"Where is your next best idea coming from?"

One of the most successful events for the University of Washington's School of Information is each year's Capstone event, where both selected undergraduates and the graduate students completing their master's degrees present first in short 30 second teasers, and then make themselves available for questions from the audience in a large hall afterward.  Tonight there were 69 such presentations.  Leroy was kind enough to photograph me with three graduates whom I respect highly.

Emily Oxenford has spent this past academic year with me. She took her undergraduate degree with high honors from American University, with a concentration in Peace & Conflict Resolution. She is the author of nine ASA research notes, whose topics include social media and communicating crisis management value. She is interested generally in solving local and global problems through improving information.

Her ASA responsibilities including editing each month's newsletter, writing 8-9 research notes, and participating in several client projects.  She chose to do an information audit of ASA as her Capstone.  How does a shop that is essentially one person move to an information architecture that will support growth? [I suggested that she redraw my photo as Medusa, with information streams as the snakes coming out of my head, but no such luck.]  The poster showing her project is behind us in this photo.

 Her maternal grandparents also attended this evening's capstone presentations. 

This is a bit out of focus but I wanted to use it because it shows the Capstone project undertaken by Shirish Munshi, ASA's 2010 summer research associate, and Swarnika Mehta, where they investigated a complex set of options involving health information data that is bound by privacy laws, with an eye to hosting Campus Health Services in the cloud. 

Norah Abokhodair first introduced herself to me when I guest lectured in an information security course at the UW.  I have followed her progress with great interest since that time.  She will be admitted to the graduate program at the Information School this fall, and she will go far. Her Capstone, conducted with two other students, looked at another record management system in the health care area, with a significant emphasis on interviews conducted with stakeholders.

One last note -- here's Harry Bruce, the dean of the School of Information, whose unfailingly positive outlook and keen dedication to students and faculty alike make its programs a joy to be affiliated with.  Tonight was not commencement, but for me it was the outward manifestation -- the culmination of the work itself -- for awarding the degrees that are to come.

Memorial Day 2011

Though only 1100 people lived in the town where I grew up, everyone wore a poppy and everyone honored the service of living and dead members of the military on Memorial and Veterans Days.  I like this poster because it looks to be from shortly after World War I, the war that my father, Dr. James Harrison Sowers, served in as part of the Army Dental Corps.  I suspect this photo is from his college graduation or from his graduation from dental school at the University of Iowa.

By the time my sister and I were born, my father was in his late fifties and we were just coming out of World War II. He managed memories of that war by story-telling, at least the humorous parts and the parts that highlighted the discipline of the Army.  We learned to make our beds with square corners, so flat that a quarter could be bounced off it.  We were taught the Army song, to salute, to turn out and to march. He let us use his Army blanket for picnics and tea parties.

Stored away in Doc's Army footlocker were other souvenirs from his time in the corps, including a terrific black and white photo of his corps, which hung in his dental office for some of my childhood.  He was a lifelong member of both the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars, for whom we sold the poppies made by veterans.

Doc was buried in the cemetery in Buffalo Center overlooking the rich cornfields of northern Iowa with a formal military salute in 1970.

I am glad that he came home from that war and, later, as a widower, married my mother and had two daughters.  So many did not come home from that war, or all the wars that have followed.  If you see someone offering you a poppy today, take it in memory of someone you know who served our country in the military. Or on behalf of the thousands who no longer have anyone left to remember them.

Inspiring Hope 2011

There are no words necessary to describe the joy and pleasure of friends who meet to do good works. On Saturday, we participated in the second annual "Inspiring Hope" 5k/10k walk run to benefit the Komen Foundation.  It is estimated that we raised around $5,000 -- and had a pancake breakfast after the event as well.  Here are a few photos.  You can see from the smiles that we are all happy to be a part of this event.

 Carol Frombach Salo and Ginny Douglas, both survivors, and both 3 Day Walkers.

 No rain, just a bit of chilly wind as the runners begin to line up.

 Runners could opt between 5k or 10k races.

 Here's the event organizer and captain of the Kindred Spirits 3 Day Walk team, Penny Kellam.

 Thanks to Ginny, I am able to tell you that William Kline is the guy in the kilt, who has been walking in 3 Day events since at least 2007, when I first walked.  To  his left is my dear friend Jenny Sinanan in the purple coat.

 We loved these young people and their signs, waving the participants onto the course and welcoming them back.

 Penny invites the walkers to take the course.

 And out they go!  (I played photographer, to spare my right knee.)  ASA Risk Consultants is one of the gold sponsors of the event.

 Coming back in.  He always walks with a pack and in these heavy boots.  Great legs!

 Here is Jenny coming in, wearing her University Street Fair hat that makes everyone smile.

Carol and Ginny cross the finish line without breaking a sweat.

Friends forever left to right:  me, Jenny Sinanan, Lynn Matthews, Ginny Douglas and Carol Frombach Salo.

Such a great neighborhood!

Our neighbors Jo and Charlie Voss have for years invited all of us in the neighborhood to their home on the first Friday of every month.  Folks bring food or drink and relax over conversation.  I spent only about an hour last Friday, but it was long enough to get a photo of an early version of Jo's table, set to celebrate Cinco de Mayo a day late...more and more food just keeps appearing as the house fills up.  This is one of several wonderful traditions in our neighborhood.

On Wednesday evening, I'm one of a number of residents attending an orientation for the Seattle Neighborhood Action Program (SNAP) implementation in our Ravenna neighborhood.  I'll be responsible for the 12 homes on one block of 19th Avenue -- ensuring we have contact information and also can assist any neighborhood residents who might need extra help during an emergency event like a power outage or an earthquake.  I like taking what I know professionally and applying it locally.

My walking hat.

I've walked to raise money for breast cancer in this hat since 2007.  Embroidered on the hat are the names of those for whom I walk.  I will be wearing my hat tomorrow at the "Inspiring Hope" 5k/10k walk/run to raise money for the Kindred Spirits team, with whom I trained and walked in 2007 and 2008.  I'm proud that ASA Risk Consultants is a sponsor of the event for the second year in a row.

I thought I would tell you a bit about each of the persons whose names are on my hat.  On the front are Tracy and Diane, both breast cancer survivors, one my next door neighbor and one my former colleague at Washington Mutual who walks now each year herself,  On the side of my hat that you can see in this picture are three other WaMulians -- Julie, whose humor and optimism in facing down advanced breast cancer was the inspiration for my first ever walk; Denise, who fought pancreatic cancer right down to the end with all the experimental treatments available; and Lisa, who beat thyroid cancer in 2006.  The back of my hat is jammed with names added over time including five breast cancer survivors (Colleen, Cindy, and  Judy from WaMu and Anne, guiding light for so many years at The Seattle Foundation), as well as two brain cancer patients, the composer/musician Andrew d'Angelo and my hero now deceased, Teddy Kennedy, Lion of the Senate; and my colleague Brian, who came back from a virulent form of abdominal cancer.  The fourth side of my hat includes my sister Mary, a breast cancer survivor; my friend Jobeth, who beat uterine cancer; and my old friend Sabine, who was laid to rest last year of brain cancer.

Each of these names represents a real person, whose life was torn apart by cancer.

My hat does not carry the names of the survivors who are members of the Kindred Spirits team, but I wanted to mention our captain, Penny Kellam, who has led this team and walked for something like thirteen or so  60 mile events.  She is the organizer of the "Inspiring Hope" event tomorrow, and a survivor of both uterine and cervical cancer.

This list is way too long.  Our banners say "Everyone deserves a lifetime."  I'll continue to walk and raise funds for screening, early detection and additional research that brings us closer to understanding how to eliminate this horrific disease.

Leroy remembers Rachel.

In Memoriam:

Rachel Elizabeth Ewer, December 2,1993-April 6, 2011

We do not know how any life will close.  We only know it as a gift, an unimaginable event of joy and watchfulness.  With her mother’s fierce and eager engagement of living and her father’s unfailing kindness and gentle regard, Rachel was a girl of enormous gifts, of talent and intelligence and generosity.  She lived her whole life fully, receiving it as a miracle and wonder.  In a family that almost every day sang themselves into waking, as into sleep, she came to music with a sober joy and seriousness, with a teacher’s calm determination setting out to give her grandfather a lesson on her diminutive violin, knowing almost before she knew anything else that this is how learning truly happens.  She went to school as if it were her absolute birthright, learning, eager to learn, everything that could be learned.  In the grief and pain of her passing, coming both too slowly and too fast, she perhaps better than any of us understood the perilousness of living and the seriousness of dying, but with a steadiness of light and a fixed determination to live out every moment as fully as it could be lived.  Her loss is overwhelming.  Everyone she touched, which is everyone she met, understood without instruction how great a gift is kindness, attention, the willingness to do and to be, that was so plain in her.  At its closing, how a life has been lived may be all that we can know of it.  Rachel’s was miraculous and beautiful and we rejoice in every moment of it.

Rachel Elizabeth Ewer

When Cassandra and the Phoenix Chorale came to sing at a national conference and then give a performance at St. Mark's cathedral (above), she brought her husband Richard, her son Jeremy and daughter Rachel Ewer.  That was a little more than a year ago.  Rachel was at that time on a more dramatic course of medications for the valley fever disease than she had been for the previous eight or so years.  But you would never have known that she did not feel well.  And she never wanted to be asked how she felt.  She disliked drawing attention to herself in any way.

 Like her parents, she loved music -- piano, violin and voice.  Her father, a composer, has both written and arranged music for the Phoenix Girls Chorus of which she was a part, and through which she became a world traveler.

To me, she was both elfin and intrepid. So smart and yet so kind.  Such a terrific sense of both humor and irony.  She lived a full and varied life, of which we will hear more tomorrow as musicians and fellow students and her family pay tribute to her life and her impact upon the world.

This photo is from 2006, when we trekked through the Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island.

She will never be forgotten by anyone whose life she touched.

Leroy and I thank each of you who have taken the time to write, and we are overwhelmed by your love and support.