Nan was what some call “a good soul.” Conversations with Nan were like an interview with Valentine Michael Smith, a human raised on Mars by Martians who came to Earth and changed the course of humanity: Nan grokked. She always listened intently to her partner in conversation and seemed to understand immediately and intuitively the other person’s point of view. The term “grok” and the character Smith come from Robert A. Heinlein’s 1961 work Stranger in a Strange Land, a novel I read in that decade and never forgot. In the 1980’s, Nan and I became friends when we both … Continue reading Nan