Reviving the art of conversation

I’ve found that when a thread of conversation has developed, some patients have surprised themselves by realizing they’ve actually had a good time at the dental office. I never cease to be amazed at how well patients can talk through the impedimenta of four-handed dentistry. Editor: So asserts Dr. Matt Dunn DDS, a dentist by vocation, who makes time for such avocations as year-round extreme mountaineering on Saturdays and helping me on the radio most Sundays. Whatever you say, Matt; but personally, I never cease to be amazed at my hygenist's assumption that anyone could possibly reply to her questions with all those freaking impedimenta in their mouth. Dunn wrote this piece, with much obvious relevance to the art of talk radio, in his capacity as editor of the Articulator, magazine of the Metro Denver Dental Society. Here's the article in full:

Sitting in the chair at the barber shop the other morning, wearing a blue smock with a tight neck-band, I noticed my barber and I had to work a little harder at our usual leisurely conversation. We encountered newfound interference, in the form of a television screen blaring forth from the center of the shop.

Raising our voices a notch, we managed to discuss some sports, some politics, some updates on our respective families. Glancing left and right, I noticed most of the other patrons weren’t having too much to say as they absorbed the morning newscast. Scissors were moving, mandibles were not.

It was to be a day of catching up on things – sundry tasks, errands and appointments.

Standing in line at the bank, I counted two TV screens along the pathway towards the tellers, and two others anchored elsewhere across the lobby, all flashing headline news. Again, except for a customer on a cell phone, I didn’t observe anyone actually talking.

Later on, moving through the aisles of a big-box chain store, I noticed I was seldom out of reach of a flat-panel screen transmitting snappy music and promotional messaging.

Then, stepping into a sandwich shop, I had to chuckle over a red-lettered sign that encouraged patrons to get off of their cell phones while ordering their sandwiches.

A routine day in America – a series of banal observations. But threaded together, perhaps they raise the provoking question: What is the state of conversation in America today?

As our lives become more surrounded by the virtual, ever more infiltrated by portable media devices, by endless flat-panels and sound systems, with increasing opportunities to email and text message and generally avoid face-to-face dialogue – are we obliged to count such as social progress?

Moreover, in this sea of virtuality, where does dentistry fit in?

I like to think that dentistry remains one of the last bastions of genuine communication in American life today. No matter how much technology may have changed our lives, the dental office is still a place where people can have real conversations, and where they may find themselves looking forward to them beforehand, and feeling good about them afterwards.

Though we may suffuse our operatories with computer monitors and our reception areas with satellite sound, there is still no getting around the fundamental fact that there must be direct, personal communication with our patients – often over comparatively lengthy periods of time.

Patients cannot multitask their way through an appointment, and neither can we. Meanwhile, there’s no such thing as ersatz dentistry.

I aver that these are good tidings, and that they can make for some of the most rewarding moments in our lives as practitioners. Though the lion’s share of our discussion with patients will tend to be about oral health considerations, there will generally be time left over for free-ranging, open-ended, spontaneous conversation. As we get to know our patients, they get to know us.

When Dick Cavett once asked Jack Paar about the secrets of his successful television talk show, Paar said: “Don’t make it an interview, kid. Make it a conversation.” Paar, the forbear to Johnny Carson, was known to be a great listener and practitioner of the art of conversation.

In days gone by the “art of conversation” formed a part of our educational curricula, and the character attribute of being a “good conversationalist” was regarded as a worthy aspiration. It was assumed that it took some study, that it wasn’t an altogether natural process to arrive at the polished result. It involved the proper blend of give and take, politeness and raillery, humor and empathy.

Though conversation as an art may now be in decline in America – as Stephen Miller persuasively argues in his recent book titled Conversation – we dentists are in a position where conversation must necessarily occupy a portion of our daily activity, and where we may take advantage of what Jonathan Swift called “the greatest, the most lasting, and the most innocent, as well as useful pleasure of life.”

I’ve found that during some of the longer dental procedures, when a thread of conversation has developed and advanced around the treatment room, some patients have surprised themselves by realizing they’ve actually had a good time at the dental office. I never cease to be amazed at how well patients can talk through the impedimenta of four-handed dentistry.

Towards the end of a procedure, when we find we’re still conversing, we may be assured that all has gone well. And we know we can pick up where we left off at the next appointment.

Concerned about the limiting sphere of social interaction in modern society, philosopher Michael Oakeshott has addressed the need “to rescue conversation.” Surrounded as we are by multifarious obstacles to conversation, the dental profession may be partaking in just such an effort.

On whatever fractional scale, as we work to rescue teeth in our daily lives, we may also, without necessarily realizing it, be working to rescue conversation. A healthy enterprise, on many levels – and something that will never become another faceless errand in the American routine.

“To my taste, the most fruitful and natural exercise of our mind is conversation. I find the practice of it the most delightful activity in our lives.” --Michel de Montaigne

Easter 2008: That's My King!

Sunday on Backbone Radio, again as in years past, we observed Easter by playing five minutes from a classic sermon by Rev. S. M. Lockridge, "That's My King." Unique, delightful, dynamic, unforgettable -- words fail me. Here's a video version. Christ is risen; risen indeed!

Russ Oberlin, 1929-2008

"Be who you are, use what you have, do what you can." Russ Oberlin stopped me at a recent political meeting to pass along these dozen words that summarized -- he said with an earnest smile -- an ethic of responsibility and giving as well as any quote he could remember from nearly eight decades of life. Russ lived that ethic admirably until the day of his sudden passing on on March 18, and its impact was attested by the throng of friends and fellow Republicans who crowded his memorial service in Littleton on March 22. What an exemplary gentleman, husband, father, and citizen he was!

Our thoughts are prayers are with Jane, Russ's wife of 56 years, and their children: Cynthia, Patty, David, and Blake. The family asks that memorial gifts be made to Developmental Pathways, the organization serving developmentally disabled persons, for which volunteered tirelessly over the past two decades.

Backbone Bivouac: A true tall tale

Have you ever spent the night outside in the Colorado mountains, in the heart of winter, at 12,000 feet, in a furious blizzard? No? Until two weeks ago, I hadn’t either. [Note: Matt Dunn froze Backbone Radio listeners to their seats with this chilling account on our Jan. 20 show. See left column for podcast starting Jan. 22.]

Prelude: I read an unforgettable book about Sir Ernest Shackleton, the British explorer of the Antarctic, whose ship, Endurance, became stuck in the ice in Vahsel Bay, Antarctica.

Months went by, with Shackleton and his men living on board ship waiting for something to happen. Eventually, something did. The trapped vessel was crushed by movements in the ice – forcing Shackleton and his men to abandon ship and set up camp outside on the ice. This took place on January 19, 1915 – 93 years ago this weekend.

Now – when a man in a sleeping bag lies down on the ice – unfortunately – body heat works to melt the ice. So – Shackleton and his men spent the next several months sleeping on slightly melted Antarctic ice – shivering in sleeping bags wet through and through – before heroically saving themselves in their now famous escape.

Reading these accounts at home in Colorado, sitting by the fire, I thought to myself – wow – that doesn’t sound like much fun. What would it be like to sleep in a wet sleeping bag, in the general vicinity of the South Pole, for a few months?

Well, I now have at least some idea – which brings us back to my story. In Colorado’s 10th Mountain Hut System – where you can ski uphill into a small wooden hut to spend the night – and then ski back down the next day – the most forbidding hut of them all is Skinner Hut – high above the town of Leadville near the Continental Divide.

Skinner Hut is described in a guidebook as “the most remote and hardest to reach” and as “situated at the top of a precipitous drop-off” and as “responsible for the most unplanned bivouacs.” A mere 10.7 miles uphill.

Eager for the challenge, our small crew set out on Randonee skis in the dark, 6:30am, Friday morning January 4th. As expected, it was already snowing – and as we trudged along, one ski after another, for the next 10 hours, it never for a moment stopped snowing.

Entering the last steep section before the summit, we noticed the wind began to pick up. It was getting dark again. The pine trees, heavy-laden with snow, creaked back and forth, with haunting voices almost human.

Finally arriving at the summit, in complete darkness at 12,000 feet, our team was now in the middle of a full-scale blizzard. The snow blowing sideways cut our headlamp vision down to 20 feet, sometimes less. We realized it was going to be difficult to find the hut.

And so we spent the next two hours combing the summit ridgeline looking for the hut, while trying to steer clear of the “precipitous drop-off” nearby. Around and around we went, using map and compass and GPS locator. We knew we were within 200 yards of the hut – maybe even closer.

We kept looking. But to no avail. At some point it occurred to us that the vaunted Skinner Hut was most likely completely buried in all the new snow – and that it would be impossible to find in the dark. We would have to wait for sunrise.

So the moment of truth had arrived – it was time to bivouac – as in, spend the night outside. Though each of the party had thought about bivouacking before – none of us had ever done so. And as the winds gusted up to 70 miles-an-hour, as the temperature continued to drop – our thoughts grew somewhat subdued.

Newspaper headlines? Television news stories? Heaven forefend -- talk radio tidbits?

At any rate, however subdued our minds, adrenaline levels were high and we took action. On the whole, we were prepared. We had the right equipment, we’d taken the training courses, we’d been reading up on these kinds of eventualities.

We found a likely-looking little alcove, surrounded by trees, somewhat out of the wind. Out came the shovels. We dug a 3-foot deep trench, set tree branches and skis and poles above the trench for the roof, and rubber-banded on a plastic tarp.

Then, inside, off came the ski boots, on went every layer of extra clothing from our backpacks –mittens, balaclavas, neck warmers, three hats each. We placed an “emergency blanket” on the floor of the trench, but the fragile material tore easily – it wasn’t much use.

Out came the down sleeping bags, and into them we went – along with a water bottle each, to keep them from freezing.

And so we hunkered down as the wind blasted the tarp above. It was loud. Snow would blow into our faces through its uplifted edges.

How long before one of those gusts was to blow the tarp off? How cold was it going to get? Would we have enough battery-power for our headlamps? Should we take the time to build a fire?

Questions, questions.

My thoughts turned to that cheery Jack London story, “To Build a Fire” – which I’d read long ago in middle school, yet have seemed to remember every detail ever since.

And as I began to notice the cold seeping in from below my sleeping bag, and soon noticed it had become completely wet on the ground-side – my thoughts turned to Shackleton and his men in their wet sleeping bags.

Aha! So THIS is what it’s like.

If they did all this for months in the Antarctic – without complaining even – surely we can do this for one night in Colorado. Some comfort in that, I suppose.

And so the hours went by. The crew was tired, but sleep was found only in fits and starts. We monitored our extremities for signs of excess cold – we gauged our respective levels of shivering. We kept checking in with one another to see how things were going.

A few hours into it – though cold to be sure, and certainly quite uncomfortable – the crew seemed to relax, realizing we weren’t really THAT cold, after all, and that the tarp was holding, and that we were going to be just fine.

Along about sunrise, we climbed out of our sleeping bags and stepped into our shiny fully-frozen ski boots. If there’s a more invigorating method of waking up in the morning, I don’t know what it would be. Temperature estimate – about 2 degrees Fahrenheit.

Packs back on, on skis again, we began again our search for the elusive Skinner Hut. Five minutes later, we found it. Sure enough, buried under several feet of snow – invisible to our angles of view the night before.

Ten minutes later, we were inside, building a fire in the old cast-iron fireplace. A big, broad, magnificent fire. Truly. In the spirit of Shackleton, we joked amongst ourselves, about how it’s good to do these kinds of things from time to time. Keeps you from getting too civilized. Teddy Roosevelt would have approved.

But we also knew that, really, they don’t make ‘em today the way they used to. A little taste of the Antarctic is altogether plenty, nowadays.

So from now on, when we talk here about Backbone Radio being broadcast from “High atop the Continental Divide” – I’ll be thinking back to that night outside in the blizzard.

And believe it or not – the memory will be a good one.

From our family to yours

President Ronald Reagan’s first Christmas message, dated Dec. 24, 1981, said in part: “The Nativity story of twenty centuries ago is known by all faiths as a hymn to the brotherhood of man. Through a generous heavenly Father’s gift of his Son, hope and compassion entered a world weary with fear and despair and changed it for all time. “On Christmas, we celebrate the birth of Christ with prayer, feasting, and great merriment. But most of all, Christmas is a state of mind. It is found throughout the year whenever faith overcomes doubt, hope conquers despair, and love triumphs over hate. It is present when men of any creed bring love and understanding to the hearts of their fellow men.”

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Mount Princeton, seen in this recent photo, overlooks Backbone, Colorado, my imaginary hometown of the heart. From there, the Andrews family wishes your family a joyous Christmas and a rewarding New Year.

All of us at Backbone America Citizens' Alliance hope to work with you in 2008. Our goal: to live the spirit of Christmas year-round, and to continue realizing President Reagan’s vision of faith and freedom for America and the world.