For much of my life, National Geographic was a natural part of people’s conversations; t wasn’t only relevant, it was part of our lives. When I went to work there, I felt like I’d arrived in Mecca. So it was with surprise and delight — and a hope that we’re back to the future — when I read this observation in the WPost by former DC Mayor Anthony Williams. He was being interviewed by Columnist Courtland Malloy. “Q: ….So what if [DC School Chancellor Michelle] Rhee leaves — give me the long view of school reform.
“Anthony Williams: I was a reading a National Geographic story about people who climb Mount Everest. They can’t do it all in a day So these people called sherpas help set up base camps along the way, suppling the camps and guiding the climbers. In many respects that’s what mayors and school leaders are to education reform: a succession of sherpas setting up base camps for our little climbers, each camp a little higher than the last. I was a sherpa. [Defeated Mayor] Adrian [Fenty] and Michelle are sherpas. [Probably Incoming Mayor] Vince [Gray] will take us higher — he may even be the sherpa who plants the flag.”
Williams made my day. I fired this quote off to my Geographic friends to savor the moment. But truthfully, it was random luck that I saw it. Malloy rubs me like Fox does, only in the opposite direction, especially on the subject of Michelle Rhee, a reformer that he abhors and that I admire. Usually I don’t even notice the headlines on his column, although I blew on the one after the primary election, when Fenty was defeated, and thus so was Rhee and their hard-pushing, creative reforms: “Ding-dong, Fenty’s gone. The wicked mayor is gone.”
That was yesterday. Today’s WPost mentioned Enric Sala, a National Geographic ocean fellow in its article about Chile setting aside a 58,000 square mile marine reserve near Easter Island.
Life on the Geographic front feels like it is returning to normal prominence.