Tweet26-02-2010 om 12:09 by Sueli Brodin

Extraordinary things happen when I’m with my friend Susan Schaefer. When we went together last June to our first Pecha Kucha Night in Maastricht, she spotted mysterious red lights strangely hanging in the sky across the river Meuse. The lights were hardly moving and seemed to be positioned at equal distance from each other. We stood in the parking lot outside of the AINSI building on our way back home and several people stopped to take a look with us at the unusual spectacle. “We need to ask someone,” Susan said, and she suddenly grabbed a man who was walking behind us. He didn’t know what the lights could be either, but he had a good sense of humour: “There’s a bunch of creative people over there too!”



Susan has a unique gift and charm in that she is able to strike up a conversation with everyone around her. In the most natural way, she asked the man if he had enjoyed the evening and his positive reply sparked an enthusiastic dialogue about the value of cultural initiatives like Pecha Kucha Night for Maastricht and its region. Within five minutes, they were exchanging business cards and Susan found out that her new acquaintance was Bert Jongen, journalist and city councillor for the D66 party in Maastricht. We joked a little more about the unthreatening-looking UFO’s, which actually turned out to be Thai paper lanterns, and we parted like old friends, agreeing to meet again at the next Pecha Kucha Night.



Pecha Kucha Night in Maastricht, photo: @Bert Janssen




This is a typical example of Susan’s extraordinary encounters. Her first contact with the Maastricht born and renowned music conductor, director and performer, Jacques Ogg is one of my favourites: “I met Jacques at our local Albert Hein. The Easter food queues seemed a kilometre long and had me steaming in place, looking at the floor, where I noticed a pair of my favourite shoes on the feet of the person in front. To keep up my humour, in very poor Dutch I asked this person where he had purchased his shoes, and in perfect English he gave the name of a shoe store I had often frequented in Minnesota. Soon we were chatting and laughing over the coincidence.”



Jacques Ogg, photo: Susan Schaefer




I witnessed Susan’s magic at work again earlier this year during the Brand New Start New Year classical concert organised at AINSI by cultural journal Zuiderlucht and Wijnhoven & Wijnhoven Coiffeurs. As we sat down to listen to the Italian baritone Carmelo Corrado Caruso, Susan took out her new purse out of her handbag to show it to me. The woman sitting next to her on the other side started admiring the purse too, and commented in perfect English that she very much liked the fact that it was made of felt, because she was a felt artist herself.

This brief talk before the concert developed into a deeper conversation during the break. Our new acquaintance Liesbeth introduced us to her husband Mark, and we started talking about life in the Maastricht region. Liesbeth and Mark said that they had spent many years in the United States and had only returned to the Netherlands some seven years ago, when Mark was appointed professor of Vascular Physiology at the Maastricht University. When I told Liesbeth about my work for the European Journalism Centre, she smiled and said that Mark had recently been overwhelmed with interview requests from newspapers in the UK and elsewhere about his groundbreaking research in growing meat out of stem cells. Intrigued, I asked Mark whether his work had received attention in the Dutch media too, to which he modestly replied: “Relatively much less”. A light flashed through my head and the words came out spontaneously: “Have you heard of Pecha Kucha Night?”



Meat of the future? Pork in a petri dish - Continium Kerkrade, photo: Sueli Brodin




And so it happened that both my friend Susan and Mark Post climbed on stage last Saturday as two of the 12 presenters at the fifth edition of Pecha Kucha Night in Maastricht.

Mark Post’s lively and fascinating presentation was very well received and the topic of his research was a revelation to most, including to one of his scientific staff members, American expat Daniel Potter, who was in the audience and told me later: “He is the head of my department and I had no clue he was involved in this awesome project!”



Mark Post: "Meat out of stem cells", photo: @Bert Janssen




As for my friend Susan, she was inspiringly true to herself in her speech on the Poetry of Change. “Strength is giving,” she said, inviting us to “treat all upon the planet with grace”.



Susan Schaefer: "The Poetry of Change", photo: @Bert Janssen




Her concluding words were spoken in earnest and moving in their sincerity:

“We are each extra ordinary. Once recognized
Our connected energy will expand the universe.”



Bonnie (left), Sueli and Susan (right)

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