It's 75 degrees under a cloudless sky and a hot desert wind rips a man's hat from his head outside the Tropicana Hotel before slapping it against a taxi cab windshield. I'm inside that taxi and scream like a little girl when the hat slams into the car, fearing the worst — Armageddon, the end of days, zombie hats — before realizing it's a natural occurrence I'm experiencing: Las Vegas in the springtime.
It's an hour later inside the Tropicana, and Jesse Slome is working the long-term care industry into a frenzy. Part pitchman, part evangelist, Slome, the executive director of the American Association for Long-Term Care, is receiving a lifetime achievement for his LTCI activism.
Slome relays a life philosophy to the crowd: "Some people see a glass of water as half full," he says. "Some see it as half empty. As a New Yorker born and bred, I see it as, 'Who stole my (expletive) glass of water.'"
