Lamont Weekly Report, October 24, 2008

It was our privilege to entertain Stephanie Comer and her husband on Campus on Monday afternoon - Taro gave an update on the successful pCO2 measurements that are being made continuously from the Comer family motor yacht - Turmoil - as she travels the world's oceans, and it was a great opportunity to show off the Comer Building now it is populated and beginning to function as a real research facility.

Scheduling conflicts forced me to miss the Chilli cook-off - apologies to everyone - I am confident it was more fun that whatever it was I was doing on Wednesday afternoon!

The Effort reporting education session on Wednesday morning - presented by Naomi Schrag, Associate Vice President for Research Compliance and Richard Ruttenberg, Associate Controller - was attended by only two folks who were not part of Admin. I hope (naive soul that I am)  that this means that all questions pertaining to this important process have been satisfactorily answered!

Ed Botwinick CU Trustee emeritus and friend of Lamont flew his Cessna Citation jet into White Plains on Thursday afternoon and spent the afternoon talking with us about our Advisory Board, and ways to increase LDEO's visibility. His renewed interest in us was triggered by our DVD that had been mailed to him so we are beginning to see some payoff from our 'movie-making' effort.

Along those same lines, Wally Broecker and I spoke at the Knickerbocker Club in Tenafly on Thursday night- to a full house - and handed out than 50 copies of the DVD to a very interested and impressive crowd.  This event was the brainchild of our Advisory Board Chair Quentin Kennedy who continues to be a tremendously effective friend for the Observatory.

I have another event tonight - downtown at the New York Yacht Club watching Robin Knox-Johnston (a childhood hero of mine - first round-the-world non-stop solo sailor) receive an award from the National Maritime Historical Society.

Clearly I am spending more and more of my time on fund raising activities - that must be my priority for the foreseeable future. To facilitate this we are building our Development staff - one important step in this process is the recruitment of Barbara Charbonnet who will be starting "officially" in our Development office as Associate Director for Major Gifts on November 5.  Barb comes to us after a very successful three and a half years at the Earth Institute where she has
been Associate Director for Funding Initiatives, and where she has been integral to the success of the Earth Institute's $135 million fundraising achievement during Phase One of the Columbia Campaign. We are really looking forward to bringing her on board to support our fundraising efforts. Welcome,  Barb!

A film company will be shooting a movie on location at a neighbor's home on Ludlow Lane from November 21st through December 19th.  Because space is so limited, they have asked Pat O'Reilly to allow the company to rent space from Lamont for parking vehicles and setting up props and wardrobe.  It is a sign of the times that Pat is trying to accommodate them and, in the process, bring several tens of thousands of dollars of revenue into our campus.  He has earmarked these funds to modernize the projector and audio visual equipment in the Monell Auditorium to better support our outreach functions, such as the public seminar series we produce each year.  The production is called Paper Man, and will be starring Jeff Daniels, Ryan Reynolds, Lisa Kudrow and Emma Stone.  I have tasked Pat to manage this operation
carefully so as to not interfere with our ordinary business, but, as always, your forbearance and cooperation would be most appreciated.  We rarely do these things just for the money - this is one of those rare cases!

A friend of more than 30 years is getting married up in Woods Hole on Saturday so I have to drive up to the Cape. Not unintentionally, I have not been there in a long long time - it will be interesting to see what has changed.

Have a great weekend,

- Mike