Hey y'all,
The last couple of days have been really great for me. I met the President of the Society, Gus Noble, on Monday morning and he took me to meet the staff, all of whom were a lively, friendly and hard-working bunch. I sat in on the weekly staff meeting and was given a quickfire briefing on issues of development, fundraising and calender events. I was lucky enough to meet the former President and Society Historian, Wayne Rethford, over lunch, with a traditional fried chicken and pop combo. Both Gus and Wayne showed me round the Scottish Home, where both the headquarters of ISAS and the retirement home are situated. I was given a detailed tour of the world's only Scottish-American Museum, with an incredible array of artefacts, dating from the Civil War to Randall Wallace's "Braveheart". (I had a feeling that little chestnut would pop up at some point!) The staff at the Society could not have been more friendly and I felt very much at home in the offices.
Today I had my first day in the offices I'll be working for the next two months. After getting set up there, I quickly got to work on a couple of reports that Gus gave me. (Actually, the reports filled up a whole gift bag but at least I'll have plenty to work on!) Once I had made headway on this, I was summoned to the headquarters of the oldest Rotary Club in the world, as a guest of Gus's, for a Rotary Club Lunch at noon. Needless to say, the food was terrific and the company great. I met briefly with Charlie Gonzalez, a member of the ISAS Board, for whom I will be working, as well as Sandy Kerr, a good friend of the Society and great guy. I was even fortunate enough to sit on on a speech and Q&A session delivered by the Chair for the Chicago 2016 Olympic Bid. The pitch was great, and the Chair, Pat Ryan, skilfully crafted some slick and silky answers from some decidedly difficult questioning. With a lot going for the city and popular support behind it, Chicago looks well-placed to be among the top bidders for the Games.
So it'll be back to the office tomorrow, where I am currently sharing office space with the HI Group, an real estate firm downtown, a partner of which, Doug Cameron, has been kind enough to grant me a place to work. I'm sharing an office with the lovely Molly, who's given me a run down on the coffee, soda, hot cocoa and POPCORN eternally available. I love America!
I'm meeting Gus and Jim on Thursday to discuss at length what I'll be looking at over the next few months. I'll be writing then! But before I do that I had better step back from the virtual world and get some much needed sleep. See ya!
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