Thursday, July 28, 2011

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Tonight's picture was taken in May of 2007 at Dutch Wonderland in Lancaster, PA. As you can see, Mattie and Peter were riding on a roller coaster. Mattie's first roller coaster experience! While they were enjoying the ride, I was running around trying to take pictures from different angles. In this picture the ride had just begun, and you can see that Mattie was happy and smiling about it! In this respect, he and I were polar opposites!

Quote of the day: Grief is a tidal wave that over takes you,smashes down upon you with unimaginable force,sweeps you up into its darkness,where you tumble and crash against unidentifiable surfaces,only to be thrown out on an unknown beach, bruised, reshaped...Grief will make a new person out of you,if it doesn't kill you in the making. ~ Stephanie Ericsson


Peter and I had lunch today with a professor of Peter's from Georgetown University's business school.
Bob Bies is a professor of management and founder of the Executive Master’s in Leadership Program at the Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. He holds a B.A. and M.B.A. from the University of Washington and a Ph.D. from Stanford University.  In addition, Bob is a co-author of the book, Getting Even: The Truth About Workplace Revenge—And How to Stop It, which was published by Jossey-Bass. Bob's current research focuses on leadership, the delivery of bad news, organizational justice, and revenge and forgiveness in the workplace.

Though I had never met Bob before, I certainly heard a lot about him while Peter was in school and I remember the business project Peter created in Bob's class. We still have the tangible product in our home from this creative business endeavor. There are some topics that I can clearly admit that I don't know much about, but higher education and surviving in such an environment are things that I am very familiar with. I have interacted with many educators over the years, and am able to decipher those with an agenda and those who are truly trying to impart knowledge and make a difference. Clearly Bob is one of the latter. What I love about his teaching philosophy is the incorporation of service learning into all his classes. In essence service learning enables students to improve their academic learning and develop personal skills through structured service projects that meet community needs. Students take knowledge captured within the classroom and operationalize this information in the real world. This is not a philosophy that every educator embraces, most likely because it requires MUCH more time, effort, and attention to detail and community connections.

We learned today at lunch that Bob has adopted the Mattie Miracle Cancer Foundation as the non-profit of focus for his undergraduate Organizational Behavior Course. His 30 students will be introduced to us on September 8 (the second anniversary of Mattie's death), when we make a 30 minute presentation in his class and tell our story. Some of the tangibles the students maybe able to help us with are revamping our website and making it more timely and interactive, enhancing our social networking presence, as well as strategies to fund raise. I was very honored to hear of Bob's interest in Mattie Miracle and in essence by selecting our non-profit he is saying that he views our Foundation as a valuable organization to invest time, attention, and human resources. As Bob told me today over lunch, we are his CLIENTS and that this Fall we will be making history together!

When I got home today after lunch, I was greeted by the same beautiful black butterfly that fluttered by us at dinner last night. I did not mention it in last night's blog, nor did I take a picture of this butterfly because we were eating dinner. But today, as soon as I opened our deck door, I was literally greeted by this butterfly. It floated around my head and it also likes to flutter by Mattie's bedroom window. So this is two days in a row with an encounter by this same unique butterfly. I googled this butterfly and found out it is a Female Black Swallowtail. In a way, I was a little disappointed to learn the butterfly was female, but nonetheless, I welcome all signs! If you look closely at my flower boxes, you will see that she was fluttering around my Lantana plants!