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Survivor—Thanksgiving on Lummi Island

The last tribal council has met and Linda and I are the winners of Survivor—Thanksgiving on Lummi Island. There were the usual reward and immunity challenges. Alliances formed, broke and reformed. There were tears, laughter, recriminations, and bonding. But, in the end, there’s just the two of us jumping around the living room yelling, “It’s all ours; it’s all ours! Don’t get me wrong. It was wonderful having eighteen people for dinner and showers this past weekend. But today, the last group was voted off the island, catching the 8:20am ferry. Tears of sorrow quickly turned to joy as Shawn, Kirsten, Forrest, Cole and Kenneth drove off carrying loads of clothes, diapers, dishes, toys and Teddy bears. And we sit on a large pile of sheets and towels watching the sun glint off Mt. Baker.

It started slow enough last week. Richard and Schuyler arrived first with a load of bricks, block and bags of concrete as Schuyler set up the first reward challenge. His goal was to have us build an outdoor oven based on an ancient Roman design. “What will we do with an oven located 100 yards from the house?” we asked. “We will bake bread and pizza,” said Schuyler. Bread and pizza are apparently the reward. Schuyler is an architect and building is its own reward. Schuyler’s childhood pal Andrew showed up to help and they unloaded some of the stuff. But, in the end, Schuyler decided it would be more of a challenge if he waited until young, strong, terribly fit Andrew left and the rain was coming down at about a half an inch an hour to begin building the oven, using two old dudes in rainsuits to mix and mortar. Schuyler won the reward challenge by continuing to work long after dark by flashlight.

The next day GMary drove in with some canned food and her lovable little cat Mitsy. On Wednesday, the stormy day, the Ashland contingent arrived after a horrible seven hour trip from their overnighter in Portland. They were tired and a bit cranky but it warmed my heart to watch them unload. Finally, someone who packs more crap into the back of an SUV than we do. Included in their collection of stuff was a baby bed, a bike trailer and a potty chair. On Thursday, Aran and Marie arrived from Anacortes with soup and his special “bad health cookies.” How we circled those chocolate chips. Dr. Dr.(sic) Mia drove up from Seattle with her collection of Ph’ds and the makings for apple pie. We then faced our first immunity challenge. How to seat everyone. Would we institute the abominable child’s table? Or would we invite the little buggers to dine with us on Caribbean soup and enchilada casserole? We hauled a folding table up from the basement to create a long medieval style banquet. Thirteen for dinner.

So far only Andrew had been voted off the island. But Friday morning we were sad to extinguish Mia’s torch. She had to get back to work. How that gal loves to work. Mayumi and Mariko and little Lilli had arrived late on Thursday. When Mayumi, who also loves to work, heard that Dr. Dr. Mia was getting to go work she begged to be able to go to work too. But Richard hid her keys and she had to stay for the banquet. Besides, Mayumi and Mariko had to continue their reward challenge which consists of seeing who can carry Lilli around the longest. Lilli is just one year old but weighs 26 lbs and is about four feet long, so carrying her is not as easy as it sounds.

Late in the day, Sarah, Schuyler’s girl friend and Sarah’s old school chum Thomason drove into the crowded driveway. Sarah had called ahead to ask for immunity for her dog Henry who she apparently takes everywhere. Henry, a retired greyhound race dog had injured his foot. Sarah wanted to allow Henry to enjoy the warmth of the kitchen. Schuyler relayed her plea. Atticus, Mariko’s dog, was at the moment of Schuyler’s fervent pitch, standing outside on the deck in the cold licking the window. We have hard and fast rules at Lummi Island about dogs in the house. Would Schuyler be able to form an alliance to amend the by-laws? I glanced at Mariko who was sitting on the couch with Miss Lilli. Mariko seemed to be smiling. Miraculously, a bubble, as if in a cartoon, appeared above her head. Inside the bubble were the words, “No f—————— way!” Following her cue I said, “I vote no.” Our alliance held.

Cole, age three, tried to form an immediate alliance with Thomason who he seemed to fall madly in love with (very much like Boston Rob and Amber in Survivor All Stars). He was relentless in his courting of her favors, entertained her by sliding down the basement stairs headfirst and by putting walnuts in a bowl and taking them out again and smiling like a maniac. He kind of liked Sarah too and after they were voted off the island the next day allowed that he “missed his ladies.”

In the meantime, Forrest had organized the ping pong challenge and was running a double elimination tournament. In an unusual move he had seeded Bobby, Lilli’s daddy, directly into the championship game. This caused some muttering even though it is acknowledged that Bob would have kicked everyone’s butt anyway. It was theorized that this ultimate seeding compliment was to make up for the unfortunate trash talking incident of last July. At any rate, Bobby arrived, ate dinner, thrashed Richard for the ultimate ping pong reward but was, alas, voted off the island. Atticus was voted off with him. Bobby also had to be at work the next day. By this time the rains had swollen the Nooksack River and flooded Slater Road the main route to Lummi, so that everyone, now voted off, had to take a long dark detour through the dreaded Ferndale.

Before Bob and Atticus left, the producers of our show awarded the entire group a vegetarian banquet that consisted of: tofurky, stuffing, yams, mashed potatoes, gravy, inari sushi, sushi rice, cabbage Ramen salad, green salad, cranberries, lentil loaf, pumpkin pies, apple pies, and raw pies (with whip cream).

On Saturday we voted Aran and Marie off the island. Aran’s immunity was low after chasing Atticus around the yard for several hours the previous day. We had drained him of free medical knowledge while discussing all our ailments, relating our hormonal problems and displaying various spots, sores and moles for his review and comment. Aran and Marie raced for a ferry while I stood by waiting for their inevitable call. Soon they rang asking if I could bring Aran’s cell phone to the dock. I did, failing to notice they had also left their gigantic soup pot, hydrochloric acid capsules and a water bottle.

On Saturday the entire remaining cast celebrated Cole’s third birthday with cake and presents. Young Kenneth demonstrated a slight crack in his otherwise phlegmatic eighteen month old demeanor by coveting his brother’s Spiderman car. “Waaan caahhh!” he said repeatedly. Saturday was a crucial day in the Thanksgiving Survivor show with many voted off the island. Sarah, Thomason, Schuyler and Henry were sent to the ferry. Then Mayumi, Mariko and Lilli. Alliances were reshuffled as we maneuvered to the crucial final days.

On Sunday morning, in a surprise twist, GMary and Mitsy voted themselves off the island. “I don’t really like Lummi Island,” said GMary just before she loaded up and raced to catch the ten o’clock.

We were down to the hardcore. Eight survivors. The clock was ticking. Could the Kirstens last another day? (In our family we recognize the power of matriarchy by designating families by the wife’s name, e.g., “The Mayumis, The Marikos, The Lindas, The Maries, etc. This in the interest in seeing the world as it really is). Could the Kirstens survive one more day without being voted off? Could Shawn do something right? Could we understand anything that Kenneth was saying? Could Forrest beat me in a game of pool? Could Cole make it through Sunday without a time-out? (Well, he would have made it if he hadn’t called his mom ‘stupid’ and then spit at her). But, miracle of miracles. They kept it together. Their alliance was firm. Richard was the next one voted off the island. He made the 7pm.

Which brings us to where we started this report. Only the Lindas are left standing. Survivors—Thanksgiving on Lummi Island. The quiet is excruciating.

Lost on Lummi

It might be an advantage to have a slow speed internet connection. It could even save time. With a DSL hookup it’s pretty easy to check your e-mail twenty times a day and hit your favorite blogs multiple times. Back on Lummi Island where, except for the library or for those with satellite dishes, we’re looking at the internet at a 42,000 baud rate and the dial up reliability is frustrating. So, instead of dropping down in front of the laptop and surfing every so often as is our city habit, we log on perhaps once a day to check e-mail and the news. Somehow it seems a more reasonable approach than spending hours in front of a computer. The fact is, technology never saves us any time. It just helps us find easier ways to waste it. Cell phones: think of a reason to call some one. Palm pilot: hours of inputting information. Ipod: downloading and listening. GPS: always checking to see if you are where you already know you are. With all this electronic stuff is a manual written by some outsourced English speaker. A manual that doesn’t quite ever answer the question you need answered. When you call that customer service number you get a telephone tree (“Dial 1 for English”) that uses up even more time.

So, how do you use that extra time? On Lummi Island you can use it to get lost. Lost in the tide pools. Lost in the woods. Lost in the views. Today we picked “lost in the woods.” We weren’t really lost. We just didn’t know exactly where we were. Starting at the house we walked across the road to some property my brother Richard bought recently. He wanted to climb the ridge and take photos of the ferns growing out of a rather impressive formation of what is called Chuckanut Sandstone, a geological feature that is quite local and which once sat at the water’s edge before being pushed up a couple hundred feet some many years ago. At places you can still see where the waves carved the stone. There were a half dozen or more varieties of mushrooms including a cute little toadstool with a puffball on top. Richard’s property is appropriately located on what the maps call Richard’s Mountain. So, we (son Shawn, grandson Forrest, Richard of Richard’s Mountain and I) bushwhacked over the top of this 300’ skyscraper ridge, after enjoying views of Bellingham Bay and Mt. Baker, and walked down the other side to a faint road that seemed to skirt the west side of the ridge. We walked through alder groves along what is the recharge area for wells on this end of the island, wetlands and ponds that collect, filter and feed the water to an acquifer we tap for drinking water. After about a half mile the road petered out and we had to thrash through some blackberry canes, snowberries and assorted dead shrubs until we popped out on the top end of a small real estate subdivision and back down to Nugent Rd., our road.

We were lost up there for about an hour and a half. An hour and a half we won’t spend surfing the web.

Former Hypocrite is Hg Free

I’m mercury free. No longer a hypocrite. Why hypocrite? Because in my unnamed book, mentioned in the last blog, I wrote about the evils of the American Dental Association and how they have poisoned the population with mercury amalgam fillings. Worse than the fillings, which bleed off poisonous molecules which are absorbed by the body, are root canals. Millions of root canals are done every year and are responsible for many forms of disease and chronic illness. Root canals are most often filled with the same mercury amalgam used in fillings. There is a wealth of written material on the subject of the dangers of mercury. Several European countries have banned Hg in children and pregnant women. The ADA, of course, scoffs at the idea that mercury in your mouth is harmful. In fact, they label as “quack” any dentist who claims mercury is unhealthy. Thankfully, there is a growing band of dentists who sometimes risk their licenses and careers by advocating “biological dentistry” that is, using materials that don’t harm the human body. Another problem is that most dentists don’t know how to properly extract a tooth. Extractions are normally done is a way that leaves cavitations that become infected and leak toxins throughout the body.

In our case, Linda became chronically and seriously ill because of bad dentistry and this is what my book was about. We got Linda’s teeth straightened out, an expensive proposition. I advocated that everyone deal with their teeth problems without doing it myself. Ergo, hypocrite.

Recently, on our east coast trip I broke a tooth—a crown, actually. Normally, it would be hard to get into a dentist that same day in a strange town. But, I knew of a Dr. Liscio who had been in the habit of giving my book away to patients who had root canals. I called and his office told me to come over. He told me that the broken crown wasn’t a big problem but on an x-ray he showed me that my root canal was abscessed and suggested I have it out. A week later, I did.

Extracting a tooth creates more expensive problems. You need a bridge. So, I made an appointment with Russ Borneman in Anacortes who is next door to Aran Galway. I had known of Russ for several years. He used to have my book in his office as well, when it was in print and available. I had referred a number of patients to him. Dr. Borneman did a thorough exam and determined that I had been neglecting my teeth and, in addition to amalgam removal, I needed additional work. So, three appointments later all that nasty mercury is gone and am awaiting crowns, bridges and inlays, soon to be installed.

I’ve got a little button to wear on my shirt that is evidence that I’m no longer an Hg hypocrite.

Hope for a Bad Back

Some people know that Linda and I have an interest in alternative medical therapies. In our case, many strange and wonderful things have worked for us to reverse serious health problems. (I would refer you to my book but since it is now out of print and only available in used copies, and since we are trying to buy up as many of those copies as we can, I’m not going to mention it, ‘cuz we don’t need any competition. At some point, if I continue this blog, I’ll put the book up as an Acrobat file for anyone who is interested to read).

Recently Linda had great success with neural therapy. (A related modality is prolotherapy). For several years, perhaps three, she has had severe, intermittent back pain. At these times she could hardly walk and would lie down on the floor with her feet up on an ottoman. The pain would strike suddenly and was quite debilitating. Then it would subside, leaving a dull, chronic ache. Lifting grand babies became an effort. I kept telling her she should get “the shots”. Our friend Aran Galway, a Nurse Practitioner in Anacortes, does neural therapy. He knows how to give “the shots.” On our way up to Lummi Island we stopped in Anacortes where I was getting some alternative dental treatment (more on that later) and Linda submitted to “the shots.” She had four or five over two days. The pain went away immediately. From what I can read about neural therapy this is not unusual. When it works, it works right away. Like a miracle. You can Google “neural therapy” if you’re interested and read all about it. No one is completely sure how or why it works but it’s thought that the injections (of a harmless substance) somehow clear up interference of the body’s electrical fields. Some might cringe at having needles stuck in their back, but after having needles stuck in my mouth two days in a row, having them in the back doesn’t seem so bad. How did Linda’s back pain develop? We wonder too. Our best theory is that it happened in the dental chair when she was literally having every tooth in her mouth crowned, capped or inlayed. All that tensing, clenching anxiety.

So many people have chronic back pain that, before submitting to invasive surgery it might be worth taking a shot at the shots.

On an Island Without Granny G.

Lately, we’ve had this thing for islands. A lot of people don’t like them. They get something called “island fever” which makes them feel claustrophobic. I’ve never had that. Islands make me feel good; protected. Plus, there’s adventure on an island. My love of islands certainly started with Hat Island, aka Gedney Island, which is anchored between Everett, Washington and Whidbey Island. It’s quite small and sort of shaped like a hat. That is, generally round. In junior high school our youth group from the First Baptist Church always went on a summer adventure to Hat Island. We would arrive by boat (the only way to get there) then circumnavigate it walking on the beach. The weather was always nice. The tide was always out. There weren’t many houses on the beach so it was very much like being on a deserted island. As we sauntered we could see Camano Island, then Whidbey, Mulkilteo and then Everett again. We’d poke along pausing to study a dead seal or some such wonder of nature while being prodded by Granny Griffith, our chaperone. Granny was dedicated to serving kids our age but, the fact is, she wasn’t much fun. At our annual summer camp on Vashon Island (another cool island) she was constantly on the lookout for young love after dark and would sneak up and surprise you with her gigantic flashlight. Yet even the moral conservatism of Granny G. couldn’t dampen our fun. Our goal on Hat was to get out in front of her, setting a frantic pace that her gnarly old body couldn’t maintain. Oh, she was game and made the effort, finally huffing up to the boat full of smiling young Baptists who had managed some island mischief while staying just out of her field of view as we curved counter clockwise around the hat. She was like our conscience in those days—somewhere back there. I’m sure Granny Griffith was a well-intentioned soul doing her Christian witness. But I like islands better without her.

Rogue River Feud

We left Southern Oregon in the rear view mirror and are settled in on Lummi Island. Lummi is so quiet it makes Ashland seem like a metropolis. It’s a small island, small enough to walk a loop around the north end. On this six mile loop, by bike or foot, watery views reward you most of the way. In the distance: Mt Baker, Sandy Point, Point Roberts, Vancouver BC, Matia and Sutia Islands, the Canadian San Juans, Orcas and Mt. Constitution, Sinclair Island, Guemas, Legoe Bay, Lummi Mountain, the New Englandy white island church, the ferry dock and back home again. Haven’t got tired of it yet. The only disappointment so far is that during dry dock they repainted our small ferry, the Whatcom Chief, with battleship gray trim, replacing a bright blue, which makes her look rather dull. Gone also are the orcas that decorated the Chief. Did we miss a meeting? Who decided that?

There’s water everywhere we look. Today, after an all night windstorm— whitecaps. Yesterday it was flat and calm. It’s great to have Puget Sound in one’s viewscape all day long. In Southern Oregon, the main body of water is the Rogue River. You have to make a trip to see it. It is a tremendous river which leaps full blown out of the side of a hill at Boundary Springs just below Crater Lake and rushes downhill to the sea. The Rogue River kind of scares me. All water does. A few years back we almost drowned Linda in an innocuous Rogue rapid when we hung up on a rock and she slipped off the back of the raft and got stuck under water then held under by what hydrologists and river runners call a “reversal.” But the river didn’t really want her and turned her loose.

Lots of people are fascinated with the Rogue. Zane Grey for one. He wrote a novel set on the river called, “Rogue River Feud.” You can read more about it on Bookends.

Observations on Interstate 5

1. Based on the condition of the rest stop restrooms, particularly in Washington State, we are on our way to becoming a third world nation. These facilities are nasty. Not cleaned nearly often enough. They smell. There’s water (?) all over the floor. We were reflecting, as we walked back to our car looking for puddles to clean the urine off the soles of our shoes (this is, by the way, why many people ask you to remove your footwear on entering their homes), on the delightfully clean rest stop restrooms in Iowa and other midwestern states. Surely Washington wants to be as clean as Iowa.

2. It’s not my imagination. Americans are getting fatter. Young people, especially young women are huge. Maybe this is why SUVs and PU trucks sell so well. We need larger vehicles to haul us around. Plus we need big rigs to haul all our stuff. Years ago when none of us had any stuff, we could get by with a car with a trunk. Now, we all have so much junk, and we insist on carrying large amounts of it wherever we go; we need carrying capacity.

3. Everyone has a cell phone. Cars passed us where two or more people in the same car were talking on the phone. Of course it was Sunday. Free minutes on Sunday.

4. Those “Support the Troops” yellow ribbon stickers are appearing more frequently. We were recently in Vermont and I did a scientific survey of “Support the Troops” yellow ribbon stickers. Nineteen percent of the passenger cars and pickup trucks in Burlington, Vermont sported a sticker. Oregon and Washington don’t have that high a percentage yet, but it is rising. What I want to know is, “What does the sticker mean?” Is there any significant portion of the population who doesn’t support the troops? I support the troops. I once was a troop. So, why does one need to put a yellow ribbon on their car telling everyone else to support the troops? My fear is what they really mean is “Support the War.” That would be the war in Iraq.

5. The food in mini marts will kill you. If it doesn’t kill you it might make you fat, cause you to want to talk on a cell phone constantly and pee on the rest stop floor while you’re supporting the troops.

Yo Mama's So Fat That...

Politics and religion used to be taboo subjects. Not any more. Politics and religion discussions are ubiquitous. This leaves “food” as the subject no one really wants to talk about. It’s something we need to talk about. People are very protective of their food choices. The previous post “Better Life Through Chemistry” leads you to the website of the Organic Consumer’s Association. Their website is educational as is their newsletter which you can subscribe to free (though a donation would be appreciated). OCA brings very interesting tidbits of news, often related to the taboo issue of food. For instance, in their current issue you will read that as a country we are getting so fat that its costing the airlines hundreds of millions of dollars in extra fuel to get us off the ground. No lie.

What we eat is critical to our national health. We aren’t eating well and, as a result, health suffers. Obesity is on it’s way to becoming the number one cause of preventable death in this country. Our food industry, which has succeeded in poisoning America now has the world in its sights having successfully suppressed a World Health Organization report which called for tough limits on sugar, salt and fat. News article from the Guardian.

We’ve become lazy in our food habits. We like to eat out. How bad is fast food, for example? Rent a copy of Supersize Me, a documentary in which the writer/director Morgan Spurlock conducts an experiment where he eats three meals a day at MacDonald’s for thirty days. His progress, or regression, is monitored by three physicians and a nutrionist. One of the most remarkable things about the film is that the docs are all shocked at how quickly this healthy young man became seriously ill. Along the way, Spurlock educates regarding our national diet, especially in our schools. And, he manages to pull it all off without pontificating or being unnecessarily offensive.

Think your more upscale restaurant is healthier? Chances are the food isn’t even made there. Look for the big Sysco Corporation truck to pull up in front of your favorite Italian, Mexican or American style restaurant to offload factory prepared meals that they warm up and slap on a plate.

Our food supply, the stuff you buy at the normal supermarket is mostly crap. Not fit to eat. Our food supply and the way we use it is making us fat. The average weight of Americans increased a pound a year in the 1990’s. Ten pounds in ten years. Billions and billions of pounds. There’s lots of pressure to be fat. Social events, birthdays, anniversaries, etc. seem to require consumption of fat and sugar. Processed food is rich with chemicals and preservatives whose side effects are unknown. Fatty, sugary food is addictive and is not an easy habit to break.

Compared to the Standard American Diet (SAD) a healthy diet represents more radical change, more study and more thought than most people are willing or able to contemplate. It’s all so depressing I’m going to go make some nachos.

Better Life Through Chemistry

EPA plans to study the effect of chemicals on poor kids. The plan is financed by the chemical industry. Read more here.  

Bagdad Burning

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What does an Iraqi citizen think about what's going on? Check out

Riverbend for a compelling and heart rending read. Riverbend is a young, English-speaking Iraqi trying to survive in Bagdad.