The World of a Busy Writer and Active Octogenarian with Marjorie Burns

Okay. Well, hello to everyone joining us today on our podcast. You're listening to one of our Successful Aging episodes this month on the Living to 100 Club program, and I'm your host, Joseph Casciani. Each program, our conversations educate and inspire, helping you get the best out of all the years we're given, regardless of what obstacles come our way. You can learn more about my club at our website. Be sure to take a look at my new training and activities manual, Better, Longer, and Happier: A Guide to Aging with Purpose and Positivity. This is a series of 12 modules in a card deck format developed for activities directors at senior living communities to learn more about psychologically healthy aging. And to engage senior residents in activities that are cognitively challenging and foster a positive mindset. Modules 1 through 9 are on sale now. Visit my website, livingto100.club/blh. Now on to today's program. Our guest on our podcast today is Dr. Marjorie Burns. Who prefers to go by Baiji as her first name. In this conversation, we learn about Baiji's latest period of her life as the author of a new book of fiction, The New Cadets, and we learn about her attitude to keep it moving. Now in her 80s, our guest hikes, bicycles, and skis in her home state of Washington. She has a 20-foot 27-foot climbing wall in her home, which she puts to good use. Why does she stay so physically active? Does her chronological age ever tell her to slow down? As a writer of academic books, papers, and journal articles, how did she come to write a children's book? And what was the inspiration for The New Cadets? And how would this new series of children books unfold? First, a little background. Marjorie Burns, author of The New Cadets, was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. She studied at the University of California, earning her PhD with a dissertation on fantasy and children's literature in 19th century England. She taught English literature and writing at Portland State University for more than 30 years. And she's published extensively in her field, largely on the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien. She's now retired from university teaching and lives in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State. Baiji, welcome to our program today.

It's kind of fun to have someone using my nickname Baiji.

Oh, good.

These programs have always been Marjorie, but Baiji is what people who know me well call me.

Yeah, how did that come to be, by the way? That's an unusual name, a beautiful, pretty name.

Where did it come to be? When I was 2 years old, I couldn't say Marjorie. And don't tell me, or do tell me, how I got Marjorie turned into Baiji, but the name stuck with me, and even the grade school teachers called me Baiji. Still sticks with me.

Wow. Okay.

No dignity at my age to still being called Biju. You know, what can I say?

Well, we're not too concerned about ego these days, are we? No.

Yeah, it goes as you get older, I think, or it should.

So I always like to open by asking our guests to tell us a little bit about the journey that brought you to where you are today. Accomplished a lot— teaching, writing, Doing a lot of outdoor sports and events. What are some of the highlights that brought you to where you are today?

I thought about that question, and I think even when I was young, I wanted it all. I wanted to have children, husband. I didn't know what the rest of the all meant, but it ended up being several things, the university teaching being one of them. And I also thought that I, I've lived more than one life. I suppose I live as Marjorie, the formal person, Baiji, the less formal person, and I've traveled a lot. I've lived in France as an exchange student in high school, so I have competent French, and I lived in Norway twice, the second time under a Fulbright professorial scholarship. So I was teaching, and I love the Norwegians, and Norwegian is a fairly easy language too. So I think if you learn other languages and you live in other cultures, and if you read books about other lives, you live more than one life. You have that experience. And Joe, do you speak another language?

Uh, no, no, I've studied several, but I don't speak any currently.

Yeah, but if you've ever spoken any, even not much, you, you feel like somehow you're a different person living somewhat of a different life. Yeah, so you'd understand that. And I, I've had a lot of lives, and I thought, well, here I start, and then I spread out, try something else, but what you try out comes back together to being you. And so And lots of friends. I don't think you have to travel or speak another language to do that, to live other lives. But the more you do it and the more you listen to other people, not just talk about yourselves, as I am having to do here today. It's a funny thing to me, talk about me. You gain, you learn from other people.

And we keep evolving and we keep opening new doors, as I say.

That's right.

There's a quote that I love, and I can't think of her name, but she said, "I've already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be." Yeah, famous writer. I can't think of her name. It'll come to me. But I think it is, as you say, just going, experiencing different cultures, learning new languages, encountering new people, new friendships, and it helps us to evolve and grow.

Yeah, new ideas.

Um, new ideas.

Anyone has time on the web nowadays, the scientific learnings that are coming through, being on Mars, it's just amazing. There are new things all the time. I sometimes have found myself saying, maybe in the last 20 years, boy, I'm glad I didn't die last year. I know so much more this year. And I don't mean just science, I mean to be human, about how to be human and how to be the best self. And then the next year I'll say, boy, I'm glad I didn't die that year. I know more now. And, and it's a delight.

Yeah, so much richer, right? I mean, it's a rich life. Yeah, not financially, of course, but rich life.

But the past— go ahead, please.

No, go ahead.

The past stays with us. Um, I've been finding in this publishing this book and somehow getting public attention more that people keep talking about me as an octogenarian. Now, you haven't reduced me to that, but some people have. And I think I wasn't born an octogenarian. I was all these other things. And life isn't a bus that drops you off at one bus stop, and then you're a toddler and another, another bus stop, and you're a teenager, and then a young married person.

You—

it's more like a train where all the things you've been, they stay with you. I have such, such vivid memories of my childhood. Yeah. It's still there.

And the age is, is, uh, I think it's more of a distraction sometimes. It's the chronological age anyway. It doesn't— it's only a number. And, um, if we can set it aside, I think we do better. That's, that's my opinion. Yeah.

Yeah. Fine too.

Yeah. Because, you know, but we start thinking of the number and people start saying, well, I don't know if I should be doing that at my age. I don't think I should, you know, I should limit myself more. And I think that's just unfair to ourselves.

Yeah, sure. We have to, to some extent.

Yeah. Well, because we can't, but not to tell ourselves we can't.

Sure.

Right. What does successful aging mean to you? What, how would you define successful aging?

Keep doing the things you like. I'm active. I don't like gyms particularly, except for rock climbing gyms, but I have nothing against them. Other people do. So I go outside as much as I can and I climb indoors on the climbing wall, not as much as I should, but I just did it again to the top the other day saying, I've got to keep doing this if I'm going to say I do it. But mostly I do things because I want to. I have a friend in the community, retired judge, a little younger than I, who says, when he's on a bicycle, he feels like a 10-year-old kid again. And exactly, I'm on my bicycle, just flying along effortlessly. And the same when the snow is right, where I live near the mountains, you can go out on skis. You can just skim over the world. You don't feel 80. No, nothing like it at all. Other things I do more lightly. I don't do class 4 whitewater kayaking anymore. It's very little incline or a flat. Yeah, that's, that's fine. I'm still doing it. And that, the feeling of moving your boat is a wonderful feeling.

Yeah. And that's, as you say, keep doing what you love. And you're, you're very active physically. The climbing wall, 27 feet, that's— I think I asked you, that's probably more than 2 stories if you look at it.

It really is 2 stories. It's, um, from the middle floor up to the roof. Yeah, it has an overhang at the last so that you have to kind of lean back and, and, uh, work a little harder.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I've seen the mountain climbers do that and stuff, you know, kind of reaching back, and it's mind-boggling that they can do that. So kudos to you for doing it yourself. Yeah, so, um, What gives purpose? What gives you meaning in your life? What puts a smile on your face when you wake up in the morning?

The dogs usually waking me up. The older one comes, her name is Talkie. She was a rescue dog named Talkie because she talks like that. And they wake me up and their tails are wagging. And how can you not feel joy when someone is wagging a tail like that? Glad to see you and glad another day is starting. And you know, I have out my window the mountain. This is very close by, covered with snow all year round. And, uh, it's, it's a wonderful world, like the Louis Armstrong song goes.

So, um, the dogs, that's great. Um, you have family that is around, supports you, and we do encourages you and gives you a lot of, um, energy.

I have 4 children, and for a while all 4 of them were living in Portland, Oregon. They'd be close. Now one still lives in Portland and one is in Port Townsend, and, um, 2 of them live right here. My second son Matthew lives on the third floor of this house, and I have a now a small space which you can— some of which you can see behind me.

Sure.

And down here, which is just fine when you've cleaned house for decades, it's very nice to have less to clean. And we share the middle floor with the kitchen is and take turns cooking. And next door, my oldest son bought 8-some acres, and he and his wife live there. So the two brothers can help each other out. And, and we're all pretty independent. Matthew, who lives with me, we both like a lot of alone time. We don't bother each other, but we enjoy each other.

Sure, sure.

It's all very nice.

Yeah, yeah, that's a comfortable, uh, home setting. I like that.

Yeah, he's out clearing the irrigation ditches because the water is going to be turned on again tomorrow. Gotta be ready.

Well, homeowner has many chores. Yeah, yes. Yeah, it doesn't go away. So, um, speaking of chronological age and things that you love to do, are there some things from your past that you, you've had to give up that you cannot do anymore?

In a sense, I have this memory. I can hardly believe it's true. My mother and grandmother were playing cards in front of fireplace at, uh, my family home where I grew up. And there was a space between their table and the fireplace of maybe 2 feet. I don't know what made me do it, but I loped across the living room, jumped the card table, and landed. And they looked up and laughed. I don't think I could do that ever again.

Probably. Well, you probably haven't tried.

I've got long jumps that I can't do. But basically, swim. I pretty much can do everything that I enjoy doing.

Well, have you ever done any mountain climbing?

Yes, a few times. Um, in Mount Hood. Yeah, I've trekked up high in Nepal, um, to the base of Mount Everest and Bhutan. Uh, we didn't climb those mountains, but I was right up there.

What I'm hearing By G, what I'm inferring is that you don't put a lot of, um, limits on yourself. You don't have a lot of self-limiting thoughts. You're just continuing to be who you are and do what you like and go after those things that bring you some reward.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I think that's— I think that's important because we do, we do tend to limit ourselves sometimes. So how do you, how do you divide your, your day between leisure and your writing? How do you tell us a typical day for you?

I get up a little lazy, have a cup of tea. Don't drink much coffee. I always say that I'm sort of naturally caffeinated and you don't want to see me under the influence, all dithery, of much caffeine. And I look a little bit at the news on my tablet and then I usually do some writing. For a while, and then the dogs come along, and one or the other will come up their nose and lift my arm from the computer. Time to get out. So we walk out in the fields and let them dig for underground rodents, or we bike— I bike, they run or ski— and do something with them. And then there's always housework and yard work. And for a long time, For a couple of weeks last fall, we were splitting wood from two tall, tall pine trees that had to come down, both of them, all three of them, probably around 100 feet. And so there's that work is there. Running the splitter, tossing the wood, there's work like that and vacuuming, which I don't like, housework. Necessary, and there. So, um, it isn't on a schedule.

It's not a schedule. Okay.

But that's basically how a day will go. And then working again, writing again in the afternoon. But it's, uh, I don't have a rigid schedule and I don't have a fitness program.

Okay, more fluid.

Yeah, other than standing on one foot or the other when I brush my teeth, that's the only fitness program I've That's the routine.

Well, balance is good. Balance is good. And brushing our teeth with a non-dominant hand and doing all those different things. Sure, right, sure. Well, tell us about your, your book, The New Cadets. It's, it's the first in a series, as I recall.

It is.

Yeah. Tell us about the, the plot of The New Cadets, and we'll talk about the series.

Uh, the plot, the plot May I say something about the origin of it? Because—

Oh yes, sure, sure.

Why the plot exists. My oldest grandson, who's now 6'4" and going on 24, at about age 5 or 6 was having night terrors, terrible nightmares. And so I bought him an almost full-sized stuffed toy, about 3/4 size, and told him it was a service dog trained to work in dreams. And that, of course, it's a toy in the day, but at night, obviously, if it's a toy in the day, obviously at night in dreams it's alive, which made perfect sense to his idea of logic at the age he was. And, and this dog that he named Oliver, he saw in his dreams. He told me he saw Oliver there. Did it make a big difference? I don't know, but it didn't hurt. And it started me writing first some sort of newsletters from a place I invented called Snooze News. And from that, I started writing the story of how these dogs are recruited in toy stores, taken off to be trained where they gain the ability to move. They become flesh dogs when they, they go through a tunnel into this world. And there they have to learn what it is to have a living body, which allowed me— didn't plan to do this, but I get to talk about what it is to have a body and to have a spirit. They have to learn about eating, which they take to rather readily. They are dogs, talking dogs. And they have to learn about toilets even. And I had my publisher said to me, well, they want to be real dogs. And I went, no, no. It's not Pinocchio. Pinocchio was the puppet that wanted to be a real boy. These dogs are quite happy when they go back and get their clients and their toys that can now, you know, are well trained in accompanying their clients in dreams. Their original ambition was to be a personal toy, and they're quite content doing that, though they like the mobility. It's a world of magic, but I've become a little jaded with spellcasting, wand-waving magic. So the magic is more just what the world is, like this world. We forget how magical it is. And that's something that's come back to me as I'm older and maybe not so caught up in work and raising a family, but how absolutely amazing the world is. I look at things and it seems to me, it seems to me, I can only guess a little bit, that I'm seeing the world again the way I did when I was a child, just with awe. At any rate, the world has, for example, the world they go to has a place called the Variable Sea. Every 12 hours and 25 minutes, it changes to something else. Probably another sea, maybe a large lake. Once they see it, it's a pond. Um, and, and so you can't control it. You can't wave a wand and make it do this or that. It does what it does, and it's just like it is for us in this world. We have to adjust. We have to go along with what's there. And in a lower valley below where the academy is, where the dogs are going to school, Only dogs can go down there. Humans try to go down and they break out into a sweat and they can't do it. I can't do it. The dogs can. And down there they meet some elements that you find in dreams, which are called the mood elements. Moodies, they're normally called. Now and then there's a storm that sends these moods up from the valley to the upper valley, and all the people and all the dogs are feeling whatever mood is hitting. They might be muddling and saying, "I've always thought you were such a good friend," weepy, or they might be in a hilarious mood, laughing and falling down on the ground, or sad, or angry at each other. It was a wonderful chapter to write when a hostility storm hits these people and they're all sort of snarling at each other and snapping at each other. It was fun to write that. And then from the lower valley is one of the ways you can get into the dream world. The world of dreams, whichever you want to call it. And these Moodies are still in that world, and there are other creatures that will either herd them towards a dreamer and create the dream they want you to have so they can get the feeding from it that they like, or, or they go around and just find one there. Sometimes groups of different type of these dream creatures will work together. And that's what makes a dream. It's your memories. They draw on your memories.

Yeah.

I had great fun writing the haunted house one because I had a dream like that as a child where there's a horrible house alone and you find yourself going up the steps. You don't want to go in, but you do. I don't know if other people have had that dream, but I'm compelled to go in. And once in, it's dark and there's a sense of horrible things off to the sides. But I have to go up the stairs. Yeah, I have to go up, and I'll maybe go up more stairs, more stairs, until I panic and run out and things are chasing me. I always survive, but that dream is basically there in my story too, dreams I remember from my childhood. Yeah, making myself do— yeah, something I didn't want to do.

Very vivid fantasy.

It is. Yes, it is.

Yeah, there's no— yeah, there's no walls to it. There's no— there's no constraints. It's just how it unfolds.

Another one I had, I think it's recurring, I'm not sure, is a child, and I'm standing on the edge of a cliff and it's night, and behind me is a restaurant with windows, and you, you can see inside, light and people talking. I'm there at the edge of this cliff with just darkness beyond, and I have to jump. You're a psychologist. How would you interpret that?

Well, I don't know.

Let me know later if you have any idea.

I think I will. Yeah, maybe we can have that conversation another time. Um, uh, so you're bringing the dreams into the writing, or a couple of dreams anyway.

Yeah.

Did you jump?

Several, and there are going to be more.

Did you jump on the cliff, off the cliff?

I did. What? In the dream, I jump off the cliff.

You did jump?

Nothing bad happens.

Okay. Yeah, yeah. And you incorporated that into the book?

That isn't there yet, but it will be. I wrote, um, 2 volumes of the book, and the publisher Paul said, break it into 2 books each volume. So the book that's coming out is, uh, half of Volume 1. Had to shift things to make a, a good conclusion to Book 1, and then Book 2 is basically ready to go, though I know there's a lot more proofreading. It is so easy Yeah, even trained in this sort of thing to make a mistake and not see it. You get so used to reading there, you read what you want to see. And book 3 and 4 are pretty well done, and I'm working on book 5. So we are— but the leaping off the cliff isn't there yet.

It's not there yet. Maybe 2, maybe number 2, maybe 3.

Yeah, 4, 5, it'll be there.

So is the New Cadets Volume 1 of the four?

Yes.

Okay. And what's the series again? I forget the series.

The Dream Ranger series.

The Dream Rangers.

Those are what the dogs become when they get trained. They're Dream Rangers.

Wow. Okay. And it's fascinating that you, you had this specialty your whole career in, uh, writing and children's fantasy, and you, you did your whole dissertation on children's fantasy in 19th century England and literature. I mean, that's, that's, that's pretty unique. Are there a lot of people with that specialty?

I know, um, I have a good friend who's still teaching at Portland State, but I wasn't most— I wasn't teaching children's literature, but I did teach a lot of Tolkien, which was— he and C.S. Lewis show up at the end of my dissertation because they were born Victorians. Uh, but mostly I was dealing with people you might not know of— John Ruskin and William Makepeace Thackeray. And no, people don't know those names, so it doesn't matter if you do or don't. Um, very, very good writers. George MacDonald, hmm, there's another Andrew Lang who collected the fairy books— the Red Fairy Book, the Green Fairy Book. He wrote some things of his own. Anyhow, uh, I didn't really teach those things so much as teaching, and I love teaching Dickens and George Eliot.

Okay.

And Hardy and the Brontës. And my— after I'd been teaching Dickens for a while, my father, I think, told me that his grandmother had gone to church with Dickens in Rochester, England.

Oh wow.

Dickens any better, but stuff. It's kind of fun.

Some connection there. Sure, sure.

I really, really like Dickens. I told myself a few days ago I'm going to read maybe David Copperfield again. Do it.

Where does the— where does the fantasy come from in your writing? I mean, that's probably a difficult question, but where, where, where does it surface from? Where does it bubble up from? Is it primary process? No, no censor? I mean, where does it come from?

Well, my father would read to us, and I remember him reading The Wind in the Willows— wonderful, wonderful book— my brother and sister rolling around laughing on the carpet. I was too young to get it, but I know now it also influenced Tolkien quite a bit. Um, and he would read me the Oz books. Those are the main memories, or recite pieces from Hiawatha, things like that. And I read a lot. And I wanted to have the kind of adventures you read about. I remember climbing out the window at night and sitting on the slatted roof and saying, you know, here I am so sincere, you know, can't I be taken away and have a wonderful adventure? I even have a faint memory of one day resenting my parents and thinking, it's so unfair, they're such good parents. If I only had bad parents, I could run away and have adventures.

It means—

which tells you, you can never win as a parent. There's always— even being good can be criticized.

We can always find something, right?

Always find something. Yeah. So I wanted to have those.

Yeah.

Wonderful thrilling adventures.

All right.

I didn't not just discover C.S. Lewis's Narnia stories until I was older.

So yeah, so a lot of the reading, hearing the stories growing up, and then allowing yourself to have these fantasies about where would you go if you ran away and what would you do. And right, unlimited, right? Unlimited possibility, unlimited doors to open. Yeah, wow. So, um, congratulations on, on Volume 1, and, um, sounds like 2 is certainly on its way, and probably 3 and 4 are close to the surface.

Close to completion, yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What are your goals for the next year, would you say? What are your goals for writing? Do you think you stay with this series?

Well, yes, I would go on make sure that Book 2 gets out. And I have friends who proofread for me. Everybody finds something. Nobody finds it all, I find, in proofreading. And then pushing forward in Book 5, I also have an essay I'd like to get out, a literary criticism one. And that's on The King of the Golden River by John Ruskin, whose name I mentioned a while ago, and Tolkien. It needs to find a home. I don't need to publish. I don't have any, um, gain at a university, you know, no, no raise in position or pay. So, but, but there, the essay is done essentially, and I would like to get that out. And I meet with friends once a month by Zoom who other people write on Tolkien. And, uh, we used to meet once a year somewhere in the, in, uh, the country, but after the pandemic, we've taken to meeting Once a month.

Online virtual meetings, sure, but more often. Yeah, yeah. So what advice would you have for anyone in their 70s, 80s, 90s to live a wholesome, vibrant life? What, what, what tips can you share?

Keep gratitude. For all— think how unlikely it is that we exist, that you and I exist at all. And we're, we're a piece of the universe who— that is capable of looking at the universe and to some extent understanding it.

It's—

remember that amazing ability and, and keep doing the, the joyful things, the things that you'd like to do, as much as you can. Meeting new friends. I've been seeing on my tablet several little mini essays, can you still make new friends after college or after high school? And I think, what are they talking about? Of course you can make new friends, and very, very good friends too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So to keep that connection, that social interaction, connection links, sure. Yeah, keep doing what you love. And, uh, I like what you said there— focus on what you can do, not dwell on what you can't do anymore.

Jumping card tables.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Here where I live in the small community, I often say that you'd have to look long and hard to find someone you can't learn something from.

Of course, we're always learning. Yes, we're always learning.

Well, yeah, my dog is scratching on the door. He— yeah, I hear— if you hear a squeak coming over in your podcast, there she is, maybe looking for a little attention.

You've been devoted to this podcast all this time.

I thought my son had them off, but I— this one has escaped.

So any, um, any final recommendations for our listeners? Um, some, some good tips there? Any, any other thoughts that you'd like to share?

Yeah, get over yourself. I think as you get older, you see that more and more. And I have a little bit of a quibble with the self-love theme that goes on nowadays. Yes, you don't want to resent yourself, dislike yourself, despise yourself, by no means. But so much good comes from doing for others. And think, the human race has survived because we've been there for each other and reached out. Uh, yeah, yeah, love yourself, but maybe love your neighbor and others more, as much as you can. Yeah, and love the world.

Did you say get over yourself? Was that—

I did.

You did. That's— I just want to repeat that. I like that. Let's put the spotlight on that. Get over yourself. Not too, not too centered, not too much spotlight on ourselves, but how we are in the world, how we connect with others. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And it's easier as you get older, at least for me, yeah, uh, and my friends, to not take offense or to take suggestions from other people, to be wrong. This gets easier. I think back on the first high school reunion where everybody was wanting to show everybody else just how very well they're doing, um, it's kind of impressive. And that should go. Doesn't mean you do less well, but it just means you, you open up.

You open up and give up trying to be perfect, right? And give up on being perfect.

Yeah, you bet.

That's, that's, um, that's a no-win race. Yeah. Uh, how can people buy a copy of your book? Is it available on Amazon, or—

It is. It's coming out on the 15th. I can show you a copy of it.

It's next week, The New Cadets.

Okay., and, uh, I find that very strong pastel. I think, well, ever since Barbie came out, it may not be pink, but pastels are strong in that cover. Um, it— the publishing house is Gabbro Head, and that's spelled G-A-B-B-R-O, new word, head. It's a rock formation in the Midwest. And the press is named after that. So if you just look, look for The New Cadets, or you look for Gabro Press. Yeah, Gabro Press, you'll find it.

Yeah. Uh, on the COVID the dog, is that, um, um, is that a toy dog or a real dog?

This, this dog was a toy dog. He's in flesh form now in Cross Over the World. And the illustrations are done by a neighbor friend of mine, one of those new friends you can still make, and she's got all these wonderful points through it. She was an artist who hadn't been into illustration, but she then— my daughter was— went to art schools back east, and it was a lower level to be doing illustration. You have to be doing oil paintings. And that was at Cooper Union New York or RISD, Rhode Island School of Design, she went to. My friend Carolyn Wilhelm, the illustrator, had the same thing. You know, illustration, it's when you teach in an English department, writing is low and teaching literature is lofty. Silly, stupid thinking. I taught a course even towards the end of my career on writing for science. One of my published books is on local geology, of all things. And it's great fun to take a concept and make it comprehensible for everyone, for a regular human being. And you don't look down on teaching writing. You don't look down on illustration. All of these, all of these things are wonderful and demanding and essential.

Difficult. Challenging. It is very difficult to translate that. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Well, good luck with the sales. It sounds like a great book. I'd like to pick up a copy myself. I'd like to send you one. Yeah. Yeah. Terrific. Well, before we wrap up, I just want to remind my listeners, my G, to visit my website, livingto100.club, and sign up for my email list and download a free copy of my 9 Tips to Make Living Longer Enjoyable. And if you're affiliated with a senior living setting or community, be sure to look for my training manual, Better, Longer, and Happier. Baiji, thanks so much for being a guest on our program today. I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation.

Thank you for having me. It's an honor.

Great. Well, you're welcome. You're most welcome.