pep talk

I stopped this past week at an auto shop on Broadway to get my state inspection renewed. There was a helpful woman behind the counter, and as I waited, we started to chat. It seems every conversation these past six months has some touch of Ike, some mention of what was lost, changed, flooded, rebuilt, FEMAed. This conversation started innocently, noting the water mark still visible a few feet up the wall of the otherwise now-normal shop. 

Then the conversation drifted. She and her family rode out the storm. They thought they were safe, perched up atop a hill above 10 ft., in a neighborhood not far from 61st and S streets. They stocked supplies, parked their vehicles on high ground, anxiously watched the news. She and her husband sat in their living room, watching through a window as the world around them went aquatic. At midnight, their pets jumped atop the sofa, and that was the sign the water had reached the foot of their house. Shouts soon followed, from panicked neighbors whose homes weren’t on a hill. A wet, dark and dangerous rescue commenced, with ropes strung between houses, a floating tire doubling as a life raft. They swam and struggled for more than an hour in the surging water, in the dark, winds howling menacingly around them.

They collected all those they could, old and young, and perched them in their home. But the water kept coming, and soon it was pouring in the window. An attic offered the last place of refuge, but a precarious one, putting only a sheet of plywood and a few singles, inches from their heads, between them and the storm’s fiercest winds. The water kept rising, the doorknob on their front door serving as a marker, them focused on it, waiting for a sign that the water had started going down, waiting for the winds to stop roaring. The fridge floats by, their home is destroyed, but they’re alive, and that’s what matters.

For this woman and her family, like for so many others, Ike isn’t something that happened; it’s something that is happening. She’s still not back in her home, still was waiting on appliances, still was unsure about so much. But she was strong, as intense in her commitment to go on, as she was in the telling of her story. We connected, and I promised to come back to catch up on the next chapter in her story.

How many of these stories there must be, I thought, of heroism and compassion and survival, not ever captured by the 10 o’clock news or repeated to anyone but friends, family and an occasional interested stranger. In the rush to clean up, dry up, and rebuild, I hope these stories aren’t tucked away, too painful to relive or too tired to remember. I hope they’re shared, that they live on in our lore—stories of resilience and survival, many of them, ultimately, with happy endings.   

I was a little surprised my blog still “remembered” me. Usually after such a long absence, it punishes me by requiring me to re-enter my password, which in turn usually means resetting my password.

I enjoy sharing a few thoughts with y’all, am pained when a friend asks “When ya’ gonna post something new to your blog, slacker?” I come in each morning with a list of things to do. The day usually slips into evening before my list is done, and here we are in the middle of February with a holiday greeting, stale and thawed, still before you. Tsk tsk.   

It’s been a busy few months, a crazy busy 2009, and I know it’s not just me. I’m spending a lot of my time working with some great people in the clinical enterprise and out in the community clinics. My work with them started in earnest after Ike, as the clinics geared up early to carry the ball for a recovering campus, and it’s never really let up. It’s a fluid situation, and that makes its critical to plug in and communicate. It’s a new arena for me, I’m enjoying it and I’m happy to have the opportunity to do it.

The KSA report, the community, UT System, the local paper, friends and foes in Austin and elsewhere, Texas politics, the economy… I’m glad I’ve been busy in at least one sense: it’s kept me in large part focused on things I can actually impact, enhance, fix, address, improve.     

If you need to catch up, there’s a page that rolls up many of UTMB’s major topics into one handy package: http://www.utmb.edu/info.broadcast/

It includes the KSA report, System statements, info on the upcoming opportunity to provide comments, our legislative request, summaries of the storm damage, highlights of all the great things we still do, and much more.

Happy Valentine’s Day. Happy President’s Day. Happy Mardi Gras.
Laissez les bon temps rouler!

I overheard in the office today that more than 400 babies have been born at UTMB since OB-GYN and our neonate specialists got back in the baby biz following Ike. Can there be a better symbol for the persistent nature of life, and our own rebirth and recovery?

Today starts my third full week back on campus.  I find myself marking progress in odd ways. I remember the day they hauled away the gauntlet of porta-potties that lined the sidewalk on my walk to the office, or the day my desk phone service was restored. I watch the piles of rubble lining roadways: are they smaller on today’s commute? Are any of the big landmarks missing (the shrimp boat in front of Fisherman’s Wharf? The vintage sportsfisherman that I think belongs to a former neighbor, landlocked near the heliport.  The fleet “anchored” at the foot of the Galveston Causeway, tossed around like a toddler’s broken toys…)?

I’ve been parking front and center in my assigned lot, a lot closer than my usual East WayBackandWalk spot. Today there were a few more cars. I was glad to see them; like today’s opening of the Field House, another sign that little by little things are getting slowly back to “normal.”

At home, Ike’s most prominent reminders were three large plywood panels still up on my second story windows—the ones too big and too heavy to get down alone. They’re now down, just in time to enjoy what’s beginning to feel like fall. (Unfortunately, I know so many others facing so many storm-related hardships, I’m hesitant to celebrate my “progress.”) 

There’s one thing about “new normal” that I’m growing fond of: the new outdoor cafeteria. For those who haven’t been to campus, Cafe on the Court, Quizno’s, Chick-Fil-A, all the kitchens and dining areas on the first floor of John Sealy, are essentially gone. There are two white tents on top of the University Plaza parking garage, one has a chow line, the other tables and an outdoor dining area. The menu is fixed, an entree or two each day. Somedays it delicious and popular—ribs or burgers or rice and gravy—and somedays it’s less so (last week’s liver and onions, as an example). It’s a little like high school, with anticipation building as small groups head over to see what fate offers, to make their way through the line and gather around the folding tables, plastic utensils and bottled beverage in hand, picnic style. People are being good sports, everyone is making the best of the situation, and even with grilled liver fumes in the air, it feels good.     

A colleague sent me a link to a great tropical weather site called “Stormpulse.” With us nervously watching Ike as it prepares to enter the gulf, it’s one more place to go and get info. This is an example of a “mashup” put together by a couple of guys, one of them living in South Florida. A mashup assembles data from various sources and displays them via the web, often in novel ways. Many of these use Google maps as a building core; I saw a neat one that offers real-time earthquake reports. Fortunately, earthquakes aren’t something high on the list of concerns for us this weekend. Visit STORMPULSE.

UTMB has a long relationship with a commercial weather service called ImpactWeather (you may recognize the name if you listen to KUHF). Many local decisions are based on what ImpactWeather—as well as the NWS—are forecasting specifically for UTMB. See the latest UTMB Advisory.