The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” – St. Augustine

I'm off this morning.  Leroy will drop me downtown at the Westlake light rail connection to the airport.  I'll be in the air by noon, and fly through Dallas to Palm Beach.  I'm speaking tomorrow at a conference hosted by the Institute of Internal Auditors.  They are actually a more cheerful lot than their name might make it sound, and they have very good taste.  I confess that one of the reasons I accepted the offer to speak was because of the conference location.  The Breakers is one of the most beautiful hotels in the United States.  Here's a couple of external views.

And here's a few from the interior of the hotel:

It will be my home away from home the next several days.  And I plan to read a whole chapter.

Bittersweet

 Over the ten years I worked at Washington Mutual, we worked hard and we often played hard, especially if it was to raise money for United Way.  These photos are from the 2007 Zucchini Car Races, which pitted execs and staff against one another for silly prizes, and to kick off the annual campaign.  Washington Mutual matched every employee's contribution to United Way, and enabled the donation via payroll deduction. Above, CIO Deb Horvath listening to the referee before racing.

Here Deb races Retail Bank exec James Cameron, a Brit.

Corporate Communications exec Ann Shannon races Karen Pierce from my team.

Here, CTO Pia Jorgensen beats CIO Deb Horvath.

In pre-WaMu Center days, we raced on the roof at Second & Seneca.  Here, Infrastructure exec Mike Spalter (a la Jerry Garcia) and myself (Princess of Darkness, per this photo and previous photos) face off.

I have always been extraordinarily proud of the teams I led.  Here a photo of some of the team at Al Wilson's Bon Voyage Party on the roof of WaMu Center. 

Here's another picture of the Enterprise Risk Services Seattle team (2007?), with the projector's blue light cutting across our eyes.

I thought I'd post these tonight before I attend the last Washington Mutual Alumni Group Emergency Assistance potluck at the Museum of History and Industry.  Seeing this many former Washington Mutual folks is always, always bittersweet.

Look back to look forward

This has been a wonderful month, so far.  The sunshine coincides with the re-entry of two of my favorite people in the world.  My colleague and friend Lauren Du Graf has been working with me to re-imagine my risk consulting firm.  Earlier this week, I wrote more about that in my other blog.


The other friend who dropped back into my world this month is Luba Lisenberg, whose work you can see here.  With good friends, it is hard to remember when you did not know them -- our first meeting was about 30 years ago, when her son Pablo Schugurensky   was my intern in the Office of Public Affairs at the  Seattle Art Museum.


Luba is a fierce artist, a psychoanalyst  turned sculptor, who lives in Buenos Aires.  My friend Jenny and I visited her there about ten years ago.  We see her each year when she flies north to visit Pablo and his family, who live in this very neighborhood now.  There is such rich fabric woven through our lives.


This visit we talked primarily about looking forward.  Both of us are tweaking the content of our days and the work we do.  It made sense to look back at the variations of our journey in order to look forward.

Happy Independence Day!

Seattle fireworks as seen from Gasworks Park.

Wishing one and all a safe and happy Fourth of July.

Our hearts go out to those who are suffering because of wildfires in the West or power outages in the East.

Remembering the Seattle Art Museum Days

I'm sitting here today in the Henry Gallery Cafe, reflecting on my life-long love affair with museums, while I wait to meet one of my first friends at the Seattle Art Museum, Judith Cederblom. I had been thinking of her a few weeks ago, and lo there she stood in Cafe Allegro not more than a few hours after I had met with another colleague from Seattle Art Museum days, Albert Thurmond.

It had been over 25 years since I'd seen either of them, and it's been a pleasure to learn how our respective lives have evolved since then.

From the Seattle Art Museum's (SAM's) own history of itself:

Annie at work at the King Tut Exhibition, 1978

"SAM’s first “blockbuster” was the 1940 exhibition of Japanese works from the collection of Manson F. Backus, which drew an astounding 73,000 visitors. But that success paled in comparison to the traveling exhibition The Treasures of Tutankhamun, which SAM mounted in 1978 at the Seattle Center. The exhibition was an international sensation (many recall Steve Martin’s hit song “King Tut”), drawing 1.3 million visitors in Seattle. 

King Tut’s popularity, coupled with the astonishing acquisition of Katherine C. White’s famous collection of African Art in 1981 (part donation, partly funded by the Boeing Company), encouraged SAM’s leaders to expand beyond the original Volunteer Park facility. In 1986, Seattle voters approved a $29.6 million levy, with the museum raising $35 million more, to build a 150,000-square-foot facility on the west edge of Seattle’s downtown....designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Robert Venturi of Venturi, Scott Brown..."

Those were indeed the glory days to be working at SAM.  Judith was right in the thick of it, putting up with four directors -- Willis Woods, then interim director Bagley Wright, then Arnold Jolles and then Jay Gates -- in the time Albert and I were raising money through development work for the new downtown museum project.  I remember how thrilled I was to be invited to write the successful National Endowment for the Arts Challenge grant application, in which we crafted the major arguments for the addition of a downtown museum. During that time, I was lucky enough to work with Mayor Charles Royer's municipal team as well, on the strategy that eventually created a new downtown museum facility.

We were all three engaged in planning events such as the museum's 50th anniversary gala celebrations, as well as in VIP events connected to exhibitions like the one from the collection of the Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza, wherein the baron invited me to sail down from Vancouver on his yacht to Seattle; or even the visit, complete with advance visits from the Secret Service, of Queen Elizabeth or Egyptian Ambassador Ghorbal.  

It was wonderful to burnish those memories with updates today, just as it was in my coffee with Albert.  What's most amazing is how true to themselves both Judith & Albert have remained, and how much we still have in common.

 

Five and a half hours

For about five and a half hours yesterday, our neighborhood was on lockdown, while police searched for an armed shooter who had killed three people at an expresso bar just blocks from where I live.


There are many iterations to the story.  The same shooter actually killed a total of four people and then took his own life.  Accounts indicate that the event cannot be characterized as gang-related violence, but rather as the mental instability of a single individual, of whom a member of his family said, "We could see this coming."


For those five and a half hours, as I sent out communications to our neighborhood disaster preparedness coordinators, I was in the same position as other members of our community who live in constant fear of a stray bullet or an unintended consequence affecting their life.  That two very well off neighborhoods -- Ravenna and West Seattle -- had armed police officers going door to door is a phenomena that others who live in different parts of the city are very familiar with.  They have been asking for action to quell the violence for many years.


For most in Ravenna, life is back to normal this morning and life is good.  For others in parts of the city where random violence occurs on a daily basis, life is as usual too -- but the reality is much more painful.  Perhaps while horrific events are still in our minds, we can figure out a way to reduce the risk of this type of violence -- that includes enforcing current laws on the books, re-examining gun control registration issues, and re-staffing the gang units to prior levels at the Seattle Police Department.


My heart goes out to all the families who have lost loved ones or friends from such senseless violence.  Colin Powell says that optimism is a force multiplier.  I am optimistic that, without guns and using our best minds, we can make some progress on this issue.  It's larger than Seattle, but I would be satisfied to start right here.

Lovely weekend

Some weekends are genuinely memorable.



Each quarter, my husband cooks for both his large class and his graduate seminar.  We hosted the seminar folks on Saturday evening in weather that was spectacular.  I shot this with my iPhone from the second floor of the house.

Leroy did his usual spectacular cooking, I made a large fruit salad, and the students ate everything.  I mean everything...including the Trader Joe's vanilla bean ice cream and triple ginger think cookies.


Sunday was Mother's Day, which I always enjoy because of the phone calls, cards and flowers from the mature adults who used to be called kids. 

A bouquet from Sabrina and family

An orchid from Cassandra and Richard

One thing is very clear -- I am a very lucky person, with an admirable, interesting family.  Happy Mother's Day to all of you!