Dear everyone,
Cindy is in Amherst, Mass., with Lucas, visiting one of his
back-up schools. Perhaps she will append
some commentary to the end of this letter to tell us of their impressions. I know Lucas went to a concert last night
with one of his friends, Tom, and that he will speaking to another ex-HCHS
student, Divia, who is a classics major there.
They left yesterday morning, which turned into a bit of a logistics
problem for me, because Jasper had to decide which day to forfeit swim
practice, because I could not drive him to both sessions this weekend. He decided to give up Iaido on Saturday (I
went to our sports club instead of my Tai Chi class), and to stay at home on
Sunday, so I could go teach an aikido class (the head instructor is in Puerto
Rico giving a seminar).
Saturday afternoon Jasper went to see part of the high
school sectionals meet (prelim to the state meet) with some of his team
members, while I drove to Highland Park for an investment committee meeting,
and then afterwards to Roka Akor (http://www.rokaakor.com/locations/chicago/dinner/)
downtown, where we celebrated Barbara’s and Owen’s birthday. We had a fantastic meal. The sake flowed freely, and we had almost
innumerable dishes. Some stand out dishes were butterfish tataki, roasted
shishito peppers, a sea urchin roll, barbequed lamb chops with Korean spices,
and Brussels sprouts.
Most everything at work is the same as always. My computer was recently upgraded, generally
a good thing. It certainly is working a
little faster with some of the bigger programs like photoshop. Yesterday, I realized to my dismay, that my
database software was obsolete. I was
using Filemaker pro 4.0, which harkens back to about 1998. Filemaker is now of version 12. I couldn’t even get the computer to load the
old software, because it was made for 16 bit software. Now I need to purchase a new version of the
software, and convert my database. I
hope it will be without significant issues, but the old software is so outdated
that the conversion process has to go through several iterations before it is
compatible with the new format. This
database is something I need urgently (it’s basically a key to study set
materials that I only update on a quarterly basis, and I don’t have any
residents to go over the cases with anymore anyway), but I have been
maintaining it since my move to Christ three years ago, and inertia has been
carrying me forward.
Thinking about neuropathology teaching, I should remark that
Jack Lee is leaving Loyola for Evanston North Shore hospital after 21 years of
service. Jack was the chairman of the
Pathology department who recruited me to Loyola ten years ago from my position
at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh.
Jack was doing a great job as chair, and then he was recruited to be the
Dean of the medical school around 2006.
This is when some of the finances of the hospital and the medical school
started to go sour, and Jack, unfortunately, did not have the right kind of
personality to make big operating budget cuts.
He was forced out of the Deanship just around the time I left Loyola,
and came back to Pathology as a professor (Eva Wojcik, his successor, was/is
now the Chair). Jack remained at Loyola
for another 3 years, but now he is leaving.
This coincides with an exodus of youngish Pathology faculty (three more
pathologists are leaving in the next three months). Loyola really has a systemic problem when it
comes to faculty retention.
Love, H.
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