Patch's Diary
January 21, 2006
Already having a wonderful year. Thank you life, and friends! Susan and I went to Chicago at Christmas to be with her mother, sister and brother and their families. I feel so welcomed in the families.
We spent an afternoon with Vivian Eussin Paley and her charming husband, Irving, drawn there by the magical voice for early childhood education that Vivian (enchanted by being with young children) has written about in her many books (her latest: A Child's Work). The hours passed in rapt conversations on the horrors of "no child left behind," and nightmare governments, to Jane Austen and Schoenberg recordings. The meal was delicious, the hope infusion incalculable. Landscapes of what education really is and its sprawling fireworks return me to the focus that education could be the most direct path to peace, justice and care for all.
Susan and I entered the year more hopeful than ever that this will be the year that major building begins on the Gesundheit! land in West Virginia. Things have happened that have us entering the year with six great prospects. One of these days. So I've told our architect, Dave Sellers, to go for finished drawings of the first building. Feel free to be part of that goal and donate!
Right after the new year began, we went on a magical clown trip—about 45 clowns and 8 builders went to Perquin, El Salvador, to build a seven-room clinic for Dr. Darwin Gonzales, and to clown in six very remote, poor villages. The experience was a result of fine coordination of a number of groups. Our travel clown buddies, the Airline Ambassadors, got access to Jet Blue (thanks, Cindy) that outsources its mechanics to El Salvador. We could all fly round trip from New York to San Salvador for free!
I've always wanted to go on a clown trip with friends from Camp Winnarainbow, and also help Jah and Wavy Gravy raise funds for their scholarship fund to get kids from ghettoes and Indian reservations to Camp. So, I thought, ask each camp clown to make $1,000 for a place on the plane. So $20,000 was raised for camp scholarships. A friend we met through camp gave $10,000 and Gesundheit! put up $25,000 and together this paid for the building and clowns from our team. The architect was Dave Sellers (our architect for 24 years), who went two months early to check the site and materials. One of the builders, Dave Brittingham, was a part of the original Gesundheit! community.
Our teen clown team and both my sons were there. Continuing our efforts to engage more medical students, Simon came from Australia (in his third year in Perth) and Jay, an American Medical Student Association vice-president came to clown and build.
Our faithful Airline Ambassador team (Darla, Leelah, Sharon and Dennis), who also went with us to Sri Lanka and Peru in '05, made all the travel easy. Thanks to all of you at Jet Blue!
We have never built something on a clown trip before, and everyone was buzzing. At the final meeting, all the clowns stated tenderly how good it felt to have left something to help the people. The builders spoke as eloquently about how the clowns really helped make the building a lot easier. There was one peak moment where a cement wall had to be poured all in one day. Clearly, we didn't have enough time or people to do it. Every clown was there in the bucket brigade. And not enough. So after some false starts, local people joined in, from age 5 to 50. The last hour and a half were done in the dark with truck lights blazing—seventy people passing buckets. Maybe, somewhere in this model of everyone pitching in, a romantic thinks of that poetry, "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need."
An irony, a backstory, makes me smile. One of the camp clowns gets very sick the first day. There is a concern for an appendicitis. John Glick, clown and doctor, goes to the local doc for a cell count, which was high. The doc drives John and two campers far away to a hospital; waits, gets ultrasound and tests. All of this care (it turned out well) and driving doctor cost $45.00 in a very poor country.
Early the next morning, after arriving home, Susan, Ginevra, John, Jay, Kevyn, Wildman and Elisa go to Gesundheit! (in West Virginia) for the second annual Health Justice Retreat for medical students. Several years ago Susan pushed a much deeper engagement with medical students. So we now have the three-day health justice retreats and five-day health care delivery system design intensives (April ’06 and September '06).
Bonnie (the physician who lives on the land in West Virginia) is beginning a medical student elective in West Virginia, and the Arnold Gold Foundation sponsors medical students on our November clown trips. So 35 or so medical students have entertainments and play, and Susan, John, Ginevra, and I each do two hours with each of three groups on one day, and a design teaser the third day. We stood in the place where we hope the School for Designing a Society will be built, and the residence for twelve teachers, so that we can have a space to do the intensives in, and we can move there to West Virginia. The idealists imagine that at this time next year it is near completion. Oooooooooh!
I know you're laughing, and it could be true. These intimacies with medical students sure make clear the value our hospital would have to enhance health justice conversations. Dare to give us the chance!
And now off to the rest of the year. Please insist on looking closely at world and national affairs. Know why I'm feeling the potential for the world’s extinction, and am so critical of our government and capitalism.
We need systems that see no choice but to love everybody, care for everybody, all of nature; and to end violence and injustice. No exceptions.
Love everybody.
Try today.
In peace,
Patch
