Saturday, March 2, 2019

Three Beautiful Things 03/01/19: More Cleaning, Listening to a Kidney Transplant, Return of Ruthy Hebard

1. As I've mentioned before, with my renewed and revived eyesight, I am seeing places on surfaces, especially in the kitchen and the bathroom, that need better cleaning than I have done before when I didn't see all the crumbs or egg yolk remains or peanut butter bits or other things that need wiping down, just from normal day to day living. So, today, I cleaned the stove top, kitchen counters and sink, bathroom surfaces, toothbrush holder, and other things and will keep on cleaning selected areas of the house each day.

2. While I cleaned, via Alexa, I listened to a kidney transplant being performed and to interviews with the live donor, Missy Makinia, and the surgeon, Dr. Joshua Mezrich, author of the medical memoir, When Death Becomes Life: Notes from a Transplant Surgeon. 

It is the first segment of an hour long episode on the podcast, To the Best of Our Knowledge, entitled, "Your Miraculous and Mysterious Body". If you'd like to listen to this episode, it's here (click the rectangle that says, "Listen Now") and if you'd like to read the accompanying article, "Would You Give Your Kidney to a Stranger?", just click here.

3.  Ed picked me up and and we joined Carol Lee, Jake, DJ, and Eileen at the weekly hamburger night at the Elks where I enjoyed a burger, fries, and some 7Up and we crossed the street for a single drink and some yakkin' with Cas at the Inland Lounge.

I returned home to watch the 7:00 broadcast of the Oregon Ducks women's basketball team in their tilt against the Arizona Wildcats.

If you read this blog even once in a while, you might remember that the Ducks' powerful low post player, Ruthy Hebard, injured her knee two weeks ago in the second quarter of a game against Oregon State. She didn't play in Oregon's next two games, losses in the Oregon State rematch and to UCLA. Hebard returned last Sunday against USC, playing limited minutes, and the Ducks played splendidly with Ruthy Hebard back.  It's difficult to overstate all that she does for the Ducks: she's an active defender and a fierce rebounder; on offense, she has a variety of agile spin and power moves inside and shoots high percentage shots, making 70% of them; she also sets nearly impenetrable screens, rolls adroitly to the iron, and, when she teams up on these pick and roll plays with Sabrina Ionescu, often frees up Ionescu to pop mid-range jumpers or drive to the cup or Ionescu slips a pinpoint pass to Hebard rolling to the hoop for a layin. It's a beautiful basketball sight.

Coach Kelly Graves refers, smilingly, to Ruthy Hebard as "The Hammer". I think of her as the team's anchor, a strong grounding player, a reliable source of strength on both ends of the court: on defense, she is a rim protector; at the other end, the Ducks' offense works best when their sets center either on Hebard's screens or on Hebard getting touches inside and deciding whether to spin and score inside or to kick the rock back outside to one of Oregon's sharpshooters. In addition, if Ruthy Hebard moves to the high post area, defenders must account for her and it creates room for her teammates to put the ball on the deck and drive to the cup.

So, tonight, Ruthy Hebard returned to the starting lineup. The Ducks looked in sync from the get go. They looked comfortable and confident. After a relatively close first half, the Ducks pulled steadily away from Arizona on their way to a 83-54 triumph. Remarkably, the hassled, frustrated, fatigued Wildcats failed to score in the fourth quarter. By game's end, the Ducks steamrolled Arizona.

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