Sylvia's Journal

I had a dream about the arrogance of power. It included uniformed bullies and fear to challenge a person in authority out of a desire to get something done. In spite all the bravery that has been ascribed to me, I believe that I am one of these persons who would cower in the face of authority, especially uniformed authority when I like to get to the other (good) side of that person.

I wondered where the theme of ‘power’ came from. Maybe it was triggered by a review of the curriculum and handouts of a course that MSH is teaching in Boston University’s Summer Institute for International Health. One of the sessions I taught in the course’s first year was about power (arrogant and regular). This is the same course that we were in the middle of when the crash took place. In fact, the day after the crash, on Sunday July the 15th, we were expecting all the students at a barbecue at our house, and two days after the crash I was supposed to have started teaching. MSH reserve troops were called in to teach that week in my stead and they did it seamlessly. The course became one of the top two courses in the 2007 Summer Institute. That was a rather stark lesson about how dispensable we are, professionally at least. It is also an argument for having teaching notes that someone else can pick up.

Maybe the arrogance of power dream was the result of seeing a picture of Bush and McCain in an awkward embrace on a platform someplace, with the caption: Eight more years? Why not one hundred! I assume it was photoshopped but could not tell which is actually scary. Or, and this is probably the real reason, the dream came out of listening to a book on tape, called Inventing a Nation by Gore Vidal. It is all about power: how to apportion it, give it away, rein it in, and the individual interpretation of what it allows and disallows.

Yesterday, after another day of primarily catching up at work (will I ever get caught up?), and a quiet dinner with Axel, it was time for our periodical OBTS Board-meeting-by-phone. I remembered the first one last October and re-read my journal entry on that day. The best thing about a journal is that it makes progress so visible. I have surely come a long way (and so has Axel). I completed the work for the OBTS elections with the material for the election website delivered to our webmaster. This work started in November and it is nice to be able to tick it off my to-do list.