JUN-C-2

RE-ENTRY SCRAMBLE FOR THE RESOLUTION OF POSTPONED COMMITMENTS AND THE PROLOGUE FOR THE COMING YEAR AND SETTING IN MOTION THE EVENTS OF THE SUMMER OF 2003

June 16—18, 2003

The re-entry period to the Derwood DC dynamic situations awaiting decisions is in progress. I have postponed the meeting with Dale Kramer that was booked for Wednesday morning since the final architectural plans are not going to be returned from Ivan until July first. We will now have the plans for the final approval on July 10, a week before my departure. I also had a large box of mail, as always, with no surprises or changes in the letters or notices sent to me. Nothing, for example, as surprising as a Father’s Day card, which, if ever one arrives, would be my first.

I had gathered all the pictures from Haiti and rapidly put them into the next photo album (already Volume VII for 2003) and had them ready when the Wednesday meeting took place with Julie, my freshman medical student coordinator and Bryan the ex-PCV in Thumonde Haiti and now an MPH student at GWU, came by for the meeting set up with Skip Williams. When I knew that would be an event on my schedule at 3:00 PM, I wrote a note to Paul Farmer in Cange Hospital as he returned to Haiti, having been gone fund raiding at the time of my visit. I typed up the brief proposal (see Jun-C-4) and forwarded it to him just before my meeting with the students and Skip Williams, and to my surprise, a response returned immediately, with an enthusiastic endorsement of the adoption of a Haitian village Monmart. (see Jun-C-5), and almost immediately, before the day was out, an arrangement was agreed to (see Jun-C-6).

At the same time I had written a reference letter for Kevin Bergman, who had gone with me to both Ladakh and Malawi for his residency applications. I heard that he had come to Huda Ayas in the International Medicine office and reported that his life had been changed by being with me in the “deep end of the pool” and that he wishes to continue doing this kind of work. The previous medical student who had gone with me to both Ladakh (where he saw his first patient) and Malawi (where he finished his last rotation before I had “hooded” him at graduation) was John Sutter, who reported back on his trip across country to get to San Diego for his residency (see Jun-C-3).

I had given Kevin Bergman the Malawi photo album from which to scan photographs for a presentation for a fall student conference on international opportunities for medical service among the poor. There will be a number of these conferences forthcoming, after I complete the next three series of India medical missions. It now seems that there may be as many as three Haitian medical missions in the near future as well, so things are beginning to roll on several fronts.

What I now have to do is to project forward through at least the coming year and pack up those items I will need for several different trips, since I will probably not have access to my stuff during the time the house is being demolished inside and the packed up stuff is in storage. This includes solo trips to the three forthcoming in India, the Alaskan moose hunting vacation in September, the Philippine trip now scheduled for February 7—21, the Cumberland hunt at which I have tried to gather up all those who have wanted to be a part of this experience for so long, but this may be the last of the hunts. So, since there “is no tomorrow” I have put in the applications for both of my sons, I have before, for which the usual pattern of “no show” is likely to be expected, but new joiners like the Elwells, Dale Kramer, possibly Tom and Drew Griffioen, Sage Baker along with the Schaefers, and the January first retiring Bill Webster, both Genes Curletti and Moore, Reg and Paul Gibbs and Rich Reinert, with a last call for any others who may overwhelm the system which is supposed to limit a group to five. I may put in as many as four groups to accommodate those requesting many times before but for whom there will not b e another chance.

In addition I am making a lecture trip down the Amazon in April—if it is not canceled as was the last one—and the three trips to Haiti now in discussion in the serial items attached in Jun-C-series. This still does not count in the return to Africa for anther Malawi trip in the winter of next year. Perhaps I should maximize my time afield during this last period when I do not have a home to come home to!

I just received an ironic letter from the application processor of the Graduate School of Education and Human Development. I had been requested by the ELDP program to have official transcripts forwarded from all of the schools from which I have graduated, in place of the unofficial copies that I had already supplied. When I did so, this letter came back to me saying “It is the school policy for an applicant to have a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree before pursuing a doctoral degree.” They had determined that I had a bachelor’s degree. “Please advise us on this matter.”

I am sending back a note: “In fact, I have not one, but TWO bachelor’s degrees. But, if that is not enough, how about Four master’s degrees and TWO doctorates as qualifications for being considered able to take on graduate level work?”

Apparently, none of the extensive documentation, submitted in triplicate, has made its way through the bureaucracy. If I am judged under qualified to undertake graduate level work in the Department of Education, I will more than happily rescind my application. I would then wonder, “Just who is it that is worthy of admission to your program?”

With all that is or may be scheduled in the coming year, I must be packed up and salted away for at least the fourteen months for which the estimate is given now. It may be more like two years if I would judge from the experiences of others in these “adventures in remodeling” in which the process never quite turns out as projected with overruns in time and costs considered standard. Next Monday I will be meeting again with the planners and designers, and we will then be setting target dates and goals so that the project can begin.

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