About ten years ago, Dennis signed us both up for a three-day beekeeping course through the University of Minnesota. The lead instructor was Dr. Marla Spivak (trading fours with the ineffably easy-going, down-to-earth Gary Reuter). It was an experience where I swear I could feel the synapses connecting in my brain. (Even the Saturday night "mixer" that involved tasting honey from around the word--literally!--was almost worth the price of admission all by itself.)
So Dennis--again, ahead of the curve--was flipping through the current Bee Culture today, and shouted out that Dr. Spivak had received a substantial grant from the MacArthur Foundation as one of its 2010 Fellows. (If you want to see how absolutely beast this lady is, watch this, and now she's confidently handling bees without gloves. Me, I'm still too much of a coward for that, even in my 8th year as a bee "hoomin.")
But, my fascination with these six-legged beauties aside, I personally think that the MacArthur Foundation made a particularly prescient choice in Dr. Spivak (and, by extension, the U of M team). Namely because it represents a tidal shift in thinking. See, business--agribusiness or otherwise--has the bad habit of chasing the fabled "silver bullet." Meaning, the latest pesticide or methodology or wonder drug...or whatever hand-wavy assumption of "innovation" fiats away the walls of any corner into which we have painted ourselves. Thus, encouraging a multi-pronged attack on a problem--with the balanced, even nuanced perspective that implies--is a huge deal. We need so much more of that kind of thinking.
And so, as I want to congratulate a person whom I consider a force of nature (and I do not use that phrase lightly), some congratulations are also due to the MacArthur Foundation itself for--I like to believe--nudging the business of problem-solving forward.
