Haute Hubris Hits the 'Hood

We certainly shoot for the moon around here in Fort Collins. Sometimes we go over the moon and miss our target.

What a week it's been in northern Colorado. The arrogance of power, profit, and politics, pomposity on steroids.

We've been so juiced up in the executive departments that we don't even know where we started, and we sure don't know how to stop.

This week alone, we've discovered:

1. CSU football coach Jim McElwain is leaving to coach University of Florida. (We suspected it all along despite the adamant public denial from everyone at CSU).

2. Tony Frank, president of CSU, saw his wet dreams come true, he got approval to build his on-campus stadium.


3. To keep up with the newbies across the street, University of Colorado Health is proposing to build yet another emergency department on Harmony Road, just down the street from the new emergency department going in at the new Banner Health facility that will open this spring. That's on top of the emergency room renovation at Poudre Valley Hospital.

The other night I was at an event with some people in the community who were familiar with the goings-on in the competing health systems in town. And they asked, "I see they're building a new emergency room. Why did it take so long to raise money to build the cancer center?"

Good question.

I don't think they'll be begging the community with emotional appeals to support them in this capital expenditure.

Why are we paying a football coach a huge sum of money- his original buyout was $7.5 million dollars, which I hear has been reduced, to the tune of $5 million. Couldn't they put that toward the multimillion dollar cost of the stadium? We know they won't put it toward academics.

Why do we have three emergency departments within 4 miles of each other in a city of 150,000, two of which belong to the same hospital system? Wasn't Obamacare supposed to reduce the need for emergency services because people would have health insurance and get preventive care so they didn't end up in the ER? (Hint: follow the money)

Meanwhile, this area is in desperate need of a mental health facility. Hello?

Ask executives at any of these institutions and they will issue the same platitudes and excuses. But these are both really unnecessary expenditures at a time when we ought to re-think our original purpose, and whether it truly benefits the community, or just a few. Those who are so hypersensitive to criticism might want to explain themselves to the public, who are asking good questions.

What are we doing in this country? Does this make any sense? Do we need another college football stadium and hospital emergency department? Haven't the costs of higher education and health care already gone over the moon?

Where are the grownups? These children who are too big for their business suits need a time-out.

Track Day, and A Fascinating Visit at CSU

Back to the track today.

I didn't expect much the way my legs have been feeling, but it turned out not so bad. I did three sets of 2000 meters, starting at 5K pace, first with a 2000 meter run, then got progressively faster with an 800 and some 400s, then finished up with 10 x 200m.

It wasn't nearly as ugly as I feared. I got 10 miles in this morning and called it good, between dog running and the track workout. I'm trying not to pile on the mileage too much early this week knowing that I have Casper on Sunday, which will give me plenty of miles. It was encouraging to feel decent in my speed work.

I've been thinking about trying some Tabata workouts, to get my butt moving a little faster, and maybe burning more fat. I'll have to be really careful with them though, and work up to the intensity, since my body has no idea what a 4:30 or 5 minute mile feels like. I'll see about that later on, if I live through Casper.



This afternoon I made a visit to the Colorado State University vet school, to the Flint Animal Cancer Center. One of my former colleagues where I work now took a job there about a year ago. She loves it and has been telling me about it, and invited me to visit. I took her up on it, so today she gave me a tour and a briefing about the facility and services, and then I attended rounds with some of the doctors and residents, surgeons and radiation oncologists, which took about an hour.



It was interesting to hear about the treatments and regimens they use, both for chemotherapy and radiation, some of them are very similar to human cancers, others are different drugs I've never heard of. They discussed some of the clinical trials and biotherapies available too. The needs of the pet owners and animals, and quality of life, were always part of the discussion.



What I was most impressed with, and hope to go back to find out more, was their program for improving communication between veterinary medicine providers and the clients, who are the owners and pet families. They have a whole institute devoted to that. They support decision making, quality of life, and palliative care needs. They have educational programs devoted specifically to teaching compassion and effective communication to health professionals, so they can do a better job of serving the needs of the client and patient. They even have a hospice program for pets.

Some of what they do for animals and their people is paralleled in human patient navigator programs, palliative care (for this you can substitute the less formidable verbiage: transitional care), and hospice, but as far as teaching effective communication and holistic talk about quality of life and decision-making, human health care seems to be far behind. Part of that is just being behind the times, and some of it is just cultural sensitivity to talking about life and death matters, something that people here in this country, and the human medical profession do not do well.

She took me on a general tour, and I got to see the critical care unit, which was interesting having formerly been an ICU nurse, I saw a dog on a ventilator for the first time, looked exactly like a human with the endotracheal tube sticking out and the ventilator giving breaths, and the monitors, tangles of IV tubing, and so on. The dogs actually looked much more comfortable and relaxed in there than any human ICU I've ever seen.

They have every specialty you can imagine, not just oncology. I had the strong feeling, after listening to the residents and the doctors who were there, that they were very much aware of the big picture of what was meaningful and compassionate care for the animals, and for their people, not just a bunch of nerdy scientists looking for research subjects.

Human medicine stands to gain a lot from veterinary medicine, and not just from research protocols for clinical trials in drug testing. There's a whole world to explore in the psychosocial dimension of cancer care where human medical professionals could improve.

I spent two hours there but could have easily spent all day, just looking at the educational posters and displays on the walls about the different research that is going on there. I'll figure out a time to go back and hopefully learn and see more.



So now I'm back home, just some easy miles the rest of the week before I leave for Casper on Saturday afternoon. I hope this marathon doesn't hurt as much as I'm afraid it will...

WTF, CSU?

So it's a day later and I have to look at the bright side of things, I've done 22 miles since my last blogpost despite my frequent but judicious use of the F bomb over the past 24 hours.

This morning I felt okay for the first 7 miles or so of my 12 mile run, but the last 5 were slow torture again, and I can't even count how many times I was dragging the soles of my shoes on the pavement. I'm surprised I didn't do a face plant.

Last night Shannon and I went out for our tempo run, we usually do 10 miles or so together, but we only did about 9 and a half this time. I cut it short, my whole body has been hurting on the left side for over a week now. My left hip, left hamstring, left IT band, left ankle, I can feel everything.

I'm sure it's due to my spill on the bike the week before last. I was riding and came to a concrete barrier across the path and was stopped, turned around briefly to say something to Troy who was right behind me, and I tipped over on the bike before I could pull my cleats off the pedals. I wasn't moving when I crashed, and nothing hurt at the time, but now I'm feeling a lot of stuff on the side I crashed on, and it all makes sense. The bruises are gone but I think I'm all out of alignment.

When Shannon and I ran, we both were feeling like crap. He's at the tail end of his Wasatch training, I know he's ready to taper now, and he's tired. I felt like crap even though I took a nap in the afternoon. It was 93 degrees when we left on our run, not exactly ideal conditions for a hard effort. Lots of F-bomb dropping on our run. We both were in the same place. The brain wants to go, but the legs won't respond.

So we took it easy and stayed around 9 minute pace and that was challenging enough. Plus we almost got smacked with a golf ball running by the Southridge golf course down there off the Power Trail. We heard it whiz by and over our heads by maybe a foot. It hit hard in the bushes off the bike path.

WTF?!!!

We were lucky. That was one of the closest calls I've had with a golf ball, and I run near a lot of golf courses. It would have been bad if one of us got hit. I told Shannon those guys better lay off the bloody marys before they go out golfing, they better get moving or they'll have to contend with this RPB.

As we ran by, they apologized, but I put my thumb and finger up to show them how close it was. No, not that finger. I wanted to, but I held myself back.

So I've put in 22 miles over the past 24 hours and I feel a bit tired. I guess that's okay. I just need to figure out how to re-align myself so everything won't hurt. I still feel cranky. Time for a rant or two.

Reading the local paper this morning was cause for another WTF. The ongoing local controversy over the building of a new on-campus football stadium for Colorado State University. (We already have a stadium 3 miles off campus.)

I love how these administrators talk so nonchalantly over taking on several hundred million more dollars in debt, since the interest rates are so low and they're only already $616 million in the hole. When the football program hasn't even proven itself, we have a new coach Jim McElwain from Alabama, a new athletic director Jack Graham, and University President Tony Frank hasn't even been in his position all that long.

The thing is, these guys are already all overcompensated compared to most people and have their comfortable salary contracts which will sustain them even if they fail. And any debt they leave behind will be on the shoulders of future generations of students, parents, taxpayers, and the community long after they have all retired and croaked. Somebody will have to pay for it. The estimated cost of the stadium is 246 million dollars.

Oh, is that all?

And I just about puked when they quoted Jack Graham as saying he doesn't want to have anything to do with debt incurred by the athletic department falling back onto the university. "I will do everything in my power to ensure that doesn't happen", he says.

And monkeys might fly out of my butt! Maybe you should try a career in politics, Jack. I heard there's a job opening in the White House in 2016.

They have $700,000 raised so far and they say that is enough to start what they call Phase I, or the feasibility part of the work- just preliminary design. Excuse me, but according to my calculations that is only 1/351 or 0.0028 of the amount it will cost to build this stadium. And that's only the building part. They really think that people are going to buy into this to the tune of a quarter billion dollars? They must have a reason to believe that.

They also have excuses for everything, we've heard it all, from big football programs attracting alumni dollars and research dollars and students, whining that the alumni who don't pay into the alumni funds shouldn't have a say in the decision to build a stadium, that student tuition and costs won't be affected by the cost of the stadium, to whining that lack of a stadium keeps them forever mediocre?

Mediocre in what? Athletics? Academics? Research? Costs? Debt? You're admitting to some sort of mediocrity. What defines mediocrity? And you need $246 million dollars to buy your way out of it?

WTF!

Is football worth it? Do we really need to perpetuate the culture of overspending and overvaluing sports at this level? Don't we have things that are a bit more important on which to spend that kind of money? (Yeah, like election campaigns!) Do we always have to incur more debt?

Meanwhile faculty members don't get raises, more and more adjunct faculty are hired to teach courses because they are cheap labor, and the costs of school keep going up and up and students have to take on more debt.

I don't buy any of their bullshit. I've long since been fed and digested it. Don't even get me started on the whole athletics and academics discussion, we'll be here for a long time.

Furthermore, a new on-campus stadium is certainly not going to influence my spending practices with regards to my CSU alumni status. It took me bloody forever to pay off my student loans from that institution, I think I've contributed enough of my hide.

And I get the feeling that a lot of future alumni will feel the same way once they graduate and those monthly student loan statements start arriving. Unless they get nice jobs like Tony Frank and Jack Graham have. But Jack, how long do you think Jim McElwain will stay in his job?

University Presidents and head coaches don't usually stick around in their positions too long. I don't know about athletic director tenure. I do know that $300,000 or so a year as an athletic director is a bit more than the average CSU grad makes. Assuming I'm just average. Mediocre, that is.

Not everyone has the privilege of having a job like that, which of course gives them the right to be this arrogant in their decisions that will affect everyone else in the community for years after they have moved on...

WTF, CSU?