Power Success

Well, we’re back to the 20^th cen­tury (we’ll get to the 21^st in a few more days, I think). The power came back on at about mid­night last night. So far, the only per­ma­nent dam­age is a lot of spoilt food in the freezer and fridge. Most of the clocks have been reset (except for the Rice Cooker — who thought of putting one on that? Oh, right, some peo­ple set it in the morn­ing to cook rice for when they get home from work).
The com­puter seems 100%, but the TV is still dead. Actu­ally, it died a day or two before the power fail­ure, so it’s not related, as far as I can tell. Too bad that it didn’t mag­i­cally heal itself when the power returned.
The rea­son for the power not com­ing back in our build­ing (when it did for the rest of the area of South False Creek that was affected) was that our Main switch blew (and that is to say ‘sploded!) when the cur­rent started flow­ing again. With lit­tle or no com­mu­ni­ca­tion (some of the land­line phones were out as well) we relied on the old fash­ioned game of tele­phone. Rumours were run­ning ram­pant as we came and left the build­ing. “It was a huge rat that got torched.” said one neigh­bor. “It’ll be down for 4 or 5 days.” said another. I’m sur­prised we didn’t get sto­ries cir­cu­lat­ing of aliens or zom­bies in the Gen­er­a­tor room.
Hav­ing show­ered, shaven and reset most of the radios and clocks, etc. I now have to get to the task of throw­ing out all of the bad food. It could have been much worse; this week we had less left­overs than we usu­ally do in the fridge.
I still chuckle over the for­tune cookie (which I tweeted last night) that we got at the end of din­ner: NOW IS THE TIME TO DEPART FROM YOUR REGULAR ROUTINE. Yes, Mr. Cookie, it was indeed. Now, I’m just hop­ing to get back to some sem­blance of that rou­tine, if you don’t mind.

Lights Out

I was in the mid­dle of an email early yes­ter­day evening (about 7PM), when *poof* all the power went off. It wasn’t as much of a shock to me as it was to Pam, who was down­stairs in the base­ment stor­age room, but she was able to feel her way out in the total dark — emer­gency light­ing kicked in after a minute or so, just as I was mak­ing her way to get her, should she have become locked in. There was a Blue­berry Buckle in the oven (it’s off now, leav­ing the dessert about half-baked. I had already made a light din­ner of tuna salad and some hot rolls (which were, for­tu­nately, done).
I checked with BC Hydro peri­od­i­cally, and yes, they were work­ing on the out­age, which spanned about 6 streets (5^th thru 11 or so), in roughly a 15 block area from Hem­lock Street to Yew or so (we are at the far­thest east­ern point of the out­age. The other side of Hem­lock to the east is fine — Doh!). They first posted that it was a cable prob­lem and would be fixed by 7 PM. Then the set it to 11 PM. Curi­ously, they said the out­age only affected 1100 res­i­dents, but since we know for a fact that there are 500 in our block of Hem­lock thru Granville, that num­ber is seri­ously out of whack.
We ate din­ner, located some can­dles and flash­lights, took a walk, got back and went to bed. Still no power. I checked again (although my phone was start­ing to run out of power), and BC Hydro had updated to their esti­mate of when power would be back to 2 AM. Then this morn­ing, we got up at about 6:30, and still no change. I went to the nearby Wicked Café to get some cof­fee (since mak­ing our own was out). Appar­ently power was restored at 2AM to every other build­ing but ours. Great. Our build­ing man­ager is out of the coun­try, on vaca­tion, so that might account for the prob­lem, but it doesn’t help, either. Another call to BC Hydro reports that it is ‘A prob­lem with Cus­tomer Equip­ment’ and that the time they esti­mate that power will be restored is 4 PM, but given that the his­tory of this set of missed mile­stones is start­ing to sound a bit like BP in the Gulf of Mex­ico, I’m not hold­ing my breath.
So, it’s about 9:45 and I’m writ­ing from Waves down­town. I plan on head­ing to the library at 10 when it opens, and have an appoint­ment about 3PM, which I will attend unshow­ered, unshaven (no hot water) and in what­ever clothes I could put together. I’m hop­ing that my com­puter will come back with all dri­ves and that not too much food in our fridge and freezer was spoiled, but it’s hard to say how much dam­age has been done.

A Bit of an Ode to Granville Island

I often tell peo­ple that liv­ing near and shop­ping reg­u­larly for food at Granville Island has ‘changed my life’. It’s true, and I thought I’d spend a lit­tle time try­ing to explain how and why.

First of all, it’s changed the food that I buy. I rarely get food that comes in a box or is pre-processed, and get mostly fresh meat and veg­eta­bles. The things I do buy that are cooked or pre­pared include sausages and other meats and paté from Oyama Sausage com­pany, soup from the Stock Mar­ket soup kitchen, the occa­sional pie (dessert or entrée) from À la Mode, and bread from any of the 3 bak­eries (French — La Baguette & L’Echalote, Arti­sanal — Terra Breads, or English/North Amer­i­can — Stu­arts). I try to buy what’s in sea­son (although that can be hard in Jan­u­ary or Feb­ru­ary), and look for­ward to cer­tain months when I know some­thing will be appear­ing and grad­u­ally (or swiftly) going down in price. We are about to hit the sum­mer fruit sea­son, and I love see­ing the arrival of peaches, apri­cots, plums and blue­ber­ries. Because of this, I’ve learned which ven­dors have the best of each vari­ety of fruit, veg­etable or meat. While I do get some organic veg­eta­bles (onions and pota­toes), I also try to buy things that are grown locally. Again, this makes the win­ter months a time when I have to com­pro­mise a bit, but most of the year it’s quite possible.

We are very lucky in that we live a short walk from the mar­ket, and I quite frankly can’t imag­ine liv­ing far­ther away from it. The fact that we walk there and carry our gro­ceries back adds just a lit­tle bit of exer­cise (or at least the excuse to go out­side and get some air, even if the weather is rainy or sim­ply dreary.) For the vast major­ity of vis­i­tors to Granville Island, the mar­ket is a curios­ity, a kind of liv­ing museum of the way peo­ple used to shop for food (and still do in many other coun­tries out­side of North Amer­ica). I’m always amused to see some­one tak­ing a pho­to­graph of a stack of cher­ries or straw­ber­ries (although they are pretty); They’re get­ting a snap­shot of my gro­cery store, and in a few cases where they flood the aisle and are obliv­i­ous to the rest of us, I wish they’d just get out of the way and let me get on my shop­ping. That doesn’t hap­pen too often, but some days, when a tourist bus lets off, the mar­ket has to walk the thin line between attrac­tion and gro­cery store.

I shop at the mar­ket often, and nearly always bring a sack. Since I’m there so much, I’m rec­og­nized by nearly all of the mer­chants, and am on a first name basis with sev­eral of them. I’ve also learned about their fam­i­lies, heard some sto­ries, found out their likes and dis­likes, and think of them as peo­ple, not just some­one at a cash reg­is­ter. I’m impressed with the close-knit fam­i­lies who work in the Mar­ket, and am often been cheered up (or calmed down) by sim­ply enter­ing the mar­ket, espe­cially when it’s not crowded with tourists, which unlike a Super­mar­ket, is not lit solely by flu­o­res­cents. (I should add that on Foursquare, the social media ‘game’, I’m the mayor of Granville Island Mar­ket, and have yet to be replaced by some­one who checks-in there more.)

Speak­ing of Super­mar­kets, I do go to Costco about once every 2 months or so for a few items (olive oil, paper goods, maple syrup), and also go to an organic gro­cer on Broad­way (who used to be the Dan-De-Pak home office, or so it seemed) for rice, the odd box of break­fast cereal or crack­ers, etc.) I always feel kind of dis­ap­pointed and maybe even a lit­tle depressed when I walk into a cav­ernous Safe­way, IGA or Save-On Foods, all lit by those flu­o­res­cent lights, and very cold from the frozen aisles.

Back to the Granville Mar­ket: In addi­tion to the peo­ple, the food and the light, there are the smells. I can nearly nav­i­gate the mar­ket by my nose. In the fish mar­ket, I can smell the brine of today’s catch. There’s fre­quently the aroma of freshly baked bread by the bak­eries (and La Baguette has that mar­velous yeasty smell of pain de mie nearly all of the time). The food court (which I must con­fess, I some­times go to first, in order to eat before I shop, which helps stop larger pur­chases made when hun­gry), there are areas where you smell pizza, curry, or falafel. In sev­eral spots in the build­ing, the smell of cof­fee and tea wafts out into the aisle, and you can under­stand why there’s such a line at J J Bean.

In the sum­mer, there is the extra treat of Thurs­days, par­tic­u­larly in the morn­ing, when local farm­ers truck in their pro­duce, and sell some of it out­side, next to the Mar­ket. In recent years, some farm­ers have spe­cial­ized in Heir­loom Toma­toes, and I’ve actu­ally tasted cel­ery (yes, cel­ery!) that is actu­ally mind-blowingly sweet and tasty. Some of the farm­ers stay all day, but most of them are there mainly in the morn­ing, so Thurs­days are par­tic­u­larly good to get early and get the best produce.

I’ve dis­cov­ered new fruits and veg­eta­bles at the mar­ket. We’ve tried Sting­ing Net­tles as a side dish, and boiled down elder­ber­ries into syrup. I’ve cooked sour cherry soup, and after our trip to South­east Asia, have made Ataulfo Man­goes (Manila Honey Man­goes), Drag­on­fruit, Rambu­tans, Lon­gans, Lychees, Pom­leos and Pas­sion­fruits a treat for break­fast or dessert. Nearly all are avail­able (although not cheaply most of the time) at the mar­ket. I’ve fre­quented the Asian Food spe­cialty shop in the mar­ket, The South China Seas Trad­ing Com­pany, where I’ve finally learned to appre­ci­ate the finer points of coconut milk, fresh tamarind, lit­tle red chiles, lemon­grass, galan­gal, and even fish sauce. I’m thrilled to have found great fish that is cheap (Rock­fish — big, red, and ugly, but they’ll filet it for you for free, so you have a lovely, firm white flesh for curry or soup), and am sur­prised at how good the turkey is. I’ve cheated a lit­tle, and got­ten pre-marinated Maui Ribs, as well as Cor­nish Game Hens, and one of these days this sum­mer we’ll make a Caribbean Goat stew with the fresh goat meat we some­times see them cart in. The spot prawns are in this week, and every year I look for fid­dle­head ferns (in the Spring) and Okana­gan pears (in the Autumn).

All in all, Granville Mar­ket has expanded my diet, made me more in tune with the pas­sage of the sea­sons, low­ered my blood pres­sure (at least when I’m vis­it­ing, I think), and pro­vided me with a sense of con­nec­tion to my food with the peo­ple who grow it and sell it. It’s helped me learn to cook new and more com­pli­cated dishes, and also let me off the hook when I’m stumped and just get a home­made turkey pie or soup. I feel as if I’m richer and my life is health­ier and fuller with the mar­ket in it, which is about the most one can say about any activ­ity, espe­cially one as mun­dane as food shopping.

In Memoriam

I’ve been think­ing about this post for a long time, and it’s prob­a­bly the hard­est one I’ve ever had to write. The world lost some­one last week. She wasn’t famous, but she was impor­tant. Her name was Rebecca Hammann.

Rebecca, or Becca, as she pre­ferred to be called, will be missed by many peo­ple; I’m clearly not alone. There has been an offi­cial obit­u­ary, and there will be memo­r­ial ser­vices, although I doubt I can attend them. I can’t even begin to sum up a per­son who I haven’t been in touch with on a reg­u­lar basis for a cou­ple of decades; I didn’t know her as an adult as well as I did when she and I were young. I can say that know­ing that we will not meet again seems just as painful as it would have been if we had seen each other regularly.

We met, back in the late 1970s, at a sum­mer pro­gram called The Walden School, a 5-week pro­gram for kids 9–18 who were inter­ested in music, and in par­tic­u­lar, music com­po­si­tion. The Walden School, as it’s web site says, was and is ‘an artist colony for young musi­cians’. The name of the place is from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, which sug­gested an affin­ity with the New Eng­land Tran­scen­den­tal­ists, as well as the idea of retreat to art within nature. More recently, when I served on the Board of Direc­tors for the School, we wres­tled with a phrase that sum­ma­rized their approach, which was that at Walden, one could study music as if it were a lan­guage. You learned to under­stand it, as well as ‘speak’ it. As part of their train­ing, all of the stu­dents com­pose, and just about every­thing that they write is per­formed by a com­bi­na­tion of other stu­dents, fac­ulty, and pro­fes­sional per­form­ers in res­i­dence. When Becca and I were stu­dents, the pro­gram was held in Ver­mont, but since then it has moved to New Hamp­shire. I recently learned with pride, that dur­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion in New York where a cur­rent Walden stu­dent was receiv­ing an award, it was referred to as ‘the renowned Walden School’.

Here’s what the obit­u­ary won’t tell you: Becky (as she was called back then) was no aver­age stu­dent. She had an extra­or­di­nary mind. She was a fine per­former, but not as excep­tional as she was a com­poser. At the time, we were both study­ing the opus 11 piano works of Arnold Schoen­berg. In par­tic­u­lar, the first of those three pieces, we real­ized, was the musi­cal equiv­a­lent of a Hirschfeld car­i­ca­ture, where instead of pick­ing out ‘Ninas’, one could find tens, per­haps hun­dreds of instances of a 3-note cell: b,g-sharp,g-natural — a falling minor third fol­lowed by a half step. In fact, Schoenberg’s piece of early atonal­ity is not so much hid­ing these cells, but like a body, it is almost entirely com­posed of them. Some of the stu­dents wrote a few pieces based on this method of tight con­struc­tion. As an assign­ment, Becky wrote a con­cen­trated gem of a piano piece that I can still play back in my mind. It also was based on a three-note cell, but her’s was c,b-natural,f-sharp, a ris­ing major sev­enth fol­lowed by a falling fourth. The drama of that ini­tial leap, fol­lowed by the smaller leap down, was fol­lowed by a bril­liant inver­sion of the first 3 notes: a,b-flat,e — a falling major sev­enth fol­lowed by a ris­ing aug­mented fourth. Those first 6 notes dis­played her unique sense of musi­cal drama and bal­ance, and along with the finely crafted and dra­matic pas­sages that fol­lowed them, won her a BMI (Broad­cast Music Incor­po­rated) prize at the age of 15. The usual age for win­ning a prize like that is per­haps mid-twenties. Sev­eral of my teach­ers, Pulitzer prize win­ners and now-famous com­posers won a BMI prize when they were older than she was, and many of them didn’t win one at all. I hope to be able to post or point to an online record­ing of the piece. The cas­sette record­ing I had of it is long lost.

Becca and I stayed in touch, mainly via spo­radic let­ters, on and off until I went away to col­lege. I know that she pur­sued a life in teach­ing, beat back breast can­cer, and adopted an adorable child in China who is named Lucy. Those items one can find in her obit­u­ary. What it does not tell you is that she remained extra­or­di­nary — How could she not be? She had her seizure while teach­ing Sci­ence class. Despite the fact that she could no longer teach, she insisted in com­ing back in to see her class. She brought with her the images from her MRIs that indi­cated the tumor. I believe that she also met with each of her for­mer stu­dents to talk about what death was, how it was a part of liv­ing, etc. In essence, she turned her ill­ness and prog­no­sis into a vehi­cle for learn­ing. Frankly, I’m in awe of such courage and clear-headedness.

The obit­u­ary also men­tions that when she learned of her diag­no­sis, she imme­di­ately wrote President-Elect Barack Obama. In fact, her seizure struck just 2 days after the elec­tion. Here is an excerpt from her online diary:

TUESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2009 5:15 PM, CST

When I first found out about the return of my can­cer and that it was ter­mi­nal, one of my first thoughts was to write a let­ter to Obama. Remem­ber, all this began the day after the elec­tion. So I did write one, telling him to use his lead­er­ship to get us to make hard deci­sions. “Your task is daunt­ing. It is not some­thing you can do alone. You will need to con­vince the peo­ple of this coun­try and in this world that they need to and can change. If any­one can do this, it is you. In a cul­ture of lies and con­ve­nience and ease, you have the abil­ity to say the truth clearly and, I hope, the peo­ple of this coun­try have the will­ing­ness to hear your words.”

I wanted VERY badly for him to read the let­ter, but every­one knows how hard it is to get a let­ter to the Pres­i­dent him­self. My sis­ter and her hus­band gave it to some­one who gave it to some­one who gave it to his per­sonal sec­re­tary, the per­son who decides what papers go across his desk. Pretty darned close.

Then today, I got a let­ter from Obama. It was beau­ti­ful. It feels incred­i­bly good to know he heard me.

Rather than link to her let­ter and his reply (which are online else­where), I’d like to pro­vide them here:

Dear President-Elect Obama,

For the last year or so I have felt as if the world was falling apart. Our sys­tem is based on buy­ing more than we need, more cheaply than the true costs. We believe that we deserve com­fort and ease and mate­r­ial things that our Earth can not afford to give us. That is why I hoped so much that you would be elected. You bring hope and true lead­er­ship to this coun­try and this world. There is a chance, now, for my two-year-old daugh­ter to live in a world of beauty and love instead of the chaos and greed I had begun to imag­ine for her.

She is a glo­ri­ous child, full of life and love and humor and she alone is worth chang­ing the world for. You must not fal­ter. I know in my head that there are mil­lions of chil­dren to pro­tect; even adults who have cre­ated this mess are wor­thy. But I must ask you for her in par­tic ular. The day after your elec­tion I learned that I do not have much time. A seven-year-old can­cer has spread to my lungs and brain and will pre­vent me from tak­ing part in the changes that must occur. So I am beg­ging you to lead this world with all your heart and mind, to not take the easy path and to never let the rest of us take it either. This is a lot to ask of you, I know. Our entire par­a­digm must shift. Our deci­sions have been based on mate­r­ial pos­ses­sions and com­forts. Even mine. I just decided a few weeks ago to try to live with­out my own car. I real­ized that I must be part of the solu­tion now before it is too late. But my tiny real­iza­tion must be mag­ni­fied a mil­lion times if it is to save our beau­ti­ful Earth. Our lives must change. We sim­ply can not sus­tain what we are cur­rently doing.

My hope is that you are hon­est and coura­geous enough to lead us in the direc­tion we must go. You have two beau­ti­ful daugh­ters your­self. You know there isn’t a moment to lose.
But your task is daunt­ing. It is not some thing you can do alone. You will need to con­vince the peo­ple of this coun­try and in this world that they need to and can change. If any one can do this, it is you. In a cul­ture of lies and con­ve­nience and ease, you have the abil­ity to say the truth clearly and, I hope, the peo­ple of this coun­try have the will­ing­ness to hear your words. The changes we must make will require almost over­whelm­ing amounts of courage and hope — and that is what you inspire in us.

My dar­ling Lucy can do with­out most of what we have grown accus­tomed to — the mate­r­ial pos­ses­sions and the com­forts. But she needs a healthy Earth and a thought­ful self-sacrificing humankind will­ing to act for our future gen­er­a­tions no mat­ter how difficult.

Please, from the bot­tom of my heart, don’t give up this fight. If you could meet my daugh­ter Lucy, you would know why you can not. And there are mil­lions of Lucys in this world.

Sin­cerely,
Rebecca Hammann

Obama’s reply:

Dear Rebecca,

Thank you for the let ter that you wrote to me on behalf of your daugh­ter. I was moved by your sense of hope and purpose.

You described what makes Lucy unique and glo­ri­ous, and then ended by say­ing that “there are mil­lions of Lucys in this world.” I was struck by the seem­ing con­tra­dic­tion, but of course it’s true — we all know that there are hun­dreds of mil­lions of chil­dren, and yet each is unique.

Just like you, I try every day to build a bet­ter world for my daugh­ters, and to make sure they are ready to enjoy it — that their per­son­al­i­ties are shaped by love, knowl­edge, com­pas­sion, a sense of honor, and the free spirit that my mother always nur­tured in me. While I can’t imag­ine the anguish you feel know­ing that Lucy will grow up with out you, I am pro­foundly hon­ored to be part of the hope that buoys you today.

You are right to be hope­ful, because our chil­dren face a future of lim­it­less pos­si­bil­ity. We know that a sus­tain­able way of life is essen­tial to our chil­dren and grand chil­dren. But beyond that, the quest for sus­tain­abil­ity that you described with such elo­quence and pas­sion is inte­gral as well, because it is a pow­er­ful uni­fier, moti­vat­ing peo­ples and nations to act in con­cert so that all may ben­e­fit.
I have every con­fi­dence that your daugh­ter will grow up to be a part of this, liv­ing out the prin­ci­ples that have moti­vated you and which will live on within her. My heart tells me Lucy will play a part in cre­at­ing the change you and I seek. My faith tells me that you will be smil­ing down on us the whole time.

Sin­cerely,
Barack Obama

With Becca’s death last week, two phrases come to my mind. The first is Shake­speare, from King Lear, when he mourns Cordelia: “Thou’lt come no more, / Never, never, never, never, never.” I will never again hear her unmis­tak­able voice, never again take in those gray-blue eyes, never again kiss her (we kissed once; I thought there would be more but that one was the first and last), she’ll never see the sketches I made of a Sym­phony that included her name (or at least the let­ters E-B-E-C-C-A) worked into it in sev­eral sec­tions. We’ll never have a reunion where we laugh over my youth­ful crush on her (and how one day she finally wrote me a let­ter telling me to lighten up, that I was becom­ing a bit of a pain).

The other is a phrase from one of the Eng­lish trans­la­tions I read of the Tao Te Ching: “The Tao is the mys­te­ri­ous female.” Like many young girls, Becca talked softly and mum­bled. Rather than ask her to say a phrase again, the awk­ward, pim­ply ado­les­cent that I was, I would just guess at what she had said. This, plus the com­plex work­ings of her mind, made her a great mys­tery to me, and one can’t but help but love a mys­te­ri­ous female.

Finally, as a last word, I wanted to include one other entry in Becca’s online diary, which also dis­plays, for lack of a bet­ter word, just how extra­or­di­nary she was, to the end:

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2008 1:25 PM, CST

This whole expe­ri­ence is pro­foundly dif­fer­ent than I would have ever expected. I feel over­whelm­ingly lucky. There is so much good­ness around me. I have to say I’ve been kind of down on humans as a species for a while. When we just go about their busi­ness, we take too much from our Earth and each other. We are so often self­ish and cruel. But when faced with chal­lenge, human beings are a glo­ri­ous thing. We are full of love and strength. Any­thing is pos­si­ble. The thoughts and love com­ing from all of you just proves this. Thank you for shar­ing your thoughts and feel­ings with me!

And it seems clear that this whole expe­ri­ence isn’t really about me. It is about the chal­lenge. The thing that makes us rise up and be what we ought to be. I see those around me do this every­day and it fills my heart with hope. Not for the amount of time I may or may not have, but for all of us.

Becca

Imminent BarCamp

Tomor­row is a big day. About 300 or so peo­ple are going to con­verge at an office park not far from here, The Dis­cov­ery Parks build­ing (old QLT build­ing) at 887 Great North­ern Way. We are all, once again par­tic­i­pat­ing in the annual Bar­Cam­p­Van­cou­ver, an ‘uncon­fer­ence’ and part of an inter­na­tional net­work of sim­i­lar con­fer­ences, “born from the desire for peo­ple to share and learn in an open envi­ron­ment.” In a Bar­Camp, (a move­ment that started in 2005). It’s hard for me to believe that the first Bar­Camp (in Palo Alto, in August of that year) was orga­nized from con­cept to event,  in less then a week, because this year I’ve been involved in the orga­ni­za­tional plan­ning of the event, and I can tell you that it took us longer than a week to orga­nize this one (more like sev­eral months).

I like to think that I have a lot of smart and inter­est­ing friends. I’m very much look­ing for­ward to some of these pre­sen­ta­tions, includ­ing a remote pre­sen­ta­tion via Skype from my child­hood friend David Saslav, who is lead­ing a dis­cus­sion (from San Fran­cisco) on “how choral singing makes you smarter and improves mem­ory”. Not only is this a topic near and dear to me, but I’m also fas­ci­nated by the idea of a remote and inter­ac­tive pre­sen­ta­tion at a con­fer­ence — hope it all works! Other top­ics dur­ing the day range from Data Min­ing Twit­ter, to how sto­ry­telling is remak­ing video games, to a pub­lic dis­cus­sion of how we are going to per­haps fill the hole cre­ated in the Van­cou­ver Tech scene by the demise of WorkSpace.

If you are in the area, have a free day this Sat­ur­day, and are inter­ested in a day of stim­u­lat­ing pre­sen­ta­tions and dis­cus­sions, head on over to Dis­cov­ery Parks on Great North­ern Way. As I always say about Bar­Camp, it proves that every­body is an expert in some­thing, and hang­ing around experts can def­i­nitely expand your mind and make your day.