A good friend of mine, let’s call him Nils, is fond of quoting Willy Loman, after he gets fired in Death of a Salesman: “I’m not interested in stories about the past or any crap of that kind because the woods are burning, you understand? There’s a big blaze going on all around.”

As ever, he’s right in many ways. But my reaction to the quote is a little different. When I see the big blaze and the burning woods, my thought is a simple, tigger-ish one: what amazing things can we do with all that charcoal?