1. First the solemn news: Saturday afternoon, Bruce had his first dialysis treatment. Byrdman texted Sally to find out how Bruce handled it. Sally responded that Bruce doesn't know what's going on and probably handled the treatment as well as can be expected. On Saturday, Bruce couldn't communicate with the doctors, Sally, or anyone else. He didn't know who Sally was or that she was holding his hand.
Bruce is now in acute care with the hope that the doctors can get a handle on Bruce's complicated condition.
Bruce's brother Eric arrived in Spokane. Eric and Sally will return to the hospital Sunday.
The current goal is to get Bruce coherent and aware.
2. At 4:00 this afternoon, I met Kenton Bird at the Griffin Tavern. We had great conversation about an array of things, very much including a discussion of our classmate Bruce's situation.
About forty-five minutes later, Kenton, Gerri, and I walked to the Mango Tree where we met Anne Franke. Kenton and Gerri know Anne from when Anne's late husband, Michael West, filled the pulpit at St. Mark's Episcopal Church and I knew Anne nearly fifty years ago when we both taught part-time at Whitworth in the late 1970s. In other words, it had been a long time since Anne and I had seen each other.
Our reunion was a happy one.
Mango Tree is a participant in the current Inlander Restaurant Week, and we ordered the appetizers, entrees, and desserts that were on the special Restaurant Week menu. We ate curry, naan, flatbread "pizza", noodles, chicken wings, different sherberts, and more and had plenty left over to box up.
Ours was a boisterous dinner overflowing with great conversation about books, music, our histories with each other, education, and more.
3. We finished dinner and Anne drove us to the Fox Theater for tonight's concert performed by the Spokane Symphony.
The concert focused on works by three great friends: Clara Schumann, Robert Schumann, and Johannes Brahms. The program featured guest conductor Shira Samuels-Shragg and guest pianist Wynona Wang.
It was, for me, a stirring concert featuring Robert Schulman's sweeping Manfred Overture, Clara Schulman's stunning Piano Concerto in A Minor and the, by turns, powerful, enthusiastic, and tender piano virtuosity of Wynona Wang, and Johaness Brahm's monumental Symphony No. 1.
The music moved me. I had to restrain myself from moving my arms and hands and legs and head the way I would if I were alone and the music fed me emotionally, moving me to wish the concert would last another couple of hours.
I am incapable of writing a critical review of a symphony concert.
All I know is that I love being in a beautiful theater like the Fox and enjoying the emotional peaks and valleys and contrasting tempos and dynamics of these inspiring compositions played live under the baton of an enthusiastic conductor and by vigorous musicians.
Guest piano soloist Wynona Wang was especially vigorous, but also remarkably gentle when the score called for quiet restraint.
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