If You're Not Careful, You Might Learn Something

 Not only did I teach the kids a bunch of stuff at school this week, but I learned three things too:

1) one of my students has a sister with something called Hashimoto's disease . . . I had never heard of this but it has to do with your thyroid;

2) the same student (and a number of other students in this class) experience something called Raynaud's phenomenon . . . this is where your hands turn yellow or white because of an excessive reversal in blood flow due to cold or stress;

3) and then, finally, I learned one thing on the way to school while listening to Gary Walker on WBGO . . . he pointed out that only was Steve Turre a fantastic trombone player, but he was also a "master shellist" and I thought he said "master cellist" but he really did say "shellist," because Turre--  long time trombonist with the SNL band-- can play the shit out of a giant conch shell (check out the video).