Transcription of “Life, Examined”, #84
Speaker 1: You’re listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, recorded at the studios of Maine Magazine at 75 Market Street, Portland Maine. Download past shows and become a podcast subscriber of Dr. Lisa Belisle on iTunes. See the Dr. Lisa website or Facebook page for details.
Speaker 1: The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is made possible with the support of the following generous sponsors; Maine Magazine, Dr. John Herzog of Orthopedic Specialists, Sea Bag, Booth Maine, Apothecary by Design, Mike LePage and Beth Franklin of RE/MAX Heritage, Tom Shepard of Shepard Financial and Ted Carter Inspired Landscapes.
Dr. Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you’re listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast. Show number 84, Life Examined airing for the first time on Sunday April 21st 2013. Today’s guest include Dr. Conner Moore, retired physician and author of Black Bag to Blackberry, a Maine pediatrician’s 40 year journey and Ted Carter of Ted Carter Inspired Landscapes co-author of Reunion, how we heal our broken connection to the earth.
This past week the world’s eyes were turned upon the city of Boston following the explosions during the Boston Marathon on Patriots’ Day. This is simply the latest in a series of unimaginable tragedies, something senseless and brings fear into our lives.
The idea that families could be out watching their children, husbands, wives, fathers and mothers running in a 26 mile race that has required weeks of preparation and suddenly feel terrorized by bombs exploding and the knowledge that other bombs are elsewhere as yet unexploded is something that is very difficult to grapple with.
We on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast examine life in a small way and in a big way every week by talking to people and hearing their stories. We hope that you as listeners are also examining your own lives the way that our guests are helping us examine ours. There isn’t much that can be said about the tragedy on Patriots’ Day in Boston.
It’s senseless, it is unimaginable. The important thing however is to keep showing up, engaging, examining our lives and making sure that we’re making the most of them every day.
Our first guest is Dr. Conner Moore who has been a long time listener of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour. He contacted me last Fall to tell me about a program at the Medically Oriented Gym that he had been doing as a Parkinson’s patient himself. This program became the focus of our show last week on Rethinking Parkinson’s. At the same time he contacted me about the Medically Oriented Gym, he sent me a copy of his book, Black Bag to Blackberry, A Maine pediatrician’s 40 year journey.
This book gave me a fascinating look into the way medicine used to be. It reminded me of why it is that I myself enjoy helping others in their own lives examining what works, what doesn’t work, examining how families go about their daily business and how they make things happen. I know you’ll enjoy our conversation with Dr. Conner Moore. I know you’ll also enjoy our conversation with Ted Carter of Ted Carter Inspired Landscapes. Ted first came on our show for Earth Day 2012 and helped us examine what’s happening on our planet. In addition to being a landscape architect, he also has a very spiritual connection to the earth and to world around him.
He has a very real sense of how we can heal our broken connection to this earth. Ted Carter does indeed live an examined life. Thank you for joining us on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour again this Sunday. You know that life does go on and that there is always hope and there is always the chance to be compassionate, kind and loving to our fellow human beings. We appreciate your joining us on this journey.
Dr. Lisa: Last Autumn I received a pleasant surprise in the mail in the form of a gift from a fellow physician, Dr. Conner Moore and this is his book Black Bag to Blackberry. Dr. Moore had been listening to my radio show and reached out, of course he could have no idea how much I loved to read and how great a gift a book is but he made my day. I’m very fortunate to have him in the studio today to talk about his experiences over 40 years of being a pediatrician in Maine. Thank you for coming and talking to us Dr. Moore.
Dr. Moore: Thank you Dr. Lisa. I appreciate that and I’m very appreciative of the work you’re doing for pediatrics. On your show I know that you’ve had people come in and talk about immunizations and other child issues. I thank you for doing that. That’s an excellent program.
Dr. Lisa: Well, lets talk about pediatrics and children in your book which you wrote not too long ago, you wrote
“In order to be a pediatrician I learn that I would need a keen sense of humor and wonderment. Pediatricians need to know the parents’ occupation and the child’s hobbies and sports interests preferably without glancing at their office chart.
Special attention must be paid to any gift a child offers you. Be it a drawing, a Popsicle stick house or a rock. Days off were not really off. There always seemed to be emergency caesarian sections or exchange transfusions. My vacations were restorative but when I returned from them, my partner would immediately take off for his 10 days of relaxation.” Takes a lot to be a pediatrician in Maine, doesn’t it?
Dr. Moore: It does. When I looked at places to settle after finishing my residency in Cincinnati in 1968, my wife was Canadian and we thought we either go to Northern Wingwood or maybe Oregon or Washington. My fellow residents and professors in Cincinnati were just aghast. Not only was I leaving academic medicine but I was going to practice medicine in the far North.
I think they envisioned polar bears. They said, “How long are you going to stay there?” I said, “Probably till I die. It’s going to be a good place to raise kids.” They were just aghast that was happening. When I got their newsletters over the years they were always changing jobs or hospitals about every five years.
They were not staying in one place for a while. The joke was that Saco and Biddeford seemed to be in the center of things. If you put a compass in Mystic one in Biddeford and swing it around it’s equally distant from Montreal, Boston and New York as the old Vermont farmer saying goes. We always thing we’re right in the middle of things.
Dr. Lisa: My family is from Biddeford. My dad’s family is from Biddeford. They used to work in the mills. We have that connection.
Dr. Moore: Yes.
Dr. Lisa: My family felt like it was the middle of everything too.
Dr. Moore: Yes.
Dr. Lisa: I think this is a good place for you to be helping the children of Maine.
Dr. Moore: Excellent.
Dr. Lisa: How did you come to be in Maine? What was it about Maine that initially drew you here besides raising children?
Dr. Moore: I think all the pediatricians at that time in 1968 were practicing solo out of their houses. They were desperately looking for partners. I partnered with Dr. Maurice Ross who was a native of Biddeford and he came to your county following his residency in Philadelphia and brought a lot of interesting things as far as IV treatment for newborns, newborn care, and umbilical catheters and that sort of thing.
I was impressed at the advanced pediatric procedures that he brought into Maine. I think that looked like a real challenge. I think along my way I’ve had to make decisions very quickly. Once when I was in high school I had a chance to go over to Germany in the field for the rotary club once but I decided not to do it because I didn’t know any German.
I woke up in college a couple of years later and said that was really stupid. I’m not going to make that mistake again. I had to decide very quickly whether to be a pediatrician when I was in the air force. I didn’t have enough training to be an internist and I had to make the decision five minutes whether I wanted to work with the pediatricians for two years or just be a general medical officer.
I had to make a decision as far as which road to take when I left Cincinnati. I was lucky enough to sit next to Robert Frost who was at Dartmouth when I was a freshman at Dartmouth in 1956 several years before he died. He talked to the freshman class every year. As a kid from the suburbs I had very little knowledge about stone walls and swing on birches didn’t make a whole lot of sense.
I think his poem about two roads diverging and I took the one less travelled. Made sense back then and having made friends with fishermen, lobstermen and farmers over the years, I think all of this poetry makes much more sense. A lot of times I had to make decisions on careers paths and I had to make them very quickly and I think this worked out very well.
Dr. Lisa: Indeed you have to make decisions very quickly often in medicine especially if you’re practicing in what I would consider a frontier medicine situation back in the late ‘60s or early ‘70s.
Dr. Moore: I think it’s all in one evening when I had a sick child with croup that there’s no senior resident to call, no hospitals to call. It was just me, the nurse, the parent, and the sick child. That was really something to think about. That happened very quickly after I came here. York County is large. Dr. Wilson and I are the only two pediatricians in York County.
York County is larger than Rhode Island and about two thirds size of Delaware. I didn’t realize how much land there. There was people coming for an hour and a half to drive to get into Biddeford. We worked pretty much on our own. There was no neonatal intensive care unit Maine Medical Center, no child intensive care center, no hospitalist…
We had to do a lot of that stuff on our own and made many frantic phone calls back to my professors in Cincinnati and they would my hand through crises sometimes. We got to know a lot of the doctors in Boston. We got their inside phone numbers and their private lines. If we got into real problem we could call them through the back lines and I think that worked out fairly well. I think for a couple of years it was just the two of us in York County. It was busy.
Dr. Lisa: One of the things that you talked about in your book was this idea of the LMD or the Local Medical Doctor. Before you finished medical school or before you finished your training, you had this experience of people outside the hospital being referred to you somewhat derisively as the LMD. The LMD did this or the LMD did that but not always put forth in a favorable light. Then you became one of those.
Dr. Moore: Right. She was on the other foot. One day in Cardiology Clinic in Cincinnati a child was standing with a questionable heart disease by LMD and I thought this child probably does not have this disease and it turned out the LMD was right. There was Marianne Moulton who just died recently was a female pediatrician. York County used to call me with kids pneumonia and meningitis on a Friday night and she was almost correct with her diagnosis.
There’s no question that she was on the other foot. Sometimes when we’d send kids down to Boston with the correct diagnosis the initial physical would come back that the child sent down with vomiting or rash or something and where they just ignore the diagnosis and that we sent the child down where it was correct to begin with.
Very often the chief of pediatrics appreciated the LMDs and sort of the people who were under him and other heads of departments. It was somewhat derisive but it was interesting.
Dr. Lisa: You also ended up needing to rely heavily on the people that worked with you; your nurses, the other members of the hospital staff, your office receptionist, and your office staff. These people came to offer a lot of very good valuable information about patients in their families and how best to care for them.
Dr. Moore: I’ve got a whole chapter in the book about whether the diagnosis was made by the receptionist or the nurse or the physical therapist and we just have to rely heavily on these. The people at the front desk knew these families very well and if somebody, Mrs. Jones is really upset about her child and she very seldom got upset or anxious we knew that there was something going on.
They certainly spotted several children with meningitis as they walked through the front door of the office or children with a very serious disease. They were really well tuned in. They would also give us the heads up if the child’s grandmother had died or something like family is getting divorced or something. They really knew these families well.
I think it started to unravel after a few years with out of wedlock babies and divorces. The receptionist said we can’t keep these family folders together any long because they’re just not holding up. We had to go to individual child folders. The people in the office knew what the relationships were as far as families and children around town.
Dr. Lisa: What you’re talking about is you used to keep families, if you’d have a family of three kids you keep them all in one family folder.
Dr. Moore: One folder and we had to go to different names doing it by alphabet it because the family just didn’t sit together sometimes anymore.
Dr. Lisa: That does speak to the importance of the relationship between the physician and the patient. Your staff and the patient’s family and how often it was very long term.
Dr. Moore: It was. Even though I’m retired my wife is my office manager for a while. We still go into Hannaford and have people come up telling us who they were from 20 or 30 years ago and it’s not an infrequent situation. A lot of the employees in my office were there for 20 or 25 years. You didn’t get a telephone free when you called in. You could talk to somebody immediately and word would filter back that so and so had a sick child and they were coming in. I think that technology is good today but I think we have to meld it with programs that still foster these intense relationships with the families.
Dr. Lisa: For several years I was a solo family practitioner and my patients had my phone number and they called me in the middle of the night. That’s actually become pretty unusual as physicians have joined physician groups and hospital groups but for you that wasn’t unusual at all.
Dr. Moore: We had a primitive answering service and I was always fearful answering the phone at 3:00 in the morning that I’d get a long number call back so I answered my own phone at home. There were some drawbacks to this and some of the calls got more bizarre as the evenings went on. My best phone call, most interesting phone call came at 3:00 in the morning is my child is, raising my dog just 18 in Hiller or I’m here college and I can’t sleep.
I thought I would call you.” Got a whole list of interesting phone calls. The other thing, my wife being a pediatric nurse, for a while we didn’t have any doctors in the emergency room in so many medical center so we had to go up and see those sick kids. I remember a couple of evenings when I gave the advice of take two aspirin now and have him see in the morning.
My wife would kick me in the back and she said, “You have no idea what’s going on with that child. If you don’t go up there now I’m never going to get back to sleep again. ” I had my own safety net at home as far as making sure I went up to the emergency room. It sounds bizarre when the hospital doesn’t have any doctors in the emergency room. I remember that’s the way it was for a few years.
Dr. Lisa: The goal of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour is to help make connections between the health of the individual and the health of the community. The goal of Ted Carter Inspired Landscapes is to deepen our appreciation for the natural world. Here to speak with us today is Ted Carter.
Ted: In working with clients, I ask them to select the three windows in their house that they most often look through. In doing so it starts to make them acutely aware of the fact that they spend so much of their lives inside their houses looking out and not the other way around. In reflecting they actually are surprised to think how little they do actually go outside. This is the way a good design is implemented. We see it from a multitude of directions. There’s also an unfolding of space that takes place as we enter the property and move through the space.
These static pieces that these pieces of architecture that I install in the landscape which are actually the plants and the trees and the semi dwarf trees, they start to move as you move through the landscape and they start to address certain things in your landscape. These are all subtle things that can make a huge difference in the way your landscape is designed and the way that it speaks to you. Contact me at tedcarterdesign.com and we can discuss this further.
Speaker 1: We’ll return to our program after acknowledging the following generous sponsor; Dr. John Herzog of Orthopedic Specialists in Falmouth, Maine. At Orthopedic Specialists, ultrasound technology is taken to the highest degree with state of the art ultrasound, small areas of tendonitis, muscle and ligament tears, instability and arthritic conditions can be easily found during examination. For more information visit orthocareme.com or call 207-781-9077.
Dr. Lisa: One of my favorite parts of the book is getting towards the end where you’re giving some pretty practical suggestions for how to keep kids healthy. For example, let them go outside and read to them.
I don’t think you remember this, but you were describing being part of the Raising Readers’ ceremony in your office where Barbara Bush gave a book to one of your patients. The part that you don’t remember is that I was there too.
Dr. Moore: My goodness.
Dr. Lisa: You and I actually, I think met each other before. I was a medical director for Raising Readers and you are a reader yourself.
Dr. Moore: I didn’t realize that.
Dr. Lisa: This is one of the things that you say we should all do for our kids.
Dr. Moore: I think we fostered that back even when I came to your county back in the late ’60s early ‘70s. I think I’ve read some studies to show that if a child has ten books at home they will, children’s books, they will become much better readers later on. You think that would be a piece of cake. Well some low-income families those books are $15 or $20 a piece. That’s a lot of money. Who is the lawyer who is the head of the Raising Readers?
Dr. Lisa: Owen Wells from the Weaver Foundation
Dr. Moore: You’re right. I wrote an article, letter to the editor and I said For all the things are doing some legal foundation these Raising Readers is probably the most bang for the buck where I’ve seen they’re really they should be proud of them. There’s been a prototype for other states that come and visit the program.
My son in Colorado has a similar program. One of the simple things like putting safety caps on pill bottles. It costs some money but take some thought but it’s not rocket science. It’s something if you get some dedicated people you can implement this. It just makes a huge difference down the line.
Dr. Lisa: As does encouraging children to go outside.
Dr. Moore: Yes. My kids have all been hikers. We take our grandchildren out on hikes. I think they’ve done a study in England showing the benefits of getting outdoors as far as mental health problems or ADHD. It’s absolutely critical.
I think a lot of the kids have this environmental depravation syndrome where they don’t get out they’re watching TV or playing games inside. I think there’s a lot of evidence that the kids really need this. Probably one subconscious reason that I moved to Maine maybe a lot easier to take it outside here than other parts of the country.
Dr. Lisa: How has it been to have the tables turn and to be a patient now yourself? You contacted me and you said, “This is my story and I think you should also know that I have Parkinson’s. I’ve been working with the Medically Oriented Gym and they’re doing a lot of interesting work there and maybe you should look into it.” How has that been for you to be the patient now?
Dr. Moore: It is. I think there was a movie called The Doctor. I forget who played the leading role. It is a surgeon who has cancer of the lungs and the tables are …
Dr. Lisa: William Hurt.
Dr. Moore: Yes. The tables were turned and he has to take a number in clinic and wait for the radiation and the operating room turns the tables on him. It has been a bit of a wakeup call in that direction. I usually don’t drink when I’m out eating but sometimes my balance is a little bit off going to the men’s room later on.
You can see people looking or sometimes I’ll have a little trouble getting change across the counter to a clerk or something that maybe a little short with me and you just get a little hint of what some of the kids with cerebral palsy or other disabilities must go through. I think even today I took my medicine on time but my voice is not usually as good as it is. I’ll have good days and bad days. Sometimes it can do that without notice.
I think we have a group at the MOG of six or seven people with Parkinson’s who’ve got to know each other. It’s like a moving support group. It’s really been an interesting evolution. There’s a chap I take from church, I won’t give his first name but he has Parkinson’s and he’s a couple of years older than I am. Has been a patient about 11 years.
A lot of trauma gets stuck in doorways and I said this was going to be a project. I held my breath and he’s done magnificently. He’s back driving his truck, he’s walking much better. I’ve been asked by other people in church, “What the hell have you done with him?” Pardon my French.
He’s a new person, he’s brighter. This is just a little part of the program of interacting. I think medical school they’re having medical students wear blinders so they see what it feels like you being blind or they can simulate some other disease processes. It’s a wakeup call.
Dr. Lisa: Dr. Moore, I know that you and I could spend so much more time talking about this. We’ve barely scratched the surface over the 40 years that you’ve been practicing medicine and even probably the 20 something years before that in your life. I know that many children in Southern Maine who are probably now adults or a good chunk of them are now adults have benefited from your wisdom, your care, your compassion, your connection and also all the work done by your wife to keep your family and your practice going.
Dr. Moore: Thank you very much. I hope there were some little truisms or words of wisdom that floated out today and the things I’ve learned over 40 years. As you said we just scratched the surface for some of that but I thank you again for the work that you do with children on your radio show. I think that’s some excellent program. Thank you.
Dr. Lisa: Where can people find a copy of your book, Black Bag to Blackberry?
Dr. Moore: It’s available on Amazon. I know that they have them in Nonesuch books in Biddeford. I’m sure if they went to the Nonesuch store in South Portland and ask them to send some books down there they would certainly do that. If anybody wants to contact me, I do some speaking gigs in PowerPoint around the book. The Jesse’s gift address is Box 1234 Biddeford 0405.
I think something worth looking out for because out of the probably thousands of boxes there’s only one box that goes 1234. Somebody was working very diligently behind the scenes to get that box number and it’s a just an interesting turn of events.
Dr. Lisa: We’ve been speaking with Dr. Conner Moore, a retired pediatrician and now author of Black Bag and Blackberry. Thanks for coming in.
Dr. Moore: You’re welcome.
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Dr. Lisa: In 2012 we had the great good fortune to have Ted Carter of Ted Carter inspired Landscapes and author of the book Reunion, How we heal our broken connection to the earth in the studio with us around Earth Day. How fortunate we are again to have Ted Carter coming back because Ted Earth day is your time of year. It’s right around your birthday, it’s right around the time that your book was published. We really appreciate your coming in and giving us an update on what’s going on in the world of dirt.
Ted: Yes. Well, thank you Lisa. It’s great to be back here and it’s great to put a voice behind the work again. I appreciate being here very much.
Dr. Lisa: You really been getting your hands dirty not only have you been working hard with the business that you’ve created and you’ve been working. How many years have you been doing that now?
Ted: How far back do you want to go probably since I was eight years old?
Dr. Lisa: Decades you’ve been working on with that and that’s gotten very successful but now you put new energy behind the book that you’re writing.
Ted: We published our first book Reunion, three years ago but we started our work on it six years ago. Everything in my life seems to go in multiples of three and it’s been out in the public eye now for three years and it’s been picked up by great Northern Books in California.
They happened to think it was a rather prophetic book and it is a book about the times we’re living in. The things that we did predict three years ago have all come true. I hesitate to say that because it’s not all good but it’s something that we basically was a handbook on climate change and what we have to start expecting.
Dr. Lisa: This is you and your co-author.
Ted: Yes, my co-author is Ellen Gunter. She’s a magnificent writer. Essentially we make a very good team because I finance a lot of the publication and all of the work that has to go into it. She does a lot of the writing. It’s a collaborative effort. However, it’s not just her thinking it’s both our thinking together and when we’re rehashing information and republishing things we’re talking continually in editing and trying to figure out how to lay the book out.
Dr. Lisa: Creating a book is a labor of love just as creating this landscape business that you’ve had for all these years. You did it because you do love the earth. You brought in a book today by John O’Donohue that I happen to really love it’s called Beauty. We’ve talked about John O’Donohue on air before and I know that you have a passage that you’d like to read to us.
Ted: I met John a couple of times through Caroline Mace. He was a guest speaker for us with Caroline Mace Institute in Chicago. Unfortunately he died of a brain aneurism a few years ago but an absolutely amazing mystic and wonderful poet and writer, great human being.
Actually chapter two in Beauty in his book entitled Beauty the invisible embrace Beauty, the affection of the earth for us. The beauty of the earth is the first beauty millions of years before us the earth lived in wild elegance. Landscape is the firstborn of creation sculpted with huge patience over millennia. Landscape has enormous diversity of shape, presence, and memory.
There is a poignancy in beholding the beauty of landscape. Often it feels as though it has been waiting for centuries for the recognition and witness of the human eye. I just think what we have to realize is that when we create this what I call sacred spaces for people or if we create any space, that space holds our energy.
We pour our heart, our soul, our energy into that creation. That imbues an energy that resonates and comes back to feed us. We think that when we go into that space that when we leave it that space doesn’t miss us but it does and it’s because we complete that piece. The earth feels our presence and those areas fill our presence.
When we walk into a nature preserve we feel like we are the great witnesses. That we witness this but we’re the ones being observed by 1,000 eyes. The birds are looking at us. The insects that are crawling on the side of the tree are peering out at us. The frogs are looking at us. You could have a fox behind another tree looking at us. We don’t see them but we’re the ones being observed.
I gave a lecture at the flower show on Saturday and I said, “We have the option of looking at the world through soft eyes or hard eyes. When we look at the world through hard eyes that’s the preparation. We look at human beings with hard eye and that creates a barrier, a separation or we can look at other human beings through soft eyes and that invites people to come towards you into that invisible embrace.”
Nature is the same way. We can look at her with soft or hard eyes and she can either come to us and we can see her for all her beauty and magnificence or we can look at her as a more of a linear logical local force which is something to be bought, purchased, cut up, divided, manhandled which we do so well.
Dr. Lisa: We’ll return to our interview in a moment. We are on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast. Hope that our listeners enjoy their own work lives to the same extent we do and fully embrace every day. As a physician and small business owner I rely on Mercy Booth from Booth Maine to help me with my own business and to help me with my own life fully. Here are a few thoughts from Mercy.
Mercy: Throughout my career I’ve worked with countless small business owners and entrepreneurs who have invested so much time and work that very little time was left over to enjoy life. To save time with family or friends and doing things other than work that revives them.
It’s a common application to the old adage if you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself. What if doing it yourself means not doing it correctly. What if spending all that time at work, keeping all the balls in the air, zaps your mental energy so much that you’re not able to enjoy your life outside work.
When I run into people who suffer from that I’ve got to do it myself syndrome, I tell them, “Stop. Take a look at the parts of your business you enjoy working on, you’re good at and create value. Then look at the broody that are on the need to get them done list and think can I outsource these?” Chances are the answer will be yes and there are a number of people out there who specialize in helping small businesses win.
When you outsource you give yourself the gift of time, time that can be saved when doing more of what matters to you personally. When this happens you’ll be surprised at the positive impact it will have on your business and your mental health. For more insight, contact us at Boothmaine.com.
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Ted: When you think of John O’Donohue’s homeland Ireland it used to be a land filled with trees. Well, they cut them all down during the potato famine and other famines and you to Ireland now, there’s no tree. We have, and there’s this huge thing going on with the Amazon Jungle right now. We were on a great path and some of the environmental things have been weakened and now we’re back on the trenches with having them do more deforestation.
It’s always a battle. Learning the indigenous birds in your area that’s a fun thing to do, I have bird feeders. I have always had feeders. I love birds. I’ll be calling birds in and I’ll talk to the chickadee they always sort of talk to you when you’re out there and they go chirp, chirp and they’re all just dancing around.
I’ve had them come down and I’m holding something up and they come and they land right on the object I’m holding, my bird feeder that I’m holding in my hand and they right at me and chirp at me and we have a little conversation and they just fly off and this is how readily available nature is to us and how she talks to us all the time.
When I was in the Red Wood Forest a year ago I remember I was on my crutches and I had had some foot surgery and my crutch would sink down into the forest floor and I’d pull this I’d pull the thing out but my ears would just … whenever I’m near a spirit my ears just go crazy and my ears were just, it was like I was a cathedral in the woods and looking up at these trees and there’s this piercing noise that comes through me and I always that’s the way my spirit communicates. There are spirits, those are the great witnesses. Some of those trees have been around since the time of Christ.
That’s how old they are, 2,000 years old. Anyway I don’t mean to get down that rabbit hole but I get excited when I talk about these things because they’re so they bring so much to human spirit. The other thing is the making of a poly-culture. What happens to the earth when it’s become violated you get all these invasives move in. We all see these honey suckles, Poplar trees, bitter sweet cultch, crap stuff that moves in and that’s like a scab.
When you scrape mother earth when you scrap her skin which is the epidermis which is her skin first shock they’re all connected. It forms a scab. That scab is the invasives because it’s like when you scrape your lawn several times with a plow year after year what grows back is plant and lily or something of that nature.
It’s like a scab and then you get sort of a monoculture going on which weakens the ecosystem. We want poly-cultures where there’s a lot of different floral and fauna out there.
Dr. Lisa: Monoculture would just be one like bitter sweet.
Ted: Right.
Dr. Lisa: The poly-culture would be multiple different things.
Ted: Multiple different things. This is why we’re having such a struggle with genetically modified organisms GMOs because what its doing is it’s eradicating the poly-cultures and creating a monoculture on a vast huge, gigantic level and it’s going from continent to continent. It’s enormous. It’s a huge movement. Europe is really fighting against it. Unfortunately America is a lost cause we’re already too late for America. We are, I’m not being defeat us but Monsanto has done a number.
Dr. Lisa: As individuals in our own backyards, in our own landscapes we can make an effort too.
Ted: We can make an effort to do poly-cultures. I’d move into an area, have these continual discussions with the DEP or with towns that say, “This is a no cut zone. This is a no touch zone.” I say, “What are you protecting here?” It’s a thicket a bitter sweet with honey suckle and Poplar trees. All trash.
Not all honey suckle is trash, all of it is good in proportion and scale but when it comes in a such a quantity and covers vast acres of it of just the same three things, it’s not a healthy ecosystem. I say to them, “What are you trying to protect here? I want to move in here I want to create a poly-culture. I want to move in a different genus and species to create a more balanced ecosystem that supports indigenous wildlife.” They get it but …
Dr. Lisa: Do you think some of it is because people don’t necessarily they’re just aren’t as aware of … You’re going to look at something and say this is a monoculture I can do better than this. Other people are going to look at it and they’re going to say, “Well, we’re trying to save the wildlife. We’re trying to save something.” Maybe their intentions are good that they’re trying to keep things natural but they just don’t have the education and the vision that you have.
Ted: Right and I have to keep that in mind. It’s unfortunate that we pay the dear price of the really reckless person. The reckless backhoe operator that gets on the coast and levels everything. He’ll ruin it for the rest of us because then they have to put these laws into place that are so stringent that you can’t move.
I think there’s a balance there. You’re right. I think that a lot of people get a hold of there’s a lot of people in the landscape design business that don’t understand that balance either. They want to impose their input on the land and I do that too. I see a design sensibility. I come out of a euro centric.
My house is very has a euro centric view to it but it has a relax formality I say but it’s very second English country house. It’s got a prune box, wood hedge, but then it’s got these wild flowers behind it so it’s got the discipline and the undisciplined working together.
You know there’s a lot of freedom through discipline. If we discipline ourselves there’s a lot of movement and creation that happens through that discipline but you have to have a good strong cultural organization to allow for that creativity and that undisciplined piece of yourself to move forward. We’re always moving against those energies.
Dr. Lisa: That’s like creating a garden or creating a landscape. That you have to first have things laid out in order for them to start growing in ways that they would naturally grow.
Ted: Yeah you have to. This is interesting about permiculture which is such a it looks like a mess. I love the idea behind it and everything and I think it’s a great thing but it’s not saleable.
Dr. Lisa: Talk to me about permi culture I’m only vaguely aware of it. I have to tell you my thumbs are not as green as yours.
Ted: Permi culture is about creating a whole system so that you actually live off the land that you have and it completely provides everything that you need from water to fruits, vegetables, flowers. It brings natural forces in and creates a very homogenous habitat for both man and native species and animals and insects and plants.
I’m not doing a very good job describing it but and I’ve attended classes and I’ve gone to workshops because I want to try and understand it better so I can move it into my landscaping work. I’m having a really hard time with it because it doesn’t quite bio dynamics works for me. Working with a biodynamic Rudolf Steiner’s work that has a …
Dr. Lisa: What is it about permi culture that you haven’t been able to quite?
Ted: Its culture. It’s lack of structure. It’s too messy. It’s not saleable. I can’t sell permi culture. I’m not knocking permiculture. I think it’s fantastic for the bright person but it’s my industry in my business model I can’t sell it yet because I haven’t figured out how to market it properly.
Dr. Lisa: Maybe when you’re talking about this balance permiculture might be an ideal but isn’t really quite there yet as far as reality is concerned.
Ted: I think there’s got to be hybrid. I think that we all so much when I think about how we’ve evolved there’s in my book presentation for instance in the slide show that I do for the book Reunion, there’s a picture about how the spray on this mist that’s being cast over all these kids are having lunch in this lunch room and there’s this fog all of it.
There’s this jack that this man is holding that’s spraying all this fog all over them. I say to the people in the audience, “Do you know what that is?” no one knows. I say, “That’s DDT. That’s in the 1950’s. We were promoting DDT.” I remember in Chicago running behind the truck in the fog going up and my gosh, and that was all DDT.
I show one thing when the guy is actually mixing it up in a bowl and eating it. To prove how safe it is, obviously he’s long gone but I mean this is how far we’ve come. When we look at where we are now, we’ve got all these things coming up with the biodynamics it really is there. Permi culture is there. You’ve got people gardening and growing more of their own food.
You’ve got a lot of things happening right now but somehow this needs to be pulled together in a way where it’s an and amd both world. It’s not either, or. I love lawn but I only like someone. I’m not a big lawn person and that doesn’t really interest me but it’s a mono culture and it’s …
Dr. Lisa: We also can’t get rid of DDT on this earth completely because there are parts of the world where Malaria is rampant and DDT is the most effective way to get of mosquitoes so I’m not an advocate of DDT in any way whatsoever but I think it does speak to this balance. We learn things as we go along and if we forget things that we learned previously then we run into difficulty.
Ted: Absolutely. It’s not flushing the baby out with the bathwater it’s about learning as we go and taking pieces we need to take with us and leaving some of that stuff that’s dangerous behind.
Dr. Lisa: One last thing I wanted to ask you about is this biodynamics idea because you referred to it and referred to Rudolf Steiner. What is biodynamics and why do you think it has some important lessons for us as we’re moving forward in trying to heal our earth?
Ted: There’s passage in my book that I’d like to read to you. Bio dynamics is designed to work with healing and empowering the immune system and every molecule of soil and plant life to weight nothing and to have a fully sustainable system.
A biodynamic farmers’ aim is to understand the laws and forces of nature and work in harmony and cooperation with them to cure the soil naturally of the toxins that have been deposited in it and heal our own hungry, disconnected spirits in the process. That is biodynamics in a nutshell. What you work with is perhaps I’ve been to the Josephine Porter Institute spent a week there. I went to the Fifer Institute and took classes there in New York and I have a barn full of cow crap from California that I still have to use.
I have pellets of it that was brought over. It’s probably the most expensive cow manure that I’ve ever a lot of people probably would have never purchased. Anyway it takes a little bit of this. It’s the essence of this. You take and you use as spray. You make these preps and you spray them and they work bio dynamically with the plant life and with the soil.
Dr. Lisa: The reason you were so excited about the California cow poop is because it was biodynamically prepared?
Ted: Right with the cow the culture. The cows are great and bio dynamic land with bio dynamic preps. You have the oak bark prep and the natal prep and all these different preps. You bury them. The earth inhales as we’re moving into the winter you bury your preps in the soil in the winter time as you’re moving into winter because the cosmos, think of the earth on one side of the earth is inhaling, inhalation. Pulling the cosmic forces into the prep and then the Southern hemisphere is exhaling so inhale, exhale. We’re now moving as we’re moving to spring we’re moving into exhalation.
We leave the prep for one solid year and then we harvest them and out of that one space we put new preps in and we use those preps and we use a little of the essence of those preps just a pinch full in a sprayer, a handful of the stuff will do a whole acre.
Dr. Lisa: The prep you mean is the cow manure?
Ted: It could be the bark prep that you take off the trees. It could be the natal prep. Now Fifer, not Fifer but Josephine Porter makes themselves the prep and you buy the preps from them. You can make your own preps and I haven’t been able to do my own preps because I haven’t had time and I bought a lot of stuff from Josephine Porter. I’m still playing with this stuff.
Dr. Lisa: You as you’re working with people who have asked you to do their landscaping you’re keeping all of these things in mind. You’re keeping in mind the health of their own ecosystem within their land and also the health of the greater ecosystem and what they need and want to have out of it. You’re trying to create this. It’s not just planting flowers or planting trees. You are trying to look at some bigger way of bringing life and beauty to their lives.
Ted: My journey with my clients is more of a spiritual journey. Yes I’m a landscaper but it’s much more involved than just planting a few bushes and trees. You have the human spirit is very complex and it’s very multifaceted and our biological systems is complacent and is incredible as our anatomical system is and as complex as it is so are our human spirits.
When I look at the land that’s another whole set of complexities so you’re moving the complexity of all the different land is so different. I come on to a job site, every job is different, every piece of land is different, the clients are different. It’s so hard to get bored in this business because there’s so much diversity and complexity.
You’re trying to meld the spirit of the land and the spirit of the inhabitant and create a space that really embraces them. I want to create a space so that they don’t want to leave. They love their place, that they feel like I’m out in the world, I’m doing my work but when I come home that’s my place of refuge. I think that the built environment if it’s done properly and it’s respectful of who they are and it’s built in a sincere way, it really can do that for them.
Dr. Lisa: Ted I’m very excited for all the work that you’re doing and I’m glad that you were able to come in and spend time with us. Talking about the book that you’re creating the second edition for, this is Reunion, how we heal our broken connection to the earth along with your coauthor Ellen Gunter and also talking with us about the work that you do as part of Ted Carter Inspired Landscapes. There’s a lot that you bring to the State of Maine and to probably, I think beyond borders of the State of Maine. I’m really thrilled to have you here today.
Ted: It’s great to be here Lisa. Thank you so much.
Dr. Lisa: You have been listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, show number 84, Life Examined. Our guests have included Dr. Conner Moore and Ted Carter. For more information on our guests visit doctorlisa.org. The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is downloadable for free on ITunes. For a preview of each week’s show, sign up for our e-newsletter and like our Dr. Lisa Facebook page. You can also follow me on Twitter and Pintrest doctorlisa and read my take on health and wellbeing on the bountiful blog, bountiful-blog.com.
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