Great story — I love how you shifted gears as a result of your experience at the fireworks show.

I had an interesting experience when I lived in Chicago. I was at a bar with a friend watching the Olympics. The U.S. had just taken the gold medal at some event, and they were showing the medal ceremony on TV. The bar was in a part of the city where there were a lot of Eastern European immigrants, and many of them were there that night, drinking beer and getting rowdy. But when the Star Spangled Banner started playing, every single one of them stood up and put their hands over their hearts. It still gives me chills to think about all those burly rough and tumble immigrant men, honoring their adopted country, the country I tend to regularly take for granted because I don’t know anything else.