06-FEB-B-11

06-FEB-B-11

AN INCREDULOUS COINCIDENCE IN AN APRIL 8 DATE WITH BOTH THE ELDP AND THE MDDF,

A SUSPICOUS PILE OF DOWNFALLEN BRANCHES IN MY YARD,

A SUGGESTION FOR ACTIVE LEADERSHIP ROLE IN SCI-CC,

A SCRAMBLE TO RE-DO PAPERS AND PROCESSES FOR ASSIGNMENTS, COMPS, PROPOSALS AND THESIS

February 23, 2006

I am doing what I have little patience for—the re-re-doing of projects already completed in order to satisfy some arbitrary pre-requisites, for papers I had prepared in advance of my Rwanda departure. I have gone over them with the “methodology” experts and the “content” expert, each of whom say the product I had produced is “Excellent—now go back and do it all over again with this in mind and with that as the format!” I have to hunker back and realize that the thesis is NOT a “product”—it is a “process” and that process is a hazing rite by those who have suffered the same indignities, so that one should simply smile and do it all over again, changing back to the way it was before someone had insisted on those changes, leaving out what was already recommended to be put in, and, in any event, cite a hundred newer critical references from endless hours you should be spending in the library. I should know how foolproof those “literature” references are; I published almost a thousand of them already!

MISSIONS, HUNTS, SCI HUNT CLUB, RUNS,

AND “IRISH RUN” OF THE “OTHER HUNT”

A lot is happening on several fronts. The Mindanao Mission Group is giving its presentation on Monday noon and a number of the Rwanda Mission Group will be there, including some supporters like Howell Simmons, whom I will be meeting to go over some of the details of the duck/goose hunt in October 8-15 in Alberta, before I rally with the gang in the Colorado Elk Hunt, and I hope to include in one or both of those Donald on the anniversary of his operation.

I had called to reserve a “table” at the Safari Club International Chesapeake Chapter (SCI-CC) to be held in Annapolis May 27, Friday of Memorial Day weekend. There is a new President, former Secretary Carl Bayard, but no Vice President, and it is suggested that I might step into that position with the understanding that this then will become the Presidency in two years. The President just returned form the big SCI convention in mid-winter held in Reno to put the arm on a number of outfitters and succeeded in getting fifteen big ticket hunts donated to be auctioned off at the May 27 Annual Banquet and Fund-Raiser. Those who were big donors are to be hosted at a special cocktail party and the one spot up for possible sites is the Derwood Deer Woods and the Game Room with a caterer on April 1—No Fooling! That I would have to get up very early the next morning and run the Cherry Blossom Ten Miler will probably not be known to too many of those folk, nor that this date starts up the full time residence week for the “Comps Cramming” for all of us involved in Cohort 16. I had been invited to the SCI-CC Board meetings which are held on March 5 and 16 during both of which I will be in Rwanda. The next one available tome is also a busy weekend—May 7. May 5, 6 is the ELDP weekend and I was thinking of the Saturday evening as a special party with my ELDP group to be here at Derwood for the post-Comps passage party. A special visitor will be coming in on Saturday evening so that we can run the Governor’s Bay Bridge 10K over the Chesapeake Bay early on the morning of the May 7. It is at noon that an SCI-CC Board Meeting will be held with a lunch at a Sporting Clays shoot on the Eastern Shore. It may almost be possible to make a part of that before I should get me and my guest to the DCA for a flight to Iowa, in order that we might be available for settlement on “Irish Run” stables if the sale goes through (contract signed on both sides, pending the bank-required survey and assessment of evaluation happening in the two weeks we are in Africa.) Then I might be driving the Dodge Ram diesel back to Derwood with some furnishings and arrive here to use it to carry back others, such as the washer and dryer for the barn, stopping in Cincinnati to pick up some other items.

THE RUNS

I have been trying to run, with my back causing more trouble each day beginning with a good deal of stiffness in the morning. I now have to stretch for the first time before running, and now I have to stop several times to stretch out my aching and numb leg during the course of the run. For the first part of the run, and the last, I feel almost like I think I know what an elderly runner must have to fight—but then I knew that already just from getting out of bed in the last weeks. The acquired ache, then numbness is now going down my right leg, whereas it had been my left until recently. I have made one more concession to calendar age. I had my lipid profile repeated at the repeat check on my BP in the Lipid Research Clinic. My BP was 96/60 with pulse 48 repeated three times. They will report my lipids later, but last February I had normal lipid profile, although not as super-good as they had been before, and had one aberrant reading—a sharply elevated Cardiac Reactive Protein (CRP.) I have a rather good idea as to the reason for that, since it related to an event, but there is a “Jupiter study” for men with normal lipids (especially low LDL’s) but the isolated risk factor of the elevated CRP. If that is persistent, as I will learn later this week, I will be entered into a placebo controlled drug trial on an agent that should lower this last cardiac risk factor, since I had always been their baseline “zero-risk” but I should keep on running at the same rate for that to remain the same, and my musculoskeletal neurologic impairment may trump my cardiovascular status if the creaky back and aching legs are to persist. Besides, I have to put on some serous mileage, since I have a lot of 10k’s, Ten Milers and even the long marathon runs still on the horizon which would be out of my reach today. I opened an envelope to find my Marine Corps Marathon 25-marathon MCM patch and the 25-MCM certificate for framing, after they had confirmed my records. I also received a very large certificate in the mail which turns out to be the “Governor’s Commendation” for my service in New Orleans following Katrina. This is almost humorous if you follow through in the last note (below) on my “ordering up for the MDDF Annual Muster!”

CLEARING THE BRANCHES FALLING ON DERWOOD

I have been working around Derwood, trying to keep it clean and looking as good as I had it earlier, with a lot of branches falling down in the ice and single snow storm ten days ago. Having picked up nearly every stick around the entire house, all of the drive and most of the woods, (wishing I had the big Dodge diesel to carry away the large collections of branches I have stacked in several places) I noticed as I was driving out today to get my haircut with Carl Dees before going running, that there was a large bunch of branches down in the cornier of my yard at the front where the logs bridge the stream. That is odd, I thought, since there was no high wind, nor did any other place have new downfalls. So, I got out checking on the bunch of branches and finding that they had each been sawed off, and someone decided to carry them all to my yard and use my carefully cleaned up woods as a tree-trash dump! I also found a bunch of beer bottles which I cleared up and made yet another new stack of branches to be carted away—these being imports, as though coals to Newcastle were not quite enough already here!

PROPOSED “MAYDAYS”

I have just looked over the ELDP schedule. The completion of the Comps will be on April 8—whatever the MDDF (below) may say about that date. I could possibly squeeze the following events in if everything worked out according to an integrated plan:

May 5 Friday; first of the two day ELDP weekend schedule and the first session after Comps with a one-month grading interval to announce passage; on this day we are scheduled to go only until 5:00 PM I propose that Virginia fly in on this Friday afternoon. We could all then go as a group from our Cohort 16 to Derwood for our Spring, after Comps celebration.

May 6 Saturday, the ELDP session goes until 8:00 PM, and I will return ready for travel for an early morning start.

May 7 Sunday, at 6:30 AM we are at tt of the Governor’s Bay Bridge 10 K Race over the Chesapeake Bay. We then go to the SCI-CC Board meeting lunch and Sporting Clays. We then drive to DCA, and I leave the Audi at GWU and fly to Iowa.

May 8 Monday—closure on Irish Run at settlement, and I stay for several days to help with the move, and load the Dodge Ram Diesel with furniture (eg dining room table and chairs, Baker’s rack and whatever is suggested for Derwood), leaving in the later week, to head on a one day trip to GR in Michigan to pick up a desk and to ---

May 13, Saturday—run the Grand River Run 25K, staying to visit family and to also see Comps teammate Lou Andriotti, then drive to Derwood

May 15, Monday to settle the furniture, clear out the spring cleaning trash with the truck, and to load up the washer/dryer and anything else needed for Irish Run to head west

May 18 +/- to stop in Cincinnati for anything else needed for Irish Run to return to Iowa with the Dodge Ram, and then fly back to DCA at whenever that can be ticketed.

After this back and forth May month, the real summer schedule begins with Virginia coming to Maryland for St Mary’s and a later trip by vehicle up to northern Michigan with Porter in his trailer.

All of these are suggestions with room for some slippage in the later schedule.

And, now, the one more almost comical coincidence, of the “you are not going to believe this! And when do they want you? After all the extra effort to redeem the time for the special April 8 written Comps to keep you with the Cohort through the Comps and on target for thesis proposal through the summer---April 8, of course!”

RES IPSA LOQUITUR

Nancy McGuire

ELDP, Ashburn Campus, GWU

Dear Nancy:

Thank you for all your help in the many steps along the way toward getting to sit for the Comps, both oral and written, in April this spring.

In the mail today I received one of those “You are not going to believe…” coincidences that I had never anticipated, that will not change anything except that I must generate a letter for an excused absence from a potential claim on me that would like to have me somewhere else on the April 8 when I will be otherwise occupied.

When I responded to the Maryland Governor’s call to lead a contingent that turned out to be the first on the ground in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina’s landfall, I worked for two weeks as a volunteer, much later finding out that I was getting decorated by a group I subsequently learned was the all volunteer “Maryland Defense Force,” the Governor and the President. When we were “demobilized” packed on a C-130 from the Air national Guard and dropped back in Baltimore upon return form New Orleans, they asked if I would step forward in response to any disaster of a similar magnitude to include natural calamities or biologic or physical terrorist attacks on the domestic US. I said I would be happy to respond again if needed, and they said this entirely volunteer option would have an annual “mustering” to keep in readiness. I heard nothing from them for the next five months, but just received a letter in the mail “ordering” me to appear, unless otherwise excused and only with my consent (they like to “play soldier” with military lingo, but recognize that my showing up, or even resigning, is entirely at my discretion, so they have to modify their “orders”) for the annual muster----on April 8, 8:00 AM through 4:00 PM unless otherwise extended!

I have written them a letter (below) explaining that I fully intend to be absent at their muster since I fully intend to be present in Ashburn (as I have no plans to develop appendicitis or any other unforeseen emergency!), but I should probably have an officer of the ELDP “flag rank” respond in cover of my letter, explaining that, no, I am not making all this up!

If a note to that effect with the significance of that date to my forward progress toward the ELDP EdD degree could be briefly written, I will still be available in the future to respond in cases of national emergency without being AWOL for their administrative meeting this April 8.

Thanks again!

Glenn W. Geelhoed, Cohort 16

LTC (MD) Amato F. Mongelluzzo

Col (MD) Walter Coryell, MDDF

Director, Operations & Training

Maryland Defense Force

Pikesville Military Reservation

610 Reistertown Road

Pikesville, MD 31208-5197

Dear Dr. Mongelluzzo: February 23, 2006

I have received the Operational Order Number 06-001 regarding appearance for the annual MDDF Muster in Pikesville on April 8, 2006, and must respectfully request an excused absence.

I was proud to serve with the MDDF when called to muster for the relief in “Operation Lifeline” in Jefferson Parish New Orleans in September, and grateful to be a participant for the full period of the operation following Katrina’s landfall. I persist in my willingness to help anyone anywhere and anytime within my capacities, and extend my volunteer status to the MDDF as long as I am able and useful.

The date April 8, 2006 at precisely the same time as the muster call is the long-fixed date and opportunity for my 23-member Cohort 16 and I in the ELDP (Executive Leadership Doctoral Program,) to sit the required Comprehensive Written Examinations. These “Comps” are held at the conclusion of all the course work in this Graduate School of Education and Human Development program in Leadership, and the key step in advancing into candidacy toward the EdD doctoral degree, an asset I would hope to offer to use in my further leadership potential within the MDDF.

I am enclosing the confirmation of this key appointment at this fixed date and time from the leadership of the ELDP program at the George Washington University, Ashburn Virginia campus, and the requirement for my presence to complete this important written Comprehensive Examination in the Doctoral degree program toward which the last years of the curriculum have been targeted.

I am leaving this week on another volunteer medical mission, this one to Rwanda, leading a medical team to Central Africa in affiliation with Physicians for Peace and the Millennium Village Project (Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, coordinator.) I will assume that the excused absence from the April 8 muster may be granted, but will not be within range to correspond by mail, telephone or digital media until I emerge from my remote stations beyond Kigali and Gisenyi Rwanda and return out of Africa in late March. If there are any questions or further steps to be taken, I may be reached when I can re-connect in communication through the addresses (attached.)

Thank you for your consideration.

Yours truly,

Glenn W. Geelhoed

AB, BS, MD, DTMH, MA, MPH, MA, MPhil, FACS

Professor of Surgery

Professor of International Medical Education

Professor of Microbiology and Tropical Medicine

Office of the Dean, Ross Hall 741

George Washington University Medical Center

2300 I Street NW

Washington, DC 20037 USA

Phone: 202/994-4428

Fax: 202/994-0926

Cell: 240/401-0247

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