For Mother's Day

Frances Cecilia McLeod





My father died some years ago now, and the initial grieving at his departure has mellowed into an irrationally rich tapestry of the sweet memories of what I like to remember most about him. His work first as a student at Merton in Oxford, and then as an undercover operative for the British Government in Kenya, meant that during the formative years of my life he was never at home. After them, the formative years I mean, he was never there anyway, for he left home when I was six.

It was my mother who raised us five children in an East African colony during the last days of British imperialism. She went to work, hacking away at a typewriter in the secretarial pool at the Government office “Supplies and Transport”. She was a nurse in the Red Cross, and an executive assistant to Kar Hartley the international game exporter. Later she worked on the research team of Dr. Guggisberg as he made headway on the Anaphalis mosquito and the malaria problem, and in the Tsetse fly as the vector for Sleeping sickness. She would come home tired and yet still made time to organize dinner and sing us to sleep.

In her songs Mum would remember the sweet times she had in her marriage. One haunting song written by her from the perspective of her children, suggests that we are comforting her as she laments.

Lonely

Do not sigh or dream of that look in his eye.

The twitch of a smile and the touch of his hand,

It's a thing of the past Mother, we understand.

Lonely, lonely, in spirit we travel together,

Lonely, lonely, in spirit we're always with you.



Turn to me, your son with the curl on his brow,

His little kid-sister and big sister too,

His brothers look like him and also like you.

Homing, homing, as birds of passage we travel,

Homing, homing, remember our home is with you.

The Royal Albert Hall

The Royal Albert Hall holds a particular significance for me, for it was there that the presentation of Graduates to Her Majesty the Queen Mother, Chancellor of London University took place in1972. Of particular note was not the fact that I got my degree, but that the whole recessional line was held up when the Queen Mum decided to stop and talk briefly to one of the proud parents. It was my dad.

How well I remember in Albert Hall
Where the Queen Mum gave me my degree
We were racked with our peers in the upper God’s
What a jolly good company.

Down on the floor were the special seats
For the dignitaries, dons and deans,
Professors and graduate fellows,
Some parents, and people of means.

At the end of one row, by the aisle
I could spy to my great surprise,
My father dressed up in his dufflecoat
And a twinkle in his eyes.

My years as a student were suddenly gone,
The lectures and tutoring through.
We were all of us off on another road,
Ready to try something new.

The anti-climax of being done
With no one out waiving a flag,
No one to slap you on your back
A hollowness made the days drag

And then there came this antidote,
The graduate presentation.
We were decked with our gowns and caps
And filled with expectation.

Each had a colored satin hood
And a tasseled mortar board,
And those who had earned distinctions
Had stripes on their gown-sleeves broad.

The orchestra started playing
Elgar’s march made our pulses rage
When the Queen Mum and her entourage
Processed up to the stage.

How thrilled we were as she gave her speech,
We listened, spellbound, enthralled.
She told us all how proud she was,
“Britain’s best” is what she extolled.

We each in our turn filed down in a line,
To cross the stage, bow and receive,
From the University Chancellor
A smile and a paper decree.

Having returned to the balcony,
The ceremony all but complete
Watching the formal recessional,
I nearly fell off my seat.

The whole parade was arrested
The Queen Mother had stopped in the aisle
And the person whom she was talking to
Was my father beaming a smile.

He was nodding his head in agreement
He put his hand up to his chest,
I imagined that he was saying,
“You pinned it right here on my vest.”

How well we remember the Albert Hall
Where I went to receive my degree,
My veteran father saw it all,
And he got to speak to the queen.

First Time in Disney Hall

I did a bad thing yesterday, and I got into trouble for doing it. I took a photograph inside the new Walt Disney Concert Hall. The usher came and told me off. I was sitting beside my children’s brilliant Ukranian piano teacher, Mrs. Galina Berezovsky. I made a joke to her about it afterwards, saying they are probably worrying about the Ruskies get the pictures, after all we don’t want them getting hold of the technology. She laughed.

We were there in this amazing hall for the first time. It was particularly pleasing to me because our daughter Maran was performing as one of the choristers in the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus. Their rendition of Bach’s “Bist du bie mir” was later followed by the Gibson “Dona nobis pacem” It was lovely. I suppose my Jewish friends would call that nachus. . (Well it is Easter you know!)

The concert was rounded out by having the American Youth Symphony accompany them, and they also played a couple of dramatic pieces with broad dynamics, “Night on Bald Mountain” and “The Firebird Suite” which demonstrated the exceptional acoustics of the hall itself. If you were lulled into dreaminess during the softer portions of the latter you were in for a rude awakening, for, as is done in Hyden’s “Surprise”, the timpanist let lose a volley of bashes on the base drum that fairly rocketed round the auditorium baring the sclera.

I found a better picture of the Toyota French Fries (The new Organ)
















I was reminded of another first time, way back in 1969, when I attended a concert at the Royal Albert Hall, in London. For years musicians used to joke about the echo in the hall, saying that if you played there you at least heard your performance twice. This problem was not successfully tackled until a series of large fiberglass acoustic diffusing discs were installed in the roof . The program then for the first concert after the discs were installed included the Bruckner 6th Symphony and Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture with bells and real cannon. The brass in the first and the bangs in the last fairly blew us out of our seats....

I guess want I wanted to say is that although we were cramped, and I can’t figure out why Frank O. Gehry would let his fine work be so abused by pecuniary meanness, the hall is exquisite, and the sound is marvelous. It is quite a Los Angeles achievement, unlike the Getty, which looks like a cheap condo lot on the top of the hill.

So What’s An AED?

Well you better know it could save your life! Automated External Defibrillators are the next best thing to the paramedics getting there the moment your heart stops beating.

If you want the low down, a lot of people have a cardiac arrest episode at the end of their lives, and young or old, the national average life expectancy from such an episode is only 5%. Please don’t believe what you see on television I am giving you the facts. Before the defibrillator was invented, when the heart stopped so did you. But chances of survival went up following the introduction of CPR (Cardio-Pulmonary-Resuscitation), and leveled off in the 1980's and have only just recently got any better. The best place to have a heart attack right now is in an airport, or oddly enough in a Casino in Las Vegas. The pervasive availability of AED’s in these locations have upped the chance of survival (that means walking out of hospital) to about 70-80%.

So why the dramatic difference?

Cardiac arrest means your heart stops beating normally. It doesn’t mean your heart is dead or that your brain is dead, but it does mean that there is no pumping of blood round your body any more. Usually the heart muscle is contracting erratically in a fluttering manner. The blood carrying oxygen is what keeps us alive, and without blood, well actually without oxygen, your brain cells start to die in about three minutes. In about five to eight minutes without oxygen the heart muscle itself starts to die. After that even if the paramedics do get the heart started you will never know it!

So the critical factor is how efficiently you can massage the heart to keep some blood carrying oxygen flowing to the brain and to the heart muscle itself, and do you know how long you’ve got? About five to eight minutes! If you had ever tried to do CPR you’d know that in about three minutes you are plum tuckered out and even changing off with a partner just delays the inevitable arrival of the point where the heart muscle will not contract any more even if you stimulate it to do so. Rarely does CPR cause the heart to start beating normally again. It takes a shock.

That is where AED’s come in and why they are a life saver. While continuing CPR, you open the box you turn it on and you follow the clear directions which are spoken to you. You cannot shock someone who doesn’t need a heart start, because the devises have a computer inside that analyses the status of the subject. Only when necessary they allow a complete novice to administer a live saving jolt of electricity to the chest of a person who is already clinically dead, and if given soon enough can bring them back to life, and keep them alive until the telephone operators who are receiving your 911 call, and the paramedics who are fighting the traffic to get to your home or the park or the shopping center, can get you the help that is needed. They make a huge difference and there should be an AED in every home, office and work place, and possibly every car.

Click on the picture above to see the range of AED's available. They are all good!

Henrietta’s Papa

Mario C. Garcia
1930 - 2006
Revelations 21:4 He will wipe out every tear from their eyes and death will be no more.





Sound Library

For Henrietta who wants her father to know how thankful she is to have had him in her life: for all the tough love shown to her and her sisters and his grandchildren. She always looked up to him for being a hard worker and for providing for his family. He was her father, her hero, her friend.

Papa can you hear me now? I’m praying that you do,
To hear me say “I love you still” now that the trials are through.
Oh! Papa I still hear you, tender in my mind,
Even in admonishment your tone was always kind.

Papa I remember how you would dance with me
I can see my sisters looking on so enviously,
You had me clutched within your arms and twirled me all around
I was flying with my Papa, with feet above the ground.

Papa I remember your strength that would not fail,
Yet when the call came telling you were gone I felt so frail.
I was numb and even now I can not tell just how I feel
But I know that you are gone and wish it wasn’t real.

Papa? do you remember when by the harbor quay
We’d be walking hand in hand, together you and me?
The waves were gently lapping and the birds mewed overhead
And I was with my hero, ’though those words were never said.

The fenders they were yawning as the boats rocked in the breeze
The halliards were clanking on the masts in a reprise,
Oh! we’d be eating ice cream and drinking in the view
And Mama would be with us and you’d call her Honey Dew.

Oh Papa! do you recall when I last pushed your wheel chair?
Through blinding tears with my eyes closed the vision is still there,
We went to the marina to see the boats a new
And Julius had an ice cream just like we used to do.

Papa, you’re my hero and so you’ll always be
And I will keep you in my heart for all eternity,
And time will never weaken nor take away one breath
For it’s love that binds, not reason, and that’s stronger than death.

Love and miss you
for ever
your daughter
Henrietta

The Pope And The Pickpocket

The fame of France and Italy is said to come in threes
For "Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres"
And Rome of course is well renowned beneath the Corinthian frieze
For the Pope within the Vatican, the pickpockets and cheese.

Now Roderick, at fifteen, had gone off with his chums,
To see the Pope and taste the cheese and watch out for the bums.
They hoped to see the Bersaglieri running round a square
In a piazza with a fountain and the ancient buildings there.

On a Sunday morning after visiting the caves
In the catacombs where long have lain the early Christian graves
They braved a local public bus to reach Saint Peter’s Square
And hear the Holy Father say Mass and Sunday prayer.

Oh they weren’t riding on their own the bus was just jammed tight
There were tourists and pilgrims coming to see the sight,
And others riding with them who have traveled that way before
Who’d polished the nack of stealing while the tourist gape in awe.

Well that morning while in transit when a pouch he tried to pick
Roddy spied a pickpocket as he made his dip.
He didn’t get distracted, he watched the hand go in
And take his teacher’s camera out. He thought it was a sin!

"No." said Roddy "Stop that now." He wrestled with the man,
And tore the camera back again from right out of his hand.
The culprit made excuses, his looks were sour and dark,
He would wait till he was in the square to find an easier mark.
















On reaching the Basilica the bus just emptied out
Like a stream of water from a horizontal water spout,
Folk fanned out on the cobbles to join the throng who hope
To receive the blessed sacrament from Benedict the Pope.

From the papal balcony he said Mass and then dispensed
A blessing on the pilgrims, and the thieves and all, and thence
Roddy and his school chums went south to see Pompeii,
And the pickpocket was left to try his luck another day.

An Easter Poem

The Folded Palm
John 12 ,“Fear not, daughter of Zion; behold, your King is coming sitting on a donkey’s colt.”
For Nan MacNamara on Palm Sunday at the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood









I keep a palm leaf in my bible
It’s folded and plaited and dry,
It reminds me of when the palm fronds waved
In profusion as Jesus rode by.
It reminds me of that fateful day
When the fickle crowd faltered and failed
Turning from frantic welcomes
To denials, in the court where they railed.

“Hosanna”, they called as He rode in
“Hosanna” they cried out with zeal,
“Blessed is He that comes in the name
Of the Lord, King of Israel”.
How quickly their attitude altered,
As the Pharisees looked on with scorn.
How deep and complete their denials
When the trials were done with the dawn.

The Pharisees saw as He rode in
On a donkey, the scripture fulfilled,
And they plotted within their jealous hearts
How the Son of Man would be killed.
How sad Jesus was when He saw them,
For He knew every thought, every plan.
He could see how the crowd would reject Him,
And desert Him to a man.

I ask myself if I’d deny Him
Had I been in the crowd long ago.
For even Peter who loved Him,
Denied Him, three times in a row.
He rode through the crowds on a donkey,
Anointed, the Pascal Lamb
He gave His life so that I might live
- Sinner that I am.

So I keep a palm leaf in my bible.
It’s folded and plaited and dry.
It reminds me of when the palm fronds waved
In profusion as Jesus rode by.
It reminds me that He died for me
That He came to atone for our sin,
So that my poor soul might be saved
And on the last day welcomed in.
Neil Stewart McLeod - March 2003

Clan MacLeod Dance Books

The Clan MacLeod Dancing Heritage















The MacLeod Dance Books, the definitive collection of Scottish Country Dances relating to the Clan MacLeod, are available in archival museum quality editions which are hard bound gilt embossed and printed on acid free paper that will last for centuries.

Among the seventy nine dances in the collection, two, “MacLeod of Harris” and “MacLeod of Dunvegan” are taken from Mary Isdale MacNabs’s collection, and they are found in Volume Two “If The Ghillie Fits”. The dances range from simple beginners dances (level one) to level four for advances dancers, and cover the whole spectrum of reels, hornpipes, jigs and medleys. A few of the dances are very old, indeed one dates back 1590. Many of the finest contemporary choreographers have written dances especially to be included in this collection.

These books took thirteen years of dedicated work to produce, and I do not know that they will ever be reprinted. The cost of the books was arrived at my merely dividing the cost of printing by the number of volumes. We will never recoup or cost. They are beautiful books however.

Available in a two volume Limited Edition set
“Dances of An Island Clan” and “If The Ghillie Fits...” Each book is illustrated and contains the story of MacLeod related dances, each with its choreographic description, original musical score, and diagrams of the significant dance movements. The books are packed with the legends and tales of MacLeod lore, and for dancers and non-dancers alike who love the clan history the books are a delight.

Wonderful presents for enthusiasts, and a must in any clan library, the books are available for $25 each and $45 for the set, plus postage and packing.

Please contact: Neil McLeod by email only: drneilmcleod@yahoo.com for mailing instructions

Postage and packing: USA - $ 8.00, Canada - $ 11.00, Britain - and elsewhere $18.00 per book
(Note: cost of postage may vary, we reserve the right to ask for additional postage if necessary, if a less costly alternative can be found we will gladly use it and make refunds accordingly.)

Success and Significance

This picture must look vaguely familiar to many. Any parent who has been involved in Junior Varsity Football with a son on the field or a daughter on the sidelines will know what it is like to get the children ready, clean the uniforms and do all the extra driving to make sure they are “there on time”. Well my buddy Jim Covell told me one day that there were two phases in a man’s life. In the first we strive for success, but in the second it is for significance. This poem, though brief, is about the transformation.

Success and Significance

By any measure
Accomplishing your goals is called success.
Yet in and of itself
When all is said and done it means little.

Success is not the measure of the man,
But what comes after it -
After the struggling and the inward perspective
Comes significance,

That greater purpose
For which we all should strive,
To matter, not to ourselves
But to the lives of others,

“Hello”, he said
Eyeing me in the football stand,
And with diminished accolade
Expounded, “Your Roddy’s dad.”

And in a twinkling
The true measure came to me,
That in his world, and that of my son
I had attained significance.

Hats Off To Checker Cab - Fighting Back Against Scandalous Advertising

I dropped my car off for service, and took a cab to work.

What would you do if you had dropped your car off and the cab that had arrived to take you to work had an advertisement of the top which offended you? Take the cab anyway? Call for another cab? It is a tough question. But every day we are confronted by attention-drawing exploitive imagery which is gradually getting more suggestive and inappropriate. It desensitizes us to normal bounds of propriety and scandalizes the innocent. Under the guise of the right to free speech marketing gurus are manipulating our appetites and creating demands for products and services we would be better off not using. Under the cloak of normal capitalist practice the fabric of our society of slowly, inexorably being torn apart and the silent majority is sitting back doing nothing because of our inertia and the belief that we as individuals can not have an effect. Well it is not true, the little guy, you can make a big difference.
Here is a cab with roof top advertising the type that I have often seen used for "gentleman's clubs".

If just a few of us complained every day about what did not work for us, if we drew attention to offences to good taste, we could form a collective army of public opinion which could drive this country in the direction we want it to go.

Let me give you an example. The cab I didn’t take had an advert for some dirty bar where prostitutes sell their services. The idea that my dollar was going to finance a promotion for such a business galled me. So I wrote a letter complaining to the Checker Cab Company, and to their credit they got back to me and told me that such advertising was to stopped forthwith. I was pleasantly surprised. I share my letter and their response with you.


So what, big deal you might say. But consider this if every time you saw an offensive advertisement you complained to the producer, and then asked other people who employ that producer whether they want to be associated with and represented by a company that uses business methods which are destructive of moral values, what would the accumulative effect be. Would they react like the Check Cab Company? If so then you and I can play a part in cleaning up America, the land of which we are so proud.

Take a look at these bill boards and ask yourself what other company is also using that marketer, Viacom or Regency or whatever, to promote there products. A letter to the company suggesting that they not endorse such free speech, and implying that with their tacit support of it, you feel that you would prefer not to use their service or product. Such and expression of condemnation might do a lot to change the permissive way advertisers get us to absorb their subliminal and not so thinly veiled messages.

Now take a look at this window treatment in a shop window on Sunset Boulevard. I am asking myself what was going on in the mind of the owner when this was allowed to be displayed.

I have heard that if you look for the bad you will surely find it. But where do you draw the line?

Falling In Love And Staying There

Well it is that time again when we are obliged, not that it is a chore, but we are pressured to be a little more romantic than may be usual. I welcome and embrace the Saints Day. It gives me a chance to tell how blessed I am to have been married to my sweetheart, and that to this day our loves grows day by day.

I look at the ring on my left hand and I remember the poem I gave to my wife, Nancy, when we were only two years wed. It still rings true today.

THREE BANDS OF GOLD
Ecclesiastes 4:12
I gave my love three bands of gold
On a summer's day so fair,
All bound they were and intertwined
As braids of her golden hair.

Three bands I gave to my sweet love
Each one to pledge my troth,
To love, to cherish, have and hold
No matter where we rove.

Each golden band I gave to her
Will ever a symbol be,
To love with body, heart and mind
The flower she gave to me.

And summer days will come and go
And time will play his part,
But nought will dull the luster
Of the love within my heart.

And on my hand I wear a band
Of three wound rings of gold,
They 'mind me of my promise to
The love I dearly hold.

January 7, 1992
On the other hand, the expectation that someone will tell you that they love you can be a demand that spoils the spontaneity of freely expressed passion, and this next poem addresses this point.

DO NOT ASK

Do not ask me to say I love you
And look sadly up to me with those deep dark eyes
Do not be like some timid furry animal
Unsure of my affections and fearing I shall say go.

Do not ask me to say I love you
Those words rob me of my free choice to say I truly love
And compel me as though I were cornered
And have to argue.

If I say nothing
You'll stir and sigh,
Or answer, you'll doubt the reply
For no more than an idle phrase.

Rather say “come love”, then kiss me
I shall follow till from the wave's crest
I'll say the real words.
For like the waves love comes and goes.

So do not ask.

Treating head and neck pain at a new level.

As dentists we are quite familiar with having to deal with pain. Often times, God willing, we are pretty good at it. However, I have to tell you that there are times when what we know and what we have been taught simply isn’t enough. Then we find ourselves using old fashioned remedies and failing treat our patients well. We have a professional title, doctor, which comes from the Latin and means teacher. Literally we are charged to be teachers, and to inform our patients about their clinical choices so that they can make an informed decision to acquiesce and accept treatment alternatives.

Daily I try to remember that, but let's get back to facial and head and neck pain. There are occasions when dentists and physicians, I express it that way because I am tired of the distinction between dentists and doctors which are one and the same, are unable to diagnose the cause of pain, because we are not trained to identify the symptoms correctly. Tragically we discover our errors after a line of root treated teeth have failed to stop the pain.


Fortunately, there are teams of specialists now who can treat the most obscure pains and get relief of symptoms using astonishing new diagnostic tools and treatment modalities which were simply not available until relatively recently. I recently heard Steven Graff-Radford, D.D.S. , Co-Director of The Pain Center at Cedars-Sinai, speaking at the Beverly Hills Academy of Dentistry. Frankly I was blown away and it wasn’t because of his South African accent. He and his team have ways of diagnosing migraine and Tic dolaru and a host of other very nasty conditions including brain and head cancer, and can break it down and find specific treatments that really work. For example, it has been discovered by using M.R,I, (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) and CAT scans (Computed Axial Tomography) that certain patients who complain of blinding pain have an enlarged blood vessel that lies adjacent to a nerve bundle where it exits the base of the skull. In such cases a delicate procedure to displace the blood vessel completely solves the problem. This was never known or even possible before. Needless to say I am really glad to have professional colleagues like Steven and Dr. Victoria Wexley to whom I can refer.


So the point is this. If you, or some one you know has pain in the head or neck give a call, we may be better able to help solve the problem now than we ever were. There are a lot of people who suffer excruciating pain simply because they have given up and don’t think any one can relieve it.

Corporal Punishment and Civility

Saint Mary's School Msongari


Before posting a new poem “The Cuts”, I wanted to recall two school songs from my days in Kenya. They are most revealing. They remind of that the nuns and the priests employed physical pain to teach and to punish. (Blubbing means crying, which us boys were not supposed to do even after a beating)


"Glory, glory hallelujah,
Sister hit me with the ruler,
The ruler bust so she hit me with the shoe
And now I’m black and blue."

...and now this end of term song:
"No more Latin, no more French,
No more sitting on a hard school bench.
No more going to Harny’s door,
Coming out with back side sore.
Kick up tables kick up chairs,
Kick old Harny down the stairs.
If that’s not enough to make him blub
Stick him in the washing tub."

The use of corporal punishment to maintain discipline in schools and other communal environments has been a standard in human society for centuries. Today’s kinder gentler policies seem more humane, and in line with a permissive all forgiving tolerant society. From my perspective, and much though I abhor personal brutality on the Rugby field, locker room, in a public bar, on the streets or in the cell of a dean of discipline, I can not help wondering if without it we have grown a new community where the consequences for your own actions are not daunting enough, and that there is now no discouragement for unprincipled behavior.

I think random acts of violence, destruction of public and private property, Graffiti, are the result of the anonymity that is now possible and the lack of appropriate punishment and the fear of it.



The Cuts
From 1955 -58 I was sent to boarding school in Nairobi. The School was called Saint Mary’s. It was, and probably still is a Catholic School run by the Holy Ghost Fathers and was arguably one of the finest schools in Africa. I never really liked it, but knew that with my father gone, we all had to put on a brave face and get on with it. Mum was wonderful about taking us out on certain weekends. We loved those times together. The worst thing about being at school, apart from the bullying, was getting the cuts from Father Harnet.

Neil Alan Roida and Ewan McLeod in descending order

After prayers on Friday night
Some of us of boys were beaten
Nothing too serious of course,
Just a sound caning with three or six of the best.

We dreaded the litany that always came
After the Dean of Discipline’s indictment
“The following boys will report to my room
Immediately after prayers”.

We thought it normal
And if you had heard your name
You would scoot and edge to the door
While others had their eyes shut tight.

Then slipping down the corridor
And up the stairs to the dorm
You rushed to put all your week’s underpants
On beneath your khaki shorts.

Silently we lined up by the cell door
Knowing the cane was kept in a tube of linseed oil
From the inner room we heard the practice slashes
On a cushion and we shuddered.

One by one we filed in
Hands on the desk we took up ‘the position’
And when it was finished
Choking and humiliated we said “Thank you Father”.

On Saturday night we had the flicks
A newsreel, cartoon and a feature
Which was always fun
If you could sit without wincing.

Going For The Gold Teeth

When it comes to restoring teeth there is no better longer lasting restorative material that the gold only or inlay. None, no matter how you argue the case, and many have. To start with, gold onlays have been placed in patients mouth for longer that any other material, and for the second nothing withstands the punishing demands made on the teeth over years of use.

In my practice, one of the oldest in Los Angeles, where I am the third dentist (principal) to be running it, we have patients in their nineties who have onlays placed in the 1950's that are still functioning and look like they were placed last week. You can’t argue with success like that.

The longest lasting porcelain crown can only have been in the patient’s mouth since the early 1970's, because Jenkins, of Newcastle University, only developed his technique for bonding aluminous porcelain to platinum in the late sixties. By experience we all know that the porcelain crazes and can cracks off anytime after seven to ten years. Not always, but often enough to convince me that gold is better that porcelain in areas where it does not show.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t want my patients having gold showing in their smiles, although if that is their wish, we can provide a parrot and patch to go with them. You have seen gold front teeth on some of our patients in the entertainment industry who wanted gold front teeth, but that was their particular preference. But take a look at this amiable smile and tell me if the gold in this mouth mars its appearance. You can't argue with work that has functioned well for thirty and forty years.

The fact is that silver/mercury amalgam, composite resin or porcelain and processed fillings don’t hold a candle to gold.

What if you haven't got a prayer

Do you believe in the power of prayer? I do! I don't know how it works, but it has worked so often for me that I am convinced some one hears me when I pray. As I kneel down by my youngest son’s bed at night I have a great sense of contentment in the knowledge of this truth. I think our community and our country needs prayer, particularly now, when we are facing such critical challenges. The Senate is considering the Judge Alito nomination, and some of the most frightening political figures are aligning themselves against his confirmation.

I want to exalt prayer and encourage you to do so, and I want to focus on two things, the Hollywood Prayer network which is headed up by my friend Karen Covell. So go ahead check that out.






The other thing I wanted to share has become a chestnut now since the publication of Dr. Bruce Wilkinson’s book, the Jabez Prayer. It is one that I think is particularly appropriate for a dentist. This is my take on it:

THE HOUSE OF SIGHS
Inspired by Dr. Bruce H. Wilkinson’s book, “The Prayer of Jabez”, at a time when David Karkenny had asked me to give a short address to the graduating class of the Kids of the Kingdom Sunday School, at Hollywood Presbyterian Church.

Now listen, I give you my blessing,
A wish that your lives will be saved,
That the road you now tread to the future
Will be straight, well marked and well paved.
I pray that we'll meet as we're destined,
In heaven, on that sacred shore,
And through all eternity share in
The treasures that God has in store.

When we get to heaven, they'll show us
The sanctuary called "House of Sighs"
Where in boxes in rows, wrapped in ribbons,
Is a sight that will tear-up our eyes.
Each box is named, and when opened
Reveals a well-scribed lengthy list
Of the blessings that God would have granted
On earth, had we asked, which we'd missed.

So, let's take our Bibles together,
Just let them fall open at will,
Then work your way back from the middle
Through all of the pages until.
You come to the list in First Chronicles
In endless parade, each strange name,
Makes a litany of Judah's children,
Inscribed with their sorrow or fame.

Each reference is brief and un-telling,
With little to set them apart.
Yet one name stopped the Chronicler scribing
And caused him to write from the heart.
"Oh! Here is a name I must mention,
Of him you must know a bit more,
It's Jabez*, who among all his brothers
Got more of what God had in store.

“Jabez, more than all of his brethren,
Was honorable,” so the words claim,
“And was given this name by his mother,
Because she had borne him in pain.”
The scribe goes on further to tell us
That Jabez had offered a prayer,
And that God up in heaven had answered
Each request in the lines uttered there.

Jabez called on the Lord, God of Israel,
"Oh that you would bless me indeed;
Increase my borders, my tenure;
May I from all evil be freed.
"And Lord keep your strong hand on my shoulder,
Lord, guide me that I cause no pain."
And God granted him all he requested,
And that's why we remember his name.

The litany continues longer
Four or five chapters or more,
It leaves us to wonder and ponder
Why Jabez was held in such store.
In the Gospels we find there an echo,
Revealed in the teachings of Him
Who said, "Ask and it shall be given thee,
Lead us not in the pathways of sin."

So my prayer is to beg that you follow,
The pathway that Jesus has trod,
That you pray for a blessing each morning,
And offer your prayer up to God.
For He will hear the prayer that you offer,
God will bless you, and stretch out His hand,
So the box with your name will lie empty,
Exactly the way God has planned.
*Jabez - 1 Chronicles 4:9-10. Pronounced Ya a baytz. Cited in the 18th Century by Rabbi Jacob Emler (ben Zvi)

Mark Roberts at our Men's Breakfast

Getting men to come to a Men’s Breakfast at church is like extracting teeth, believe me I have done both. And yet the benefits are similar, the aching pain is removed by both services, from the tooth with the extraction, and from the conscience by attending the gathering. There is something wonderfully uplifting about praying together with a group of guys who all want to know God better, in their hearts they know they should be doing more, and the message at breakfast will last through Sunday and maybe all week helping us to be mindful of our walk and its purpose.

On February 4th we are hosting our monthly Men’s Breakfast at 8.00 a.m. in the Mears Center at Hollywood Presbyterian Church, and our speaker is Mark Roberts.
He is a truly inspiring teacher, an author, husband, father and Senior pastor at Irvine Presbyterian Church.

A Ship In A Bottle

It took months to craft the model of the ship so that it was ready to put into a Dimple Haig bottle. All the sails have to lie down on one another and then be unfurled after they are placed inside.

The 'Wild Deer' is the ship my great grand father sailed upon to New Zealand in1872. It took a hundred days at sea on the great circle route, and as steerage passegers they were sealed in the hold when the weather was rough.

The Wild Deer
Boldly then she plied the Southern Seas
From Scotland, horsing past Brazilian coast
Her speed and sail the China trader’s boast,
For racing home a hold of fragrant teas.

And from her prow Diana scans the view,
A figurehead the goddess of the hunt,
An oracle, carved from a solid stump,
To guide her charge upon a course that’s true

On she drove, this ship of wood and steel,
A clipper in the zenith of her prime,
With hardy crew who dare to boldly climb
Her rigging high above the plunging keel.

Then Lesseps scoured his ditch across the sands
And changed the course of history for all time,
Diverting from tea trade ships-of-the-line,
To carry immigrants to foreign strands.

And then her cargo’s price beyond compare,
In steerage sealed beneath the rolling deck,
Without life boats their fear is of ship wreck,
Those emigrants who for new life prepare.

Black and sleek she lunges on the breeze,
By iceberg-flows in endless summer’s light.
For a hundred days they crave the sight
Of Port Chalmers in the south’s antipodes.
7-27-2000 A.D.

Ring Out Freedom - Martin Luther King Remembered

Tony Campolo, Neil McLeod, Michael Bruner and Patrick Hare after the Martin Luther King concert at the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood, Sunday January 15th. 2006

The concert on the 15th of January was a truly memorable event, and Patrick Hare pulled the rabbit out of the hat again. Sorry I couldn’t resist. Professor Michael Brunner was an excellent Master of Ceremonies, with well researched and succinct comments on the participants. All the choirs were dazzling and The Hollywood Mass Choir just tore the place up, and we were ready. You had to be in a wheel chair if you weren’t standing and clapping and tapping.
Andrea Kim Walker’s dramatic tribute to Rosa Parks has added a new dimension to the breadth of subject matter that might be considered suitable for a Martin Luther King celebration, and her performance of the scene on the bus when the arrest occurred was compelling.
I got to play harmonica again as I went up to recite my poem “Oh Black and Unknown Bards”. I find it adds a little sparkle to the water.
Now the real kicker. Tony Compolo's message that was brilliant. This is a man who knows how to work even the stiffest crowd, and he had a good message. I found myself softening my stance about leftist ideology. I found his arguments valid, that the analogy of what could be done in our society if we spent three trillion dollars on the poor and the needy and the underprivileged rather than war convincing. He mentioned gay rights once, and only glancingly, but still this was the wrong platform to do so. Personal sexual preferences have nothing whatever to do with a forum on civil rights. The extreme left constantly tries to equate the two and to blur our perception with a seductively juxtaposed argument. They want a morality-blind and color-blind society. Well I don't. Saying part of the truth is just as good as saying a complete lie.
But I am convinced that this preacher/speaker/author is one of the best on the circuit, and found myself wanting to buy one of the books that he was signing after the concert. That I resisted. I thought of my bonny bride at home, and our three children, and I knew that for the moment the money would be better spent on them.

One final thought. The Martin Luther King holiday has been a minor American holiday, one upon which many still work. Personally, I have always have been confused between celebrating human rights, and justifying public handouts. I do believe now that there is more to the holiday than that. It now seems the be the focus of the next area of growth in our democratic experiment, and I and America are growing.

Siafu - These ants really bite

As a boy I thought a day had been usefully employed if I could boast a ring of Siafu ant heads around the hem line of my khaki shorts. We would catch a large soldier ant and hold him so that his pinchers could grasp the bottom of the cloth. Then as soon as he had bitten we would nip off his body leaving the head permanently attached. I have been told that it is perfectly possible to align the edges of a severe skin wound using siafu heads as sutures. These migratory fire ants will pass through an area and eat every living thing in their pathway.



Siafu, Siafu, they travel in lines,
Sometimes in tens and sometimes in nines,
Sometimes the ranks are ten yards wide
With big soldier ants that keep guard at the side.

Siafu, Siafu, I’ll tell you no lie
You had better move quickly when they come by
For if they catch you and if you should fall
There won’t be much left of you at all.

Siafu, Siafu the cleaning brigade
In Africa we all know why they were made
They march in their rows and where ever they’ve been
Not a living thing’s left, the whole place is clean.

Siafu, Siafu, the farmer’s prayer
They scour through the fields and leave nothing there
Not a mouse, not a mite, not a snake nor a snail
Only the crop’s left when they end their trail.

Siafu, Siafu, you’ll be on the run
Ants in your pants was never such fun,
They climb up to places that you never mention
Then all bite together as if by intention.

Siafu, Siafu, they make a cow shudder
They crawl up and bite them from eyeball to udder
They stagger and fall it’s a pitiful scene
In a day and a half their bones are picked clean.

Siafu, Siafu in rain or in drought
When they move in, why you move out,
There really is nothing else that you can do,
They invade but are gone in a day or two.





Neil, Ewan, Alan and Roida by the river in Rumeruti 1956

I dreamed of a treehouse #3

It took eleven months, working weekend and nights, and everyone in the family has helped. Now all of us just love to spend time looking at the view, learning a poem or writing, or just lying in the hammock.