Read The Room with Dr. Domani Hintze-Pothen and Dr. Douglas Schaak

Foreign.

Town for MU talks here on the campus, the beautiful campus of Multnomah University in Portland, Oregon.

Mr. Rob Hilderand is back, ladies and gentlemen. And we also have Renee on in an undisclosed location somewhere. She's on the phone with us today.

Witness protection.

No, we can't start that rumor. But it's 2022. You know, people will have to actually stay home for various reasons and throughout this year. Renee, you need to introduce the guests we have today because I am very, very, very, very excited to have two of the most wonderful people on Multnomah's campus. Our guest today. I'm not, I'm so happy. This is not, this is not video because you would see them smiling, but I don't know why they're smiling because I believe that every, every, every iota of what I said right now. I believe it. Please help us get to know our guests today. And then we're going to go straight into it. Super excited.

That's right. Hi, everybody, and welcome to Nu Talks again. We have two fantastic guests with us. We have Dr. Domani Pinsi Poten, a professor of English here at Multnomah University. As a professor, she prepares students to read courteously, write thoughtfully, and attend the human condition carefully. We are so excited to talk with her. And Also we have Dr. Doug Schack with us. He's also a professor of English here at Multnomah University and he is excited to be teaching students who become leaders in the world today. It's still January. I know we don't have much January left, but it is still January and many people set themselves reading goals for the year. And so that's what we want to talk about today. We're interested to hear from you two about what are your goals. What books would you encourage us to maybe include on some of those lists this year? And this is the one I'm really excited for. What encouragement or tips do you have for people who maybe want to do that for the first time? Maybe they want to try reading more or more challenging books this year? How do you guys encourage people and instruct people in something like that?

Doug Domani we're going straight into it because we only have 30 minutes usually and it ends up not being enough with all our guests. So we're going to go straight into it. And then at the end of our session here, we're going to do the podcast episode. We're going to do a rapid fire session to get to know you way more. So let's go straight into into answering some of these questions.

Well, I hesitate to give book recommendations outside of class because I don't know what people like to read. So in a classroom, I can tell you what I'd like you to read outside of class. I usually ask, what do you like? And then I'll say something like, read something different from that. So to choose a different discipline, you know, a different genre that you're not familiar with, and just see. See how you do with it. So there is. I'll give one book recommendation right off the bat, which is called the Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich. She's a Native American writer from North Dakota. She writes about historical things in the way that a family or an entire culture is sort of generationally impacted by things. So there's this murder of this family by Native Americans, and then the white people, you know, exact justice by murdering the murderers. And one person is left as a witness, and that person comes back to be the person who sort of informs the story. And it's a really densely packed story, probably 50, 60 characters in it. And it's very fascinating. So if you like almost any of the topics of racial justice or personal judgment, the way that God looks at these actions, historical fiction, it's got it all. So it's from 2008. It's a book I've taught. And just to sort of start as one book recommendation, throw it out there. I think you would enjoy. Most people would enjoy something from that book.

But I'm interested in the question of what kinds of habits to practice when it comes to reading. Reading lit. And the two that I've been focusing on this semester are well captured by Jonathan Sacks in his book Morality, in which he talks about morality as other centered concern, other centered care. The posture is primarily directed toward the other. And I find literary works are. Are these spaces in which you get to practice, practice caring about someone else's condition, someone else's circumstances, written, presented, developed by someone else. And I think that kind of engagement, that kind of involvement, I think it's a rather healthy. Rather healthy practice. So one of the first things I like about literary works, it is. It is hazardous. But one of the first things I like about it is, is that it's other centered. And the second thing that I like reminding students about is brought out by Martha Nussbaum. She talks about the literary imagination as being a means for compassion. So this other centered posture also invites involvement right in someone else's circumstances, on their terms, for the duration of the reading. And that involvement, I think is a habit that we can. We can practice.

Go ahead, Doug.

Yeah, I was just gonna say, you know, sort of touching on that, that when you. When you enter into a book, you're entering to somebody else's constructed world, so you're not in charge there. You know, you don't get to say what's going on, who. Who's doing what, what the tone is like, what the action is like. You're just not in charge of that. So I find that when students are maybe frustrated inside of a book, they haven't learned that they're not in charge. They go in with their own tone, their own pace, their own expectations, and then they don't realize they have to acclimate themselves to the book itself. It has a pace, it has a tone, has subject matter, it has all those things. And you can say, I don't like that, but that just means you haven't entered properly. It's like entering someone's home and saying, I don't like this home. Well, it's not your home. You don't get to make those choices about carpet and couch. It's just not your. And so to tell students, you know, to read humbly means enter someone else's space and respect what's there. Once you do that and once you sort of accept the facts on the ground, then you can begin to, you know, skulls interpret properly and eventually criticized properly. So I think the same thing that was Damani was saying is that you. You have to be humble, maybe even a little prone. Like, you go into it with. With a feeling of expectancy, but not with expectations. There's a difference between these two that you're. You're hoping to learn something, you're expecting to learn something, but you don't have specific expectations that you're trying to. Because if you don't get those, then you're going to be disappointed with the book. That could be very good. I heard a student say the other day in a journal, well, this book's on the syllabus, so it must be good. And I said, well, it is good, but you clearly haven't learned why yet. And so at least that person is expecting the book to be good, and that's a nice thing. So when you asked us to recommend books, it's like, well, if I'm not much of a reader and some person like me gives a book recommendation, I might be likely to accept it and try it. But the more books you read, the more books you know, you have as a sort of part of your arsenal and, you know, what's good and not so good, and then you can begin to select a little bit more, you know, discriminatingly.

Yeah. And the kinds of books, I think for me, I'm sure this has happened to you too. The kinds of books I was interested in in college are very different from the kinds of books I'm interested in now. There were books I didn't like very much then and didn't particularly care for, and I read them now and think. What was I thinking? There's so much, so much here. So reading also depends on, of course, it depends on your interest, but also where you are in life, what station, what time of life, what season, what you're going through. I think that's fair. That's, that's, that's also part of.

Part.

Of your involvement in attending to another situation, another life, another unfolding on. On. On its own terms.

Yeah.

One of my. One of my favorite lectures I've participated in my entire life was a lecture called how not to Read a Book. It was by a professor in England and I really love that. Now a former. I'm a former soccer player and I've always enjoyed life at a very fast pace. And books were always challenging to me because of the. Just the pace. And it was not until I read a few really good authors that have really were really good to capture my attention. But what I loved about lecture was saying that you will know if you read the first sentence of any chapter and the last paragraph of any chapter, depending on how good the author was or how poorly the author constructed, that you'll get everything they need because they have a tendency to provide a summary of what they said in that chapter. And so if you read the last paragraph, if they're really not a really, really good author, or even the ones. It's a temptation for every author out there. Let me just kind of summarize. So you read the first sentence, last paragraph, you read the whole chapter. And I've tested that theory on quite a few books and it worked really well. And my question to you is, what makes you a good author? Because what, what they're saying is, and I love Paul Ricker. Paul Ricker talks about what is a text and he talks about the fact that a text is not a text until the author dies. So you can't ask, ask him questions. Right. As long as you can ask the author questions. The, the text is not true text and the text will always make you ask questions, but then the next paragraph will somewhat answer it and it Will just carry you through it. Right. And it will keep you with it instead of providing a summary at the end of that. What makes a good text for you? What makes a good book for you? Something that you think this is. And I know it's. It's really complex. I mean, there's just so many genres and so many. But what make. What makes a really good author for you?

If I could just.

Yeah, go, go.

Push back a little bit. Do it.

What.

Something you just said which was, you know, a. About the author being alive. And I tell the students, the moment that book, when that last period is placed, shove the writer aside, like, you know, I don't want that writer to be alive. That writer was there to write the book. So if I'm. If I'm asking questions, the moment I ask a question of that author and say, what did you mean by this? Or I am actually allowing that person to create another text that also has to be interpreted in order to get to the first book, which is very dangerous because that person has a vested interest in me seeing that book a certain way. So I say to writers, when they want to comment on books, get in line, the back of the line. Critics do this better than you do. You write it. We take it from there. And so, yeah, I tend not to be too concerned about the writer after the book has the period on it.

Okay, wow. Interesting.

Yeah.

And so the question was, what.

What makes good text for you? What makes a good book for you?

I think what interests me in the books that have me. That I'm interested in are books that. In which the form of the work is just as much a surprise as the events. As events. So I think Le Guin talks about the difference. You know, Ursula Le Guin, she talks about difference between a story, the sequence of events, and the unfolding how. What the telling is. So I find I'm drawn to texts in which the telling is unique.

To me, I think a good book is a. At least for fiction, is a book in which a writer is sincerely grappling with something that he or she cares about deeply. So, you know, the more you read great writers, the more you realize they only write about a couple things over and over and over. You know, Melville is like this. Hemingway is like this. Like, you see the same themes, but they're still coming at it from a different stage of life. But if they didn't care about it, they would no longer be grappling with it. So once the grappling is over, the book writing is done for great Writers like it's life and death for them, it's a struggle of life and death. In fact, Hemingway said, maybe with his bravado, but he said, as soon as you learn how to face death without being afraid, you don't need books. You've learned how to live at that point in time. Books can't help you because you're living properly. And so I think. I think most writers are duking it out with death and time. The great writers are, and they care deeply about their books. When they start phoning it in or you say, hey, this book doesn't sound as good. It seems like it's, you know, maybe derivative, whatever. As an example, you know, Melville wrote to. His two earliest novels were Taipei and omu in the 1840s. They were successful South South Sea adventures. And of course, the publishers wanted more of those. And he said, I'm over that. I want to write a different kind of a book. He winds up writing a book like Marty, and people go, why on earth would this man write such an odd, unpopular book? And it's because. Because that's what he was into then. And then he wrote a book like Pierre, which is a book that included sibling incest. And he's like, this is my greatest book ever. He'd already written Moby Dick. You know what I mean? So the great writers think, this is my best book. I'm grappling better. And in Pierre, there are some amazing chapters. It's not Moby Dick, but he was really into it. And to me, that's what makes a great writer. I'm still grappling. I still think this is worthwhile. And therefore, when I'm. When I hand it to you and say, hey, hey, this is worth, you know, six, eight, 10 hours of your time, I mean it. Instead of, hey, give me the 10 bucks. Very big difference between these two things.

So when we sit in this room, you know, I look at you guys, and sometimes I'm a little jealous. If you think of the world as a big house, I feel like there's a room of the house that you understand. And I have barely peaked in, partly because I'm kind of an ADHD guy. And so for me, I'm. I like thinking and I like being challenged. But staying with something on a lot is hard. Like, I have to work hard. I had to work hard to go to school, you know, stay focused on the page and not to skip ahead and not to have the mind wander. So here's my question. Assuming that there are some folks out there Listening, who are not yet great writers, but would like to understand the world better and they'd like to be better thinkers and they'd like to under. They'd like to see this room, this beautiful room with all of its. And they maybe won't read a hundred books, but they're going to read a few. And so let me frame the question like this. If there was an island, and on the island we could have 10 books to shape thinking to, not just for enjoyment, but just to understand the world better, to be mentally challenged. You've got an average intelligence audience on this island, and you're not going to come up with a perfect 10 books. But there is, let's say, a number of people suggesting books. What are a couple of books that you would suggest. Suggest to be part of the 10 books that people should read at some point in their life.

I feel like it's going to be a grievous error not to say the Bible.

I think that goes.

The Bible, yes.

You should have started with that. Yeah, I should have to be like, disclaimer.

Okay, The Bible's number one. Well, I'll include that. It's a book.

66.

There you go. Sure.

Yeah.

66.

So having said that, you got any others to add? It's the question I was resisting.

I'm sorry. Always sorry.

Probably Dostoevsky's the Brothers Karmas of.

Oh, wow.

Wow. Sure. Yeah. I mean, you can jump into it. Yeah.

But no, I'm saying you would start. You would start some, some kerfuffle on that island if they read that. Go ahead, Doug.

You know, I think a lot of students read books that they're not ready for. I mean, if you've read the Great Gatsby in high school, you didn't read it. It's a book for adults, you know, So, I mean, I would put. I mean, I would put Moby Dick as a book that everybody hates. Everybody hates that book. Oh, I read that in high school and blah, blah, blah. I said, well, you weren't ready to read it, maybe. And so. Or you didn't have a teacher who could guide you through it properly. So I would put that in the list. But to your point, and maybe you will agree if you don't, please say so. About the, the room that you mentioned this, you know.

Yeah.

Not to get too sure, you know.

No, go ahead.

Serious here. But, like, that's a very dangerous room to enter. You know what I mean? So when you, when you, when you spend your time with Dostoevsky and Melville and whoever else, that. That's not company to be taken lightly. Like, they. They will radically change the way you look at the world. And so a lot of people don't want that. And that. That's understandable.

Stay with the schema.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I see a lot of people who are happier than I am, and I'm like. I'm kind of jealous of that. So, like, when you read a lot of great books, you're not happy most of the time. So just to say that room, that has a warning sign up in front of that room, you know?

Yeah, no, that's good. Youth pastors have more fun. Or like the blonde, I think I'm.

Often surprised when I get put in that room.

Yeah.

Because, one, I didn't know there was a room.

Did you not know there was a world outside of that room? Or did that room? I think, second.

I've often felt like finding a place to belong was hard enough, and now it's like, oh, there's a room. And third, and I think this is. This is probably what. Why I read. You can blame my parents. They read. I watched them reading, and I wanted to know what was the magic happening between. You know, between the page and them? And as a kid, when I'd look at them and be like, what is this space they're inhabiting? I'm cute. I'm chubby. I know this. And they can still not pay me attention when this thing is in their hand. Like, what is happening between them? And I think that that sort of thing I wanted. I wanted to enter that. That space. But I'm interested in everything. So reading was just a way to get at everything. And I know that's a naive. That's naive. But I like reading stories. I like reading works because there is so much to know, and I have only one life. I can't spend that kind of effort and labor to know a lot. But I can hang out with people, as Doug said, you know, who. Who are very honest about the few things that they want to wrestle with and who wrestle with it to their satisfaction or not to their satisfaction, but who are. Who are honest with the wrestling. So that the company I keep. I like their company. Their company helps me understand everybody else. That's why I like reading. I like. I like these conversations. I like. I like the ways in which these conversations go. I'd also recommend Toni Morrison's Beloved in that list.

Thank you. I was hoping for another one.

Because it's someone else. I don't know how to meet. Someone else. And I want to know what is that magic right between this other person and the world and the world that they see, the world that they're meeting.

They'Re encountering to get through the list. I guess you want to keep even one more. So my next one would be the Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad.

Oh, wow.

That, that, that book will, Will change your life if you have a good group of readers around you to discuss it. I mean, it's, it's an amazing book. And so that would be. That would be very highly regarded on my list.

The God of small things. It'll hurt you, but.

Well, this is great. And by the way, I'm going to try to read these, as you probably imagine.

Yeah, go ahead, Go ahead.

That's good.

Thank you, Renee. I'm going to, I'm going to say a. A book that has completely. That I've come back to and it's, it's. It's almost a pamphlet, but it's, it's been so good and I'm pretty sure they know it, but I'm giving you a chance to ask a question after I say this. Little Prince Antoine de Sant Exuber. Oh, my goodness. I don't know. That was just. Is revolutionary. It keeps, it keeps on giving. I mean, the small statements in that book come from such wisdom that surprised me in the most powerful way. Like I would take that. I would take that book anywhere because I think it just touches a part of human soul and humanity that sometimes not even Christians in, in all the books that they're readings and even reading through scripture, they don't come up with such understanding of, or self understanding of humanity, which I found that to be fascinating that he comes from that book and, and almost a fiction, but very, very powerful. Yeah.

I mean, none of the, none of the writers I would give you would be Christian writers.

Yeah.

And people say, well, why? Why not? And I did to what you just said and what Damani started with, which is when you're a fiction writer, you have to care about people as people on earth in physical space and time. You have to watch them, you have to listen to them, you have to love them. Otherwise there's no way you can create believable ones. And a book. Christians are too interested at times in the afterlife, the next life, things that. Things that are to come to pay attention to what's actually, you know, solid objects. Virginia Woolf, you know, Flannery o' Connor says if you can't pay attention to the stuff in front of you, then, then you're just too great of a person for such an undertaking as to write fiction. So go do something else. And she's saying it sarcastically, but, but she's. You really have to. So as a Christian, if you've been trained not to accept the world as it is, you're not going to be able to create good fiction. But if you're trained, you, you accept the world exactly as it is. But then perhaps you show something that could change that. Grace, the ability, the ability of God to step in, whatever. Then you have. And that's what her fiction is. Of course. It's, you know, she says it's the action of grace and territory held largely by the devil. But she has to create believable human beings in that space or people aren't going to want to read her books. Why would you bother? You'd read someone else. So she would be maybe the one person on the list who would be a Christian that I would, that I would include.

Wow, this is, this is beautiful.

I heard someone say once, and I'll probably say it wrong, but we, we read so that we know that we're not alone or something to that effect. I don't know if you've heard that or what you think about that.

I just. C.S. lewis, I just, I'm not going to quote him very often, but he, he said that that's why do you read is a waste of time, you know, and he said, no, he said one set of eyes is not enough to see the world with. I need 10,000 sets of ice.

Wow.

I need to each one of these perspectives. I need to see the world fully. And I'm not going to say no to any of them. And so he, he quickly just pushed aside the idea that reading books of fiction with real human beings in them is a waste of time. Like in a book. Those characters are real human beings. They're not, they're not, you know, like, you know, certain characters, you know, whoever walk the earth. You know, Mr. Verloc in the Secret Agent is a man who walked the earth. He's not a character, he's a person. He's a fully formed 3D person. And you go, this, this is a plausible, you know, plausibly created human being. And that's why you care about what happens next, because you're saying that might happen to me. Let me have a look into the future here and see what happened to Mr. Verloc when he was a double agent. Deceived his wife, whatever. You wouldn't care if he did. If he Wasn't created, you know, plausibly. And so that, that kind of work is a habit of mind. It's a habit of, you know, attention. You have to care about people to be a good fiction writer. You have to, you have to, you have to gape and stare at them for thousands of hours or do something else.

Yeah, my natural inclination is, is to ignore is, is. It's, it's the opposite of right, of what reading teaches me. I like my self absorbed world. So I say that only to get at. To answer the question you just asked about. Do you read to know that you're not alone? I think I keep going back to how I got to this. I got into reading, which sounds like, oh, I had a choice about it and I thought about it and then chose.

It's not.

It just happened. And the simple, the simple condition was that the world is much too rich. So I think of Annie Dillard, you know, the sight into insight. It's Pilgrim, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. She writes about the dire poverty of the human condition that is expressed in this way. She says if you, if you see a penny, if you see a penny right on a. On a street or something, would you just ignore it and walk by? And if you do what you've expressed. I'm badly paraphrasing what she said. What she writes is basically your own evaluation of things. So what you see is what you get if that penny, if your own poverty. She says we're all poor, right? We're finite creatures in a universe that is big, that is rich, that is. But if we fail to see that way, then our conditions aren't exciting, our conditions aren't worth our attention. And I, I like reading because there is so much. The world is too rich, the universe is much too rich. And pain is part of its. Part of how rich it is. But that's, I think, what I'm trying to get at. There's so much that so many people have written about, so many people have talked and it's, It's. Exciting isn't quite the word. It's. It feeds me. It feeds me to be able to listen, to be able to be focused, to be guided, to be, to be guided into multiple lives, to take on multiple points of view. I think that's, that's just living, isn't it? It's just, it's.

It's that I thought of something to, to maybe to come around to add that to your point, Rob, about, you know, you're, you don't have the time. You Want to keep going well or what? You know, whatever. You don't have the attention, whatever. I think the thing that might motivate someone with your personality to do that would be it's good for me to stand in someone else's shoes and look at the world differently for a long period of time in order to make myself a fuller person. This isn't enough. So, you know, when you. When you adopt someone like Ahab's perspective in, you know, Moby Dick, you're like, I don't like being in this person's shoes. But what happens to my world when I think about actually being in this position and making these decisions instead of, let's just see what happened? No, it's about inhabiting that person's body, mind, decision making for a while. And that's why a novel needs to be kind of long. You can't do this quickly, so, you know, that's. It almost approximates, like, approximates watching your parents when you're growing up, you know what I mean? Like, you're there, you're there hour after hour, and you sort of just take on there because you must. And when you read a book, you know, you of course have the option to put the book down. But people who continue to pick up the book. I have great admiration for people who read books because they're willing to continue to face the world in a painful circumstance and put themselves in the middle of it. That's not easy to do. And so, you know, some people are more prone to it, some need it, some maybe shy away from it, but everybody, I think, benefits from that.

What a challenge from Doug for us and for the audience. Do not press the escape button. Hold on to that book. Stay with it. And. And I think that's it. That's wonderful. And it's a profound challenge. I love this. And so many more things that we could talk about. The increased rate of illiteracy, the literacy, or the illiteracy with YouTube channels coming and hitting the world with the Snapchats of the world, with the Instagrams. Now everything is video. People are eating true food. And. And we don't like to think for ourselves. And so that that's increasing that. That rate. The oral culture, orality. I mean, we have not really done too much, but what I've gotten in this, in this 30 minutes was really profound. I'm very thankful for this. We need to get to know you a little bit better. And you know, Doug, he started reading books. He's not that happy, but I really think he's a happy man. I've seen him on kiddos campus. And now we have a chance to rapid fire tonight. Comparatively. Yes, only comparatively. We have a chance to get to know them a little better. And not just professionally, but personally. So rapid fire, we're going to start with Renee because Renee was so kind to just go through this, through this session and give us a chance to talk. Renee, if you have a question or if you want to go for rapid fire.

Yeah, sure. If you could have a lifetime supply of anything, what would it be?

And you both need to answer. So this is not. This is not tac team. A lifetime supply in anything.

Mountain Dew money.

That's great. Second question. Rapid fire. You have to take a one year sabbatical. You have to go somewhere you've never lived. What country are you going to? One year?

Italy.

Yeah, I've got so many. I would say probably. I would probably go to Germany.

Yeah, Germany.

Nice.

What is the weirdest thing you wanted to be when you grew up?

Oh, it's a good one.

I wanted to be an orthodontist.

For real?

For real Player. I didn't see that coming.

I wanted to be a psychiatrist.

I see that coming. Yeah, I could see that. Yeah.

Yeah.

I could see how you deconstruct people's worlds and they put it back together.

Back to. Yeah. So if you could live. If you could live for one week in any movie, television show or book, which. Which would you choose?

I want to hang out with the ents. What with the ants.

Now you're talking about.

Want to hang out with the ants.

The ants are going to Eisen Guard. Yeah, absolutely.

I just have to say Hooers. There we go. There we go. 1950s Indiana.

Yeah.

That's really exciting. I mean this is my wife's in I just my place. Renee.

Renee, what are you most looking forward to this year?

I'm most looking forward to hanging out, I think hanging out with family and friends.

There we go. Not wearing a mask. There we go.

Now we're talking about. Yes, yes, yes. Oh, I had one.

Darn it. What was it? Oh, yeah. Okay. One thing you really like about Christianity.

Jesus.

That was good.

That's rapping. The ability to conf. The. The willingness to confront the world without resorting to alcohol and drugs.

There we go.

Wow. For the ones that can.

Or overindulgence.

Here's my last question. If you had a parrot. Oh, I love this question. Every time I have to ask it. What would you teach it to say? What would. What would be one Word. Or something that you would teach your parrot to say.

I think I'd shoot my parrot.

Peter could send letter to.

If you want to send letters or starve. My parrot.

Oh, boy. Oh, boy. For like to. Not because of the singing or is it.

I'd probably forget it was there.

Oh, that's why. That's why. So you wouldn't do it on purpose.

I'm wavering between well done and I like you now.

Okay, so here.

Can I do one more? Yes, please.

Okay. So we're kind of an international bunch. I mean, sort of. We got a Romanian. We got a couple of Canadians. I'm calling Doug American, but he's sort of Canadian and. And then Indian, I believe. What one food from.

We have Renee from Illinois, you know.

Sorry, Renee from Illinois. Yeah, that's right. Illinois is a place. What's the one food from your, like, I don't know, like, someplace you've lived that would be interesting to us like that. Like. I don't know.

Oh, my grandma's pierogies.

Oh, yeah. I like the pierogies.

I just still think of them.

Yeah. Yeah.

Interesting to you?

Yeah. To the novice.

To the novice. I'd say a biryani.

What is a beer?

Biryani. Rice and meat.

Okay.

In one. In one. In one dish.

I'm for those.

Yep.

Okay.

Wow. Thank you.

Well, we cannot thank you enough for being with us. I, for one, got tremendous value from. From the session. I want to thank you. If you want to learn more, you can actually audit courses at Multoma University. You. And that is a. That is a. Or possibility. Or just enroll fully. But you would be studying under the great wisdom and leadership of Doug and Domani, and I am very personally thankful for the ability to work with them. So thank you for coming to Monoma to MU talks.

Thank you.

And thank you for. For being with us. And with that being said, Rob, you.

Know, I'm the trade monkey. He says go and I go.

I tell jokes. The previous recording has been.

Or the current. Or the current.

The current recording has been a couple of guys talking. A couple of folks friends.

It's not.

It's not from Multnomah University. Don't sue us. No, we don't represent the views.