June 4, 2017

Dear Everyone,

Lucas left for Greece on Thursday, and after a couple of nights in Heraklion, Crete, he is now at his site, Mochlos.  Here is another web site. I don’t know how important this particular area was, but it was occupied for a long time. I’m sure Lucas will be able to tell us all a lot more by the end of the summer. Cindy and I, and Cheryl Jenner (Cindy’s sister) will meet him in Crete in August.  I’m guessing it will be hot.

It is hot this weekend (finally), but not so much last Memorial Day weekend, where we had, in my opinion, perfect weather: sunny skies, a soft breeze, and temperatures in the mid-seventies.  On Sunday I took Lucas and Jasper to the relatively newly opened zip-line park (it opened last summer) in Bemis Woods. This is about three miles from our house (you could bike there).  The morning looked like rain, but by 2:00, the time of our reservations, the weather had cleared nicely.  On arrival we were given harnesses and had a ten minute safety lecture on how to attach our carabiner and cable trolley. Each of the five courses started with a rope ladder climb, and ended with a zip line ride, but each course was progressively more challenging. Under the watchful eye of the instructor, we climbed the first ladder which led immediately to a zip line.  Then, the second ladder which had two easy obstacles (one of which was to sit in your harness and pull yourself along a rope using the trolley system, basically to prove to people how safe the whole apparatus was).  The last three courses were harder, although still not difficult enough for Jasper and Lucas.  There were cargo nets to climb, a variety of bridges to cross, a Tarzan jump into a cargo net, and the last zip line must have been almost a block long. You are up high in the canopy, which gives a very different view of the world.  While waiting for our turn to go on the last zip line, a red-tailed hawk flew into a nearby tree, and we were at eye level with it.  We did the course pretty quickly (two hours total, and part of it was waiting for slower parties ahead of us).  The park reminded me a lot of the one the kids and I did on our barge trip in France almost ten years ago.  Surprise - - the company that builds these parks is British, but all of the engineers are French.  It might have been the same firm. We have the ability to get discounted tickets for the remainder of the year in case anyone is interest in coming out this way.  

before we started

climbing the ladder

one of the more difficult bridges

Zip line

Nothing else is new at home.  Jasper is staying with us this summer; he has a part-time job as a swim instructor for one of the local swim clubs.

Not much to report on at work, either.  I had a recent case of a 31 year old woman with a cerebellar mass that looked like a medulloblastoma microscopically.  However, the radiologic imaging was a bit peculiar, and she was also old for this diagnosis (this is usually a tumor of people below 25).  I sent it to some colleagues at St. Jude’s Hospital for genetic testing.  They agreed the cases looked like a medullo, but genetically, it appeared to be a worse tumor, maybe a glioblastoma.  I’m sure that ten years ago no one would have thought twice about the microscopic diagnosis, which goes to show we have learned some things.  Unfortunately, the tumor is in an inoperable location, and the treatments that are usually effective for medulloblastoma are going to be inadequate for her tumor. I’ve got another peculiar case in San Francisco right now. 

A friend of mine from Hopkins (he was a resident a year below me, and then a neuropathology fellow), Dan Brat, just resigned his position at Emory, where he has been for the last ~17 years, to take a job as chairman of Northwestern’s pathology department.  I hope we will have some time to visit.  His brother is also on the national stage - - Dave Brat, one of the US representative ‘freedom caucus’ members who beat Eric Cantor for one of Virginia’s seats.

I feel obligated to set down my disgust and abhorrence with Trump’s pulling out of the Paris accords.  I don’t think that is will make much difference, since he is already gutting the environmental programs of this country as much as possible, and I think wise heads in private industry are trying to green up as much as possible, but as a symbolic gesture it makes us look even stupider than usual.  China is going to drink our milkshake.

Love, H.