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 BEAR: This is my granddaughter, Heather. HOOKER: Nice to meet you. HEATHER: I've heard so much about you. HOOKER:You didn't have to tell me that. HEATHER: All good! BEAR: She performed her Woody Guthrie show at the universitry last night. You missed one hell of a performance.  HOOKER: I had a conflict. BEAR: Timbers tickets! Our esteemed and retired professor of American Studies prefers sports to art. HOOKER: I'm not a rich man. I bought season tickets I can't afford. I like to use them. HEATHER: I may be doing the university again this summer. BEAR: Really? HEATHER: They said they wanted to bring me back. BEAR: That's great. HOOKER: The word is awesome, Bear. Have you done the show other places? HEATHER: Right now the show is my job. BEAR: I didn't know that. HEATHER: I've had very generous grant support. I've performed throughout the Northwest, at universities and colleges, performing arts centers, senior centers, labor picnics, union halls. I even pe...

 BEAR: I just finished an incredible book: the Age of American Unreason. HOOKER: By Susan Jacoby. I know it. It's a follow up to Hofstadter's Anti Intellectualism in American Life.  BEAR: She mentions this. HOOKER: The thing is, Bear, that it's always been the age of unreason here. Look at what Mencken was writing in the twenties. I recently came across a quotation that sounds like he's describing today. I bet I can find it. (He starts searching on his smart phone.) BEAR: Today people present "alternative science" as if it's a real thing. They believe Thomas Jefferson led prayer sessions. If you have an education, you're "elitist." People are proud of their ignorance! It's unreal. HOOKER: Here it is. (Reading) "On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. The Evening Sun, Baltimore (26 July 1920)," BEAR: I'm not s...

 BEAR: Did you see the guest editorial by Robert Charles in Sunday's paper? HOOKER: I don't read the paper any more. I don't watch television, and I don't listen to the radio. I don't do anything where there's a chance I will be exposed to news or images about the Golden Felon. BEAR: Well, listen to you. Does it work? HOOKER: No. What does Charles say? BEAR: He wants to expand physician-assisted suicide to include everyone.  HOOKER: Death with dignity for all! I like it. He give any details? BEAR: At age 80, whether sick or not, even if completely healthy, anyone is eligible to apply for death-with-dignity. HOOKER: That's too old. I'd do 70. Or make it part of retirement. BEAR: Are you serious? HOOKER: Of course I'm serious. We should have the right to manage our own deaths. BEAR:  God manages our death, Hooker. HOOKER: No, God manages man and gives him a mind capable of managing death for himself. BEAR: I guess we have to agree to disagree. HOOKER: ...

BEAR: You were watching a football game with the sound muted. Do you always do that? HOOKER: Pretty much so. Not just football, all sports. They all have hosts -- I won't call them sportscasters -- who endlessly talk and talk, even with the game going on, and almost never say anything interesting to anyone with half a brain.  Worse, sometimes the screen is split down the middle, one side with the game and the other side is an interview with the coach or a player, even as the game is going on! If that isn't disrespect for the game, I don't know what is. Red Barber and Vince Scully are rolling over in their graves. BEAR: My dad used to tell the story of how dramatic it was after the war when DiMaggio got a raise. One headline in very large letters read, DiMaggio gets 100 grand! HOOKER: My dad had a sports story, too. About Hurricane Hugh. BEAR: I need more. HOOKER: Hugh McElhenny. All American at the University of Washington, drafted by the 49ers. After his rookie season he w...

 (A song plays on Hooker's cell phone, by Ramblin Jack Elliott:) I went to the doctor / The doctor said, "Son, / you've got arthritis / and it ain't no fun." / And it's all kinds of trouble / gonna find you somehow. // Arthritis is a thing to miss / It will leave you walking / with a double twist. / And it's all kinds of trouble / gonna find you somehow. (The song ends.) HOOKER: He's talking about us, my friend.  BEAR: Not about me any more. I'm my old self after knee replacement surgery. You really should consider it. HOOKER: I know, I know. Maggie said the same thing. She was a great hiker and now she was on the trail again. BEAR: What are you afraid of? HOOKER: I'm not afraid of anything. I just don't like the idea of being turned into a bionic man. Doctors keep making us live longer, by the time we die we won't have any natural parts left. BEAR: You exaggerate. HOOKER: I hope so. The thing is, Bear, the health industry is extending ...

 BEAR:  Maggie donated her body to science, didn't she? HOOKER: Right. And I plan to do the same. You have a problem with that? BEAR: No, no. If you were being cremated, I have a horror story for you. Might affect where you wanted your ashes scattered. HOOKER: What's the story? BEAR: This happened to a friend of my son. When his mom died, they scattered her ashes in her favorite fishing hole down on the Applegate. Ten years later his sister died in a car crash, and she wanted her ashes spread with her mom. So he drives to the Applegate to do that and the fishing hole is gone. They built a dam!  My son says his friend rented a boat and tried to figure out where the fishing hole might be but finally gave up and just scattered the ashes in the new lake. HOOKER: Ouch. BEAR: Moral: spread your ashes someplace that is going to be around for a while. Or get buried in a cemetery. You can't get more permanent than that. HOOKER: Which is your choice, I presume. BEAR: Of course. Rig...

 BEAR: Looking back at the time right after Liz died, I don't know how I navigated all the legal things I had to do. HOOKER: I hear you. BEAR: And it's the worse possible time to have to make decisions on legal matters. Fortunately my son stepped up to the plate and really helped me. I try to remember that whenever I'm throwing mental daggers at him for seldom calling me. You didn't have kids to help, how did you do it? HOOKER: Our financial profiles have always been pretty simple. No wall street or investment brokers or real estate for us. We're certainly not your typical capitalist. BEAR: I always thought of you as a socialist. In the closet maybe. HOOKER: Not a socialist. Not a member of any political group. I call myself a Transcendentalist. How many of those have you met? BEAR: Hooker, you definitely are one of a kind. HOOKER: Back to post mortem legal hoops. There's a lot of that that could be done before anyone dies. And get rid of redundancies. How many ...

 BEAR: Do you miss performing? HOOKER: Of course. But with these hands, I couldn't play if I wanted do. BEAR: Arthritis? HOOKER::I don't know what else to call it. BEAR: What does the doctor call it? HOOKER: I haven't been to a doctor. It doen't hurt that much. BEAR: All the same-- HOOKER: Bear, I've reached the age when the doctor is no longer my ally. Our goals conflict. He wants to keep me alive. I want to die of natural causes, sooner rather than later. BEAR: That almost sounds suicidal. HOOKER: Bullshit it does! BEAR: Sorry. Didn't mean to piss you off. HOOKER: I'm sick and tired of being called morbid or suicidal just because I want to manage my own death. I've had a spectacular life! But it's over. No family left, no kids.  BEAR: What about me? HOOKER: You're my longest friend, but you're not my responsibility.  BEAR: I'm saying I'll miss you. HOOKER: And I'll miss you if you go first. But this doesn't change the bigger...