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'Love is care in action': Dr. Patch Adams Wednesday 18 April 2001 - Patch Adams, the doctor whose life inspired the hit movie of the same name, clowns around during a lecture at Centrepointe Theatre last night. Dr. Patch Adams challenged a house full of adults to challenge their fear of judgment and make a commitment to be universally friendly while celebrating life every day. The West Virginia doctor made famous around the world when Robin Williams played him in the movie Patch Adams, gave a public lecture to about 1,000 people last night at Centrepointe Theatre in Nepean. Dr. Adams came to Ottawa as the keynote speaker at Lighten Up, a conference held yesterday and today at the Royal Ottawa Hospital, aimed at bringing the joy back to health care workers and teaching humour strategies to positively influence patient care. Many in the audience were participants in the conference, and came dressed in clown gear. Dr. Adams said he was dressed as usual, in a riotous pair of blue pants and a green shirt, an Archie's tie and one yellow, and one blue, sock. His long grey hair was tied back in a pony tail and the right half was dyed blue Though he made the audience of about 1,000 laugh frequently by his humorous stories and antics involving a Whoopie Cushion and fake dog excrement, Dr. Adams was serious about his message. "We are so far away from love I believe in our society that to love is to be a sucker," he said. Dr. Adams, who in 1971 founded the Gezundheit! Institute, dedicated to treating patients with humour and compassion, and has been clowning around the world for as many years, said power and money are the gods our society worships, leaving no place for love, even in health care institutions that purport to care. "Institutions don't like the word love," he said. "If they don't like the word love you can bet they don't like the word care. "And love is just care in action." Dr. Adams said his clowning -- with patients, with everyone he meets -- is "the gimmick to sneak the love in." Audience member Paul Bertrand said he thought that if people took Dr. Adams's message seriously, and if enough people heard it, the world could be greatly changed. "If he could touch enough people he will do a lot of good," Mr. Bertrand said. Tomorrow, Dr. Adams will speak to conference participants and students in a public school in Killaloe, where the chairman of Gezundheit!, Dr. Blair Voyvodic, has a practice. Janet Hunter Rebecca Stevenson The Ottawa Citizen Copyright 2001 CanWest Interactive, a CanWest company. All rights reserved janet paterson, an akinetic rigid subtype, albeit perky, parky PD: 54/41/37 CD: 54/44/43 TEL: 613 256 8340 EMAIL: [log in to unmask] "a new voice" home page: http://www.geocities.com/janet313/ . "new voice news" latest posts: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nvnNET/ . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn