Done deal! I’ll have the new Mac mini at my doorstep by Monday. I made a good friend in the order process, a guy named Marty from Brooklyn, who’s been working at B&H for 11 years. He started there when he was 61 yrs old and has no plans to retire. When I gave him my last name, he quoted a line from Gunsmoke about Chester on that show. Of course the show was very popular when I was a kid, and I often imitated Chester’s limp and speech patterns on the show as I was growing up.

So then I told him about the song, The Weight, with the line about Crazy Chester, which led to a 20 min discussion about Bob Dylan and then Patti Smith, singing Hard Rain at Bob’s Nobel Prize ceremony.. And please, if you watch the video of her performance, you must also watch the video where she describes her experience in the performance and its aftermath.

Now my friend, Marty, is gonna read Patti’s book, Just Kids, on my advice. He thanked me for the order, but mostly thanked me for the really interesting discussion. I think we both ended the call feeling like it had been a marvelous experience. Even in something so mundane as ordering something on the Internet, a joyful experience is possible, if you’re open to it.