Fiona and Jeff drop into Ottawa

I'm very pleased with the weather gods who turned on spectacular late summer, rather than early autumn days, and cool fall nights throughout the visit to Ottawa by my old friend Jeff House and his wife Fiona, whom I also know, but less well. I was very chuffed that Jeff and Fiona came all the way from San Francisco mainly just to see me, it appears. Fiona has an elderly courtesy aunt here so she too had an incentive to make this visit. They saw Ottawa almost at its absolute best (perhaps a dash or two more of autumn colours would have achieved absolute perfection, but fall is late this year, another sign of climate change I suppose). The visit wasn't long enough for all the exchange of news and views I would have liked but it was certainly way better than no visit. I first met Jeff some time towards the end of the 1970s, soon after I had been appointed editor in chief of Preventive Medicine and Hygiene, the venerable American textbook first published in 1913, edited by Milton Rosenau; he saw the book through six editions then handed it on to his friend Kenneth Maxcy, who was based at Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health in Baltimore. Maxcy in his turn passed the torch to Philip Sartwell, who was not a good editor. The dissatisfied publishers asked the Association of Teachers of Preventive Medicine to select a new editor; ATPM struck a search committee and chose me, which was a shocking surprise to everyone, especially me. I first met Jeff when he was senior medical editor at Oxford University Press. We seemed fellow spirits and a few years later when the IEA selected me to compile and edit the Dictionary of Epidemiology, Jeff and I became firm friends, drawn to each other by many shared interests. We used to meet annually at least once at a major epidemiology or public health meeting, and over the years he made several tactful suggestions about ways I could do better in my editorial role. Our shared interests include literature, the arts more generally, and politics, as well as the making of good books. I wish Jeff and Fiona were my neighbours instead of living 3000 or more miles away. Now they have set off on their way home to San Francisco and I'm kicking myself that I forgot to get out my camera on any of the occasions that they were here in my home. Just to close the circle on my digression into the matter of that big public health textbook: I used my editorial role in many innovative ways, one of which was to change the name from Maxcy-Rosenau Preventive Medicine and Hygiene to Maxcy-Rosenau Public Health and Preventive Medicine. I wrote about my reasons for the name change, and later in the 13th edition, the publishers honoured me, adding my name to the book's eponym: now it's called "Maxcy-Rosenau-Last" - and perhaps soon Bob Wallace's name will be added too; or maybe the eponym will be dropped, maybe the great monster will become an e-book. Sic transit gloria mundi. (Fiona took the photo at the top of this post with her cell phone. I could kick myself for forgetting to get out my digital camera! I missed several splendid photo ops.)