I was missing New York, but loving Texas

I was missing New York City for a minute or a lifetime just a second ago. It's been 16 years since I moved to Texas. And just a minute ago I was missing my apartment on 3rd and 90th street. I was missing the 10 foot ceilings with pressed tin, the bathroom that was bigger than most bathrooms, the wrap-around windows that gave us views on three sides as we were on a corner.

I was missing Central Park, and the American Museum of Natural History, and the Modern, and the Whitney, and the Frick, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I was missing the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel, where I lived for a couple of months years ago.

I was missing riding my bike to High Times to work, and I was missing playing one wall handball, New York City style with my friend Earl the Pearl immensely. I was missing my family a lot, and late night walks with my friend Chuck or earlier, with my friend Phil B.

I was missing real Chinese food, real sushi, street hot dogs, perogies in the Village, hot sesame bagels with a good shmear, and fresh smoked mozzarella on a roast beef sandwich at an Italian deli.

I was missing cooking at Jimmy Day's and The Mad Hatter, and The Lounge, and missing Chefing at Arthur's Court, the Banana Boat, Keats', and co-chefing with Sarah Appel at Wilson's for so many years.

I was missing working at Multiples Art Gallery on Madison Avenue, and pulling the squegee on Warhol silkscreens and Olderberg silkscreens for Chrysalis, or working on Rauchenberg and Marisol work for Dave Basinow, the Impossible Man.

I was even missing Diamond Lil's, a topless joint I helped build way back in the day on Canal Street. I was even missing driving a taxi. And everything else.

I don't know why that came on me like it did, like a summer shower that turned into a downpour unexpectedly and very quickly. No way to get out of it. Just get soaked and soaked I was.

But while it was happening, while I was rushing through a million scenes from my life, I was standing on my freshly painted wooden bridge that spans the tiny seasonal creek next to my garden here in Texas. I was looking at two crawfish that come up out of the earth when it rains and make their way downstream to some place I never found.

I had just fed the chickens and ducks rice and bread and lettuce and picked up a few eggs. I was thinking about fixing my dog Boots chicken livers and hearts mixed with left over rice and beans, and the cats their cat food with a little fresh meat tossed in.

The sun was shining, the garden was giving up beautiful hot Peruvian Charapita peppers and a few late season tomatoes and cherry tomatoes.

So I was missing New York, but I was loving my life.

All told, a pretty good one, then and now.

Thanks, universe.  

Time to Eat to Heal the Pain

I'm having a tough day. My daughter needed $180 for a couple of things. My ex needed $100 twice this week, plus she needed me to pay for one of her new child's ( whom I adore) lunches. Plus I had a flat and had to have the tire guy come out to my house to take it off, bring it to the shop and give me a new tire for $120. Plus my Saturday night car, my Crown Vic, lost it's power steering and the new power steering part cost $164. That's about $720 for those counting. And my book residuals from Ayahuasca in My Blood and Sapo in My Soul came to about $350 this month. So this is not a winning financial formula. This is a losing formula. And do NOT get me started on Trump asshats who kill people at his command and then he runs away like a sissy and blames the killings he encouraged on others. BS! But I'm trying to keep my sanity.
So my daughter asked for Uncle Clem's Chicken. I have probably talked about it before. Uncle Clem, my godfather, made a dish that he entered into the mazolla oil competition. It was seared chicken breast bites on a bed of asparagus, topped with a sauce of Campbell's Mushroom soup and Heilman's mayo, and then topped with cheddar cheese and baked.
My first wife, Clare, changed that to chicken over broccoli with the same sauce, and topped with mozzarella, which was a better dish. Serve that goup over good jasmine rice and you have a winner. So that's what I'm making tonight. Three half chicken breasts to 6 pounds of trimmed broccoli, so it's mostly a broccoli dish with a little chicken. But that's what it is going to take the stench of Trump and his bullshit out of my nose and soul. Wow! Great meal. Hate to waste it on eliminating horrible nonsense that's not grounded in reality.
Eat well. If you are hungry, come on over, I'm sure there will be plenty for everyone.

The current refugee caravan and other refugees

The way this caravan goes, and the way waves of refugees go is this:
The United States and corporations based here create untenable situations for humans all over the world, then wonder why people want to leave their homelands and come here to escape those hells we created. And then we have a president who wants to ignore international law regarding the treatment of people who ask for asylum--who have to be allowed in the country until their claim of asylum-need is evaluated. Traditionally they go to family or friends awaiting their court date, at which nearly 95 percent appear. We've stood that on its head and now incarcerate them, most of them, until their appearance date. Dehumanizing people for fleeing a situation we created for them. We are not the great nation we claim to be, not by a long shot.

A hint at what I stand for

A friend of mine and I often disagree on fb. She puts up bad memes that spread lies and hate and says it's up to the reader to discern what's true or not, for instance, and I really don't like people who do that. Today she accused me of worshipping at the altar of the democrats. This was my response:
As to worshipping Dems, I'm so far to the left of Bernie Sanders it ain't funny. I think we should all get paid about equally: I worked kitchens and drove cabs and did painting in NYC apartment buildings and carried lumber 10 blocks to get it to site and no brain surgeon should make more than the people who do those jobs do. AND NO writer like me, semi famous or not, should make more than a good dishwasher. And certainly not idiot insurance CEOs or lawyers, or paper pushing people on Wall Street, or elected officials. Hell, those jobs are for generally stupid people who are afraid of real work because they know they'd never measure up. I've met lots of dishwashers who went on to become doctors, but I never met a doctor who would be able to wash dishes in a restaurant in New York City. And no, I do not believe you should be able to inherit anything more than the house your parents had and enough money for its upkeep. Every thing else goes into the pool and we get it to poor people, or people who cannot fend for themselves because of physical or mental disability, and we bring them up to the level of everyone else. And I want nearly every prison shut down because while their job is to educate and rehabilitate, we use them as punishment and that is not their description. So yes, some people need a time out from society, but our system ain't it. And I do not believe one single person would work less hard if they knew they couldn't become millionaires. They either like their work or quit. I don't care. And if you want to drink too much or do drugs, hell, let's put that stuff on every street corner, with a notice: You will not be assisted if you over indulge. So no, I do not worship at the alter of the dems. I liked Obama because he was a straight shooter, a regular guy who interacted with regular people fairly often for a president. I liked Ike, though I was young, because he did not like the idea of a military buildup despite being a General. I hated Johnson for the buildup of Vietnam, but loved him for THE GREAT SOCIETY and civil rights work-- even if he had to be dragged kicking and screaming. So you and doc got me all wrong. You know me and know that I am all about sharing and trying to make the best of things for everyone, from my team in the Amazon to my family, even if that means sacrifice for me. That's okay. Sacrifice for the betterment of others is a good thing.

Sapo/Kambo and your arteries

Someone was asking about sapo/kambo and it's effects on the human body. People were discussing temporary blood pressure lowering. I disagree. Here's my simple argument:
I'm going to go out on a limb--because I am not a medical doctor--and contradict George M a little. I see the vasodilation very differently than most people. I picture a balloon that you blow up for your kids and let fly around the living room. You blow it up 20 times and it flies and flies. Finally, it disappears behind the couch, and nobody finds it for a month, until you are doing a deep cleaning and move the couch and your kid sees the balloon and says "Dad, here's that balloon! Blow it up!" Of course you can't because the sugars and so forth in your breath have dried and made the balloon taught. To blow it up you have to stretch it out, vein by vein, until the sugars have dropped off because of the stretching and the balloon can be blown up and sent around the room again. Your arteries are like that balloon: Garbage gets stuck on them and it dries and cakes and shrivels little portions of your arteries, allowing less and less blood flow to your vital organs. Now you add a good dose or 10 of sapo/kambo and the peptides blow those arteries wide open and that garbage, stuck in the corners, starts to fall off into your blood stream for elimination. Not all at once. I have no idea how many times it takes but if you blow those arteries open enough to lose one percent of the accumulated garbage--like stretching that dried out balloon--you wind up with a permanent one percent more blood and more oxygen going to your vital organs. Do it again and get them open a bit more. Remember that it took your entire life to clog those arteries, so when you stretch them and the crud falls off, it will take another lifetime to replace that crud. After a number of sessions you might be getting a permanent two, three, four percent more blood/oxygen to your organs, which means you will permanently see/hear/smell better, have your kidneys and liver working more optimally, have your heart and lungs functioning at a higher level, have your stomach digesting better. And you will have permanently lower blood pressure because your arteries are a bit more wide open than they were.

More Joy, Less Pain -- the movie

My friend, Mike McCoy, is nearing the finish of a full length documentary called More Joy, Less Pain. The title comes from an ayahuasca vision I had during the breakup of my marriage: I realized that at every moment I felt pain or my buttons being pushed I responded badly and caused more pain. Then I woke one night with the words "more joy, less pain" etched into my brain. It took a couple of days to see how that phrase could be useful to me, and then I had another squabble with my wife/ex-wife and in the middle of it I realized that if I responded angrily, I would cause more pain for myself, and especially for my kids. If I chose to respond cheerfully -- and that was flippin' hard -- the argument defused and the kids didn't hear us screaming, which produced more joy and less pain. I have tried to infuse that into all aspects of my life -- at least when others are present, because I still allow myself an occasional primal scream in private -- and it has really made a difference for me.
I'm very proud that Mike McCoy has chosen that title for his pretty wonderful movie about northwest Amazonia, medicine, and to some extent, me. He's done such a good job that my daughter Madeleina, on seeing a screening of it recently, noted: "Holy shit, Mike! That was great. And you even managed to make my dad look cool!"

How long will ayahuasca last?

Someone posted on a forum page the question of using ayahuasca that was a couple of years old. This was my response:
I always recook ayahuasca even if it is being used just two days apart. If it is thick, add water to thin it and then cook and smoke and reduce again. If it tastes clean, regardless of the age, I use it. If it has a sour or fermented taste even after recooking, I toss it. But I generally find that if it is cooked well in the jungle, then recooked two days later for a second use in the jungle, then recooked in Iquitos, then recooked the day I return home, that it lasts for years in the fridge, with full potency. The last recooking, the fifth, is saved for the day it is being served. All recooking is done with full attention, mapacho smoke, and singing. It's also done in stainless steel pots and stored in containers that are cleaned, dried and smoked.

It's Fall, so time for pumpkin soup

When the Gorman's were kids, mom used to grow pumpkins, rhubarb and other things we thought were fairly disgusting, until the rhubarb pie or the salted pumpkin seeds were ready. But she also made a pumpkin soup, in the pumpkin, that I'd never eat as a kid but love today. And it's getting time for it, so here goes:

Take a good sized pumpkin with a flat bottom and evenly round or fairly straight sides. Figure 4-6 pounds.

Cut the top off one inch below the stem.
Clean the seeds out of the pumpkin and set aside or wash and salt them and put into the oven at about 300 degrees until baked dry and edible.

On the stove, saute 4 cloves of garlic, chopped, with one sweet red onion, chopped, in a bit of olive oil. When the onion and garlic are nearly done, add three diced roma tomatoes, sea salt and black pepper to taste.
In the empty pumpkin put one pint of heavy cream, two quarts of organic vegetable broth, and the garlic/onion/tomato mix.
If the pumpkin shell is not near full, add more broth.

Stir all ingredients in the pumpkin.
When the pumpkin seeds are done, raise oven temperature to 350 degrees

Place the pumpkin on a baking tray and place it in the oven.
Bake for about 90 minutes, or until the pumpkin meat is soft.
Add minced parsley or thyme or basil — whichever you like — to the pumpkin mix and allow to cook, with the oven off, for another 10 minutes.
Remove pumpkin from oven and allow to cook for 20 minutes.
Gently scrape the meat of the pumpkin into the mix, pouring it off as necessary and blending it.
Continue scraping until most of the pumpkin meat is blended with the stock and cream mix, then put onto the stove. Bring to a simmer for 10 minutes. Add sea salt and cracked black pepper as desired.
Serve soup with a spoonful of sour cream.
Bon appetit!

Fake memes

Sometimes people I know and like, post things that get to me. Fake memes, for instance, bother me. If your truth doesn't back up your political stance, a fake meme ain't gonna get it done either. But the fake meme might get through to people who don't bother to do any research. The fact that they are seeing the meme on the internet, and could therefore check its veracity in a matter of minutes, doesn't get a lot of people do do that checking. And posting fake memes — lies to make a point — makes the person posting them a liar. You post it, you own it. No excuses, though my friends will always say something to the effect of "Well I just post intriging things. I don't vouch for them. It's up to the reader to check their truthfulness." BS on that. Again, you post it you own it.

So in the last couple of weeks, a couple of my friends have been coming down on Colin Kaepnernick and LeBron James, asking where they are and what they're doing about alleviating hurricane Florence damage in South Carolina. I don't know how either is helping with the hurricane. I know LeBron helped immensely with Katrina, paying to have homes rebuilt and such, and I think he's awfully busy with his "I Promise" public school that he opened with his own money in Akron, Ohio. The school that guarantees free college for all of the at-risk kids in his school that graduate.

Kaepernick, meanwhile, just finished up donating the $1 million of his own money to an array of fantastic charities. And a million coming from a guy who has been out of work for a couple of years is a great deal of money. Now he might be making a killing on the new Nike ads, but the million came out of his football savings.

Trump doesn't like either one of these guys. He called LeBron dumb and he's called Kaepernick a host of insulting things in light of the former quarterback's protest of police brutality/killings of unarmed black men.

My question to my friends is where has Trump been during the hurricane? He wasn't there for Puerto Rico, and he has not been there for Florence: not one dime of his money has gone to help anyone. The people he vilifies, however, seem to share a great deal of their wealth.

Trump did say he "liked Mike", meaning Michael Jordan. Jordan, who just last week donated $2 million of his own money for Florence relief, does not like Trump. And Jordan thinks sports pros who use their position to protest peacefully — like Kaepernick — are doing the right thing.

Another explanation of water with sapo/kambo

Thought I just wrote about this but then today someone asked if it was necessary to drink a gallon of water prior to sapo/kambo use. This is what I wrote:
If you do the medicine Matses style, Sapo style, there is no drinking of water beforehand. But the Matses were hunter/gatherers when I met them, still eating tree barks for carbohydrates because they did not have fields. They would put pineapple tops down to make them grow on hunting paths and such, but they were not yet agrarian. What they needed sapo for was to clean them out, steady their hand with a bow and arrow, allow them to walk several days with little sleep, little food, and little water. Now the Brazilian groups that we subsequently learned about who used sapo, did it Kambo style: The Katukina and Yaminawa were more agrarian and fishermen and less depending on hunting. So it might be--and this is only my hypothesis--that they suffered more stomach ailments because of their diet, and so needed the Kambo to clean their stomachs out. Their style emphasised drinking water--one or two liters, never a gallon, which could kill a person who weighed under 100 lbs--to help produce vomiting, which would clean out the stomach of rotten material. So your question is "is it necessary to drink lots of water prior to sapo/kambo use" and the answer is: IF you want to concentrate the medicine on cleansing the stomach, drinking a liter of water will ensure vomiting, and probably vomiting bile. If you want a full body detox and reset, do not drink water and do not worry about vomiting, because the Matses never thought of that as necessary for the medicine do do the work.

My friend John passed

So I got a call a few days ago from someone I did not know. He said that my friend JOHN had died and that I was on the list of people to inform. I thanked him and hung up.
John came on my trip to the jungle about 4-5 years ago. He had signed up for it a year earlier but never showed up in Iquitos. I called to find out what happened and his sister told me that John was in the hospital: He weighed over 400 pounds and had gone on a starvation diet to get down to 300 to do the trip, but when he reached 300 his body went into shock and he wound up sick. So he was fine, but would not make the trip.
A year later, at about 300 or just less, he came. My trip is not physically difficult but there is a lot of climbing in and out of canoes, some walking, some hiking. He did the parts he could do, and he did them well. For a real softie he was a tough ass motherfucker. I liked him.
After the trip he'd send me cards for Christmas, Thanksgiving, my birthday, St. Pat's day. He was a wonderful gentleman in the old school style. If he read a good book he'd write me a postcard suggesting I read it. When we occasionally spoke he was always engaged.
He had colon cancer when I met him and though the person who called me about his death didn't go into it, I suspect that's what killed him.
Good people come in all sizes and shapes. He once wrote the lyrics for a song for an up and coming music person and they were wonderful. He'd laugh like nobody's business. He was one of the good guys and today I sang for him to help him cross--though he probably did not need any help--and my friend Drew, who ditched this plane about 18 months ago and now helps people find the bridge to cross to get to the other side, had him well in hand, so I think he's good.
Good bye, John. It was my pleasure to know you. Thanks.

Sapo/Kambo: Similarities and differencies in use

Someone asked me about the difference between the frog medicines Sapo and Kambo. They are the same medicine, but used differently by different indigenous groups. This was my response, after which he had a follow up question that I also answered.

Kambo and Sapo are the same medicines, but generally applied differently. Sapo, utilized by the Matses/Mayoruna indigenous group (which includes the Matis, Marubo, Matsis, and perhaps others) is moistened with saliva--from a strong person with a good heart--to impart that person's spirit into your blood stream along with the medicine. It is taken as a rule before meals or a couple of hours after them, with no special preparation. The burns for sapo tend to be fairly large, about half the size of a cigarette, and made from tamishi, a jungle vine.
   Kambo is moistened with water as a rule, with the recipient drinking 1-2 liters of water before the session to help produce vomiting to eliminate bile. The burns are quite small, often made with the end of an incense stick or something equivalent.
   Kambo is not generally considered successful unless there is vomiting.
   With sapo there might be an urge to vomit, but most people don't, or if they do, it's just the elimination of bitter orange bile.

The person writing to me then asked why there were different ways to utilize the medicine. This is what I answered:

Different indigenous groups do things differently. In Brazil, kambo style was used. In Peru, where most of the Matses are, and where I first discovered sapo (I didn't discover it, the indigenous did. I just happened to be the first person ever to publish an article about using it) they have their own style. In Brazil, among the Katukina and Yaminawa and others, they have a different style. It might have to do with the fact that the Matses, when I ran into them in 1985, were still primarily hunter/gatherers, so they needed the medicine to work a certain way, (which involved a complete body clean up to aid in hunting, long walks with little food, steadiness of hand when shooting bow and arrow), while the Brazilian groups were more agrarians and fishermen, so maybe they needed the medicine to clean out infections in the stomach, so used the medicine in a way that focused on that. All speculation, but in my experience, the indigenous generally do what is needed for them and no more. So my explanation makes sense--though I cannot swear it is right, just an hypothesis.

On leaving the space during ayahuasca ceremony

Someone on FB posted recently that during an ayahuasca session they decided to leave the space and return to their room. The people running ceremony did not permit that and the poster saw that as a sort of imprisonment--if a temporary one. I disagree. This is what I wrote:
On my trips we make an arcana outside of ceremony space that people can use. They an look at the stars, lie on the clay, just get out of the intensity of the ceremony space. But they cannot go beyond that arcana until the circle is opened. Beyond that space, which is beyond where you can hear the curandero singing, are thousands of spirits who wanted to come to the ceremony but were not invited. If someone rents a tear in that invisible wall those spirits enter and though each only has a tiny bit of energy that we can feel, tens off thousands at one time will knock everybody flat on their backs and cause hell to break loose. So I make it clear before ceremony: If you are here for ceremony, whether you are drinking or not, you are staying put. You can go to sleep, you can sing to the trees, you just can't put the rest of us at risk by leaving.

Preparing to serve Sapo, the Matses frog medicine

Someone wrote to me today saying that when they serve sapo/kambo, the frog medicine, they sometimes do not feel connected to the medicine. They said they wanted to feel more connected when they served and could I help. This is what I wrote:
Dear X: When I am serving any medicine, I always start by cleansing myself. In my case I use cuma lunga and agua florida. It's a 20 second cleanse, but it gets me out of being me and gets me into the medicine space. You could use mapacho, a quick meditation, a rattle, anything to get you out of being you and into being a medicine server. 
     Then, though it is NOT traditional, I sing the people for the first four minutes or so of the event. I sing to the frog to come and cleanse the skin, the blood, the heart, the lungs, the stomach, the liver, the kidneys, and then the head, the spirit, the soul of the person/people being served. I ask that it eliminate toxic things that those people do not need. I sing for it to work deeply but with tranquility so as not to cause fear and add to their toxic load. When I am done I am quiet. Somehow that attunes me, and it eases their entry into the medicine. When I forget to cleanse myself beforehand I can feel it immediately: I might be scraping the stick with saliva and realize it feels like I'm spitting on a stick, rather than sharing the best clean part of my spirit with them. So I stop, apologize to the guests, cleanse myself, then continue with what I was doing. That's the best I have for you. I hope it helps.

What's up with us humans?

I've been pretty busy since I came back from Peru at the end of July. Had last week's cover story in the Fort Worth Weekly, about the local Roller Derby scene, which is enormous but I didn't even know about a few months ago. This week is the Weekly's Best of Fort Worth issue and I had about 15 categories to do there. On Thursday my editor Anthony gave me a short investigative feature to write about a company wanting to open a private high-stakes poker club here in Fort Worth and I got that done and in print yesterday. In between I held my 10 day sapo (frog medicine) course for two people, had several guests over, and this weekend hosted ten former jungle-trip guests of mine here at the house for a medicine weekend/reunion. Yesterday I got both the Crown Vic and one of my Ranger trucks inspected and registered. And I've been dealing with insomnia, getting maybe 4-5 hours of sleep nightly, most of that just nodding out at the computer.

So there is that. But what about the world? What about the atrocities in Yemen? What about a president who denies the death toll from the hurricanes in Puerto Rico — most of which were the result of horrible federal response to that catastrophe? What about Judge Kavanaugh being rushed through a Supreme Court vetting so fast, considering how much of a paper trail he has that's not been reviewed, that it looks like the fix is in? And there are a million other things that make my blood boil. I just want to grab humanity by the neck and shake our collective heads and ask what's up? Can't we just do right by one another? Can't we all play together nicely? I guess not. And I'm sad about that. I'm mad about that. Damnit. Nuts.

Making noise during Ayahuasca ceremony

Someone on fb posted that they always roar all through ayahuasca ceremonies. They are unaware of it but it apparently goes on all ceremony. There was some back and forth on the issue, and I finally decided to weigh in on it. This was my comment:
If people are deep in the medicine and begin to make noise, whatever it might be, I always allow it for a few minutes because I don't want to interfere with their process. But once it becomes problematic--is taking over the space--I try to get them to walk out of the ceremony space with one of my team and walk them to the edge of the protected area, facing away from the ceremony hut, where they, under the eye of one of my team, may sing, dance, roar, scream, do whatever they like or whatever they are being compelled to do by the medicine running through them. But I do not let them stay in the ceremonial space and take over for a long period. I explain beforehand what the protocol will be and that the experience is not a participatory one: People came to the Amazon for the trips to hear the curandero sing, not to hear someone rebirthing. But I don't ever want to have people feel they cannot do what's necessary. They just can't do it in the ceremony hut. But outside, facing the forest away from the hut, they are welcome to do what they need for as long as they need. And always under the watchful eye of one of my team.

One last meal for my Italian students

indigenous Matses' frog medicine) course yesterday, and they did it with flying colors. Final written exams were on the money. Congrats to both father and daughter. For the celebration I bought them some champagne--which we had out at the bridge over the dry creek, right next to the garden. Then for dinner I felt like breaking new ground, so I decided to make them shrimp and sea scallops with apples and pears--a combo I have never heard of with sea food. It was either gonna be great or suck. I bought half a pound of smallish sized (21-25) shrimp and half a pound of medium sized sea scallops. Home, I cleaned the shrimp and tossed the shells, along with onion ends, into a dry heavy sauce pan and scalded them till they were bright red. Then I added water and cooked it down until I had just about one-quarter of a cup. I made jasmine rice while the juice was cooking, then trimmed and parboiled thin--and beautiful--asparagus. I trimmed a yellow pepper and then julienned it--to go with the asparagus--and added scallions, cut the same length as the yellow pepper, and halved sweet cherry tomatoes. I sauteed those together in a little olive oil with garlic and sea salt and cracked black pepper. While those sauteed I peeled a large Delicious apple, one Bosc pear and one Red pear. I sliced them fairly thin, then put them in a very hot saute pan with a bit of unsalted butter. As their sugar carmelized, I added minced shallots, the shrimp and sea scallops. A touch of salt, and finished them off (they took all of one minute) with a good balsamic vinegar to tie the flavors together. I pulled them from the pan, added the shell juice and reduced it with the balsamic until I had a nice glaze, and poured that over the seafood and fruit. Served the veggies next to that, with a nice portion of the Jasmine rice and voila! And you know what? The apple and pears were great with the seafood. I sort of thought they would be but was glad when they were. It was a slightly different flavor/texture mix than our mouths and taste buds are used to, so there was a bit of suspension of previous beliefs necessary, but damn, it was a good mix. And now they're off and back to Italy--or will be very soon--and I hope they use the medicine well.

Snacks for Guests from Italy

I have a father and his 23-year-old daughter taking my sapo course (Matses frog sweat medicine) at the moment. They are in from Italy, and as my house was full, they took a room at a motel down the road a couple of miles. My friend Devon picks them up and drops them off daily. Today is their seventh day of the 10 day course.

Because they were staying at a motel where they had no kitchen, I decided to make them a snack after their daily sessions. They had fruit immediately after, of course, but I wanted to give them at least one warm meal a day to make up for what they would miss while at the hotel.

I cannot remember all I've cooked for them, but it was a pretty good selection: They are vegetarians, but not vegans, so the first day I took some left over rice--made the night before--heated it up in garlic with a bit of oil, then added three or four eggs and parboiled broccoli, cauliflower, and chopped onions. Nice seasoned rice.

Next day I made some angel hair pasta and tossed it with garlic, scallions, shallots, and, from our garden, zucchini, yellow squash, and tomatoes. Topped that with a bit of really good parmesan.

One morning I made spaghetti squash with garlic and diced red peppers with a side of sauteed spinach.

One morning I made cheese toast with good melted swiss on rosemary sourdough. That was served with sliced organic Bosc pear, a good olive mix, very sweet black cherries, and two boiled eggs from our own organic chickens.

Yesterday I made omelets stuffed with spinach, garden tomatoes and good cheddar and served them with homefries and onions.

This morning, after they told me they sometimes ate fish, I served them salmon filets--sauteed hot and fast. When the filets were half done I added some sesame oil, a bit vegetable stock, some teriyaiki marinade, and garlic with olive oil. I candied the skin, then removed the fish, and sauteed julienne redpeppers and scallions to top the fish on the plate. The fish was served on sauteed spinach with a side of our garden's zucchini, yellow squash, and tomatoes.

I think these guys are eating pretty good, and I feel good for making them food. Keeps them strong, and I need them strong because my course is hard. Bon Appetit!

We're messed up and pickles won't save us

Okay, so with all the trouble in the world, with all the horror of war and imprisonment, slavery, hunger, lack of shelter, natural disasters and provoked wildfires, fish killing algae, corruption, pain, suffering, emotional torment, and all the rest of what is rotten in this world, we still have to get up and work. We still have to make our lives the best they can be. we have to treat our loved ones as truly loved ones. We contribute where we can, most of us try to help where we can, we alleviate suffering as we can, but in the end we cannot do it all. The saints among us regular humans did not have the power to stop the suffering of everyone. As a collective, of course, we could stop most physical suffering within hours if we put our hearts into it. Simply stop the wars and go take care of people. Send in builders to rebuild ruined cities. Send in food and water and doctors. Reduce the cost of medicines and provide free food and shelter to those who need it. We already have enough for all seven billion of us; it's simply not distributed evenly. And then there is the hatred that keeps us from coming together as a collective and rectifying all the physical problems the world faces. Yes, we all are still going to die and it ain't gonna be pleasant, but there is no reason kids in Yemen and elsewhere are getting their freaking legs blown off, losing their moms and dads. No reason we have kids sitting in what are essentially prisons here in the USA because their parents had the audacity to try to move away from war zones in Central America and seek asylum here.
I almost cannot go on some days when it all hits me hard and I realize how powerless I am. No superpowers, no special abilities to eliminate hate and prejudice in everyone. I am stunningly ill equipped to save this world.
I was going to write about making some pickles today. That was my meditation because I was being overwhelmed by the whole shebang that causes pain, that revels in pain, that is careless with other people's pain.
So yes, I made pickles and they're gonna be great. As a job it was a wonderful thing to do, and my friend Devon helped me. But as a meditation to forget the helpless feeling of rotten mess in this world, well, it failed miserably. I sincerely hope I did not put that vibe into the pickles! Yikes! I'd only be adding to the suffering when my friends and family eat them and start to puke. Ah, nuts. Momma said there would be days like this. I should have believed her.

Note on Illegal Aliens

A friend posted a meme on fb about people here in the US illegally. Makes my skin crawl, these racist mothafukkas. Who gives a shit if someone doesn't have papers? Are they taking your job? No. Are they paying taxes and not getting the benefit? Yes. Are they paying into medicaid and medicare and social security and will never get the benefits? Yes. So leave them alone.
   In an effort to be polite, this is what I responded:
Illegal aliens have no status. They do not vote. They earn money and pay taxes and social security but will never see that social security money and cannot benefit from many of the things those taxes pay for. They do the grunt work that citizens refuse to do/cannot physically do/are too weak-willed to do. Without them we have no fruit and vegetable crop to speak of. Without them we have no one to wash dishes or cook your horrible fast food. Without them we have no nail salons, no roofing industry, no house building industry, no one to lay tar to build roads. Without illegals this country comes to a full stop in three months. I'm all for giving lots and lots of people temporary work permits, as is done in Alabama for the farming industry and in other states as well. If anyone remembers, when the Alabama governor cut off temporary work permits in the state a few years ago, he thought poor people on welfare could pick crops. They couldn't. He thought poor people who were not on welfare would pick crops. They couldn't. He had people in prisons given the option of working the fields rather than sitting behind bars: In less than one week every prisoner opted for jail over working the fields. $4 billion in crops rotted on the ground in Alabama that year. And yes, temporary work permits were given out the following year, and all the crops got picked and sold. You do not have to like them, but you have to admit we depend on illegals from central America and Mexico for many many things that will otherwise not get done.

This Year's Garden

So I was out at our garden yesterday, like I am every afternoon when here at home, and I was standing on the dry creek bridge looking out at the 16 rows of veggies and bemoaning the fact that it did not produce well, and is not going to produce well. The corn was a complete bust, as were the red peppers, the scallions, the onions, the green
beans, the radishes, and carrots. How do you botch radishes and carrots for goodness sake? The carrots simply never really came up, while the radish tops flourished but the radishes never materialized into anything more than gangly thin red roots. The hot peppers from Peru, the charapitas, looked great early on, but produced few peppers--simply too hot and dry for them. They may produce in September when the rains come.
This garden was put in with lots of energy by Devon, Valerie Van dePanne, and myself. The soil is good and enhanced with a dozen or more sacks of organic manure. It gets watered daily and was weeded wonderfully, first by Devon and I and then by my daughter Madeleina and her beau Adrian while Devon and I were in Peru. It should have produced wildly.
It didn't. We've had a dozen good cucumbers and there are another half dozen near ready on the four or five cuke plants plus a lot of babies on the way. We've had some wonderful zucchini and yellow squash, huge ones, and there are more to pick, but not many. We have had sweet cherry tomatoes and good beefsteaks, but again, we're talking in the dozens, not the hundreds. And the watermelon and cantaloupe are just starting to show up, while our friends melons are already being eaten. There is some spinach but it's growing in trailers, not bushes, and it's not really wonderful to the taste.
So I was drinking a glass of wine and snorting a bit of the Matses' snuff nü-nü and thinking what a bust the garden was when I unexpectedly found myself chuckling. Of course, I would have loved more produce, but when I've had gardens produce like they should, I have wound up with so much stuff--and at the same time that everyones' gardens are producing--that you can't even give it away to the local churches. I remember pickling more than 60 quarts of cucumbers and hating it. I remember having to carry 30-40 watermelons in the back of my pickup with a sign that said: Help Yourself, They're Free, just to get rid of them. I remember having tomato fights with my sons Marco and Italo because we simply had hundreds of tomatoes we couldn't use or give away.
And when I finished that rhapsody, I lapsed into thinking that the idea of the garden wasn't really all about making food. It was about being around the plants, getting quiet for an hour in the afternoon, enjoying watering them and watching the insects that came into the garden for a taste or three. I mean, I've still got more zucchini and yellow squash than I know what to do with--and yes, I've stuffed it, made a casserole, used it in veggie medleys and still am looking at 15 pounds on the kitchen table with 10 more pounds ready to pick. And we've had cucumbers with lime for dinner several times, had cucumber sandwiches, made cucumber soup and still have nearly a dozen on the kitchen table. And there are tomatoes too, with more on the plants to pick. And enough hot charapita peppers to burn several mouths.
So I decided I should not complain. The garden did its job. It produced enough of a few things to keep me going out there every afternoon to quiet myself. And next year it will probably produce so much that I will be back to cursing the okra and cukes and carrots and radishes as I stand in front of a hot stove in August in Texas, pickling them all.

Back from Peru again

Well, I'm; back from the Jungle. It's been nearly two weeks, but as my daughter, Madeleina, says, "Dad, you're no good for the first two weeks you're back." She's right. I'm too full of the jungle, the rivers, the medicine, the guests I had out there to integrate in just a few days. Which doesn't mean I do not do anything. Since I'm back I've got three cover stories for the Fort Worth Weekly lined up, the new incarnation of SKUNK magazine needs me to come up with a new column for them (I did exactly 100 columns of Drug War Follies in the first Skunk incarnation and now it's time to come up with a new idea, right?), and I have cleaned the house, cooked, trimmed my beard, etc.
Probably the main place I've been able to put energy is in cooking. Since I've been back we--that means my friend Devon, who has been staying here for a while, plus Madeleina, off from College, her boyfriend Adrian, and me, plus occasionally my wife/ex-wife Chepa, her two new babies Sierra and Alexa, my son Italo and his wife Sarah and their babies Taylor Rain and Teigan Gray, and my son Marco, plus a dozen friends who have stopped in--have had good hamburgers, stuffed manicotti, linguini with clams and shrimp in a clam sauce. We've had prime rib with sauteed potatoes and seared tomatoes with parmesan. We've had chicken cacciatore over angel hair. We've had hot roast beef sandwiches on organic sour dough bread with mayo, horseradish sauce, skinned red peppers (fresh, of course) with fresh coleslaw. We have had Spanish chopped beef with yellow rice, veggies and jalepenos. We have had Greek Moussaka with organic figs and olives on the side. We have had roast chicken thighs with yellow rice and stuffed zuccini from our garden. We have had four or five cucumber and lime salads with the cukes coming from our garden. We have had good ice cream, great coffee, and we have thanked the lord--insert any lord you believe in right here--for letting us eat so wonderfully and have sung, and prayed to make the same food available to everyone. There is enough to go around. I can invite 10 people and still have enough for 10 more.
And now our chickens are starting to lay eggs. Yikes! Do you guys see what we are eating? This is beyond fantastic. I hope you are all eating as well. And if you tell me who to cook for, I will cook for them too, okay. I do not mean to be selfish here.

Using Sapo/Kambo While Breastfeeding

Claims about Sapo/Kambo, the frog medicine that some indigenous apply to small burns in their skin to introduce it to the capillaries that carry it to the general blood stream are getting out of hand. People who use the medicine are shrouding it in nonsensical spirituality, and claiming it can cure damned near everything from rickets to rheumatoid arthritis. It is a miracle medicine, no doubt, based on the science of it--as first explored by the late great pharmacologist Vittorio Erspamer of the FIDIA Research Institute of the University of Rome--but it ain't gonna fix mom's bunions necessarily. One person recently told me they'd taken it to strengthen their umbilical cord as they were pregnant. She was in obvious pain and sure it would pass. I did not have the heart to tell  her it was an abortive and that she was having a slow miscarriage because of it. Yesterday someone claimed it was great to give to breastfeeding moms as it made their milk better. BULLSHIT! Who the hell would know that except a scientist who did a study and there have been no studies on that matter. I think it might be dangerous at the very least for a breastfeeding mom to use sapo. Here's what I wrote, being my political and politest best:
I do not think it is good for breast feeding women. The toxins that are released by the medicine are temporarily stored in fatty tissue until they can be eliminated and that includes breasts. Might some of those toxins make it into the milk and hurt the baby? Perhaps. And even if the toxins do not get into the milk (there have been no studies on this as yet) the medicine itself might. And while many of the peptides in sapo/kambo are bioactive, babies and small children do not have the developed receptor sites to receive them. So I would think a good practitioner would hold off on serving a breast feeding mom just as a precaution. If studies are done at a later date and show that I'm wrong, well, that would be a different matter, but without them I would not take the chance based on someone's personal claim.

One more on the Matses and Nu-Nu use

Nu-Nu is a snuff the indigenous Matses use in conjunction, generally, with sapo, the frog sweat medicine burned into their arms. The nu-nu, as hunting tool, compliments the sapo in that the sapo fine tunes your vision and the nu-nu snuff brings out the hues and color values of the greenery of the jungle, so that instead of looking at a wall of green, it becomes very three-dimensional, allowing a hunger to look "through" the thick foliage to see animals they might want to hunt hiding in the greenery. It also makes you feel slightly drunk and after a failed hunt the hunters would often take copious amounts of it, and the more they did the more fantastic their stories--of the animals they almost got that day--became.
   Someone asked me if they could eat nu-nu and I had to say no, as the primary ingredient in it was wild tobacco, a very strong poison. Someone else responded that a Matses said they ate it for hunting. This was my reply, based on my experience:
Never heard of that. Now among the Bora and Aucaiño, they make an ibu coca that is activated with liquid extract of tobacco that is used like chewing tobacco and placed between the cheek and teeth. Some of that winds up being swallowed and they seem to survive just fine. But the tobacco content is small compared to the ibu-coca (jungle coca, not very strong) and is not nearly as high a dose as the Matses' nu-nu. And considering that when two hunters get together they might do 100 shots of it each, about 3-4 ounces per person over the course of a couple of hours, that would be, if eaten, like eating 3 or more ounces of pure tobacco, and you would be dead in certainly less than an hour. Unless you speak dialect, I would refrain from believing most of what the Matses say. The old ones who know things do not think in Spanish, so do not communicate very well in that language. The younger ones just try to tell you what you want to hear. Now the really old ones still communicate mostly telepathically, so language is not a barrier, but there are not 10 of those left in all of the nearly million hectares of Matses territory.

Someone asked me this question about sapo/kambo/the Matses

Someone asked me if the Matses used different parts of the body to elicit different effects from sapo, the frog medicine that's administered into small burns on your body. They were hoping I would say something like: Well, if your chacras were closed, they would.......bullshit. Here is how I responded, and it's only from my experience but I do have experience with them:
With the Matses back in 1985-2000, there was very little consideration of dot placement. Burns were universally on the upper left or right bicep for men, with the occasional exception of some young buck who insisted he get them across his chest, above the heart. That request was always met with laughter by the elders who thought it was ridiculous but would serve it that way on request. For small kids who were sick, it was given on the forearm, generally, to break a sweat. For women thought to be pregnant it was given on the inner wrist, just a touch. 
Later, during the first trimester, a very small amount was administered to the labia to provoke urination that the midwives would read to see if the embryo was male or female, healthy or not. And if it was a female they did not need, or if it was unhealthy, a second administration to the labia would produce an abortion. I was never invited to watch those female procedures, so I'm going on what I was told, not personal experience. 
There was absolutely no consideration as to where it would be stronger: ie, the chacras. The Matses used this as a utilitarian hunting medicine, sickness medicine, abortive. No ritual, no singing, no dancing, just apply and walk away and let the recipient deal with it while everyone else ate a tapir or boar or crocodilian. 
I still am with the Matses a full month a year and have never seen that differ. You are sick or lazy, need to abort, or are not hunting well, you are getting sapo, whether you want it or not. 
The best that can be said is that in true Pervian form, they laughed while you suffered. Same as if you broke a hip. They would just laugh and laugh and never for a minute consider your broken hip. 
Their world was a rough place. It's now gotten soft, what with having agriculture and iphones and electricity. In those days they were still stealing machetes, shotguns, women. Different world.

Saliva vs Water to Liquify Sapo/Kambo

People who use frog sweat medicine, known as kambo in Brazil and Sapo in Peru, have two distinct ways to moisten it for application. It needs moistening because after it is collected from the frog it is dried onto a small piece of hardwood until it has the consistency of varnish. To liquify it, Peruvian indigenous generally use saliva, while Brazilian indigenous are said to use water.
Someone has recently been challenging my position that the saliva helps break down the medicine so that it is more quickly absorbed into the subcutaneous layers of the skin (skin that has been burned with a piece of vine called tamishi), while using water to moisten it simply makes it wet. I used the example of putting a small piece of meat into a bit of saliva and waiting a few minutes: it begins to break down because of the enzymes in the saliva. The same little piece of meat (or veggie, or other things) in water just gets wet but does not begin to break down.
The person was having none of it, so I finally answered with this, which gets to a very good point but does so awkwardly, just because I didn't write it well. Anyway, he was my explanation:
The hard shell of  the medicine on the stickneeds to be broken down so that the medicine is moistened to the point where it can be absorbed. When you liquify it in water you wind up with little globules. Liquify in saliva and you wind up with a fully prepared paste that will get into the blood stream more quickly. Imagine if you just took a chunk of the medicine and put it on a burn: it would take forever for that to get absorbed. Now imagine good sea salt: put it on food and you have chunks of salt that take longer to break down than they do if you crush them. That's what I'm talking about. I have never seen the water method make the same quality paste as the saliva method, and in my book that makes it more quickly absorbed. The saliva does the same job on the medicine as it does with the food in your mouth: It begins breaking it into its component parts on contact for better absorbtion by your body.

Someone asked me and this is my answer

Someone asked me if I get excited about going to Peru twice a year. This is how I responded:
   You told me to ignore this, but now I see you asked a legit question. Do I get excited? I just finished a 1400 word piece yesterday for my newspaper, and I have a 4,000 word piece due Monday before I leave Monday night. Excited about Peru? While I am here I live here. I try to tighten up my life here--from garden to kids to animals and animal food and two months worth of bills paid, and then I go. And when I am in Peru I am not a dad, not an ex-husband,  not a grandpa. I'm Peter Gorman, Jungle guide and raconteur. They are two very separate worlds and it is a difficult crossing each time. I am expected to work magic both here and there and I know I cannot work magic  anywhere. No, I don't get excited, I get terrified that I will fail people who depend on me: While here I am terrified that I will fail my friends and family. While there I am terrified that I will fail people who come on the trips seeking healing that I might not be able to provide. YIKES!!!!!!!

Getting Ready to Leave, Lots to Do

Well, getting ready to head back down to Peru for 5 weeks or so. I've got two groups of seven and a couple of people in each group are friends who are returning, so they should be good allies for the trip. I think I've done just about everything I can think of: I've rented hotel rooms for the guests and got my old hotel, the Isabel, the oldest hotel in Iquitos, reserved for me. I've rented cabins on the riverboat, sent hundreds of dollars worth of goods up river, bought the supplies I need to bring, other than a couple of new shirts and sneakers for myself, and so I'm good to go.
   Where I'm falling short is here on the home front. I've got a story to finish today, then another one, a cover, to have done and edited by Monday, before I leave. I have more weeding to do in the garden, need to buy animal food for cats and dogs, birds and hummingbirds; need to get money to my family so that they'll have a little extra if they need it, need to pay my bills, two months each, and a host of other small things. So I'm feeling my blood pressure go up, but at the same time I know I got this if I just keep at it and do not falter. Plow ahead, Gorman. Chip away and the mountain will become a molehill. Of course, when that happens I'll notice there is another mountain behind the molehill, but I can chip away at that when I get there. Whew! Nervous, excited, cool.

The USA: Love it or Fix it

Somehow, my fb page had a conversation on it from some conservative types who were all touting that people complain about the USA but then enjoy its freedoms. They talked about how bad it is in other countries and if people don't like it here they should get the hell out. I had to respond, so I did. Here's what I wrote:
I don't know how this ended up on my page, but since it did, I have to tell you that there are dozens of countries that have the same and often more freedoms than we have here in the USA. And better economies, and better schools, better medical availability, and so forth. It's just a myth that we are the best. We're not any longer. And no, I'm not moving. My family is here an that makes this home. But the home, USA, could certainly use some improving in a lot of areas: How we treat immigrants--especially illegal immigrants--and asylum seekers; how we treat, mistreat, minorities; how we are in love with imprisoning people; how we like to make poor people grovel for the little bit of help we offer them in the way of food stamps or HUD housing; how we love to take from the middle class and give to the rich; how we care so little for the environment these days; how we deny science as a reality; how we love to bomb the shit out of other countries, and how we love to sell weapons to others so that they can do it too. The list of needed improvements is pretty extensive. Time to get to work on that.

Franks and Beans for Dinner

Franks and beans for dinner. Wanted something that would cook slowly and not take a lot of prep time because I have a garden to admire and some lawn to cut. So I decided on franks and beans. Started off with two nice short/fat slabs of salt pork in a bit of olive oil. Once that was good, tossed in more olive oil with lots of rough cut garlic, and a diced large red onion. Sizzling, I added 16 Ballpark beef franks, cut in half-inch pieces and browned them. Once that was good I diced four nice tomatoes; two from the vine, two Roma, and let them cook a while. Then I added a 32 ounce can of Bush's Original Baked Beans and a 32 ounce can of Texas' own Ranch Style Beans. Then a quart of organic vegetable stock.
Now I'm going out to do what I need in the yard and I've left the pot on at a "2", so it won't burn. When I come back I'll add some good mustard, cracked black pepper, sea salt if it needs it, some Heinz ketchup, Peruvian paprika, and then, when near done, a bunch of fresh cilantro, minced. If I need body I'll borrow half a beer from Devon and add that; if not, I'll just add more stock till it's spicy and rich.
I'll serve it topped with good smoked cheddar cheese over jasmine rice, and serve a side of broccoli and cauliflower florets in minced garlic and a bit of olive oil.
Papaya for dessert.
Nice Noble Vines 337 Cabernet on ice in an old pickle jar to help me get through the heat of the lawn mowing.
I hope you are all eating well tonight. I wish I could serve everyone in the world. Imagine if we had stoves that could feed 7 billion people, the cooks to do the cooking, the food to cook, the plates or leaves to serve it on, and the will to get it done. Wouldn't that be great? Have no one in the world going to be hungry because they had no food, or thirsty because they had no water. Ah, shit. This world sucks, but I got to keep trying to fix it, one post, one meal, one invite at a time. I don't know what else to do.

Shift of Perspective

Lately I've been indulging in self-pity. Pitiful. I'm too fat, my freaking back is locked up tight, I can't breathe well, I have too many stories to write before I leave town for two Jungle Jaunts in Peru. All that jazz. Fortunately, a friend started to straighten me out: he pointed out that with the wine I drink and the number of cigarettes I smoke, it's up to me to change or die.
So I cut back on both and will cut back further when I have the guts. For the back, I've been weeding the garden, painting, mowing lawn daily. Those things, coupled with a chiropractor every couple of weeks have loosened me up considerably. And helped me breathe better because I got to force myself to push that damned lawnmower over 5,000 feet of lawn daily in order to get the acre of grass cut every week.
And then this morning I woke up with lightning in my head. I had promised myself to get one of my stories in by tomorrow afternoon, but I've been slogging. Just no oomph! in the work. But this morning I woke with the idea that I should stop complaining. I got to change the way I'm looking at it: This isn't work. This is a chance, as an investigative reporter, to give voice to those who normally have no voices: In this case a huge population of women in Texas prisons and the treatment (lousy) they receive. What a gift to me to get to do that!
Ah, Gorman, what a self-indulgent old fart you are! Time to take the love, grab the gifts and kick some ass!

Meant well, but going nuts

So I wanted to write a short and sassy piece about the left over food that's sitting on my counter as I prepare tonight's meal. I've got a bit of highly seasoned chopped meat that was used in an open burrito, something I think we used to call Nopalitas--feel free to correct me. That takes a heated tortilla. Put the well seasoned (cumin, garlic, onion, tomato, black beans) meat mix on the large tortilla. Grace with pico de gallo (diced onion, tomato, cilantro in fresh lime juice with a bit of salt and a touch of garlic oil), cover with cheese. Heat. When finished heating, adorn the open tortilla with sliced avocado--room temperature--sour cream, an lettuce or a Spring mix. Eat.
There is also a bowl of shrimp and clam pasta in a garlic clam/shrimp skin reduction. That, with good garlic bread, was fantastic.
Then there is the last piece of the Chicken Cordon Bleu--a half a chicken breast stuffed with good diced ham and swiss, breaded, sauteed, baked, and then covered with a mushroom Marsala sauce (basic white sauce with fresh mushrooms and Marsala wine). I was not happy with the quality of the Marsala wine but now I know better. Too thin, not what I would have used in the New York restaurants I ran. Still, that was a meal to drool over as the cheese oozed out with the ham into the sauce.
Then the barbeque: All that's left are some barbequed veggies: Broccoli, cauliflower, zuccini, yellow squash, corn on the cob, and onions that were par boiled (except for the onions), then soaked in an oil/white vinegar/teriyaki marinade that had lots of onions and garlic and black and red pepper in it. Then barbequed, of course. With the chicken, sausage, and the potato and egg salad (with mayo and a bit of white vinegar to give it a bite), it was a good barbeque.
So I wanted to write about that. But then I'm thinking about the damned Embassy in Jerusalem that Trump insisted on, and which lead to nearly 60 Palestinians being shot like fish in a barrel by the Israeli army--guys using sling shots are NOT a threat to the military, I don't care how scared you are!!!--and another 2400 wounded. And it continues today. Do not believe the lies. These poor Palestinians are being massacred say my friends on the ground over there.
Then we find that Trump decides to ignore the Chinese phone company's violation of the Iran and North Korea sanctions--which automatically disallows them from buying American parts they need--three days after the Chinese government backed a park that will bear the TRUMP name for $1/2 billion dollars, which will be matched with another $500 million from Chinese Banks. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Let's just (fill in the blank) the motherfucker or douse him in hot tar and feather his ass. How the freak am I supposed to write nice stories when so much horror is going on in the world, and so much of it is directly caused by the USA and Don Trump? Ivanka was doing a ribbon cutting ceremony while Palestinians were being slaughtered! Damnit.
I could go on but I'd probably have a heart attack, so I won't. Man, I cannot find anything worthwhile about this president. Everything is for him and his friends. That $20 a paycheck you got from the tax stuff was already eaten up by the highest gas prices in several years. We're at $2.66- to-$2.89 here in Joshua, Texas, generally the cheapest place to buy gas in the USA. When Trump came into office it was $1.89 and I was pissed off about that as it had been around $1.70 for most of the Obama administration and rarely went above $2.00.
Ah, I better stop. Sorry, my blood is just boiling with the greed and distain for life--from immigrants to pot smokers, to Palestinians, to Syrians, to people who need medicaid to pay for their old folks homes, people who need clean water and air, to damned near everybody who ain't fukkin' rich, that this administration shows.

Sapo and food

Someone in a kambo page on FB recently noted that they were going to have their first encounter with frog medicine and they said they'd fasted for 12 hours, but wanted to know what else to do to prepare. I couldn't help be a wise guy and suggest two cups of coffee and an egg sandwich. Well, that threw some people off in a big way because in the Brazilian style of doing the medicine, which is called Kambo there, you normally drink a couple of liters of water after fasting, and then do the medicine with a concentration on vomiting and cleaning out the gut. Well, I had to explain myself, so I made an edit to my initial post suggesting that people look at a new post further down the page. Here is that post:
Explanation of gorman comment above: When I first used sapo and watched the Matses use sapo, it was still an epoch when few Matses had fields to speak of. They were serious hunters, aiming at bringing back about a kilo of meat per person per day. If a man had 4 wives and 20 children, that meant 25 kilos of meat, or about 60 kilos of animals hunted. That was not a monkey or a boar. It was 10 monkeys or two or three boars. Every day. So in my experience, the majority of sapo use occurred when a hunter's aim was a bit off. They would not have been able to explain it scientifically, but what they benefited most from in that regard was the combination of turning on the adrenal cortex and opening the arteries. The first allowed them an extra level of calm when hunting; the second provided more blood to their organs, sharpening their senses, including their eyesight, their sense of smell, their hearing,, all vital tools to hunting. Those elements also allowed them to run faster, longer, without tiring, and to stay out hunting longer without being thirsty or hungry. Vomiting when doing sapo was incidental at best. Yes, there was stomach cramping and a bit of bile might get eliminated, but no one in my experience ever did sapo for the purpose of stomach cleansing. That is apparently different among the Brazilian kambo users, where vomiting seems to be vital to the use of the medicine. So while I am being, or trying to be cute when I say to have "two cups of coffee, maybe an egg sandwich," what I really mean is that it never mattered to the Matses I knew. They simply did sapo when they wanted: Sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon, sometimes in the middle of a meal, sometimes after a meal. At a session in my home yesterday, one fellow had eaten some fruit, one fellow had had several cups of Yerba mate' and I had had two cups of coffee (half decaf) when we decided to do sapo. We did, no one threw up, all was fantastic cleansing, lots of sweating out toxins through the pores of the skin, and then afterwards we did several shots of nü-nü each to 1) finish up sharpening our eyesight to incredible levels, and 2) to eliminate any residual "drag" from the sapo toxin release. That style is just different from the kambo style with a focus on the gut. So sorry I was a wise guy, I guess I just wanted to draw attention to another way of approaching the medicine. And no, to be honest, I do not recommend a huge meal before sapo. That becomes very painful and is utterly pointless.

Remembering the Kent State Massacre

Unless I have my dates wrong, May 4, 1970 was the day that 4 unarmed college kids were gunned down by the Ohio State Guard at Kent State University for protesting the illegal bombing of Cambodia by the Nixon administration. Kids that were putting flowers in the rifle barrels of the National Guard. The Guard shot a total of 67 rounds, killing four, permanently paralyzing one and injuring, I think, 8 others. It is a day of infamy. A day of horror. Let us never forget or forgive. Let us stay ever vigilant against the powers that be lest they think they are actually the power, not we. Because we are the power that moves this country. WE are it. The corporations, the military, the administration, they are all just working for us at our disposal and whim. We can change them out in a heartbeat. They are our gardeners, nothing more. At Kent State, they thought they were the power and rained down on us. That must never happen again. That means Black Lives Matter, Kids' lives Matter, Your life Matters. Stay strong, stand tall, do not quiver.

Not for the Vegan-Hearted

Not for the Vegan-Hearted

The world is both a beautiful and terrible place. There is so much pain, so much unnecessary suffering, so much intentional infliction of suffering that it is overwhelming. I spend my days mostly doing investigative reporting in the Fort Worth area. That includes looking into private prisons and immigration--both intentional infliction of suffering on populations unable to protect themselves and having few rights by which to protect themselves. I also read about wars that I do not cover, and starvation caused by greed and all sorts of awful things.

By late afternoon I retreat to some red wine and then cooking food. I'm always willing to share the food with whomever shows up and I'm always happy when people show up for it. The wine is another matter: Better to bring your own if you want to have a glass.

The food here is always good, but sometimes there is a string of a few days when it's just mouth-watering. We just finished a couple of weeks of that. When a dozen friends came in from around the country two weeks ago I started with chicken parmesan and a side or two of veggies, after some nice homemade guacamole and good fruit. The next morning was baked eggs replete with lots of veggies and good bread. That evening we had a barbeque of marinated chicken thighs, marinated shrimp, sausage and tons of marinated barbequed veggies, including asparagus, cauliflower, broccoli, onions, scallions, yellow squash and zuccini.

For a going away dinner for the crew my friend Mike made a crawfish boil with corn and potatoes, to which Chepa, my wife/ex-wife added a great ceviche and a mountain of yucca..

Next night, with only a few guest left, I made a baked bean dinner: garlic, onions, diced tomatoes, nicely seasoned; then some fat back bacon, then the really good beef franks cut into 1/2 inch slices. When all was sauteed to the right color, a couple of cans of good beans went in, to which was added mustard, some ketchup, cilantro. A lot of cheating in that recipe but it's the best darned franks and beans I know of, for real. Top it with a bit of cheddar when serving and you're in pig heaven.

Somewhere along the line I made an Uncle Clem's chicken--diced, sauteed chicken breast over a big bed of steamed broccoli florets, covered in a rich sauce then topped with mozzarella cheese and baked till the cheese is brown. Served over Jasmine rice.

We also snuck in lime chicken one night (chicken breaded with good crumbs mixed with parmesan cheese, sauteed, then baked with lots of fresh lime juice so that when you eat it your mouth squeals with delight), with spaghetti squash and sauteed spinach in garlic. Then we went light with hot roast beef sandwiches: fresh rosemary sourdough bread with a bit of mayonnaise popped into the oven till warm, then topped with rare roast beef, homemade coleslaw and swiss cheese. I think we served a side of a melange of broccoli, cauliflower, zuccini, tomatoes, and onions, all cooked in a bit of olive oil and lots of garlic.

Couple of days ago I was in the mood for lamb, so I made a variation on the Greek dish, pastitsio. Instead of using pasta, I covered the base of the baking dish with mashed new potatoes, topped that with lamb sauteed with onions, garlic and scallions and tomatoes, to which was added smoked paprika, cumin, a bit of curry, allspice, and a bit of this and that, which was topped with more mashed potatoes and then covered in a bechamel--a white sauce with parmesan cheese and nutmeg. The whole thing baked for about 30 minutes at 325, till the sauce was lightly browned. Man, that was good.

Last night was an old fashioned mac and cheese. I cooked fusilli cause I like the way the sauce sticks to the screw shaped rings of that pasta. For the cheese I used cheddar, swiss, some mozzarella I had laying around, some colby jack, parmesan. To that the yolks of three organic eggs was added to help keep it light. Also, to the cheese was added smoked diced ham sauteed in garlic and onions and tomatoes (I use that combo a LOT). It was topped with breadcrumbs and parmesan, then baked till brown.

I am sure I'm forgetting the roast pork dinner baked with potatoes and carroes on a bed of celery, onions, apples, and pears; the sauce espagnole I made over the course of two days (with no flour) that I added to several of the dishes; and plain old chicken wings.

I think there is plenty of good stuff left in the fridge, so don't hesitate. When you get here I'll be working on a new story that's due in two days. At least till late this afternoon, when it will be time to cut the grass, open a bottle of wine, and think about what I should make for dinner.

Sapo Note on Vaso Dilation

Someone was talking on a forum about the need to physically purge when doing sapo/kambo to get the desired effect of a good stomach and liver bile cleansing. To encourage that, a lot of practitioners have their clients drink a couple of liters of water half an hour before a sapo/kambo session. I disagreed. I said that among the indigenous Matses very few people purged and that in my experience forcing the medicine to work on one specific area might be to the detriment of it working on other areas. The example I gave was the clearing of plaque from arteries that would then allow more  oxygen to get to your vital organs, a very beneficial side of the sapo/kambo medicine.
    Someone liked that and asked which peptide in sapo specifically eliminated plaque. This was my response:
George: I'll have to refer to Vittorio Ersparmer's (late, great pharmacologist who worked with the Phyllomedusa bicolor frog that produces sapo/kambo) work to tell you which of the peptides acts as vasodilator. The example I use, and I hope it is a good one, is this: Let's say you are blowing up balloons for your kids and nieces and nephews and letting them fly around the room. Sooner or later one or two will drop behind the couch or what have you and no one retrieves it. A couple of months later someone cleans behind the couch and finds it and your kid asks you to blow it up for him/her again. Only problem is that the balloon is now all scrunched up and non-stretchy because the sugars and proteins in your breath when you were blowing it up previously have all dried and made that balloon no longer stretchable. So you stretch it by hand and those sugars slowly drop off--simply from the act of stretching--into the belly of the balloon and in a few minutes you've got a stretchy balloon again that you can blow up. The plaque in your arteries, or the feathering around your heart valves that can result in an irregular heart beat is a build up of things that eliminate the stretchyness of those arteries, or the smooth opening and closing of those heart valves. Introduce a high powered vaso dilator that blows those arteries open a bit and that plaque will simply fall off into the blood stream and later get eliminated. Same with the feathering of goop that can build up around heart valves. So while Ersparmer did not talk about a peptide that officially eliminated plaque he did talk about the burst of vaso dilation (leading to a temporary drop in blood pressure) that I think would be the equivalent of you stretching out that dried up balloon and causing the sugars to drop off the inside of the elastic skin. Make sense?

Visiting the Matses

Someone wrote on FB that they are in Iquitos and want to visit the indigenous Matses. I wrote this, then decided not to put it up, because while meant to deter people, it will probably only encourage them. But since you guys ain't going anywhere, I don't see the harm in posting it here.
Natasha: First, you need to get in touch with the military and see when their next plane is going to Angamos. Get on it. Get to Angamos, a military base, and there is a Matses camp nearby. Don't forget to get chacira, a couple of kilos. Those are Chezhoslovakian seed beads, made from glass. They love those. Rarely sold in Iquitos. Then, unless you want to stay in the dire community near Angamos, you'll need someone to rent you a peque-peque and someone else to sell you gasoline, which they don't always have there. When Angamos is dry, the few people who have some gas might charge you $30 a gallon, and you might need at least 50 gallons. Be prepared. Them the boat owner will take you up the river to a village of very westernized Matses. They will likely charge you to visit. Just a hundred or two for a day or so. You will probably need to bring your own food: They might have a little for you, they might not. Do not expect that by paying a hundred or two hundred and giving each member of the village some seed beads that you will be invited to stay overnight. Mostly they just want your gifts and then want you gone. I could go on. At least they won't shoot arrows at you as you approach anymore. But these are not tourist injuns. These are people who generally do not want outsiders in their camps. That becomes more true the further up either the Yakirana or Galvez you go. Some people have been lucky and made friends with village headmen, but not many. Outsiders are a drain on their communities for the most part, which is why they're not very welcome, or welcome for only a day or two at a camp, essentially while your presents for them last. And they will want presents every day or twice a day, so be sparing with those seed beads. Ruber Castillo and Jhonny Java can get you in for a few days but will cost you. Ask for them at El Noche restaurant on the boulevard. But this is expensive, no fooling, and is still only for a few days, tops.

Tired of Stupid

A friend of mine, one who swears she is not either Dem or Repub, sometimes posts things on fb that blow my mind. When I call her on it she says she's just reposting interesting things. I tell her that spreading hateful things spreads hate, whether interesting or not. Yesterday, I told her I was done with her. She posted a meme that compared Hitler to Liberals. It said things like: Take away guns, and noted both groups wanted to; "pro Abortion" and both groups wanted to. And so forth. I went nuts emotionally. Today I reconsidered and thought that if I was speaking with her directly, I would explain that a man who ordered and controlled the systematic killing of 6 million Jews, another half million Catholics, half million gays, was not the same as a present day liberal who wants poor kids to have free breakfasts at school so that they can learn with a clear, not starving, brain. I would tell her that the use of pro abortion is a misnomer: People who are for a woman's right to choose when she has a baby are pro-life.They want a baby born at the right time to the right person. They do not want a baby born to parents who do not want it. And then, of course. the people who are anti-liberal are cutting funding for things like day care and school breakfasts, and after school programs, making it harder for the poorest people to maintain jobs and raise kids. So I was emotionally upset yesterday. Today I just want to say that if anyone I know thinks that liberals wanting kids to have breakfast and after-school programs, mental health availability, low cost day care, equal pay for women, good union jobs, health care for all and so forth, are the equivalent of Hitler, then please unfriend me. Cause you know what? I'm done with you and your stupidity. You're taking up too much of my precious life. I'll meet you again when you come around to being human.

The Secret Power of Nü-nü, the Matses' snuff

Nu-nu, a snuff used by the indigenous of the border area between Brazil and Peru near the Alto Yakirana, is a hunting tool that is used in conjunction with sapo, a frog medicine that is applied to the subcutaneous layers of a hunter's skin. Nu-nu adds a dimension of visual aid and calmness that improves hunting ability among people who depend on hunting to eat. Someone asked me about it and I responded from my experience, dating back to 1985 with the Matses, and 1986 with the Matses and nu-nu.
While other indigenous groups make several types of snuffs, the Matses generally only make nü-nü, which is made from the inner bark of the cacao tree (reduced to ash), mixed with nicotiana rustica (what was wild tobacco but is now grown). Part of its strength is that it is always made by two hunters, who each impart some of their spirit into the medicine. When administered traditionally--at least in my experience--among people who depend on hunting to eat, it is always the best hunters who administer it, so that the recipient is getting spirit from three separate hunters along with the actual snuff. (Unless the receiver is also one of the makers of the medicine, of course.) The hunters' spirits make for better hunters; the medicine makes for better eyesight, a sharpened sense of accuracy, a steadier hand on the bow and arrow. The cacao in the medicine relaxes the hunter so that he is not tense when hunting, which will affect the trajectory of the arrow. The visionary effects of the tobacco will allow--in large quantities, say 20 1/2 grams in each nostril over the course of half-an-hour, to have visionary prescience as to where animals can be best hunted the following day. Crazy, right? But real and real magic stuff.