Cornell Book Award - Greater Boston

For the last several years I've had the privilege to select the Cornell University Book Award for Greater Boston, sponsored by the Cornell Club of Boston. The award is given to over 35 high schools in the Greater Boston area each spring, to a junior who has demonstrated outstanding academic and extracurricular achievement. The selected book is usually authored by a Cornell professor or alum. I usually try to get the author to autograph the hardcovered books. Makes it a bit more special for the recipients.

This year's book award is "Armageddon in Retrospect," by Kurt Vonnegut '44. Actually, he never received a Cornell degree because of WWII. He was a Cornell Daily Sun newspaper editor. He would have graduated in 1944, despite having flunked a course or two. This posthumously published collection of short stories and letters has an introduction written by his son, Dr. Mark Vonnegut, a resident of Milton, MA with a pediatric practice in Quincy, MA. The publishing company told me Mark wasn't publicizing his father's book any longer. I was disappointed but I left it at that.

I have the honor of presenting the Cornell Book Award at my town's high school. The school official I correspond with mentioned she knew Mark. He was her kids' pediatrician, many years ago. She said why not try calling him -- what's there to lose! So I did. Heh, yesterday afternoon, Wednesday, he said he'd be happy to sign the books while I waited; just come on down. I made the quick drive to his office and waited in the waiting room. After just a few minutes, a nurse help me carry the two boxes of books into their kitchen area. I was excited and felt just a little nervous, but privileged.

I've never met Kurt Vonnegut before, so my impressions of him come from his books and the articles about him. In Mark I could definitely see aspects of his father. Mark was funny. Well spoken. Had his dad's eyes. I knew him to be about 60 years old, but he looked younger than that. But he was also not like his dad. When I asked him why he became a pediatrician, he said he wanted to help parents who wanted to do the best they could to raise their kids. I have a feeling Kurt perhaps was not as altruistic. But who knows. So it goes.

To the anonymous poster with the tip on including a PDF file a blog, thank you! I used Scribd to upload my resumes on their host. I found embedding them here made the post too slow to render. So I'm including just the links.
IT resume
teaching resume

This morning I'll be attending a seminar on dressing for success and practicing interviewing. Neither of which I've done in years. I also have to enter my transcript in SchoolSpring.com, for my substitute teaching application.