Jan 19th, MLK day

The Capitol was very blurry, all night.





The filming of an episode of Hardball on the mall. The media was basically a circus all week. People didn't care so much about the news, but they desperately wanted friends and family to see them waving a plastic bag in the background.



Sue lives so close to the National Cathedral that she didn't think she needed fingers on her gloves.

Inauguration week photos, jan 18th

Sunday, the 18th, heading toward the mall and Lincoln Memorial Concert. It felt like a post apocalyptic zombie film...but with street vendors. Favorite sales pitch: "Hand warmers $5. Frostbite is free."



Firemen doing their job (taking pictures for people in the crowd, of people in the crowd, from their exceptional view).

There were so many people trying to see the concert at the Lincoln memorial, that they were backed all the way up to the Washington Monument watching jumbotrons of the event. Some even risked life "on" limb....

Jan 18th, Inaugeration week

At 6am in Boston, it was snowing. My flight had been cancelled the night before and I had made immediate rearrangements to catch another on AirTran. I wheeled new bright red luggage down my lonely snow-dusted street, blemished with the marks of one early-risen driver, and toward the train station. I got to the airport early, and was expecting to camp out for several hours during the morning snow storm, but everything went remarkably according to schedule. My window-seat was waiting for me, next to 2 sweet middle-aged black women with american flag painted fingernails. they asked me what I was doing in Baltimore, as if they didn't already know my answer. "On the way to D.C.," I said, "How 'bout you?" Throughout the 40 minute delay these women told me all about the plans they had not yet made. They, like many Americans, were winging it. The important thing was just to be in D.C. for the moment; everything else would fall into place.

As it snowed, Airport attendants sprayed green and orange Nickelodeon fluids on the airplane, getting ready to de-ice us for takeoff. I looked down at the armrest where the XM radio receiver was. The channel was left on Lithium 54. Somehow they had known I was a closet 90s grunge fanatic. REM was on. I waited a few seconds to see what song would scroll by. "It's the end of the world," it read.

Oh great. I buckled up and went to sleep. In a little over an hour, I'd be in DC.

hiccup

10 pm, just 10 hours before my flight, jet blue calls me and cancels my flight.

I found another with a different airline, even cheaper actually, but there might be a storm brewing in Boston which could potentially delay things again.

We shall see. I'll get some great pics of the airport at least...

Bobby Goes to Washington

My bags are packed. I'm leaving tomorrow morning for my first adult visit to our nation's capital. I've been there twice in my life as a child, which means I remember dinosaurs and a giant statue of Abraham Lincoln. This trip will be significantly different. As an adult I've read about Capitol Hill and all of the rotten and sometimes amazing bills that have been turned into law. D.C. is an amazing city to me because it is more of an idea than a place. Living in Boston for a handful of years has given me an interesting perspective of history and location. Every major city in America has a ghetto and a ritzy downtown. Likewise, they have experienced miracle and tragedy. It's easy to live somewhere and forget it's history, and it's even easier to visit some place and forget that people live there.

Through the grace of good friends I have accommodations for this trip to D.C. and thanks to the bad players at Cake Poker, I have the means. I'm excited to feel the emotions of the people who've been charged up by politics and hopefulness, not Britney Spears or the New England Patriots.

Hopefully I will be able to get some great video and pictures for you all who cannot make this trip, though I'm sure CNN will do a more complete job. Stay tuned!

a story of mine in the Allston-Brighton Tab

as shown here

Allston, Mass. -

Fighting off recommendations from Attorney General Martha Coakley to become primarily a teaching facility, the new management of Caritas Christi Health Care System said that St. Elizabeth’s Hospital will not only maintain most of its services, but expand upon them.

Dr. Ralph de la Torre, the new president and CEO of the not-for-profit hospital chain, confirmed that St. Elizabeth’s work as a tertiary care community hospital will continue and they will also maintain their status as a teaching facility. This coincides with the information St. Elizabeth’s President Chris O’Connor told the TAB in March.

The William F. Connell Emergency Dept. and Urgent Care Facility is still scheduled for a June 2009 opening.

“The final piece of steel was put in place,” said de la Torre of the building’s recent structural completion. Now they will be working on the inside, putting up the walls of what will be a state-of-the art emergency room, he said.

According to de la Torre, they are no longer the practicing referral hub for the Caritas System, meaning that patients will not first be sent to St. Elizabeth’s to later be referred elsewhere.

“The hospitals are about the communities we’re in,” said de la Torre. “We’re not just in the community; we’re a part of the community.” And as Good Samaritan is about Brockton and Carney is about Dorchester, St. Elizabeth’s is about the communities of Allston-Brighton and Brookline, he said.

Emily LaGrassa, director of communications to the AG said, “We do not feel that having some tertiary services is incompatible with being a community teaching hospital. [CCHCS] needs to identify which services are responsive to the community.”

LaGrassa said that those at the office of the AG feel that de la Torre really understands how to find that balance, and they look forward to working with him.

A reshaping of the Caritas System management is the largest appeasement of the AG’s recommendations to date, resulting in a largely layperson Board of Governors, almost entirely independent from the Archdiocese of Boston.

As stated in the AG’s executive summary on a report compiled by Health Strategies & Solutions, Inc. in March, “CCHCS needs strong, dynamic leadership whose accountability and reporting obligation is only to the CCHCS Board of Governors. It is critical that the current executive recruitment process be successful and that the new leadership be effective, visionary, and stable for the foreseeable future.”

Though the archdiocese still appoints three members to the board, health care and business professionals represent the new face of Caritas.

“Our management team is more streamlined,” said de la Torre. “We’ve hired out gaps to fill.”

The gaps already filled include Brian Carty, chief marketing officer; Joseph Maher, executive vice president for governmental affairs and general counsel; and Timothy Crowley, MD, senior vice president of physicians and network development.

Crowly, former medical director at Mount Auburn Health Care, will attempt to address the AG’s concerns about the Caritas Physician Network by improving productivity and financial performance.

Carty, former CEO of the Burlington-based Wheelhouse Corporation, has been competing in advertising and internet marketing for years, working with clients such as Verizon Wireless and Dunkin’ Donuts.

Joseph Maher has been taken on because of his healthcare and governmental law experience, said de la Torre. He had overseen the merger between Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Faulkner Hospital, as well as many other hospital mergers in the region. Though de la Torre, a renowned cardiac surgeon, has many ties to his former Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, he said no mergers are in consideration in Caritas System’s near future.

“I asked him [Maher], does that mean every hospital you work for ends up merging? And he said, ‘No, it just happens to have worked out that way,’” said de la Torre of a conversation he and Maher had had upon his coming to Caritas.

At Beth Israel-Deaconess, de la Torre was founder, president and chief executive of its Cardiovascular Institute and the Cardiovascular Management Associates, a multi-site hospital, physician and testing facility network.

De la Torre hopes to expand the offerings at all of the community hospitals, and provide the highest quality health care achievable, he said.