Well, certainly ONE of my luckiest days was my second day working as a contract grant writer here at PCS, which was when Nancy Hartline, who was then on-staff grants manager, announced she was taking a job with the City of Portland. Soooo, the development director asked if I’d be interested in a full-time position with the theater - which I definitely was. Still happily here after five years!

I was an unemployed 23 year old with a Masters degree in hand and no idea what to do with it. I went to a “park talk” in Ashland, and heard an Oregon Shakespeare Festival employee talk about his job in the Information/Education Office, and how he was about to leave it. So I applied for his job, got it, and voila! A career was born. Talk about right place, right time…

Honestly, my first thoughts were a stream of names and faces of the people whom I love and count as friends. This is real treasure! It was a very lucky day when I met you, and each one of them. And that’s a lot of luck. I’m no flag-waving American, but I feel incredibly lucky to be an American and to live here where everything is possible and where we have so much. I also think you make your luck by being out there and taking risks. Reward after risk seems really lucky, but I think it’s more about impacting the universe in a positive way, and feeling the bounce. A lucky story from today: In this fabulous city, whose amazing transit system I rely on completely, I was able to hop on a bus when my bike began to malfunction — the 17 just happened to be coming down the street toward me. From breakdown-on-the-street to delivery-to-my-front-door in 10 minutes. Pretty lucky. This evening, another bit of luck for me and about 1,000 other Portlanders, we witnessed the stopping off of the Vaux’s Swifts for the night and the fantastic performance they do (and the battle with the hawks) to the amazement and thrill of all. 40,000 small black birds funneling into a brick smokestack to bed down, shingle-style, lining the inside of the stack, for the night. Luck and serendipity are a lot the same.

I went to New York City for the first time to see the musical TABOO. I was super excited because I wanted to see Boy George. I was standing in front of the theatre talking to another fan about where our seats were. Her’s were much better than mine and I was complaining. A stage manager was outside and overheard me and gave me front row seats!

My luckiest day was the day that I was serving as the registration chair for a faculty club holiday party at PSU and an English professor called to ask if it was okay to come to the party alone. I told him there would be a number of other singles at the party and I would be sure to seat him at a table with several single women. I did, right next to me. We have been married for 15 years and celebrate our good fortune every 6 months instead of just once a year so we have an anniversary and a ‘versary celebration.

I’ve been lucky all my life. Jobs have come to me; my health was generally good; I lived 31 years in Hawai`i and had interesting, fulfilling work. But without question, the luckiest day (night actually) was when I met the incredible woman who is now my wife. She is the best thing that ever happened to me and the way we met was indeed lucky — one of those rare internet meetings that blossom.”Some night you’ll meet a stranger, across a crowded chat room. Then fly to her side (I did,and the rest is beautiful history) . . .”

I was probably ten years old. Dad had decided to take me camping on a school day(which happened all the time). On this trip I learned that sometimes small miracles do really happen, and I couldn’t really have learned that from a text book anyway.

We couldn’t find any firewood. Dad spewing curse words at nothing and everything at the same time, and me often running behind him to keep up as we searched. There just wasn’t any felled wood. No wood meant that we couldn’t eat, and if we couldn’t eat then we’d probably have to go back home. We gave up. We were heading back to camp. Dad was silent and gloomy. My feet hurt, and my stomach grumbled, yet I stayed quiet. I just didn’t want to go back home.

It sounded like thunder. A giant tree limb tearing away from it’s trunk and crashing through the canopy to the ground not ten yards in front of us, and as if sensing its purpose, broke nicely in two perfectly sized (and drag-able) pieces of fire wood.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” and then he was lauging hysterically. We dragged the wood back to camp, ate some flame charred hot dogs, and never spoke another word about it.

Not hugely momentous, but a perfectly lucky day non the less.

Back in the early 1970’s I was a penniless grad student who wanted to study British theater. I visited the financial aid office at my mega-university and was told that there was not a dime available in scholarships for my kind of project. But outside that office I saw a flyer on a bulletin board for a fellowship tailored to study abroad. I applied on my own. Result? Enough money to spend a year and a half in London, reading scripts and mingling with staff at the Royal Court theater and going to see every opening night in the West End on house tickets. Now THAT was luck!!

My luckiest day occurred last October when I found an envelope in front of PCS. Inside were two tickets to the extended run of Cabaret. What of the now-unlucky couple who lost their last oppurtunity to see this great musical? I thought of Nicely-Nicely Johnson and did the right thing:

I’ve got the show right here
My luck is on a tear
I gotta boss who says if the time is clear
Can do
Can do
My boss says the show can do…

My wife and I sang Kurt Weill while departing the Pearl District on a shining fall afternoon.

Be well,

Bob

After riding a train for 5 hours with a South Dakota legislator smoking a cigar, we got off in pouring rain at a tiny village on the shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland in early October. The next day, a Sunday, we awoke to a chrystaline azure sky. We hiked thru the vineyards as they were being harvested inhaling the mixture of sweet and sour of a wine grape harvest. We listened the church bells ringing from village to village and the thump of the compressors powering the pnumatic bladders performing the grape crush. From high above we looked down on the lake to see several dozen sail boats in a regatta. As perhaps the most perfect day of my life, it has to also be my luckiest.

My luckiest day was the day I ventured out of my comfort zone of near social isolation and ended up on a dragon boat team. My bench and paddling partner was a man with a terrific sense of humor and adventure. We have been together over 5 years: the best 5 years of my life so far. Lucky man I am!