“Life, Examined”, #84

Dr. Conner Moore:

I still think doctors ought to make house calls and some of the chronically ill kids just to see what's happening in the house. And sometimes it's a lot easier, especially if it's on the way home, to stop in at the house rather than to get the child out in the wheelchair. And some of these chronically ill kids are not particularly mobile and I think it's a skill that needs to come back a little bit.

Ted Carter:

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 a separation. We can look at human beings with hard eyes. We or we can look at other human beings through soft eyes and that invites people to come towards you in that sort of invisible embrace.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

this is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast show number 84, Life Examined, airing for the first time on Sunday, April 21, 2013. Today's guests include Dr. Connor Moore, retired physician and author of Black Bag to a Maine pediatrician, 40 year journey, and Ted Carter of Ted Carter Inspired Landscapes, co author of 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, it seems, 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 and husbands and wives and 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 doctoralisa Radio, our own podcast examine life in a small way and in a big way every week by talking to people and hearing their stories. And 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 and engaging and examining our lives and making sure that we're making the most of them every day. Our first guest is Dr. Connor Moore, who has been a longtime 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, and 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 a Maine pediatrician's 40 year journey. This book gave me a fascinating look into the way medicine used to be, and 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. Connor 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 the world around him, and 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. We know that life does go on and that there is always hope and there is always the chance to be compassionate and kind and loving to our fellow human beings. We appreciate your joining us on this journey. Last autumn I received a pleasant surprise in the mail in the form of a gift from a fellow physician, Dr. Connor Moore, and this is his book, black bag to BlackBerry. Dr. Moore had been listening to my radio show and reached out and of course he could have no idea how much I love to read and how great a gift a book is. But he made my day and 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 in and Talking to us, Dr. Moore.

Dr. Conner Moore:

Thank you, Dr. Leese. 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, and I thank you for doing that. I think that that's an excellent, excellent program.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, let's talk about pediatrics and children. In your book, which you wrote not too long ago, you wrote, in order to be in pediatrics, I learned that I would need a keen sense of humor and wonderment. Pediatricians need to know the parent's 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 seem to be emergency cesarean 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. Conner Moore:

It does. And when I looked at places to settle after finishing my residency in Cincinnati in 1968, my wife is Canadian, and we thought we'd either go to northern New England or maybe Oregon or Washington. My fellow residents and professors of Cincinnati were just aghast at it. Not only was I leaving academic medicine, but I was going to practice medicine in the far north. And I think they envisioned polar bears. They said, how long are you going to stay there? I said, probably till I die. I think it's going to be a good place to raise kids. And they were just aghast. That was happening. When I get their newsletters over the years, they were always changing jobs or hospitals about every five years. So they were not staying in one place for a while. But the joke was that Sachem and Vidaford seemed to be in the center of things. If you put a compass in, stick one end in Vidaford and swing it around, it's equally distant from Montreal, Boston and New York is the old Vermont farmer, Joco. So we always think we're right in the middle of things.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, and my family is from Biddeford. My dad's family is from Biddeford. They used to work in the mills, so we have that connection. And my family felt like it was the middle of everything, too.

Dr. Conner Moore:

Oh, yes, yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So I think this is a good place for you to be helping the children of Maine.

Dr. Conner Moore:

Excellent. Excellent.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So how did you come to be in Maine? What was it about Maine that initially drew you here besides raising children?

Dr. Conner 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 York county following his residency in Philadelphia and brought a lot of interesting things as far as IV treatment for newborns and newborn care and umbilical catheters and that sort of thing. And I was impressed at the advanced pediatric procedures that the AAB brought into Maine. And I think that looked like a real challenge. And I think along my way, I've had to make decisions very quickly, very quickly. And once when I was in high school, I had a chance to go over to Germany to the Rotary Club one summer and decided not to do it. And because I didn't know any German, I woke up in college a couple years later and said, that was really stupid and I'm not going to make that mistake again. So 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 in five minutes whether I wanted to work with a pediatrician 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 when I was a freshman at Dartmouth in 1956 and several years before he died. And he talked to the freshman class every year. And as a kid from the suburbs, I had very little knowledge about stone walls and swinging on birches didn't make a whole lot of sense. But I think his poem about two roads diverged in the wood and I took the one less traveled made sense back then. And having made friends with fishermen and lobstermen and farmers over the years, I think all of his poetry makes much more sense. But a lot of times I had to make decisions on career paths and I had to make them very quickly. And I think this has worked out very well.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And indeed, you have to make decisions very quickly often in medicine, especially if you're practicing in what I would consider a free frontier medicine sort of situation back in the late 60s, early 70s.

Dr. Conner Moore:

Yeah. And I think it dawned on me one evening when I had a sick child with Krupp, that there was no senior resident to call, no hospitalist to call. It was just me, the nurse, the parent and the sick child. And that was a real, really something to think about. And that happened very quickly after I came here. York county is large. Dr. Ross and I were the only two pediatricians in York County. York county is larger than Rhode island and about two thirds the size of Delaware. And I didn't realize how much land area there was. People would come in for an hour and a half to drive to get into Biddeford. So we were pretty much on our own. Yeah, there was no neonatal intensive care unit, Maine Medical center, no child intensive care center, no hospitalists. And so we had to do a lot of that stuff on our own. I made many frantic phone calls back to my professors at Cincinnati, and they would hold my hand through. Through crises sometimes. We got to know a lot of the doctors in Boston. We got their inside phone numbers and their private lines. And so if we got into a real problem, we could, you know, we could call them through the back lines. And I think that worked out fairly well also. But, yeah, I think for a couple years it was just the two of us in York county, and it was busy. And

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

one of the things that you talked about in your book was this idea of the LMD or the local medical doctor. And before you finished medical school or before you finished your training, you had this experience of people outside the hospital being referred to somewhat derisively as the lmd. Oh, the LMD did this or the LMD did that, but not always put forth in a favorable light. And then you became one of those.

Dr. Conner Moore:

Right. The shoe was on the other foot. One day in Cardiology Clinic in Cincinnati, a child was sent in with a question of heart disease by lmd. And I thought, this trial probably does not have this disease. And turned out the LMD was right. And there was a Marianne Moulton, who just died recently, who was a female pediatrician in York county, used to call me with kids with pneumonia and meningitis on a Friday night. And she was almost correct with her diagnoses. And so there's no question that she was in the other foot. And sometimes when we'd send kids down to Boston with the correct diagnosis, the initial history and physical would come back that the child was sent down with, you know, vomiting or rash or something, and where they just ignored the diagnosis and we sent the child down with. It was. It was correct to begin with. So. But very often it was the chief of pediatrics, you know, appreciated the LMDs. It was sort of the people who were under him and the other heads of the departments that were somewhat derisive, but it was. It was interesting.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And you also ended up needing to really rely heavily on the people that worked with you, your nurses and the Other members of the hospital staff and your office receptionist and your office staff. And these people came. Came to offer a lot of very good, valuable information about patients and their families and how best to care for them.

Dr. Conner Moore:

I've got a whole chapter in the book about where the diagnosis was made by the receptionist or the nurse or the physical therapist. And we did have to rely heavily on these. The people at the front desk knew these families very well. And if somebody, Mrs. Jones was really upset about her child and she very seldom got. 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. And they were really well tuned in. They would also give us a heads up if the child's grandmother had died or there's something that family was getting divorced or something. They really knew these families well. But I think it started to unravel after a few years with out of wedlock babies and divorces. And the reception said, you know, we can't keep these family folders together any long because they're just not holding up. So we had to go to individual child folders. But the people in the office really knew who was, you know, what the relationships were as far as, you know, families and children around town.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yeah, that. So what you're talking about is you used to keep families. If you'd have a family of three kids, you'd keep them all right in one family folder.

Dr. Conner Moore:

And we had to go to different names, doing it by Alphabet because the families just didn't sit together sometimes anymore.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

But that does speak to the importance of the relationship between the physician and the patient, your staff and your patient and the patient's family. And how often it was very long term.

Dr. Conner Moore:

Well, it was. And even though I'm retired, my wife was 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. Not an infrequent situation. And a lot of the employees in my office were there for 20 or 25 years. You didn't get a telephone tree when you called in. You could, you know, talk to somebody immediately and word would filter back that so and so had a sick child and they were coming in. And I think the technology is good today, but I think we have to meld it with programs that still foster this sort of intense relationships with the families.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

For several years, I was a solo family Practitioner and my patients had my phone number and they called me and they called me in the middle of the night. And that's actually become pretty unusual as physicians have joined groups, physician groups and hospital groups. But for you, that wasn't unusual at all.

Dr. Conner Moore:

We had a primitive answering service and I was always fearful answering the phone at 3 o' clock in the morning that I'd get a wrong number to call back. And so I answered my own phone at home. But there were some drawbacks to this and some of the calls got more bizarre as the evenings went on. And I think some of my best phone call, one of my most interesting phone calls was we came at 3 o' clock in the morning and my child is wheezing, my dog just ate the inhaler or I'm here at college and I can't sleep. I thought I would call you and got a whole list of interesting phone calls. But the other thing, my wife being a pediatric nurse for a while, we didn't have any doctors in the emergency room at Solomon Medical center. So we had to go up and see the sick kids. And remember a couple evenings when I sort of gave the advice of take two aspirin in the morning now and haven't seen me in the morning. My wife had kicked me in the back and she said, you have no idea what's going on with that child. And if you don't go up there now, I'm never going to get back to sleep again. So I had sort of my own safety net at home as far as making sure I went up to the emergency room. You can see that, you know, it sounds bizarre. The hospital doesn't have any doctors in the emergency room, but that's the way it was for a few years.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

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 is Ted Carter.

Ted Carter:

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're actually, 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@tedcarterdesign.com and we can discuss this further.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

One of my favorite parts of the book is heading 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. And 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. And the part you don't remember is that I was there too.

Dr. Conner Moore:

Oh my goodness.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So you and I actually, I think, met each other before. So I was a medical director for Raising Readers. And you're a reader yourself.

Dr. Conner Moore:

I didn't realize that.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

But this is one of the things that you say we should all do for our kids.

Dr. Conner Moore:

I think we fostered that back even when I came to York county back in the late 60s, early 70s. And I think there have been some studies that show that if a child has 10 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 with some of the low income families. Those books are 15 or $20 a piece. That's a lot of money. And I who was the lawyer who was the head of the Raising readers?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Owen Wells from Library.

Dr. Conner Moore:

You're right. Yeah. I sent, I wrote an article letter to the editor and I said for all the things they're doing this in the Libra foundation, this Raising Reader says just probably the most buck bang for the buck than any program I've seen and they really should be proud of that. And it's been a prototype for other states that come and visited the program and My son in Colorado has a similar program. But, you know, this is one of the simple things, like putting safety caps on pill bottles. It costs some money, but takes some thought. But it's not rocket science. It's something that if you get some dedicated people, you can implement this. And it just makes a huge difference, huge difference down the line.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

As does encouraging children to go outside.

Dr. Conner Moore:

Oh, yes, yes. My kids have all been hikers. We take our grandchildren out on hikes. And I think they've done a study in England showing that the benefits of getting outdoors as far as mental health problems or ADHD is just absolutely incredible. And I think a lot of the kids have this environmental deprivation syndrome where they don't get out there watching TV or playing games inside. And I think there's just a lot of evidence that the kids really need this. And probably one subconscious reason that I moved to Maine, because it's maybe a lot easier to get outside here than other parts of the country.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

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 and I've been working with a medically oriented gym and they're doing a lot of interesting work there and maybe you should look into it. So how has that been for you to be the patient now?

Dr. Conner Moore:

It is. And I think there was a movie called the Doctor. I forget who played the leading role, but he's a surgeon who then has canceled the larynx. And the tables heard. Yes, and the tables were turned. And he has to take a number in clinic and wait for the radiation. And the operating room really turns the tables on him. So it has been a bit of a wake up call in that direction. And 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 they have a little trouble getting change across the counter to a clerk or something. That may be 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 think I took my medicine on time, but my voice is not as usually as good as it is. And I'll have good days and bad days, and sometimes you can do that without notice. But I think we have a group at the MOG of six or seven people with Parkinson's. We got to know each other. It's like a moving support group. And 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 years older than I am and had the disease for about 11 years. And a lot of tremor gets stuck in doorways. And I said, this is going to be the, this was going to be a project. And I sort of held my breath. And he's done magnificently. He's back driving his truck. He's walking much better. His balance is better. People at church, what the hell have you done with him? Pardon my French. He's sort of a new person. He's brighter. And this was just all part of the program of interacting. I think I was doing some of this in medical school or having medical students wear blinders for a day to see what it feels like being blind or they can simulate some other disease processes. And it is, it's a wake up call.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Dr. Moore, I know that you and I could spend so much more time talking about this. You've barely scratched the surface of the 40 years that you've been practicing medicine and Even probably the 20 something years before that in your life. But I, 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 and your care and your compassion and your connection and also all the work done by your wife to keep your family and your practice going.

Dr. Conner Moore:

Thank you very much. I hope there are some little truisms or words of wisdom that floated out today and the things I've learned over 40 years. And, and as I said, we just scratched the surface of some of that. And I thank you again for the work that you do with children of the radio show. I think that's an excellent program and thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And where can people find a copy of your book? Black bag to BlackBerry.

Dr. Conner Moore:

It's available on Amazon. I know that they have them at Nonesuchbooks in Biddeford. I'm sure if they went to the Nonesuch store in South Portland and asked them to send some books down, they would certainly do that.

Ted Carter:

That.

Dr. Conner Moore:

And if anybody wants to contact me, I do some speaking gigs in PowerPoint around the book. And Jesse's gift address is Box 1234, Bitterford 0405. And I think somebody was looking out for us because out of the probably thousands of boxes, there's only one box that goes 1, 2, 3, 4. And somebody was working very diligently behind the scene scenes to get us that box number. So it's just an interesting turn of events.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, we've been speaking with Dr. Connor Moore, a retired pediatrician and now author of Black Bag and BlackBerry. Thanks for coming in.

Dr. Conner Moore:

You're welcome.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

We'll return to our program in a Moment on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast. We long understood the important link between health and wealth. Here to speak more on the subject is Tom Shepard of Shepherd Financial.

Ted Carter:

It's in Our DNA Evolution Growth and development are increasingly seen as being heavily influenced by our human design, but we are no longer simply instinctive creatures programmed to live life without thought. The ability to think and feel make us more adaptable, but we are also more susceptible to feeding our program bad data. The just do it culture calls us to act first, but the athletes that brought us this slogan had meticulous plans, a singular focus that helped them move way beyond instinct to a place that combines experience, instinct, feeling and routine. They operate on intuition. What DNA does offer is a model to help us make incremental changes consistently over time. Evolution instead of Revolution Marketing may play on your instincts, feelings and thoughts, but we are free to choose how we spend our resources. To learn more, email us at infoepherdfinancialmain.com

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

In 2012, we had the great good fortune to have Ted Carter of Ted Carter Inspired Landscapes and author of the book How We Heal Our Broken Connection to the Earth in the studio with us around Earth Day and how fortunate we are again to have Ted Carter coming back. Because Ted, Earth Day is sort of your it's 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 Carter:

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 Belisle:

Well, and you've really been getting your hands dirty. Not only have you been working hard with a business that you've created and you've been working. How many years you've been doing that now?

Ted Carter:

How far back do you want to go? Probably since I was 8 years old,

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

so decades. You've been working hard with that, and that's gotten very successful. But now you've really put new energy behind the book that you're writing.

Ted Carter:

Yes. Well, we published our first book, Reunion, six years, well, three years ago. But we started our working on it six years ago, and 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 we were picked up by Great Northern Books in California, and they happened to think it was a rather prophetic book. And it is a book about the times we're living in. And 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, you know, basically it was a handbook on climate change and what we have to start expecting.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And this is you and your co author?

Ted Carter:

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. It's not just her thinking, it's both of our thinking together. And when we're rehashing information and republishing things, we're talking continually and editing and trying to figure out how to lay the book out.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Creating a book is a labor of love, just as creating this landscape business that you've had for all these years. And you do it because you do love the earth. You brought in today a book 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 Carter:

Yeah, I met John a couple of times through Carolyn Mace. He was a guest speaker for us at Carolyn Mace Institute in Chicago. And. And I was, you know, unfortunately, that he died of a brain aneurysm a few years ago. But an absolutely amazing mystic and wonderful poet. And writer, great human being. It's actually chapter two in Beauty in his book entitled Beauty the Invisible Embrace. Beauty. The affection of the earth, for 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. And I just think that what we have to realize is that when we create these, what I call sacred spaces for people, or we create any space, that space holds our energy. We pour our heart, our soul, our energy into that creation, and that imbues an energy that resonates and comes back to feed us. And 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 peace. And the Earth feels our presence, and those areas feel our presence. And, you know, when we walk into a nature preserve or something, we feel like we are the great witnesses that we witness this. But we're the ones being observed by a thousand eyes. I mean, the birds are looking at us, the insects that are crawling around the sides of the tree are kind of peering out at us. The frogs are looking at us. You know, it's could have a fox behind another tree looking at us, and we don't see them, but we're the one being observed. And I gave a lecture at the Portland Flower show on Saturday, and I said, you know, we have the option of looking at the world through soft eyes or hard eyes. And when we look at the world through hard eyes, you know, that's a separation. We can look at human beings with hard eyes, 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 and to that sort of invisible embrace. So 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 or magnificence, or we can look at her as more of a linear, logical, local force, which is something to be bought, purchased, cut up, divided, manhandled, you know, which we do so well.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

We'll return to our interview in a moment. We and 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 Marcy Booth from Booth, Maine to help me with my own business and to help me live my own life fully. Here are a few thoughts from Marcy 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 savor 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. But 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 of 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 duties 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 savored, 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@boothmain.com.

Ted Carter:

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 Ireland. You go to Ireland now there's no trees. So you know we have and there's this huge thing going on with the Amazon jungle right now. I mean, we're on a great path and some of the environmental things have been weakened. Now we're back in the trenches with having them do more deforestation. So it's really always a battle. Learn the indigenous birds in your area. That's a really fun thing to do. I have bird feeders. I've always had bird feeders. I love, love birds. I'll be pouring bird seed in and I'll talk to the chickadees. They always sort of talk to you, you know, when you're out there and they chirp, chirp, chirp, and they're all just dancing around. And 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, like my bird feeder that I'm holding in my hand. And they look right at me and chirp at me. And we have a little conversation and they just fly off. And, you know, I mean, this is

Dr. Conner Moore:

how

Ted Carter:

readily available nature is to us and how she talks to us all the time. You know, when I was in the redwood forest a year ago, I was. 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 the foot thing out. But my ears were just. Whenever I'm near spirit, you know, my ears just go crazy. And my ears were just. I mean, it was like I was at a cathedral in the woods and looking up at all these trees, and there's this piercing noise that comes through me, and I always. That's the way spirit communicates, you know, and there's spirits. Those are the great witnesses. Some of those trees have been around since the time of Christ. I mean, that's how old they are, 2,000 years old. So anyway, I don't mean to get down that rabbit hole, but I get excited when I talk about these things because they bring so much to the human spirit. The other thing is the making of a polyculture. What happens to the earth when it's become violated? You get all of these invasives move in. We all see like these honeysuckles, poplar trays, bittersweet, just kulch crap, stuff that moves in, and that's like a scab. So when you scrape Mother Earth, when you scrape her skin, which is the epidermis, which is her skin, first chakra all connected, it forms a scab. That scab is the invasives. Because it's sort of 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 really weakens the ecosystem. We want polycultures where there's a lot of different flora and fauna out there.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So a monoculture would just be one, like bittersweet, and the polyculture would be

Ted Carter:

multiple different plants, multiple different things. This is why we're having such a struggle with genetically modified organisms, GMOs, because what it's doing is it's eradicating the polycultures and creating a monoculture on a vast, huge, gigantic level. And it's going from continent to continent. It's enormous. And it's a huge movement. Europe is really fighting against, against it. Unfortunately, America is a lost cause. We're already too late for America where we are. I mean, I'm not being defeatist, but Monsanto has done a number.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

But as individuals, in our own backyards, on our own landscapes, we can make an effort to.

Ted Carter:

We can make an effort to do polycultures. I'll move into an area. I have these continual discussions with the DEP or with towns that say, oh, this is a no cut zone. This is a no touch zone. And I say, what are you protecting here? I said, it's a thicket of bittersweet with honeysuckle and poplar trees, all trash. I mean, not that I. Not all honeysuckle is trash. All of it's good in proportion and scale. But when it comes in such a quantity and covers very vast acres of it of just the same three things, it's not healthy. It's not a healthy ecosystem. So I say to them, yeah, what are you trying to protect here? I said, I want to move in here. I want to create a polyculture. I want to move in different genus and species to create a more balanced ecosystem that supports indigenous wildlife. And, you know, they. They get it. I mean, but.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, do you think some of it is because people don't necessarily. They just aren't as aware of, you know, if they look at something, 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 some things. So 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 Carter:

Right. And I have to keep that in mind. I mean, it's unfortunate that we all 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 in place that are so stringent that. That, you know, you're kind of like, you can't move. And I think there's a balance there. And 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 really don't understand that balance either. You know, they want to impose their imprint on the land. And I do that too. I mean. I mean, I see a design sensibility. I come out of a sort of a Eurocentric. My house is very kind of a. Has a Eurocentric feel to it, and it has a relaxed formality, I say. But it's very. It's like an English country house, but it's got a prune boxwood hedge, but then it's got these wildflowers in behind it. And so it's got the discipline and the undisciplined working together. And, you know, there's a lot of freedom through discipline. You know, if we discipline ourselves, we can. There's a lot of movement and creation that happens through that discipline. But you have to have a good, strong structure and organization to allow for that creativity and that undisciplined piece of yourself to move forward. And we're always moving against those energies.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So it's like planting a garden or creating a landscape is that you have to first have things sort of laid out in order for them to start growing in the ways that they would naturally grow.

Ted Carter:

Yeah, you have to. I mean, this is the big thing about permaculture, which is such a. It's just a. It looks like a mess, you know, And I really love the idea behind it and everything, and I think it's a great thing, but it's not saleable.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, talk to me about permaculture. I'm only vaguely aware of it because I have to tell you, my thumbs are not as green as yours.

Ted Carter:

Well, permaculture is about creating. Creating a whole system so that you actually live off the land that you have. And it completely provides, pretty. Completely provides everything that you need, from water to fruits, vegetables, flowers, and brings natural forces in and creates a very homogeneous habitat for both man and native species and animals and insects. And plants. And I am not doing a very good job describing it. And I've attended classes and I've gone to workshops because I want to try to understand it better so I can move it into my landscaping work. But I'm having a really hard time with it because it doesn't quite. Biodynamics works for me. Working with the biodynamic, you know, Rudolf Steiner's work that has a.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So what is it about permaculture that you haven't been able to quite.

Ted Carter:

It's structure. It's lack of structure. It's too messy. It's not saleable. I can't sell permaculture. I mean it. You know, I'm not knocking permaculture. I think it's fantastic for the right person. But I. It's in my industry, in my business, in my business model. I can't sell it yet because I haven't figured out how to market it properly.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So maybe when you're talking about this balance, permaculture might be an ideal, but it isn't really quite there yet. As far as reality is concerned.

Ted Carter:

I think there's got to be a hybrid. I think that we are all so much, you know, When I think about how we've evolved. There's. In my. One of my. In my book presentation, for instance, in the slideshow that I do for the book reunion, there's a picture about how these sprays spray gun this mist that's being cast over all these kids are having lunch in this lunchroom, and there's this fog all through the. And there's this jet that this man's holding that's spraying all this fog all over them. And I say to people in the audience, you know what that is? And they no one knows. And I said, that's DDT. And I said, that's in the 1950s. We were promoting DDT. And then, you know, I remember in Chicago running behind the truck and the fog growing up and, oh, my gosh, you know, and that was all ddt. And then I show one thing where the guy actually is mixing it up in a bowl and eating it to prove how safe it is. Well, I mean, obviously he's long gone, but I mean, this is how far we've come. And so when we look at where we are now, we've got all these things coming up with the biodynamics really is there. The permaculture 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 in both worlds. It's not either or. I love lawn, but I only like some lawn. I'm not a big lawn person and it doesn't really interest me. But it's a monoculture and it's.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And 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 rid 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 the things that we learned previously, then we run into difficulty. Right?

Ted Carter:

Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's not flushing the baby out with the bath water. It's about learning as we go and taking pieces, cherry picking the pieces we need to take with us and leaving some of the stuff that's dangerous behind.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, 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 and trying to heal our Earth?

Ted Carter:

There's a passage in my book I'd like to read to you. Biodynamics is designed to work with, healing and empowering the immune system in every molecule of soil and plant life to waste nothing and to be fully sustainable, to have a fully sustainable system. A biodynamic farmer's 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. And what you work with is preps. I mean, I've been to the Josephine Porter Institute, spent a week there. I went to the Pfeiffer Institute and took classes there in New York, York. And I have a barn full of cow crap from California and that I still got to use. I have pallets of it that was brought over. It's probably the most expensive, common or that I've ever. Or a lot of people probably would have ever purchased. But anyway, you know, it takes a little bit of this. It's the essence of this. You know, you take and you use it sprayed. You make these preps and you spray them, and they actually work biodynamically. With the plant life and with the soil.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So the reason that you are so excited about the California cow poop is because it was biodynamically prepared, right?

Ted Carter:

With the cows, the pasture. The cows are grazed on biodynamic land with biodynamic preps. You have of the oak bark prep and the nettle prep and all these different preps, and you bury them. See, the earth inhales as we're moving into the winter. You bury your preps in the soil in the wintertime as you're moving into winter, because the cosmos think of the earth on one side of the earth as inhaling inhalation and pulling the cosmic forces into the preps. And then the southern hemisphere is exhaling. So inhale, exhale. So now we're moving into the. As we move into spring, we're moving into exhalation. So we leave the preps in there for one solid year, and then we harvest them out of that one space, and we put new preps in. And we use those preps, and we use just a little. The essence of those preps, just a pinch full in a sprayer. I mean, a handful of this stuff will do a whole acre.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And so the prep you mean is the cow manure?

Ted Carter:

Well, it could be the bark prep that you take off the trees. It could be the nettle prep. Now, Pfeiffer, not Pfeiffer, but Josephine Porter makes and sells the preps, and you buy the preps from them. You can make your own preps. And I. 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. So I'm still playing with this stuff.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

But 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 sort of the health of their own ecosystem within their land and also their. The health of the greater ecosystem and what they need and want to have out of it. So you really are trying to create this. It's not just planting flowers for you or planting trees. You are really trying to look at some bigger way of bringing life and beauty to their lives.

Ted Carter:

Right. I mean, my journey with my clients is more. Really 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 know, you have. The human spirit is very complex, and it's very multifaceted, and our biological systems as complex and as Incredible as our anatomical system is and as complex as it is, so are human spirits. And when I look at the land, that's another whole set of complexities. So you're sort of moving. The complexity of all the different land is so different. I mean, I come onto 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, and you're trying to meld the spirit of the land and the spirit of the inhabitant and create a space that really embraces them. You know, I want to create a space so that they never want to leave, that they just love their place, that they feel like, you know, okay, I'm out in the world, I'm doing my work, but when I come home, that's my place, my place of refuge. And I think that the built environment, if it's done properly and it's respectful of who they are, built in a sincere way, it really can do that for them.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

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 How We Heal Our Broken Connection to the earth, along with your co author, Alan 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, and to probably, I think, beyond the borders of the state of Maine. So I'm really thrilled to have you here today.

Ted Carter:

Oh, well, it's just great to be here, Lisa. Thank you so much.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You've been listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast show number 84, Life Examined. Our guests have included Dr. Connor Moore and Ted Carter. For more information on our guests, visit Dr. Lisa.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 doctoralisa Facebook page. You can also follow me on Twitter and Pinterest doctorlisa and read my take on health and well being on the Bountiful blog. Bountiful Dash blog. We love to hear from you, so please let us know what you think of the Dr. Lee Radio Hour. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also, please let our sponsors know that you have heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour to you each week. As Socrates once said, the unexamined life is not worth living. We hope that our show, the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour, may assist you in the examination of your own life. We know it helps us examine our own lives every week as we bring it to you. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle hoping that you have enjoyed our show this week on Life Examined. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.