1. What a day! The Deke leapt in the Sube and buzzed out to Charlemagne Elementary French Immersion School to interview for a third grade position, replacing a teacher who will start her maternity leave in November. In the meantime, I walked an old and familiar route from West Broadway and Polk to the Bier Stein on Willamette. At the Bier Stein, I met Dan Armstrong. Dan and I were hired at the same time at LCC in the fall of 1990 and began teaching full time at the college in January of 1991. We became fast friends back in 1991, arranged to have our offices next door to each other in the early 2000s, and had wore a path between our offices, going back and forth to talk about everything from our teaching to movies to spirituality to our lives at home to poetry and all sorts of other things. Over lunch, we picked right up where we last left off in July of 2017, and once again talked about all sorts of things: family, movies, current politics, our good friends at LCC, health challenges, and the documentary film work of Ken Burns, to name a few of our topics. It was a heartwarming and invigorating lunch and I look forward to my next visit to Eugene so Dan and I can have a beer, eat some lunch, and get another fine session of yakkin' underway.
2. While we were eating lunch, I received a much anticipated text message from the Deke: "Got the job 😄."
Now our lives make another change. The Deke will start looking for a place to live from November-June of 2018-19 and we'll start making some decisions about when I'll travel to Eugene and when the Deke will come up to Kellogg. The Deke taught at Charlemagne Elementary from 2008-2014. She knows many of the other teachers and the principal at the school and enjoys them a lot. She knows how things work at Charlemagne. It looks like a great opportunity for the Deke to have 8-9 months of classroom teaching at a place where she can be creative, have fun, and be excited about her work.
3. I carried the Deke's great news with me from the Bier Stein on my walk downtown where I had stimulating conversation over coffee at Perugino with Nate, Margaret, and Michael. As is always the case, our conversation covered a lot of territory as we looked back, looked at the present, and looked ahead. Margaret used to teach a course in Detective Fiction and I especially enjoyed listening to her insights about James Lee Burke (I just finished his first Dave Robicheaux novel). I also very much enjoyed a discussion we had about the movie, Lost in Translation and sharing enthusiasm around the table for our shared love of Bill Murray as an actor. I left our time together glad that I taught at LCC the many years I did -- they were very good years in the English Department and it was a superb time in the classroom at Lane. I was dismayed to hear that things are currently less fun and less convivial where I used to work and I had a feeling that recurs that I retired just in the nick of time.
Michael gave me a ride from downtown to Lynn Tullis' house and we enjoyed a beer together and we had our own version of recounting our teaching time at LCC and I found out that they were referred to derisively by a newer faculty member as the "Kumbaya years" one day in a faculty meeting. I'm happy I got to experience those 10-12 years of Kumbaya and I'm proud of whatever I contributed to whatever harmony existed among us. Lynn and I talked joyously about how that great feeling of mutual respect and togetherness was alive at the reunion party at Pam and Michael's back in June.
At about 5:30, Lynn and I headed over to Billy Mac's where the Deke awaited us and Kathleen Horton joined us. I was elated that Cathy was working the floor. I hadn't seen her since we left Eugene four years ago and now I know she works the floor on Wednesday nights. Billy Mac himself was also in the house and I enjoy our brief handshake and his hearty greetings and the fact that he checked in to make sure we'd had a good meal. Our dinner conversation was intense and stimulating as we discussed the Deke's return to Eugene, books, movies, and the political climate.
The Deke and I ended our night with a quick stop at the Bier Stein. At lunch I'd had about 12 oz. of Oakshire's Hazy Double IPA called Hop Envy and I hoped the keg might still have a few ounces so the Deke could enjoy some. I'd loved it. But, alas, the Hop Envy keg had kicked and we each had different beers -- I had 4.5 oz of Firestone Walker's hop shower Leo vs Ursus: Doublus and the Deke had a very short pour of pFriem's Mango Milkshake, a milkshake IPA and enjoyed it a lot.
We returned to our cottage and fell almost immediately asleep.
What a day!
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