Thanksgiving

This weekend the new Watkins Center at Heywood Hospital opened in Gardner, Mass; on Thursday evening I attended a reception at the hospital and met many of the clinicians who helped shape the design.

I particularly enjoyed speaking with Rick Ellbeg who is the hospital’s Director of Critical Care, Emergency, and Surgical Services. Rick was involved throughout the design and planning process and was justifiably proud of the end result. However, he emphasized that it was the extraordinary experience that he and his staff had with our design team that made the project so successful. He thanked me and said, “You are fortunate to be leading such a great group of people.” The next day at work I reread the foreword to our firm’s monograph. In it I had written, “As we conclude our first century of practice, we recognize that our most valuable asset is our people – talented, inspiring and thoughtful people with exceptional credentials.”

So, let me take this opportunity to give thanks to the Heywood Hospital design team and to all the TRO Jung|Brannen staff who make my job so enjoyable; and, finally, thanks to Rick who reminded me.

Geoengineering

Today is my Godson’s sixth birthday, I almost gave him a pogo stick, but instead I bought two “young scientist” projects that teach simple lessons in climatology and renewable energy through entertaining experiments that any six year old kid can do. I know the pogo stick sounds like more fun, but I think he has a future as a geoengineer and I wanted to get him started early!

Geoengineering is an emerging science that studies the potential manipulation of the Earth’s climate to offset global warming. The most seductive proposal now under consideration involves injecting sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere to simulate, on a global scale, the effects of the Mount Pinatubo eruption in 1991 when the Earth’s temperatures cooled considerably from the ash cloud. And, it’s cheap and relatively easy to do. So, what’s the problem, you ask? Well, scientists recently met in Japan and agreed to defer geoengineering initiatives until the international effects on such diverse things as rainfall and terrorism can be studied in detail. Very sensible; they point out that we don’t want a rogue nation to upset the atmospheric apple cart. However, I think there is a more fundamental reason to reject geoengineering proposals such as this. If you’ll pardon the pun, it’s an unsustainable quick fix. As Americans, we want a quick fix for everything. For example, we’d rather take a diet pill than eat sensibly and exercise regularly. Our grandchildren {and Godchildren} deserve better.

Don’t worry, this Christmas I’ll get him the pogo stick.

Gather No Moss…..Again!

I will apologize in advance for beating this subject to death, but I just couldn’t resist the temptation to point out that an employee’s character is far more important than his/her talent.

Four weeks ago I blogged about Randy Moss and the fact that the coach of the Patriots, Bill Belichick, elected to trade the future Hall-of-Famer in mid-season to the Minnesota Vikings. Many football fans thought that Brad Childress, the coach of the Vikings, had put one over on Bill until Childress unceremoniously dumped Moss by placing him on waivers after only three games as a Viking. Unfazed and unapologetic, Moss watched as twenty-one teams declined to sign him until the Tennessee Titans finally claimed him off the waiver wire. The Titan’s coach, Jeff Fisher, gushed about his good fortune. He then made a prophetic observation, calling Moss “a tremendous threat wherever he has been.”