Who joins you recorded for the record and for celebration
Of Jon and Chris who've given us our education
In skills and talents we need to solve the mystery
In the biochemistry and its developmental history
And some fundamental balance that isn't right
In our children's rhythms of their day and night,
The way their D D4 receptors oscillate,
And how all the music of their bodies integrates
So that words and thoughts and the currency of all the senses
Fly in to find a metabolic landscape full of fences,
Where enzymatic fingers fail to make the changes
That we need to handle, process and to rearrange
The stuff that enters so that it can then get out
And allow our kids to express themselves and shout,
"I am in here! See me so I can see my self reflected in your eyes
And so become myself in action and win the prize
Of creativity, and loving, being loved and making well formed stools
And useful bile, and urine, and song and go to normal schools."
 
As I was growing to become the doctor I've become
Thirty years ago I was feeling pretty dumb
When it came to scoping out the chemistry of kids in whom I longed
To know not just their problems' names but what was really wrong.
 
On a blizzard weekend periodic meeting of just a few
Colleagues at a snowbound little inn up on Route 22
Jon flew in and opened up the doors he'd learned to swing
To understand the chemistry of his son Bob and bring
Creative mind to grasping options suggested by the tests
That name not just some genetic group but the step that's best
For this one kid as judged by his individual indications
Of what we now know were problems in oxidation,
Getting rid of toxic stuff, and inflammation
That affects the handling of information
At every level of the organism's being
Where tasting, touching, hearing, seeing
Feeling, thinking, talking, and rhythmic integration
Needed something more than just a medication.
 
So began a friendship that has shaped my life
With this funny guy and Christine, his wife
Who helped him move from overhead projection
To Powerpoint and toward perfection
As the embodiment of a discriminating mind
That has kept us all on the path to find
Options for our kids where science and imagination mix
To help us consider among all the many picks
Which may give hope the wings to bring hope home
And to deal effectively with complex issues
In the gut, metabolism, brain and other tissues.
 
Be you a parent, practitioner or both for whom
Your education gives you to assume
That threshing grains and chaff from data should conform
To nomenclature's branches, boxes and nosologic norms
In which the narrow assignment of a name
Is the game that allows us to fix the blame
And so to know what exactly what we can or cannot do?
 
Chris and Jon have given maps by which to move us through
That landscape - to a way of thinking and decision
That gives us the tools, the leeway, and precision
To treat each child as a unique creation.
 
So all of you out there please join in thankful celebration
Of the gifts that Chris and Jon have given DAN!
And the larger world that was always part of Bernie's Rimland's plan.
 
With love, Sidney MacDonald Baker, MD
October 2008