Happy 64th Birthday Patch!
Educational Opportunities
THE SCHOOL FOR DESIGNING A SOCIETY • July 10–17, 2009 on the Gesundheit land in West Virginia. During the Institute, the question "What would I consider a desirable society?" is given serious playful thought, and taken as input to creative projects. Two parallel sessions: Composition—in music: what is music to become that it has not been yet? Activism—community organizing to address a social problem.
RE-DESIGNING THE CHARACTER OF THE CARE-ACTOR • July 19–22 The Health Care Intensive is now full. Any further registrations will be placed on a waiting list. Thanks to everyone who responded so enthusiastically! The next Intensive is planned for April 2010.
CLOWNING AND CARING • Sept 10-16, 2009 An educational clown tour, with Patch Adams, Susan Parenti, Mark Enslin, Melanie Melzer, and Kate Herron Slaymaker.
Patch is both a medical doctor and a clown, but he is also a social activist who has devoted 30 years to changing America's health care system, a system which he describes as expensive and elitist.
He believes that laughter, joy and creativity are an integral part of the healing process and therefore true health care must incorporate such life. Doctors and patients in his model relate to each other on the basis of mutual trust, and patients receive plenty of time from their doctors. Allopathic doctors and practitioners of alternative medicine will work side by side. If you think that all sounds like a utopian impossibility, it isn't.
Patch and his colleagues practiced medicine at the Gesundheit Institute together in West Virgina that way for 12 years in what he calls their pilot project. They saw 15,000 patients. Patch Adams has devoted his life to the study of what makes people happy.