T. Scott

Learning To Fly

2013-05-24T16:11:34-05:00

We talked for a long time after dinner last night, about the multitude of swirling adventures that characterize our lives these days. At one point she said, "You look so sad when you're moving around." She hastened to add that she didn't mean that I was sad, but that the people who care about me see me struggle and it makes them sad.

I get that. I see it behind the smile on Billie's face when she watches me pass from my office in front of her desk on the way to wherever I need to be next. Or I'll be in a meeting with some of the Deans and as the meeting breaks up someone will sidle up to me and ask, "So how are you doing?" and I give them a brief update. But when I'm in the meeting, I can forget about it and be fully engaged with the work I love to do. I'm sorry that I cause them worry, but I am so grateful for their tenderness and concern.

M., my very astute therapist is working on my gait. She laughs as she watches my Tin Man walk. "A PT instructor would love you -- the PT students would hate you!"

"Why's that?"

"There's just so many things..." She puts a finger to her chin. "I'm just trying to decide what I'm going to fix next." She radiates confidence.

Like I've said -- I'm great teaching materiel.

Who knew that walking was so complicated? My ankles & toes & hips & knees & arms are all ready to do the work, but the brain can't get the right signals to them. So we work on retraining -- swing the arms, raise the knee when you stride, don't sashay those hips! Heel to toe, heel to toe. So much to remember! C'mon little nerve fibers -- you can sort out the new pathways.

I tell her that now when I see somebody running up the stairs I want to shout, "Do you realize how amazing what you're doing is?" And M. grins and says, "And then you want to smack 'em?"

But no. I don't carry any of that kind of anger. I just find the whole damn thing fascinating. I am learning so much.

Today it's a beautiful early summer day in Alabama. I walked around the edge of the lake to the spillway, practicing. Swing the arms, shoulders relaxed, heel to toe, heel to toe, don't sashay those hips!

Learning to fly.

Call me "Tin Man"

2013-04-27T08:50:21-05:00

“Right there,” says the neuroradiologist, poking her finger at the screen and sounding slightly exasperated. “The enhancement is definitely worse there than on the March 25th scan.” The neurologist leans in, looking back and forth between twin images of my spinal cord. He shakes his head slightly. “I’m still not seeing it.” She enlarges the images. “Right there,” she says again. “It’s obvious.”

The neurosurgeon stands behind them, arms folded. He says nothing. He doesn’t see it either, but he’s not the one who spends all day in a dark room looking at scans. Maybe the enhancement is worse. But he still doesn’t see anything he can cut. And unless he’s sure what he’s going after he’s not going in.

At least, that’s how I imagine the scene a little while later as the neurosurgeon stands at the foot of my hospital bed explaining the current consensus (there are at least four world-class physicians working on my case). I’ve been here since yesterday morning when my neurologist decided I needed another MRI. I’ve been doing pretty well overall but the March 25th scan didn’t show the expected improvement in the spinal cord swelling. And although two weeks ago I was walking all over Dublin after five days in Bournemouth, this past Saturday and Sunday I felt like I was struggling just to make it down to the end of my street. So Dr. B. decided he wanted another image, and the fastest way to do that was to check me back into the hospital. I’ve had nothing to eat since last night and no coffee yet today, on the off chance that I’d need surgery. I was as pleasant as I could be this morning to the three doctors and five medical students who crowded into my room to discuss my very interesting case, but now it’s going on 1:00 and I’m getting decidedly peckish. So when Dr. O finishes explaining why he is not doing surgery, my only question is, “Does that mean I can have coffee now?” He laughs. “Yes, I’ll see that you get some coffee.”

That was Thursday. Now I’m back home, waiting for the Home Health nurse to come by and infuse me with another gram of steroids. Lynn has a list some twenty items long of diagnoses that have been considered. Many have been discarded, but there are still a couple on the list. (Think of what a waste of teaching materiel I'd be if I weren't in a big academic medical center!) Without the exploratory surgery that Dr. O. definitely refuses to do they really can’t nail it down any further at this point. So we’re treating it as an “autoimmune inflammatory process”. Which simply means that my overeager white blood cells think there’s something wrong with the myelin that insulates the nerves in my spinal cord and are eating away at it, causing severe inflammation and swelling at the neck. To put it simply, there’s a short circuit in my spinal cord. When my brain tries to control my legs or hands, the signals get scrambled. If I try to make a fist, the muscles on the backs of my hands start to contract as well, attempting to pull my fingers straight when I’m trying to clench them. Makes forming chords on the guitar damned difficult. Similarly, when I try to move a leg forward, some of my hip muscles are trying to pull it back, giving me what Lynn refers to as my “Tin Man” walk. I can do most of what I want to do – it just requires some extra conscious effort.

The very cautious plan we’ve been on so far has been no treatment – let’s see what the body does on its own. The latest MRI suggests that the body needs some help. So we’re starting a regimen of steroids and a mild immunosuppressant. That should help.

And in the meantime, of course, all the rest of life rumbles on and I remain a generally happy guy.

Work is good, and Lynn is ever her amazing strong magical self (she was with me the entire hospital stay and, seriously, we had a fine time).

The Bearded Pigs play Boston a week from tomorrow!

Josie came in 3^rd on beam at the Regionals meet at Clemson on Friday morning! Woo-hoo!

It’s a lazy Saturday in Birmingham. I have no complaints.

Bournemouth

2013-04-07T06:21:01-05:00

Look out the window one direction and there's the ocean at the end of St. Michael's street. Look the other way and half a block down is the Shamrock Bar where the footballers were gathered yesterday until late into the night. Through the alley across the way I can see another intriguing Terrace Bar similar to the one that fronts our own hotel. Right below us is the fancy Thai restaurant. Early this morning we were awakened by three spaghetti strap girls giggling and flirting with a couple of young men out front.

It's a breezy, partly sunny Sunday in the south of England. In an hour we'll meet Dr. Snowmoss for Sunday lunch and then go exploring.

We took the bus down from Heathrow yesterday afternoon after an easy flight across the Atlantic. I'd hoped for more scenery, but we were on the motorway most of the way and the sound bafflers blocked most of the view. We were, however, amused at the sheep industriously trimming the grass on the embankment as we left Heathrow.

As our cab took us from the bus station to Highcliff House, past the arcades on the waterfront, Lynn said -- "It's Atlantic City. Without Trump." And it certainly does have a bit of that feel.

After a walk around to get our bearings on the nearby neighborhood, we drank whisky on the hotel Terrace, letting the sunshine wash the jetlag away until the chill wind off the water pushed us into the warmth of the Lounge. And then, later, a superb dinner in the Highcliff Grill. I told my waiter it was some of the best lamb I'd ever had. He smiled indulgently, "The secret is simple -- fresh and local."

I drifted to sleep, thinking of all of the different cities that Lynn and I have spent time in over the past two decades. We are here now because someone thinks it's worth listening to me talk for 30 minutes on Wednesday to close the conference. I wonder what I'm going to say.

Not FASTR Enough

2013-02-19T12:07:38-06:00

While the publishing industry continues to explore numerous avenues for providing full Open Access to the stewarded versions-of-record of the scientific literature, SPARC once again offers up the hope that the US Congress will save us from the evil paywalls. Is this really the best they can do?

Springer is now the largest commercial OA publisher in the world. The publishers on the Highwire platform make over 2 million articles freely available within twelve months or less. CrossRef is playing an increasingly important role in this space, most notably with the FundRef initiative. NPG, AIP, and others are launching mega-journals built on the PLoS One model. Wiley announced just today that they are moving two of their established journals to open access. Even stodgy conservative Elsevier now publishes a couple dozen fully OA journals.

SPARC has changed the name of their bill. Yay! Let's write our congresspeople!

There was a remarkable scene at the STM Annual Meeting in Frankfurt last October. I was moderating the closing session, a discussion of the value of emerging models of scholarly publishing with Kent Anderson as the main speaker. Always eager to be provocative, Kent was being sharply critical of eLife, BioMed Central, PLoS One and the notion of open access in general (this will come as no surprise to readers of his pieces in the Scholarly Kitchen). What resulted was significant pushback from many in the audience, who argued that not only were the various OA models financially viable, but that moving to OA was the right thing to do -- that it represented the values that had brought so many of those people into publishing in the first place. Imagine that -- 300 STM publishing executives in a conference room with a significant portion of them (and seasoned professionals at that) vociferously defending open access.

Alas. I think I was the only librarian in the room.

The tide towards open access is inexorable. Many in the publishing industry recognize that and are actively engaged in making things happen. Wouldn't it be nice if librarians were a part of that? But SPARC, as the librarians' advocate for OA, would have us sit on our hands (well, one hand, I guess -- we're supposed to use the other to write to Congress) and hope for a legislative solution.

The previous FRPAA versions of FASTR haven't even been able to get a decent congressional hearing. It's easy enough for a congressperson to sign on as a co-sponsor, but there doesn't really seem to be much legislative muscle behind it. And even if it were, somehow, to get through Congress in the current session, think of the time and money that will be wasted on building the infrastructure necessary for each agency to comply. All for the sake of "freeing" manuscript versions of articles, many of which publishers are already making available.

I suppose you can't blame librarians too much. If all they know about publishing is what they read in SPARC press releases it's natural to think that publishers are evil demons bent on hoarding knowledge to the detriment of civilization as we know it. The slogans about publishers getting everything for free and making the taxpayers pay twice are compelling if you don't look at them too closely.

I'll agree with SPARC on one thing -- we've got no time to waste in moving the open access future forward. Too bad that while publishing professionals of all stripes are working to make that happen librarians seem content to sit on the sidelines waving cardboard sabers.

I Blew A Fuse

2013-02-18T17:46:06-06:00

The doctors remain perplexed. Yes, they agree, the 1/30 MRI doesn't look any better than the 12/2 & 3 MRIs did. If anything, they look a little worse. The spinal cord remains inflamed & swollen from about C3 down towards C7. (The steroids should have reduced that!) But there's nothing obvious in the image that we can point to as the cause. It could still be three or four very different things.

But the patient (that would be me) continues to improve.

The consensus is to wait. There are some diagnostic procedures that could be done, but they all carry their own risks of making things worse. Personally I'm not that eager to figure out the cause that I want to risk getting the spinal cord nicked by some probe. The doctors agree. So we'll schedule another MRI for the end of March. Maybe by then the swelling will have gone down and we'll be able to figure something out.

In the meantime, my body continues its amazing self-healing process. On any given day, I still can't tell if I'm better or worse than the day before. But if I look back a couple of weeks I can see the progress. Walking is easier -- and a little faster. I have full range of motion with my left arm. The grip of my left hand is much stronger. My fingers remain tingly and numb, so the frustrations of typing, guitar and buttons haven't lessened much. The biggest problem now is muscle soreness from months of over-compensating and not using the muscles properly, particularly in my left shoulder & arm. So I've got a referral for a physical therapist -- if I can get a decent daily exercise routine I should be able to reduce some of the muscle ache.

Explaining this to people is still a conundrum. When I was at the PSP meeting in DC the week before last I carried my walking stick with me -- not so much because I needed it, but because it gave people an excuse to ask me what was up. I'd say that the simplest description is that I've got a short-circuit in my spinal cord.

Lynn prefers the more evocative, "His spinal cord blew a fuse." Accurate enough for the non-neurologists, I think.

Still Inconclusive

2013-01-31T13:23:18-06:00

We're looking at my brain. Or, rather, at the MRI images of my brain that were taken earlier in the day (yesterday, that is). This is after my doctor's done the series of neurological tests that I've become so familiar with -- grip his hands tightly, pull him toward me, push him away, raise my knee and see if he can push it down, touch his finger with mine and then back to my nose. He checks my reflexes and how sensitive different parts of my body are to the touch of a pin. He has me walk on tiptoes and then toe-to-heel. If I stand still, close my eyes and hold my arms out in front of me with my palms up, do I start to tip forward? (I do, a little.)

I joke to the med student observing us that I'm convinced the reason people go into neurology is that all of the little tests are so interesting. The doctor agrees that I have improved since he saw me six weeks ago. Now we're looking at the MRI images and as he scrolls back and forth through my brain he confirms that it is completely normal and healthy. That's good, but my brain hasn't been part of the problem.

When he puts the scan of my spinal cord up next to the similar image from nine weeks ago, the challenge is immediately apparent. The expectation had been that the megadoses of steroids would greatly reduce the inflammation and swelling. The hope was that he could then make a definitive diagnosis on the basis of the image alone. But there is still substantial swelling. That in itself is surprising and it means that we're still looking at a number of possible causes. More examination is necessary. He'll present my case to a conference on Tuesday and see what his colleagues think. Then he'll call me with a recommendation on the next steps.

I'm a firm believer in the power of low expectations. I don't like disappointment, so in general I try not to get my hopes up about things. (I tend, for example, to frequently have good experiences at professional conferences, because I expect so little from them.) So I didn't really expect to get the definitive diagnosis yesterday. We knew from the beginning that diagnosing the cause of transverse myelitis is a difficult challenge. I do have more confidence than I did initially that we'll narrow it down.

In the meantime, I continue to make progress, although it can be frustratingly slow. It's as if I've got 50 yards to travel and I'm managing a couple of inches a day. On any given day the difference between where I am and where I want to be seems as vast as the day before. It's only when I compare today to two and three weeks ago that the progress becomes apparent. I can walk up and down stairs without steadying myself on the rail. Although my left hand is still very weak, I was able to trim the nails on my right hand this morning without thinking about it -- six weeks ago I couldn't do that at all.

I'm keeping up my normal work and travel schedule (I leave for DC next Tuesday and I've got a couple of trips to the UK scheduled for March and April). I'm walking to all of my on campus meetings as I usually do -- I just have to allow about a third more time to get from place to place. My typing is improving, and I can form guitar chords, even if I can't move between them fast enough yet.

He explained the muscle twitches this way -- normally, when you want to activate a muscle, the signal goes through the nerve fiber from the brain to the correct muscle, clean and direct. But in my case, because some of the myelin sheath that encases each fiber has been eroded, the signal jumps fibers and activates other muscles as well. So I get twitches, or I'll stiffen because two muscles in opposition are both flexing. It lasts only a second or two and the muscles sort themselves out and I go on. Annoying, but apparently not something to worry about.

When the doctor was doing his assessment he asked me for examples of things that I could do three months ago that I could not do now. There's really not much, if you allow for the fact that many things take longer.

Every morning, when I write in my journal, I'll write a bit about how I think I'm doing that day, but those questions are occupying less and less of my time. I don't feel normal yet, but I'm doing normal things.

Resistance

2012-12-13T07:16:33-06:00

My interest has always been singing the songs. Playing guitar was the vehicle for doing that. (And yet, when I go down to the basement where my gear is I always say, "I'm going down to play guitar" never "I'm going down to sing." What's up with that?)

I can make my way around my acoustic pretty well, but it's still rudimentary. And despite my three telecasters, I've never spent much time playing with the sounds. In the band I just bang away on the chords trying to keep the rhythm going. They're nice guitars, so I feel guilty about that.

Now, since the objective is to restore dexterity to my left hand (the chording hand), I'm focusing on the guitar sounds. I'll skip the singing for awhile. I've set up one of the small amps with an effects modulator in my study. I'm playing very loud.

One of the most transcendant and luminous pieces of piano music ever recorded is the solo concert that Keith Jarrett did in Cologne back in 1975. I first heard it a few years after it came out (thanks again to the unknown librarian who was selecting albums for the Oshkosh Public Library in those days) and it was one of those recordings that changed my life. I go back to it often and it always refreshes me and brings me new joy.

Only recently did I come across the story of how that concert came about. It was a mess. The stagehands brought out the wrong piano. Not the one that Jarrett had requested, it was in lousy condition, had bad sound, malfunctioning pedals. Jarrett almost refused to go on. Seventeen year old Vera Brandes, the promoter, managed to talk him into it.

And that damn piano forced him to go further into himself, into his technique, into his lyrical imagination than he ever had before. It redefined his career, became the all time best selling piano album and continues to have a tremendous impact. Resistance.

In high school I was baffled by the notion of poetic form. (This was the heyday of free verse). Why would one want to confine oneself that way? Sure, I could enjoy a clever rhyme scheme but that seemed like such a secondary effect. It took me years to understand how pushing against the resistance of form unlocks and opens creativity inside that can't be found in any easy way. The seemingly arbitrary constrictions of the sonnet form are so attuned to the rhythms and sounds of the English language that they can bring a poet to a level of sublimity that a free verse poem is incapable of achieving. Resistance.

I can manage the chord changes to "Rockin' In The Free World" pretty well, even with the numbness in the tips of my fingers. The muscles are fine (it's the nerves that are messed up) and the fingers know where to go. I'm flipping switches and twirling dials and grinning at the woof-woof the amp makes when I slam the Em and let it sustain. It sounds horrible because I don't really know what I'm doing. So I'm pushing. I'm listening. I'm finding new sounds that I never bothered to think about making before. I'm laughing and having a really good time. It's hard. I like that.

Resistance is not futile. It's necessary.

Diagnosticians and Therapists

2012-12-12T05:49:00-06:00

"There's nothing wrong with your pons," says my neurosurgeon. "I'm not going to order another MRI. They can talk to you about that later if they want one." I've had six already. And he has ordered up nine of the vials of blood they want. He rolls his eyes. "But I'm not ordering that one. Nothing in your history indicates that kind of vitamin deficiency. They're reaching."

"They" are the neurologists, who have been brought in to consult on my case. When the ambulance brought me in, the first worry was stroke, so they called Dr. O., the neurosurgeon on duty and I became his patient. The CT was negative for stroke so he sent me down to the tube. That's when they first saw the inflammation of the spinal cord. O. was still ready to cut if need be, but he wasn't satisfied with what he was seeing. "I'm going to run a contrast MRI so I can get a better look at this." He sent me back to the tube.

Two hours later. "You don't need surgery yet. I'm checking you into the hospital."

By the middle of the 2nd day he was sure he didn't need to cut. There were still four MRIs, a spinal tap and a variety of other tests to go to try to figure out where the swelling was coming from. "But this is out of my area now, so I'll need to call in the neurologists." It was apparent that he was trying to decide whether or not to transfer me to their service or just bring them in to consult. He decided to keep me. "You're an easy patient." He smiled.

But he doesn't have the same kind of curiousity as the neurologists. Like my primary care guy, he mostly wants to figure out what he needs to do to save my life and make me feel better. He knows he doesn't need to cut and he knows that whatever the cause is, massive infusions of steroids give the best of odds of reducing my symptoms in the short term. He'd be interested in knowing why my immune system is gnawing at the myelin sheath, but he's due in surgery this afternoon and that's where his focus is. He's done as much as he can do for me.

For the neurologists, however, my current status is just the beginning. Now their professional curiousity is up. Why is my body doing this? Is it the vitamins after all? Is there some other kind of deficiency? How long has this been happening? Did I have a viral infection at some point? Is it tied into my optic nerve somewhere? Why is it mostly in the cervical area rather than further down -- isn't that unusual? Why is the swelling diffuse along the cord rather than bunched up? Is there another test we can run?

I'm amused by the competitive tension -- the different perspectives of these very calm, but very intense professionals. And it occurs to me that this split may occur, to some degree, throughout the medical professions. There are those, like Mike and like O., who are principally therapists -- they want to fix the problem and get their patients back into their daily lives as quickly and completely as possible. Then there are the diagnosticians like Dr. A. and Dr. S., who really want to know what's going on. We know so little about the nervous system. This is a chance to learn a little more. And then maybe to find a way to treat me a little bit more effectively than their last patient.

Bless them all.

Sentimental

2012-12-11T13:31:51-06:00

There comes a point whenever we go out to a movie when Josie will lean out to look past Lynn to me to see if I'm crying yet. (We usually sit Mommy, Josie, Nonni, Nonai). The odds are good that I've started a bit before she thinks to look. Is there any movie I don't cry at? All three of my strong and steadfast girls think it is sweet and amusing. I've no choice but to suffer their laughter.

I like crying at movies. I like my high emotions. In the later years of my first marriage, I never cried. I needed to be the rock. I didn't realize at the time what an emotional cost that demanded. When I got my tears back, I felt like I'd been given a gift.

The last couple of days I've been particularly subject to bursts of emotion. I've been listening to Queen's Platinum Collection and am enchanted by the joy that Freddie brought to everything that he sang. And yes, when he and Bowie duet on "Under Pressure," I cried. Just for the passion of it.

Part of my current sensitivity, I suppose, is due to the health crisis. I'd been feeling some tingling in my hands & some weakness in my arms for quite awhile. Finally got around to going to see my doctor week before last. I'd been diagnosed with a herniated cervical disc fifteen years ago, and recent x-rays show quite a bit of cervical osteoarthritis, so I put it down to pinched nerves. Mike told me to load up with ibuprofen to see if that'd ease the pressure on the cervical nerves and he booked an MRI for me for the following week.

Then, early Sunday morning (a week + ago) I'd stayed up to watch a movie after Lynn went to bed and as I was putting things away I collapsed. No motor control from the neck down. Lynn got the ambulance guys here and by the time I was in the ER feeling was coming back. Turns out that I've got some inflammation in the spinal cord. "Transverse myelitis" is what they're calling it. They haven't sorted out the cause, although scary things like MS or a tumor have been ruled out.

I came home on Wednesday, loaded up with steroids and the docs seem pleased with how quickly I've recovered so far. I still have weakness and tingling in my fingers and hands, but I'm typing normally, getting out for walks, and young Dani, the delightful Occupational Therapist who came by my room on Tuesday prescribed as much guitar playing as I can find time for as therapy for my left hand. I'm grateful to her forever. I'll go back to work on Thursday.

I found the hospital experience fascinating. I never lost my sense of humor. And I've been enjoying the slap upside the head that reminds one of where one's true priorities need to be. Josie's had the flu, but she texts me every morning to see how I'm doing.

So yes, this all could have me being a little more sentimental than usual, although I expect my girls would tell you it's just par for the course.

This morning I came across Jay-Z's "Where I'm From," the 25 minute documentary he posted on YouTube of his opening stand at the Barclay Center. Perhaps it's a surprise to some of my mates that I'm a rap fan, but Jay-Z in particular impresses the hell out of me. The journey that he has taken, and what he keeps trying to do with the larger than life person that he's become, I find tremendously stirring and inspiring. He knows that his success carries a great weight of responsibility and in everything he does he's trying to live up to that.

There's a moment in the documentary, from the last of the eight shows, where a fan in the audience hands him a Jackie Robinson Dodgers jersey. "How far we've come," says Jay. And how long are the roads we still have to travel.

I cried.

It felt wonderful.

The Front Yard

2012-11-01T16:29:15-05:00

On the mornings that I walk, I leave the house about 6:25, after my first two cups of coffee and half an hour of journal writing. My standard route takes me around the lake and across some low hills in about 50 minutes. These days it's just on the cusp of dawn when I set out, and every morning the view of the lake is a little different. This morning, as I looked at our house from across the spillway, there were beautiful mists rising so I stopped to take a picture. We've lived in this house for over a decade and I am still astonished that this is what our front yard looks like.

I walk briskly, listening to music (this morning a mix of Keith Jarrett, Queen, The Who, The Police and a string quartet by Wernick), feeling the stiffness creak out of my legs and back. I do this primarily for the well-being of my aging, sedentary body, but it's my mind that gains the greatest benefit.

I don't know where my thoughts will go, and that's a good thing. This morning, my initial preoccupation was with the external review of the libraries that we're embarking on today. I had a morning meeting scheduled with Maureen Sullivan and the Huron consultants and I was thinking through the critical points that I wanted to get on the table during this initial session. I remembered a document that I should have added to the website and made a mental note to send that in as soon as I got back. I thought about how I might respond to some of the questions that I thought they'd be likely to ask.

I'm optimistic about what the results of the review will be, but naturally still a little anxious. I want there to be some surprises -- otherwise what's the point of bringing in consultants? But I want them to be surprises that I'm happy with and I don't have any control over that.

Before too long, though, my thoughts had drifted. I found myself thinking about a response that had been posted to a comment I'd made on a blog post and what I might say back if I wanted to take the time. I knew that I didn't want to take the time, and wouldn't, but it was fun to turn some sentences over and over and shape what the appropriate response might be.

And then I was thinking about the upcoming trip to San Francisco, that the Chicago Collaborative meeting on Thursday will be my last and how I'm ready to step away from that project, but what an amazing amount of time I've put into it over the years. And what I might still want to do even when I'm no longer officially a part of the group.

Whatever the other topics are that come to mind on any given morning, inevitably, at some point, I'll find myself thinking about the band and new songs we're trying to learn and how can I find enough time to play because my chops are so rusty because I don't get into the basement with the guitars and amplifiers often enough...

And then I'm walking back down our street and I take the earbuds out and slow down a bit and start to shift into a more directed mode. When I get to the house I pour my last cup of coffee and sit back down at the rolltop desk and pick up my fountain pen for a last fifteen minutes of journal writing. Usually the first thing I find myself saying is, "What a great walk that was!"