1. At about 9:15 this morning, I vaulted into the Sube and blasted over the pass, fueled up at Costco, and rocketed on into Browne's Addition in Spokane.
I met Deborah and Scott at the Elk for lunch. Deborah and I first met at Whitworth about forty-eight years ago. We've kept in touch with each other over the years, aided significantly by electronic communication. Now that Deborah and Scott live in the Treasure Valley and because they have longtime friends in the Spokane area, they travel up this way on occasion.
Deborah, Scott, and I last saw each other back in October of 2019 when we spent much of a morning and afternoon together centered on attending the annual Whitworth University President's Leadership Forum. The speaker that year was Bob Woodward. We enjoyed coffee at the Rockwood Bakery before the talk and debriefed over a beer at The Onion when the talk was over.
Since then, we've had other plans to see each other in Spokane not work out for a variety of reasons, but today, everything clicked and we enjoyed a relaxing, stimulating, sometime nostalgic, comforting, and loving time together, full of good cheer and vitality.
I was at Whitworth as a student, chaplain's assistant, and an instructor for about six, almost seven years (1974-78; 1982-84). Those were times of significant awakening for me, certainly intellectually, and also spiritually. Whether in the classroom, listening to visiting speakers, participating in worship, or having great discussions with fellow students in the dining hall and the dorms, during those years I learned how to examine myself, learned how try to come to grips with why I saw the world the way I did, and, when unsatisfied with myself, learned how to revise my worldview. I was far from alone in this process. That's why the discussions with fellow students were so dynamic -- many of us were focused on trying to work out big questions about human nature, the human condition, faith, service, our futures, and how we might live out our ideals as we moved out from behind "the pine cone curtain" of Whitworth's campus into the world.
Those days and nights in the Whitworth classrooms, in the dorms and the dining hall, and in worship on campus and off combined with my many interactions with faculty at Whitworth (in all three of my roles at the college) shaped my reasons for studying literature, especially Shakespeare, in graduate school and shaped my fundamental ethos as a longtime community college English instructor.
Being with Deborah and Scott today brought that all back. Over lunch, we talked about things in ways that were deeply familiar to me, deeply rooted, in my view, in Deborah's and my experiences as students and employees at Whitworth.
Whatever that Whitworth spirit is, whatever that deep familiarity is, I love it and I feel its profound presence when I jump on ZOOM with the Westminster Basementeers. I felt that spirit enfold Mark Cutshall and me as we dined and talked for nearly three hours at Voula's. I felt it when I visited Bill and Diane later that day. I could feel that spirit animating my conversation over coffee with Colette. It's vibrated through email exchanges with David C, text messaging with Rich, and, in my view, animates Bill Davie's Tuesday night poetry breaks on Facebook Live. That spirit will be alive when I see Jeff S. next week, the next time I see Val, and as I get out into the world a little more and renew relations with other people I knew, taught, and taught with from Whitworth.
I'm especially fortunate because this experience of deep familiarity exists in my friendships with people from other contexts, too: forever Kellogg friends, friends from the U of O days I see in Eugene, fellow employees from my days at Lane Community College, and the many people I worshiped and served the community with at St. Mary's Episcopal Church.
The ongoing Whitworth experience is living in the front of my mind today because of seeing Deborah and Scott and having the other recent experiences I've had with other Whitworth people over the last weeks, months, and, in the case of the Basementeers, years.
2. Driving home from Spokane, glowing after such a scintillating lunch, I thought about retirement. I guess it's about time. After all, I retired from LCC eight years ago!
My recent trips to Eugene, Pendleton, Gladstone, and Seattle combined with today's drive over to Spokane and in concert with road trips I've taken with Byrdman, local outings I've gone on with Ed, the vacation I to Glacier National Park I went on with Patrick and Meagan, and outings I've been on with Christy and Carol all got me thinking that, more than anything else, in my retirement, I want to be with family and friends. I really enjoy traveling with family and friends and making trips to where friends live.
I thought about the tv commercials financial institutions run during golf tournaments marketing not only financial products, but marketing the experience of being affluent and retired.
Not one of those commercials advertises the joy of traveling to where friends are -- none of them feature two men in their late sixties, like Mark Cutshall and me, sitting in an old diner in a not very shiny neighborhood on the edge of the Univ District. None of them advertise the joy of sitting in a condo with longtime friends, like I did with Bill and Diane, listening to Fairport Convention, Richard Thompson, Richard and Linda Thompson, Steeleye Span and other folk-rock music after eating spicy 10 vegetable soup and crusty bread. In none of them, do they advertise sitting with lifelong friends in a living room in Gladstone, OR watching the NCAA men's basketball final or sitting in another living room in Eugene with a longtime friend, in this case, Jeff Harrison, listening to back to back radio shows, the first focused on Bob Dylan, the second on the Grateful Dead and related jam bands. I've never seen one of these companies present a day with siblings at Manito Park as something to dream about in retirement.
None advertises a retired married couple driving across the country with a little Mal-Shi, stopping at dog friendly breweries, relaxing with family and new friends in a lake house at Lake Michigan and drinking beers in an obscure little brewery called Burn 'Em.
None advertises sitting on an outdoor table at a Post Falls pub with lifelong friends from high school telling old tales and listening to Pink Floyd.
Those two nights I spent in Seattle visiting with Hugh and Carol, Mark, Bill and Diane, and Colette epitomized what I most enjoy now that I'm retired.
I will continue to make that sort of thing happen as often as I can.
And continue to jump on ZOOM, chat online, and exchange emails and text messages with friends near and far.
It all makes these retirement years full of vitality and enjoyment.
3. Christy hosted family dinner tonight and to use a favorite old Kellogg phase, it was a dandy.
We started with a peachy keen cocktail -- very peachy in fact. Christy mixed Peach Jim Beam with Peach Vodka and peach flavored sparkling water and added a fresh peach garnish.
For an appetizer, I toasted English muffin halves, put some olive oil on them, and then spread hummus on each muffin and added crumbled feta cheese, Kalamata olive pieces, and a couple thin slices of cucumber. It worked!
For our mail meal, Christy perfectly baked salmon chunks topped with a Dijon mustard sauce.
Carol prepared asparagus spears topped with lime and white miso sauce.
I had fun making my side dish contribution.
I melted a slab of butter in the Dutch oven and added about a cup of broken pieces of uncooked spaghetti. Once the spaghetti bits were brown, I added couple cloves of chopped garlic, about three stalks of green onion, and a cup and a half of raw long grain white rice. I cooked all of this for another minute and then added a quart of homemade turkey stock (instead of store bought chicken broth) and some salt, pepper, thyme, and turmeric.
I brought all of this to a slow boil/simmer and then covered the pot and turned the heat down to low. In about fifteen or twenty minutes, the rice had absorbed the liquid, the spaghetti was soft, and, if you are still reading this, I was ready to take Homemade Rice-a-Roni to family dinner.
We had red and white wine available to sip on during dinner and over the course of the evening we talked about a goat rescue on Silver Mountain, other tops stories coming in Tuesday's Shoshone News Press, the Godfather movies and the series The Offer, and the history of television viewing, mostly in the Woolum household as we were growing up. No one ever said it, but I think we all agreed within ourselves that we had some awesome options even though we only had three, and later a fourth (PBS), channels.
Much of this television discussion took place during dessert. Christy made Sour Cream Banana Bars served with Ben and Jerry's Whiskey Biz Ice Cream.
Like I said, tonight's dinner was a dandy!
Here's a limerick by Stu:
No comments:
Post a Comment