Three Beautiful Things 03-03-2025: Breakfast with Linda, An Afternoon with Judith/Judy/Sparky, I Was Spent

1. Linda Schantol and I became great friends over the many many years that she worked in our division office at LCC until her retirement in 2023. It all started with our weekly reviews of the past weekend and our expert forecasts for the upcoming week of Duck sports, especially football and men's and women's basketball. 

Well, as coincidence would have it, we are also now both kidney patients and support each other as we go through the different phases of dealing with kidney disease. 

Linda and I met at Elmer's this morning and I learned a lot more about where she's at medically, the great work she's doing taking care of herself, and what lies ahead for her in kidney world. We also talked about my recovery from having had a transplant. 

We also had a great discussion of current events, especially in the USA. I enjoyed learning more than I'd ever known before about how Linda sees things and what most concerns her as we move forward as a country. 

2. I spent much of the afternoon with Judith/Judy/Sparky Roberts. We've been great friends ever since I started teaching Shakespeare classes at. LCC, beginning in the fall of 1991. Over the years we've worked together on Shakespeare Showcases, LCC productions of plays by Shakespeare, on entertainments for the U of O Library Foundation, the Landlords Association of Lane County, the faculty and staff of LCC, for part-time instructors at LCC, and more. We've gone to movies, plays, parties, poetry get togethers, meals out --- well, and we made a great trip to Seattle together to see Bill Irwin in Waiting for Godot. We went to the Seattle Art Museum. We saw Artis the Spoonman busking near Pike Street Market. I drove on that trip to Seattle and back and Sparky read the great Robertson Davies novel, Tempest-Tost aloud while we zoomed up and down I-5. 

And here we were today, 34 years after we first met, sitting at Sparky's dinner table, talking about everything from grief to cats to Shakespeare to medical matters to memories to our families to New York City to -- well you get the idea. We covered a lot of ground. 

Judy and I used to eat meals together at the Glenwood on South Willamette and we returned today.

It was a great comfort for me to be back there again, especially with Sparky,  after years of absence and Judy's and my stream of conversation continued, making it a warm and stimulating reunion. 

3. I drove Sparky back to her house and admitted that I was spent. 

I'd had a marvelous and intense long weekend in Eugene and Corvallis and. now I really needed some time to myself, time to be quiet and to rest. 

So, I did. 

I wish I could have visited with more people, maybe gone to a movie, but I was spent with a long day of driving ahead of me on Monday.

So I took it easy.