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Previous:  https://thoobasa.blogspot.com/2025/03/next-legacy-with-guest.html STEVE: Your suggestions really helped, and I'm so thankful. HOOKER: No trouble at all. BEAR: What did you end up doing? STEVE: Nothing's public yet, but I'm putting as much of his work as I can, including published work, onto a website I'll call "A Literary Archive." HOOKER: Excellent. STEVE: At another website I'm publishing something short every month. BEAR:'Something short? STEVE: Poems, short stories, journal things. BEAR: Sounds like you're going to be busy. STEVE: I found software that will do everything for me. I just have to input things in the order I want. HOOKER: I was going to suggest using software. STEVE: So Hooker, thank you, thank you, thank you. HOOKER: You're very welcome, welcome, welcome. (Pause.) STEVE: So how did you guys meet? HOOKER: Oh boy ... BEAR: We've been friends since grad school. HOOKER: Mid sixties at U of O in Eugene. Over half a c...

 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: Did you watch the Blazers game last night? HOOKER: I don't follow the Blazers. BEAR: I thought you were a basketball fan. You used to be. HOOKER: I won't be an NBA fan again until they raise the basket. The game's turned into dunking and showing off. Today I follow women's basketball. It's still a team sport. BEAR: How about Caitlin Clark? HOOKER: She's spectacular.  BEAR: All those three pointers, some almost at half court. HOOKER: I'm talking about her passing. There are many good three point shooters but I've never seen anyone pass with her accuracy and consistency. She's the very definition of what a team sport looks like. BEAR: Granddaughter number two worships Clark. HOOKER: She plays? BEAR: First string on her high school team. I try not to miss a home game. HOOKER: I envy you. BEAR: Why don't you come to a game with me? HOOKER: I'd love to. BEAR: I think there are a couple games next week. I have to check my calendar. HOOKER: N...

 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...

 HOOKER: I wrote my obituary over the weekend. BEAR: My God! HOOKER: There's nothing wrong with me. I was watching a discussion on TV and a shrink recommended it as a valuable exercise for anyone. Boy was he right. BEAR: Tell me more. HOOKER: Writing your obit is more or less telling your own life story, and my memory brought up experiences I hadn't thought about in years. Decades. I ended up with far too many pages to publish as an obituary but more importantly with insights I never had before. BEAR: Can you share them? HOOKER: How unfocused and lost I was until the Army changed me. But not in the way the commercials suggest. I was the front desk clerk to a small company of Russian linguists. BEAR: You speak Russian? HOOKER: No. The job didn't require it. But I had a Top Secret Codeword security clearance because I typed reports sent to the Pentagon.  BEAR: This was after your undergraduate degree?  HOOKER: I dropped out in the middle of my sophomore year. I had no idea ...