Two Ways of Doing Things
By Founder and Director Geoffrey Peckham
There are always two ways of doing things. It is 4:30 in the morning, August 3, 2023, and I’m writing this to you on my iPhone as I lie in my hospital bed stuck full of needles. Monitors above my head note my vital signs with flashing numbers and various beeps. I’m in my room on the Cleveland Clinic’s cardiac floor and my open-heart surgery is scheduled for 10:00 am today. I woke up this morning thinking about a lesson that came to my mind three days ago—a good lesson—one that deserves to be passed along to you. In a very real sense, it is the reason why I am here right now.
This lesson was taught to Tom (my youngest son and Tusen Takk’s artistically gifted and genuinely nice guy studio/site manager*) and me. The teacher was Dan Webb, the accomplished sculptor and one of Tusen Takk’s first artists-in-residence. It was January 2021, COVID was in the middle of its reign over our collective lives because the vaccines had yet to be invented, and Dan agreed to come here as a pilot artist to help us get the residence and studios, particularly the woodshop, ready for use by all the future artists who would come here. I first met Dan at Haystack—an incredible craft/art teaching place in Maine that every summer for the past 50+ years has added to humanity’s vitality. I’m sure you would like Dan—he’s got a great sense of humor, he’s intelligent as all get out, and he knows the historical roots and tools of his chosen discipline like nobody else I’ve met.
Here’s how the lesson was taught to us. Tom and I are in the woodshop with Dan and Tom and I are trying to cut a hole for the etching studio’s sink drain. This hole needs to be accurately cut into both wood and Corian and it has to have a routered lip in which to set the stainless steel drain. Tom and I ask for Dan’s help—he more than willingly comes over to where we’re working. He examines the problem. His first words are the lesson, a lesson he’s encountered many, many times—the lesson is a question. With the utmost sincerity and a seriousness you rarely encounter in the doing of anything, he asks us: “Do you want to do this the easy way or the right way?” Tom and I paused, looked at each other for a moment and both replied. “The right way.” Our answer met with an agreeable smile on Dan’s face, then a laugh. He replied, “Good.”
Think about the question—what does it imply? “Do you want to do this the easy way or the right way?”
Here’s what it meant to us: There is always an easy way to do things, but when it comes to some jobs, like making this hole, the easy way is not the right way. The hard way is the right way and it’s hard because it’s going to take some thought, time, and the right tools. Dan didn’t mince words: Tom and I needed to learn some new skills. We also needed to buy the right tool—a plunge router—to create two accurate templates which we could then use to precisely cut the hole and the necessary lip. Obviously, this was going to take some time. A job we thought we could knock out in a day was now going to take days, maybe a week, to finish. This was one of many things we had to do to prepare the etching studio for Vaune Trachtman’s upcoming photogravure residency.
Choosing the hard way is tough, the easy way is, well, easy. Dan shared with us the hard way is most often the route that’s necessary to make great art—and few people are willing to go down that path. Mastering the use of chisels and learning how to read the nature of wood (and stone) to understand what will likely happen with the next action, what sort of chip will be taken out—well, it takes time. There is no easy shortcut.
Over the past four years of working side-by-side with Tom to build out the Tusen Takk Guesthouse and Studios, he and I have often come to a point where one of us asks the other, “Do you want to do this the easy way or the right way?” The question always brings a smile to our faces as we remember Dan’s asking it of us. These 13 words have become sort of a right-of-passage, like the question one must answer correctly to enter into the fairy tale kingdom.
Three days ago I was in one of Cleveland Clinic’s ‘Cath Labs’ to find out what’s been causing bouts of excruciating pain in my chest these last two months. If you Google “Best cardiac hospital,” Cleveland Clinic comes up first and it should—it’s been rated the number one hospital for cardiac medicine in the country for 29 years running. Patricia and I figured that this place and its staff have what’s needed to accurately diagnose and treat my situation—think Dan Webb, “you need the right skills and the right tools!”
In the cath lab’s operating room on Monday, I was having a cardiac catheterization. During the procedure, I was presented with a choice—a choice that could only be made by me. I was awake during the entire procedure. I’m telling you, it was fascinating. Multiple monitors were situated above me and to my left. One was displaying the moving image made by the camera on the end of the catheter my cardiologist had expertly inserted into an artery on the back of my left hand. Ten or so minutes into the procedure my cardiologist stops moving the catheter. The image on the screen was what you see here (he kindly had a print made for me at my request). The picture shows my left anterior descending (LAD) coronary artery, it has a section that had narrowed to the point where it was 90% closed. The cardiologist explained that this was the cause of the impaired blood flow to my heart and that it was causing my chest pains.
His explanation continued. He made no bones about it, this is a serious condition. Blockage of the LAD artery is called ‘the widow maker’ because it supplies 50% of the blood your heart needs to function. Its impairment often leads to a fatal heart attack. The fix is often easy—put in a stent during this catheterization procedure and I would be walking out of this hospital tomorrow to resume my life without any long healing process or need for physical therapy. Just take some new medications. Easy.
In my case, there was a problem. The ‘easy fix’ stent solution could be done but it was troubling to the cardiologist. While I’m lying there on the comfortable operating table he further explained that the narrowed part of my LAD artery was right where the LAD artery joins my heart’s main left artery. Stents in this area can be troubling because you don’t want to get close to messing with the main left artery (please note this is my reinterpretation of what he said, don’t quote me). The other choice was to do open heart bypass surgery to graft a replacement artery from my chest and bypass the narrow section of the LAD artery. But this is the hard way: a four to six-hour complicated surgery followed by a months-long recovery process. I’m thinking it also means a lot of pain and putting my life on hold for months. Maybe longer.
In my cardiologist’s view, surgery would be a better choice. He told me at my age, 64, bypass surgery would give me a better chance to live a longer life than putting in a stent. Then he asks me the question, “What do you want to do?”
I’m lying on the table. I can see the image on the screen. My heart is beating and the narrowed section of my LAD artery transfixes my gaze. It is quiet except for the sound of the monitors beeping and a country western song playing in the background about something I can’t remember but doing its job of easing tension in the room. Which choice should I make? My mind raced through the options:
1) Choose the stent so I can leave this hospital tomorrow without any painful surgery or painful physical therapy. This choice would allow me to continue with two months’ worth of plans: to get chores done at Tusen Takk to prepare for the next artist, to go camping, to visit with a photographer friend out East, to spend a bunch of time in September with Kira and Everett (our grandchildren). I was looking forward to doing all of these things: choosing the stent meant I could do them…but the downside was that I would most likely live a shorter life. In the Dan Webb matrix, this is the easy way.
2) I could choose to have open heart bypass surgery in the next couple of days and, as explained above, forget doing what I want to do for the next several months and have a longer life. This is the hard way.
FLASH. An image goes through my brain: I’m dancing with Kira at her wedding—she is 1-1/2 years old now—so we’re talking a couple of decades away. Then FLASH. Another image—there Kira is, at her wedding, and I’m not there.
Easy way or hard way? In the two seconds it took my mind to ponder the options of my very real existential dilemma, the answer was clear—I told my cardiologist, “I will choose bypass surgery. I want to be around as long as possible.”
In one hour I’ll be on my way into the pre-op surgical waiting room and then the surgery suite. Spiritually, I’m at peace—I know God’s loving presence is near. And I know I made the right decision, all will be well.
_________
*Tusen Takk would not be here if it weren’t for Tom Peckham. Its construction was the result of a vision the two of us had one hot August afternoon while we were pulling weeds on the vacant lot that is now the place where Peter Bohlin’s beautiful buildings inspire artists to create extraordinary works.
Self-portrait: Geoffrey in the Cleveland Clinic’s cardiac ICU the day after his surgery—his smile is fake, his glowing "ET phone home" finger is real.
Update 8/5/2023: The surgery went perfectly! Thanks to many of you for your thoughts and prayers! Geoffrey is doing well—still with his sense of humor—and expects to be released from the hospital sometime next week.
