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With 12 days till Christmas

Last night the Backbone Radio audience was subjected to some wretched holiday doggerel performed by Kathleen LeCrone and me. Mercifully the composition was recited, for the most part, rather than sung. Without waiting for popular demand, we hereby provide you the lyrics. Aren't they an improvement on the timeworn leaping lords, French hens, partridges and pear trees?

If you can improve further on what's here, by all means post a comment.

With 12 days till Christmas, my listeners gave to me…

12 Looney liberals

11 Forwarded emails

10 Obama bumper stickers

9 Palin tee shirts

8 Limbaugh coffee mugs

7 Carbon footprints

6 Wall Street bailouts

5 Electoral College diplomas

4 Regifted neckties

3 Hybrid vehicles

2 Democrats named Clinton

… And one newborn baby in the manger!

Wishing you a very merry Christmas from all of us at Backbone Radio and BackboneAmerica.net.

John, Kathleen, Matt, Krista, Joshua, Karen, Matt, and Joan

Radio host's mission of mercy

Looking out the airplane window, on about the twelfth hour of a fourteen hour flight to Ethiopia, the hazy streak of water I’d been watching suddenly divided in the Sahara dust. The map suggested we were flying over Khartoum, where the White Nile and the Blue Nile become simply the Nile, en route to Cairo. As the plane followed the White branch southeast towards Ethiopia, it began to sink in that our team of twenty-plus health care volunteers was getting pretty far from home.

With two dentists, two plastic surgeons, one obstetrician and an assortment of nurses and students, the International Medical Relief team arrived in Addis Ababa and then flew to our destination of Mekele, a remote city in Northern Ethiopia not far from the Red Sea. It was August 2008.

Walking into the Mekele Hospital the next day, we found several hundred prospective patients on hand to welcome the Americans. Word had gotten out, with demand for health care apparently quite profound in one of the poorest regions of the eighth poorest nation on earth.

I was informed that 305 individuals had gathered around the dental clinic, marking a spectacle of chaos. The dental team lugged its bags and suitcases through the crowd and into the clinic, laid out instruments, set up a sterilization area and started the screening process.

Along with Dr. Don Vollmer of Castle Rock, and Keren Etzion, a pre-dental student from New York, we took down each name and set up basic treatment plans and arranged general appointment times for the week ahead. We were joined by two capable Ethiopian dental technicians and eight nurses who rotated into the clinic.

Over the next five days we worked our way through the list of patients. One after another, with subsequent patients thronging the doorway. The most necessary procedure, by far, was the extraction. Some patients required scaling and debridement – with periodontal disease almost universal in the area – and some inquired about fillings. On the occasional tooth which afforded reasonable access to a spoon excavator, we carefully placed Geristore dual-cure restorations and hoped for the best.

The dental chair was a creaky 1973 Dental-Ease model which could be moved up and down if you held the wires just right around the plug-in. A bent-arm lamp was used to help with lighting, though my battery-pack loupe light attachment proved indispensable.

It was a definite jolt to the standard dental routine to find myself working in a small, hot room with a dozen spectators around the chair chattering in Tigrigna, with dozens more clamoring outside waiting to get in. Working during the August monsoon season, a string of afternoon rain storms battered the tin roof of the clinic, offering the sensation of doing dentistry to the sound of machine-gun fire overhead.

The electricity often went out during these storms, leaving the clinic room completely dark save for a beam of LED light between my forehead and the tooth I happened to be working on. As the days went by, focused and intense, I realized I had stopped noticing when the power had gone off – just kept on working away.

Though many of the Ethiopian patients were living with staggering levels of suffering, in terms of their dental and overall health, I was amazed by their optimism and good cheer. Quick to smile, quick to laugh, you wouldn’t imagine that Ethiopians have endured the history of famine, war, and dictatorship that they have.

I’m not exactly sure what to make of that, nor am I sure how best to respond to such scenes of hope and heartbreak, courage and happiness against the odds. But I do hope to find time to work again in Ethiopia someday, and am thankful for the chance to have spent some days in the Mekele Hospital last August.

Matt Dunn, D.D.S., is a founding partner and frequent cohost on Backbone Radio. He practices dentistry in Denver at the Cody Dental Group.

Marshall Fritz, RIP

My friend Marshall was that rare combination, a devout Christian and a rigorous libertarian. Heroically he led the Alliance for Separation of School and State, and previously the Advocates for Self-Government. His death on Nov. 4 at 65 is a loss to all of us who remember Jefferson's warning that the natural course of things is for government to advance and liberty to recede.

Tributes are here. Friends are endowing a lecture series in his memory, for which donations may be sent to Fritz Fund, 1071 N. Fulton, Fresno CA 93728.

Dressed for the War Room

If you haven't visited the GOP War Room, McCain's rapid response media facility at 2810 Speer Boulevard, it's worth a look today or tomorrow as the DNC approaches its climax (orgasmic pun intended) with Obama's big stadium speech. I stopped by there on Tuesday to gather news, not make it, but Myung Kim of the Rocky was intrigued by my pro-Bush tee shirt and posted this short item about it. She also snapped a photo, but since that didn't appear, here's one of my own:

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The War Room is an impressive operation and was buzzing with activity when I was there. Mitt Romney was in front of a bunch of TV cameras in the inside studio, and Rudy Giuliani was in front of a bunch more outside, sweltering in his NYC dark suit. The place is a bit tricky to find: go north on Speer from I-25, past Zuni, then right on Firth, which curves into a sort of alley from which you enter the 2810 building on the rear, away from Speer.

As for my "10 of 10 Terrorists" shirt, the last time I wore it for anything but yard work was at the 2007 Bolder Boulder, where I figured it would stir conversation among fellow runners -- and perhaps incentivize me to run faster, lest the Bush-haters beset me. And it must have worked; I almost ran my age, 64 minutes for the 10K. Here's hoping it brings my side good luck in the much bigger race of these next ten weeks.

Counsel for a college freshman

A young friend of mine started at Hillsdale College this week, and his dad, with whom I attend church, gave the new freshman a unique gift. The father asked a couple dozen people whom he respects to email our thoughts on two questions, for inclusion in a virtual scrapbook that will accompany the Class of 2012 entrant to campus. Those questions, and my answers to each, were as follows: 1. What is one thing that you did (or wished you had done) to make your college experience great?

My years at a Midwest liberal arts college with high ideals and a small student body, picturesque rural campus (much like Hillsdale in all those ways), were golden in part because I was led to (a) take the smaller, more challenging classes where I could get full benefit of personal tutoring from the professor and (b) participate to the fullest in many extracurricular activities, which often provided me better learning experiences and more lifelong friendships than the academic side of college.

2. What is one "truth" (adage or scripture or quote) that was important to you back then or today?

Very early in college I came across the Latin motto, "Navigare necesse est, vivere non necesse est." It was the by-word of explorers setting out from Europe into distant unknown oceans centuries ago. The translation is roughly, "To sail is imperative, to live or merely survive is not." In other words, risk it! Aim high, go beyond your limits, follow your star. That served me well as a undergrad and ever since.

Endnote: If you want to feel ancient, try confronting the fact that it's been 46 years since you were in this young guy's shoes, diving into college with all the excitement and trepidation that includes. For me that meant August 1962, heading off to my parents' alma mater, Principia College in Elsah, Illinois. The dad's question about "what made your college experience great" was on target in my case; those turned out to be four of the best years of my life. Two decades later, as it happened, I had another great four years working as a vice president at Hillsdale, to which I must regretfully give the edge over my beloved Principia in terms of conservative principles and fidelity to biblical truth.