When we come to Denver, we usually don't see anyone but our family -- Jon's sister and my brother. But this time we made loose plans by text with enough people that we had to keep moving and keep eating all day long.
First we went to Boulder to meet up with Sam, a beloved farm worker from about five years ago. She left the East Coast to go to a program to learn about herbs and tinctures, and then eventually she figured out that the potential income from that sort of work was just about the same as farming and she liked farming better. So she worked on one farm or another, met someone wonderful, got married, and just happened to meet a woman in a pottery class who knew someone who needed some farm help. Knowing nothing about the farmer or the farm, she decided to apply for a job. One year later she and her husband are the managers of this little farm and the owner is a successful musician who is on tour most of the time, promoting his recent album. He is famous enough that he doesn't want people to know where he lives because he doesn't want random people showing up to try to find him, so they have to be a little bit circumspect about the farm location (no sign, no internet presence, I guess). But he is a great person to work for and Sam is contemplating the possibility that she and her husband will be on this little farm for years to come. Life is so random. We had a great morning with her, looking at the farm and then retreated to a coffee shop for several more hours of catching up.
From there we headed to the foothills of the mountains to the west, going to meet two of my best friends from high school for lunch at the Chautauqua Dining Hall. This location is the last remaining one of its kind west of the Mississippi -- in the early 1900s there were a bunch of these retreat centers established around the country. The one I have heard of the most is the one that the Clintons go to every year to recharge their intellectual batteries. Anyway, we had lunch in this lodge. I haven't seen Steve and Jim in the same place since 1976. We definitely do not look the same as we did 48 years ago, but their voices and personalities are so much the same. I spent so much of high school in classes and working on the yearbook with these guys. Unlike so many other people I know, each of them got a job after college and stayed with it all the way to retirement. That is so old school. Steve was a civil engineer working for Shell Oil, traveling the world designing off shore rigs and Jim has worked for the US Park Service forever. The opposite ends of the spectrum but their politics seem to align with each other's, and with mine. I guess I have also had the same job since college, so that makes three of us.
Then back to Denver, jumping forward about 25 years, we went to see Stuart and Andrea in their swanky apartment with a great view. They left Northern Virginia a few years ago when they realized they really could work anywhere and the suburbs were not nearly as interesting as living in Denver nearer to more of their kids. It felt like we had seen them last about a month ago. They keep up with NVHC, attending services on YouTube, paying dues, staying in touch. I realized that I have really missed Stuart -- his pragmatism, his clear thinking. He is like me in the area of not taking things personally. We talked at some length about Israel and found that there is a great consistency amongst our Reform Jew friends across the country -- their support for Israel remains solid. It feels like a generational thing. I am much more muddled in my thinking, probably because as a Jew by Choice I have less lifelong clarity about Israel. But I very much hope this war ends soon and Netanyahu's political career ends.
Jon dropped me off at Charles and Lee Lee's house and he went to Dena's. We had quiet evenings, separately, and spent time with our own siblings.
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