To Boston, with love

My heart has a home-sized hole in it right now.

I didn't just live in Boston, but I loved it as well. When MIT turned out to be The Wrong Place For Me it was Boston where I found safe haven, asked myself who I really wanted to be, and started to rebuild my life from scratch. It was Boston where I went back to school and finished my degree at Boston University. It was Boston where I met the woman who would be my wife. It was Boston where I realized that I wanted to be a librarian, and it was in Boston at Simmons College where I finally made that dream come true after many long years.  It was Boston where my daughter, who was born with a rare metabolic disorder, was treated for years by kindly doctors, nurses, nutritionists, and phlebotomists- the most wonderfully gentle of all hospital employees- at Mass General.

(When my daughter was born, I skipped out of work on my lunch hour and walked to the pro shop on Yawkey Way so I could buy my little girl a tiny Red Sox outfit- she wore that outfit to a game against the Philadelphia Phillies during that unforgettable 2004 season. I remember that I was so proud that she stayed for all nine innings; the rest of that year, of course, was history...)

Boston, I have walked your streets- so much that I feel that I know every crooked cobblestone by heart. How I loved nothing more than an urban hike along miles and miles of your glorified cow paths until I couldn't feel my feet anymore. Some days all I would do is walk- from Beacon Hill to Southie, from the Back Bay to the Arboretum- and back again, much to the chagrin of the poor unsuspecting friends who would visit from more car-friendly locales!  And as much as I loved to hate on your quasi-reliable system of public transportation, I was enchanted with the T ever since my first night at MIT, when a bunch of upperclassmen whisked us down to the Kendall Red Line station, pressing subway tokens into our hands, and took us out to dinner in the North End.  I remember seeing your skyline from the Longfellow Bridge at night for the very first time, and the magical sight of the Custom House rising above Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall. From that early moment on, you had me, Boston. I was yours.

I have closed down the Crossroads, bowled candlepin beneath Fenway Park (and peed in your legendary troughs at my first Red Sox game), and laughed as people got 86'ed for trying to dance at the Black Rose.  I ate Chinese food for the first time in Boston's Chinatown.  I went to my first concert in Boston, when I saw Howard Jones play at the Paradise.  I remember camping out all day on the Esplanade for July 4th year after year to hear the Pops and catch the fireworks, and watching the man-made lightning storms and Laser Floyd shows at the Museum of Science. I have fond memories of going elbow to elbow with the tourists so that I could spend my last dollar on a gyro from Mykonos Fair at Quincy Market, getting lost in your museums- the MFA, the ICA, and the Gardner...  oh, the Gardner!- for hours on end and wishing I could stay for days instead, and playing in the fountains with friends at the Christian Science Church headquarters on a boiling hot day and ignoring the rude looks from the Nieman Marcus staff when we wandered around their store dripping wet afterwards. Even when I moved further and further away from you- first to Cambridge, then to Somerville, Lynn, Peabody and finally on to Gloucester- you were always close to my heart, and my wife and I eagerly seized any opportunity to bring our daughter down to Boston and introduce her to this city that we'd both come to know so well and love.

And of course, I remember the Marathon. I had the great fortune to watch the marathoners run by on many a Patriots' Day, that peculiar local holiday which grew on me even as it confounded me every year when I tried to figure out whether or not I should come to work and how to commute through a sea of a million-odd runners, fans, and curious onlookers. Funny, before we decided to move to New Haven last year, I remember suggesting to my wife that we take our daughter down to Boston to see the Marathon, as she'd never yet beheld that grand spectacle and we felt strongly that she was missing out on something special. As it was, I had many friends and colleagues who were there yesterday- some of them at Mile 26.  While the people I knew closely were all unharmed, I suspect that it will be quite some time before anyone who was in Boston that day will feel safe or whole. My heart breaks for the families who were injured or lost a loved one in this senseless act of terror on what has always been a day of celebration- of liberty, of sport, of the marathoners' courage, endurance, and triumph of mind over matter.

Yesterday I said that words failed, but I was wrong.  The words are there, and there are many more words out there that are more eloquent than mine. Words from people who experienced things that no one should have to live through, words from everyday people who witnessed selfless acts of heroism, or became heroes themselves. Words from Boston, whether they are from Bostonians or from people who traveled from virtually every other nation on earth to share in the magic of this quintessentially Bostonian day. The person or persons who perpetrated this heinous act may have thought their actions would destroy that magic, but if so, they gravely miscalculated, as the darkness of their deeds was quickly subsumed by the goodness of humanity and the big-heartedness of a city like Boston, my adopted home. My words feel empty and cheap right now as I type them, but I know that millions of people who have known and loved Boston as I have are out there feeling exactly the same way that I do right now.

Thank you for everything that you've given me, Boston. Twenty-odd years ago you took this Jersey boy in, and I will always be grateful for the time I spent living in the Hub of the Universe. I grieve with you now, but that just means I will be all the more joyous when you come back even stronger than before, like I know you will.

See you next Patriots' Day.

So much for the extended warranty

Almost ten years and we've never had to take Andriana to the emergency room...  until yesterday.  Ten days before her tenth birthday, our daughter ended up getting ten sutures after falling off a trampoline at a friend's house and cutting her upper thigh badly on a protruding bolt. I was home when it happened, as my wife works the reference desk on Tuesday evenings. One moment I'm sitting at home answering some work email and feeling rather satisfied about a hectic but productive morning of meetings, then all of a sudden I'm riding in the back seat of our neighbor's car to the hospital, holding my daughter's hand, reassuring her, and trying not to lose my shit when I look at the gash on her leg.

"Am I going to have to get stitches?"  Andriana asks fearfully, already knowing the answer. The cut is almost six inches long and has split the skin on her thigh wide open. Fortunately my daughter's friend called for help immediately, and her father had a large clear trauma bandage on hand to stop the bleeding and protect the wound while he contacted me to tell me what had happened. I'm grateful that she is stable and not in shock, but whenever I see the blood and the exposed flesh under the plastic I feel nothing but panic. I want to look away, but I'm also afraid that Andriana will shift her leg and start bleeding again.

How deep was the cut, I wonder. Is it just the skin, or her muscle?  Spring soccer had only just started.  Was she going to have to sit the season out?  

Rather than default to the standard parental prevarication "We'll see," I tell her the truth. "Yes, you're going to need stitches."

"Will it hurt?"

"Only when the doctor gives you a shot. After that, you won't feel a thing."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

I squeeze her hand extra hard, look away for a moment, and call my wife. Maria answers the phone at the reference desk and I fill her in on what's happened. She's a good half hour away without traffic, and of course it's already rush hour here in Southwestern Connecticut, so even though her boss lets her leave immediately it'll be a while before she can join us. When we get to the hospital, our neighbor runs inside to get us a wheelchair, then asks me to write his phone number on my hand so I can call if I need a ride later. I know he feels terrible about the accident, but I'm simply glad that he's able to keep me moving forward right now.

I'm holding Andriana's shoes when we get to the emergency room, while we check her in at the triage desk, and during the process of registering her as a patient. Thank goodness it's a slow day in the ER, but sitting in a chair and filling out forms seems surreal when your daughter is also sitting there with a hole in her thigh. No, she doesn't have any allergies. Her religion is Greek Orthodox.  No, she's not taking any medication right now, save for the protein formula she drinks for phenylketonuria. At this point I realize I'm still clutching her shoes because I'm fearful of putting them back on her feet at this point. She's been so composed through this whole ordeal, and I don't want to disturb that somehow.

We sit in the waiting room and wait. I tell Andriana jokes and try not to ask her if she's okay over and over again. She plays Subway Surfers on my phone until the receptionist- a kindly older man- brings her a big book of poetry, which she reads intently. I get her a blanket to keep her warm in the air-conditioned room and to cover up her leg from prying eyes, as my daughter is very self-conscious about her injury- I asked her if she wanted me to take a picture of her leg and she simply fixed me with a death stare. The waiting room is starting to fill up, and I notice that Andriana is doing her best not to be freaked out by the other patients and their various ailments.

"Can you call Mommy and ask her to bring Waddles?"

Waddles is her beloved stuffed pig that she sleeps with every night. I feel stupid for leaving the house without it in the first place, but at the time I had had just enough presence of mind to grab my wallet and my phone. I call my wife, who is still stuck in traffic, and she agrees to stop by the house and pick up Waddles on her way to the hospital. A minute or two later and they're calling us in.

Everyone is beyond nice- the nurse with the almost-impenetrable Slavic accent and the avuncular attending physician are as gentle as they can be, and they praise Andriana for being so brave as they examine the cut, numb it with lidocaine and clean it, then stitch the wound back up. She was so worried about the shot that she didn't believe me when I told her that they'd already given it to her, and aside from the curious sensation of feeling her flesh being tugged taut by the doctor's needle and thread she felt nothing. We talk while the physician works. I tell her about the times I went to the emergency room as a kid. We joke and say that she's just like Sally the ragdoll from The Nightmare Before Christmas, who stitched her leg back on after jumping out of her tower prison.

Next thing I know, the doctor is showing me his handiwork, then asking me to put pressure on the freshly-sutured wound before they wrap it up with sterile gauze. My wife shows up now. I'm glad she's here, but I'm also happy that she never saw the untreated cut, which I won't be able to clear from my mind for the rest of the evening. The neighbor also appears to check up on us, for which I'm grateful. Then another nurse comes in to give us post-treatment instructions. Keep her off her feet with her leg elevated for two days. Change the dressing once per day and give her antibiotics two times a day. Watch for bruising and signs of infection. Make an appointment with your pediatrician to take out the sutures in ten days. We thank everyone profusely, then we're wheeling Andriana back out of the hospital and taking her home.

Considering that our daughter spent every Thursday morning of the first year and a half of her life in the pediatrics wing of Mass General Hospital to attend a weekly metabolic clinic, it seems almost incredible that I can count the amount of times on one hand when we've had to call Andriana's doctor over the years. I think a remember a bad fever once, a rattling cough when she was still a baby, and a bout of pink eye from daycare- otherwise, that was about it. Whenever my wife and I discussed our daughter's health I tried not to call undue attention to her good luck, but superstition aside my wife and I both knew that for all of our early trials with Andriana's PKU, we had been extraordinarily fortunate.

And we still are. Frightful as Andriana's cut was, it will heal. I have a boss and colleagues who were more than understanding when I told them that I'd need to stay home with my daughter for a couple of days until she was back on her feet, so that my wife wouldn't have to miss hours on the desk for which she wouldn't get paid. And as for Andriana herself?  I wish I'd had such equanimity when I was her age. No tears, no complaints. She's simply delighted that she'll get her stitches taken out the day before her birthday, rather than on the big day itself, and that she'll only miss a couple of weeks of soccer at most. At the end of the day, we're home again as a family, for which we are thankful.

"Daddy, why do you keep looking at me like that?"

My daughter asks me this question when she catches me staring over at her later that evening with an expression that is equal parts relief and disbelief- relief that the day's ordeal is over, and disbelief both that it happened in the first place and that it wasn't something even worse. I tell Andriana that maybe she'll understand someday, if she chooses to have children of her own. But it's more than that. As rattled as I am, I'm proud to have a daughter like her. I tell her this and she makes a face, but I know that she's proud as well.  Despite all of the panic and emotional exhaustion, on Tuesday I got to catch a glimpse of the strong woman that Andriana will be, and this makes me happy.

Do you even code, bro?*

It's funny how ideas tend to percolate through the quintessence. After coming back from a fun and extremely knowledge-packed ILLiad International Conference in Virginia Beach last month, I was doing my best to digest all of the cool things that my resource sharing colleagues were up to and ruminating about coding, libraries, and how to foster a culture of innovation myself when I stumbled across Jenica Rodgers' excellent post "Considering the librarian tech skills gap."

In her keynote for the New Librarians' Symposium at the Queensland University of Technology**, Jenica said:

Or the best new idea requires skill sets we aren’t training for and don’t have, except for a dozen people who are all being hired by Google, and that one guy who can write his own ticket and you could never afford him anyway. Or even smaller scale: Griffey shows me his LibraryBox and enthuses about how straightforward it is, and I totally want to make one to take to every meeting I ever have and insist that people download the files we’re going to be working with instead of printing them out… and then my eyes glaze over when he starts talking about the code that you need in order to set one up. I, um, was hoping for a nice little point and click and stick the cord in the hole kind of interface and he’s talking about GitHub…

Oh, how much of this rings painfully true! As a librarian who openly embraces technological innovation, I am constantly running into examples of phenomenally bright people doing amazing things. For all of the hand-wringing about the future of libraries, there's an awful lot of inspiration to be found out there if you look for it. The tricky thing, as Jenica so rightly identifies, is taking that inspiration and transforming it into something actionable at your own library. In so many instances, the innovative spirit may be willing, but the coding flesh is just too weak.

When I got into the resource sharing business all those years ago, I don't think it ever occurred to me that interlibrary loan would be such fertile ground for the library hacker set. Never mind the fact that the predominant ILL management system, ILLiad, was the brainchild of a bunch of programmers in the Virginia Tech library system who were tired of doing things the hard way. In my mind, coding was something that vendors did. Even if you did manage to pick up some new and interesting stuff at a conference or elsewhere in the library blogopshere, your local IT department was usually too busy supporting all of the existing systems to commit resources to adding anything else to their plate.

Somewhere along the way, however, a tipping point was reached in the library world where frustration with waiting on vendors or systems staff to provide desperately-needed solutions met with a critical mass of programming skills in the latest crop of library school grads. This was nothing short of a revolution for librarians, but like all revolutions it has come with its share of turbulence, as disruptive technologies have pushed administrators, staff, and IT folks out of their comfort zones and into unexplored territory. And also like many revolutions, this one has not been equally distributed. While through the serendipity of fortuitous hirings and receptive management some libraries have transformed themselves into hotbeds of innovation, others find themselves scrambling just to keep the basic service points staffed and the library budget in the black.

Contrary to what many people might think, this isn't just about the money. I've seen library systems with deep pockets struggle to get themselves out of the 19th century, whereas libraries which have been financially challenged for years somehow find ways to cultivate and sustain a culture of innovation. In her subsequent blog post, Jenica explores the nature of this disconnect. Her conclusions, below, are of course spot-on:

1. We aren’t taught crunchy tech skills. 
2. We don’t know how to learn crunchy tech skills.
3. It’s not our job to learn crunchy tech skills. 
4. The technology headspace is openly hostile to most of the profession.

While all of these are true, I would submit that the following is also true:  We don't know how to manage librarians with crunchy tech skills.  And this is just as important as #1, 2, 3, and 4.

I will never have enough time or energy to learn how to code like a Mover and Shaker. And chances are, that if you're already a director, assistant/associate director, or department head, nor will you. But what we can do is focus on developing our skill sets so that we can effectively manage the innovators in our midst and create a work environment where future Movers and Shakers are not just happy accidents but an inevitable outcome.

How do we pull this off, exactly?  Well, that's what I've been trying to figure out. While this is by no means an exhaustive list of suggestions, here's what I've managed to come up with so far...

• Learn to code. But wait, didn't I just admit that I'm never going to be able to code like Matthew Reidsma?*** Well, yes, but you can't manage what you don't understand. I may never learn how to write a script in Lua, but I sure as hell will have an easier time asking other people to code one for me if I know what it is I'm asking for in the first place. Managers are interpreters between the people with the skills and the people with the budget lines - if you don't learn how to speak both languages, something is going to get lost in translation.
• Cultivate your talent. This is rarely about hiring people from the outside, especially in these times of shrinking library budgets and hiring freezes, but finding out how to develop what you already have and don't even know it. For example, student labor used to be about staffing the circ desk or reshelving books, but chances are these days that you're employing student assistants who have some l33t skillz (grad students can be especially useful trainers in this regard). I've had the good fortune of managing some talented student employees, some of whom I've been able to successfully hire as library staff. 
• Challenge your staff to learn new things. At the same time, don't neglect the staff you already have. This one comes down to basic transformational leadership. If you want to foster an environment that is friendly to technological innovation, you need to encourage your staff to become managers of innovation themselves. Doing so means throwing out all of your assumptions about what your staff is or isn't capable of. This is often much harder than you think, but experience has taught me that it's almost always worth taking that leap of faith in empowering your staff to develop their own skills and tools to become the agents of their own continuous improvement. 
• See what other people are doing. Steal from them shamelessly. Share your successes with others so that they may see, steal, and share in return. My favorite example of what all librarians should aspire to be is the IDS Project in New York State. If you are not familiar with the work they've been doing over the past several years, it's nothing less than extraordinary. The IDS Project has fostered a statewide culture of innovation predicated on a collaborative model of training, support, and mentoring which consistently puts them on the bleeding edge of the resource sharing world. Somehow they've managed to find that magic balance between tech skills, strategic thinking, and good old-fashioned librarianship, and I've done my damnedest to replicate this magic in my own workplace.

I'll admit, it's still a work in progress. And there's a lot more going on here that I think Jenica does a brilliant job of deconstructing in her posts about this topic, especially insofar as coding culture is still a hostile space to women in general and not the most accessible subject matter to our profession. But I hope that I've been able to contribute one library manager's perspective to how we can start to bridge the tech skills gap and incorporate technological innovation into the DNA of the library workplace.

* Know Your Meme- "Do You Even Lift?"

** Note to self: I need to get my sorry librarian butt to Australia... 

*** Sorry, Matt, but I couldn't resist (congrats again on being a 2013 Mover and Shaker!)

AL eh?

This conversation actually happened:

"Hey!"

"How's it going? Great to see you at ALA."

"Great seeing you as well- thanks for sending that information, by the way."

"Sure, not a problem. Uh... what did I send again?"

"Umm... I don't remember off-hand... but I'm pretty sure it looked useful."

"Well, then- you're welcome?"

Resolutions resolved

It's been quite a while since my last blog entry.  If you're reading this post, however, you probably already know me either through Facebook or Twitter, so you're well aware that even though I may not have had the time to document the remainder of my 2012 in long-form blogging I've been busy sharing my transition from Harvard to Yale - not to mention all of the other life changes along the way, like losing weight:

Nevertheless it was always my intention to end the year with some kind of reflection about how my resolution to Make It Happen turned out.  In the past I've always sucked at New Year's resolutions, and I think I finally understand why:  they've either been too specific and/or numerous, so that they ended up seeming like a giant "To-Do" list which I would inevitably resent and never get around to completing.  By opting for a thematic resolution this time around, I was able to avoid this trap.  Rather than worry about specific goals, I changed my attitude towards change instead and the details fell into place as a result.

There's more to it, of course, but as I'll be making a presentation on this very topic at the upcoming ALA Midwinter Meeting I'm going to wait until I've finished gathering all of my thoughts on the topic before I share them, though I do promise to share it here as well.  In the meantime, as December drew to a close I wondered what my next year's resolution should be.  Since a theme seemed to work so dramatically over the past year, I decided to adopt another thematic resolution this time around for 2013:

Keep Moving Forward.

If you're a Disneyphile such as yours truly, you'll immediately recognize the source of this phrase: Walt Disney himself, who wasn't just an entertainer, but a passionate futurist. At the end of the 2007 animated movie Meet The Robinsons, Walt is quoted as having said the following:

Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we're curious… and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.

Whether this is an apocryphal quote or not, I've always found it to be fairly inspirational stuff, but now that I've gone and successfully changed All The Things in my life this phrase feels even more appropriate.

(Okay, after having just returned from spending the holidays in Disney World I may still be a wee bit under the influence of pixie dust, as well!).

Changing my life was necessary, and I'm glad that I found the courage and motivation to do so, but how do I sustain this type of radical change?  As happy as I am right now with what I've accomplished, I want to ensure that the past year of transformation was not the exception but the new normal for 2013 and beyond. So I'm going to Keep Moving Forward.  Here's to the future!  I look forward to sharing my progress here and elsewhere, and hope that resolutions or no resolutions, your new year is more awesome than the previous one.

What I got done offline this evening

1. Cleaned the hermit crab tank
2. Played badminton with my daughter
3. Built a LEGO table
4. Created a weekly activity checklist for my daughter
5. Made giardiniera from some leftover celery
6. Built with my daughter using our nifty new LEGO table
7. Watched some postseason baseball
8. Played Bad Piggies

Okay, maybe I should spend less time on the laptop at night...

My Harvard Commencement

I've been listening to a lot of college acapella music lately.  Maybe it's because my job search has put me in something of a nostalgic mood, especially now that I know I'll be leaving Harvard in just a few short weeks. That's right, folks- I'm happy to announce that I've accepted the position of Associate Director for Resource Sharing and Reserves at the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University, starting this August! This means that my days here at the World's Greatest University are numbered.

Although I am thrilled about the new job and excited about the challenges ahead of me, now when I walk across Harvard Yard on my way to Widener Library in the morning I can't help but feel bittersweet about my impending departure.  It always occurred to me that every time I swiped my ID card to enter the library there would come a time when I would no longer have the privilege of doing so, but I guess I didn't realize that that day would come sooner and not later.

Which brings me back to my recent acapella obsession.  Right now my favorite track by far is a cover of Josh Groban's "Awake" by Northwestern University's Freshman Fifteen.  Though the song is obviously about someone preparing to say goodbye to their loved one, the sentiment that the lyrics encapsulate is pretty much what I'm feeling at the moment:

And I know that only time will tell us how
To carry on without each other
So keep me awake to memorize you
Give me more time to feel this way
We can't stay like this forever
But I can have you next to me today

True story:  it took me 13 years to get my Bachelor's degree.  However much I'd like to credit this unusually long and circuitous path towards undergraduate completion to my Bluto Blutarskyesque lifestyle, it was less a function of partying hard and more a Socratic exercise in figuring out how little it was that I actually knew about myself (okay, there was some partying, a change of major or two, and a lot of acapella, but that's a completely different story!).

The white-hot intellectual fires of MIT very quickly melted away any pretense that my 18-year old self may have harbored about being an unappreciated genius;  once I had cooled down and recovered enough to make what I assumed was an informed decision concerning what course my studies should take, how could I have known that when I transferred to Boston University to study Classics I was embarking on yet another painful process of elimination, mixed in with some difficult life lessons to boot?

When I finally did leave BU with my BA, however, I felt that I had finally learned enough about myself to know what I wasn't.  So what if it took three and a quarter times longer than it should have for me to learn this lesson?  To me it was thirteen years well spent.  My parents and teachers always told me that I was stubborn- in retrospect I probably should have taken this observation to heart a lot earlier in life, but you see, I was too busy being stubborn to do so.

Therefore I find it fascinating, more than a little bit ironic, and of course totally thematically appropriate that after thirteen years of working for Harvard, I find myself leaving for a new job.  When I committed myself to Making It Happen as my New Year's resolution for 2012, I should have suspected that it would lead to my departing Harvard at long last, but for as long as I could I allowed myself the luxury of pretending that I could somehow embrace radical change without changing everything.

But change has come, and it has been radical indeed.  And just as surely as I've sloughed off upwards of sixty pounds since the beginning of the year, I seem to have wriggled free of Harvard's grasp as well.  This is the haven I chanced upon when I decided that graduate school was not for me and I found that I was at a loss as to what to do next.  This is the place where I discovered my passion for librarianship and had the good fortune to be mentored by wonderful librarians who saw my latent potential and nurtured my passion.  This is the community that helped celebrate my wedding, the birth and christening of my daughter, and many of life's other milestones along the way- big and small.

If my time as an undergraduate was about learning who I wasn't, surely my time at Harvard was about discovering who I actually was.  Even if the going here at the library has admittedly been rough of late, how could I ever dream of leaving this place?  And yet now I find myself doing just that- not out of necessity, but by choice;  not on a decision made angrily, but thoughtfully;  looking back not with bitterness or regret, but with love and gratitude for the University that took me in, the community of artists, academics, and other adventurous and/or lost souls who sustained me and inspired me, and the colleagues who helped me become the library professional I was always meant to be.

That when I finally arrived at my Socratic destination I would find that my future lay elsewhere probably should not have come as much of a surprise to me as it did (after all, in true 8-bit fashion, isn't the Princess always in another castle?).  I like to think of it as a testament to how formative an experience my time at Harvard has been that even when a great opportunity like the Yale job presented itself, I had to do some serious soul-searching before deciding even to apply for it, let alone accept it.  I'm glad that I did, of course, but I am also sad to leave behind my friends and colleagues, our patrons, and the Harvard Library itself- and Widener Library in particular.

So don't mind me if I seem to linger a little and breathe deep when I walk through the Stacks, if I slow down to listen to the never-ending beeping of the barcode scanners at the Circulation Desk, if I stop to look up and admire the brilliant view through the skylights of the Phillips Reading Room- or if you catch me flipping through the card catalogs on the third floor, marveling over the wondrous machinery down in Preservation, or standing in the Widener Memorial Room engaged in a quiet conversation with Harry.  I'm trying to soak in as much of this place as I can before I finally say goodbye.

Thank you, Harvard, for the past thirteen years.  I will always treasure our time together, but it's time for me to move on...