As for Linda, my first memories of Newby are associated with a house, a house to which I’d come for lunch w/ friend Sue at the end of my second year of grad school at UVA. Sue knew Lisa through both the English Department and ITT, and as we were looking to (sorry, Newby) interested in sharing a place downtown the following year, when we had wind of Barry & Blair’s outrageously selfish decision to move out of the basement appartment on North First Street into what became (I believe) My Blue Heaven, we saw our chance. I later met Barry & Blair, of course, who indeed often merited the epithet outrageous (only in the best sense) but never, ever selfish. I had my doubts when Newby didn’t seem at all interested in such standard legal irritations as a lease, and it would be another several months before we began what is arguably the longest and dearest friendship of my life, but when I think how close Sue and I came to taking a place on Altamont Circle instead... The Butterfly Effect. Somehow appropriate, for those of us who know and love the peculiarities of The House on North First Street, that it should be a principle of Chaos Theory that best explains the effect of meeting Newby on our lives.
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