear from our recent correspondence that we care very much for each other. 

I think when I was younger I always thought that when I was older, I would outgrow or somehow get beyond anxieties that have troubled me much of my life. 

The most constant anxiety I've lived with since I was a teenager is that I'm just one wrong move, one utterance, one act of recklessness or neglect away from alienating any one of my friends and even family members. It's an anxiety I've experienced (big time) in marriage.  I used to experience this anxiety a lot in relation to the people I worked with when I was an instructor and also at church. 

I'm better at fending off this anxiety now than I was when I was younger. 

But old habits are stubborn and my inner voice's longtime patterns of sowing doubt and anxiety are difficult to change and silence. 

So when that long familiar feeling that I've disappointed a friend or family member rises up or when that voice inside me tries to persuade me that I've alienated a longtime friend and that friend is done with me, I am better at interrupting, putting an invisible wedge between my consciousness and those dark feelings, better at arguing back with that voice. 

The recent correspondence between the three friends I alluded to in this blog post and me was a very positive move. I'm glad the trip I have planned to Eugene gave me good reason to contact each of them, tell them I wanted to see them, and that things are all good. 

2. I've had a cyst on my backside emerge and recede for a couple or three months. It's not been especially painful, nor has it ever gone away on its own.

Today I visited my primary care giver at Heritage Health uptown.

I had also corresponded a bit with the transplant team about this cyst. 

No one seems overly concerned about it -- that was a relief. 

I was very happy with how the NP  I saw today handled things. 

She examined the cyst, told me to occasionally put a warm moist wash cloth on it and she told me she would put in an order for a seven day course of antibiotics. 

I told her I was a recent transplant recipient so she did some research, determined which antibiotic my kidneys could best deal with, and then she went the xtra mile. She called me to get a phone number for my transplant nurse coordinator, called the transplant clinic, talked, as it turned out, with one of the transplant pharmacy specialists, and confirmed that the antibiotic she had in mind for me to take was acceptable. 

I appreciated and was very impressed with her conscientiousness and willingness to put in this extra effort on my new kidney's behalf. 

She called me back, raved about how helpful the transplant team was, confirmed my date of birth, and ordered the medicine from Yoke's pharmacy -- and I picked it up. 

3. I do like these packages of marinated meat that Trader Joe's sells. I bought a couple of them in CdA over the weekend. Tonight I roasted potato strips, red onion chunks, zucchini spears, and red pepper slices and I stir fried the pieces of balsamic and rosemary steak tips I'd bought from Trader Joe's. 

Debbie and I both enjoyed the marinated beef and the roasted vegetables, seasoned with Trader Joe's 21 Seasoning Salute. 

I hope I can remember that one day I'd like to try to replicate some of these Trader Joe's packages of marinated meat on my own at home. 

 

Three Beautiful Things 11-18-2024: Tina and The Waterboys, I Build a Loaded Salad, Paul's Birthday Family Dinner

1. In my retirement, I'd say, off the top of my head, that I miss two things the most. 

I miss yakkin' with my fellow instructors -- I miss hallway and office conversations, coffee meetings, meals together, photo outings with Russell, theater projects with Judy, and more. 

I also miss all that I used to learn from my students and from actors I got to play with in the theater. 

Students and fellow theater-ites expanded me immeasurably, especially in the worlds of music and movies. 

Today, out of the blue, a student who was in, I think, two classes I taught at the University of Oregon about forty years ago popped into my mind. 

Her name is Tina. 

Tina once handed me a cassette tape of This is the Sea, an album recorded by a U.K. group, The Waterboys. 

I loved that album.  

I played one song, "The Whole of the Moon", from that tape repeatedly, in large part because, in my mind, it described what I thought and how I felt about a woman I loved at that time. 

With this vivid flashback of becoming friends with Tina and with that song occupying my mind all of a sudden, I wondered what kind of playlist Spotify would offer, so I did a search for Waterboys Radio. 

I played Waterboys Radio as I fell asleep and in my half sleeping half awake state heard a variety of artists: Fleetwood Mac, Van Morrison, Nick Lowe, R.E.M., Supertramp, The Cure, and others. Finally, though, after an hour or two, I turned off the radio and slept the rest of the night without Neil Young, Crowded House, Robbie Robertson, 10cc, Roxy Music, and other bands lulling me to sleep only to jolt me awake again. 

2. Carol assigned Debbie and me to bring a loaf of crusty bread and a green salad to Family Dinner tonight. 

I eat salads frequently, so I had a lot of salad making ingredients on hand and decided to make an "everything but the kitchen sink" salad. 

I probably won't remember everything I put in the bowl, but among the ingredients were Romaine lettuce, baby spinach leaves, cabbage. red pepper, cosmic crisp apple pieces, blueberries, fresh basil, cilantro, celery, zucchini, grape tomatoes, and maybe more. I made a walnut oil, lemon juice, garlic, and balsamic vinegar dressing for the salad and topped it with shaved Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. 

I had fun making it and family members told me it worked. 

3. We enjoyed a simple Spanish-themed dinner in celebration of Paul's 65th birthday. Molly made a superb  Spanish white bean dip to go with tortilla chips to start. In honor of Paul's love of Amaretto, tonight's cocktail was an Amaretto Sour. Carol prepared a delicious, and wouldn't you know it!, comforting paelle for our main dish, complimented with the salad I made and the bread I brought. 

After enjoying our meal, we retired to the living room. Christy baked a perfectly moist and flavorful Spanish almond cake and Paul opened his gifts. 

I left dinner tonight asking myself if I'm overly sensitive about matters (in my view) of confidentiality and privacy. 

Maybe it would be good if I loosened up about such things. 

I'd say more, but what I'm referring to feels confidential to me! 🤣🤣🤣

Three Beautiful Things 11-17-2024: Seeking Enlightenment and Purpose, Thanksgiving Dinner Figured Out, That Chicken!

1. Tonight I finished reading Haruki Murakami's book, Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche. 

I admit, I didn't come away from this book with a clear understanding of what the title calls "the Japanese psyche". 

Nor, after reading Murakami's interviews with those past members of the religious cult Aum Shinrikyo (known as just Aum) or with those who remain loosely affiliated with Aum, did I see any patterns in terms of these members' backgrounds, family life, level of education, or much of anything else aside from a shared desire to live a more purposeful life, to follow the disciplines and practices and demands of Aum and renounce the secular world in order to experience a more fully enlightened existence, and, for many, enter into a monastic life. 

Those who consented to be interviewed saw Aum's leader, Asahara Shoko, as a man of great wisdom, inspiring teachings, deep insight, and something like spiritual purity. 

But, he turned out to be corrupt. 

He orchestrated two sarin gas attacks and ordered assassinations and set several other criminal actions into motion. 

Aum Shinrikyo disintegrated. 

Asahara Shoko was tried, found guilty, and eventually, in 2018, executed by hanging. 

Regarding my ongoing project to learn about extremism, I have more reading planned. 

I have some reviewing to do of things I've already read. 

I have questions. 

No answers. 

I'll leave it at that for now. 

2. Debbie, Christy, and I agreed this afternoon on what we are going to do for Thanksgiving. 

Carol and Paul will be in Meridian. 

Debbie and I will have three guests in our home: Patrick, Meagan, and our niece, Misty. 

Molly will be in town and we'll see how our plans and Brian's family plans mesh (or don't). 

We set aside a plan we made a while back to have our Thanksgiving Day dinner at the Inland Lounge. 

We set aside a plan to have a second Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday. 

We will have dinner at our house on Thanksgiving Day and we will follow the menu that Christy created for the dinner we were originally going to have on Saturday. 

I was really happy that we settled on this simpler plan and that we worked it out so easily. 

3. Months -- oh many months! -- ago I bought a couple whole chickens at Costco and one of them has been in our freezer ever since. A few days ago, I decided it was way past time to thaw that chicken and cook it. 

Today, it was finally thawed out and Debbie told me she'd like to fix it. 

She prepared it in the crock pot and fixed a delicious combination of chicken and leftover rice we had on hand. She also made a terrific zucchini salad. Our dinner was simple, delicious, and comforting and, best of all, we had enough food left over that we can have a simple dinner ready on Thanksgiving Eve when Debbie arrives home with Misty, after picking her up late in the afternoon at the Spokane airport. 

Three Beautiful Things 11-16-2024: Listening to Old Music I Never Listened to Before, *Underground* and Extremism, A Great Casserole

1. Having spent a couple or three days listening to Luna and other Lofi DreamPop bands and then spending hours listening to Moby while reading and putting him on overnight, I suddenly realized that over the last, wow!, nearly forty years, I've paid very little attention to Radiohead. 

So I did a Radiohead search on Spotify and requested a playlist called Radiohead Radio.

I don't have intelligent words to describe the music that came on for the next couple of hours while I continued to read Underground. I do know the playlist included bands like The Smiths whom I've heard mention of over the years, but haven't tried out. It also included a couple of Pink Floyd songs -- and while I can't really explain it, I heard these familiar Pink Floyd songs in a different way when they popped up in the company of Radiohead and The Smiths and others. 

I'll continue this exploration of music I missed all those years ago -- it was during a time when my attention was on Richard Thompson, a wide array of acoustic folk and singer/songwriter music, Celtic bands, the Fairport Convention family tree of musicians, the Grateful Dead, and other similar music -- but not Radiohead, not Luna, not a wide array of bands and musicians I'd never hear of until this week, not the music I'm enjoying going back to and, I guess you'd say, catching up with now. 

It's fun. 

2. Haruki Murakami's book, Underground, took quite a turn when he added interviews with members of the religious cult Aum to his oral history of the March 20, 1995 Tokyo subway system sarin gas attack.

The individuals, so far, who agreed to talk with Murakami are mostly now only loosely affiliated with Aum, but continue to have high regard for the spiritual teachings and guidance of the cult. 

The interviews I've read so far feature individuals who were (are?) seekers, searchers, introspective, philosophical, hungry for spiritual meaning. They found in the teachings of Aum's leader, Shoko Asahara, 

inspiration, stimulation, intrigue, and deeper meaning and became, at different levels, involved in the cult.

Not one of those individuals Murakami interviewed was involved in the sarin gas attack in Tokyo, nor did they know it was going to happen. Each of them condemned the attack. Each was bewildered by it. It affected their future involvement with Aum. 

Over the last year and a half or so, I've been reading books and listening to podcasts dealing with extremism, trying to understand what moves people to commit themselves to ways of seeing the world that are often dark, often involve violence, are deeply distrusting, and often put them under the sway of a mesmerizing leader. 

This blog includes a written record of the reading and listening I've been doing. 

Underground is another book chronicling extremism. 

I have been hoping all this reading would help me understand more fully why people turn to extremism and why they follow extremist leaders, join extremist groups, and embrace extremist ideologies. 

So far, I haven't succeeded. 

In fact, I'd say the more I read, the more I'm bewildered. 

But, I'll keep chugging along. 

3. Debbie found a recipe for a ground beef and sauerkraut casserole and she fixed it for dinner tonight. It's a simple casserole consisting of ground beef, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese, sour cream, and seasonings. She also boiled some delicious noodles to go along with this dish. 

Awesome. This dinner was awesome. Debbie made two pans of this recipe. She'll freeze the second and some day, on down the road, we'll pull it out of the freezer and enjoy its awesomeness again!  

Three Beautiful Things 11-15-2024: I Made It Into CdA's Trader Joe's, Traveling Back in Time with Moby, Superb Left Over Stir Fry

1. Okay. 

I have fun shopping at Trader Joe's. 

It's nostalgic. 

I also enjoy the novelty of some of their products. 

It's kind of like going to a grocery theme park -- by the way, I went through a period of not enjoying Trader Joe's around twenty years ago or so -- I'm not sure when I quit being a grump about the store. 

So, today, Debbie and I were yakkin' about eating the left over stir fry from last night for dinner again tonight. Debbie wondered if we had any of those Thai wheat noodles from Trader Joe's we like so much, that she'd rather have noodles than rice in the stir fry. 

I replied that we were out -- but, I also said that after not going to Trader Joe's in CdA on Wednesday because of the full parking lot, but being inspired by Christy's parking lot success on Thursday, I'd pop over and give it another shot today!

So full of hope and enthusiasm, early this afternoon,  I bought a latte at Espresso Peak,  blasted over to CdA, arrived at Trader Joe's, and, as I was circling around the parking lot, I was near an exit on to Spokane Street and a shopper pulled out of a street parking spot that was easy for me to slide into.

I snagged it. 

Trader Joe's just opened in CdA on Tuesday. Shoppers thronged there and, like me, continued to do so today. 

I toured around the store, acquainted myself with its layout, dropped a few things in my cart, and eventually found the Thai wheat noodles. I was grateful they hadn't sold out. Many products had. . I grabbed three boxes, added it to my cart, checked out, and headed across the the street to Pilgrim's Market where I bought produce, tofu, and a few other items. 

I enjoyed this outing a lot. 

2. On my way to CdA and back I enjoyed listening to more Lofi Dream Pop alternative rock music from around the 1980s and 1990s.

Back home, an album I loved right at the turn of the century suddenly came to mind. 

Moby's album Play. 

Patrick absorbed this album when he was in high school and when he wasn't playing it, I got way into myself. 

Then, to my utter delight, when I used to assign my students creative projects, some of them used tracks from Moby's Play as accompaniment to slide shows or videos and their work moved me, stayed with me. 

I spent about three hours this evening listening to Moby, to his versatility, to his ambient music, to his electro genius, and I enjoyed the trip he took me on back to the early 2000s when I lived out my home life and work life with Moby occasionally providing the soundtrack to my life. 

3. By the way, stretching that stir fry from last night worked. I don't know if I can replicate it because making stir fried food is, for me, inexact and spontaneous. But, adding the noodles, fresh spinach, more yellow squash, and fresh Thai basil transformed what I'd already made and enjoyed Thursday night into a miraculously delicious new dinner tonight. 

Three Beautiful Things 11-14-2024: Lofi Dream Pop Music, Jeff Pays Tribute to Phil Lesh, A Fun Stir Fry

1. I mentioned the other day that I returned to listening to Luna, an alternative band, and their album Bewitched. I played that album on Spotify, and to my surprise and delight, once the album was done playing, Spotify continued to play music similar to Luna and played some other Luna from other albums. Until a few days ago, I was completely unfamiliar with Stephen Malkmus, Smog,  Silver Jews, Loose Fur, The Glands, The Sea and Cake, Sparklehorse, The Ladybug Transistor, and other groups from the 80s and 90s that recorded and performed way off my radar. 

I did a little reading about these groups and discovered their music can be known as Dream Pop and this made a lot of sense to me -- there is a dreamy quality to this music (I think I mentioned this in a recent blog post) that I enjoy a lot. Sometimes these recordings are referred to as Lofi. They are often not highly produced and not only leave flaws in the recordings, but seem to invite them. 

Two artists come immediately to mind as I listen to this music. I think at least some of these musicians were influenced by Lou Reed's vocals and by some of the Velvet Underground's musical stylings. From time to time I also hear pop sounds from the sixties -- could I have heard musical references to The Monkees? -- to Chad and Jeremy? -- did I occasionally hear some surf-like guitar?

Often, at least this is how I see it, J. J. Cale's recordings are Lofi. I'm not sure I can explain how or why I think this is true, but I'm going to trust that the way some of this music has been produced seems similar to  J. J. Cale recordings and maybe to the Tulsa sound (I could be all wet). 

Oh well. Whatever this genre is or isn't, I'm sure enjoying it! 

2. Jeff Harrison emailed me a quick message to be sure to listen to his November 7th Deadish show on Eugene's KEPW radio (streaming at kepw.org). It was a show paying tribute to Phil Lesh, the Grateful Dead's bass player who died on October 25, 2024. 

I went to the KEPW archives and listened to Jeff's show tonight. 

After Jerry Garcia died and as the surviving members of the Grateful Dead reorganized themselves, Phil Lesh got musicians together and called them Phil and Friends. I guess my attention was elsewhere over the last, oh, 25-30 years because tonight was the first time I ever listened to any music by Phil and Friends. 

Jeff played a generous helping of Phil and Friends music from a show at Eugene's Cuthbert Amphitheater in August, 1999 and the magic of his band's performances began to take hold of me. 

It was especially fun that during the half hour of his show's overtime, Jeff played a fantastic Grateful Dead "Dark Star" leading into "Morning Dew", an uplifting and stirring way for Jeff's show to end and for my evening to begin to draw to a close. 

3. I had a blast tonight making a stir fry composed of chicken tenders, red onion, cabbage, yellow squash, broccoli, eggplant, cilantro, and mushrooms. I seasoned the chicken with soy sauce and red pepper flakes and poured toasted sesame seeds over the meat pieces. I put the stir fry in my bowl over brown rice and flavored it all with Trader Joe's peanut satay sauce. 

Wow! Believe me! It worked!  

Three Beautiful Things 11-13-2024: Quick Labs, Relaxing at Great Harvest, Lunch with Shelley (and Shopping)

1. Lab day! 

I'm always eager to get going to Spokane on lab day and so I bolted out of bed at 4:15 this morning, got cleaned up, gathered a few things, completed Wordle, and by 5:45 I was on I-90 for a fairly uneventful drive to Spokane. 

Until November 1, I went to a lab in the same building on Sacred Heart's campus for labs as houses the transplant clinic.

Sacred Heart closed that lab.

Now I go to the main hospital, check in at the surgery check in area, and wait to be called in.

It was all quick this morning and lo and behold the superb Angela drew my blood -- it was good to see she came over to the hospital when Sacred Hearts bosses closed that other lab. 

How quick? 

I was out of the parking garage I use in under a half and hour and so parking was FREE! Ha ha ha!  I saved three bucks!

Test results came quickly, too, and I hope the transplant team is happy with the numbers.

I sure was. 

2. My day continued to be fun when I left Sacred Heart.

I immediately blasted over to Great Harvest and bought a loaf of Harvest Blend bread, a magnificent Morning Glory muffin, and a 16 oz cup of Cravens Earth & Sky dark roast coffee.

I dove back into Haruk Murakami's book Underground and learned that I was reading a newer edition with material added to the book that had not been in the original. 

Originally, Murakami's plan was to interview only victims of the gas attack along with a few medical personnel and a few relatives of victims. 

But, reader responses to his original book moved him to interview members of the cult, Aum, who perpetrated the attack.

I'm reading those interviews now. 

I relaxed and read. 

Mornings at Great Harvest are quiet. 

Morning customers tend to be, like me, older people, often in small coffee clatches. 

Today, the counter person who took my order lit up when she saw I was reading a book by Murakami, told me she enjoyed his fiction, and asked me to report back to her when I finished Underground. 

I'll do that. 

3. Back around the time of Don Knott's Celebration of Life, Don's sister Shelley and I agreed to get together for lunch some time. We made some plans that fell through for good reasons, but today our plan didn't fall through. 

I arrived in Coeur d'Alene about an hour so ahead of our appointed time to meet. 

I spent that hour happily wandering around Fred Meyer, looking at what coffees they sell, checking out kitchen ware, browsing their men's T-shirts, and seeing if anything else caught my eye. 

I wasn't in the buying mood, so I left the store empty handed.

I buzzed over to Tomato Street and met up with Shelley.

We had a splendid lunch. 

I enjoyed a plate of spaghetti topped with a sauce of brown butter and myzithra, a Greek cheese made from goat or sheep milk. I splurged and added three meatballs to my pasta and enjoyed a small green salad and Tomato Street's garlic bread. 

Shelley and I had a lot to talk about. We told each other what we experienced in the time period around the celebration of Don's life. Shelley filled me in on how the area around the Kellogg cemetery was a place where she and her brothers spent fun times growing up and how she and Don had returned to that area not too long ago and that some of Don's ashes are now scattered there. 

I enjoyed how wide ranging our conversation was and that I got to know Shelley better, a delight. 

I lost track of time, but I think we talked for nearly two hours. 

I wanted to check out the Trader Joe's that opened Tuesday in Coeur d'Alene, but, ha!, the fairly ample parking lot was full with several cars driving around looking for shoppers to leave. 

I almost immediately gave up. I'll go back later. I also wanted to buy some groceries at Pilgrim's Market and so drove across the street (its parking lot was almost full!) and purchased produce, Cravens Earth and Sky coffee, Nancy's kefir, raw almonds, and maybe one or two other items. 

Back home, I was happy to find Copper was relaxed and content despite being behind a closed door for nearly eight hours. 

I was tired.

I napped. 

I relished that I had done today what I enjoy most: expanding my post-transplant trips to Sacred Heart into fun times in Spokane and Coeur d'Alene. 

Three Beautiful Things 11-12-2024: Winter Tires On, *Underground* Changes Gears, A Simple Soup

 1. I loaded the winter tires into the back of the Sube, dropped the Sube off at Silver Valley Tire Center, dropped Debbie off at school in the Camry, dropped the Camry off at Silver Valley Tire Center, walked home, got a call that the tires had been switched, walked, drove the Sube home, stored the spring/summer/fall tires in the garage, walked, paid, brought home the Camry, sighed a sigh of relief, and felt happy that our cars both are equipped with winter tires. 

2. The book Underground suddenly turned philosophical. It's a different book now that interviews with victims, family members, and medical professionals are finished. It's as if I'm reading two books in one. 

3. Because Debbie had to work late tonight, I fixed dinner for me alone and had fun sautéing onion and mushrooms, adding chicken bouillon and hot water, and finishing my simple soup by adding Trader Joe's Thai Wheat Noodles. Easy. Quick. Warming. Satisfying. 

Three Beautiful Things 11-11-2024: Mending, Plumbing, Carry Out -- A Day of Relief!

1. It was my fault. A misunderstanding (not related to the election) transpired between me and a longtime (not Kellogg or Whitworth) friend. We exchanged a few kind and honest emails that cleared up everything and I'm confident our friendship is right back on track again. 

I'm immeasurably relieved. 

2. Another source of relief: the three small plumbing problems that needed fixing are repaired. Our toilet is running as it should; a basement drain is unclogged; our basement sink has a new faucet. 

I'm immeasurably relieved. 

3. The plumber and his helper worked on these jobs in the afternoon around the time I usually fix dinner for Debbie and me. 

When she got off work, Debbie drove by the house and saw the plumber's truck was out front. 

She buzzed up to Radio Brewing where she enjoys getting work done after school.

She also ordered sandwiches and pasta salad to carry out. I was no longer responsible for figuring out dinner. 

I was immeasurably relieved. 

Three Beautiful Things 11-10-2024: ZOOMing and Goodness, Cooking Wild Rice, Minnesota Themed Family Dinner

 1. Bridgit, Diane, Bill, Val, and I jumped on ZOOM this morning and got right into an intelligent discussion of the election results. I prefer to keep the content of our discussion private,  confidential. 

I thought a lot after we were finished about something I find remarkable. Bill, Bridgit, and Val were all students of mine at Whitworth forty and more years ago. In fact, Bill was in a writing course I taught at Whitworth in 1977. 

That's 47 years ago.

I met Diane at a get together at Bridgit's mom and dad's house on the Kalama River on August 28, 2010. 

Here's what I wrote about meeting Diane, in this very blog, referring, when I say "we", to Susan-Louise, Bridgit, and me:  "We reunited with Bill and got to meet Diane and within minutes we were all talking with each other as if it had been 20 minutes, not over twenty years since we'd seen each other and it felt like those of us who went to Whitworth had known Diane forever."

I kept thinking, as we talked today, not only how fortunate we are to be continuing to grow together as friends, but what deep thinking, caring, alert, and good people we've become as we've aged. 

All of us went to Christian colleges, Whitworth and, in Diane's case, Pacific Lutheran University. 

We've lived out our spiritual lives in a variety of ways since our Whitworth and PLU days.

It's awesome to listen to each other talk about where our paths have taken us, where we are now, and where we might be headed.

What's unwavering in each of us is our commitment to goodness and this came through urgently and admirably as we talked today. 

Even as we moved away from talking about the election results and talked about food and cooking and other lighter subjects, our discussion, our laughter, our enjoyment of each other was grounded in our commitment to goodness, making the two hours we ZOOMed together uplifting and nourishing. 

2. Speaking of cooking and nourishment, in preparation for today's family dinner, I cooked up a batch of wild rice, something I can't remember ever having done before. 

If you've cooked wild rice, you know that it can take as long as ninety minutes for the rice to cook. That was exactly my experience today. 

First, I chopped an onion, some celery, and some mushrooms and sautéed them in butter in our smaller cast iron Dutch oven. 

Then I poured in the uncooked Minnesota wild rice and about five cups of chicken broth.

I put the lid on the Dutch oven and, following the recipe Christy sent me, I set the oven at 375 degrees and let the rice cook for 75 minutes. Upon checking it after that amount of time, Debbie and I determined the rice needed more broth and gave it another 15 minutes to cook.

Ah! Success! I was a little late for dinner, but the rice turned out pretty good. 

3. Christy's longtime friend Tracy visited Christy this weekend. Her family's roots are in Minnesota. Tracy and Christy put their heads together and planned a Minnesotan family dinner. The main entree was a tater tot hot dish with venison that Christy made. I contributed the wild rice with celery, onion, and mushroom. Christy made a loaf of wild rice cranberry bread and Tracy fixed a fruit salad. Tracy told us about traditions around food in Minnesota and her family. We rounded out the meal with a dessert Carol made, a cake with the words apple and donut in its title, but I didn't quite get the name of it right. 

We visited about Minnesota and midwestern food. I got kind of carried away talking about The Band and their song "The Weight", but the rest of the family nicely balanced me out as we commented on different Light Rock from the 70s songs that played on Pandora while we ate and yakked. 

It was a fun and delicious dinner with a lot of fun and sometimes funny conversation. 

I'd be just fine with the idea of returning to Minnesota cuisine again, if Tracy returns for another family dinner or if we decide to repeat it on our own! 

Three Beautiful Things 11-09-2024: I Will Call Sparky Judy Now!, *Underground* and Bach, Five Day Old Casserole!

1. For over thirty years, I've known her as Sparky, although I always knew her name was Judith or Judy. She and I are having a splendid email exchange and now I know that Sparky has reverted to being known as Judy. I also know that her calendar is wide open when I come to Eugene (fingers crossed), starting December 4th, so, knowing that, I will now contact other friends to see if we can make plans to see each other. In our exchange, I learned more about how Judy is doing. It's been a rough several months -- her partner, Joe Cronin, was receiving in-home hospice care until he passed away on May 15th and about six weeks later Judy suffered her own health problems, from which she is recovering.  (If you and Judy and I are friends and you don't know what happened to Judy, contact me privately and I'll let you know.)

2. Reading Haruki Murakami's Underground has been like listening to a Bach variations composition. In much the same way that Bach holds a series of variations together with a musical theme he establishes early on, so Murakami, as he tells each interviewer's story, comes back again and again to the details of what happened on the Toyko subway trains when the attackers released the sarin gas. 

The variations come as each interviewer tells his or her response to the gassing. Many had the same physical reaction -- difficulty breathing, pupils contracting, legs giving out, etc. --, but the variations come as they tell Murakami about their lives, how they responded to the emergency, their lives in the following weeks, even months, and in these variations, the book offers up a fascinating look into these people's lives and psyches.

The last interview I read tonight was unique. It was the first (and only?) interview with the spouse of a person killed by the sarin. The victim was a young man and his wife spoke at length, fascinating length, about her life, his life, the day her husband died, and how her father and the victims' parents provided her with loving and material support in the aftermath of his death. 

3. Tucked away in the back of the fridge, I found a small container containing a helping of the chicken enchilada casserole we served on Monday for family dinner. I had fixed Debbie some spaghetti to do with what she would when she returned home from The Lounge, and on this night of eating what we would for dinner, this leftover casserole, combined with some left over rice, eaten cold, satisfied me unreasonably well!