Weekend walking

Walked the five-mile loop up Los Gatos Creek yesterday and today. Running shoes and ankle braces. My feet ache a little, but no blisters and my ankles don't hurt. Feels very good to be back getting a reasonable amount of exercise, and as much as I like the Rose Garden it's nice to get some variety and a couple of gentle hills. I like the Creek a lot. Won't be able to do it the next couple of weeks, unfortunately; my schedule is starting to look busy.

Columbae House reunion

The high point of the weekend was Saturday evening when Colleen and I went to the 35-year reunion of Columbae House, the co-op house where I lived for a couple of years when I was a grad student at Stanford. As it says in the history

Columbae is a student-run, Consensus-governed, Vegetarian cooperative house located in the heart of the Stanford University campus and dedicated to Social Change through Nonviolent Action.

It was an extraordinary group of people, at an extraordinary time. Lots of the people I knew were there last night; many meetings and much fantastic catch-up conversation. I was shy and geekish back then, even more so than I am now; I think I had more good person-to-person conversation in a couple of hours last night than in most months when I was living there. I could have stayed and talked another week.

On the whole I think we look a lot like we did then, modulo grey hair and wrinkles. We still think a lot like we did then, for the most part. After dinner we sat together in a circle and shared our stories. Fascinating. I found out later that I wasn't the only one who forgot to mention their kids, but Colleen got a prominent mention along with the fact that it was our 33rd engagement anniversary. A few people remembered her from Alan Strain's Quaker meetings; she never came by the house because we hadn't started hanging out together at that point.

After dessert we got back together to stand in a circle and sing along with the Joan Baez recording of We Shall Overcome, and share brief visions of the world as it ought to be.

Sang a short version of QV during dessert, though I don't think more than a handful heard it. It just faded into the background, which is probably as it should be. Handed out a few cards. Some people live surprisingly close to us; San Francisco, Palo Alto, even San Jose. All these years...

We need to get connected again, and stay connected. Three and a half decades later we're still standing, a circle of friends all singing the same song.