Hump Day

Back in Washington my spies tell me it is a Code Red Day, 105 degrees on the heat index, one of those days that sucks the life out of the city and turns that energy into looming thunderclouds in the late afternoon. Monday we had our usual three 90-minute case studies. The first was about a remarkable Indian eye surgeon in Tamil Nadu province. He has established a private eye hospital specializing in cornea transplants. It is so profitable that he has managed to plow the proceeds back into the enterprise to finance a free hospital, no frills, that performs the same service for tens of thousands of the poor. He had mixed spirituality and business acumen and hard work into a package that successfully provides a necessary service for humanity. I didn’t really see the applicability to our collective government situation and the images of lines of the blind queued up to lie on a table and have their eyes operated on made me a bit queasy.

The second case dealt with welfare reform in the Nixon Administration. Our professor was Roger, a trim and energetic fellow who ran Industrial Policy in the Ford and Reagan White Houses. We talked about all the great names of the day. H.R Haldeman in his buzz cut, John Ehrlichman, pudgy and willing to walk over his own mother for the President. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, cerebral and prescient in his advocacy of welfare reform. Schultz and Burns and Finch and Laird, the whole cast of characters from yesteryear were brought alive for ninety minutes. It was the best block we have had. Roger invested the Nixon White House with life as the actors played their little parts in the arcane process of policy development. That welfare reform emerged from the White House only to die in Congress, part of the teaching point. He opened the first program we had here on the first Sunday, noting that there would be forty-five 90 minute blocks of instruction.

It seemed daunting at the time, but today’s first class will be number 21 by my count, and that by the end of the day we will be sliding into the second half of the curriculum.

Announcement Time with Marie-Christine came yesterday before Third period. Nancy Katz is leading that block of instruction, an elegant young doctor of organizational psychology who favors dark suits set off with colorful scarves. We have great fun with her as she leads us through case studies examining dysfunctional organizations very much like the ones in which we all work. It is a nice and relaxed way to finish the day.

But Marie-Christine’s announcements are always greeted with wild applause. Yesterday she outlined how we would all arrive at Fenway Park. We had been scheduled to take the MTA Red Line, but that has changed. We will embark in a bus for the adventure, with a barbecue in the courtyard before. Marie-Christine looked over her glasses at us, informing us it was proper to dine on hot dogs and hamburgers before attending  a ball game. I think she was talking to the international students.

The game tonight is between the Red Sox and the Oakland Athletics. I am fired up to visit Fenway, home of the Green Monster, the big wall in right field, and the place Ted Williams hit .400. It is the shrine of golden age baseball. We were admonished to read ahead, since it will be a late night.

It was quiet back here at the ranch. Loren fell asleep around dinner and we didn’t make it back to the Kennedy School for dinner. It was a night for reading, for getting a little ahead so we can play at the ballpark tonight. I spent some time with the Clinton Health Care Task Force, a case study on Thursday. I made some good progress, and Loren and I sat out front smoking cigarettes before bed-time. I was tired and felt good about the work we got done. I was up for Tuesday, for that is the halfway point.

Hump Day. And we begin the long slide back into the Washington we have been reading about.