It will be a short report today, because I am focused on the event this afternoon to honor our great friend John Diebold. I am gladdened by the outpouring of love and respect from his friends from all over the world - we are still receiving fabulous accounts of his exploits and achievements from friends and colleagues. I hope that what we have planned honors him as he deserves. We co-ordinated the spreading of his ashes in the middle of the Pacific from our research vessel, Langseth, with the start of the event this afternoon. (Langseth is on her way to San Diego from Honolulu). With great help from Rose Anne Weissel we have plotted a great track chart showing all the research cruises in which
John participated - 79 voyages in every ocean on the planet on 19 different ships from 7 nations - an incredible career.
It was a marathon ExCom this morning- a full three hours. The two biggest items were a presentation from Kenneth Crews (Director of the CU copyright office) on the University's plans to follow the lead of Harvard and MIT and develop a policy on 'open access' to scholarly works produced at the university; and secondly we started what will undoubtedly be a very long review of a completely new draft of the Observatory bye-laws. This is a much simplified document - hopefully
much more succinct and clear than the present documents that we use to guide our procedures, that have evolved in complex ways over the years.
Tomorrow afternoon we hold the inaugural meeting of the Director's Circle - a new group built around our advisory committee to help us with promotion of the Observatory and fund raising - hoping to have 50 attendees - and many new guests - who I hope we can impress and persuade to continue a relationship with us long term.
Have a great weekend,
Mike