Long-billed curlew (Numenius americanus): Medical Schools at World Univ & Sch ONLINE, "Vadodara: poor people suffer due to Lack of Medicine in Generic Medical Stores," Online SURGERY? "I ask my residents & students to draw a pic of the post-operative anatomy after #GISurgery to help them understand the resulting physiology ..." * * * One thing I appreciate a lot about Cuttyhunk is that there is and has been a kind of love there, a sense of community, of communitas, of connectedness, of positive co-connectings between people in words, ideas, being, and experiences +. It's this caring ... In some ways, my blog - a web log or journal - is a flourishing, creative & helpful unfolding of writing and idea-sharing, and in other ways, I'd like to get my life together re income and beginning a family, and cleaning my house-let, which I continue to like a lot ...

Vadodara: poor people suffer due to Lack of Medicine in Generic Medical Stores http://www.gujaratheadline.com/vadodara-poor-people-suffer-due-to-lake-of-medicine-in-generic-medical-stores/ …

*
World University and School plans to offer an online Medical School - https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/World_University_Medical_School - with online Teaching Hospital - https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Hospital - for online clinical care with online Pharmacy (https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Pharmacology) available from our online store (https://twitter.com/WUaSPress) ... in the Gujarati language (https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Languages) and accrediting academically and licensing-wise at India World University and School - https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/India (planned in official languages in India too) ...


*
See, too:
https://plus.google.com/u/2/+InfoWorldUniversityinEnglish/posts/STWzoo8gVpT

*
I ask my residents & students to draw a pic of the post-operative anatomy after #GISurgery to help them understand the resulting physiology & what to expect in the post-op period.  One of the recent best: Right hepatectomy + EHBDR #Cholangiocarcinoma #HPB #SurgEd #MedEd #SurgOnc

I ask my residents & students to draw a pic of the post-operative anatomy after #GISurgery to help them understand the resulting physiology & what to expect in the post-op period.  One of the recent best: Right hepatectomy + EHBDR #Cholangiocarcinoma #HPB #SurgEd #MedEd #SurgOnc pic.twitter.com/AGjEvOUwK2

— Niraj J. Gusani, MD (@NirajGusani) June 16, 2018

https://twitter.com/NirajGusani/status/1008015737959706624


*

For online tele robotic surgery, see too:

http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/search/label/surgery


***

Good morning, M,

One thing I appreciate a lot about Cuttyhunk is that there is and has been a kind of love there, a sense of community, of communitas, of connectedness, of positive co-connectings between people in words, ideas, being, and experiences +. It's this caring which goes on through generations of families that's so unusual. And for both summer and winter folks ... and as the times change, and as people mature. (Perhaps the '60s and 70s and a preponderance of summer folks helps to generate / create this as I see it ... but perhaps it being an island in Massachusetts at this time in history also helps).

This (a loving and caring community) isn't always (and hasn't been) the case in my experience on Cuttyhunk by any means, but in part, we've all - who experience this love and community there (as I have in my experiences there, speaking for myself) - contributed to generating this connectedness through the years. For me, being a CYC (Cuttyhunk Yacht Club) instructor (for a number of summers) have been good instances of this opportunity to share caring (for me as a kind of teacher - albeit in my teens). But so many people do this in their own ways there, and over decades. It's partly a kind of Cuttyhunk receptivity.

Hoping I can have & raise 2 or 3 kids there as well.

Wondering too how to generate a kind of love and care online at World University and School in these regards - and perhaps in the circles I find myself in in the SF Bay Area, but California is different from Cuttyhunk - I experienced / helped to co-generate a kind of love in Oregon / at Reed (as I recall) with friends, as well. And perhaps I miss this ... but think it's possible to generate this in new ways in a family I have too.

(Going back and forth on whether to cut my hair or not ... seems like a potential partner could conceivably like long hair at least in the beginning).

Here's a MIT father's day greeting - https://plus.google.com/u/2/+mit/posts/DtHB9g5bVud - with relevance for World Univ & Sch and Dad and your father too, M, since he went to MIT.

... Here's a picture of Annie and I at the ranch recently - https://twitter.com/scottmacleod/status/1008024491560034305 - which
you'll also find here - https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2018/06/wallowa-whitman-national-forest-saw-guy.html ...

Looking forward to heading to the ranch+ in the autumn with you. :)

L,
S

*

Hi M,

Added the not-easy-to-obtain NSF ID to the NSF application last night ... and hope WUaS can begin to accredit and grow with this.

In some ways, my blog - a web log or journal - is a flourishing, creative & helpful unfolding of writing and idea-sharing, and in other ways, I'd like to get my life together re income and beginning a family, and cleaning my house-let, which I continue to like a lot ...

But in some ways, it feels like writing daily like this all goes into a vacuum ... and re even an ecology of attention, which I'm further exploring here ... https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2014/03/dancing-animals-ecology-of-attention-in.html and recently here - https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2018/06/john-day-fossil-beds-what-is-cabin.html ...

Jonathan Lovell (and his wife who has spent some time on the Isle of Skye) continue to be an inspiration for me (you'll see a picture of him and his wife here - https://twitter.com/jlovellsjawp/status/1008317290889338881 - both smiling, which I reposted here - https://twitter.com/WorldUnivAndSch ) ... as a professor of writing at San Jose State University, and in his cheeriness and intelligence ... and somehow his consciousness or awareness, as well as commitment to social change (as a progressive professor at SJSU) ... and his focus on very meaningful English literature, including kids' literature and teaching teachers to teach writing ... may cut my hair in these regards, as well. :)

May head out for a walk today in Indian valley below me (re Jonathan's focus on fitness too) ... and float through its openness and beauty down to the road into Moraga, which I actually haven't walked to yet :)

Played my pipes last night before going to bed (playing through the SCD sheet music for Open Band tomorrow). There's a remarkable opportunity to develop my piano playing re SCD through lessons now (when I get money for lessons) ... but I need to avail myself of this. (If I ever were to move back to Pittsburgh with family / kids and so they could go through Shady Side Academy K-12, it might be fun to contribute to Scottish Country Dancing in Pittsburgh ... and also learn here in the Bay Area to become a SCD teacher, in addition to playing the piano for SCD ... and small pipes for SCD further).

What are you up to today, M?

L, Scott

*

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-billed_curlew

...

Keralan Egrets: Would like to create FREE CULTURE at World Univ & Sch, Hippies Feel Ambivalent About Modernity, Learning from my Father

... would like to create FREE CULTURE with worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/World_University wiki - PUBLIC, Free, Open, All languages & levels with music school MISSION. Open to YOU to Teach, Learn & Create


*
DASH - Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard at http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Library_Resources just increased number of open Harvard and MIT online libraries! :)


See Harvard Computer Science Professor Stuart Shieber's blog:
blogs.law.harvard.edu/pamphlet/2010/02/28/harvard-business-school-approves-open-access-policy/


*
A friend in FB asks:
Would love feedback on this. In the near future, when everybody knows everything about everything and everyone, what will be important?

Many interesting responses; I said:

Music? Bliss elicitation? Ideas? Ursula Le Guin's "Always Coming Home" (amazon.com/Always-Coming-Home-California-Fiction/dp/0520227352). Friends ...

1st friend:
Being, playing, loving, laughing, watching the show instead of identify with the role : )

2nd friend:
love....love is all you need.

3rd 'singing' friend:
Do-Be-Do...Do-Be-Do...gracefully...


*
A FB conversation:

A friend posts:

Peter Pan ways make bonobos the most amiable of apes
(http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18443-peter-pan-ways-make-bonobos-the-most-amiable-of-apes.html)

Scott:
This article seems absurd. I wonder if it's a misrepresentation of Harvard's Wobber's research. Thanks for sharing it.

Scott (again):
This seems like a better representation of their work because there's no teleology of mature = selfish: https://web.archive.org/web/20100614031203/http://www.harvardscience.harvard.edu/animal-vegetable-mineral/articles/bonobos-it-s-one-all (was harvardscience.harvard.edu/animal-vegetable-mineral/articles/bonobos-it-s-one-all) Rather, abundance of historical Bonobos' environment is hypothesized to lead to ongoing, sharing behavior.

Friend:
ooh thanks, this article is much better! will forward it to the fb-friend who originally shared this link - a performer/lgbt activist named Shelly Mars - http://homobonoboproject.com/about.php

Scott:
:)


*
5-9 servings of fruits, grains, vegetables & beans, including tofu, per FDA, and exercise - e.g. sun salutations - facilitates WELLNESS :)


*
Breaking News: "Hippies Feel Ambivalent About Modernity," Indian Psychiatrist Dr. Mrs. Shrivarajasana reports in Kerala today

:) in a Skype interview from her office overlooking the 'colonial history museum' in downtown Trivandrum, Dr. Shriva, her Swedish hippie client in plain view, said her client just can't seem to get in touch with her Shakti energy. Dr.Mrs. Shriva will recommend having a baby in a warm pool in the Keralan waterways.

A friend writes of modernity:
It's not ambivalence if you feel like it sucks 100 percent.

Scott:
Stanford Emeritus Professor Phil Zimbardo's 'Planned Hedonism?' Facebook Open Office hours ... facebook.com/video/video.php?v=614090435683&ref=mf - And the Swedish hippie went into the Keralan waterways, had a baby in the warm pool, - 3 times. She now spends half the year in Sweden (in the summer), and the other half in Kerala, India (in the summer) :)


Friend:

Drop out was part of the formula, right? I think raising consciousness involves ambivalence, because you see the Koyaanisqatsi race-race-race {http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085809/} -- a crowded, inebriated planet unbalancing itself from the cool spin of millenia -- self- destructiveness, anesthesia, and religious fervor aren't lasting answers, but they sure raise questions, if you sit and breathe with it.


Scott:

Formula, aka countercultural, was wild - consciousness-wise esp ... ambivalence butterflies into river rafting on the Koyannisqatsi river, too ... and population will increase to 9.2 billion from 6.7 billion in 50ish years ... reverse this with education / literacy (most unimpoverishing birthday control for impoverished women} - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/World_University - breathe ... lots of fascinating quaestions from the 6os and early 70s rippling through ... now :)

(From some post on my Facebook page)



*

Dear Rose,

Greetings in the early morning from Canyon. Just thinking about my father and what I might learn about learning, independent-mindedness, and agency (choice in life) vis-a-vis love and getting along comfortably in society. In what ways can we learn far-reaching love? Is building on Quaker, UU, Harbin, and good friends' 'processes' - and learning love, and loving bliss, a sensible approach, besides just living, and making a living, pragmatically? I think so. What do you think? I'm missing my father a little, and, while he was both pro-learning and education, and fiercely independent of limitations (of learning, too) to himself, I'm wondering what I might learn from my reading of his last 10-ish years and life vis-a-vis love. Heading for a root canal today. I'm glad we live in a knowledge-oriented world where dentistry is competent, and we can think about love, and develop approaches to it, perhaps like learning musical instruments. Nice to be in Canyon, too.

Love, Scott












(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/03/kerala-egrets-would-like-to-create-free.html - March 2, 2010)

Queen Anne's Lace: Father's Birthday, Free Thinking, Realizing Things in Life

It would have been my father's 80th birthday today - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_K_MacLeod (b. January 30, 1929). He died on November 25, 2007 in hospice in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, having sustained a concussion on Semester at Sea on December 30, 2004, which led to two subdural hematomas.

Here's a video from his memorial service on Cuttyhunk Island, Massachusetts from August 2, 2008 - scottmacleod.com/family.htm. I miss him.

As a medical doctor and a professor, he was very free-thinking, and able to realize fascinating things in life.

Hot Springs Canyon: Happy New Year, Holiday Letter, Greetings

Happy New Year! Here's my holiday letter.


January 1, 2009

Dear Friends,

Greetings from Canyon, California, 20 minutes southeast of Berkeley in the San Francisco Bay Area. Happy New Year! How are you? I’d love to hear your news.

I've traveled a lot this year, focusing mostly on doing fieldwork at Harbin Hot Springs, - http://harbin.org - a hot springs retreat center 2 hours northeast of San Francisco. I'm writing an ethnography about it, and planning to create a virtual Harbin in Open Sim and/or Second Life. In addition to this, I've taught “Society and Information Technology” about the digital revolution in the 3-D virtual world of Second Life this year, both on Berkman Island (not on Harvard's faculty) and on Penn State Island. In addition to teaching, I've taken classes this fall at Berkeley to focus the chapter writing for my book.

In the course of the year, I also visited Sierra Hot Springs, Harbin's sister springs in the Sierra Valley in northeast corner of California, a number of times for research, traveled to the Pacific Northwest - Oregon and Washington - seeing many old friends :), and visiting my alma mater Reed College, attended a "Cultures of Virtual Worlds" conference at U.C. Irvine near Los Angeles, went to the Rainbow Gathering in early July in Wyoming, and visited Cuttyhunk Island, Massachusetts in the summer.

I think a fair amount about my father, around this first anniversary of his death on November 25, 2007. It was caused by complications from a subdural hematoma from a concussion he received while in Belize 4 years ago, on Semester at Sea on December 30, 2004. While I'm very sad he's gone, I'm glad he's past the challenges he was facing over the last three years of his life. We all miss him. Here’s an entry in Wikipedia about him: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_K_MacLeod, with some additional web sites about his life. My mother and brother, who I just visited in Pittsburgh, are doing relatively well.

I’m re-visiting here some ideas from my holiday letter 2 years ago. What is wisdom in modernity, or the network society, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernity), social conditions that some social theorists suggest is ‘shaping’ life today (say, since the printing press, the Enlightenment and 'industrialization'), now influenced significantly by computing and the Internet? How does the Internet help reshape modernity and post-modernity? In this now information-rich world in which we live, is wisdom a moot idea? I think that wisdom in the network society has both to do with networking, and in making connections in a broad sense, and which, in my experience, is somehow made better in conjunction with the relaxation response (Benson 1972). Here are some steps to elicit the relaxation response - relaxationresponse.org/steps.

I’ve had an eventful few years. In the fall of 2005 I was on Semester at Sea, and, at the end of this voyage, I spent 3 ½ weeks traveling through a lot of India, a fascinating motherland. In the spring of 2005 I lived at Harbin Hot Springs in northern California for a few months. Since studying at Berkeley (2000-2001), the University of California, Santa Barbara (2001-2003), and the University of Edinburgh (2000-2004), I’ve taught college in anthropology and sociology, most recently in the 3-D virtual world of Second Life. I study some social effects of the Internet and information technologies.

One place you might enjoy exploring is the virtual emerging world and society in Second Life - http://secondlife.com/community/downloads.php. The program and going in-world are free, and there are a lot of virtual islands to explore (your computer needs to have a gigabyte of RAM). And all kinds of things take place there like musical performances and lectures, universities and nightclubs. In addition, you can communicate with other avatars, through type-chat and voice, and create and build anything imaginable. And there's a currency, the Linden dollar, which has an exchange rate with the U.S. dollar, if you want eventually to buy things, but at no time do you have to give your credit card. Second Life, like other virtual worlds, is developing quickly and will change a lot in the upcoming years. Virtual worlds are fascinating and it’s worth getting an avatar – having an avatar is a little like having an e-mail address - but exploring in world doesn’t compare with having good friends. The Internet and virtual worlds allow for all of us to become information producers, relatively freely, with far-reaching implications.

In the spring of 2007 I taught "Sociology" at Penn State, and “Society and Information Technology,” at Chatham University, and through the University of Pittsburgh’s OSHER program, all 'in-the-actual-classroom.' And in that summer and fall of 2007, and the spring and summer of 2008, I taught "Society and Information Technology" in Second Life on Berkman Island. Virtual worlds like Second Life make meeting at any time, and across great distances, a possibility, - online academic conferences and courses, for example, are a ‘real’ possibility – and virtual worlds allow opportunities for innovation in many other ways. And they’re easy to use. My research interests are leading me to examine some of the distinctions between ‘real’ and virtual processes, which have arisen due to information technologies like Second Life.

In June 2007, I spent about 2 ½ weeks in Greece taking a yoga course with Angela Farmer and Victor van Kooten, who are unique and creative yoga teachers.

In August 2007, I helped celebrate my parents 50th Anniversary on Cuttyhunk Island in Massachusetts. I was so glad my father could participate a year and a half ago.

Sandy, my brother, is a sculptor in Maine: http://sandymacleod.com. His art is an ongoing exploration for him, and beautiful.

My mother is fully engaged in Pittsburgh on the board of the Pittsburgh Chamber Music Society, walking, gardening, traveling and visiting friends.

Concerning health, I return to the thinking that a very low-fat, varied, natural foods diet, 30 minutes of daily movement (vis-a-vis Dean Ornish’s, M.D., clinical, medical research showing the heart disease is reversible through lifestyle changes – WebMD - http://www.webmd.com/content/pages/9/3068_9408.htm), a multi-vitamin, and omega-3s {for mood, heart disease, and more} (Dr. Andy Weil: drweil.com/drw/u/id/QAA356000) have numerous health benefits. Dr. Andy Weil’s web site’s search field, in particular, offers much useful integrative and complementary medical information. In a related vein, keeping one’s brain active learning, for example, a foreign language or a musical instrument benefits the mind, and is useful for lessening the effects of aging, particularly memory loss (http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/memory-loss/HA00001). (Use it or lose it?)

Thinking outside the ‘box,’ I wonder how one might realize great happiness / bliss, in conjunction with the pragmatics of daily life? My Friends’ Dalton Letter and 4 other related letters are partly an exploration of this: http://scottmacleod.com/daltonletter.htm, and I continue to find creative possibilities in thinking about these letters. Listening to Mozart’s arias, doing contact improvisational dance, contra-dance, and talking with friends, are ways for me to access qualities of bliss, - so yes, it is possible. I'm curious how extensively and with what qualities? Click on ‘notes’ on my yoga page - http://scottmacleod.com/yoga.htm - for related perspectives. I’m interested in your thoughts about this.

This past year, I've also begun to envision and realize World University and School: A Global, Virtual, Open, Free-to-Students, Multilingual University {potentially Degree-Granting, with Great Universities as Key Players} and School, using a Wikipedia model, for the Developing World {One Laptop Per Child countries to begin with} and Everyone - worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/World_University. So, all languages, all subjects. Add or take a class. Here's the Facebook page: facebook.com/group.php?gid=48753608141&ref=ts. World University and School is based on a kind of Wikipedia-cum-MIT Open Course Ware model. While the possibility that many people will contribute an amazingly wide variety of courses is exhilaratingly exciting with creative potential, and academically, too, I'm particularly interested in how we might make learning fun, and to explore questions of eliciting loving bliss here, as well. Post a course about this :).

I've also started to play my Scottish Highland Bagpipe regularly, and for events like weddings, too - scottmacleod.com/piping.htm.

I also started this blog - scott-macleod.blogspot.com - in June 2008, and as of January 16, 2009, have made 189 entries. Click on the 'poetry' tag here to read some poetry I'm writing, including some haiku-ish :)

hot pool, cold plunge
light through a leaf ~ fig:
green light smile

Whether or not wisdom has something to do with connecting positively, the world continues to be a beautiful and symbolically-rich place, especially with the Internet. Engaging it creatively is enjoyable. And for me, the relaxation response - relaxationresponse.org/steps - accentuates this.

Warm regards in the New Year,
Scott




*

The computer adds new ways to create things, easily. Here's a perspective on the Apple MacBook:

The new-ish Apple MacBook, which runs both main operating systems (Mac OS - operating system - and Windows OS), has useful and easy video technologies, including making video-making and conferencing easy. The Mac OS makes computing elegantly easy. There’s now a program that runs both the Mac OS and Windows OS at the same time on the same machine, called Parallels.


There's no reason not to get an Apple MacBook now. (You can run all your old Window's software on it). Getting a MacBook with a large hard drive and the maximum memory will make it useful well into the future. The thirteen inch screen Apple MacBook has a battery that lasts much than the 2 hours of the larger screen of Apple’s MacBook Pro, and does everything the larger laptop does for $1850, instead of $2900 for the MacBook Pro. Everything is done and ordered through the Apple web site. Here’s a CNET review about it:
http://cnn-cnet.com.com/laptops/apple-macbook-13-inch/4505-3121_7-31884384.html?tag=mncol;lst. If you have or get an Apple MacBook, and want to video-conference using iChat, which makes it very easy, let me know your .mac or free AIM address.


**

And MIT’s new One Laptop per Child, the XO – is another fascinating convergence development.


***

This click-to-give web site: thehungersite.com - with 6 possible clicks daily, plus more with mult. browsers, and x 2 with a MacBook w/ Parallels, allows you to give to worthy causes just by mouse clicking.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2009/01/happy-new-year.html


(Scott Macleod Bagpiping at Easter Harbin Hot Springs with wizard and Easter Bunny
photo: Harbin Hot Spring's Easter 2005 (Scott MacLeod and Eric R.) photo credit ?)

Fruit: Remembrances of Gordon MacLeod, by Dick Robb MD

Remembrances of Gordon MacLeod

To remember Gordon is to
Think of his cheerful friendship,
Feel his interest in our lives.
Sense an inquiring mind,
Be surprised by an unexpected pun.

To remember Gordon is to
Know the challenge of wanting to understand and hear his regard for those who did,
Listen to the satisfaction of accomplishment,
Enjoy a gin and tonic and the conversation that accompanied it,
Or share a breakfast bowl of dry cereal piled high with fruit.

To remember Gordon is to
Know his love and regard for Janie,
Realize his hopes and affection for his boys,
Recall his tenacity in holding on to friends,
Think of his pride in the Boston Latin School.

To remember Gordon is to
Replay his thoughts on how to organize medical care,
Believe that hesitation and uncertainty are enemies to be combated,
Sense his pleasure in understanding how the world works,
Know his deep happiness at Cuttyhunk and his interest in its people.

Such remembrances are not easily dimmed.
He was part of us and we of him.


~ Dick Robb
August 2008

Read at Gordon MacLeod's memorial service on August 2, 2008 on Cuttyhunk Island, Massachusetts.

*

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit

...

Rosehip: Gordon K. MacLeod MD's - my father - Memorial Service on Cuttyhunk Island

Gordon K MacLeod MD’s Memorial Service

January 30, 1929 – November 25, 2007
Cuttyhunk Island, Massachusetts - August 2, 2008

I’d like to honor my father’s passing with a brief history of his life.

My parents met in Cincinnati, Ohio, in the Unitarian Church in the mid-1950s. They married there in 1957 on August 17.

My father grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, and went to Boston Latin School. He came to Cincinnati first to work at Proctor and Gamble as an industrial engineer, and then to go to the University of Cincinnati Medical School in the early 1950s. After marrying, they moved to Boston for my father’s internship in internal medicine at the Boston City Massachusetts General Hospital, and then, after, to a research position at Harvard Medical School.

Sandy and I were both born at Mt. Auburn hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1964 and 1960, respectively. Sandy, my brother, is now a sculptor (see his web site at https://web.archive.org/web/20120620120957/http://www.sandymacleod.com/ - was: sandymacleod.com). Both of our wide-ranging interests reflect my father’s active, open thinking.

My father loved Cuttyhunk Island a lot, where rosehips abound in the summer. He came here first as a school kid in 1943. We started coming to Cuttyhunk in 1966, the year we moved to Hamden, Connecticut, where my father took a position at Yale University, working on the development of group practice and community health plans at the Yale Medical School.

Cuttyhunk Island has been a place of continuity and community for my father and mother, through a number of moves in their lives, prior to their move to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1973.

My father was Cuttyhunk Island’s principal medical doctor during his vacations in August each year in the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, and provided medical advice for many who needed it for free.

My parents moved to the Washington DC area in 1971 where my father began the federal Health Maintenance Organizations' (HMOs) program, under Elliot Richardson in the department of Health, Education and Welfare. We stayed there until 1973, when he took a position at the University of Pittsburgh, in the Graduate School of Public Health. During the two years we lived in Bethesda, Maryland, we spent 6 months living in Geneva, Switzerland, from 1972-1973, utilizing a Ford Foundation Grant to study the health systems of three European countries in Denmark, Germany and Britain.

While at the University of Pittsburgh, my father (http://www.pitt.edu/~gmacleod - and - http://web.archive.org/web/20080723201931/http://www.pitt.edu/~gmacleod), in 1979, was asked by the then Governor Dick Thornburg to serve as the secretary of health in the state of Pennsylvania. Thornburg picked my father for this position because he had already set up a federal health program, and was recommended by a close adviser of his. Soon after this appointment - 12 days - the Three Mile Island nuclear accident occurred in central Pennsylvania. My father, the official responsible for managing the health issues, later openly criticized the Thornburg administration’s lack of preparedness for two main reasons. They didn’t have any physicians on what was the equivalent of Pennsylvania’s nuclear regulatory commission to bring forward health considerations in planning for the existing nuclear plants, – it only had engineers. And Pennsylvania didn’t have any potassium iodide stockpiled; potassium iodide protects the thyroid gland from radiation in the event of radiation exposure, such as that which occurred at Three Mile Island nuclear accident. My father resigned a year or so after the accident occurred and continued to speak and write publicly and critically of the country’s preparedness for nuclear accidents.

In the intervening years in Pittsburgh, my father continued to teach about Health Maintenance Organizations, and the U.S. health care system at the University of Pittsburgh, and also taught medicine (grand rounds) for years. My father also continued to speak internationally about health systems and nuclear preparedness issues. And my parents traveled a number of times around the world on Semester at Sea related voyages, once as the academic dean (1999); they also traveled on Semester at Sea in the summer of 2001 around Europe. They continued to travel to other places around the world in the 1990s and 2000s with a group of friends from Pittsburgh, as well.

In the last few years of my father’s life, my parents continued to participate actively in a Unitarian Universalist-related book group. And while very independently minded vis-à-vis religion, especially those religions in sociocultural fabric around him - he was very areligious {he was a nonbeliever} for a number of reasons - my father identified loosely with the open-mindedness, tolerance and freethinking of Unitarian Universalism.

My father, a wit, a word smith, a maverick with a keen political sense, an indomitable fighter, and a punner, with a very quick mind and a sharp, good memory - someone who exercised his mind, almost without thinking about it, like some people exercise their bodies - sustained a subdural hematoma, a head injury from a concussion, during a Semester at Sea alumni voyage in Belize on December 30, 2004. Over the following 3 years, he faced a number of health challenges that are a consequence of this.

In the last 6 months of his life, he started to practice a little yoga relaxation & movement with me - with enjoyment and benefit. We both enjoyed it when he elicited http://www.relaxationresponse.org/steps/. In about the last 5 years of his life, he also reversed his heart disease through life-style changes, with a very low-fat, nutritionally sensible, fruits, grains & vegetables' diet, and exercise, - his angina, or heart pain, disappeared.

My father was wonderful. He was an optimist and an idealist, with a twinkle in his eye, a smile on his face, and an engaged, articulated, intelligent comment about almost every life situation - and, in my experience, an ability to instantiate ideas, - to realize what he envisioned in sometimes complex ways. He also thought about things alternatively; in a way his information technology (his brain) was quite countercultural, - he saw things differently. (He asked the question 'why? a lot, as long as I knew him, and came to his own conclusions about life through this). He could also be very precise with language, very funny, was perseverant or persistent, proud, especially of his accomplishments, principled, and he aspired to excellence. {At his memorial service in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on December 1, 2007, I almost read Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into that Dying Night," as it reflected an aspect of his character}.

My mother, a remarkable caregiver, with a creative spirit, weathered my father’s challenges in recent years, and helped him in remarkable ways.

My parents in their marriage, and my father with his interesting mind, have created a remarkable world for themselves, Sandy and myself. Although I’m very sad my father has passed away, I find some solace in the perspective that he is an unbroken link in a chain of life that extends back some 3.5 billion years, and that the challenges that he faced in recent years are in the past.

~ Scott MacLeod (scottmacleod.com/family.htm)



Thanks to the following friends who spoke and played music:

Jim Todd
Abby Williams (wife of Ken Williams, MD)
Richard Robb, MD
Reed Hinrichs
Alastair Craig, MD
Smoke Twichell
Nicholas Porter
Seymour DiMare, MD, and Judith Archer, harmonica and voice
Ned Prevost
Lucy Robb, piano
Cuttyhunk Cruisers, singing group

Sandy MacLeod produced a beautiful stone and sundial for our father's grave. The gravestone is inscribed in Latin with "Non Sine Lumine" ~ {"Not Without Light"}.

I also played my bagpipe before the memorial service in the Church, at the Cuttyhunk cemetery, and from the cemetery to in front of the Cuttyhunk Fishing Club.


Here's a video of Gordon MacLeod's memorial service:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRF9ytbh1ac
https://youtu.be/jRF9ytbh1ac


There’s a Wikipedia Encyclopedia entry here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_K._MacLeod) about my father.


Here is the Memorial Service announcement we posted in the Cuttyhunk Post Office:

Memorial Service

for

Gordon K. MacLeod
Saturday, August 2, 2008, 1:00 PM

(at the Church, followed by a brief visit to the
Cemetery and light refreshments at the Fishing Club)

All Are Welcome