I'm about to go off on Donald Trump. Yes, some of you might hate me. I'll live with it.

 So I wrote this on facebook the other day:

I'm getting really tired of Mr. Trump, the inveterate liar, third rate carny con man, and general idiot. I'm tired of his blowing hot air out of his mouth in one direction and then, in the same day, claiming he didn't say what he said. I'm tired of his lies about Hillary Clinton. During her time in the public eye, her positives--and there are lots of them--include working as a US Senator from New York to get help for the First Responders after the World Trade Center horror. And she has continued to work hard for that. She worked very hard for equal pay for equal work for women. She worked for health care for all as First Lady of the US--which is the real reason people don't like her politics, she showed too many lazy dems and dumb repubs up--and that nearly cost her husband his second term and certainly brought 25 years of animus on her. And then, with the Clinton Foundation she's saved countless lives and made countless others livable by getting medicine and water and farming equipment and a host of other necessities to them. Oh, and she and Bill pay about 1/3 of their income into federal income tax: $9.6 million following their best year on the speakers' circuit; $3.4 million last year. Nothing Mr. Trump has done for the public good--including his modest donations to good causes in the distant past--comes close.
Oh, and if you are going to come back with unfact-checked nonsense about the Clinton Foundation--which has an "A" rating from Charity Watch, a non-partisan charity watchdog--please do your research before commenting.

One of the people reading it reacted badly because I insulted his intelligence. I was wrong. He also blasted Hillary Clinton in a long response. Here's what I wrote in my reply:

Dear X: I was strident. I apologize for being rude. BUTTTT, I think you are way, way off base with Hillary. She's spent her adult life working for women, children, underprivilidged people. In the time after she was First Lady, and after she was Secretary of State before becoming a presidential candidate, she was one of the top tier speakers on the speaker circuit. There are tens of thousands of people on various speaker circuits. Some get $300 a talk, some get $1 million plus. She was in the $225,000 range evidently, according to her tax records. Who would pay that? I don't know. Not me, but I don't live in that rare air up there. People who need a tax write off, I suppose. And she gave a lot of that money to the Clinton Foundation[s], which is a monstrously great foundation and from which no one in her family ever took a dime. Now you tell me that Trump is a "maverick populist" and I say, "no dice." He's a criminal through and through. He lies incessantly and often denies his lies on the same day he makes them. He's backed by every white supremecist group in the USA, he's backed by the anti-women, anti-choice, anti-life-after-birth crowd. He's cheered on by those he describes as "uneducated". He accepted a present of a Purple Heart medal from a man who had been wounded in war, held it up and said, "I always wanted one of these." yet did not protest the Vietnam War, simply got out on "bone spurs" and has recently declared that avoiding Venereal Disease was his Vietnam. Along with saying that going to military high school was pretty much the same as being in the military. With that in mind, he says he'd "bomb the shit out of Isis", would "carpet bomb the Middle East," and wants to know why we have nuclear weapons if we can't use them. He claims he was against the Iraq war when he's on video being for it. He claims he didn't want to see Gaddafi removed from his position, when he's on video calling for him to be summarily killed by a "strategical strike". This is a man you want to have nuclear codes? He's a pathological liar, a man who works with the mob in New York and New Jersey, a man who dumps his wives at the drop of a hat and now professes a Christian faith to appeal to the alt.right crazy right-wing Christian voters. This is a man who has never, ever done a decent thing for another human being without touting it endlessly. This is a man who just today patted himself on the back for calling last night's bomb in New York a bomb. He relishes idiocy. He has reporters arrested and then touts free speech. He incites violence and then hides like a baby when someone jumps on his stage. He calls HIllary out for her Secret Service body guards when he not only has Secret Service body guards but his own guards as well. This is a man who has cheated, lied, stolen money from enough people that more than 1,300 have sued him over it. This is a man who has paid cash money to two attorney generals who were considering taking Trump University to court for fraud--and who, after they received his contributions to their campaigns, decided not to. This is a man who says he contributes to political campaigns because he knows that when he calls in a favor his phone calls will be taken by them. This is a guy who claims he'll bring manufacturing jobs back to the US while making everything he sells overseas. This is a man who insisted that Mitt Romney could not be president if he did not release his tax returns and now will not release his own, after swearing on television that he would. This is a man who has a family foundation that buys gifts for himself. This is a man who suggests his opponent might be stopped by "second amendment, people". This is a man who, in the past, has paid no federal income taxes, yet wants more tax breaks for people in his tax bracket. This is a man who refused to rent his apartments to black people--and was caught by the US Department of Justice doing just that and had to settle to avoid a criminal record--who claims he is loved by the African American community. This is a man who decries illegal aliens and then hires them to work for him. This is the man you want for president? I understand, Haydon, that you are an Australian and so might not know all of this. But everyone in the USA knows all of this and much, much more about this man. So no, the choice of a person who ain't perfect but has given her life to helping the public sector, versus this man, this small, small human being whom we all hope someday will do something for someone other than himself...well, that's not a choice. He's a joke who never meant to get here, got here, is stuck being here, is trying desperately to get out of being here, and he should be shown the door. 

Peter Gorman Haydon: Now for Hillary: Never met a war she didn't like, eh? Hmmm....after 9/11, President Bush and insane Dick Cheney went all out on Saddam Hussein as terrorist protectors. Everyone who know anything knew that Hussain, crazy as he was, was keeping the entire Middle East stable. He kept them stable because he was crazy enough to attack anyone and win. But we also knew that he especially hated the Saudis, and if Osama Bin Laden had touched foot on his soil he'd have been vaporized. Nonetheless, Bush/Cheney insisted he was part of the Bin Laden protectorate and chose to go to war there. A vote was taken in the US Senate. It was NOT a vote to go to war. It was a vote authorizing the US President to go to war PROVIDED HE COULD PROVE that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Yes, Hillary voted to give the president, President Bush, that power. But Bush then ignored the glaring truth that Hussein had no weapons of destruction, outed a CIA agent because her husband had proved there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and then invaded. That destabilized the Mideast. On top of that, Hussein's Royal Guard and much of his military were disbanded and sent home--without money but with all the weapons fo war they could carry. That's ISiS backbone and Hillary had nothing to do with it .The Spring was going to happen no matter what the US did. So we did out best to outfit the freedom fighters so that they'd have a chance. It has not worked out so well. ISIS has had an odd mesmerizing effect on a lot of disillusioned kids in the US, Europe and the Mideast. I don't think Hillary or anyone could have anticipated the draw of cutting people's heads off on TV would have on the gullible and hopeless. Should we have left Gadaffi in power? Should we have not tried to take down Assad? No. These were monsters, killing their own. As was Hussein, with the Kurds. But we didn't go after Hussein for the Kurd massacres, did we? No. We went after him on the false pretense--the absolute lie--that he harborded terrorists and had weapons of mass destruction.

Hillary's work as Sec of State will be evaluated properly in 20 years. It will ask the question: Did her work to bring Iran to the table prevent them from obtaining and using nuclear weapons or not. That's going to be a huge question for a while. Right now, that looks like some of her best work: Bringing Iran to the table, kicking and screaming. As president, I don't think she'll enter a single war. I only have my belief systems on that. But looking at her 40 year record, from blemishes to cool shit, and her cool shit so far outweighs her blemishes that it's a non-topic. You brought up, Haydon, that things were rigged against Berni. Not true. In all those thousands and thousands of emails there were 7 or 9 that suggested things to undermine Berni, none of which were acted upon. The superdelegates have been in place for years and years: They were not put there to stymie Berni, as he knows. Now I did not want to spend all this time on this issue, Haydon, but you pushed me with your rant. I hope you suffered as much reading this as I did reading your rant.

One more time, Spirit in the real world

Someone wrote to me last night to say they'd been in Peru recently and had had several great experiences with ayahuasca there. She noted that her experiences were different from what she'd read in my book Ayahuasca in My Blood and was curious about why that would be. She also noted that she went into the future with ayahuasca and saw her future grandchildren (her kids are not old enough to have kids, she said) and wondered if it was possible that she had really seen her future grandchildren. So I wrote her back, and for some reason added a story I'm sure you've all heard before--and which probably changes a bit with each telling, though I try to keep the facts lined up truthfully. So here's what I wrote to her:

Dear X: I'm glad you had a wonderful experience in Peru. As you noted, your experiences were different from what you read of mine. I would not expect someone else's experiences to be like my experience. Why? Because I think we're dealing with real spirits, and so what they choose to teach or share with us is individual. If we were just dealing with the chemicals extracted from the plant and they somehow did not have spirit, then I would expect that people would have more similar experiences.

   As to your vision: I have no reason to doubt that you were allowed to see future grandchildren. Or at least POSSIBLE future grandkids. I have often been amazed--truly amazed--at the results of visions in the real world. One of my favorites is this: I had moved to Texas and nothing was working out well in terms of my journalism. Editors who hired me got fired, a couple of magazines hired me then changed formats and dropped me, that sort of thing. So I was with ayahuasca in the jungle at Julio's house and asked what the heck I could do to make things better because the lack of work was taking a toll on my kids. Ayahuasca told me simply, that when I got back to the US I would have the work. I would have to do the work, but so long as I worked at doing the work, I'd have enough work. (This is the short version, so forgive me if you saw this somewhere and it was slightly different.)

    Anyway, I got home and almost immediately a magazine Skunk, out of Canada, asked me to write for them, and I started a monthly column that I still have 12 years later. Then the Fort Worth Weekly changed me from a free lance writer to a staff writer with a weekly income, but allowed me to work from home. And I got some freelance work and so forth.

    BUTTTTT, in the magazine/paper business, you don't always get paid quickly. Sometimes you wait a few months. So I remained broke even with the work I was doing, and the electricity was about to be turned off in my house. I tried to explain to my kids, and especially Madeleina, who was probably 7 or 9 at the time, that it would be like camping in the house with candles for a few days or a week until I got money to get the electricity turned back on.

   She was not having any of it. She refused to believe that the spirits told me I'd have the work if I did the work and that they'd then allow me to not have money and have the electricity shut off. And on the day when the man came to the house to shut off the electricity she had an absolute tantrum in the driveway. I asked the guy if he could go to someone else's house and let me have 15 minutes to calm her down. He said he couldn't but then began looking at some bushes I had. They were ordinary bushes, so I knew he was stalling to let me calm my daughter down.

   While the man pretended to be interested in the bushes, I spoke with Madeleina, and a bright yellow DHL truck raced past out house. In a few minutes it had turned around and pulled into our driveway. The driver asked if I was Peter Gorman and then gave me an envelope. In it was a check for $1000 from a magazine for which I'd done some background work on a story about a year earlier.

   The thing was this: I was not owed a check, and it wasn't a regular newspaper style check. It was a bank check. I showed it to the guy who was going to turn of the electricity and asked him if I could have 10 minutes to go cash it. He let me and I cashed it and paid what I owed and we kept the electric on and Madeleina was all crazy with "I knew it! The spirits couldn't lie! I knew it, dad!" and that sort of thing.

   Well, obviously I was guilty so I went into the house and called the magazine and explained that they'd mistakenly sent me a check and that I'd used some of it but that I'd send the rest back and repay them the remainder when I could. But here's the thing: The people who do the paying at the magazine said they hadn't sent me a check so that there was nothing to send back. I told them it wasn't just a check but a bank check. They said I was crazy: No newspaper or magazine pays by bank check, ever. Which is true. Which was part of the reason the whole thing was so crazy.

    So they said they hadn't paid me. So I called up DHL to see who had given them the envelope to give me. And then it got really crazy, because DHL said they did not deliver to my neighborhood, and that there was no record of anything coming to me. I hung up and thought, well, maybe I was nuts and it was a FedEx truck instead, so I called them. They were very clear that nothing had gone to me via FedEx that day or any time recently.

   So a real bank check got delivered to me that had never been sent to me, by a company that did not do business in my very rural area (at the time). It was spirit all the way. I have always thought that the spirits heard Madeleina and got her message that if they promised me I'd have the work if I did the work then it stood to reason that I should get paid in time to not lose my electricity, which would make it difficult to do the work. So they manifested a truck, a driver, an envelope and a bank check that was legitimate. Now that's spirit for you in the real world.

Gorman's Jungle Juice--for Mosquito Bites to Shingles

Okay: Years and years ago I was taught a basic jungle after-sting remedy. It was good. I worked at it and made it better via 20 years or more of trial and error. The ingredients are largely the same, the proportions very different, but I think that had more to do with cost and availability at the time than anything else.
    Gorman's Jungle Juice After Sting works on eliminating pain from mosquito bites, spider bites, wasp stings, hornet stings, black fly stings. It eliminates the itch, the redness and the bacteria, so that you don't scratch and spread the bacteria. It's very good. No one should go to the jungle or woods without it.  Make me a millionaire, but you'll be happy you did, no kidding. And the people that taught me the medicine get their very healthy cut, so it's a good deal for everyone. (I am not so enthusiastic about its value for fire ant stings. It relieves the pain temporarily, but not permanently. I've used it three or four times after being stung by several hundred fire ants and cannot say it's the be-all, end-all for those. The last time was just this week, mowing heavy lawn and stepping into several fire ant patches I didn't see.)
   Now 14 months ago, a friend of mine bought the rights, for two years, to market this. He's a businessman, so better in his hands to get it to the sports outfitters around the country than mine. But I am allowed to still use it and give it to people to try.
   So here's the thing: A grown up friend of mine, about 60-years-old, has a mom whose 80 and last week got Shingles. Badly. She was suffering horribly and unable to sleep from the pain of her nerve endings going crazy from the autoimmune condition.
   So I was singing for her--okay, you can call it my prayers that I do for people--and it came to me that if the Jungle Juice worked on the nerve endings going nuts from mosquito, wasp, spider bites, etc, it might just work on the nerve endings going crazy from Shingles. I told him that, then gave him most of a quart of the medicine. He started on a small patch of her Shingles yesterday. "She told me it didn't hurt her, so I covered them all this morning," he told me just a few minutes ago. "And now she's sleeping like a baby and my girlfriend and I were able to sneak out of the house to go get dinner. Her Shingles are drying up and just before she went to sleep she said they were at a 3-to-4 pain level, rather than an 8-to-9 pain level. So I think it's working."
   Now that is fantastic news. So here's the deal: Do you know someone with Shingles at the moment? Are they suffering. I can't spend a fortune, but I can give out medicine to five or eight people to see if it works. If it does, I'll find someone to get me to put out more, for free. I'll pay shipping if you ain't got the dough. I never had Shingles, but I had two sisters who did when they were kids and it would be just wrong not to make this available if it works. We don't know yet if it works. We know it's working on ONE person, but that's all we--I--know so far. But since Shingles has no medicine with which to treat it, if this works, fantastic.
   So get in touch if you know someone who is suffering from this. Email me via my website, pgorman.com (the contact is there) and we'll go from there. I'll provide it free as long as I have it.

Ladies and Gentlemen! Adventurers of All Ages!

 

Ladies and Gentlemen! Adventurers of all Ages!

Announcing the 2017 Tour Dates for the Gorman Jungle Jaunts!

January 2017

Saturday, Jan 21, through the morning of Monday, Jan 30

February 2017

Saturday Feb, 4, through the morning of Monday, Feb 13

June 2017

Saturday, June 17, through the morning of Monday, June 26

July 2017

Saturday, July 1, through the morning of Monday, July 10

Looking for a dozen intrepid seekers for each of the Jaunts. Looking for people who want to see and be in deep Amazon jungle; people who want to experience ayahuasca and the Matses’ medicines Sapo and Nu-nu in their natural settings; people who don’t mind dirt under their fingernails if they get it because they were walking in high canopy jungle or in a primordial swamp or collecting wild foods or even making clay pots. I’m looking for people who want to collect the medicines they’ll use and watch their preparation, people who would rather participate than observe and be served. I want a small group of curious people, humans interested in their personal growth, in the spirit world, in the Northwest Amazon as it is today but may not be tomorrow. I want people who see bathing in the beautiful Aucayacu river as an opportunity, not as a poor substitute for a hot shower; people who view the chance to eat a few local magic mushrooms while traveling overnight on a flat-bottomed river boat on the Amazon as a once in a lifetime thrill, and see night canoeing in dugouts while searching for medicine frogs a rare and wonderful opportunity. In other words, I want anyone who sees living as a bit of a risk but one worth taking.

   And if you join, my team—which will outnumber the guests—and the medicines and the jungle and the rivers and I will all work our collective asses off to give you something you’ll hold onto for a very long time. The medicines will astound you, the people will thrill you, the jungle will amaze you. So what are you waiting for? Drop me a line at peterg9@yahoo.com or head over to the pgorman.com website for more info, photos, and an idea of the trip itinerary and costs.

Leftovers Anyone?

So I was cleaning up my fridge to make room for some fresh stuff--just in case anyone in my family stops by, I keep it full and fresh, and Italo did stop by yesterday, and then Chepa this morning--when I realized I was getting up there in left overs. This is what I have in the fridge, all good, nothing spoiled. I think I'm cooking for more than one...
    There was a nice bowl of hot sausage, peppers, onions, tomatoes, and garlic. Good over rice or in an Italian sausage sandwich. Put that in a hero (that's bread), cover with a little tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese, put that in the oven till the cheese is done and you're in New York heaven.
    There were two baked chicken legs. Good for eating cold, heated up, chopped up into a salad. Anyway you like 'em
    There were three roasted chicken thighs. Originally meant over couscous with spinach and a salad, they're now good for burritos, the meat cut off and sauteed with a homemade barbeque for a pulled chicken sandwich, or turned into a chicken salad sandwich with scallions, mayo, and celery. Or that same salad stuffed into an avocado half for an Avocado Queen.
    There is one pork chop left from last night, sauteed, then baked, with some good saurkraut.
    There are two pieces of chicken parmesana, both with good fresh mozzarella and a nice tomato sauce. Could be heated up and had for dinner.
    There are two half-ribeye steaks, because I just can't eat 12 ounces of meat at a sitting anymore and I bought two last week. Both are medium rare, topped with onions, and still look like they'd tickle your throat and please your taste buds no end.
    A small bowl of coleslaw, homemade, that I made to go with the first of those two ribeyes.
    So tonight, I'm making shrimp. I've got a pound of 10-15s, so about 14 shrimp. I'm gonna make couscous--pretty instant--with fresh garlic and then make it spanish tasting with achiote and cilantro. The shrimp will be sauteed in garlic and olive oil, with scallions, a diced red pepper, a diced poblano pepper, a diced tomato and a huge handful of spinach. I'll add some Peruvian achiote to that as well and I've got the shrimp shells on the stove--I already seared them blood red--in water with half-an-onion and a Roma tomato to make a bit of juice to keep the couscous moist.
   I'll probably have 5-6 shrimp. Which means that tomorrow I'll be putting 8 fantastic shrimp into a bowl in the fridge to sit alongside everything else in there. If any of it was rotten, I'd toss it. If it was even a littl bit off, I'd put it outside, in the ditch near the road for the birds and any other animals that want it. But when it's all still at the top of its game, I just can't bear to toss it.
   So if anybody is in the neighborhood, stop by for fresh shrimp or a smorgasbord of really good leftovers. Mange!

Feeling good again

I don't know why I was so crazy the other day, why I didn't fit into my own skin, couldn't breathe deeply, couldn't get relief from almost anything, but it seems to have passed. I'm feeling very strong today, feeling good. Just went to the store and forgot to buy hummingbird food so I just made some here--it's just sugar water, so not a problem, but I realized I was snubbing the hummingbirds by being so distracted by myself. Now they'll eat good again.
   I think human interaction and being needed is important to me. Whether it's needed as a dad or a writer or a jungle guide or friend, I get grounded by feeling useful, feeling that there is a spot for me. And I think sometimes I don't feel needed at all. If Madeleina's at school, my stories for the magazines are all caught up, no friends drop by--remember, we usually have a busy house with house guests, but have not had many the last couple of weeks--if Italo doesn't come by and Chepa doesn't stop by for coffee...well, I can go 36 hours without human contact beyond a store teller. And I think that's part of what had me so edgy, and I do mean edgy.
   Anyway, I'm okay now and hope it will last. Thank you all for putting up with my rant of a couple of days ago.

Not liking this feeling at all

Woke up this morning feeling a little bit off. Over the first few hours I was up, from 4 am till 7 am, that "little it off" moved into a shallow breathing, slightly frightened, slightly paranoid state. Now it's noon. I've eaten fruit, had water, been outside, took out garbage, showered, used my Peruvian medicines, and it's still there. I'm not liking this. Might be because I've simply been too alone recently, with Madeleina back at school and some family issues that have sort of occupied everybody else's time and left little time for dinner with me. Might be because I've caught up on all my work and am now faced with either getting back to trying to work on another book or simply being at loose ends. Whatever it is, I don't like it, and it's too hot to mow the lawn right now, though when I get to that I should start feeling better. Dang. I'm not liking this at all. Sorry for complaining, just had to reach out to you all because there are no other humans on my horizon this morning.

This is for you, and I mean, personally...

Okay, this is between you and me. And I’m talking to you. And you and me are in trouble.
There are about 300 million people in the USA who are not infants.
About 160 million of them are retired
That leaves 140 million to do the work.
85 million of those are in school,
Which leaves 55 million to do the work.
Of that there are 35 million employed by the federal government.
Which Leaves 20 million to do the work.
2.8 million of those are in the armed forces, preoccupied with killing terrorists,
Which leave 17.2 million to do the work.
Take from that the 15.8 million people who work for state and city governments.
That leaves 1.4 million to do the work.
On any given day there are 188,000 people in hospitals,
Which leaves 1.212 million to do the work.
Then there are 1, 211, 998 people in prisons and jails on any given day.
Which leaves just 2 people to do the work.
You and me.
And there you are, sitting on your ass, staring at your computer,
Reading jokes.
Nice, Real Nice.

PS: This is copied from someone much smarter and more clever than I am, but it was nearly impossible to resist posting here. And since I'm weak, I gave in to the temptation... PG

Quick thought on an opinion piece I read

Very short but good opinion piece in the Huffington Post today that asks the question of why are news outlets screaming for Hillary Clinton to disassociate herself from the Clinton Foundation--or to shut it down completely--because it looks like it has the potential for a conflict of interest with foreign donations, while the same news outlets are not calling for Donald Trump to disassociate himself from the Trump organization? Very valid. Hillary Clinton--love her or hate her--is simply held to a completely different standard than other people. She makes no money from the A-rated Clinton Foundation, no salary, nothing, and everyone who knows anything acknowledges that the foundation is doing wonderful work in difficult areas, including AIDS, water, and women's rights among other things. And she said she will separate from the foundation if she's elected president. Bill Clinton has chimed in that if Hillary is elected the foundation will not accept any foreign donations while she is president. Bill will also disassociate from the foundation. I'm not sure about Chelsea, whom many people claim makes a huge salary from the foundation but actually., like her parents doesn't make a cent.
The Trump Organization, is strictly a money-maker. And while Donald has railed about the Clinton Foundation taking money from Saudi Arabia (our political ally, by the way), he is not holding himself to task for taking many millions from...yes, Saudi Arabia. And a number of other Middle-Eastern countries. His son Donald, Jr. has said that the Trump Organization also gets a lot of money from the Russians; we know Trump is in deep debt (maybe not for a billionaire but at least to the tune of a few hundred million) to the Chinese, and so forth.
Here's the thing: If the Clintons step away from the Clinton Foundation, the people actually running it will continue to do so and the good work will continue to get done. If Trump does as he said he will and turns the Trump Organization over to his children, he'll still be making money from that Organization and that organization will continue to do business with China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and so forth--with all profits going to Mr. Trump and his family.
I agree with the writer of the op ed piece: It's time for Trump to be held to the same standard as Hillary Clinton.

Nice Phone Call from My Kid

Nice phone call from my oldest, Italo, this morning. It was about 7 AM so I figured it to be Chepa but no, it was Italo. He'd been over yesterday and got my riding mower working after two or three years and then attacked the one section of yard I have not gotten to since the rains stopped--the section over the bridge on the hill by the chicken coop--which, by the way, needs major work to be operational again!!!!
     Anyway, not to be outdone, I had a couple of glasses of wine (a cabernet named 337--not bad at all), then got the push mower going and redid the very front lawn--just done last week, but we've had a couple of night rains so it has been growing fast--and then the section of lawn between the telephone poles and the drainage ditch off the road. That last is a bit of a pain and I decided to get the whole 10' by 150' piece of it done.
   Anyway, before the mowing I started a simple tomato sauce: Lots of garlic in good olive oil, a large, freshly chopped red onion, a good vine-ripened tomato. Once that was done I tossed in a jar of organic tomato sauce (about $2.48, I think it's Bertolli), cracked black pepper and sea salt. I loostened it with organic vegetable broth and put it on low. Near the time I was ready to use it, I put in a good three or four tablespoons of grated parmesan cheese to give it a bite.
   Later, after the lawn mowing and another glass of that 337 Cabernet Sauvignon, I sliced 3 half- chicken breasts in half, so I had six portions of meat, then breaded them and sauteed them and seared them in a bit of that olive oil with garlic.
   I transferred them to a glass baking dish, covered them in the sauce and topped them with fresh mozzarella cheese and threw them in the preheated oven at 350 degrees.
  While they baked I made a good bunch of steamed broccoli florets and then a nice romaine salad with tasty blue cheese I crumbled into bits and served that with my balsamic vinagrette for me and  organic ranch for Italo and his daughter, my granddaughter, Taylor Rain. No starch.
   The meal was definitely tasty. I haven't made chicken parmesan for a few months now--just too hot in the summer for it, right?
  So we ate and watched some Seinfeld, then they left and I washed some dishes, read a bit of news on the net and went to bed.
   I managed to sleep pretty good--thank you, spirits--and got up at 6. Then Italo's call came at 7.
   "Hey pops, you okay?"
   "Sure, buddy, what's up?"
   "I just want to say thanks for that dinner last night. That was fucking delicious!"
   "You're welcome, no sweat."
   "The thing is, I woke up feeling so good because of it. My whole body feels great! Thanks, pops!"
  I think he and Sarah and Taylor eat pretty well at their house. I don't know if they go out of their way to make the broccoli or would add the fresh ingredients to the tomato sauce, or buy an organic tomato sauce or the fresh mozzarella. Most people wouldn't. The same meal would still taste great without that stuff. But with it, and then the salad as well, my kid's body felt so good he had to call me to let me know. And that's cool. The phone call was cool, but even more cool was being reminded that fresh food can do wonders for the human body.
    Thanks for the reminder, buddy.

Not sleeping a whole lot

Well, I'm not sleeping a whole lot lately. The last few years I tend to sleep at my desk or at a table, sitting up, then, when I wake enough to realize I'm sleeping--or close to it--I head for the couch I sleep on. I can grab an hour there, then back to the desk, then back to the couch. In the end I get maybe 2-3 hours of sleeping horizontally and the rest sitting up. Not great for keeping my ankles looking like kankles!
   But the last week, well, I've been getting up at 3:30 or so--last night was 2:37--and cannot go back to sleep at all. I've been making coffee at 4 AM and sometimes that works to focus my mind so that I can grab an extra hour--if I only have half a cup (and I make it half-regular/half-decaf) probably akin to the way add drugs cause you to focus.
  Think is, I don't know why I'm not sleeping. Even if it's half sitting up, I can generally put my head on my arms and go out quickly and pretty much stay sleeping for a couple of hours at a clip.
  And a night like last night, a 2:37 wake up, well that makes for a very long night. Darn it. Once in a while I'll take a shot of cough syrup or the over the counter sleep-eze caps, but I don't like being dependent on those so I keep that to once in a while. Aaarrrrrgggghhhhh! This not sleeping makes for huge bags under my eyes and my brain is not as quick as it should be.
  C'est la vie, but I'm not digging it.

Just come in from lawn mowing

So I've just come in from lawn mowing. I'm drenched. Took a shower this morning, worked, got ready for a ceremony tomorrow--a friend coming over for San Pedro--visited with a friend who came by, went to one of Alexa's 3 soccer games today--she's fast but hesitant; if Italo got six hours with her she'd be great--and then had some wine and went to mow the lawn directly behind the house.
   Now I'm not having fun mowing the lawn this week. I mowed when I returned from Peru in late July; but then Chepa and me and Chepa's babies Sierra and Alexa went to Mexico to get our teeth done (http://www.fwweekly.com/2016/08/24/best-root-to-mexico/) and that became, somehow, a cover story, and then it rained for nine days, and so I had a couple of weeks of no lawn mowing while the grass kept growing.
   So the last few days I've attacked it. I first attacked a back portion, about 60 feet by 90 feet which abuts two small bridges over the "sometimes" creek and involves mowing around a large tree that lightning just knocked over and lots of poison ivy. I dont' think I'm allergic to it but it still is a pain.
   Then three days ago I attacked the beautiful large front lawn: 160 feet by 40 feet with end tables of 20 by 30 and 50 by 50. By the time I got done with that--I'm using a push mower with front wheels that turn on their own--I was pooped.
   Then two days ago I attacked the very front lawn, not large, maybe  50 by 50 with a 12 by 30 side bit and everything was looking good.
   Today I hit the lawn behind the house. That's 80 by 40. It's only 3,200 square feet but since that's where the gray water from our kitchen sink and laundry go, it grows fast. I mean that sucker, on the half I did today, probably averaged 15 inches high, which is way too high for a push mower. And after the nine days of rain, even though we've had sun the last couple/few days, was freaking wet. So I attacked it and stepped into two fire ant colonies I didn't see. I've got about 500 bites on my ankles, calves and thighs. I've poured Gorman's Jungle Juice After Sting all over them, so the pain is subsiding a great deal, but I didn't have my magic juice while working so just dealt with it. Man, those little bums can lay a sting on you. And now I've got to rake the part I mowed because there's clumps of cut grass everywhere that will burn the grass' roots if they're not taken up.
  So I'm taking this minute to tell you that. I'm soaked in sweat, I'm nearly eaten alive, but I beat the worst of it. HA! Ain't life grand? You don't need to look far to find a cause. Cause there's always something to do right near where you are.

Oy, vey! If I wasn't already near death, I'd be having a heart attack!

So a great friend paid me some funds he'd borrowed. Man, it was great to have them. Thanks. And then either the same day he said he was paying me back or maybe the next day, my house air conditioning unit went out. Now I'm from New York and never had AC in my life. But we always had plenty of fans. And we never had Texas' summer heat where it routinely hits 105 and often feels hotter than that. So to have the AC go out here, well, it makes it hard to get a good night's sleep, hard to focus on my work, hard to keep smiling.
    But I got this extra money, right? And how much could repairing a 3 1/2 ton AC unit be?
    Even better, I had a 10-year parts warranty on the thing and it's only seven years since I bought it. Hooray!
    Except that the guy changing the thing out said that when a compressor goes bad, the gas in it goes bad as well, so I need new freon, about 8 1/2 pounds of it at the good price of $62.50 a pound.
   And the labor is not included.
   Price tag: $1100 and change.
   Damnit.
   If I wasn't already almost dead I'd be having a heart attack!
   I'm not really near dead. I'm actually doing well. My lawn looks great. Went to Mexico with Chepa and her girls, Sierra and Alexa and got dental work done last week. Madeleina passed her driving test and now has a license--if only I can get the new (old) 2003 Ford Mustang I got for her registered. Seems previous owner can't find the title. Don't worry, there are bonded titles and I'm working on one, which will allow me to circumvent not having a title.
   And I got the funds, which was great.
  It's just that $1100 AC fix that irks me. Although I must say, it was nice of the Universe to keep the thing running until the check was in the mail. That is a good thing, eh?
   So I guess that makes everything okay.
   Hope you all are having wonderful days too, only without the repairs needeed!!!!!

Gonna rail about something here

Okay, so I'm back from Peru, back from 3 days in Mexico to get dental work done for me, Chepa, Sierra and Alexa--good work, inexpensive, fast, with lots of good food and a couple of beers tossed in as a bonus in Nuevo Progresso--back from north Texas where Madeleina and I had to go to do some interviews and get some photos for an upcoming cover story. I'm back and I'm exhausted.
   So today there's a new report that just came out in the September issue of the Obstetrics and Gynecology that shows that pregnancy related deaths in Texas have doubled since 2011, the same year that Texas cut 66 percent of its budget for family planning funds, which resulted in 82 family planning centers, including a lot of Planned Parenthood centers, to shut down.
   Did you get that? The pro-life crowd tried to eliminate abortion centers and the collateral damage was that women had available pregnancy services dramatically cut, causing deaths to mothers during both pregnancy and childbirth to shoot up more than 50 percent. And it shot up the first year those cuts were made, from 72 deaths during pregnancy and childbirth in 2010 to 148 in 2012, the year the cuts were felt.
   The pro-life crowd? The same crowd that crowed loud and long about Obamacare Death Panels--which only existed when insurance companies were allowed to cut people off from care prior to Obamacare--screamed long and loud about needing to help poor women bring their fetuses to term by cutting the funding for pregnancy care, which has killed a lot of them.
   Good job if what you really meant was "we hate poor people and people of color and we want to see them die."
   I could go on, but I'd probably have a heart attack.

A little something about illegal workers

I just read something about illegals that made my blood boil. It was in the comment section of the Miami-Herald and the writer was disparaging illegal workers. His comment was basically that illegal workers pay sales tax and that was it. I don't generally comment on the Miami-Herald site but had to. The fellow obviously has no idea of how illegal laborers work here in the US.
Typically, an illegal worker gets hold of a quality copy of a real social security card, and with that can build the rest of his/her paperwork: Driver's license, bank cards, and so forth. But that person will then pay federal, state, and local taxes; they'll also pay into social security and medicare. But they will not be able to get a refund from the feds or state or utilize social security or medicare because the initial social security card is not their own. So the illegal workers are pouring billions and billions into federal, state, local taxes, social security and medicare and not getting anything in return for that. It's just gone. On top of that they pay gasoline taxes like we all do whenever we buy gas for our cars, they pay sales taxes, car registration and inspection fees and so forth. Oh, and they buy houses and cars and televisions and all the stuff the rest of us buy, keeping the economy going.
Additionally, a huge percentage of the illegal worker population take jobs that nobody else will do: roofing, road construction (not the cushy supervisor jobs, the ones working with the hot tar during Texas summers), motel and hotel cleaning, gardening, fruit and vegetable picking, chicken and fish farm work. Pretty tough and wretched jobs. So they're really a vital cog in how we live.
Why do they take the awful jobs and risk deportation and jail? For some it's because they imagine that their children will fare better for their hard work in a land with more opportunity than much of Mexico and Central America. For others it's a way to earn US dollars to send back home so that their families can start a business there. For still others it's a way to escape the violence of the drug wars raging in much of Mexico and Central America (which you already know are US-fueled because we love our drugs here).
In my book the illegal workers are to be celebrated not denigrated.

Oy Vey! Gone again!

Oy vey, I'm gone again! Off to Peru, but this time with a twist: I've got a June trip and a July trip, neither full, unfortunately, but instead of staying down there between trips, I'm gonna sneak home for a couple of weeks. Why? A few reasons: First, my Madeleina goes back to college in early August and if I don't come back till the end of the second trip I'll hardly have any time with her. Then there is the matter of my legs: Since I tend to have severe apnea down there, I generally sleep sitting up in a chair, leaning my head on my arms on my desk. I love sleeping that way but if I do it for days--or weeks--my legs blow up enormously from basic force of gravity. And when they blow up the skin cracks, leaving me open to infection. And since I don't want any more leg infections, coming home and sleeping while laying down is a good option to beat that. I'm also gonna buy a couple of extra pillows so that I'll have a better chance at sleeping while semi-laying down than no chance at all. Pretty boring stuff. Sorry. When it's time to go my life is just a bunch of details.
    On the other hand, I'm gonna make these two trips fantastic things for the guests. I think my team is geared up and ready; I've sent lots of stuff up the river to camp already and I am stoked. Leave DFW tonight at 10:20 PM, arrive in Lima at 5:40 AM, then hit Iquitos tomorrow morning by about 10:45 AM. My room at the oldest hotel in Iquitos--no running water, unfortunately--is ready, my stuff is packed and just waiting for a last going-over before I seal it all up. If I have time I'll mow some lawn this afternoon to burn off nervous energy.
   But just to leave you with something, here's my newest column of Drug War Follies for Skunk Magazine. It's my 94th column for them, which is cool. I hope they keep me on till I hit 100, and then keep me on after that just for fun. Here it is. Have a great couple of weeks. I'll write from Iquitos if I can get my Ipad back from Chepa...

DRUG WAR FOLLIES

On any given day, reading the headlines is enough to make you question the humanity of humanity

By Peter Gorman

Today started out like most days: The cats started scratching at the couch I sleep on at about 5:30 AM to let me know I damned well ought to quit sleeping and get them fed. I ignored them as long as possible; when I finally got up I put them outside without food—nobody gets fed before I have coffee—and made myself some coffee. While it was brewing I brushed my teeth, took a shower and put on clean clothes.

     I said a big HELLO to the universe, thanked the powers that be that I didn’t die or kill anyone in my sleep, then sat down to my computer. I checked my email accounts—nothing too dramatic—checked to see if I’d sold a few books during the night—I love finding out I’ve sold several of my Ayahuasca or Sapo books while I slept—and then I opened the New York Daily News, the paper I used to read regularly for most of the 50 or so years I lived in New York city. It’s a working class paper, a blue collar paper that’s long on sports and local news, short on the heavier New York Times’ stories that I have never been able to dive into before a couple of cups of Joe.

    And you know, like a lot of other days, the headlines screamed wretched stuff from both New York and the Southwest: I guess their computer can read that my computer is now just south of Fort Worth, in Texas, so it includes a few stories from around here in tailoring the page to my locale. Anyway, these were in the headlines: Police looking for a guy who shot and killed another guy in the Bronx; a Mexican soccer star, Alan Pulido, was kidnapped in Tamaulipas, Mexico; a Georgia sheriff’s deputy was shot in the face while making a routine traffic stop; a biker got pissed off in a Queens, New York road-rage incident and shot the driver of a car through his window three times (driver stable, biker on the loose); vandals defaced military memorials in both California and Virginia; two men killed after being hit by trains in New York in separate incidents; three people shot at a fraternity barbeque in the Bronx; two dogs tied up and burned to death in Pennsylvania; a woman went crazy and stabbed another woman 48 times—killing her really, really dead—at a YWCA in Brooklyn, New York; ISIS and Syrian opposition fighters clashed in Northern Syria; 30 men in Brazil being sought for the gang rape of a 15-year-old. Oh, and a council in Pakistan clarified that men are perfectly allowed to beat their wives “lightly” if they didn’t do as they were told.

    Okay, there were a couple of stories about rescued puppies; a fireman who just got ordained as a priest; a good story about a couple of teachers really reaching out to tough-luck kids and having an impact on their lives. And there was sports, of course, and some opinion pieces about the upcoming U.S. presidential election and so forth.

    But most of the headlines were about how badly people treat each other and I’m probably starting to sound like a harpy on the issue, but what the fuck is wrong with people? Someone cuts you off in traffic you have to try to kill them? Have an argument over music and you have to stab somebody 48 times? 30 freaking grown men rape a 15 year old girl? WTF is going on in this world? And these stories are just the tip of the iceberg: What’s going on in Los Angeles? What horrible things happened in Toronto or Vancouver or Miami? How many people felt the urge yesterday, to hurt or kill other people or to kill themselves by stepping in front of trains? How many freaking refugees drowned trying to make it across the Mediterranean yesterday trying to get away from a war they want no part of?

   Were we always like this? I don’t think so. Maybe we were but without the internet we didn’t immediately access dozens of news stories from around the country and around the world. But it sure feels like I got to ask the question: Is there any humanity left in humanity?

    Couldn’t we all just smoke a nice organic outdoor bud—Cali Orange if you’re rolling for me, please—and talk our problems out? I know that sounds silly, but almost nobody goes ape-shit after they take a couple of tokes. It’s just the nature of the plant. It’s why the freaking beautiful cannabis plant was put here by the aliens to begin with! They knew we were crazy and wanted to give us something that would grow all over the world that would chill us out.

    The great folk musician and writer Tom Paxton wrote Talking Vietnam Potluck Blues in 1971. In it he talks about being a soldier in Vietnam. I don’t know if Paxton was ever actually in Vietnam but he was in the military at the right (wrong) time for it. Anyway, in it, the soldier is on a long patrol with several other soldiers and as they bed down for the night he smells pot.

    “I might be crazy but I think not.

    I’d swear to God that I smell pot.

    But who’d have pot in Vietnam?

    [The captain] said ‘What do you think you’re sitting on?’

    These funny little plants, thousands of them.

    Good God Almighty…Pastures of Plenty.”

So the patrol lights up, the captain gets a smile on his face and begins cleaning his rifle while chanting Hare Krishna. Well, our hero finally has to go pee and when he moseys off from the makeshift camp he runs into a Viet Cong soldier dressed in black. The soldier tells our hero that the Cong smelled the dope and thought it was trash, so he brought the Americans some top-flight Hanoi Gold.

   The two squads then get together and smoke, get high, and do not kill each other. And the captain finally gets on the radio and calls in to headquarters with this message: “Hello, headquarters. We have met the enemy and they have been smashed!”

   It was a beautiful little song—go look it up and give it a listen—that was just made up, but the message rings true. If you smoke with your enemy, you won’t be enemies. If you smoke alone, you won’t want to see others as enemies. If you just freaking take a couple of tokes you might even wind up loving your neighbor’s music, rather than having to stab her 48 times because you hate it so much.

   Silly, right? But right on: This plant can save the world if only we’d let it.

It would all be funny if people weren’t dying and the prisons weren’t full.

Chicken Catastrophe

Well, that chicken cacciatore I was making turned into a chicken catastrophe. I just didn't pay enough attention, had too much liquid in there and by the time it cooked down enough to be a sort of soupy-sauce the chicken had fallen off the bones and so every bite had little bones  you had to watch out for, and the chicken itself had lost it's juiciness and flavor. Have not blown a meal like that in ages, but I did last night. Oy, vey! Pay more attention, Gorman!!!

What are we eating around here? Great food, of course!

Well, just because I have not been writing does not mean I have not been eating. I have already admitted to being in a funk. Medical testing and anticipation of bad shit can do that. But since everything seems okay, that means the problem is me. That means fat and smoking. The fat is brought on by drinking wine (I stopped hard liquor, my 3 minis of bourbon a day back in early Feb). My cigarettes I've cut from 3 packs to under 1 1/2 packs. Still too much, but better, way better, than it was. A friend was over recently and when I didn't smoke for a while i said that except for a couple of hours a day I was keeping it to one cigarette per hour. He laughed and said he'd seen me smoke a pack in an hour on many occasions. He was right. So that's out.
   And except for the occasional hot sandwich on fresh sesame seed French bread--with the insides of the bread pulled and tossed--neither Madeleina nor I have had pasta, bread, or rice more than once a week since February and not more than twice a week since last October or so. We just quit it and put a salad and/or extra veggie in its place.
   Which doesn't mean we're not eating well: This week we had shrimp and a small piece of salmon on a bed of spinach--sauce made of garlic, a bit of sesame oil, diced tomatoes, onions, daikon radish, and scallions.
   Another night we had lime chicken: Chicken lightly breaded (oops!) in a mix of bread and parmesan, sauteed till golden, then doused with fresh lime juice and baked till done. Had that with steamed broccoli and cauliflower.
    Another night we split a prime rib seared in garlic and a bit of olive oil and served with a melange of steamed zucchini, yellow squash, onion, garlic, broccoli, cauliflower.
    Last night it was hot sausage (10 ounces for 3 people) boiled (with holes in it to eliminate most fat) then sauteed with onion, sliced red and green peppers, and tomatoes, served on--you guessed it--a bed of sauteed spinach with garlic.
    The peppers got to me, so tonight, a cool, damp, day here in bucolic Joshua, Texas, I'm making Chicken Cacciatore. It's an old Italian favorite that my Irish father Tom used to love making. I'll cut a whole chicken in pieces, with bone, then saute the pieces in good olive oil. I'll set them aside and in the left over olive oil I'll saute lots of fresh garlic, two onions, scallions,  three red and green peppers--rough cut, large pieces--and 12 Roma tomatoes. To that I'll add fresh rosemary (thanks to my friend Mike, who brought it yesterday), fresh basil I just bought, Peruvian oregano, and a bit of thyme. When those are all going good I'll add the left-over of yesterday's wine--about a cup. When it's all working I'll put the chicken pieces back in the deep roasting pan, add two cups of low sodium organic chicken broth and cook for an hour or so, until the tomatoes have made a sauce of themselves.
    That should normally be served over pasta or boiled potatoes (my father's Irish prefence). I'm not sure what I'll serve it on. I do have half-a-head of cauliflower that I could put in the oven for 45 minutes to bake and then cut it into pieces and serve the cacciatore over that. We'll see.
    Just letting you know that though I've been in a funk, we ain't dead yet.
    And yes, I've been kicking ass with the lawn. I figure I'm using the electric push mower to cut about 6,000 square feet a day. Maybe a little more. Every day except if it's raining. And then I'm walking a lot daily too, and eliminating weeds from all over this yard. So yeah, I think I'm losing a few pounds. Still fat, but not bordering on freaking obese! Ye gods! How did that happen???????
     And I hope that all of you are eating something fantastic today as well. Cooking is a great meditation on being part of the whole shebang--don't mean to sound new-agey here, but I really do think it's an important part of my day, the time when I consider each veggie, each condiment, each meat or fish or bean or eggs. And when I do that, I forget me, and that's good meditation.

I am going to own up...

I am going to own up to you guys/gals who actually read this blog. It's been nearly two months. I was undergoing a lot of tests that were supposed to prove that I was dying. I didn't like it. I passed the tests. It turns out, against my doctors ideas, that I't have diabetes, heart disease, COPD, plaque or anything else. In other words, despite smoking 3 packs a day for 40 years, my lungs are pretty clear. Despite drinking two bottles of wine a night for 15 years, my kidneys and liver are fine. Look like 35 year old stuff according to my doc, who thinks I might have paid to have the tests done in my favor.
   So I've been a little worried about the results. And that's put me in a funk. Who wants to write when the docs are saying you're dying in 3 weeks? Not me. All I'm trying is to get my affairs in order before I go.
   But then I don't think I'm going anywhere. I think these docs don't know anything. I'm sitting in a very unusual place: I'm not here nor there. I'm not strong or weak. I'm not honest or a liar.
    I hope I can be better for you all tomorrow.--PG

'Scaredy Cat Gorman

I think I mentioned that when I hit 65 recently I got Medicare health insurance. It's the insurance pool every worker in the US has paid into every week since its initiation. You know the one: The one the politicians call an entitlement. Sure: Pay in since 1971 or so, whenever it started, and then collect in 2016, and after 45  years worth of paying into the system, it's an entitlement, rather than an earned benefit.
    Okay, I'll stop the politics before I get started, cause if I get started, I ain't gonna stop.
    As soon as I got the insurance, my surgeon, the fantastic Dr. Ford from Huguley Hospital recommended a full check up. All was good, despite years of abusing myself with cigarettes, coffee, alcohol, jungle trips, being a dad and all the rest. Except for this little nodule--swear to god that's what they call it--in my lower left lung. Naturally, I panicked and looked it up on the Internet: Turns out it could be anything from a coffee stain on the hospital gown I was wearing during the X-ray, to a little nothing, to cancer. But Gritter, my Alabama doc, said not to sweat it. Given the size and location and the fact that I've had several illnesses and conditions that facilitate the formation of nodules in the lungs, it was surprising that I didn't have more.
    But the doc in Texas, Doc Thomas, he needed a CT scan to be certain.
    Today was the day for it.
     Not saying I'm not nervous and that I wasn't a little nervous going up to the place where they do the CT scan. What if it's something bad? Yes, I'm a little nervous.
    But things fell apart in the CT room.
    A CT (pronounced cat) scan machine is like a huge donut into which a bed is fitted that slides in and out of the donut hole. The patient lies on the bed and the part of the body that needs to be scanned gets slid in electronically so that the scan can be done. When they did it on my leg just prior to operating on it for the debridement of the dead material from the flesh eating bacteria, it was no big deal: Slide me in up to my thigh, take the pics/scans, pull me out.
    Today was different. Today I was having my lungs looked at, which meant that when I was slid into the donut I was going pretty far into it: Like, far.
    The machine operator was a peach. She needed to take a blood sample to check that I'd be good for an intravenous injection of iodine so that after the initial CT scans they could take an additional scan with the iodine creating bright contrast. No problem. I've had so many injections, intravenous drips and so forth in the last 5 years I don't even notice them.
    But then she had me lie down--I insisted on pillows under my head so I wouldn't totally freak out from needing to cough--and ran me into the machine to check position and so forth. Then she had me raise my arms and put them over my head so that I wouldn't bump the machine with my elbows or block the scans. Well, I had no idea just how deeply I was going into that hole and how close the operator was going to raise that table, and my face, to the inside of the donut hole. I made the mistake of opening my eyes and realized I wasn't one inch from the machine. I swear I felt like I was in an Iron Lung. You know, the tube you saw pics of that allows a person to breathe but only their head sticks out for the rest of their lives. One of my childhood fears--one of my big ones, and I still have a deal with Chuck in NYC that if I ever get put into one, he has to pull the freaking plug instantly, even if that means going to jail forever. I'll do the same for him.
    So here I was, eyes open, arms unable to help, just like in an iron lung. I did my best. I swear I did my best but could not, NOT, stop from calling out to her and telling the operator to pull me out.
    She did. In a few moments I went in again.
    Again, utter panic and I asked to be pulled out.
   She did. I apologized and asked for a few minutes. What a chicken! I called myself every name in the book. I tell people all the time that frog sweat medicine will only terrify for the first 10 minutes and that they can do 10 minutes standing on their head. I tell people in the jungle that Ayahuasca will only last two or three hours and they can do that standing on their heads. And here I couldn't do 5 minutes in that damned machine.
    I breathed in and breathed out. After I stopped calling myself names, I thought about what was at stake: I've got a small nodule in my left lung. Probably nothing. But the docs and I need to know for sure. If I walked away from the CT scan, we wouldn't know for sure. And if it's something bad, it's vital to identify it as early as possible. So was I going to allow my terror, and it was abject terror to force me to have the operator pull me from the thing twice, keep me from knowing something my doctors and I needed to know?
    I finally said, "let's get it done," and lay back down.
    She slid me into the machine. I kept my eyes closed but could feel my breath hitting it nearly the moment it left my mouth. I just kept breathing. Then the machine told me to hold my breath and the first scan was done and I was slid out for just a moment before being slid back in for the second scan. And then the third. And then the iodine was pumped in and I had to sit there in the machine for 40 seconds for it to get to where it needed to go, and then the next scan and then I was done and she pulled me out and I sat. I nearly puked. I was so sick of my terrified behavior. Big tough guy? Not on your life. Little 'fraidy cat.
   The operator handed me a cold water and said she was glad that I got through it. She said that a lot of people don't. I'm not surprised.
   But I am glad that it got done. Now, good or bad, we'll know. And that's a good thing.