32 minute read
university of utah, and university Librarian, brigham Young university
Associate Dean for Collections and scholarly Communication, university of utah, and university Librarian, brigham Young university
by Leah Hinds (Executive Director, Charleston Library Conference) <leah@charlestonlibraryconference.com>
and Tom gilson (Associate Editor, Against the Grain) <gilsont@cofc.edu>
The following is a lightly edited transcript of an episode of ATG The Podcast that was posted on August 18, 2020.
LH: Hi, I’m Leah Hinds. Executive Director of the Charleston Library Conference and I’d like to welcome you to ATG! The Podcast. This week we have a new interview with Rick Anderson, currently the Associate Dean for Collections and Scholarly Communication at University of Utah and recently named University Librarian at Brigham Young University. I conducted the interview alongside Tom Gilson, Associate Editor of Against the Grain. Join us to hear a conversation about Rick’s transition from University of Utah to BYU, his love of music and his CD HotList website and some recent articles and projects he’s been involved with. Thanks for listening and I hope you enjoy this week’s episode. TG: Rick, first we’d like to congratulate you on your recent appointment as University Librarian at Brigham Young University and, speaking of which, can you tell us a little bit about how it all happened? What led you to apply for the job and what factors lead you to accept?
RA: Yeah, so, I actually got my start at bYu. I got my undergraduate degree and my library degree there back when they had a library program and I have just always loved bYu. I’ve always missed it. I’ve always felt a pull back to my alma mater, and over the years, as I’ve come to find that I enjoyed the work of library administration and library leadership, the University librarian job there has sort of become my dream job in my head and the timing in the past had never quite been right. But this time it was, although the circumstances under which the job came open were tragic and very sad for me and for all of us in libraries in the state of Utah with the passing of Jennifer Paustenbaugh who was a friend and a huge hero to all of us. But, when they decided to open up the position again, the timing was finally right for me and I was at a point in my career where it felt like the right move, and so one of the things that really attracts me about bYu is that I’ve been for the last 13 years at a Research 1 University that is an absolutely wonderful institution and a place where it is just very, very exciting to be, and that’s been wonderful and I’m tremendously grateful for the opportunity I’ve had to be at the university of utah. But, I’ve got about ten years left in my career before I’ll hit retirement age and I’m really excited about the prospect of spending those last ten years focusing on student success, undergraduate education and basically being of service to bYu students whom I have always loved and continue to love. So I’m really excited to be back on that campus working with the tremendous leadership team at the bYu Library and at a unique and wonderful university that’s focused on undergraduate education and student success.
LH: Thank you, Rick. So, according to BYU Academic Vice President Shane Reese it was “Rick’s wealth of experience in libraries” that made you their top choice. As you look back on your past career, which of those experiences do you think best prepared you to take on the challenge of being the University Librarian at BYU?
RA: It’s weird because in my mind I’m still kind of 28 years old and for anybody to talk about me having “a wealth of experience” just seems kind of strange. But, the reality is that I’m 55 years old and that as I look back on it I go “Oh, wow, I actually have had a fairly long career already and a wide range of experiences,” and I’ve now worked at three different research universities, in three different research libraries, as well as spending the first four years of my career at what was then called Yankee book Peddler serving all kinds of libraries as a bibliographer working with approval plans. Each one of those places where I’ve worked has given me experience and exposure to incredibly smart and accomplished, insightful people who have educated me and helped me along my way and all of those experiences have been tremendously important in preparing me to take on leadership in the library at bYu. But, I think the single most important experience and the most important preparation I’ve had for this job has been the last seven years that I’ve spent working under Dean Alberta Comer, who came to us in 2013. I just can’t say enough about not only what a talented leader she is but also what a tremendous example she sets of leadership that is simultaneously empathetic and genuinely caring for the people who work for her and focused on fostering the success of the students and the University. She’s always got that balance in mind and I’ve learned so much from working closely with her at moments when there have been crises or problems, and she’s responded in a particular way and I thought “Dang, I’m not sure that’s how I would have responded, but, that was the perfect way to respond!” And I’ve just sort of grabbed those experiences like a squirrel hunting nuts and cached them away in the tree of my brain and said to myself “I need to remember what I just saw her do, because hopefully someday I’m going to have the opportunity to put those lessons to use in my own leadership experience.” So, again, I think the time that I had to spend with Alberta has been the single most important preparation but certainly everything that I’ve done in small and medium size and large libraries and
on the book-selling side have been hugely helpful in preparing me to be ready for this opportunity.
TG: Rick, it sounds like having Alberta as a mentor really made a big difference?
RA: Oh, absolutely. Her mentorship has been completely invaluable. I can’t say enough about what a great mentor she has been.
TG: The one question we feel we need to ask is what do you see as the key challenges that you’re going to face as University Librarian at BYU, and have you any specific strategies in mind as to how you’d address those challenges?
RA: I think we’re going to talk about the COVID-19 stuff specifically in a minute, but just in general terms, certainly making that shift from supporting a research-focused university to supporting a student education-focused university is going to require a shift in mindset. I don’t think that’s going to be too hard. I think it’s going to be gradual, but I think it will come more or less naturally as I get acclimated to the new environment. But, I think what’s going to be a bigger challenge is going to be the sheer process of getting to know a new large and complex and diverse staff and organization in the library and then getting to know a large and complex and diverse university organization. Certainly one of the daunting things about being a University Librarian is the thought of having really difficult decisions to make and never really being positive that you’re going to make the right decision. That’s scary. But, I think in the short term the thing that is most daunting to me is the thought of setting foot on that campus and going “Holy cow! Where do I even start?” And because I’ve been thinking about that a lot, I have actually formulated some strategies, one of which is my to “hit the ground listening.” When I get to the library, one of the messages that I will be sending is “do not look to me for major programmatic or organizational changes for the next six months to a year.” Right now, I need to listen. I need to learn. I need to get a sense of what’s going on and why it’s going on and where the issues are and what people think about the issues. I need to take this opportunity to let people tell me what they think and share what their dreams and hopes are for the university or for the library, and what their fears are, and I need to go around campus. I need to meet with the other deans. I need to meet with campus leadership and say “What are you trying to do?” And then come away from those conversations back to the library and say “Okay, here’s what they’re trying to do in the College of Humanities. Here’s what they’re trying to do in the Equity and Diversity Office. We need to figure out what we can do as a library to help them do those things.” One of the common complaints that my colleagues have heard from me is that in libraries we have a tendency to go out to faculty or student leadership or university leadership and say “What can the library do to help you?” The problem is, it’s not their job to know what the library can do. They don’t know how to answer that. What we need to do is go to them and just figure out what they’re trying to do and ask them questions like “When you try to do this, what kind of barriers do you run into? What are the challenges and frustrations you’re facing?” And then we need to go back to the library and huddle up and say “Okay, they’re facing this kind of barrier. Is this something that we can help with?” And the answer is almost always “yes,” but we have to think creatively in order to figure out how to do it. So, trying to maintain that kind of a mindset in myself, resisting the temptation to swoop in and solve problems that I think I understand because somebody just explained them to me for 15 minutes, and instead just listening, getting my feet under me and getting my brain around the issues that the library and the university are facing as best I can so that when the time comes to make decisions the leadership team and I are doing that with the best possible information.
Another strategy that I will be implementing is more of a mindset thing, and that is to keep the university’s mission always in mind. This is another thing that I kind of preach about quite a bit: that the library is an organ of the university. The library exists because the university created the library and the library’s purpose is to move the institution in the direction that it is trying to go. Of course, we have other purposes as well: we need to be a force for good in the larger world of scholarly communication, and there’s all kinds of things that we need to do — but if the university doesn’t see the library as an engine that is moving it forward in the direction that it’s trying to go, the library is going to lose support from the university, and arguably should.
So, keeping the mission in mind is another strategy that I’ll be implementing and then I think the last thing, and maybe one of the most important things that I’m planning to do, is to really rely on the leadership team that is there that has already impressed me so much. A number of the folks on the leadership team at bYu are people that I’ve known for years and have always been really impressed with, but there are others whom I’ve gotten to know over the course of the interview process and then as we’ve begun having remote meetings together leading up to my move there on September 1st. The more time I spend with them, the more I talk to them, the more I listen to them, the more impressed I am by them and, frankly, the calmer I get because I know that when I walk in there and sit down behind that desk, I know that I’ve got a really tremendous team to work with, and it’s very calming to me to have the confidence in them that I do.
LH: Rick, you alluded to this earlier, but on top of taking a brand-new role at BYU you’re also switching jobs in the midst of a global pandemic. So, speaking of being calm, not to alarm you...
RA: Wait! There’s a pandemic?
LH: So, how would you address the specific challenges posed to the University Library by all of the uncertainty surrounding COVID-19? Will students be on campus this fall? Can you tell us a little bit about that?
RA: Yeah, so far it looks like they will. But, the library — it’s interesting to compare and contrast what’s happening at the university of utah with what’s happening at bYu, and for those who may be listening who don’t understand what higher education in Utah looks like, the metropolitan areas of Utah are spread along the foothills of a mountain range called the Wasatch Front, and way up to the north is utah state university in Logan; about 80 miles south of Logan is Salt Lake City where the university of utah is and then about 50 miles South of Salt Lake City is Provo where bYu is. And so, these three research universities all work together very closely in a lot of ways, and the libraries in particular have very good relationships (despite the bitter sports rivalry that exists, for example, between the u of u and bYu). So, we are in constant communication in situations like this and we get to sort of see what each campus is doing and that can inform some of the things that we do. At the university of utah, the libraries closed at the end of March and we’ve been providing all
of our services remotely. Patrons have not been able to come into the library. At bYu they’ve never closed the library. Right now, during summer, there are, to my knowledge, two buildings on the bYu campus that are open to the public and one of them is the student union where the campus store is, and the other one is the library. Now, the library is operating on a skeleton staff and they’ve reorganized their furniture in such a way as to facilitate social distancing and they’ve basically told all of the staff and faculty in the library “If you can work from home, please do.” But every day there is a member of the library administration on site and every day there is a skeleton crew of public service folks and others on site.
The other thing that’s interesting is that both bYu and the university of utah — I think this may be true at utah state as well, but I’m not positive — have so far seen an increase in enrollment for this fall. Now, there are some unique population dynamics in Utah that have led to that and one of them is that the Latter-day Saint missionaries who were serving outside of the state were mostly brought home early when the pandemic hit, so now there’s been this influx of 20-year-old kids going “Oh, wow, okay, I guess I’ll go back to school in the fall.” So, that has really protected both the u of u and bYu from the kinds of enrollment impacts that other institutions are likely seeing.
But, both the u of u and bYu right now are planning on a hybrid onsite and remote classroom experience. They are planning for lectures to happen in socially distanced classrooms and also for instruction to happen remotely. They’re both planning to end the in-person instruction after Thanksgiving, so the students who go home for Thanksgiving will stay home for the remainder of the semester and have the rest of their classes online.
Obviously, the big challenge, and this is an especially big challenge in the library, is balancing service and safety. The library is, by its nature, a huge enclosed public space and so the challenge that we’re dealing with at the u of u is the same one that we’re going to be dealing with at bYu, and that is how do we make it as easy as possible for students to get the services and access that they need while keeping them from getting themselves and others sick? And so, we at the u of u are taking the same kinds of steps that they are taking at bYu: reconfiguring furniture, putting up plexiglass shields at public service points, putting tape and decals on the floors to illustrate where people should stand if there’s a line, limiting the number of people that can be in a room at a time and, you know, all of the standard sort of CDC, science-directed precautions that anybody would take. Masks are going to be required inside. Enforcing that is going to be difficult. That’s one of the big challenges that we’re all trying to anticipate how we’ll deal with; you know, there’s an old phrase from military theory that says “No battle plan survives the encounter with the enemy.” And I think about that all the time. We’re going to come up with all these plans, then those plans are going to encounter the real-world COVID situation and the plans are going to be adjusted.
I think another thing that’s going to be critical is clear, broad and constant communication about what’s going on, what’s expected, how we’re going to deal with imposing the rules that are put in place, and how we’re going to deal with exceptions where exceptions need to be handled. There are times when as an administration or as a leadership you can’t talk openly about everything. There are times when you’re dealing with confidential situations. You’re dealing with people’s health problems or whatever and you can’t explain everything to everybody perfectly but in the vast majority of cases you can. And erring on the side of open, transparent and clear communication is especially important in a situation like this. So, that’s one of the guiding principles for me.
And then the other thing is we in the library have been supporting online access to services and content for decades now. We have to do that even better than we did it eight months ago and we’ve got to figure out new ways that we can support online teaching. One of the things that I was very upfront about in my job interview with bYu is, I told them Look, I am not a very creative thinker. I’m an analytical thinker and I’m pretty good at that. I’m good at the linear logic, the ‘if this is true, then that must be true’ type of stuff.” When it comes to the “art of the possible,” that’s when I turn to the people around me and say “Who’s a really good creative thinker?” And, so, we as library leadership and management are going to have to think in really creative ways about new things that we can do to make the online instruction experience better for both students and faculty, and I’m really going to be counting on the very, very smart and creative people in the library to come up with great ideas that then I can support and champion and push forward and help to realize.
TG: Rick, on a lighter topic, in addition to your day job as University Librarian, you are a talented musician, music critic, a self-proclaimed roots reggae fanatic. You play the banjo, right?
RA: I do.
TG: What other instruments do you play and what are your favorites?
RA: Boy, it depends on how loosely you define the word “play.” I am a very good clawhammer banjo player. Clawhammer banjo is a style of five string banjo playing that predates bluegrass — the fancy three fingers super-fast stuff. I’m a good guitarist. I’m a good bass player. The string bass is actually the instrument in which I have some formal training. I play string bass and electric bass. I’ve actually been learning mandolin during the pandemic. That’s been one of my stay-at-home activities. I’ve always wanted to learn the mandolin since I was like 13 or 14 and it finally occurred to me that I had no excuse not to. I play a little bit of Irish flute. I play the bodhran, which is an Irish frame drum. I think of all of those instruments I’m probably best at clawhammer banjo and bass. Unfortunately, bass is not really an instrument that you can enjoyably play a lot by yourself at home during a pandemic. Bass you really need to be playing with other people for it to, in my opinion, for it to be really, really fun and enjoyable, but I think in an ensemble bass is my favorite instrument to play and otherwise clawhammer banjo. It’s just an instrument that I’ve loved since I was 14 and it’s still the thing that most feeds my soul, I think. So, that’s what I do.
TG: Wow, that’s really incredible. When we meet in Charleston next we will have to get you to perform.
RA: I am a terrible solo performer and I’m very uncomfortable performing solo but if you can find me a fiddler that I can stand next to and a little bit behind, I love to play as an accompanist. I hate to play as a soloist. But, getting up on stage with a fiddler is tons of fun for me as a banjo player and standing at the back of an ensemble playing bass is also very...
TG: Well, it sounds like we need to get a Charleston Conference bluegrass band going.
RA: Yeah. That would be fun.
TG: Alright.
LH: We need to work on that for sure. So, as a follow up to that, speaking of your love of music, we understand that you’ve decided to keep your CD HotList website going. So, for our listeners who may not know about it, can you fill us in on what it is and how it got its start and where you hope to take it in the future?
RA: CD HotList is a website that I put together back in 1999 and the reason I did it was I had been, I started writing music criticism back in 1990. And I wrote for a local newspaper and then I wrote for a couple of small syndicates and I’ve written for a variety of outlets over the years, and after I had been doing that for some time — and I remember I was actually in the shower when this, because the only good ideas that I ever get come either while I’m in the shower or while I’m running — and I was in the shower and I thought “You know, I keep seeing new releases that come across my desk,” and it will occasionally occur to me this would be a really good addition to an academic or public library collection. And I thought “What if I were to just once a month recommend 12 or 15 new releases that I think would be of particular interest to libraries?” Maybe it might be a world-premiere recording of works discovered by an important composer or it might be an important album that’s been out of print for years and now it’s been reissued, or it could be anything. So, this was in the very early days of the World Wide Web. So, I actually coded, I just learned some very basic HTML code, created a website of my own and a template for it and that was what I did: every month I had five genre categories: Classical, Jazz, Folk/ Country and Rock/Pop and World/Ethnic. And every month I just recommended a handful of releases in those genres with a little one paragraph review explaining why I thought this would be of interest to libraries. And then when each issue went up every month, I would put a note out on several library listservs saying “Hey, if anybody’s interested, here’s the new issue of CD HotList.” It’s weird that it’s called CD HotList now because that really dates me, but the fact is libraries are still collecting CDs and still need physical formats that they can lend, so I haven’t changed the name of it.
Anyway, over the years it has gone through different phases and different manifestations. For a while it was sponsored by baker & Taylor and we expanded the coverage to 35 to 40 releases a month and I had several writers who worked with me. But, now it’s back to being just something that I do. Since 2012 I’ve been doing it on a blog platform. It’s free. I don’t make any money off of it anymore but I get a lot of free music and getting free music has been sort of the primary motivator for years. It’s how I managed to build this huge collection of music that I have.
So, yeah, so when I accepted the job at bYu I thought “Oh, there are a number of things that I’m going to have to cut back on. I’m going to have to be on fewer advisory boards. I’m probably going to have to travel less and I don’t know if I’m going to be able to spend as much time writing about music as I did.” And I was thinking “Well, it’s been 21 years. Maybe the time has come to just retire CD HotList and be done with it,” but the more I thought about that, the more I just couldn’t imagine my life without writing about music. And so, I decided instead of retiring CD HotList I’m just going to keep it going at a scaled back level. So instead of writing 25 to 30 reviews a month, which is what I’d been doing, I’m just going to do 10. I’m going to do 2 in each of those five genre categories and if that turns out to be sustainable then I’ll do it indefinitely and if it’s not sustainable then I’ll have to stop.
TG: Rick, you’re also one of the chefs at the Scholarly Kitchen and you write regularly for them. Your most recent post was entitled “cOAlition S’s Rights Confiscation Strategy Continues.” And it generated some good discussion. Can you tell us a little bit about the article and the addendum of the announcement for the European Research Council?
RA: Yeah, so, for those who aren’t familiar with it, and I would imagine most people who are listening to this probably will be familiar with it, but, coAlition s is an organization of funding agencies in Europe that all got together and they said “Okay, look, we want to help move the world towards a universal open access environment where nobody will have to pay for access to scholarly content and where scholarly content will be freely available for people to reuse in any way they want.” And, so, toward that end they all got together and said “Okay, we’re going to form this organization called coAlition s, and we’ve put together what we call Plan S, under which all of us as funding agencies agree that if you get research funding from us you have to make your work freely available as soon as it’s published and you have to make your work freely reusable in any way a member of the public might want to reuse it.” So, freely available to access, freely available to reuse without having to ask the authors’ permission, which is fine. There are other funding agencies that have done this and there are governments that have done this and certainly increasingly publishers are getting on board with open access and either creating fully OA journals or giving authors the option of publishing in their existing journals on an OA basis if they want, usually by charging them a fee upfront that covers the publisher’s costs.
And then there are other organizations that have created Open Access journals that don’t charge anybody. They just absorb the cost of publishing the journal institutionally. And there are funding agencies in the U.S. like the gates Foundation and the Ford Foundation, very large and significant grant funding organizations that have adopted similar policies that say “if you take research funding from us, that’s fine, but when you write up your research and publish it you have to make sure that it’s freely available.” coAlition s — I mean, I’m on the record as being in favor of OA but also being in favor of discussing very openly and upfront the fact that OA, like closed access and any other model, has got both costs and benefits associated with it and we need to be able to talk about the costs and the benefits, not just say “Well, I advocate for ‘X’ and therefore I’m only going to talk about its benefits.” And one of the problems that we have in the Open Access movement is that there is an unwillingness generally, culturally, within the movement to talk about any of the downsides or disadvantages of various Open Access models. So, one of the things that coAlition s has recently done is they have tweaked their policy and this tweak they are referring to as a “Rights Retention Strategy.” What they mean by that is they are requiring that the author of a funded article retain the copyright in her work and then make the work available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Only License, and the Creative Commons Attribution-Only License, commonly known as CC BY, basically says “I am still technically, in legal terms, the copyright holder but all of my rights as the copyright holder are now given away to the general public. For all functional purposes, the work is now in the public domain and anybody can treat the work as if it were not under copyright
at all.” The point of the article that I wrote for the Scholarly Kitchen last week was to point out that calling this a “Rights Retention Strategy” amounts to Orwellian doublespeak on the part of cOAlition S. They are, in fact, doing the opposite of what could reasonably be called a “Rights Retention Strategy”; in reality it’s a rights confiscation strategy. They are saying “If you take our money to do your research then you have to give away all of your rights.” You have to remain the copyright holder in name, but you don’t get to keep your rights as a copyright holder. You have to give them all away. So, basically what they’re saying is “In return for the money that we provide, we confiscate your rights and give them to everybody in the world.” Now, reasonable people, as I said in the piece, can either agree or disagree with that policy. That’s fine. We can talk about what’s good and bad about that policy. What’s not okay, in my view, is to call it a “Rights Retention Strategy” and advertise it that way and proclaim this so that people will go “Oh, this is awesome! cOAlition S is helping authors retain their rights!,” whereas in fact you’re doing the exact opposite of that. That’s what I object to and that was the point of that article. And there has been some good discussion, as I knew there would be, and that’s great. That’s one of the reasons that I write for the Scholarly Kitchen; it provides a forum for people to then come in and say “well, wait a minute, you said this and what about that?” Honestly, I think the discussions that happen in the comments in the Scholarly Kitchen are at least as valuable as the essays that are published there.
But, anyway, you mentioned the recent announcement from the European Research Council. The European Research Council is one of several organizations that joined cOAlition S in the early days because they agreed with the stated principles and purposes of cOAlition S, but have since said “You know, actually, we are no longer fully on board and we’re going to step out of cOAlition S and we’re going to pursue our Open Access goals in our own way.” And I don’t know, whenever something like this happens there will be people on the outside who point and gleefully go “Ahh! The coalition is falling apart!” I don’t know if the Coalition is falling apart, but it is certainly true that we’re seeing more people stepping away from cOAlition S than we see joining cOAlition S, and I suspect that cOAlition S’s future is going to look quite a bit like its recent past rather than growing and becoming the standard program for Open Access. Other countries are going to do things in the ways that make more sense for them. There has certainly not been a groundswell of organizations rushing to join cOAlition S. If anything, the net change has been in the opposite direction.
TG: It is a very complicated issue, and we appreciate you giving us your take on explaining the situation from your vantage point. Thank you.
LH: So, we’re kind of bouncing around a little bit between professional and more personal interest questions, but you mentioned earlier that travel is one of the things that you’re considering possibly cutting back on with taking on your new role. You’re normally a frequent flyer. You’re somebody that travels a great deal to industry conferences and events throughout the year. Have you enjoyed the time off from your usual busy schedule during the quarantine or are you itching to get back out there when it’s safe to do so?
RA: A little of both. I think in the last two or three years especially I’ve had this sneaking feeling that I’m spending too much time on airplanes, and I think this new position will give me a good — I was going to say “excuse,” but “excuse” isn’t the right word. It will give me a good opportunity to sort of reassess how much of that I do, what things I say “yes” to and what things I don’t. I’m certainly going to cut back on the number of advisory boards that I serve on. I feel like advisory boards are a really valuable use of my time and of librarians’ time generally, but it’s time to cull those back a bit. I do miss it. I love going to new places and meeting people from libraries that are very different from mine and cultures that are very different from mine. I do love that, and I have really missed that, but I have to confess: I’ve enjoyed being home and sleeping in my own bed every night, and I’ve got a ten- month old grandbaby who lives nearby and being close to her is certainly better than any kind of travel I can think of. And I love waking up in my own bed next to my wife every morning and I’ve really had complicated feelings about travel since it has been so radically curtailed. On the one hand I miss it, but on the other hand I have just really enjoyed being at home.
LH: And it doesn’t hurt that you’re in a beautiful state like Utah. I was out there a couple of summers ago. We were on an extended camping trip and we visited a lot of the national parks in the area. We were at Arches and Canyonlands and Capitol Reef and Zion and you’ve just got such a wealth of natural beauty around. I don’t know if you get the chance to do much of that during the quarantine, getting out and seeing some of that, but it’s a beautiful place to be.
RA: Yeah, and actually just a couple of weeks ago my wife and I went “glamping.” I don’t know if you’re familiar with that concept, but we went to a fancy — I’m not a very enthusiastic camper. I love the outdoors. I love going out and hiking. I love doing all the outdoor stuff. But at the end of the day I then want to take a shower and go to sleep in a bed. And we went down to the Capitol Reef National Park which is not one of the more heavily visited but it’s a really, really great national park with amazing hiking and beautiful views, and we went and we stayed at a place that had cabins and teepees as well as more traditional hotel rooms, and we stayed in a teepee with air conditioning and a queen-size bed and a 45 inch TV and wifi, and a private bathroom and shower, and it was fantastic. That was my kind of camping. It was great. But, yeah it has really taken a bit of the edge off of this COVID situation that our house is almost directly at the foothills of the Wasatch Range and in 15 minutes we can grab our dog and be up in the foothills hiking up a canyon. We are tremendously blessed to be where we are and we feel very fortunate.
TG: It’s a really beautiful part of the world. It really is. I’ve been out to Zion a few times and driven around in Utah and it’s just fantastic. You do live in a beautiful place. Rick, we know that it’s got to be a very busy time for you right now and we really want to thank you for taking the time to talk to us. I learned a lot. I’m sure Leah would say the same. It was very interesting and a lot of fun. I’ve enjoyed it, so, thank you.
RA: Thank you. It was a pleasure for me and I’m honored to have been invited.
