Another public health board meeting has come and gone! The weeks of dread and despair preparing for the event, the unspeakable torment of the actual meeting, and then the blissful moment when the terrible task was done–all past! With heart felt thanks, I raise the glass of a free woman! The ordeal is over!
Until the next meeting, of course. But that is MONTHS away–6 of them, in fact.
This time we met in the fair city of Atlanta, where our chair shines as a beacon in this naughty world, DEAN of the school of Public Health of Emory University. And his wonderful and patient assistant did all the work that I would have done had this been in our usual place of celebration, for which I honor her–a very good woman. She was an angel of light in trying times, and I shall send her a box of chocolate.
In fact, I was dazzled by the good people of Atlanta–how friendly, how pleasant they were! Everyone I happened to have eye contact with smiled and said hello.
This is not the norm in Washington. We mostly avoid eye contact here.
The Dean wished to show off his splendid new building–in particular, his magnificent suite on the 8th floor, with views through huge windows spanning the whole floor, nothing but vistas of trees with the tall spires of downtown Atlanta in the distance–very nice indeed. The conference room featured 4 screens that lowered at the touch of a button over the windows, with shades that also lowered at the touch of a button, to cover the rest of the windows. Such luxury!
Though when I mentioned this to one of our board members he smugly retorted that he had THE SAME THING in his office, only he had a REMOTE CONTROL device to control them.
Which the Dean did not have.
The floor was a shining masterpiece of pieced wood, very lovely indeed–though, every footfall sounded like the trump of doom, and I found myself on tippy toes whenever I had to actually walk about. Everyone else did likewise.
A moment of joy, I own, to see the mighty titans of public health walk on tippy toes.
Also, it appeared that the architect had decided that a telephone would mar the beauty of the room, so that we had to resort to placing a cell phone next to the microphone to conference in one of our presenters, but there, this is the price for BEAUTY.
A lovely room, and looking at the magnificent view was some recompense for the ghastly blather I had to listen to.
After the meeting ended, I had some time to kill, having made reservations for a later flight in case I was required to do anything more–ever ready, don’t you know. Well, it turned out that there was nothing required of me, and so I went for a walk in a little park right by Emory there–a little jewel of a place, nothing but tall trees and quiet in the middle of the city, with a blue lake at its heart. Such an odd moment of limbo, walking in this tiny wilderness with moms and their strollers, the bikers, the runners–not to mention, the slow geese grazing on the grass, the ducks on the water—all under the bright blue sky, a precious moment in the hurly burly of a difficult and demanding event.
Hope
