My boss came into my office at the end of the day, sat down, and told me his idea for how the Department of Medicine can address the issues of burnout and resiliency that the health system is focused on these days. Dr. Rogers wants to relieve the various stresses on our faculty, clinicians, and health care providers. We can do this. I told Dr. Rogers how, the day before, I'd been annoyed by the painful screech that a highly-trafficked automated door made every time it opened, and how a call to Engineering and Operations got it addressed the same day. That's the kind of availability and responsiveness that can help reduce frustrations throughout the medical center.

I'm on a few committees exploring these issues and the innovative solutions - simple or systematic - that we can implement. I'm not quite sure how best I can be involved, so I'm thinking about how I can evolve to be a park ranger, or a community builder and culture creator.

Over my morning cappuccino, I reread Duke's recent academic strategic plan, Together Duke. It's clear, ambitious, inspiring.

Oliver was to have a friend spend the night, and he was brimming with excitement because it was to be the first sleepover. Alas, the friend wasn't able to come over, and Oliver was quite bummed. So Erin decided we needed a family movie night, and off to the theater we went, to see Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.

I wasn't sure I was going to like this update of the 1995 movie with Robin Williams. But this new film, with Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart and Jack Black and Karen Gillan, was hilarious. I laughed so much that I was crying. Through my tears, I heard Oliver busting up, too.

Fun night.

On the Football Show on Sirius XM yesterday, Charlie asked Ray to name the best soccer books.

"The Miracle of Castel di Sangro, by the late, great Joe McGinniss," Ray said, launching into a long answer about why McGinniss, who'd written a bestseller about Nixon's 1968 presidential campaign, had gone to Italy to write about a small team newly elevated to Serie A.

The book sounded interesting, so I requested it from the Duke Library, and picked it up today.

I'm a few pages in, and wanted to note this passage on page 30:

The sidewalks, in fact, were filled with walkers spilling out into the street. "This is the time of the passeggiata," Barbara said. "Everywhere in Italy, in early evening, almost everyone turns out for a walk. No destination. No purpose. Just to walk slowly and to look and to talk occasionally with one's friends. Maybe to shop, but that is usually an afterthought, not the purpose. The charm of the passeggiata is that it has no purpose beyond itself.

What a great idea. A daily walk, to be outside, with people without purpose.

I see from the McGinniss entry on Wikipedia that Hudson spoke at McGinniss's funeral.

Duke Health is building a new bed tower, and the construction crane is in the process of being installed, the pieces lifted and lowered into place by another, mobile crane. This morning, men are walking up there, guiding the heavy counterweights into place.

This is fascinating to watch, engineering in the open, and it made me think about all the amazing medical procedures that happen in the operating rooms and intensive care units above my desk (my office is on the ground floor of one of the older bed towers of Duke University Hospital). I wonder if we made more of medicine visible, would we inspire more wonder in ourselves and those we serve?