Three Beautiful Things 04-11-2025: Fire Exhibit at the NW Museum of Arts and Culture, The Stirring Paintings of Andrea Joyce Heimer, Watercolors -- The Cambell House -- Frank's Diner

1. What a day! 

Christy, Carol, and I piled into the RobertsMobile and Carol blasted us to Browne's Addition in Spokane.

Today we enjoyed our next monthly sibling outing. 

Carol was in charge of our April trip and decided we'd go to the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture (MAC).

My first impression (and all the rest of them!) was joyously positive. 

MAC is a modest sized, even small museum. 

Granted, I have enjoyed the mammoth museums I've visited over the course of my life whether in London, New York City, Washington, DC, San Francisco, or  elsewhere. 

But, I have a limited museum/art gallery viewing capacity mentally. 

I loved going to the National Gallery in DC, for example, but I always limited myself to visiting, at most, four or five rooms or focused on displays of a single style of art.  

If I tried to take in more than that, I was running on empty. 

Today, my ability to focus and enjoy the museum was spent after visits to two superb exhibitions. 

First, I slowly made my way through "Fire: Rebirth and Resilience", an exploration of the paradox of fire, its life giving qualities, like heat, and its destructive capabilities. 

The exhibition featured recent greedy fires in Washington state in Mabden and Medical Lake, for example.

It also featured multiple displays of the savage fire that ripped through Spokane in 1889. 

2. I reached a point where I couldn't absorb any more fire destruction, photographs, maps, written commentary, and human heroics and left the fire room. 

I then entered the gallery featuring Andrea Joyce Heimer's unusual and unsettling paintings. 

Heimer paints large pictures with long, narrative titles. Her paintings are not naturalistic, not in any way photographic.

Rather, she presents collages of scenes, often from her memories of being raised an orphan in Great Falls, MT, that are a mixture of dreams, fantasies, hopes, and events from her life, combining darkness with humor, all done in overwhelming detail. Sometimes her painting style struck me as prehistoric, like cave drawings, but in color, and each of her works was like looking at visual novel. 

I couldn't begin to take it all in, but the slow survey I did of Heimer's paintings transported me into experiences with life, death, wonder, memories,  and all the thoughts and feelings these experiences called up inside me. 

3. The three of us met up again near the museum's gift shop and strolled a short ways to the Helen South Alexander Gallery in the Cheney Cowles Center to enjoy the Spokane Watercolor Society's National Juried Show of thirty watercolor paintings. 

I'm not positive, but I think what I enjoy most in paintings took shape back in 1975 (fifty years ago!) when I first stood in front of the huge dramatic paintings of J. M. W. Turner in London at an exhibition in either the Tate or the National Gallery focused on his work.

I guess the best way to say it is that I became enamored with subjective paintings, like the French Impressionists, that were less concerned with painting objective portrayals of the world (resembling photographic likeness), but more with the inner experience one has with the outer world. 

It was the impact of Turner's paintings that also made abstract art wondrous to me. 

Watercolors seem to me to be a perfect medium for subjective renderings of subjects, whether still life paintings, landscapes, cityscapes, portraits, or anything else.

In the paintings we viewed today, those painting which were, to me, more dream like, where objects almost seemed to blur into one another, were the ones I enjoyed most. 

Some of the watercolors were more objective, more like photographs, requiring a tremendous amount of skill. The skill astonished me, but the paintings didn't stir me the way the more subjective ones did, where I thought color choices, presentation of scene, and degree of sharpness seemed much more determined by feeling than by objective observation. 

We closed out our visit to MAC by admiring the handsomely preserved Campbell House, built in 1898, for mining magnate Amasa B. Campbell.  One of the Campbell House's architect, Kirtland Cutter,  is well-known in the Inland Northwest for many of his designs, including the Davenport Hotel. In designing the Campbell House, Cutter partnered with Karl Malmgren. As of now, I don't know anything about Malmgren. And, for now, I'm wanting to finish this blog post, not look into the career of Karl Malmgren! Sorry, Karl....

We ended our outing to Spokane at Frank's Diner where I threw all concern about weight loss out of one of the vintage railcar's windows (the diner is housed in a railcar) and ordered a terrific Creole Bay Benedict, a lobster, crab, and hollandaise sauce entree,  with hash browns.  I said YES! when our server asked if I'd like my hash browns with grilled onions and gravy. 

What a fun meal, made a little more saucy by transgressing my weight loss project. 

Three Beautiful Things 04-10-2025: Kidney Appointment, Part 1, Kidney Appointment, Part 2, Acoustic Grateful Dead on *Deadish*

 1. I had an appointment with Dr. Bieber, the kidney doctor I see at Kootenai Health, early this morning. 

He was clearly happy that I was reaching the one year anniversary (May 11) of my transplant and told me things usually get easier after a recipient passes the one year mark. 

I blurted out something that might have sounded stupid, but I said it, "Wow! Things have been so easy so far. That's great news that they could get easier!"

No harm done. 

2. Our conversation then took a slight shift, one that I welcomed. 

Dr. Bieber said something to the effect of this: transplants are a great thing, but we do have do deal with things that suck (his word...I chuckled inside) post-transplant. 

We talked about my blood work and, at this point in time, my numbers do not indicate that I'm becoming diabetic, but kidney transplant recipients have to keep eye on this. I've been told this several times in the past year, including during my pre-op time at Sacred Heart. 

He encouraged me to continue to try to gradually lose weight. I had lost some weight  since the last time I saw him in March and it will help my system defend against diabetes if I continue to shed pounds. 

Then there's the cancer possibility.

I will always live with lowered immunity because of the anti-rejection drugs I take.

Dr. Bieber referred me to a dermatologist. That appointment is coming in two weeks. It'll be an exam to see if any signs of skin cancer are apparent. 

Lastly, it was good news that I'm having my prostate checked annually by my primary care provider and that I'm on a regular colonoscopy schedule. 

As I thought was true, the vast majority of my blood work looked really good, really stable. 

I return to Sacred Heart for a one year exam on May 12.

Back to Dr. Bieber on June 12. 

I am now on a once a month schedule for blood work, but that could always change. 

3. Jeff played a very healthy dose of the Grateful Dead on Deadish tonight. Part of his show featured different cuts from the Dead's April 9, 1970 show at Fillmore West which included a handful of acoustic tunes. 

That acoustic mini-set was purely beautiful, as close to perfectly played and sung

 acoustic music as I've ever heard.

If anyone ever doubted that the Grateful Dead's music has roots in American acoustic folk and blues music, a listen to these songs would surely erase that doubt. 

I don't remember, as I write this, if Jeff played "Viola Lee Blues" on his show (I'll go back and check later), but I know he played acoustic versions of 

Candyman

Friend of the Devil

Deep Elem Blues

Black Peter

It was sublime. 

Three Beautiful Things 04-09-2025: Hey Knucklehead! You Bought One!, Copper Sunning in 2021, Super Salad

1. On Tuesday, I discovered that Gibbs had urinated on our living room rug. I absorbed as much of it as I could with paper towels and I then treated the rug with an anti-urine spray as directed. 

I wished to myself that I still had the little rug cleaning machine we had back in Greenbelt. 

I woke up this morning and suddenly struck my forehead with the bottom of my hand's palm.

I bought one of those very rug cleaning machines back in January! 

I'd totally forgotten. 

And I stored it essentially in plain sight -- it's not hidden behind a door or in some obscure spot. 

So today, I vacuumed the rug and then I got out our recently purchased Bissell Little Green cleaning machine and cleaned that spot again. 

Maybe next time I'll remember that I have just the machine I want and need to clean up such occasional accidents. 

2. In my Facebook memories today, a handful of pictures popped up that Christy took of Copper. I was out of town.  Christy had come over to give Copper and Luna some company. Debbie was in New York and Gibbs was with her. So, Copper and Luna had the run of the entire house back then, in 2021, and I loved remembering the days in 2021, before Gibbs returned to Kellogg with Debbie, when Copper could sun himself, perched on our ottoman, soaking up rays and looking out the living room's picture window. 

3. Tonight for dinner I fried bacon until I could crumble it and put the bits in the last of my most recent huge green salad. I had already added brown rice to the salad. In the bacon grease, I fried three or four chicken tenders, let them cool, and chopped the pieces up, adding the chicken bits to the salad. 

The mixed greens, spinach leaves, apple slices, and various chopped vegetables in the salad, along with the rice, bacon, and chicken were so flavorful that I didn't dress this salad and enjoyed it immensely as was!  

Three Beautiful Things 04-08-2025: Recycling With a Dopey Grin, Led Zeppelin Flash Mob, A Shindig With Oysterband

1. If you read this blog much at all, you know that I find irrational and incomprehensible pleasure in removing cardboard boxes, newspapers, and aluminum cans out of our garage and taking them up the road to the transfer station's recycling area. 

I did that today.

With a dopey grin and a spring in my step, I made our garage a bit tidier. 

PEP. 

Private Eccentric Pleasures. 

2. I was looking up something, I don't remember what, on YouTube this evening and the words "Led Zeppelin Flash Mob" caught my eye and, being the sentimental sap that I am, I remembered that years ago I used to watch this video of a mob, men and women of all ages , slowly gathering in, I think, a German town, and performing an incredibly beautiful rendition of "Stairway to Heaven".  

If you'd like, see if it moves you. I tear up every time listen to it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPHvwzyGwHA&list=RDQPHvwzyGwHA&start_radio=1

3. Well, I was now a YouTube goner for a couple of hours. 

I watched Dire Straits play a stunning live version of "Sultans of Swing".

I watched a band -- maybe a community band -- gather as a flash mob and play a fun and glorious instrumental version of "Bohemian Rhapsody". 

I suddenly discovered that Oysterband made a video of their rocking Celtic polka song "New York Girls" and watched it at least three times.

"New York Girls" is the opening song on Oysterband's riveting album, Ride, so I did what any reasonable person would do at 10:30, with Gibbs on my lap.

I played cuts from the album, remembering what a comfort Oysterband and June Tabor were to me as I listened to their album Freedom and Rain in the hospital as I recovered from my bout with bacterial meningitis in November of 1999. 

Tonight, though, the Oysterband topper for me was their song "Granite Years" from their album Deserters. Its refrain continued to play over and over in my head as I finally pulled myself together, joined Copper, and went to bed for the night:

Say that I was foolish

Say that I was blind

Never say that I got left behind

Three Beautiful Things 04-07-2025: BLOCK THAT METAPHOR!, Late Turnovers Doom Houston, Upheaval and Contentment

1. I miss some of the whimsy I used to enjoy in The New Yorker that the magazine has moved away from. 

One whimsical feature, so small and inconspicuous, tucked in, as I remember, at the end of articles,  that it would be easy to miss, was Block That Metaphor! It featured examples of figurative language and mixed metaphors abuses that appeared in other publications. They were unfailingly funny! 

Today, as I read some writers at The Athletic forecasting how they thought tonight's Florida/Houston game would come out, one writer mixed his metaphors in the following sentence, a sentence that suddenly made me leery about all the blood I've had drawn from my arm since the transplant, suddenly anxious that my mindset might have been drawn out with the blood! 🤣🤣🤣

So, here's the sentence. 

BLOCK THAT METAPHOR! 

Writing about the Houston Cougars, the writer asserted:

"These are grown men with a never-die mindset flowing through their veins."

2. I listened to the Houston/Florida game on the radio and, sadly for the Cougars, some of their never-die mindset must have leaked out of their veins. 

Houston committed four turnovers in the last 1:21 of the game and lost by two points to Florida, 65-63.

3. Maybe I should be somewhat restless. 

I write this because I've been spending the last few days since my Friday blood draw in CdA contentedly staying home, reading, working puzzles, cooking, enjoying Copper and Gibbs, keeping up on current events, and grateful that, for the time being at least, life in the small world of our home, family, friends, and pets is so calm, joyous even --I'm thinking of Debbie's experience with family in Chicago over the weekend and Carol and Paul's enjoyment of their visit to Moscow to see Bucky --while in the big world of government and finances, things are, as I see them, tumultuous, uncertain, uneasy.

Multiple realities are competing for my attention and for how I feel day to day.

I see Copper having curled himself into a ball, asleep at the edge of my small pile of flannel sheets that need laundered, and it helps my perspective to know he's not upset by wars, financial chaos, or even the NCAA basketball tournaments. He's content to be fed, have me shoo Gibbs away when Gibbs scream barks at him, have a clean litter box, and be provided with comfortable places to rest and sleep.

I've been more self-reliant during my days in the house than Copper can be, but, still, he helps keep my mindset balanced.

(My mindset, by the way, that is not flowing through my veins!)

Three Beautiful Things 04-06-2025: Letting Spiritual Variety Sink In, Helping Gibbs Relax, A Weekend of Vegetables in the Wok

1. I didn't start a new book today. I continued to let the stories and the unnerving revelations of Blazing Eye Sees All sink in. Debi Mc's comments on my blog were an affirmation to me of the joys of a wide reaching spiritual life, an openness to various traditions, and being spiritually grounded in particular foundational practices and ageless wisdom. 

2. Gibbs started scream barking and hopping and scratching at windows and then I heard the sound of leaf blowers. 

Ah! Ethan and his workers arrived to give Jane's, Christy's, and our yards a spring cleaning and a first mowing. 

The yard workers were here for quite a while blowing, mowing, and fertilizing -- well, and talking -- all human actions that Gibbs wants to protect me from! 

Luckily, if I simply put Gibbs on a leash, he calms right down, even jumps up and sits on my lap or beside me in a living room chair. 

Copper? 

I think he slept through it all, unfazed by the noise and activity, unbothered by Gibbs' cries of alarm.

3. For the nearly eleven months now that I have been (beautifully) recovering from the kidney transplant, the transplant team's emphasis has been on protein in my diet and I've enjoyed eating fish, beef, pork, and chicken. This weekend, however, I was in the mood for vegetarian meals. I fixed myself some bacon at breakfast today, but I fixed vegetable stir fries for dinners, served with couscous on Saturday and with basmati rice today.

I supplemented these meals with nuts by the handful to up my protein intake.

These stir fries really hit the spot and while I enjoy eating a variety of foods --I'm an omnivore -- I enjoy variety! -- , I have enjoyed the pleasures of vegetarian cooking for over forty years and enjoyed my weekend of cauliflower, broccoli, mushrooms, spinach, celery, yellow squash, green salads, and other vegetables both cooked and raw yesterday and today. 

For me, vegetarian eating is not only delicious, but it's (I'm not exaggerating) profoundly nostalgic and brings back happy memories I treasure, memories of decades in the past and the many times in recent months and years that I've cooked vegetarian meals. 

When I was in my thirties and forties, especially, vegetarian cooking was source of stability, a reliable source of pleasure and calm. Much else in my life was not so stable or very calm, but things were always reliably even keeled in the kitchen with vegetables. 

A  post script. 

Tonight, before I turned back the covers to crawl into bed, I sat up on the bed with Copper for a while and I wanted to go back to 1983, a turbulent and ecstatic year, when I was loving teaching but outside the classroom much of my life was in chaos. 

I wanted to feel some of the elation I felt during that year of my inward life being so polarized, so I went to YouTube and retrieved two different videos of Joan Armatrading singing, "Drop the Pilot". 

That did it. 

Forty plus year old invigoration returned, I beamed and I remembered how I used to fend off guilt and confusion and my deep sense of failure by dancing without inhibition alone in my apartment, often to Joan Armatrading. 

The second video ended. I turned to Copper, pet his welcoming head and spine, and re-entered the world of April, 2025, stretched out under the covers, and, with a hand resting on Copper, let his deep purring put me to comfortable sleep. 

Drop the pilot.

Try my balloon.

Drop   the   monkey

Smell

My

Perfume

ahhh zzzzzzzzz

 

Three Beautiful Things 04-05-2025: Thinking About Deliverance, Sickened by Abuses, My Enriched Spiritual Life

1. When I put down Leah Sottile's book, Blazing Eye Sees All Friday night, I made a firm resolution, as I obeyed Copper's urgent command to roll over and face him, to finish the book on Saturday. 

I checked in on basketball scores, learning that I missed one of the most thrilling finishes ever to a tournament game when Houston roared to 9-0 scoring run with just 42 seconds left to defeat Duke 70-67. I 

I ate. 

I tended to other domestic duties. 

But, I spent most of the day reading. 

Sottile's  book provoked me to think a lot about deliverance. 

I might not have this exactly right, but the words "New Age" don't refer so much to the time we live in, but to a time that is to come, a New Age of harmony, bliss, prosperity, reconciliation, beauty, and other utopian qualities -- a New Age humans can help bring about through attending to the teachings of deceased masters who speak through mediums, channelers, and other prophets -- like the mostly women leaders Sottile profiles. 

Again and again, Sottile told one story after another about individuals who became obsessed with, even manic about, a New Age commune or community/organization with a prominent New Age figure, often through online platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Skype, and other means of direct communication. Many of these people were looking to be delivered from the unhappiness of their lives or from the corruption of the world we live in. The leaders of these collective New Age entities effectively persuade followers with  paranoid conspiracy stories and theories. It's the cabals, the government, Jews, the illuminati, and other key players in these conspiracies that followers must be saved from and in the New Age, they will be vanquished. 

2. Sottile researches and explores the viciousness, greed, abuse, mind control, and exploitation that lies behind the pastel colored veil of universal love of the New Age entities she focuses on. 

It's awful.

It's disheartening. 

It parallels similar abuses in the Christian world.

Egomaniacal leaders in both worlds link their promises and manufactured joy to money, selling merchandise, seminars, and, in the New Age world, elixirs, potions, creams, and spiritual paraphernalia like crystals, candles, and other goods. 

3. I thought a lot today about people I know and others whom I've had conversations with or observed who I'm convinced have benefitted from and not been corrupted by their involvement either as individuals or with friends in New Age-y kinds of things. When it comes to reasonable and thoughtful readings of Tarot cards, to focus on inherent (but not exclusive) human goodness, the benefits of meditation and yoga,  connectedness, the power of cultural mythologies, and other similar things, New Age-y kinds of things have bolstered and enhanced my life long practices of Christianity, added dimension to my spiritual life, and have not led me down divisive or dangerous rabbit holes. 

My life continues to be enriched by a variety of spiritual influences and it's deflating to read a book like Leah Sottile's or to read stories from other sources about abuses of power and the greedy acquisition of money in spiritual movements and Christian churches and fellowships when the potential for goodness and meaningful service to others can be so strong and ought to be at the heart of these spiritual traditions. 

Three Beautiful Things 04-04-2025: Leah Sottile Writes Solid History, Extremist Intersections, I'm In the Money!

1. After attending the Northwest Passages event Wednesday evening featuring Leah Sottile, I wanted to read her new book, the one I came home with, Blazing Eye Sees All: Love Has Won, False Prophets, and the Fever Dream of the American New Age. 

I worked my way about half through the book today and, as with any solid historical study, I'm seeing again that very little in our world today is unique or unprecedented, largely, I suppose, because human beings don't change much from generation to generation regarding what they are drawn to, what they become obsessed with. 

The particular obsessions Leah Sottile explores in the flow of United States history involve preoccupation with lost ancient, mythical,  and utopian civilizations and centering one's spiritual life around making mystical contact with these civilizations, like, for example, Lemuria, and seeking to elevate human existence to higher planes of reality, through love, seances, divine revelation, and a host of other means. 

Because a critical mass of people are drawn to New Age legends, practices, promises, disciplines, charismatic leaders/prophets, communities, and other aspects of this spirituality they find powerful, clever and mendacious con artists and charlatans exploit the power of New Age attractiveness and bilk people of money, valuables, and property -- much like a certain kind of Christian evangelical. 

Not all prominent New Age speakers, writers, leaders, etc. are charlatans, not all are fatally dangerous, but this book examines quite a few who are (or were). 

Sottile focuses on some of the more prominent false prophets in our country's history and the power they accrue(d) over countless followers. The growth of the power of the World Wide Web, especially the growth of social media and platforms like YouTube and TikTok has greatly increased the reach of these spiritualists and made it, of course, possible for followers to be in real time contact with each other through live streams, chat rooms, texting, and other means. 

I admire how Leah Sottile approaches these New Age practitioners and the history of this spiritualism without mocking or deriding them (for the most part). I admire the number of scholars in the world of higher education she's sought out for help in understanding this subject. I admire how Leah Sottile devoted herself to countless, mind-boggling hours of research in archives and other written records and books and more mind-boggling hours of watching online videos and live streaming presentations. 

The book is an unblinking combination of journalism and scholarship and to top it all off, Leah Sottile's writing is accessible, direct, and absorbing. 

2. Leah Sottile's focus as an independent, free lance journalist is mostly, but not entirely, on extremism in the USA. Blazing Eye Sees All is a study of extremism, and I'd like to add to what I wrote above that while the aesthetics and the manner of New Age spirituality appears to be very different from, say facism or militia groups or QAnon or other prominent extremists in the USA, these extremists often intersect at the junctions of anti-semitism, anti-science, anti-government, anti-vaccination, preoccupation with conspiracy theories or stories, and other similar flashpoints. 

I find this aspect of Leah Sottile's research and reporting fascinating -- and I was fascinated by her comments about this intersection on Wednesday evening. 

As I mentioned in my blog post yesterday, I was in the company of people practicing some form of New Age spirituality daily when I lived in Eugene. In addition, and this is just one example in the Silver Valley, if you go uptown in Kellogg, you can shop for New Age/Metaphysical items at Positive Practice on the corner of Portland and Main.  Here's the link to this shop: https://tinyurl.com/5xe3tbxj

I have no idea what, if any, intersections between New Age spirituality and the far right exist at Positive Practice. I haven't visited the shop beyond exploring its website. My immediate impulse is to be happy Positive Practice is in business. 

Because I don't have to be scientifically accurate in an informal blog post like this one, I'll just post a few of my impressions. 

Yes, I would say that it's highly likely that people whose company I shared in Eugene and whose spiritual lives leaned toward the New Age/Metaphysical were suspicious of pharmaceuticals and medical professionals and were likely, in most cases, to look to naturopaths, body manipulation of one kind or another, acupuncture, essential oils, and herbs, tinctures, and teas, and other similar means for medical treatment. 

From time to time, I did the same. 

I trusted the integrative/holistic medical specialist, Dr. Andrew Elliott whom I consulted on several occasions in Eugene. 

I trusted him because he knew naturopathy had limits.

For example, Dr. Elliott fully supported the pharmaceutical therapy that saved my life when I contracted bacterial meningitis. 

Other naturopathic remedies he sent me home with successfully cleared up other medical problems I had. 

I never got the impression that Dr. Elliott's medical practice or his outlook on life intersected with the far right. 

If Leah Sottile's research, interviews, and observations are correct, the pandemic mightily affected the intersection of the New Age movement with far right perspectives. I'd sum it up by saying the intersection occurs in suspiciousness, distrust, investing one's hopes and dreams in a single idolized leader, and (I might be out on a limb here!) in a yearning for a return to an imagined golden past and the desire for ethnic cleansing of the population that accompanies such yearning. 

3. I had more on my mind today than extremism in the USA! 

A couple weeks ago, Ed and I buzzed over to the Spokane Tribal Casino and laid down modest wagers on NCAA tournament basketball. 

I bet on the women's tournament and decided to bet on two teams to win it all: the University of Connecticut and the University of South Carolina. 

Well, as luck would have it, guess who's meeting on Sunday, April 6th in the tournament's championship game.

That's right. 

UConn and South Carolina. 

I'm in the money no matter who wins -- I'll win a few dollars more if UConn triumphs, but no matter who wins I'll come out -- are you ready for this stunning news? -- about 30-35 dollars ahead! 

I'm not much of a high roller. 

Luckily, I have fun making small wagers! 

Three Beautiful Things 04-03-2025: Thinking About Eugene, The *Deadish* Variety Show, I Figured Out the Rebus!

1.  After attending the Northwest Passage's program Wednesday evening featuring Leah Sottile and after listening to her discuss her newly published book, Blazing Eye Sees All, a sweeping historical and contemporary study of New Age spirituality, its origins, its popularity in the USA, and some of its prominent leaders (Sottile focuses primarily on women), I was compelled to start reading it today. 

New Age spirituality is not grounded in creeds, doctrines, a single authoratative book, and has no structures that look like, say, Christianity, Judaism, or Islam.

It's amorphous. People who practice New Age spirituality have commonalities, but within the New Age movement exists much variety, many different emphases, and any number of self-appointed, for lack of a better word, leaders. 

I referred to Eugene in an earlier blog post as a robust city. I hear or read people typify Eugene as a hippie town, a university town, a town of anarchists, and any number of other things. The longer I lived in Eugene and the more years I taught at Lane Community College, the more variety I experienced in Eugene. It's a business center. A medical center. It has deep roots in logging and blue collar work. I saw close up how the police work as well as the DA's office when I spent a month of grand jury -- nothing hippy dippy about these pros. 

So, a lot was, and is, in the air in Eugene -- including New Age spirituality. 

Reading Sottile's book, so far, has kindled many memories, many conversations, many fragrances, many images, many visits to Saturday Market and a few visits to the Oregon Country Fair and I'm learning more about what might have lain behind the way many people  I encountered, taught, talked with, and was friends with over the years saw the world and their place in it. I couldn't and didn't buy in, but I listened and did my best to sort out the virtues from the wackiness of what these people had to say about their spiritual lives. 

2. I listened to Jeff's radio program Deadish tonight live. He arranged tonight's show chronologically,  playing cuts from live shows that were performed on April 3 many different years. He played Miles Davis, Santana, Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys, Jerry Garcia Band, and treated us listeners to another good dose of the Dead. 

Variety. 

That's what I like. 

Tonight Jeff played a great variety of music, all connected to the Grateful Dead some (like Miles Davis) by improvisation, some by style (like bluegrass), some were  musicians who played with Jerry Garcia in projects like Old and in the Way or the Jerry Garcia Band, and some were musicians like, say, Carlos Santana, who were vital contributors to the the San Francisco/Bay Area sound over fifty years ago.

3. I was very happy to complete the NYTimes crossword puzzle I worked today. I figured out that the puzzle featured some rebus squares and I figured out the puzzle's rebus almost right away, a very rare feat for me. 

If you wonder what a rebus is, here's help from the NYTimes: "Rebuses are crossword elements where solvers are asked to write multiple letters in the same square."

Or in a single square. 

The rebus I figured out today appeared in six different squares. 

Three Beautiful Things 04-02-2025: Pre-Pandemic Cultural Safaris, I Meet Leah Sottile, I Listen to Leah Sottile and Walk and Think

1.  Back in the fall of 2018, Debbie started a school year long substituting job at Charlamagne, the French Immersion elementary school she taught at in Eugene for several years before we moved to Greenbelt, MD. 

In the fall of 2018, we'd been living in Kellogg for a year.

I was enjoying many of the aspects of Kellogg life I've written about over the last several years: living so close to Christy and Carol, family dinners, living close to life long friends, hanging out at The Lounge, hiking, exploring the area, and more.

But, after living near Washington, D.C., going to the New York City metropolitan area to visit Adrienne and Jack and coupling those visits with forays into Manhattan, and after leaving a robust smaller city like Eugene, the one thing I missed in Kellogg was living where a culture of arts and letters thrived, where such a culture is routine.  

So, I began making cultural trips to Spokane. I also made one such trip to Missoula in 2019 (to see Jerry Douglas and Tommy Emmanuel) and I drove to Billings when it was Hiram's turn to be a part of the President's Own Marine Corps Band touring group and attended their performance there. Billings was the closest the 2018 tour came to Kellogg.  

I had decided, by 2019, to lean on what was happening in downtown Spokane and through Whitworth University to fulfill my desire for attending lectures, plays, art exhibits, movies, live concerts, and anything else that captured my interest. 

I expanded this cultural safari in the fall of 2019 when I joined Mary Chase, Kathy Brainard, Linda Lavigne, and others to play trivia at different venues around Spokane. 

By mid-March of 2020, soon after I'd gone to hear tribute bands at the Bing play music by Cream one night and Pink Floyd the next night, the pandemic was upon us. 

No more trivia.

No more concerts.

No more cultural safaris. 

I would begin learning how to culturally satisfy myself at home with movies, live streaming content on the World Wide Web, and reading. 

It worked. 

2. I bring this all up because this evening I returned to my Spokane cultural safari. 

Between March 2020 and last night, I approached public events very cautiously because of my trust in medical observations that the caronavirus attacked diminished kidneys.

In addition, I didn't attend most public events after my May 11, 2024 kidney transplant because my immune system had to be shut down significantly to keep my body from rejecting my new organ and I didn't want to complicate my recovery by adding illness to it. 

But, a couple of months ago, when I read that Leah Sottile would be in Spokane on April 2 as she promotes her latest book, Blazing Eye Sees All, I bought a VIP ticket so that I would receive a signed copy of her book, get a complimentary (for me, non-alcoholic) drink, and have a chance to meet and chat a bit with Leah Sottile. 

When I introduced myself to Sottile, she let out a mild gasp, knowing from our brief bit of correspondence that I was the guy who set out to read the books on the list she published as a counter to the NYTimes' list of best books of the 21st century. She knew I had succeeded in reading every one of her listed books. 

She told me, as she had written to me, that she was honored that I had taken her book list so seriously.

Others were around to visit with Leah Sottile, so I didn't tell her how much that list of books expanded my horizons, both in terms of the world we live in and in terms of my world of reading. I'd say that, at most, only about two books on that list were books I would have read on my own -- most of them were books I'd never heard of. 

One author on her list, the only one with two books on it, and a writer who has helped Leah Sottile with her work, Spokane's Jess Walter, semi-interrupted my conversation with Leah Sottile (no problem) and then he and I accidentally sat side by side during the evening's program. 

I left him alone. 

While I might have wanted to tell him how much I enjoyed the three books of his I've read, I thought, no he's enjoying this evening with friends, talking about "civilian" stuff (like the upcoming Final Four). If I want to express my appreciation of what I've read, I can do so by other means or attend his June 10th program when he will promote his newest book. 

3. The Spokesman Review launched a project several years ago called Northwest Passages. Its mission is journalism and book focused. Among other activities, Northwest Passages hosts a far reaching online book club and hosts events like tonight in which an author presents a book of hers or his by being interviewed by a professional writer. 

This evening, Leah Sottile gladly submitted herself to the questioning of former Spokesman Review journalist Emma Epperly. Epperly asked a series of probing question about New Agism, the subject of Sottlie's newly published work, giving special attention to how Sottile, well-known and respected for her  journalistic integrity and stellar ethical standards, went about journalistically researching and conducting interviews about a subject that is as elusive and and, for some, a focus of derision, as New Age beliefs and practices. 

Leah Sottile answered these questions directly, intelligently, wittily, and humbly. She was humble in the face of such a huge subject, knowing that she can't tell the whole truth in a single book and aware that even has meticulously as she researched and sought out people's experiences and knowledge, she might not have gotten everything right. 

On her podcasts, I've listened to Leah Sottile conduct face to face interviews with a wide range of people, including police officers, Cliven Bundy family members, FBI agents, anarchists, extremists -- whether eco-terrorists or white supremacists--, and I'm always deeply impressed with how she gains the trust of those she interviews. 

This evening, she talked some about how she earns trust and I'll sum up what she said this way: she seeks truth, is genuinely and humbly eager to learn how those she talks with see the world, understand their experience, and want to discuss it. She doesn't rush those she interviews. She's not after soundbites. She's not what's known as a "gotcha" journalist. She invites those she talks with to tell their truth, however long it takes, and, with an exception here and there, these people then respond to Sottile's probing follow up questions. 

I parked down at the River Park Square and enjoyed my several blocks hike up to the Steam Plant's rooftop, where this event took place (indoors!), and back again. 

I love city walking. 

I miss the long walks I used to take in Seattle, DC, New York City, Portland, Spokane (when I lived there), and many, many years ago, London. 

I thought a lot as I walked and then drove back to Kellogg how I need to return to my cultural safari outlook of the fall of 2018-March of 2020.

With my immune system getting stronger, I need to pay more attention to what's playing, who's performing, who's reading, and what's happening through Whitworth and try to get back to leaning on Spokane and my alma mater, Whitworth, for cultural enjoyment again. 

 Here are a couple of links to conclude with. 

First of all, KHS Class of 1972 member, Kenton Bird was featured as the guest author of a Northwest Passages event on Sept. 6, 2024. He was interviewed by Spokesman Review reporter Jim Camden about the book he co-authored about Tom Foley.  You can watch and listen to them talk (and learn more about Northwest Passages) by clicking on this link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTf9-KbHN98&list=PLO4UFBdqq__l8zIlFs_cYD29m9-S3l19v&index=12 

Second of all, if you'd like to see other videotaped programs presented by Northwest Passages, here's the link to their YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLO4UFBdqq__l8zIlFs_cYD29m9-S3l19v

Leah Sottile's presentation hasn't been posted yet -- I hope to see it go up before too long.