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ever feel like you've been hit with one of these?

As was my mode with such things, I let it go for a while, until the fact that It wouldn’t go away became more annoying than the pain itself.

“How long has this been bothering you?” my darling wife asked, when I told her about it.

“A month or so.”

“A MONTH? You’ve been in pain for a month and you didn’t SAY anything? Why not?” she demanded, in her darling, alarmed way (subtext: “I’m going to hurt you!”).

“I dunno,” was my perfectly lucid explanation.

I made an appointment to see a doctor. I can’t remember what kind of doctor he was, besides the “overweight with poor complexion” kind. I explained my pain, he gave me a cortisone shot, which hurt, and the original pain didn’t go away. Neither did his bills, which kept coming months after I had paid.

Mrs. Confucius say, 'Listen to your wife'

One day we were at a health food store that had a natural healing book section. For I-don’t-know-what reason, one on Chinese medicine caught my eye. On the cover was a map of the meridians (channels through which chi—“life force” flow).

On this map, I noticed a dot on the exact spot my leg hurt—right, outer, middle thigh—labeled “GB 31.” The index told me GB 31 corresponds to “Gall Bladder.”

“What does the gall bladder do?” I asked Mrs. Right, and showed her the meridian map.

“It processes fats.” I had been eating way too many fried foods lately, not eating enough water, and my tongue was black (a symptom which is only good if you’re a Chow Chow).

Furry Face, Black Tongue, No Potato Chips For You

• SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING: Smoking Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema, And May Complicate Pregnancy.
• SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING: Quitting Smoking Now Greatly Reduces Serious Risks to Your Health.
• SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING: Smoking By Pregnant Women May Result in Fetal Injury, Premature Birth, And Low Birth Weight.
• SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING: Cigarette Smoke Contains Carbon Monoxide.

The implication is that if you go ahead and smoke anyway you basically don’t care about your health, the health of your unborn children, or the fact that you’re essentially committing suicide by the equivalent of sucking on a smoking automobile tailpipe. And don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Maybe cigarette companies will continue to rack up profits, but their customers must now claim a higher degree of willful ignorance than ever before.

Speaking of warning labels, it’s always annoyed me how herb and vitamin companies must put similar boilerplate on their products—many of which have genuinely beneficial properties and have been in use by health practitioners since before recorded history:

“These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.”

What I’ve often wondered—considering the ubiquity of this statement on health food shelves everywhere—is what is the FDA doing with their time? Why isn’t someone there evaluating some of these herbs and vitamins, instead of endlessly printing up helpful labels for things like bottled water, helpfully informing us that water has essentially zero nutritional value (forget about the fact that you’ll die if you don’t drink it) but that Wacky Fruit Friends snacks has twenty percent of the U.S. Recommended Daily Allowance of Vitamin C, which is full of antioxidants?

What really bugs me now, though, is this: why is it that herbs that have been in use for thousands of years—and are known all over the world for their specific therapeutic usefulness to the human body—must by law be labeled in the above manner, but any yahoo can now boldly label their products “Anti-Aging”—in large print, without any FDA caveat—even though everyone knows that you can’t stop time, and that aging and death are therefore 100% inevitable?

I strongly suggest that all companies who wish to boldly declare that their skin creams and such have “Anti-Aging” properties must similarly inform their prospective customers about the outrageously misleading nature of their “Anti-Aging” claims. Something along the lines of:

“This product has not yet been shown to have any significant or insignificant effect on slowing, stopping, or otherwise affecting the passage of time in any way, shape, or form. No laboratory testing has ever demonstrated that the human body’s inevitable natural aging process can be counteracted even slightly by the application of any manner of chemical compound found in any commercially or privately available skin care product. The purchaser fully assumes all responsibility for being labeled a fool, booby, sap, imbecile, cretin, dullard, simpleton, moron, clod, nitwit, halfwit, dope, ninny, nincompoop, chump, dimwit, dingbat, dipstick, goober, coot, goon, dumbo, dummy, ditz, dumdum, fathead, numbskull, numbnuts, dunderhead, thickhead, airhead, flake, lamebrain, zombie, nerd, peabrain, birdbrain, jughead, jerk, donkey, twit, goat, dork, twerp, schmuck, bozo, boob, turkey, schlep, chowderhead, dumbhead, goofball, goof, goofus, doofus, galoot, lummox, klutz, putz, schlemiel, meatball, dumb cluck, and dumbass by the rest of thinking society.”

Better to chant Hare Krishna mantra.

So many events like that come and go, and I don’t immediately go and write them down. All I’m left with, in such situations, are laments like this one, where I keenly regret not having captured some transcendental gem in Microsoft Word.

Do our “own” ideas actually originate with us anyway? Is there anything we can genuinely claim the copyright on? If so, then why the hell are we stumped when it comes to coming up with good ideas so much of the time?

Today I heard an NPR podcast about the Talking Heads song “Once In A Lifetime.” The vocal was the very last part they wrote. The band had the basic groove, which they thought was cool, but no lyrics at all. They came close to dropping it from the album because the producer wasn’t even into it.

David Byrne said, “There was a motion to just abandon this one, but I thought there was something about this that I thought ‘I’m sure I could write words to this that would make it work, that would pull it together.’” Then Brian Eno (the producer) came up with the melody for the chorus, and Byrne started building on that.

No one involved with the making of that record said anything like, “oh, yeah, I simply willed that song into existence, and it came deliberately and fully-formed from my mind.”

Any artist knows there’s a certain amount of shooting in the dark going on. If you fire enough ammo, you’re bound to bring down some game. By “ammo” I mean you know there’s something there, or you have faith that something is there, you don’t know exactly what it is, and all you have is the little trigger of your mind that keeps firing, firing, firing.

My prayer lately? “Please give me the necessary whatever to do what I feel I have to do. Without Your help, Your energy, Your mercy, I can’t do anything good.”

a. If so, then you are SAVED, meaning you are OK. You are not going to eternal hell to roast perpetually.
b. IF NOT, then you had better start believing, unless the idea of roasting perpetually appeals to you.

This “turn or burn” rationale always put me off. If God loves us the way you’d expect God to love us—with a love greater, more unconditional, and deep than any kind of love we can imagine—and the whole point of sending Jesus was to remind us that He loves us, why would such a loving person use threats of eternal torture to coerce us to love him back?

The whole “you’re going to hell” challenge is enough to make me fighting mad. Mad enough to suggest a similar destination to whomever’s cursing me to go there. And not even in such polite words. Or, in the words of Woody Allen, “be fruitful and multiply.”

If you look at what Jesus actually taught, it’s all about loving God. Surrendering to God. Serving God. He was teaching the same essential message of bhakti-yoga (devotional service to God) you’ll find in the Bhagavad-gita, or at the core of any genuine theistic spiritual tradition.

His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, founder of the Hare Krishna movement, stressed to all his followers (and anyone else who would listen) “Jesus Christ is our guru.” In fact, I’ve heard many statements to the effect that Prabhupada has inspired more Jews to become followers of Jesus than the Christian church has.

Here’s how I’ve been thinking about the exclusivity of “accepting Jesus:” Say you’re trapped somewhere. Somehow, someone is able to reach your precarious location. They tell you “I know the way out. You have to follow me. Do what I tell you.” You have to accept them. That’s all.

So I accept Jesus. No problem. What I don’t accept is people using Jesus as a loaded gun pointed to my head. Whoever you are, whenever and wherever you were born, whether you’ve even heard of Jesus or not, if you’re curious to know the underlying truth behind all things, you’ll be given the opportunity to find out. And when you do, you’ll have no problem accepting Jesus, either.

Eric G. Dailey
11/10/1983
Advanced Placement History

The Eating Habits of the Iroquois

Many have said that the best way to learn about someone is to go through their trash. Such is true of the Iroquois tribes, who once had dominance of all of New York State. Much can be learned from studies of the fossilized remains of the food scraps they so carelessly cast aside after a big meal. Most importantly, we find that our previous concepts of Iroquois Eating Habits have been mis-conceptions, hypotheses, and altogether bushwah, balderdash, and malarkey.

In the Minoa area alone there is, and has been unearthed much evidence as to the true nature of an Iroquois Shawuk, or feast, that leads us to believe it was a major part of their culture, a veritable spiritual, communal, and nutritional gathering to enjoy all the nutrition Mother Earth had to offer. And, in being such an all-involving ritual, the Shawuk was an involved process that took up much of the Iroquois’ time.

Part One: The Hunt

The Hendayah, or hunt, wasn’t as all-fire important to the overall well being of the Iroquois as most films and bum novels would like to have us think. In fact, under the vegetarian chief Mohet-Se in 1540, the hunt as an institution was completely abolished and anyone caught harming any of God’s little creatures had the hair in his nose removed by a very primitive, very painful electrolytic process which stigmatized the unfortunate recipient for life while making breathing not such a pleasant experience.

As far as the Hendayah went, the able-bodied braves of the tribe would simply venture forth into the forest and see what they could scare up in the way of game. Most of the time deer, wild boar, or ruffed grouse would be their quarry: which would be skinned and filleted on the spot and cleansed in the nearest unpolluted stream (yes-there was pollution-see Part Three: The Cleanup). Occasionally, of course, the hunters would stumble upon the occasional wild ram, bear, turkey flock, large woodchuck, herd of cattle, fox, vole, hamster, mole, meadow mole, meadow vole, pigeon, chicken, snake, “chicken snake,” moose, puma, tame boar, or fish.

Fishing, incidentally, was also an extremely popular method for trumping up “eats,” though quite different in practice from fishing today. The Iroquois had no monofilament line, outriggers, ‘trolling” motors, Rapala minnow-type lures with treble hooks, “Mr. Wiggly’s”, etc. No, these early Central New York anglers did without all of that. They constructed nets out of Weelamak, a new extinct species of Spanish moss, which they meticulously crocheted. These nets the Iroquois Nastaquai, or “Fish-gatherers” would cast into the water in fervent hopes of some fish swimming into them. Though mildly successful, these nets usually did a better job of frightening the poor fish away from the generally clumsy Nastaquai.

The Nephado-Nastaquai, however, were highly skilled, spiritual, technical, and artistic masters of obtaining fish. While the Nastaquai were upstream with their Weelamak nets, a Nephado-Nastaquai would blindfold himself, lie down on the bank of the stream—in a trance—and cradle an unsuspecting trout in his grasp. Yet they would not make any move to grab the fish-not yet. The man would slowly and hypnotically stroke the trout’s belly for hours, until it fell asleep; at which time, if he was still awake himself, the brave would snatch the fish out of the water and swallow it whole. This practice was later frowned upon after the discovery that a live, intact fish the size of a trout—if swallowed whole—can do a real job on one’s insides.

Part Two: the Feast

“Much as in a game of good bridge, the direction of flow was clockwise.”1 So said Major Thomas Stephens of the British army when, in 1745, he accidentally stumbled upon an Iroquois Shawuk in his sleep.

Inside each longhouse was a single, very long table at which each member of the longhouse would sit during the Shawuk or for religious or political gatherings. What Major Stephens was referring to, of course, was the procession of food from one place to another around the Iroquois Tehraneba, or “Table of Great Length.” It seems that circulation began with the women, then to the men, then to the old women, then to the old men, and finally to the children. “Iq hane rehtana defgupadi Shawuk quoe kande!”2 (By the time it got around to us kids, there was nothing left!)

The feast began at a signal from the leader of the longhouse, who would heft a handful of maize paste—the staple grain comestible of the Iroquois Nation—and utter an incantation that no one understood, not even him. After the signal had been given, the elders of the longhouse would similarly heft the maize paste, yet instead of the aforementioned incantation utterance, they would “ . . . proceed to inscribe a pattern of dots and stripes upon their mates’ foreheads with the paste, which varied from Shawuk to Shawuk.”3 After this display of good will, the actual eating would commence.

Part Three: The cleanup

The history books are a bit hazy in regard to the Iroquois sanitation process, yet we do know that it was carried out by a select few, and given nearly as much importance as the meal itself. The Panewohke, or “table cleaning,” it seems, was executed by a group of Pahtanegwaa, or “table cleaners” who were elected bimonthly. The Pahtanegwaa, highly skilled tribal sanitation workers, were said to have worn the Yuhngapas, or special deerskin mittens with which they would handle the partially eaten food. With this food they would carefully fill a series of Bananequas, large satchels made out of a coarse, burlap-like material. According to social standing, each Pahtanegwana would carry his own bundle to the nearest stream, where, at the command from the Pahtanegwana-Quansada, the leader of the Pahtanegwaa, they would all heave their respective bundles into the onrushing current. Whatever happened to leak out of the Bananequas or was left behind in the longhouse was swiftly disposed of by Keelewanas, or “rats.”

In Robert Myron’s Mounds, Towns, and Totems, he writes, “After supper, the children would often play with the Keelewanas, throwing them food and teaching them tricks.”4

Part Four: The Philosophy of the Iroquois in Regard to Eating

To the Iroquois, the Shawuk was more than just a meal. To them, it represented the culmination of a day’s toil. It symbolized the survival of the Indian Nation in its simple replenishment of the basic, essential nutrients of life. When they ate, they ate with their entire families, their friend, and they shared alike. They ate with such pleasure that to use utensils of any kind was an abomination. They considered utensil use “an alienation from the pure stuff of life,” from the bounty of Mother Earth. They ate “with their hands; not as savages, but lovingly, caressing and experiencing each scrap, until all was gone.” 5

They ate but one meal a day—the Shawuk—yet this singular event in the daily life of the Iroquois was more significant than it widely believed. It gave them a true sense of community, brotherhood, responsibility, and a taste of good cooking, above all.

Bibliographical Index
The American Indian in America, Jones, Jayne Clark, Minneapolis, The Lerner Co. 1973
The American Indian Today, Levine, Stuart, New York, Penguin books 1968
Great lakes Indians, Kubiak, William J. Bonanza Books 1970
“Handbook of the American Indian,” Hodge, Frederick W. Bureau of American Ethnicology, Washington 1971
History, Manners, and customs of the Indian Nations, Heckewelder, John G. E., Philadelphia 1953
Indians at Home, Hofsinde, Robert, New York, Morrow Co. 1964
Indians of the Longhouse, Bleeker, Sonia, Macmillan 1968
Mounds, Towns, and Totems, Myron, Robert, Cleveland World Publishing 1966
The Iroquois, Aston, Francis, New York, Random House 1974
My Experiences with the Iroquois, Markham, James Stanley, Philadelphia, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1967
Editor’s Note:
Where the pronunciation of some Iroquois dialect is disputed, the most widely recognized spellings are furnished.
“Mr. Wiggly” is a product of Garcia Fishing Lures, Inc.
Rapala is a registered trademark of the Rapala Corp.