Straight roads do not make skillful drivers… Paulo Coelho
I am always struck by our ability as scientists and practitioners to embrace and experience a curved and complex path, and to have boundless curiosity for the nooks and crannies of understanding. The stories of those intellectual and experiential journeys can be so wonderfully rich. But if you are like me, when you retell it to the wider world, you go to great lengths to straighten the line until it rises from left to right, from beginning to end, as if you had planned it that way all along and circumstances had obeyed. But it is in the ups, downs, left and right turns that the learning occurred, and so to re-tell the story as a straight line deprives both the storyteller and the story recipient of all that learning. In other words, it does nothing to make us more skilled in our driving. This annual report describes what we learned, and accomplished, in a year that felt like a drive down San Francisco’s Lombard Street. We gripped the wheel, we laughed nervously, we learned to pay attention to things previously unseen, we cried over losses, we felt exhilarated, we felt exhausted, we are grateful to have arrived safely at the bottom, all of us. Above all, we are much more skilled drivers than we were before. We are looking forward to the opportunity to use those skills in the coming year to be even more smooth and quick in the turns, and to have even more partners in the car (electric, of course). Our profound thanks for your passion and partnership.
All the best,
Denice Wardrop
Executive Director
Chesapeake Research Consortium