From Chocolate to Morphine: Everything You Need to Know About Mind-Altering Drugs

BOOK REVIEW-FIVE STARS
From Chocolate to Morphine: Everything You Need to Know About Mind-Altering Drugs by Andrew Weil

Defining, describing, analyzing, cautioning, and comparing a wide spectrum of drugs along with many substances not normally considered as drugs. Fascinating, informative, and well written, everybody needs to be aware and this book delivers the message.
Excerpts:
Our purpose is not to encourage or discourage the use of any drug but rather to help people learn to live in a world where drugs exist and not get hurt by them.



We pay a high price today for our rejection of natural medicines in favor of potent chemicals. The tendency of pharmacologists and doctors to regard more potent drugs as better drugs encourages the use of dangerous derivatives of plants, when often the milder, natural originals would do as well.



It is clear that drug laws have done nothing to discourage people from becoming addicts. There are more addicts than ever, and the kinds of addiction are worse than before those laws were passed. The prohibition of opiates has spawned an ugly criminal underworld, given rise to powerful drug warlords, and led to the widespread corruption of public officials. Campaigns to stamp out heroin, while popular with politicians, have invariably had the opposite of their intended effect, ultimately causing more heroin to enter the world market, not less.

Rez Life: An Indian's Journey Through Reservation Life by David Treuer

BOOK REVIEW-Five Stars
Rez Life: An Indian's Journey Through Reservation Life by David Treuer
America’s ruthless history of “Manifest Destiny” with land free for the taking with Winchester repeating arms was unquestionably out and out genocide. This malevolent greed had no limit and was sold to the public as their inalienable right over savages.
This must read book is an honest look at America outside the bubble.
Excerpts:
I think it is safe to say that many Ojibwe would go back to using wooden spears and birch bark canoes if non-Natives simply fished with cane poles from shore, with bits of pork rind on the end of their hooks, only as far west as the Ohio River.



Tom Shingobee has in his possession a grocery receipt totaling seventeen dollars that his father had to settle by signing over his 160-acre farm. During World War I, when many of the men were away fighting in Europe, the timber stands were cut down by large timber outfits. One man remembers coming home to his beloved forests only to find a desert of slash and brush and not a tree in sight for miles.



In all, during the forty-seven years the Dawes Act was on the books (the Indian Reorganization Act, passed in 1934, officially stopped allotment but did not formally rescind the policy), Native Americans lost more than 90 million acres of tribal lands, about two-thirds of the lands held by Indians when the Dawes Act was passed; Indians lost, roughly, land that equals the size of the state of California. Ninety thousand Native Americans were left landless and largely homeless. The problems of this kind of landlessness were felt well into the 1970s and are still felt today. During that time, many Indian families were found to be living in cars, under porches, and crammed eight and sometimes ten to a room in dilapidated shacks across the country.

Travel complications 2019

Jane and John, Palma de Majorca, May, 2019

First let me say, everybody has problems.

My youthful frugality has served me well and has seen me through some troubling times.

I had a plan to finish my last two years of school that required saving money, which I did. Without complicating the story, somebody beat me to the money leaving me desperate. My dear old dad extended me enough to carry me through if I was extremely frugal and worked after school and weekends.

He set an example for me. As a young man my dad had developed three newspaper routes, cleaned a drug store before high school every morning, and repaired bicycles in his spare time. He walked five miles a day to save a nickel bus fare to get his pharmacy degree...my dad was no stranger to frugality.

When I finished my school I paid dad back in full...I know that he would have forgiven the debt, but I knew that this was a point of trustworthiness and honor. We both were happy. I then went on to pay off my house mortgage only making bank interest payments on while finishing school. By paying ahead on the mortgage I made my last mortgage payment at age 28, owned my home, car, and business, never again needing to feed bankers. Thank you Dad!

Being debt free the rest of my life set me free to fulfill my dreams and see me through two devastating economic collapses without being foreclosed upon. Frugality was resumed!

Four years ago I went to the doctor with a urinary infection and came away with problems: walking in and coming out crippled. Thirty days of the antibiotic Cipro left me with tendinitis, painful leg spasms, and sudden onset instability from low blood pressure. I still had my urinary infection which I resolved myself. Trust in the Mexican government social security medical system was gone.

This led to a long and tedious recovery that has not been 100%, the tendinitis could be lasting. A special diet, daily full body massages, plus walking with trekking sticks was imperative.

I longed to bicycle again, but that was looking impossible.

Eventually I discovered I could use my small folding bicycle as a walker for daily therapy. After two months I put the seat low and tried getting on...this was very difficult. Next I tried pushing with my feet. Eventually I was able to get my feet on the pedals...I had some colossal crashes. After a month my instability still held me back. My persistence story continues.

Today I ride my bicycle every day...it is limited to quiet streets on relatively level ground. Getting started is difficult, and it is imperative to dismount to cross busy intersections.

To this day I can not step up or down a curb without a hand rail or my little bicycle used as a walker. Standing in line for five minutes is painful and my limit. I am thankful for what I can do and always think of my dear old friend George Tappin, who on his deathbed said to me, “John, I would give anything if I could just walk out that door”.

This year we planned a Europe trip to Madrid, Palma de Majorca, and northern Germany/Netherlands. Our health was the number one consideration. Jane’s blood pressure and asthma had to be under control. She has done heroic measures over the years of diet, exercise, and radically reducing medications by strict adherence to diet, not imbibing corporate prepared foods plus low salt and sugar. Our ecologically friendly home and surroundings are virtually chemical free and that includes insecticides.

I will keep this brief …nearly twenty years ago Jane had a heart attack, her wonderful doctor got her on a strict diet that enabled her to get off all of her medications while controlling her weight, and she was cross country bicycling within two weeks...at a sensible rate. She later needed glaucoma medications that she eventually developed an allergic reaction to. Luckily the one eliminated did not cause any eye complications, but blood pressure needed controlling.

Jane was at the IMSS Mexican social security medical clinic for her yearly vaccinations, and they took her blood pressure. It was too high, they gave her medication and asked when the last time her doctor tested her. The doctor never tested her though Jane had visited monthly. The IMSS director made a schedule for Jane to get daily blood pressure evaluations. Jane’s doctor prescribed three asthma medications. Amazingly Jane’s asthma became severe and her blood pressure erratic. Jane in desperation made an appointment with her private doctor. Her doctor heard her coughing in the waiting room, and when she came in told her that the problem of high blood pressure was caused by her cough and an infection. Then her private doctor saw Jane’s medications prescribed by IMSS and discovered all three of them induced coughing complications. He prescribed a blood pressure medicine to be taken only when needed. This was the answer and Jane’s health miraculously improved, and we both were feeling great.

We were happy and our Europe trip plans could be put back on schedule.

Two more health calamities occurred. The first was the blood pressure medicine bought for our three month Europe trip turned out to be a fake, and Jane nearly had a stroke due to spiked blood pressure. Thankfully our dear friend Helga in Germany got Jane good medicine and that problem was put behind us. The next problem was a mysterious fluke. Briefly: When we were disembarking our flight at Palma de Majorca we noticed a baggage handler give our folding bicycles flying lessons complete with crash landings. Jane’s sprocket was badly bent, but I had the ability to bend it back into alignment. Less than a week later we were biking in Germany, and I took a colossal crash, broke my bicycle helmet and received a brain concussion. My sprocket was also broken but the chain guard has splintered and formed a hook that snatched my bike pants into the sprocket and sent me flying. The reason this didn’t happen at Palma de Majorca was that  I wore short biking pants when bike there.

A note: Our Dahon folding bicycles made eight trans Atlantic crossing and miraculously survived brutal handling, this was the crowning punishment. They are still rolling with us.

Hein Zenker

"The Goddess of opportunity may give us a chance only once in our lifetime; we couldn’t afford to miss it. With thirty-odd years of age, the time was right. We (my wife and I) built ourselves a boat – not very big; 20 feet – and off we were on the greatest adventure anyone could hope to experience."  Hein Zenker



We received word yesterday that an old friend of ours, Hein Zenker, passed away on October 19, 2019.  Our friendship with Hein and his wife Siggi goes back many years.  Siggi passed away two years ago.  Now they are both gone, but many wonderful memories of our times with them remain. We are honored to have had them as friends.  RIP Hein and Siggi.

Siggi and Hein Zenker on Thlaloca Dos signed our logbook on February 15, 1976, while Dursmirg was anchored at Boot Key Harbor, Marathon, Florida.

Without a doubt, the nicest looking boat to pull in and anchor at Boot Key anchorage was Thlaloca Dos. This precision built sailboat was sailed by the saltiest sailors of the group, Hein and Siggi Zenker. However, they were unassuming and immediately very much a part of our dropout anchorage community. They fit in to it naturally. In no time at all, they struck up friendships with all of the boaters in the harbor.

Hein Zenker on Thlaloca Dos and Bubba Schill aboard his Jaeger hit it off like life long friends and soon discovered that they both had something in common. Both served their country during World War II, but ironically they had been on opposing sides, Bubba in the American Navy and Hein in Germany’s Merchant Marine. They were each victims of geography and political leaders that had whipped the world into a monumental state of hate and terror. The chemistry that Bubba and Hein felt for each other was one that I am sure could only have been conveyed by the indelible scars left on their youthful souls and then carried throughout their lives.

Hein and Siggi could look at the world and especially this little collection of social outcasts that made up the Boot Key anchorage with empathy because they had both survived World War II Germany from within and gone on to fulfill a dream that took more determination, dedication, and forceful self-motivation than I had ever seen.

As a matter of fact, with only a couple of exceptions, all of the live aboard boaters that made up Boot Key anchorage back in the mid 1970s did not come to boating with financial backing and each carried their own load in life.

Some were world-class sailors and others couldn’t even tie a nautical knot, but one common thread bound us together and that was that we all were in this boating life for the adventure and freedom of sailing over distant horizons.

Oh, by the way!

In the world of strange coincidences, this next little story unfolded:

Back in St. Augustine, Florida, in the spring of 1973, after Jane and I had just spent our first winter living aboard Dursmirg, which we anchored for some time in Matanzas Bay near the St. Augustine City Yacht Pier, we met a young man living aboard a small sailboat. That spring we were the only two boats anchored in Matanzas Bay. We thought the longhaired hippie looking young man was strange because of his profession, which we had never heard of before. He was a computer programmer who daily commuted to Jacksonville to work, leaving his boat Thlaloca anchored in the bay.

The thing we did not realize at the time was the significance of that little boat with its strange name.

We would later learn the incredible story of the vessel’s monumental maritime achievement plus become close friends with the very people that actually built the boat and then went on to sail it into world history. The builders were Hein and Siggi Zenker and their historical feat was to sail their 20-foot Thlaloca around the world. It was the smallest vessel to do so at the time.

Hein and Siggi started building their little 20-foot sailboat in Iron Bridge, Ontario, Canada, and finished it in California where they launched it to begin the Australian leg of their round the world cruise. Siggi later told Jane and me that that trip was 95% misery. When I asked Hein about his navigational skills, he said that he did not have any at the time, but that he figured he would have plenty of time to study and besides he also figured that he could not possibly miss anything as large as the continent of Australia.

Reviewed by John M. Grimsrud

West! Sail West, Man! Around the World in Twenty Feet

By Hein Zenker

This is a story about real people that not only dreamed the impossible dream but also lived it to the fullest. The husband and wife team of Hein and Siggi Zenker tell their extraordinary story in riveting first person fashion that will leave the reader enthralled.

Jane and I became good friends and neighbors to these real life adventurers that did as we did and put the work-a-day world behind them, built their own boat, and sailed away. They did it ten years before we began our voyage of Dursmirg.

We are deeply impressed by their book and happen to know that the stories of their adventures within are very true but cannot fully relate the dynamics of their powerful free spirits.

To us, they are the kind of people that make the world a better place and knowing them has forever added to our hope that dreams are there to be lived.

Apathy scuttles many a dream boat.

A couple of quotes from the book:

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checked by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”

“Crouched deep in the cockpit, I remained there for a long time and observed the foaming seas and listened to the howling gale. And for the x-time, I pondered why apparently sane people venture into this mess repeatedly.”

“Are we the only dreamers? Blinded in believing we are at home in an element, which in reality is out to destroy us, by forces we are unable to control nor understand. Fortunately “dreamers” are optimists who do not cease believing in their power to prevail-like the man in the cartoon, floating on a raft in the middle of the ocean, catching wind in a net.”

I rank this book with the best of the best sea stories I have ever read, need I say more?

Dance Between Flames: Berlin Between the Wars by Alton Gill

BOOK REVIEW - FIVE STARS

Berliners were a divided lot, the idle rich were totally oblivious to the world collapsing around them and the under privileged were priced out of everything by run away inflation that would cost Germany and the world dearly under the thousand year Third Rich that only lasted twelve years.


Excerpts:

Six weeks into 1919, Kessler noted: “I was hauled off by acquaintances to a place where you can dance until dawn. There are hundreds like it in Berlin now. The best description of this second phase of the revolution...is “dancing on a volcano”
Greater Berlin had fewer than 100,000 inhabitants. The rises in population were due less to births than to migration, as people came to the industrial centre from the land to seek better work. There is an old saying that most true Berliners actually come from Silesia, but city records show that the majority then came from the province of Brandenburg. By 1925, the total population of Greater Berlin had reached four million.



Inflation run away destabilized confidence in anything government
The day of Rathena’s murder, the mark stood at 300 to the dollar. By 6 July the rate was 450. The middle classes, those who had savings, trembled. Patriotic, though misguided, investment in War Loans during the First World War had cost many families their futures. Now, what remained seemed threatened with being wiped out along with any faith in received values, ethical, material or moral. By the middle of January 1923 the mark stood at 10,000 against the dollar; by the end of the month, 50,000. At this point the State Bank intervened and forced the rate down, but it could not stem the tide for long. By May the mark was down again, to 70,000 to the dollar: by the end of June it was 150,000. By August the dollar stood at 1 million marks, and the banks were issuing 46 billion marks a day. By the end of September, the rate had risen to 160 million. The Ullstein newspaper presses were commandeered to print money. The figures on banknotes were overprinted as million mark notes became billion mark notes. Currency in circulation rose to 44 trillion marks. The government was accused of deliberately allowing inflation to skyrocket in order to avoid repaying foreign debts and reparations at par value.

Anyone who hadn’t left by 1933, he said, was de facto a Nazi.



While offering all the attractions of the earlier youth movements, these Nazi organizations also indoctrinated children and turned them against rebellious or controversial parents.

Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy by Nicolas E. Reynolds

BOOK REVIEW - FIVE STARS

A turning point in history marked by wars, changing political alliances with greedy go for the jugular power grabs.
One of the very best history oriented books. This is about real people radically changing the world.

Excerpts:
Regler saw his duty as maintaining the morale of the troops and working with the civilian population. In 1938 he would boast of saving priceless paintings from destruction and transporting women and children to safety from villages where battles were raging. He was most likely sincere when he said that it was up to the commissars “to halt the cruelties . . . on both sides.” It felt good to be waging the good fight again: for him the winds of “heroic Spain” were blowing away the “stink of Moscow.” He watched “the good Russia” come onto the scene, but worried that “the diabolical Russia” might not be far behind.



Alexander Orlov, the NKVD chief who ran the secret war in Spain for Stalin and made time to entertain Hemingway. National Archives, College Park. Orlov may have gone on to facilitate Hemingway’s visit to Alfambra, the town where he spent the four days in the fall of 1937 with communist guerrillas. They in turn allowed him to witness the attack on the Nationalist train that would drive the plot of his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls.
August 1949, the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb and overturned America’s monopoly on super-weapons. A few months later, mainland China fell to the communists. Mao and Chou were now in charge, and Chiang had to make do with ruling the offshore island of Taiwan. In 1950 Stalinist North Korea invaded noncommunist South Korea, starting a war that would last into 1953. At home, the Red Scare intensified when Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin launched a witch hunt for communists that made HUAC’s work seem careful and professional.



Castro already knew how to charm a crowd, and spoke a “clumsy but clear” language some called “fidelenglish.” While in the United States, he literally reached out to anyone who came near him and calmly answered most questions put to him. Staying away from anti-imperialist rhetoric, he adeptly sidestepped questions about communists in his movement. During a speech from the bandstand in Central Park, Castro was eloquent but vague about his core political values: humanism and democracy. The only discordant notes came when he met with officials like Vice President Richard Nixon, who lectured him about the dangers of communism.

Hitler's Swedes: A History of the Swedish Volunteers in the Waffen-SS by Lars T.Larsson

BOOK REVIEW - FIVE STARS

Swedish neutrality during WWII was not 100% and changed with political ups and downs.

Revelations of little known political happenings are the theme of the book, and I found it interesting and informative.
Excerpts:
Swedish neutrality was not accepted by all it citizens. There were, in addition to those who politically opposed the government’s policy, thousands more who decided to voluntarily participate in the war. Indeed, thousands of volunteers perpetuated the legacy of those who fought in the First World War, Finnish Civil War, Estonian War of independence and Spanish Civil War.



The war turned in the Allies’ favor in 1943. It was in August of that year that German leave trains were denied passage over Swedish territory. Swedish governmental support for the Western Allies commenced not long afterwards when secret espionage and sabotage bases were permitted to be established along the shared border with Norway.



Sweden had trade agreements with both Germany and the Western Allies during the war. Supplying, amongst other raw materials, immense quantities of ball-bearings and iron ore,
It is a common misconception of post-war literature to hold the Division up as an example of a Pre-NATO pan-European division fighting communism. The fact is that throughout its almost five-year service primarily consisted of German personnel. For example, its total complement consisted of approximately 1,500 foreign volunteers and 18,000 ethnic Germans in summer 1941.



Mikhail Gorbachev was present too, clinging to office as president of the Soviet Union and general secretary of the Communist Party. One month later, Gorbachev survived in office only because Yeltsin climbed onto a tank in Moscow and faced down an attempted army-KGB coup. By December 1991, Gorbachev was gone. The Central Committee of the Communist Party was dissolved. Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, the Baltic states, and other former Soviet republics had proclaimed their independence. In relative peace, seventy-four years of Communist rule in Russia had come to an end.

The Almost Nearly Perfect People by Michel Booth

BOOK REVIEW - FIVE STARS

Humorous, cynical, satirical, brutally honest, and truly memorable.

Even if you aren't Scandinavian as I am, I am sure you will find this informative and revealing book one of the best entertainingly humorous and educationally informative reads you are likely to find.

Excerpts:
How come you have no idea where Aalborg or Trondheim actually are? Why can no one you know speak Swedish or “get by” in Norwegian? Name the Danish foreign minister. Or Norway’s most popular comedian. Or a Finnish person. Any Finnish person.



“If you had to be reborn anywhere in the world as a person with average talents and income, you would want to be a Viking,” proclaimed British news weekly The Economist, ever so slightly backhandedly, in a special Nordic-themed edition. But where were the discussions about Nordic totalitarianism and how uptight the Swedes are; about how the Norwegians have been corrupted by their oil wealth to the point where they can’t even be bothered to peel their own bananas (really: we’ll get to that later); how the Finns are self-medicating themselves into oblivion; how the Danes are in denial about their debt, their vanishing work ethic, and their place in the world; and how the Icelanders are, essentially, feral?



Swedes will likely cut foreigners some slack in the footwear department, but there is one golden rule that you will not be forgiven for breaking: be on time. You should not be too early, no one appreciates that, but equally you should absolutely never arrive later than five minutes after the time you were invited. In Sweden, the concept of fashionably late” is akin to “fashionably flatulent.”



Alfred Nobel made his fortune by inventing dynamite, initially for the mining industry, but later for the munitions used to slaughter thousands in the Crimean War, and countless millions thereafter. And yet, somehow, one idle day while drawing up his will in his retirement home on the Italian Riviera, Nobel felt his life’s bloodstained legacy warranted, of all things, a peace prize in his name, it is akin to King Herod sponsoring a beautiful-baby competition, or a demolition man handing out architecture prizes.



I can think of many American states in which it would probably be quite an uncomfortable experience to declare yourself an atheist, for example, or gay, or to be married yet choose not to have children, or to be unmarried and have children, or to have an abortion, or to raise your children as Muslims. Less significantly, but still limiting, I don’t imagine it would be easy being vegetarian in Texas, for instance, or a wine buff in Salt Lake City, come to that. And don’t even think of coming out as socialist anywhere! In Scandinavia you can be all of these things and no one will bat an eye (as long as you wait and cross on green).

Charlie Wilson's War by George Crile

BOOK REVIEW - FIVE STARS

America’s clandestine warfare and the person who hyped it.

Provocative and gripping revelations are stacked together in this monumental fast moving true story that reads like a fairy tail. A must read book worthy of more than five stars.
Excerpts:
Government wasted money. The poverty program didn’t solve poverty; it might have made it worse. The billions spent in Vietnam had backfired. Washington Post cartoonist Herb Block loved to draw Caspar Weinberger walking around with a thousand-dollar toilet seat around his neck. And everyone knew that the CIA screwed up everything it did.

Israel’s complicated relationship with Iran how the Mossad had “had half of the mullahs on its payroll” before the revolution. But mainly he factored in why Israel would want to be building up Khomeini. The answer was simple: Israel’s most dangerous enemy was Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and right then Iraq looked as if it might be on the verge of winning its war with Iran. What better way for Israel to do in its enemy and rebuild its alliance with Iran than to get the United States to finance it? That was enough to call into question Israel’s motives, but ultimately what enraged Avrakotos was the vision that Oliver North and the others had of a group of Iranian moderates just waiting to deal honorably with the Great Satan.

The United States roused may well have inspired an entire generation of militant young Muslims to believe that the moment is theirs. To call these final pages an epilogue is probably a misnomer. Epilogues indicate that the story has been wrapped up, the chapter finished. This one, sadly, is far from over.

Prohibition in Washington, D.C.: How Dry We Weren't by Garrett Peck

BOOK REVIEW - FIVE STARS

A look at America’s plunge into radical, fanatical lynch mob mentality.

This must read history book opens up an eye opening visage of just how close to the surface extremism waits to strangle liberty for all. Americans can be sold anything, even a war. The book holds and reveals numerous unflattering aspects of a nation that has the attention span of a gnat.

Excerpts:
Temperance advocates were eager to demonstrate that dry law could work nationally, and they used the national capital as a proving ground. The problem was that Washingtonians didn’t want to go dry and never would go dry. Prohibition came early to Washington. It started on November 1, 1917, more than two years before the nation officially went dry and ended on March 1, 1934.



Thanks to legions of German immigrants, beer became the nation’s most popular alcoholic beverage after the Civil War. Washington was no different. The city had a thriving brewing culture, and local breweries struggled to keep up with insatiable demand. With hot and humid summers, lager beer was just the ticket to take the edge off the season. In 1916, district residents drank 7.2 million gallons of beer and 1.6 million gallons of whiskey, wine and other spirits. Beer was so prevalent that temperance advocates took to calling Washington the “Sodom of Suds.” Their victory in prohibition meant the loss of a vibrant brewing culture.



“Looking back on it all, the striking thing about prohibition was that so many people could have been so utterly wrong.” The temperance movement seriously misjudged how deeply ingrained drinking was to American culture or how paramount drinking was to Washington society. Discredited and unpopular, the temperance movement went virtually extinct, leaving only the ugly Temperance Fountain as a monument.