And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.
I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.
I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.
[Citation: From SALT-WATER POEMS AND BALLADS, by John Masefield, published by the Macmillan Co., NY, © 1913, p. 55; the poem was first published in SALT-WATER BALLADS, © 1902.]
Figure 13.5 Søren and his wife Sue Ellen shortly before his death.
Our first course, which we called “An Explanation of Taguchi's Contributions to Quality Improvement,” was offered in the spring of 1987. This was a discussion of the research that we had done on Taguchi methods in the previous five years. To our surprise, over 60 people took the course. In the CQPI office, Judy Pagel, Conrad Fung, and others often worked well into the night, to get ready for the course. Statistics courses had never garnered this kind of attention in the past. Growing interest in quality improvement methods inspired scientists working in industry to learn all they could about the most effective and efficient statistical procedures.
In the fall of 1987, we began offering our second course, “Designing Industrial Experiments: The Engineer's Key to Quality,” which became the short course we taught in Madison as well as “on the road.”
The activities of 1988 are suggestive of the enthusiasm that the quality movement engendered at the time. In January, we submitted an NSF proposal for a three-year grant on “Experimental Design and Statistical Methods for the Improvement of Quality and Productivity,” which we ultimately received. In April, CQPI brought Professor Noriaki Kano, a Japanese expert in quality management and customer satisfaction, to Madison where he also met with members of the city government and with participants in the Madison Area Quality Improvement Network (MAQIN). In the same month, we held the first of two annual quality retreats at my home, an all-day event that brought together many of the same people from city government and MAQIN. In May, the Annual Quality Congress, held in Dallas, was a “sell out.” There Conrad, Søren, Mark Finster, and I gave a tutorial titled “Modern Quality and Productivity Improvement: An Overview” that was well received. In the late summer, Søren, Conrad, and I gave our short course to 60 employees from three Hewlett Packard divisions in Sonoma County, California. In September, we repeated the course for members of the Swedish Association of Engineering Industries in Sodertalje, Sweden. From there I flew to England where I gave a talk at ICI on the uses for statistics in quality improvement. On October 12–14, we brought Professor Kano back to Madison to give two seminars. At the end of October, Stu Hunter, Søren, and I gave a three-part tutorial for the society of Manufacturing Engineers in Chicago.
Because our short courses were successful, we decided in 1990 to make a series of videotapes on the same topics. These were shot at my home in Madison by my son, Harry, who was a cameraman in Hollywood. We filmed two tapes a day for three days. These covered Quality and the Art of Discovery, The Iterative Nature of Scientific Investigation, Factorial Designs, Blocking, Simple Plotting Methods to Analyze Results, and a Practical Demonstration of a Product Development Experiment. The latter featured the same optimization strategy we used in our classes at the university, illustrating the effect of the design optimization of a paper helicopter. Søren climbed a ladder and dropped the different paper helicopters while Conrad sat below timing each flight with a stop watch.
The filming process involved a lot of different people coming and going in our home, because in addition to Harry, there were other crew members who did the lighting, adjunct camera work, and other tasks associated with the taping. At one point, Claire and I decided to escape the chaos by going out to dinner. While in the restaurant, however, Claire had an extreme bout of vertigo. She had recently been diagnosed with Meniere's disease, a disorder of the inner ear that affects balance and hearing, but previously she had never had a major attack. On this particular evening, she was so affected by vertigo that she could barely walk. We left the restaurant, and once in the car, she felt even worse. I pointed the car toward home, driving at a slow, consistent speed while avoiding bumps and potholes in the pavement. We had a number of miles to travel. Suddenly I saw red lights flashing in my rear view mirror and realized that a police car had been following us, so I pulled over. “I stopped you because you're traveling dangerously below the speed limit,” said the officer, as he inspected us for signs of intoxication. When I explained the situation, the officer gave us free passage home, but once we arrived, Claire crawled into the house and went to bed.
Some years later, Claire had another medical emergency when a drug she was taking caused an extremely painful “bleed-out” in her leg. As I drove her to the emergency room, I once again traveled at a crawl. Luck was not on our side; we were soon pulled over by a police officer who was far from understanding. After taking my license and sitting for a time in his squad car, he returned and said, “You did this before! You have a history of traveling below the speed limit.” I was reminded of the story of a fellow who had a car accident. In his written explanation, his insurance agent said, “the policy holder admitted it was his own fault, as he said he'd been run over before.”
Our videotapes are still current. They have been converted into DVDs and are once more available.
1 G.E.P. Box and R.D. Meyer, “Studies in Quality Improvement: Dispersion Effects from Fractional Designs”; G.E.P. Box and R.D. Meyer, “An Analysis for Unreplicated Fractional Factorials”; G.E.P. Box and R.D. Meyer, “Analysis of Unreplicated Factorials Allowing for Possibly Faulty Observations”; W.G. Hunter, “Managing Our Way to Economic Success: Two Untapped Resources”; P.R. Scholtes, “My First Trip to Japan”; B.L. Joiner and P.R. Scholtes, “Total Quality Leadership vs. Management Control”; S. Bisgaard and W.G. Hunter, “Studies in Quality Improvement: Designing Environmental Regulations”; G.E.P. Box and C.A. Fung, “Studies in Quality Improvement: Minimizing Transmitted Variation by Parameter Design”; W.G. Hunter and A.P. Jaworski, “A Useful Method for Model-Building II: Synthesizing Response Functions from Individual Components.”
2 See also G.E.P. Box, L.W. Joiner, S. Rohan, and F.J. Sensenbrenner, “Quality in the Community: One City's Experience,” Center for Quality and Productivity Improvement Technical Report No. 36, June 1989 (originally presented at the 1989 Annual Quality Congress in Toronto).
3 S. Reynard, “The Deming Way: Management Technique Saves Money in Madison,” The Milwaukee Journal, March 1, 1985, p. 6.
4 The six of us wrote “Quality Practices in Japan,” in Quality Progress, March 1988, pp. 37–41.
“What else had you to learn?”
“Well, there was Mystery.”
Chapter Fourteen
Adventures with Claire
…I could write a preface on how we met
So the world would never forget
And the simple secret of the plot
Is just to tell them that I love you a lot…
Lorenz Hart
[Citation: “I Could Write a Book,” by Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers, from the musical “Pal Joey;” Broadway stage production 1940; film adaptation 1957.]
Claire and I met when she took a course on quality improvement taught for managers working in and near Madison. At that time, she was the Psychiatric Program Director at Madison General Hospital. She had worked her way through school, earning a Master of Science in Nursing, and had previously taught at the University of Wisconsin School of Nursing. I found that whenever she spoke
, it was like a ray of sunshine: helpful, sensible, and original.
Claire told me that becoming a nurse wasn't always easy, and once, as a student, she was nearly removed from the program. She had been working with an older woman who was dying and had no family or friends nearby. On Mother's Day, Claire sent her flowers and made the florist promise to keep her name confidential. The unit clerk called the florist, who revealed Claire's identity as the sender, and there followed many lectures about “inappropriate boundaries.” She later had a wonderful instructor who eventually forgave her and even let her stop wearing her nursing cap because it kept falling off.
When Claire and I were getting to know one another, she sometimes worked evening hours in the hospital's oncology unit, and I would sometimes wait in car with a chilled drink or flowers. We married in September of 1985. On our first anniversary, Claire and I celebrated the day by taking a long walk in the countryside outside of Madison. We hadn't got very far when we heard meowing, followed by the appearance of a thin and scruffy kitten. The cat was obviously hungry and in distress, so we gathered it up and went home. She was a beautiful female kitten with long golden hair, most probably from a litter of barn cats. We couldn't very well call her Anniversary, so she became Annabelle. She later suffered from diabetes, and I took charge of her injections for many years. She was the first of a number of beloved cats, the present one being the large and amiable “Bert.”
At the time I married Claire, I had a number of Ph.D. students who gave my new wife a good “looking over.” We had purchased a modern house with a swimming pool outside of Madison, and the students helped us move in. The house provided an excellent place for parties, and sometimes when we taught short courses in Madison, we bussed the attendees to our the house for a reception. The students helped by preparing food, serving drinks, and cleaning up. Early in our marriage, one of them, Tim Kramer, approached Claire and told her, “We students have talked and we've decided you're okay for George.”
Claire and I had married at a time when the camaraderie among the students and staff at the Center for Quality and Productivity was very strong, and many still speak of the family atmosphere at the Center, where Judy Pagel, who ran the office, was like a second mother to the students. Claire fitted right in and rolled up her sleeves whenever help was needed. She was an excellent organizer and put together many memorable gatherings, some of which were a total surprise. Once, on my birthday, I had a vague notion that she was spending a lot of time cooking, and later in the day, José Ramírez, a student from Venezuela, stopped by. José had a small orchestra called “Paraguas” that played Latin American music, and when eventually other members of this band arrived, it finally dawned on me that my wife was throwing me a party (Figure 14.1).
Figure 14.1 Paraguas playing at a birthday party for George, José Ramrez on the left.
One weekend, a contingent of students and professors painted the entire exterior of Judy Pagel's house. Their personalities emerged during the event. Conrad did an expert and meticulous job on all the trim and left each day in clothes that were untouched by a single spatter of paint. Claire worked on the siding, and within minutes, she was saturated in paint from head to toe. Søren mounted the roof with a broom in one hand and a can of insect repellent in the other, cleaning out a bees' nest.
Once, Claire and her students at Edgewood College were having a “punk party.” She attired herself in the appropriate outlandish garb, putting several bright colors in her hair, which she stood on end, making her face up appropriately, and attaching safety pins for earrings. Later that day we were having a get-together at the house for the Statistics Department faculty. As a joke I asked Claire to remain in her weird garb. Everyone enjoyed it, but when Norman Draper arrived, her appearance evoked no response, so when I finally asked him what he thought of my wife, he commented, “Well, George, I've liked all of your wives.”
Claire worked with AIDs patients in the early 1990s, when many were dying. She would often be gone at night to be with someone whose family needed to get a good night's sleep. She told me about one family who kept three televisions on all night long, like a comfort blanket. At about 3 a.m., she turned off the television in the small room where she had been sitting with a dying man. He had not spoken all night, but now he said very clearly, “Don't you like TV?” So that television remained on until she left in the morning. She got to know the man's mother and the pastor and his wife when they visited. When she went to the funeral, she experienced gracious hospitality. The minister's wife came to her, took her hand, and led her to the pew where she herself was sitting.
Claire naturally had many strong feelings and challenges as she did this work, and I remember her writing a lot during this time. It was her way of saying goodbye.
His Bathroom
velvet blue &
gold hand towels
Eternity Calvin Klein
almond massage oil
Jacoma of Paris
Aveda hair spray
Clinique for men
Nivea Oil dry skin
antiseptic soap
paper towels
bleach spray bottle
plastic bags
latex gloves
chux & adult diapers
powder groin rashes
and row after row of
safety capped bottles
soon to be discarded
Claire has an unusual ability to solve difficult interpersonal problems. The shabby way that I had treated my first wife Jessie was something that had sat heavily on my conscience for many years. I told Claire how I felt, and she said at once, “Well you could go and see her and tell her that you are sorry.” This had never occurred to me even as a possibility. However, I wrote to Jessie and she invited Claire and me to come and visit. We flew to Scotland and were received most generously by Jessie, her son Simon, and his wife Wendy.
Before Jessie's death, we were able to make several visits to her in Scotland and to develop a warm relationship with her. This was a transformation I would have regarded as impossible, but Claire understood that the only way to try changing the pain I had caused, and the pain I felt, was to go toward it, not to run away from it.
During our time in Aberdeen, we explored the lovely countryside, watched the salmon running, visited friends, and indulged in a bit of good Scottish Whiskey. In a lovely country home, the owner asked Claire (the only American) if she liked scotch, and she replied, “yes”. He returned with a large tumbler and, smiling, handed it to her. She was the driver on that particular trip, but she showed no signs of intoxication. Later she told me that she had used the whiskey to water a number of indoor plants.
Claire and I have a loving relationship. Fortunately we share similar political views and Madison offers many opportunities to express these views. For the most part, however, I don't try to do her things and she doesn't try to do mine. At the First Unitarian Society in Madison, over a period of eight years, she helped conceive a program known as “Quest: A Spiritual Journey.” This program provides a two-year spiritual course for its participants and is based on an extensive curriculum that Claire and others wrote. For many, this program has been life changing. Like working with patients who have AIDS, this work is pro bono, but Claire has always said that the rewards are great.
Until quite recently, Claire and I went on many exciting trips together. Some places have become special for us. Claire introduced me to the Point Reyes National Seashore in Marin County, California (Figure 14.2). The park is extremely large—over 70,000 acres—and is set on a peninsula of rugged coastline, beautiful beaches, and high grasslands that are usually almost deserted. In the 1960s, it had been on the brink of destruction by housing developers, but by making it a national park, not only were its spectacular natural features preserved, but so were the ranching and oystering that had provided livelihoods for decades.
Figure 14.2 Point Reyes National Seashore.
In the park we hiked for miles on the extensive trail system. We
stayed in the quaint town of Inverness, visiting its pubs, food co-op, and once even a dentist, who in record time repaired my upper bridge so that I could give a lecture the next day without a gap-toothed smile. There were cultural events as well, including a performance of Under Milkwood in which the actors used the strangest Welsh accents I had ever heard. Sometimes these were mishaps. Claire had a dramatic reaction to poison oak, for example. But we always returned.
On one occasion, Tom and Helen joined us and we hiked the park together. It was full of all sorts of interesting animals. We spotted a large animal some distance away and began a discussion that continued for quite a period of time. The men were sure it was a mountain lion, and the women were equally sure it was a bobcat. If you asked today, I am pretty sure we would still disagree.
A distinctive feature of the park is the lighthouse shown in the photograph. This was a necessity because the peninsula is one of the foggiest places in North America. Built halfway down a cliff in 1870, it is accessed by a descent of 308 steps. During the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, the peninsula, and, of course, the lighthouse, shifted about 20 feet north, but the lighthouse sustained no damage.
The original inhabitants of the area were the Miwok, who were hunters and gatherers. They were there when Sir Francis Drake appeared in 1579, and the encounter was apparently peaceful. Drake careened his ship, the Golden Hinde, in what is now called “Drake's Bay.” It is a sheltered inlet where he could repair and restock without interference. A year or two previous to our first visit, a commemorative plaque was erected at a ceremony attended by the British Ambassador. Later the Spanish named the region Punto de los Reyes and established a mission to which they attracted many of the Miwok.
In 1990–1991, I was invited to spend a year at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, which gave Claire and me many opportunities to explore the northern coast of California. My colleagues for the year were a very varied and interesting bunch of people. Among them were sociologists, psychologists, behavioral scientists, a chemist, and one other statistician. We each had a hut of our own and were left completely alone to do our research. There was also a basic library and a central staff that would help if called upon.
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