Summer 2004:

Boat People

 Lisa Harner, MD: Choreographing Destiny It's a mistake to look to far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time. -Sir Winston Churchill     Dancing has always been Lisa Harner's passion, but it didn't seem to be her destiny. She was expected to folloin the footsteps of her grandparents, who were doctors. “I was a dancer before I was a doctor,” she says.

   So, after quitting her pre-med studies for dance school, her father warned, “You’d better get a cart and learn to sell apples because you’ll never make any money dancing.” He reconsidered his career advice after watching his daughter perform and announced, “Cancel the order on the apple cart.”

   Lisa joined a dance company in the San Francisco Bay area, where she met her husband, Warren, a Navy pilot. The touring life of a dancer didn’t appeal to Lisa. She decided to return to her medical studies when Warren was relocated. The medical world took Lisa away from dancing for 16 years.

   Moving from Pennsylvania to Steamboat Springs with Warren, noa commercial airline pilot, and their two children enabled Lisa to finally fulfill her destiny.

  While teaching modern dance at her daughter’s ballet school, Lisa discovered two organizations that focus on medical problems particular to performing artists. Performing Arts and Medicine Association and International Association of Dance Medicine and Science gave Lisa the tie between her love for dance and her profession.

   Lisa nofocuses on newborn care, pediatrics, adolescence, women’s medicine and performing arts medicine at Yampa Valley Medical Associates. She

also helps local physical therapists treat dancers and musicians.

   Her favorite job is being the mother of 13-year-old Erin and 16-year-old Renny. Lisa says spending time with her family is precious and jokingly wonders if she can take her unused maternity leave now. “The mom job is harder than the doctor job.”

    Lisa’s passion connects her with family. “I get a charge out of dancing on the same stage  with my daughter and watching my son work the lights in the wings,” she says, as their greatest fan, Warren, applauds from the audience. Her professional life enables her to get

to knopeople. “I can take better care of an individual because I knothe family and the community,” she says. Destiny fulfilled.

Chapman "Chan" Young: Inventor and BaristaGood ideas sometimes come from strange places - even a foamy cup of cappuccino. Just like a good cup of coffee, ideas keep Chapman "Chan" Young going. 

   With advanced degrees in geology, geophysics and materials science, Colorado native Chapman “Chan” Young holds five patents for various methods of drilling and breaking

hard rock using non-explosive devices like highly pressurized foam. And he says he’ll keep going. “This stuff is too much fun,” he says with a gleam in his eye, like a kid delighting in

getting into dad’s shaving cream and making a huge mess.

    A graduate of Cornell and Stanford universities, Chan worked as a geophysicist in earthquake prediction and explosives engineering. At Institute CERAC in Switzerland, he became involved with non-explosive mining techniques, but was frustrated by the lack

of ideas generated there for business applications. “They had this technology but weren’t developing it properly,” Chan says. “They didn’t have a good concept of hoto mix basic and applied research with commercialization.”

   One day, while making a cup of cappuccino at the lab, too much steam caused the milk foam to go everywhere. The birth of an idea – what if, Chan thought, you could use

high-pressure foam to break rock?

   The idea kept coming back to Chan, who had been developing rockbreaking techniques using smokeless gunpowder. Armed with SmallBusiness Innovation Research grants

from the National Science Foundation, Chan confirmed the foam technique is effective and safe. The non-toxic foam, which looks like shaving cream, is biodegradable, environmentally safe, and can be used close to people and homes because it’s less violent than explosives.

   Chan’s company, Applied Geodynamics Inc., develops the Controlled Foam Injection technique in collaboration with companies in the U.S. and Canada. The process is being tested at the nemarble mine near Carbondale.

    This 67-year-old grandfather of five occasionally becomes a mischievous child with shaving cream, surprising his clients by tasting the foam. Made from water, compressed air, guar gum and sodium dodecyl sulfate (used in toothpaste), it tastes like chicken, of course, or cappuccino.

Jilly Scully: Art in the Eye of the Beholder"Anyone who does art is an artist"    Jill Scully teaches her art students about great artists – Matisse, Monet, Picasso and Klee. One student prepared a resume – a circle and a line drawn on paper. Another brought his favorite creative tools – grasshoppers. The enthusiastic students are children, ages 5-10

years old.

   Jill, who has been doing art for as long as she can remember, always kept her work private, using it as aform of journaling. One day a friend asked her to give her children art lessons. So began the informal weekly backyard art Jill offers to aspiring young talent,

including her sons Sam, 7, and 3-yearold Gavin.

   Using the same materials that artists use, Jill shows children works from master artists, and they do a project that mimics that style. “They are so excited when I shothem their work and tell them ‘you are an artist, this is your masterpiece,’” Jill says. “I can see their self-esteem and confidence grow as they explore.”     After talking about hoFrida Kahlo expresses emotions through painting, one child, who was feeling sad, did a beautiful black painting. “It made him so happy just doing it,” Jill remembers.

   Inspired by the children’s creativity, Jill listens to their ideas and incorporates their suggestions. One child wanted to use bug parts in his design, so they went on a hike and used things from nature in their art. Another time, the grasshoppers inadvertently became

part of a Jackson Pollock splatter paint project. “Kids are so open-minded,” Jill says. “They have no pre-conceived notions about what art should be. No one has told them a tree has to be green. They haven’t been molded. Their ideas are so fresh. They don’t come out of the womb with a color wheel. They just grab what they like.”

   Treating her young apprentices with respect, showing them something neand listening to them helps Jill inspire creative talent. “The only guarantee I make to the parents is that I

will get their kids dirty.”    Jill, 36, has recently begun to exhibit her work locally. What is her advice to anyone wanting to explore their own artistic expression? “If you want to go hiking, you call a friend

who likes to hike. If you want to paint, get together with a friend who paints and go.”

    “I’m combining the two things I love the most: children and art,” she says. “I’m not an expert. I just enjoy what I’m doing.”