Board?

We're overwhelmed with preparations for two big events this fall. The first is our Education Fair,scheduled for Thursday September 8th. We'd love it if you stopped by the Library to explore some of our course offerings, get education counseling or just to take a look at some of our spruced up classrooms. We'll have refreshments and drawings for some great prizes as well as insurance-related items free for the taking!

We're also working on preparing printed invitations for The 10th Annual Insurance Professional of the Year Award Ceremony printed this week so that we can mail them out next week. We have 26 tables already reserved, leaving 9 still available (if you're interested, you should probably act soon!).

Since we’re so busy and I’m finally making a blog entry, you might think I would be popping in to discuss hurricane-related subjects-- a lively wind vs. water debate, perhaps. You'd be wrong though. I saw something interesting on the web and thought I would share it here for those who are interested. This spring, I wrote on earthquakes and one of the earthquakes mentioned was the one in New Zealand which damaged Christchurch Cathedral.

They've come up with a unique solution for an interim church. They're creating a cardboard cathedral. The architect has built similar structures in Japan, following their earthquake. You can read more about the solution here, here and here. I think (though I might be misunderstanding the model) that they'll even have stained glass windows. It's not a cheap solution, but it is supposed to last for a decade, at which point they hope to have a suitable replacement.

For those of you disappointed we didn't talk about hurricanes this time, I leave you with a link to this article. It reminds me of a scene from Low and Behold, an independent film dealing with claims adjusters in post-katrina New Orleans. There's a point in the movie where the main character attends a claims adjuster conference and the leader says:

I used to lay in bed at night and pray to God that he would bring a natural disaster on this country, a disaster so large as to bring massive property damage. No one would get hurt or die. But it would yield the largest claims the industry had ever seen.

The director said that he'd actually heard this speech given when he was training to be a claims adjuster but that no one believed him. Perhaps he wasn't making it up. . .

Still disappointed? How about this article from the New York Times which mentions:

While insurers have typically covered about half of the total losses in past storms, they might end up covering less than 40 percent of the costs associated with Hurricane Irene, according to an analysis by the Kinetic Analysis Corporation.