Peggy in Grand Rapids, Jim in Brooklyn, Beth in Poughkeepsie, Shelly in Indy and John in Chicago keep searching.
Way back when, Peggy met Shelly at the University of Chicago. It was a cold day in August in the early Bill Clinton administration. Peggy greeted Shelly using an elbow bump she didn’t know would become all the rage in a couple decades,
It was around the same time that Jim was leading a team of fast-talking high school debaters in Georgetown and discovered, much to his frustration, that John was the source of much of his angst from “work” John was doing in the Chicago area. Jim knew they’d have to meet, but not yet.
While Shelly and Peggy met at Hyde Park’s Jimmy’s for beer, Jim himself was on a Southwest flight to Midway looking forward to another weekend in the City of Big Shoulders. He landed and zipped to the North Shore where he met with Linda and the crew preparing for the big fall event. Finally Jim met John.
Fast forward a couple years when Jim flew to Los Angeles for some sun and city, in a morning before the marine layer burned off, Jim did his regular morning drop-in to Starbucks to grab a New York Times and take an hour defeating the crossword. It turned out that John moved to Santa Monica that fall, so Jim met with John and they became even better friends. John got to know Jim’s students, and they started with rudimentary arguments about Las Vegas, Utilitarianism and Critical Race Theory.
John’s move to LA meant he missed Peggy, who was still at Jimmy’s in Chicago A couple more years passed. John spent a couple of years in Dallas before returning to Chicago and starting his writing in earnest. Peggy moved to Philly. Shelly moved to Indy. Beth kept plugging away in DC.
Ships passing in the night have nothing on this gang of five. They crisscrossed continents working too much and doing early internet greetings. John lived in Paris, Amsterdam and Shanghai after Chicago, LA and Dallas. Beth returned from Thailand to work with Jim in DC. Peggy moved to Philadelphia and introduced John to her friends at Woody’s. And Shelly moved to Indy from Chicago. They all flew too much, guiltily fueling climate change and deeper friendships.
Peggy joined Doctors without Borders first in Uzbekistan and then Darfur where she had to be flown out on a United Nations helicopter when the fighting got bad. Her safe return to the US paved the way for this podcast.
Beth, Peggy, Jim and Shelly still travel the world even as John stays home with the kids. They share New York Times game results daily.
