It has been a while since I posted and much has happened in that time. UC ANR has begun to wrap up the Vision 2040 process. We have successfully navigated a call for positions and will soon be announcing some of the approved positions. We have engaged in budget planning as an organization. The merit and performance cycle is drawing to a close. Spring is halfway through and summer is on the horizon. We have endured challenges and seen opportunities for growth emerge as a result. Change is ever present and so it is sometimes the greatest challenges that bring the greatest opportunities. 

Authors across the globe have for centuries posited on the notion that inherent in challenges lie the seeds of opportunity. Our challenge individually and organizationally is to see possibilities in our challenges and then turn those possibilities into reality. We are seeing this come to fruition with the reorganization of SAREP, with past and impending retirements of key personnel, and with the budget challenges that we face as Californians. 

We also experience personal challenges. Three weeks ago, I received word that my father who has terminal pancreatic cancer was going to need round the clock care as he prepares for his self-described, "graduation from mortality." My wife and I loaded our vehicle and immediate came to Utah to assist my mother and siblings in providing this care. I have spent the last three weeks taking shifts providing this care while simultaneously trying to navigate the challenges of remotely working. I have also experienced three weeks of unbridled gratitude for the home health and hospice workers that have worked with us to provide my father with his end of life care. 

To be honest, I didn't foresee me still being here in Southcentral Utah. My dad has suffered these last three weeks and multiple times we thought that we were at the end of the road. However, he has rallied each time. Each high he experiences is not quite as high and his inevitable lows continue to get lower. This is the natural progression that accompanies a diagnosis of this magnitude. He has indicated on numerous occasions that he is ready to make the inevitable transition. However, his body seems to be approaching this transition in the same stubborn way that my father has taken on life. As a farmer, coal miner, and one of the hardest working men I have ever met, he has taken challenges on like many of the bulls he raised. He simply drives forward and keeps his face to the wind. 

I have seen opportunities to learn throughout this journey. I have watched a humble man accept assistance that I could not have ever foreseen him take. I have watched his sincere gratitude well up and spill over into tears of gratitude and love for all of us. I have watched my siblings and my mother take on the day-to-day care with love and with grace. In all, I have been grateful to be part of this process. While not an opportunity that I have sought, it is one that I would never pass up. To be able to provide this care has brought me closer to my family and enabled me to share my love with my dad in nearly every interaction. 

I want to express my sincere gratitude to Glenda, to the entire ANR leadership team and to the Second Street staff that have worked with me to be able to provide this care for my father. I sincerely appreciate the flexibility that everyone has shown to accommodate my remote working arrangement. I look forward to being back in the office and getting back out on the road to the county offices, RECs and UC campuses. Until that time, I express my sincere gratitude to everyone in the ANR family for what you do and how you do it. You are the reason that we are able to take on challenges and turn them into opportunities. You are the reason that ANR is and will remain strong, in spite of the challenges that come our way.