Thanks For Asking

Last week I spent two days wearing Regina Holliday's Walking Gallery Jacket #300 in our nation's capital.  I walked on busy sidewalks, spent a half day at a conference of ALS advocates inside an upscale hotel, and called on legislators for a day on Capitol Hill with a curious painting covering the back of my yellow wool jacket.

The people who went out of their way to ask me about the jacket were interesting -- the staff at my less upscale hotel, many strangers on the Metro, people waiting to cross streets, security guards at a House office building, workers at the snack bar in the basement of a Senate office building, a lady who saw me in line at Starbuck's, several legislators who really wanted to learn about the backstory, and on and on.

Perhaps the people who didn't ask reflect something important about the fight against ALS.

The Walking Gallery has an everyman quality.  It draws interest from real people relating to other people.

How do we move clinicians and other healthcare professionals and scientists and organizational executives to have that same personal curiosity that everyman displayed last week?

The Walking Gallery makes some powerful statements in many ways.