SCHLAG BYTES

Schlag Byte 9/6/04 - "Swiss Chocolate on Labor Day"

There have been lots of people dying around me lately. I don’t need any more reminders that I’m now the oldest generation in my family. I’m the one at the goal line.

Last week, my friend Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross died. A tireless champion for the terminally ill, she changed the way people talked about death and dying. We met nine years ago, when she came to Arizona. She came after her Virginia farm burned to the ground in a mysterious fire. Elisabeth thought it was because some in the community didn’t want her to build a healing center for AIDS babies.

As great as her talent for inspiration was, she could get people agitated as well. Mostly, I remember her laugh. Elisabeth loved to laugh. She dressed up on Halloween, but she gave away candy every day. She loved Swiss chocolates (anything Swiss actually). Nothing quite made her smile like lighting up one of her beloved Dunhill’s cigarettes.

Some months ago before addressing a Hospice audience, I read to Elisabeth my summary, which was entitled “Six Things to Do When You’re Dying.” She said, “Of course they are all important, but the most important is ‘Don't lose your sense of humor, there is nothing you can’t laugh about.’”

The week before she died, over our traditional breakfast — a bagel with lox spread and capers — we schmoozed. I told her about the death of my mother and my trip to Germany. After we’d both finished, I asked for my customary piece of Swiss chocolate and, for the first time, Elisabeth refused me. “Why not,” I asked incredulously, and she said, “Wait and eat it later.” I didn’t quite get it, but didn’t plead.

Elisabeth’s memorial service was over the Labor Day weekend. I had planned on going up to the White Mountains with my grandkids to do some fishing and hiking. I decided that’s really where I wanted to be and knew Elisabeth would have agreed, but I did take a piece of Swiss chocolate along with me.

Her memorial service was at 3 p.m. last Saturday afternoon. I was deep in the forested mountains of Northern Arizona and, about that time, put the chocolate in my mouth. When you love someone, you save a little piece of them. There comes a time, a place, a song, a picture, a story, a piece of Swiss chocolate…..and you think about the soul you loved.

“Wait and eat it later” is clearer to me now; what a wonderful way to be reminded of a life remembered.

Schlag Byte 8/30/04 - "Drugs to Loosen the Addictive Grip"

Serious drug addiction is a problem that afflicts more than 10 million Americans. The grip of hardcore drugs like heroin and cocaine is so intense that relapse rates are staggering. So far, rehabilitation programs have had limited success, and dropout rates high.

Last year, scientists developed the first new drug since Methadone to treat drug addiction. Called Suboxone (buprenorphine), this little orange pill can be prescribed by your doctor and is available at any neighborhood pharmacy. Suboxone blocks opiate receptors in the brain, which means even if you shoot up you don’t get high. This offers new hope for addicts; instead of standing in line at an impersonal Methadone clinic, you can go to a doctor you like and trust who can guide you through the struggles without the old fix.

Suboxone loosens the grip that opiates have on the brain; the only catch is . . . you have to want to take it. I hope it will motivate addicts to see therapists who can help them find a new path through the hard times.

Scientists are using another drug that can loosen an addictive grip of another kind. Some people are psychologically addicted to re-living old traumatic events like post-war syndromes, sexual abuse, domestic violence, vehicular accidents, sudden death and natural disasters. The current psychiatric nomenclature calls this Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). PTSD sufferers can’t get rid of old tapes in their brains that keep them trapped in the past. This diagnosis, used only since 1980, is a rapidly growing diagnostic category affecting an estimated 5% of all Americans (13 million people).

Such psychological addictions may be mediated by a different mechanism and affect a different part of the brain than opiate addiction, but the strength of its grip is no less intense. A handful of psychiatrists in the United States have recently been allowed to do human research on PTSD sufferers using the drug Ecstasy (MDMA). Preliminary studies suggest it may have a profound therapeutic effect. Psychiatrists say it helps people move beyond the traumatic events; patients get more comfortable in seeing themselves where they are now rather than where they’ve been.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has fought against this research. It puts Ecstasy in the same legal category as heroin. DEA scientists say Ecstasy alters the shape of brain cells, may cause permanent harm, and affects memory. But nobody knows for sure; there is no evidence that it produces such results used in a therapeutic environment, for a time-limited period. This is the same argument that the government has used against advocates of medicinal marijuana.

I am of the opinion that if we can loosen an addiction’s grip on the mind, then patients and society are better off. All growth is about moving beyond the things that enslave us — old certainties that keep us from facing the truth of who we are now. If Suboxone and Ecstasy can help us in that pursuit, I say go for it.

Schlag Byte 8/23/04 - "Dream Teams"

I admit I am a hopeless Olympic Games addict. I am hooked from beginning to end — I love the opening ceremonies and the parade of nations. I love the idea that small countries like Mauritius, Mauritania, and the Maldives (I’m not even sure where they are) can get a standing ovation just for showing up. I love the idea of the glory of sport as a vehicle for fellowship between nations. Ten thousand athletes, from 202 countries, marching together with pride — the global community doesn’t get too many chances to gather together in peace — it makes me feel hopeful.

The excesses do bother me a little. The endless hype and puffery — the national chauvinism that equates how many medals a country wins with a measure of its power, the theatrical attempt at creating soap operas — all leave me cold. But the thing that galled me most this year was the refusal by several American professional basketball players to join the “Dream Team” and participate in the games at all.

These elite all had some excuse . . . it was too risky, too dangerous for their family or they were too tired after a long season. These young men are multi-millionaires whose arrogance is such that they believe they owe nothing to the game or the country that has given them so much. It’s the sense of entitlement without obligation, the idea that you can take without giving back, that galls me. I applaud the basketball players who chose to show up, but this is not a Dream Team. This is an amalgamation of NBA all-stars who have not played together under international rules. This is a team in name, but not in chemistry. A team embodies the concept that the whole is more than the sum of its parts; it’s not about me, it’s about us.

Want to see a Dream Team? Look at the Iraqi soccer team. These players were brutalized by Saddam Hussein’s son, Udai, whenever they didn’t win. They endured medieval tortures and it did not steal their spirit. They survived a regime’s brutality and still came together as a team to represent their country. The Iraqi soccer team beat the overwhelming favorites in their first two games and advanced to the quarterfinal round. They are the Sea Biscuit of these Games — beaten and abused but not broken — they are a Dream Team that ennobles the Olympic spirit.

Schlag Byte 8/16/04 - "Haliburton Global "

Halliburton, the world's # 2 oil-field services company, has just agreed to pay $7.5 million to settle SEC charges that it misled investors. Among other things, Halliburton has been unable to account for $3.1 billion in profit and cash. Now, Halliburton investors have filed a class-action lawsuit against the company, charging several top executives with intentionally engaging in “serial accounting fraud” from 1990 to 2001. This includes the time period when Vice-President Dick Cheney was its CEO.

The United Nations’ International Advisory and Monitoring Board (IAMB) is charged with the responsibility of ensuring Iraq’s oil revenues are managed responsibly. The IAMB has asked why more than $1 billion in contracts was awarded to Halliburton without competitive bidding, and how the U.S.-led coalition has managed billions of dollars in Iraqi oil revenue. The IAMB is accusing the Bush Administration of withholding information from them.

Halliburton is a global company that does well in wartime. We all know there is a cost to war and some people do well (usually those not directly engaged in the conflict), while others pay the highest price. The kinds of excesses we are seeing here are obscene and make my blood boil (not good in Phoenix AZ these hot summer days).

To escape these dog-day afternoons of 100-degree days, Phoenicians go to lots of movies. A cool place to kick back and mindlessly allow yourself to become absorbed by the make-believe. But I went to a movie that didn’t take me to Fantasyland, but instead, one that made me focus on the reality that what we see in the world is scarier than any Hollywood make-believe.

The Manchurian Candidate is a remake conspiracy tale set in Kuwait during the Gulf War. This latest version features a platoon captured and brainwashed, not by Communists, but by agents of an international conglomerate called Manchurian Global. Their medical experts perform brain surgical implants and turn the son of a United States senator into a murderous robot that is positioned to become the Vice-President of the United States.

It’s pretty far-fetched, and scared me a whole lot less than today’s reality. A global company, operating without accountability, whose representatives are leaders of nations. Sometimes going to the movies is no respite from the heat.

Schlag Byte 8/9/04 - "ECT + VNS = TLC"

Forty years ago, the treatment of choice for refractory depression, was electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).  Profoundly depressed people who didn’t respond to medications and therapies received a repetitive electroshock to the brain. It caused generalized grand-mal seizures but clearly left people less depressed.  It also left people unable to remember what they had for breakfast and all other recent events; however, compared to the relentless despair they previously felt, these side effects were acceptable.

It was never quite clear what the electroshock did to alleviate the depression, nor was it clear what the long-term side effects of such shock on the brain might be, so it was used only when everything else failed. Researchers have discovered that a new device used for the treatment of drug-resistant epilepsy can also treat refractory depression (without the nasty side effects).  A tiny pacemaker-like pulse generator is implanted in the chest that delivers an electrical impulse to the vagus nerve (called vagal nerve stimulation or VNS).  

The vagus nerve carries signals from the heart, lung and stomach to the mood centers of the brain. Neurologists and psychiatrists still can’t explain how this electrical stimulation works, but they do say VNS provides new insight on how people get depressed.  They posit a connection between our organs and our own emotions; people who get depressed, they say, have too weak a signal coming from their vital organs to their brains.

Schlag Byte 8/2/04 - "The Healing Blessing "

To all of you relatives who have written to share your condolences on the loss of my mother, I say thank you. Your loving expressions have touched me, and I want to share this follow-up story.

One week after my mother’s burial I was in Germany to conduct a three-day workshop for mental health professionals entitled “The Science and Spirit of Healing.” This was my third trip to Germany and each time I go it gets easier to be there.  My second-generation, survivor-son certainties and resentments have slowly undergone modifications. Most Germans are younger than me, and do not share any responsibility for the sins of their fathers. Anti-Semitism may be a transmittable disease, but it is not a national character.

My workshop was designed to teach psychotherapists how to magnify their healing power by incorporating rituals, ceremonies, even ordeals into their therapeutic repertoire. It began early on Friday afternoon with an opening lecture and then moved into an exercise in which participants found themselves in a ceremonial circle.  The task was for each person to speak directly from the heart.  I asked them not to prepare a speech but to speak from the heart when their turn came. To trust whatever the spirit moved them to say in the moment.  When it came my turn to speak it was getting dark, which ushered in the Sabbath. I spoke about what it was like to be in Germany at this moment, on this holy night one week after my mother’s death. The Sabbath (Shabbos) was her favorite holiday. She welcomed Shabbos with joyful anticipation, because everyone ushered in the possibility that tonight was the night the Messiah would come. When she lit the Sabbath candles, she covered her eyes so she wouldn’t be blinded by the light of His arrival.  Afterwards, she would place her hands on my head and bestow the traditional mother’s blessing upon her son.  My mother blessed me this way every Shabbos we were together, until the day she died.

As I told this story in the circle, I could feel my tears welling and was moved to stand up and recite the Kaddish, the traditional mourner’s prayer. This may have been the first time it was recited in Rottweil since the synagogue here closed in 1938. In that moment I felt enveloped by the presence of my mother.

Two days later the workshop ended, culminating in the creation of healing ceremonies.  The 50 participants broke into five groups, each charged with creating a ceremony for a volunteer among them — somebody in the group, who was looking to heal a problem, disease, or create a new ending to an old painful story. The volunteers then left to contemplate what they hoped this ceremony might achieve.  The rest of the group planned and later conducted a five-minute ceremony.

The ceremonies were astoundingly creative and passionate, each one touched me. When they were completed, I was moved to ask for a healing ceremony for myself.  I told the group I had come to Germany at this extraordinary time.  At first, I thought it was to teach, then I thought it was to honor my mother, and recite the traditional blessings in her beloved homeland.  Now, as I was preparing to leave, I believed it was to ask for their blessing. I wanted them to help me move beyond my acute pain but also beyond that pain which I had carried for a long time.  I pulled a chair into the middle of the circle and invited anyone who wanted to come forward and place his or her hands on my head to give me a blessing.

I sat with my eyes closed, hands opened on my lap, and, one by one, I felt dozens come forward to place their hands on my head and bless me.  Some, offered scriptural blessings, others poems, spoken words and songs. When I felt no more hands, I looked up and found myself surrounded by the group.  Fifty people had joined hands in a circle, and began dancing while singing Hava Nagila, in Hebrew. I wondered how they all knew the words, but their passion moved me to stand up and begin dancing in the middle.  Slowly, the circle spiraled in and I was hugged in a communal embrace; then they moved out and danced around me. In that moment I saw my mother smile, and felt my spirit lifted by the blessing that heals all wounds.

Schlag Byte 7/26/04 - "Goodbye, Ma "

lost my mother four weeks ago; her heart finally gave out. She was hospitalized to get rid of the fluid that was accumulating in her lungs (but only after she delayed her admission for a day so she could attend a scheduled bridge game and luncheon). Her doctor thought that IV medications would be effective, so my wife and I were still planning on our vacation to Italy. My mother encouraged us to go and said she could certainly last at least a couple more weeks.

But the hospitalization did not relieve her symptoms, and the day before we were to leave, she told me not to be disappointed or angry if she couldn’t hold on until I returned. For my mother, that was as clear as she could say don’t go I’d like to see you. So we cancelled out trip and flew to California instead. Don’t you know the first thing she said when we walked into her room was, “Sorry for making you cancel your vacation plans.”

We talked all afternoon. She wanted us to know that she didn’t want to go on like this, and she didn’t want to spend another night gasping for every breath. She had no doubts about this, she knew her heart wasn’t going to get better. The night before she had hallucinated, and she didn’t want to lose it completely — she wanted to go with her dignity. She’d had a full life, been blessed with wonderful family and friends, had no regrets and didn’t need to suffer like this.

Her doctor had told her that whenever the struggle became too hard, he would make her more comfortable. So that evening when he came, Ma told him that she had no uncertainty, it was too hard a struggle and didn’t make sense anymore. Her doctor, a true healer, kept his word and ordered the medication that would ease her suffering. She kissed him, and gave him a Jewish mother’s ultimate compliment, “You remind me of my son.” To which Dr. Ray responded, “There are some patients who are just wonderful to work with.”

Before the nurse came with the morphine, Ma asked for iced coffee with vanilla ice cream, which she finished in its entirety. Then she called the only granddaughter she hadn’t yet said goodbye to. When she hung up she asked my wife to take off the ring remaining on her hand, and then she motioned for me to bend down so she could bless me. When she finished, she whispered, “Will you still call me on Shabbos, even up there?” and I said I would. A wonderful nurse was with us every hour. Mom fell asleep as my sister, my wife, and I stayed with her. She died quietly nine hours later, as I cradled her head and stroked her hand.

We buried our mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, friend and bridge partner on Friday afternoon before Shabbos began. This holy Sabbath is the only night Jews do not conduct memorial services, so we conducted an honoring ceremony instead. Family and friends gathered to tell stories about this exceptional woman who survived Nazis and two husbands, was a great cook, loyal, competent, committed, gracious, and who loved life. It was around this circle that my sister announced she had put a telephone in Ma’s casket. She told the funeral director that my mother loved getting calls before Shabbos. The director said he wasn’t sure it was kosher, to which my sister said, “What’s the big deal if the Rabbi doesn’t know.”

Our blessed mother lived and died her way and on her favorite day. Good Shabbos, Ma, I’ll call you.

Schlag Byte 7/19/04 - "Nip and Tuck, Stretch Your Luck "

Television’s new makeover reality shows are telling today’s fairytales. Beautiful princesses emerge from toads to live happily ever after. Self-described “ugly ducklings” appear on TV shows to improve their appearance, not just with make-up and clothes but with plastic surgery. Plastic surgeons are doing rhinoplastys, face lifts, liposuction, and breast augmentation for TV contestants who want to be completely made over.

Nationally, cosmetic surgical procedures have grown 87% since 1997. Plastic surgeons have portrayed them as a healthful rejuvenating regime, something like a spa weekend. In an article in Newsday in 2002, Dr. Sherrell Aston, Head of Plastic Surgery at Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital compared to cosmetic surgery patients to “the lady who gets her hair done and her nails done….people are wanting to do it as part of a personal grooming. It will become more and more common as time goes on and be programmed into people's consciousness.”

Make no mistake, this is real surgery with real risks. As a matter of fact, one of Dr. Aston’s patients, a 56-year-old woman, went into cardiac arrest and died recently. But, people are willing to take these risks because our culture defines perfection through the glorification of eternal youth. We are willing to face death, permanent deformity, and immune diseases to model somebody’s idea of “beautiful.”

Today’s plastic surgeons are doing what most consider minor alterations, but in the future they will have the capacity to do complete face transplants. Sounds like science fiction, but we already have the technology and skills to transplant the entire face of one compatible person to another. Such transplants could have an enormous role in the treatment of profound facial disfigurement from burns, cancers, or other injuries.

But you know that as soon as this operation is developed for these indications, others who are less scarred will clamor for it. This is an extraordinarily lucrative profession, and doctors will find some justification to expand the indications for its being done. Face transplants may become the next generation’s cosmetic nip and tuck.

Wake Up! Enjoy what you’ve got rather than resenting it and remember, no surgical improvement lasts forever.

Schlag Byte 7/12/04 - "Wave That Flag, and Be Grateful for the Dead"

The Grateful Dead are making their first concert tour since Jerry Garcia’s death nine years ago.  When Jerry died he left a hole so big that the group didn’t perform together. But there is still a huge audience of Deadheads out there that now spans three generations, and these young people have a loyalty to the music, not just to the man.

After almost a decade’s lapse, a new generation is ripe for initiation into the phenomenon that is a Grateful Dead tour. The remaining band members got together, found the talented singer/songwriter/guitarist from the Allman Brothers band, Warren Haynes, and so the 2004 summer tour, Wave That Flag, was born. I say hallelujah! It couldn’t come at a better time.  

I have long been a fan of the Grateful Dead — even been at concerts with three generations of my family in attendance. It’s not just the music, it’s the ambience of a Dead concert. There is a mood here that is permeated by gentleness and peace. From the time you park in the lot, you can feel the spirit in the air . . . a combination peace rally, outdoor bazaar and casbah. The parking lot scene is toned down nowadays, only one aisle with vendors still selling jewelry, tie-dyes, Dead memorabilia, and veggie burritos (there are no goo-balls or brownies anymore). There are still the minions outside the gate, waiting for a miracle.

Inside the mood is one of joyful anticipation. As soon as the band comes out everybody stands, never to sit again. The band is great and Haynes (who looks a little Jerry-like with a head full of hair and full beard) only adds to the group. You could feel Jerry’s presence everywhere, on T-shirts and in the classic repertoire. The traditional drum duo of Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann is still unbelievable, creating an undulating tribal rhythm that brings together the tribe of the Grateful Dead. Phil Lesh sang the Dylan tune, Like a Rolling Stone, which galvanized the tribe into one community of spirit.

The crowd roared for an encore, and went delirious when the band came back. Phil walked up to the microphone and announced he’d had a liver transplant five years ago.  He was here because somebody else gave him their liver. His young son signed up as a donor, because he wanted to do for somebody else what somebody had done for his dad. “There aren’t enough donors, please sign up,” and the crowd roared its approval. Then Bob Weir took the microphone and said, “The Wave That Flag tour is a reminder of what it means to be an American. Everybody needs to vote or don’t complain when it doesn’t go your way. Register to vote, and there are registrars outside who’ll sign you up. Use it or lose it,” he said and the crowd roared again.

They closed with Iko Iko, (I wish they had done Ripple, with all of us singing the chorus and holding onto each other) but the energy couldn’t have been more wonderful. I wanted to bottle it and take it home as an antidote to despair.  But you can’t bottle the spirit— you have to find ways to seek it out again and again.

Just when I’m most dispirited, about where we are headed as a nation, something happens to lift me up. Celebrate this great country, where freedom of expression is guaranteed . . . wave that flag and be grateful for the Dead.

Schlag Byte 7/5/04 - "Fahrenheit High on Fourth of July"

I’m generally happy on the Fourth of July . . . it reminds me of all that I love about America . . . that freedom is an inalienable right, and equality, an over-riding principle. This year I’m feeling badly because everything I hold dear about my country is getting battered in the current political climate.

Bush appointed a commission to look at the 9/11 tragedy. The 9/11 Commission just finished their 18-month inquiry into what happened that fateful day. The commissioners, five Democrats and five Republicans, minimized their partisan differences to come up with this shared assessment. Iraq did not collaborate with Al Qaeda; Osama oversaw the whole operation, and Saddam Hussein was uninvolved. It pointed out how unprepared the Country was, both in terms of response and the quality of our intelligence. The commission recommended the overhaul of the FBI, CIA and Pentagon, saying the old structures needed to be dismantled because the right hand doesn’t know what the left is thinking and doing. The Commission acknowledged that resistance to change from within is intense. Each agency has it’s own constituencies so powerful that this dysfunctional system is perpetuated.

No one on the Commission seems convinced that the White House will follow through on its recommendations, and already Bush is saying that he doesn’t care what the Commission says, he’s heard the evidence but also knows things they don’t. He knows he’s right because he’s talked to God about it. Bush tells us Saddam murdered his own people and he would do it to us. He wants to eliminate those who threaten America. If this rhetoric sounds familiar, it’s because it’s same litany articulated by our enemies. They also know they are right, they say we want to destroy them, they hate our values, and know that God is on their side.

We’ve got to apply some serious pressure as this presidential election approaches if we care about where this country is headed. If we want to sell a philosophy that democracy and liberty are our gift to the world, then we need to find somebody who can tell this story better than Bush can.

If you are still on the fence about Bush’s re-election see Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. This film just won the Best Picture award at the recent Cannes Film Festival. If this movie doesn’t tilt your wagon, nothing will.

Schlag Byte 6/28/04 - "Show Me The Integrity"

If you were born after 1982 and have come of age in the 21st-century, you are part of the “Millennial Generation.” The first of this generation are now graduating from college, and what kind of jobs are these young people looking for? Experience Inc., a company that provides job search software for University Careers Offices, reported what new college graduates said about the kinds of careers they wanted (New York Times, 5/30/04).

After two years of rising unemployment and dismal job prospects, these young people know that the days of getting hired and spending an entire career with the one paternalistic employer, benefits and a pension, are long gone. Today’s college graduates know about job instability, increasing competition, health care costs, and the outlook for Social Security benefits when they come of age. In spite of these uncertainties, the Millennial Generation says job stability is not the #1 reason for choosing a job. The #1 reason for choosing a job is “integrity of organization in its dealings with employees.”

Two years ago, organizational integrity was the #8 reason for graduates choosing where they wanted to work. The Millennial Generation has become sensitized to deceit and cynicism in the marketplace and they don’t like it. They are looking for credible mentors, men and women with values, who will provide them with an honorable framework for their life’s work. They want someone of integrity to teach them how to lead, how to roll with the punches and survive the hard times.

I’m thinking business may be able to do what diplomats have failed to achieve— to bring people together in a community where trust and honor still exist. A world where making friends precedes making sales, and people keep their promises. Cheers to the Millennial Generation for reminding us that values-driven organizations can prosper in this age of dishonor and mistrust.

Schlag Byte 6/21/04 - "Granny Annie"

My mother-in-law died last week. We developed a pretty good thing together over many, many years. She was Annie Goldberg, from Quincy, Mass. I called her “Ma,” my kids called her “Granny Annie” (or Annie Fanny Granny Banani). Last year she suffered a compound fracture of her leg that required a metal rod to be inserted. Six months later she needed colon surgery, which slowed her down considerably.

That’s when she started talking more seriously about “Why bother, it’s just one thing after another.” I could shrug it off most of the time, but it drove her daughters to distraction. It was her character to anticipate the future from the worst possible perspective. If there was anything you could be sure of, it was that some bad shit was going to happen. That was how she justified smoking a pack of cigarettes a day for 71 years. “Something is going to kill me anyway, so it’ll be a little sooner.”

After the colon surgery, she was talking more and more about what was the point of it all. I told her she always said that but always managed to pull herself up. “It’s because I’m scared not to,” she said. I told her I was with her whatever she wanted to do. As long as she wanted to keep moving, I would be with her and encourage her, and if it didn’t make any sense to her anymore, I would be with her if she wanted to stop pulling. Then, just before Mother’s Day she fell again and this time broke her hip. When, after two months, she still couldn’t stand and walk to the bathroom, she became less afraid. Didn’t eat and drink much, shut down and refused anymore surgery.

We took her to the Valley of the Sun Hospice. I am a great admirer of hospice and home care workers. Here are doctors, nurses, social workers, chaplains, pet therapists, musicians, and volunteers who still talk to patients and families. It is the last bastion in healthcare delivery where the soul of medicine still lives. These are healers who help patients, families, and friends come together at this extraordinary time to touch the soul of their humanity.

At this hospice, I have a friend whose title is “pastoral counselor and integrative therapist.” In addition to her many skills, she is a talented harpist. She brings a small, traveling harp to people’s rooms and plays. She has a wide repertory of musical selections, from psalms to the Beatles or “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”. People here are encouraged to come together in community to create ceremonies that inspire them.

We gathered in Granny Annie’s room on the last day of her life. Three generations were around her bed when her granddaughters broke out into their very funky rendition of Sister Sledge’s “We are Family.” I looked at my girls dancing at Granny Annie’s side and thought what a way to go. Can’t imagine any better goodbye than feeling such love from generation to generation.

So long Ma.

Schlag Byte 6/14/04 - "M.D.M.B.A. Is Not Ecstasy"

Harvard’s medical and business schools have just announced plans to begin a joint M.D./ M.B.A. program. To get into this program, you have to be admitted through the regular process of both schools, and after five years you get both an M.D. and an M.B.A degree.

What do you suppose this says about the direction of contemporary medical education? This is what the Dean of the Harvard Medical School says, “It’s to prepare our medical students for the realities of modern medicine.”

Profitability and health have become linked in contemporary life. If medical schools respond to this reality by training more businessmen, then I worry we will lose our souls as healers. Profitability is antithetical to good healthcare. To deliver great healthcare, you have to plow back everything you make into improving patient care. If, however, you first have to improve investors’ returns, then it mitigates against great healthcare.

Last week, the Canadian Medical Association Journal (6/7/04) published the most comprehensive analysis ever, comparing profit and not-for-profit healthcare facilities. It doesn’t matter whether the for-profits are hospitals, dialysis centers, rehab facilities, hospices or nursing homes; when compared to nonprofits of the same description, for-profits have higher death rates, and deliver lower quality care. Profit-making facilities charge more and their payroll costs are lower. The Congressional Budget Office has concluded that HMO’s actually increase Medicare costs by at least $2 billion each year.

If the culture of medicine is moving toward the business model, and our finest schools respond to such a climate by legitimizing its pursuit, we’re in trouble. If, on the other hand, these new degree programs allow doctors to study how inner city and teaching hospitals can compete more effectively, or make for-profits share their booty with inner city and teaching hospitals . . .this kind of MDMBA would be ecstasy.

Schlag Byte 6/7/04 - "The Look In Your Eyes"

The Attorney General says there is increasing chatter, from terrorist cells the world over, about some dramatic attack. However, he’s not increasing the new color-coded alert system and wants us to do nothing special. Why then is he telling us, other than to escalate fearful anticipation?

This is classic neurolinguistic programming . . .the Attorney General feeds us his map about how to process information and we create some representation of those expectations. This Administration is building an atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust to extend racial profiling, justify carrying more handguns, which lead to more and more acts of violence disguised as self-protection. Recently, in Payson, Arizona, a guy walking a couple of unleashed dogs was shot 3 times in the chest and killed by another man who was quoted as saying, “He had this look in his eyes.” We are being sensitized to see “this look” in people’s eyes; this is based upon our perception not their reality —this “Ashcroft Syndrome” breeds suspicion and mistrust.

Don’t get programmed into the current atmosphere of color-coded, fear-anticipating reality, because that kind of thinking actually increases the likelihood of disasters happening. It’s not terrorists that will steal our peace, but rather each other. Plant these seeds instead: if you reach out your hand somebody may reach out theirs and touch your heart.

One such person who has touched me is a pen pal who lives in the far northern reaches of Quebec. We write to each other several times a year, handwritten notes on lovely cards that we pick out specially. I’m not exactly sure how old she is. I do know that she’s white-haired and has been widowed for 25 years. Struggling and alone, she first wrote to me 10 years ago, after reading one of my books. It was a moving poetic piece about “feeling subdued by life” and wondering if her spirit could still rise in a world of fear and isolation. She quoted a line from George Orwell’s 1984, “It is not by being heard, but by staying sane that carries on the human heritage.”

I wrote back, and the rest is a decade’s history of correspondence. We have never seen each other face to face but she is my respected, honored, trusted friend who brings me joy every time I hear from her. I recently got one of her beautifully colored cards (she still addresses me as “My Dear Dr. Hammerschlag”), and she said she was once subdued by life but now only by death and thanked me again for acknowledging her when her heart was aching.

I love this lady, whose face I don’t know. I do not need to look into her eyes to see into her soul and feel a connection to someone who reminds me in these times that there is hope for our humanity.

Schlag Byte 5/31/04 - "The Huichol Experience: The Offering"

It was the morning after our meeting with the Marakame. We gathered with the children and community around “the tree.” At its base, lay the Navajo shawl holding our communal offerings. It included a deer skull, peyote head, weavings, beadwork, gourds, poems, sacred salt from Kahunas in Hawaii, cedar from the tribes of the Black Hills, and the “fear drawings” made by 300 Huichol kids.

I wore the hat the Marakame gave me and held his muvieri. Pablo described our meeting with the feared Marakame. Seeing me without obvious scars or disabilities made Pablo’s telling of the story especially powerful. Pablo told the community what we had said to the Marakame, that we knew of his reputation and came with respect and honor. We hoped he would help us bring the circle together to heal this disease, and we asked him to give us an offering to add to all ours. Pablo pointed to the Muvieri in my hand and said, “This is what he gave us,” than came over and gently placed it in the bundle.

We invited everyone to help us roll up the shawl, and then we made a giant circle around the tree. We said a goodbye to each child, gave little toys— tiny windmills, animals, cars, crayons and soap bubbles. I felt as though the sky had opened and dropped love in abundance— not many dry eyes.

It was almost noon before we departed for the Grandfather Village that guards entry to the “Holy of Holies.” Fernando brought along a letter signed by the school principal and the head of the parents association. It told about our work together and the community’s hope that we be allowed to spend the night in the village and then take the offerings to the holy place in the morning. It was likely that we would not be allowed to go, as few non-Huichols have ever been there. Our backup plan was that we would take the offering home with us and bury it in a sacred place in Arizona.

The dirt road to the Grandfather Village was completed only last year. The rutted path is often impassable in the wet season, and the talc-like sand makes it treacherous even in the dry season. We slip-slided along, holding tight. Halfway down, we caught the first glimpse of the village. This is how I imagined Walpi must have looked 150 years ago, when the first roads came to the Hopi reservation. As we got closer, we could see the adobe homes surrounding the central plaza and make out the mission church. We drove into the village, which may be the oldest continuously inhabited community in all of the Americas. The road ended in front of the official governing chamber.

Fernando met with the governor, established relationships, and then shared the letter. After four days in Huichol country, our presence wasn’t any great surprise to the governor. Slowly, the council gathered. The tribal chamber was a room 50 feet long, but quite narrow, maybe 10 feet wide. A bench was carved into one wall, and in front of it was a long wooden table; an altar and fireplace lay on the ground in front of it.

At one end of the long room was the jail, the one where the old Marakame was incarcerated, only months before. The people here obviously knew him personally.

The council consisted of men and women, young and old, who passed the letter around among them. Then came the customary introductions, presentations of credentials, and us telling our story. We told the council how and why we came, what we had done with the children, and about our meeting with the Marakame.

Then came a passionate exchange during which some members wanted to see what was inside the offering bundle, while others were reluctant to do so. The skeptics wondered if by opening the bundle, they would unleash the Marakame’s negative energy. Could it be that his healing offering was designed to bring more misfortune upon them? They all finally decided to open it, but only after cleansing the entire room with copal incense.

They looked at everything quite carefully, even took some instamatic photos of its contents. They examined the children’s drawings and the Marakame’s muvieri. Then more discussion and a final question. The governor wanted to know what I saw when I looked in the old man’s eye. At first, I heard Fernando’s translation as a clinical question. What had I seen when I examined his eye? I said he was going blind in his left eye because of a cataract. But they asked it again, what did I see when I looked in his eye. They didn’t want to know what I saw when I looked at it, they wanted to know what I saw inside it. It was a soul question. They wanted to know if I believed he was sincere in his gift. I said this was an 81-year-old man with 14 children, 43 grandchildren, and 87 great-grandchildren. He and his family had also suffered greatly. I believed that he did not want this illness to be his lasting legacy. I looked in his eye and believed he was sincere.

In the end, they decided to let us bury the offering at the “Holy of Holies.” This crisis was so profound, the suffering so chronic, and the need so desperate, that they allowed us to do it. With the proviso that many of them would go with us, and we’d leave after the burial and prayers.

The next morning, accompanied by a dozen Huichols, including the governor and his wife, we left at daybreak. The atmosphere was palpably lighter. During the night, the governor had a dream in which he saw the old Marakame, walked up to him, and looked directly into his eye. He, too, believed his offering was sincere.

It was a three-hour trek into the canyon, and a lot longer coming out. Down into the canyon, across the river and up to the entrance to the “Holy of Holies.” We stopped at a 200-ft. serpentine cleft through a rock. This is the only way in and out and can accommodate only one person at a time. This opening was created by a giant snake who split the rock so the Huichol could emerge from the “Cave of Life” and walk to their land. This is the birthplace of the world.

The leader blessed the path and asked permission to enter. He cut small twigs from a bush he said was the firewood that ignited the sparks that burst out of the “Cave of Light.” We would deposit these offerings at its mouth when we walked by. By the time I walked through the crevasse, I had chills of anticipation. We passed caves and pools, the narrowing path lined with cottonlike-fluff prayer offerings. Then the trail got treacherous and you had to hold on to the canyon walls. I could feel the stones vibrate, the same kind of hum I felt many years ago when I touched the original cornerstone of the ancient temple in Jerusalem.

This “Holy of Holies” is a large ledge big enough to contain seven temples, each one big enough for one adult. For tens of thousands of years, this fireplace has burned continuously. The Huichol have kneeled here at this spot that is reputedly the oldest altar in the Americas. On a ledge below are piles of deer skulls, the most sacred Huichol totem. We prepare ourselves and open the bundle. Fernando picks up the beaded deer skull and puts it on the pile. I pick out the place that speaks to me and together we dig out a three-foot hole in the sandy earth.

When we are ready, we gather in a circle; tobacco is passed around in a cornhusk-rolled cigarette. This holy sacrament was blessed and given to us by Navajo Indian relatives, who also pray with Peyote. When we light this sacrament and share our breath with each other, all our dreams, hopes, and prayers get heard as one. Our hopes for the children, for the community, would be carried to touch the ear of the Creator.

We sprinkled the cedar offerings from the Lakota and sacred salt given by Hawaiian Kahunas. We poured the water from the “Spring of Life” and prayed together. Then we sang some closing songs and ended in Hebrew, asking God to bless us, be gracious onto us and grant us peace. We did the best we could, greeted one another around the circle, and did not hang around. We stopped for lunch at an awesome place (that will have to be told later) and emerged at 4 p.m.

We packed, loaded up, ate dinner, and said lots of good-byes. At dusk we drove out, passing the ancient church whose courtyard was now filled with Peyotero’s. These pilgrims had just returned from the sacred gardens in Wirikuta, a week’s walk away. Their feathered hats on the ground surrounding a full-skirted Christ, they were singing the songs of their ancestors. Then we came to the new road with its new convenience store. It’s another adobe house, but this one has a solar-powered cooler to chill soda and beer among other things. A truck now makes weekly deliveries and we stopped for a cool beer. It was delicious and then I felt the tears in my eyes.

Since we’ve returned, each of us has been asked, “So, has the illness has been cured?” I don’t know, but I do believe we made a difference. The children got heard; their fear was made visible and faced. A powerful shaman got a chance to close the circle and leave a healing legacy. And six people came together in a way that reminded each of us of the miraculous. The right people, in the right place, at the right time . . .and you can heal the world. This is how the awesome is made visible.

Schlag Byte 5/24/04 - "The Huichol Experience: The Connection"

We arrived in Guadalajara on a Sunday afternoon to a warm greeting by our Mexican teammates. I looked at the old stick-shift-on-the-floor van, which was loaded to the max both inside and on the roof. There was no question in my mind that this gypsy caravan would be stopped at every Federale checkpoint.

We climbed in and drove for the next 10 hours to the end of the paved road that signaled entry into Huichol country. The next morning we arrived at the boarding school after a four-hour, spine-rattling ride on a potholed cattle track. No sooner had we started unloading, than Joyce, who spoke no Spanish, was surrounded by dozens of children, connecting with them using a turtle hand puppet. The rest of us put our stuff in the 5x12 room that served as our communal sleeping quarters, clinic, and storage room. Within an hour, word of our arrival had spread, and slowly the community gathered. We met around an ancient tree outside our room, which became our ceremonial center.

The school principal introduced Fernando, who then introduced us as doctors, “Marakames”(traditional Huichol shaman), healers, and singers who had come to try to help the children get over the “illness” which everyone knew about. Then each of us spoke. I said we came to the community with great respect and open hearts. I had seen such illnesses and believed we could help them overcome this disease that had spread so much fear and suffering among them. We planned to work with all the children—we would draw out their fears, and we wanted to speak with all of them too. We believed teachers, parents, cooks and Marakames could help us mobilize a healing power greater than that causing the illness. We would make time for everybody who sought us out (we never realized it would mean conducting clinics long into the night).

That evening we met with the children in the schoolyard. Fernando and Pablo translated my not-quite-David Copperfield magical demonstration. Using ashes from a fireplace, I demonstrated how things outside of us could get inside us. The converse is also true, I said, as it is possible for things trapped inside of us to come out. The next day, we were going to ask them to draw a picture of what the illness inside them might look like. Could they give the Fear Monster, a face? If we could see it, perhaps we could find a way to get rid of it.

By the time we got back from the schoolyard, we discovered that clinic hours had begun. Over the next three days, with Marta at my side, we saw patients with chicken pox, rheumatoid arthritis, and lots of heartache from abuse and growing alcoholism. Marta had an amazing ability to translate my words in a way that brought tears to people’s eyes. She touched them, held them, and reminded me how restrained I am in my own repertoire. Mostly, we saw the remarkable resilience of these people and their powerful sense of family.

We asked our patients to leave an offering on a table we’d set up under the tree. Joyce had brought a Navajo shawl made and blessed especially for them, which we used to cover the table. We would later wrap the offerings in it. Anything would be welcomed— a stone, a picture, a poem—any object that reminded them of their hopes. We would carry these offerings to the holy place when we completed our work.

The next day, the children drew their pictures; with remarkable openness they drew fierce animals and people who could turn into animals. These half-human monsters could claw their way inside them. One kid drew a picture of such a creature and said it was a Marakame, whom he named. It turned out that a lot of people thought this was the shaman responsible. We thought it a good idea to speak with him. Fernando, “The Driver”, made plans for us to be accompanied to the Marakame’s village the following day.

The three-mile walk to this isolated ceremonial center at the bottom of a spectacular canyon was a descent through time into Middle Earth. The tiny picture-postcard village from a lost planet movie set was surrounded by cornfields, corrals, and the community well. Adobe homes circled a central walled compound, inside of which were the sacred temples. We were guided to the family compound of the old Marakame, which included at least half a dozen homes and its own temples.

An old man wearing the traditional Marakame’s hat was led outside by his son. I remembered seeing him that first afternoon—he had been telling his father that we were the doctors who had come to cure the children’s illness. He seemed wary. We learned he recently had been jailed by tribal authorities who believed him responsible for the illness. Some people actually wanted him hanged.

Woven chairs, tree stumps, and stools were arranged in a circle and we were invited to sit. The women and children stood behind us, listening to every word. Fernando introduced us to the Marakame. We spoke and told him it was with enormous respect for his reputation and power that we came to ask for his blessing. We told him what we had learned from the children’s drawings and that our interest was not in assigning blame. This was not about who was right or wrong, or the forces of good vs. evil, or peyote vs. kieri. It was about healing the split, closing the circle, and pointing the way to a solution. We knew how much he and his family had suffered too. We believed that, with his help, we could mobilize a power greater than the one causing the illness and overcome it. We hoped he would give us an offering to add to the ceremonial bundle that we hoped to offer at the “Holy of Holies.”

The old Marakame took off his hat and gave it to me. At first I thought this was his offering, but Pablo said no, it was for me. The old man motioned for me to put it on, and so I took off my red baseball hat and gave it to him. I put on his hat, and then he invited me to follow him into his private temple. Pablo and I climbed several steps up into the 5x8 peaked-roof sanctuary, and I was overwhelmed by the space. There was barely enough room for the three of us to walk around—the sanctuary was filled from floor to ceiling with sacred symbols and holy objects—a table-top altar, deerskins, feathers, masks, beadwork, peyote, photographs, Christian symbols and incense.

The Marakame reached into a basket that contained dozens of carved wooden prayer sticks with feathers attached, called “Muvieri,” which are very sacred healing objects. He picked one out, examined it, for some reason decided against it, and put it down. Then he picked up another and, after scrutinizing it, gave it to me for the offering and tied it onto the hat he had just given me.

When we emerged from the temple, he asked me to examine him. He was going blind in his left eye and that side of his face had also been paralyzed for years. We sat looking face to face. His face showed the residual of a facial nerve paralysis, but otherwise he had no left-sided weakness. When I looked in his eye, I saw the dense cataract that was blinding him. I told him his eye could be operated on and his vision improved, but that after four years it was unlikely that his facial paralysis would improve much.

Before we left, he wanted us to chant for him; so as our final goodbye, we sang blessing songs from many tribes of North America. Listening to our melodies reverberating from those canyon walls, whose stones have echoed such songs for millennia, moved me to tears.

I walked out wearing the old Marakame’s hat, to which he had tied the Muvieri that I would place in the offering. The next day we would take it to the “Grandfather Village” that guards the entrance to the “Holy of Holies.”

Stay tuned next week for the conclusion.

Schlag Byte 5/17/04 - "The Huichol Experience: The Invitation"

I just got back from my consulting trip with the Huichol Indians in Mexico’s Sierra Madre Mountains. The intensity of the experience is still so vivid that words can’t recreate the enormity of its power. Putting it all in perspective will take a while, but I wanted to at least share a flavor of the story while it’s still emblazoned in my mind.

I came to this project through Fernando Ortiz-Monasterio. We met on the beach in Baja California during my last “Boy’s Trip.” I learned that Fernando is a mechanical engineer; he discovered I am a psychiatrist who has worked with Native people in the American Southwest. This prompted him to tell me about a serious psychiatric problem he had encountered among the Huichols.

Fernando told me the children in boarding schools were hallucinating. It was attributed to sorcery—the children, thinking an evil spirit had possessed them, became incredibly strong and had to be physically restrained. If they got away they could run for miles, and there were occasions when they became violent toward others. The problem had been going on for 10 years and traditional shaman, called Marakame, had been unable to cure the disease. Some observers thought this might be the result of a Jimson Weed-like intoxication. The cost of this illness, both psychologically and economically, had been devastating.

Fernando is deeply attached to the Huichols. He was first asked to build a bridge over a raging torrential river deep in their territory. He founded a “deer nursery”; the deer are their most sacred totem, and they were disappearing. Fernando got the zoo in Mexico City to fly surplus deer back to their homeland to replenish their numbers. His Huichol name is Marayauya, which means “Father of the Deer.”

Fernando asked me if I’d ever seen such a psychological problem, and I told him I had. I had seen spells caused by witchcraft, drugs, psychosis, and hysteria. In my experience, it didn’t make any difference if the disease were explained genetically, psychoanalytically, psychopharmacologically, or by sorcery; the affliction was real and could be treated. He asked me if I thought I could be helpful, and I said, “Maybe . . .let’s correspond.”

There were many emails, shared literature, and questionnaires sent back and forth, translated into Huichol and hand-carried to the village. The result of our correspondence was an invitation from the Huichol principal at the boarding school asking me for help. Fernando put together the Mexican team, which included his brother Pablo, a world-class photographer and author, and Marta Riveroll, an extraordinary energy healer. Both of them had worked with the Huichol previously. I organized the American team, which included John Koriath, a research psychophysiologist who establishes learning communities, and Joyce Mills, a talented play therapist, teacher and author. Joyce, John, and I have worked together with Native people in the Turtle Island Project for almost 20 years.

We educated ourselves about the Huichols and knew they had been using peyote for at least 10,000 years. Their whole lives are ruled by ceremonies and symbols, and their holy places are considered the oldest continuously used sacred sites in all of the Americas. The Huichol live in areas so inaccessible, that only last year was the first primitive road opened into the Grandfather Village that guards the entry to their holiest shrine. The Huichol adapted their traditions as they were exposed to Christianity, incorporating Catholic symbology into their traditional repertoire. They continued to worship in the same places, in quite the same ways. The Huichol may represent the longest unbroken taproot into tribal America.

What could we do in a week that might be helpful? The problem appeared to be a conversion disorder that, in simple terms, is unconscious fear or conflict that manifests in a physical condition because it can’t be expressed more straightforwardly. The treatment of this illness is to help sufferers face their internalized fears more directly, which would eliminate the symptoms. It doesn’t matter how you find the power to do this—psychotherapy, drug therapy, trance induction, ceremonies or rituals—all of them work, if the participant believes in the practice and in the practitioner.

As far as we knew, nobody had met with all of the children at the boarding school. If we could find a way to connect with 300 kids through stories and magic— maybe get them to draw a picture of their fears to get them out, so we might ceremonially dispose of them. If we could talk to parents, teachers, even the Marakames, perhaps we could mobilize a power in the community greater than the power that was afflicting them.

That was our plan, based on limited experience and blissful naivete.
We brought with us toys, stories, medical instruments, sacred blankets, chants, prayers and open hearts. We dared to imagine that a solution might open itself up to us.

Stay tuned next week as the story unfolds.

Schlag Byte 5/10/04 - "Wal-Mart Medicine"

Last week, Vice President Cheney paid a visit to the Wal-Mart flagship in Bentonville, Arkansas. He told the retail giant they are an example of the Bush administration’s success in this difficult economy.

It’s true that Wal-Mart is the envy of business executives everywhere. What is a major competitive advantage? Wal-Mart provides minimal or nonexistent healthcare coverage for its employees.

The Wal-Mart medical coverage model is the direction in which American companies are moving. More and more employers are offering jobs without health benefits, and major corporations are also cutting back on the healthcare benefits they had promised to their employees.

Companies say they have to do it because of the astronomical costs of healthcare coverage. The insurance companies want to minimize risk and ensure profitability, so underwriters are now denying coverage for anything that a patient might need in the future. If, for example, you’re an asthmatic, it’s likely they will exclude respiratory coverage. If you have ever had a back injury or back surgery, you will probably have to sign a waiver agreeing that you have to be symptom-free for a certain number years before another back claim will be considered. In the near future, insurance companies may exclude you on the basis of genetic testing. If you have a family history of heart disease, high blood pressure, Alzheimer’s disease or bipolar illness, you’ll have to get tested before they’ll cover you.

The economic cost of today’s healthcare delivery model is astronomical. People wait until they get really sick before they come to emergency rooms. Hospital emergency rooms are bound to respond to emergencies, even if patients have no proof of payment. Sicker people require more expensive, acute care, which drives hospital costs up. Meanwhile, the under- or un-insured will not have access to preventative care or services like rehabilitation.

When medicine becomes an industry, it abandons its ministry. Bottom lines and margins are destroying the heart of healing. When doctors no longer have time to build a relationship with patients, they lose touch with the spirit of the work. Doctors who like to talk to their patients don’t stay in the system too long. If your value is predicated on your production, (which in some practices is one patient every four minutes) you don’t get your contract renewed. HMOs, once launched as healthcare’s bright hope, have raised Medicare costs by billions, and people don’t trust them. For-profit hospital chains have been wracked by scandal.

The current system isn’t working. We need to reject the Wal-Mart competitive advantage and provide more people with basic care. We need a workable national, single-payer health plan (see Schlagbyte Archives, 3/10/2003, “Mandatory Health not War”).

That we need a national plan is an opinion shared by at least 8,000 American physicians who are lobbying for it, including two former Surgeon Generals, Julius Richmond and David Satcher. These physicians wrote a proposal that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in September 2003. The American Medical Association is opposed to it. The President of the AMA says it will make for long waits; slow the development of new technologies; create a huge new bureaucracy; cause a decline in doctor-patient authority about what’s best for the patient. Elephant shit.

I’m saying it can’t get much worse and every American knows it. There is not a single American who has not been affected: hassled by an insurance company, made to jump through hoops to get necessary care, or excluded entirely and without coverage. Let’s cut the crap. Begin by supporting Physicians for a National Health Plan (www.pnhp.org.) and encourage your legislators to support them as well.

Schlag Byte 5/3/04 - "Nine-year-olds and Money"

I celebrated with my nine-year-old grandson on his birthday. My daughter asked me if I could entertain seven, nine-year-olds for a couple of hours before they went to dinner and a movie. I said if that’s what he wanted, I’d be happy to do it.

We gathered in front of my house, where I explained the ground rules for the afternoon’s game. We were going into the desert, armed with slingshots for a “Slingshot Olympics.” We would shoot at targets in a variety of positions. If they got good enough, I’d take them into the mountains to hunt wild turkey, rabbits, javelina, and maybe even mountain lions. Off we traipsed to our secret place. We shot at signs and bottles while running, jumping and twisting. It was an intensely competitive afternoon.

When it was over, I announced the winners and invited them to collect their prize money. The gold medalist got three dollars; the silver medalist, two; and the bronze medalist, one. But when I got to the bronze medalist, he said he didn't want it. “You can’t buy anything for a dollar,” he said.

It took me back a little, but I didn't want to come down on the kid. So I took it back, saying I was sure I could find a kid who could get something for it, maybe even give it to someone else who needed it more. I have a tendency to pontificate (my sons-in-law say it’s more than a tendency— it’s repetitive, and most importantly, is based on nothing substantive). I admit I get sucked in by some subjects, and one is the price we pay for living in a culture of materialism. Money is to acquire things and you can never have too much.

I gave up this sermon the next day, when I read a story about another nine-year-old. Mak Shulist was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor a year ago. He received chemotherapy and radiation, but the tumor returned and now had blinded him. He started school last September, got through a couple months, but then deteriorated more rapidly.

Mak made this dying wish: he wanted to build a climbing wall on the playground of his elementary school, in Ellisville, a suburban St. Louis community. He asked the Make-a-Wish Foundation if they could help make his wish come true. He told them that he wanted to leave something for his friends. The community pitched in as well. The Shulists put a basket out on their front lawn and everyday people would leave offerings to help make Mak’s wish come true. The Make-a-Wish Foundation put up $15,000, and the people of Ellisville volunteered to build a 7-ft. high rock climbing wall in the playground.

Last month, Dave Knes, the school's principal, videotaped students doing the inaugural scaling of the wall. He recorded students’ conversations with Mak and added his own colorful commentary to describe the scene. He rushed it to Mak’s parents who played it for him that night. His mom said he listened to it and responded. The next day Mak Shulist died.

Schlag Byte 4/26/04 - "Finnishing School"

On April 10, the New York Times reported that Finland ranks first in the world in literacy and is among the top five in math and science. The Finns have accomplished this even though their children don't start school until they are seven years old; the country spends a paltry $5,000 a year per student; there are no gifted programs; and class sizes often approach thirty.

How do they do it? For one thing, the Finns have a small, homogeneous population, which certainly helps. But the one trait that sets Finland apart from other countries is the quality and social standing of its teachers. The profession is highly respected, and more high school graduates want to become teachers than the universities can handle. Teachers in Finland must have at least a master’s degree, and they are no better paid than teachers in other countries.

In stark contrast, on April 11, my local paper headlined a story about a teacher at a West Phoenix high school who was taking one of her students to court to stop his vulgar outbursts. Elizabeth Anne Moore, a 53-year-old reading teacher at Trevor Browne High School, said that this 15-year-old boy tells her daily, in front of other students, “to go (expletive) myself.”

Moore also said, the student uses a crude expression in telling classmates he offers sexual favors to students. “I am sexually harassed and abused by his vulgar language and I am unable to protect my other students from him.” Moore asked the court to issue an injunction to stop the harassment.

The boy didn’t show up for the hearing. His father apologized for his absence and said he wasn’t where he was supposed to be to catch a ride to court. He told the judge, “He’s going through the typical teenager years. You know, he has good days and bad days.”

On April 20, the Court issued an order barring the student from having any contact with Mrs. Moore. They cautioned him that if he violated the order, they would give him a six-month jail term and a $2,500 fine.

We have got to stop depending on our legal system to define our morality. WE, as parents, families and communities, must define the limits of what is right and wrong. We shouldn’t curse teachers; we should support teachers and honor the extraordinary job they do. We do need to pay teachers more, but I think they’d be grateful if we just taught our children respect. As the Finns have proven, if we demand respect for our teachers as a cultural norm and value, we all—teachers, students, and society as a whole— benefit in the long run.

Schlag Byte 4/19/04 - "My Father's Songs"

This is the season of my birthday. I’m sitting on my family room couch next to my grandson, who is practicing a Hebrew blessing with me. He and his classmates will recite this blessing during the big Saturday morning service. Together, we read the words and chant the melody.

Listening to him sound out the letters and vowels, I find myself transported to the tenement apartment in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan where I was raised. My father and I are sitting on the convertible couch in the family room (which is also the living room and my bedroom) humming the text together. Across from me is the big upright radio that I lean against to listen to The Lone Ranger and The Shadow.

Looking down at my grandson as he chants the songs of my father, I can feel the tears well in my eyes. The most sacred obligation in my tribe is to teach Torah to one's children. Every day in morning prayers, Jews repeat these words, “We will teach it diligently to our children.” We believe that by transmitting these laws from generation to generation (l’dor v’dor in Hebrew) we will survive as a people.

When I came to Indian Country, I learned that Native Americans told the same story. They greeted the morning sun by saying, “Thank you for giving me a tribe.” They have no book to transmit their laws—they rely on the spoken word. Native Americans say that if their stories are handed down for seven generations then their tribe will live. At Native American ceremonial gatherings (pow-wows, tipis, church meetings, potlatches, hogans and sweat lodges) they begin by greeting their relatives, from the doorway in, to the doorway out (l’dor v’dor).

We are all tribal people. Remember to sing the songs of your mothers and fathers, from the time you are welcomed through the door, to the time you take the door out. L’dor v’dor, from generation to generation . . .the tears caress my cheeks with Happy Birthday kisses.

Schlag Byte 4/12/04 - "Poisoned Pen of Serial Liars"

Remember Jason Blair? He is the disgraced New York Times reporter who sparked a plagiarism scandal that rocked journalism. Blair wrote stories filled with details based only on his imagination, occasional phone interviews, photographs, and other people’s news stories. He lied to everybody about everything. The scandal led to the resignation of New York Times Executive Editor, Howell Raines, and Managing Editor, Gerald Boyd.

There have been other journalists who were scam artists, but until now, they only made up quotations and sources. Blair reached a new low in the betrayal of his profession, and he eroded the public’s trust in the printed word. That’s what I thought, until last week when USA Today reported that Jack Kelly, a 21-year career reporter, fabricated substantial portions of his stories for years. Editors had nominated him five times for a Pulitzer Prize. USA Today apologized for not recognizing Kelly’s problems and for failing their readers, and they promised to withdraw all the Pulitzer nominations. Furthermore, they would flag all of Kelly’s stories in their online archives. People, seeing the red flag, will always have to wonder if anything he writes is other than make-believe.

What happens to journalists who betray the public trust? They capitalize on their betrayal. Six months after Blair was fired, New Millenium Press, a Beverly Hills publisher, gave him a “mid-six figure advance” and ordered a first-run printing of 250,000 copies. The publisher promised it would be “compelling and honest.”

Blair’s book, Bringing Down My Masters House, was just released. I read it, sitting in a Borders bookstore because I didn’t want to buy it. The fact that our culture will exploit dishonor doesn’t mean we have to buy it. We can’t become a culture without the capacity for shame and consequence. But I wanted to read it; I wanted to see, if I could believe anything this guy wrote. Sadly, there is nothing in this book that convinces me I can.

Blair opens by telling us the truth, “I lied, and I lied, and then I lied some more. I lied about where I had been, I lied about where I had found information, I lied about how I wrote the story. And these were not everyday little white lies—they were complete fantasies, embellishments, down to the tiniest made-up detail. I became as adept as anyone at getting away with it unquestioned and unscathed.”
After that, however, there is not a lot of self-reflection—not even when he goes to the chic psychiatric rehab facility in Connecticut and learns he might be manic-depressive. Nowhere in this book is a sense of shame, like “I’m sorry Mom and Dad for disappointing you, I’m ashamed of myself and, more importantly, for losing your respect. I pray that you will not see this failure as the only measure of my life.” None of that, instead, he whines and points the finger of blame at everyone in the New York Times organization, Johnnie Walker Black, cocaine, and society. Occasionally, he congratulates himself on what a campus star and great writer he became, stating, “Howell Raines had a lot of things in common with me.”

Reading this whining made me wonder if I could believe anything he wrote. Was he really going to kill himself in Greenwich Village the night before his resignation? Was he really sexually abused as a child? Was he really manic-depressive? He was treated in a private psychiatric hospital with Paxil and Neurontin (not the first-line drugs generally prescribed for this psychotic disorder). Is he still taking these medications and in on-going psychotherapy? Maybe that’s the greatest punishment for Blair and Kelly. They have to go around knowing that people are always wondering if they’re full of shit.

They will probably make a movie based on this book, and Blair may never have to work again. While the hard-working journalists—who pride themselves in getting the facts straight, and see their profession as a sacred obligation— they may never be able to retire, but they will live with honor.

Schlag Byte 4/05/04 - "Veggie Tasting Better"

I've been in a serious weight-loss mode for the last month. Goaded by my daughter, who calls me Porky, and my son-in-law, who challenged me to keep up with his weight-loss program or pay some serious penalties. The money is less of an incentive than my male competitive strivings that won’t let him beat me in front of my baby. (There are some biological imperatives that make men perpetual boys and/or shmucks.)

I need to lose 20 lbs., which has proven incredibly difficult for me over the last few years. Desserts, bread, pasta and ice cream are my idea of the menu in heaven. I can’t see beyond my belly when looking down. Such an assault on my narcissism pales in comparison to the assault on my blood pressure, which is still borderline on two pills a day. Not long ago, I walked a steep mountain trail with a friend; she left me halfway up, because I was gasping and had to rest.

I need to get in better shape because I’ll be in Mexico at the end of this month working with the Huichol Indians in the Sierra Madre Occidental. We will be doing some serious trekking, and I don't want to be gasping down there. So I’m doing more aerobic exercise, eating better and losing weight, but I can’t say I'm having a good time at it. I’m not one of those guys who looks forward to eating celery and carrots as a mid-afternoon snack. I am desperate for a Milky Way. . . how much salad can you eat before you start feeling like walking to the dinner table on four legs?

This misery ended a couple of weeks ago when I read this study in the Archives of Internal Medicine (March, 2004). Researchers examined 14,125 men with high blood pressure. Those men who reported having one or two drinks a day were 44% less likely to die of a heart attack than those who rarely, if ever, had a drink. We know alcohol increases levels of good cholesterol and that it thins the blood. These scientists concluded that moderate consumption of alcohol appears to reduce heart-related deaths in men with high blood pressure.

This is what I call timely research. I don't hate those celery sticks anymore, and the olives are absolutely superb.

Schlag Byte 3/29/04 - "A Change in Character"

James Hamm is a convicted murderer. In 1974, he orchestrated an execution-style double murder over a drug feud. He was sentenced to life in prison. While serving his time, he educated himself, not through treatment programs or counseling sessions (which weren’t available), but by reading books. He was determined to change himself completely and opened himself up to the spiritual and psychological parts of his life. In prison, he earned an undergraduate degree in applied sociology from Northern Arizona University. He resolved to live his life, whether inside or outside of prison, in a way that atoned for his actions. He founded a rehabilitation program for fellow inmates, and his behavior was so exemplary that he was paroled after 17 years of incarceration.

After his release he applied for and was accepted into law school at Arizona State University. His admission caused a local furor, with lots of citizens angry at the idea of having to support a convicted murderer at the publicly funded State University. But he was accepted, he graduated, and he passed the bar.

Since 2001, Hamm has been on unsupervised parole working as a private criminal justice consultant. He has been qualified as an expert witness on prison conditions and confinement issues and now wants to be licensed to practice law in the State of Arizona. His goal is to serve a constituency not regularly served by lawyers. People who feel a sense of despair at the indifference of “the system” find hope in seeing a rehabilitated former prisoner fully accepted into the community.

The Arizona Bar’s Committee on Character and Fitness will now judge Hamm’s suitability to represent the people of Arizona in court. This has caused a new round of hand-wringing—lots of citizens think James Hamm gives new meaning to the term “criminal defense attorney.” People doubt that his character is fundamentally changed.

I agree that character is a difficult thing to change, because it takes such a long time to develop. There’s no question that Hamm was in serious trouble early in his life, and there is no question that he committed a heinous crime for which he was sentenced to prison for life. We’ve come a long way from time of Hammurabi’s “an eye for an eye” code. In the old days, if you killed someone you would be killed. Nobody hung around for decades, so there was never any chance for rehabilitation. Hamm, however, is an example of successful rehabilitation, which is why he was paroled after 17 years.

I think character does count and that it can be changed. You can’t forfeit your whole life on the basis of the character you developed in the first 25 years and then say the next 30 years don’t count. He was a murderer and he rehabilitated himself, which is what we say we want from the system. It makes no sense to later add, “But you can only be rehabilitated so much.” I don’t think we can now tell James Hamm that he’s gone as far as he can go. He’s done everything that has been asked of him, and I think we ought to let him decide how to complete his life’s commitment.

That's what I'm thinking, let me know what you're thinking on the Healing Cafe Discussion Forum, and we'll talk among ourselves.

Schlag Byte 3/22/04 - "Taking Away Hope"

Since antiquity, healers of every description have preached the positive impact of hope, belief, and support on the healing process. The medical specialty of psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) provides modern scientific proof to all the anecdotal tales that things like touch, love, faith, prayer, even sunny environments, have a beneficial effect on the human immune system. Most people understand it’s not the disease you’ve got, but rather how you come to it, that will determine how you survive.

This gospel came under assault last month in a new study published by Australian cancer researchers. Dr. P.E. Schofield and colleagues at the Peter McCallum Cancer Institute of the University of Sydney reported that optimism doesn’t make any difference in lung cancer patients' survival. The researchers followed 179 lung cancer patients for five years and discovered that 96% of them died. It didn’t matter whether the patients were hopeful or not— optimism had no effect on survival rates.

Dr. Schofield was flooded by e-mail and phone calls after the article appeared on the American Cancer Society’s website and the online issue of Cancer (Feb. 9, 2004). Outraged cancer patients accused her of reinforcing the stigma that if you have cancer you should just give up because you’re going to die. Schofield defended her grim results, but hastened to add, "These results may not hold true for other cancers that typically involve better odds." Of course these results don’t hold true when, in addition to longevity, you look at the difference hope makes in the quality of a patient’s life every day.

It’s been my experience that the people I see with lung cancer believe they might be among the 12% who will survive this terrible disease. These patients believe they might beat the odds, and it is this sense of hope that allows them to come to every day with some joy. Sending a message to patients that nothing they do or believe will alter the inevitable decree is harmful to their spirit. Talk to workers in hospice and homecare and ask them about hope as a therapeutic blessing.

It is our job as healers to support patients and to do no harm. This does not mean forcing people to share your need for optimism. Patients are not here to do our thing for us; it's hard enough for them to deal with what they've got without feeling guilt or shame for not being optimistic enough or having too little faith.
Hope is the opiate of humanity. A sense of optimism, faith, and connections to others help the body and lift the spirit, regardless of the length of our days.

Schlag Byte 3/15/04 - "No Passion for The Passion"

I'm seriously overloaded by the media spectacle surrounding Mel Gibson's movie The Passion of the Christ. The hype surrounding its release ensured record-breaking box office sales. People either get this movie or they don't. Some see it as historical reality; others think it’s a Hollywood production number. Some see it as the "light of world salvation"; others see only its anti-Semitic sentiments. In spite of my reluctance to support this media circus, I needed to go and see it. My wife refused to go, and she’s not the only one boycotting this film.

As an American Jew, I come to this film with a certain foreboding. Lots of people, especially Jews, are turned off by this contemporary passion play. Historically, these Easter performances have been responsible for igniting anti-Semitic passions for 1,000 years, and the 2004 movie version may be the most brutal display of sadism that I have ever seen in film. The blood drips, flows and pools; flayed pieces of flesh fly before your eyes, splattering torturers from head to toe.

Pontius Pilate comes across as a conflicted, basically good guy who is sensitive to his kindly wife, while Herod the King is an almost sympathetic character. Not so the blood-thirsty rabbis and their rabid Jewish followers who are screaming for Jesus’ death (floating behind whom is a fleeting glimpse of a ghostly androgynous Satan). The only thing missing in this movie (whose soundtrack is in Aramaic and Hebrew) is this familiar line, found only in the Gospel of Matthew. The crowd cries out, “His blood be on us, and on our children,” after Pilate washes his hands of responsibility for ordering the death of Jesus. Instead of this inflammatory line, we are left with this closing image: Caiaphas, the Jewish High Priest, looking in horror at his hands.

It doesn’t matter that in 1965, at the historic Second Vatican Council, the Church decreed, “While some Jewish leaders and their followers had pressed for the death of Jesus, what happened in his passion cannot be charged against all Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today.” Mel Gibson is a follower of a group who rejects any modern Biblical interpretation. The fact that his father is a Holocaust denier only makes Jews queasier.

There is no overt anti-Semitism in this movie. Nobody is screaming “Kill the Jews,” but Jews know— at a cellular level— that somebody is going to come out of this movie somewhere in the world looking for someone to blame. I’m not talking about the Middle East or North Africa; in Denver on Ash Wednesday, the day it opened there, the Lovingway United Pentecostal Church announced on its reader board: “Jews Killed Lord Jesus 1 Thess. 2:14,15.” Jews understand their fragility in the world. Even though anti-Semitism has declined worldwide over the last 50 years, the times they are a changin’. We are seeing an upsurge in age-old hatreds; there is rampant instability in the world, and global terrorism a fact of life. Add to that mix the faltering economies everywhere, and you can see what escalates Jewish paranoia.

If the true message of the Gospel is to elevate the spirit, this film drained mine. By the end of this movie, I felt battered, not loved. I believe in the richness of Bible stories, all creation stories, because their power lies in continuing to meet humanity’s current spiritual needs. I’d tell this story differently, emphasizing acts of love, rather than suffering. But then I’m not Mel Gibson.

Schlag Byte 3/8/04 - "Too Many Drugs"

It used to be that if I heard somebody died from an overdose, my immediate thought was Heroin. Today, 25% of all overdose deaths are from prescription drugs. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Agency (SAMHSA), from 1995 to 2000 there has been a 63% increase in emergency room visits tied to the abuse of prescription drugs. SAMHSA estimates that 9 million people are now abusing prescription drugs; 3 million of them are kids between the ages of 12 and 17.

We are prescribing and selling too many drugs because we live in a culture that psychopathologizes its humanity. The media bombards us with messages like, If you’re tired at the end of the day, maybe you ought to take a pill to liven you up. Wake up to life! TV commercials trumpet, if you’re too tired to party, take a pill, so what if it’s for treating narcolepsy. If you’re feeling down or inhibited, you may be suffering from depression or social anxiety disorder, take a pill. If your kids don't pay attention or are acting-out, they may be suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder, take a pill. Watching these ads can convince ordinary people facing ordinary crises that they have a disease a pill can cure. If you want a drug, you don't even have to see a doctor to get them—you can get any medication you want on the Internet. You can find doctors online who will prescribe potentially lethal drugs even if they don’t know you.

Shit happens— it happens to us all; don’t hide from it, learn from it. Facing whatever the agony might be actually helps us to deal with those still to come.

Here’s a plan without a pill:
- Talk to somebody you trust
- Go away to a place that helps you see things from another perspective
- Join a group of shared spirit
- Accompany Patch Adams on a clown trip
- Seek out the awesome
- Exercise, do yoga and meditate

Whatever you do, don’t buy the medical/ pharmaceutical/ cosmetic/ advertising industries’ attempts to convince you to get a prescription drug to cure you from a disease you probably don't have. If you're not feeling good in every moment, it means you’re alive.

Schlag Byte 3/1/04 - "Boyz to Men"

John McKissick is a legend in Summerville, South Carolina. Summerville is a town of 28,000 people, nestled in the piney woods 25 miles northwest of Charleston. McKissick has been the football coach at Summerville High School for 52 years. He has won 10 state championships and 26 regional titles.

Every Friday night during football season, 10,000 people come out in their green and gold to cheer “The Mighty Green Wave.” Grandfathers, fathers, uncles, brothers, cousins, the next-door neighbors’ kid—everybody in this town is tied to the Green Wave. High school football brings this community together, and Coach McKissick is the “Chief” of this ceremonial ritual.

This year, John McKissick became the first football coach at any level to ever achieve 500 career victories. That's more wins than legends like Eddie Robinson at Grambling who won 408 games, or Joe Paterno at Penn State with 337. How has he done it? Coach McKissick says it’s because he loves the work and loves the community. He has been offered jobs elsewhere, including universities, but says, “This is a wonderful community and wonderful support, this is my family, everything I've always wanted I have right here.”

John McKissick's interest has never been in teaching winning football, but rather in building winning men. He sees himself as an educator whose vehicle is coaching. His talent is in teaching self-respect, discipline, and how to bond together with pride. To join his team players have to sign an application that states they will always conduct themselves in a manner that will be a credit to their family, school and themselves. Furthermore, they agree not to curse or use drugs and to be home by 10 p.m. on school nights.

The Coach inspires the respect of young men who want to learn what he’s teaching on their journey into manhood. In our culture, high-school sports may be the last initiation rite of manhood. He has taught doctors, lawyers and shopkeepers in Summerville, as well as legislators, judges, and leaders throughout the state. To a man, they speak of him with respect. We need more Chiefs like John McKissick who teach young men a code they can live by. Without such guidance, the natural adolescent male competitiveness and unruliness gets expressed in more disruptive ways.

Go Mighty Green Wave!

Schlag Byte 2/23/04 - "Help Me I'm Cold"

The practice of medicine mirrors the values of the society it serves. Today’s society emphasizes that, for a price, you can buy anything. Ours is a marketplace culture driven by profitability not principles. The same pursuit of the bottom-line drives healthcare just as it does any other business. What’s right or wrong in business, politics, or healthcare is less important than whether or not it is profitable and if you think you can get away with it.

In the practice of medicine, this translates as private, for-profit specialty hospitals— those that serve by appointment only, where people pay up-front, and there are no emergency rooms— those places are thriving. They skim the top of the reimbursable pie. However, inner-city and teaching hospitals—those places who serve the sickest and the poorest— they are dying. If you can afford the finest care money can buy, there are magnificent, state-of-the-art facilities that will indulge you. But if you are one of the 100 million Americans who are under-insured or have no health care insurance at all, then you’re in trouble.

The poor rely on hospitals with emergency rooms, but they are disappearing. Those that remain are under-staffed and overflowing. In Newsweek (2/2/04), featured Paul Duke, an emergency room nurse told his story in “My Turn.” Paul started ER nursing five years ago and would typically have four to five patients at a time. He could spend a few minutes chatting with each of them and answering their questions. Now his average is 10 to 12 patients at a time and, once, he had 22. A woman in her mid-seventies pleaded with him as he sprinted down the hall, “Help me, I need a blanket, I’m cold.” Paul was so overwhelmed with the critically ill that he didn't have time to acknowledge her, much less exchange a few words. He asked the Charge Nurse for help but she was as busy as he was and said to him, “Take the five sickest patients and keep them alive. Get to the rest when you can.”

Paul Duke’s prayer is to be able to retain his soul as a healer, but the patient loads in our emergency rooms have doubled in the last three years. We are critically short of nurses and nobody expects this situation to get better soon. When the marketplace determines the standard of care in healthcare delivery, medicine will lose its healing spirit. The practice of medicine was once a calling founded on these sacred principles: care for all those in need, and do no harm. Those ideals are becoming a historical artifact in this society. We must put the brakes on for-profit medicine and we must support universal healthcare coverage before Paul Duke, and all the rest who still ennoble the profession, feel their souls crushed. Then we will all be left out in the cold.

Schlag Byte 2/16/04 - "Friends Like That"

When I was in California for my mother's 90th birthday, I got a call that my longtime closest friend had died. Stan and I forged an intense bond over the last 34 years. We raised children together, saved each other from disaster, shared the same cigar and philosophized together. We often disagreed, but he was one of the people I always listened to. He was a man of honor, and I respected and trusted him. Trust has never come easily for me. As a child, my test of friendship was whether on not you’d hide me in your closet if the Gestapo came after me. Such a test makes it hard to trust many friends.

Since his wife’s death two years ago, Stan’s health began declining. First, he fractured his pelvis and then other complications arose. For the last six months he was in an assisted living facility. I saw him every week. It was Stan I saw immediately after the surgeon told me that my thyroid mass might be cancerous.

We walked outside to the patio where we shared a cigar. I told him what the doctor had recommended and that I didn't want to share the news with the immediate world. Even wondered if I would tell my kids— why burden them with weeks of uncertainty. I have always had a problem sharing my vulnerabilities. I’m more like a cave person, someone who hides alone to heal. It makes my skin prickle when lots of people flock and hover. When I finally finished my musings he said, “You’re full of shit. You preach about connections and then you choose to go it alone. That’s bullshit. For me, I’ve found it’s been good to have people around.”

The day we buried Stan, friends and family got together in the evening for a memorial service. We recited the traditional Hebrew prayers and then we did a Native American Talking Circle. We passed around Stan’s hat and a cigar, and when it came to each of us we told Stan stories.

The old Pimas (the Akimel Oodham), descendants of the ancient Hohokam, taught there are very few people in your life whom you call “my friend” (un yah nah witch). That relationship is holier than calling someone brother or sister, because it transcends blood— it is a commitment of soul. Your “friend” is a person with whom you are bonded not by blood, but by soul. It is someone in whose hands you’d put your life. You can’t have too many friends like that.

I miss you my friend.

Schlag Byte 2/9/04 - "The Last Hurrah"

My mother just celebrated her 90th birthday and her only wish was to have a big party. She wanted to gather her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, family and friends to what she called her “last hurrah". I didn’t particularly like that ring, and preferred to look at it as just another chance to party.

It wasn't that I didn't recognize that my mother was getting shorter and shorter of breath. Now she 20 minutes to recover from any exertion, but I still harbor an image of my Mama as indestructible. She’s sharp, plays bridge at least three times a week, still keeps a kosher home and goes to the synagogue every Sabbath.

The entire clan gathered on her birthday three weeks ago. Four generations were called to the Torah on the Sabbath for a special blessing. When the service was over the whole congregation sang a blessing to her. It was quite a hurrah.

Saturday night we celebrated in Leisure World at Clubhouse #6. There were 70 people, mostly old and very old, who gathered at 6 for Happy Hour and hors d’oevres. Then a four course meal preceded by a blessing from her nephew who came from Israel to be with her. While we were eating, an aging accordianist in polyester leisure suit walked slowly, very slowly, from table to table to play requests. He played German folksongs, waltzes, Barbra Streisand, Fiddler on the Roof and Opera.

After dinner we performed a family presentation. The six great grandchildren began the entertainment with a riotous, choreographed rendition of the Sister Sledge tune “We are Family". They loved the old people, who loved them back and didn’t want to leave the floor. Her grandchildren followed, and sang a German nursery rhyme she had taught them as children but to which they added hilarious new lyrics. Then her children and friends spoke and we ended the evening with a champagne toast. My mother took the microphone and said:

"Thanks for coming, I'm not going to talk to long, because I get short of breath. This is how I wanted to celebrate my 90th birthday; being surrounded by the people I love, all of us out of breath from laughing. This is what gives me life.”

What a way to get together, families celebrating their commitment and competence, from generation to generation. You don't have to wait for a last hurrah to party in community and watch your story unfold.

Schlag Byte 2/2/04 - "The Perfect Seashell"

On the morning of my 43rd wedding anniversary, I found myself on the beach in San Carlos, Mexico. The expanse was seemingly endless and empty except for me, the birds, and a brilliant sea of white shells. Occasionally my eye was caught by an unusual shell, which I’d pick up.

I came upon an astonishingly striking shell. It was a brown and white conch with a perfectly etched outline of the Native American “Man in the Maze” symbol. This symbol (see photo) tells the metaphoric tale about facing uncertainties, surprises and blind alleys in life and making the journey anyway. I'd never seen a seashell quite like it. Might just be the perfect seashell, I thought. I'd give it to my wife as an anniversary gift when I got back.

Further down the beach I saw another lovely shell and when I bent over to pick it up, I felt one of my collection, drop out of my hand. When I looked, I saw I had dropped the perfect shell, I looked around but couldn't immediately see it. Then I started to sift through the shells more frantically. It must have landed upside down because now all the shells looked the same and I was staring at a sea of white. The impossibility of my search soon became clear . . . I had lost the perfect seashell.

Feeling a bit down, I sat and pondered the meaning of this misfortune on this morning of my 43rd wedding anniversary. It became clear that it pretty much summarized what it takes to stay married this long. I picked the perfect one when I found my wife and she felt the same about me. It’s fortunate that love is blind, because it gives us time to see each other again with all our imperfections. What once was perfect becomes more ordinary, but if you can see your partner in this new light and love them anyway, you can hang together a long time. Loving the shell, not just the beautiful markings, is how we learn not to take ourselves too seriously.

When I got back to the room I said, “Happy Anniversary Baby,” and proceeded to tell her the story about the perfect shell I’d found and lost. She said, “I don’t need the shell, I love the story.”

Schlag Byte 1/26/04 - "Where Are You Going"

We usually celebrate the Christmas/New Year holiday on vacation. This year we were planning on going to Cambodia and Viet Nam. We are not the last of the great planners and, until now, it’s always worked for us. But this year when we were six weeks from departure, we discovered we couldn’t get flights to Southeast Asia. Our indecision became a joke—our kids would ask where we were going and then roll their eyes as we scrambled for a ride to China, Costa Rica, and even the Solomons. Finally I just said, “We’re going south.”

Four days before departure, when it was clear we were down to our final option, we decided to drive into Mexico. We’ve been there often and never had a problem getting a place to stay or a train ticket, so we took off. I had always wanted to see Copper Canyon, Mexico’s equivalent of the Grand Canyon and the home of the Tarahumara Indians. This was the perfect time for an extended trip into the wilderness.

It took a couple of days to get to El Fuente, the gateway for the Copper Canyon railroad. This is a picturesque, colonial city where we found a little hotel and then walked around town. We learned that the train left at 8:30 a.m. the following morning and getting tickets was not a problem because we could buy one from the conductor on the train. As for a place to stay, there were rooms available up there.

I got a little antsy when, at the station that morning, I saw 200 other people waving tickets. We happened to be standing next to a couple who had just come through the Canyon from the other direction and were now returning. They told us the highlight of their trip was staying at a rustic resort in the town of Cerocahui, which sits atop the deepest gorge in Copper Canyon (1000 ft. deeper than the Grand Canyon). This eco-tourist hotel was more than adequate— individual rooms with a woodburning stove, a hot shower and a toilet. The proprietor was knowledgeable and also connected to Indian people. This sounded just like the place we wanted to be. “Would there be rooms,” I asked. The couple assured us the owner would make room for us and that there was even a van at the train station to pick up guests.

We climbed aboard the Chihuahua-Pacifico (CHEPE) and found a seat at a table in the lounge car. The CHEPE is no ordinary train ride. This railroad goes over 400 miles from the Sea of Cortez to Chihuahua Mexico, and is one of the engineering wonders of the world. It has 66 tunnels, (which includes one in which the train makes a 180-degree turn inside solid rock) and took 90 years to build. It has been running since 1961.

When the conductor came through, we decided to cancel last night’s plan and bought two tickets to the Cerocahui stop. When we rolled into the station, the van was waiting. The driver asked no questions and had no list of arriving guests, so with nine other people we piled in. After thirteen miles down a bumpy dirt road into the gorge, we landed at the Paraiso del Oso (Paradise of the Bear), spartan but homey. The manager checked in the nine others and then got to us. “Do you have a reservation?” he asked. “No,” I replied. He said it was “no problem” and gave us a room with two double beds.

That night, around the communal table, the other guests asked, somewhat incredulously, if we truly had no idea where we were staying before we got to the hotel. We said not only did we not know where we were staying, but we also didn’t know where we were going to get off the train until that morning.

You don’t have to know exactly where you going before you undertake the journey, you only have to know that you want to go. As a matter of fact, go someplace a little unprepared and prepared to be spontaneous. In the excitement of discovery, you might even find yourself in paradise.

P.S. Our kids still laugh at us and shake their heads in disbelief.

Schlag Byte 1/19/04 - "The Return of the King"

I went to see the final installment of the “Lord of the Ring” trilogy, Tolkien’s mythological hero’s journey. Together with grandchildren and family, we went through three bags of popcorn, assorted candy, drinks, fruit and nuts, watching this last dramatic episode “The Return of the King.”

This is another rendering of what the genius Joseph Campbell said was a universal theme in all cultures. From Bible stories, to Greek mythology and Native American legends, all tell of epic battles between the forces of good and evil. Stories of death, rebirth, sorcery and miracles where ultimately the hero triumphs with a little help from friends and occasional miraculous interventions.

I loved this movie, and I love the fact that my grandchildren were so captivated by it. Kids have no trouble believing, they understand that there are beings with supernatural powers who can heal wounds, make worlds collide, and even lift the human spirit. These are stories of villains who abuse their power and hurt people, and wizards who can alter evil decrees. Kids can imagine the impossible and don’t have to explain why; they know miracles happen.

We don't talk much about miracles anymore—not since science has provided us with explanations for our successes and failures. Still, even with the “facts”, they never tell the whole story of the ups and downs in our lives.

We need to believe in the hero’s journey, in the triumph of good over evil and that we are not alone on the journey, because at a soul level, we are all tribal people seeking the return of a king.

Schlag Byte 1/12/04 - "Fruitcakes"

A fruitcake estimated to be 125 years old made its TV debut on The Tonight Show. Morgan Ford, 83 years old, of Tecumseh, Michigan, carried his great grandmother's fruitcake to Burbank California to share a piece of it with Jay Leno.

The cake was never touched, and when his great grandmother died, the cake was handed down from generation to generation in a glass bowl. Ford intends to pass it along to his son and says, “It’s fossilized but it has a pleasant odor of spices.” I take heart that 125-year-old fruitcakes can smell good, because I see much younger ones that smell bad.

The foul-smelling celebrity fruitcake of the year has to be Michael Jackson, who scares me more than Mad Cow Disease. The coverage that publicizes his peculiarities bothers me. The whole world knows that Jackson has again been charged with sexual misconduct involving a minor. Does anybody really care how Michael explains his penchant for sleeping with young boys, or why he would dangle his infant son from a hotel balcony? Do we need to be treated to more graphic speculations on how he may have fathered his sons, or how many facial surgeries he’s had?

This media circus desensitizes us to such public demonstrations of his pathology. Why else would a mother of a pre-pubescent boy ever allow her son to sleep over at “Neverland,” knowing this guy’s history? We need less adulation of celebrities because it seduces us into excusing their bizarre behaviors.

Some fruitcakes age more than a 100 years and others never grow up. Either way let's keep the fruitcakes under glass because most of them don't emit a pleasant odor.

Schlag Byte 1/5/04 - "New Year Hope"

Gregory Smith was one of the National Caring Awards youth honorees this year, and some of you may have seen him appear on Oprah. He is a truly awesome 13-year-old who graduated college in May 2003 and founded International Youth Advocates. IYA’s mission is to empower, recruit, and unite the children of the world. It demands an end to violence, universal education for young people and the wise stewardship of the environment.

Last year, Smith helped broker a peace among three nomadic tribes in northern Kenya. He helped raise $1 million to create Amani (Peace) School and Dormitory for the children of the Turkana, Pokot and Sambura tribes so they could receive an education. Greg was honored by all three tribes, and somebody even nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize.

I can hardly imagine this whole scenario. A 13-year-old with a B.S. degree (cum laude) who intends to earn three Ph.D.’s (in biomedical research, aerospace engineering and political science). He wants to be President of the U.S., and says his heroes are Martin Luther King and Mahatma Ghandi. Greg Smith humbly acknowledges he has a God-given gift that he wants to use to help bring peace to the world.
This remarkable young man brings me to the New Year with hope. I can even imagine a President with intellect and nonviolent compassion.

Schlag Byte 12/29/03 - "Let Old Acquaintance Be Forgot"

Last month, when I found out my thyroid tumor was benign, my first thought was that I had dodged a bullet. That awareness of cheating death immediately elicited a response of spitting three times over my left shoulder. It’s an old superstition to ward off the “evil eye.” The thought is, you don’t want to attract the attention of an avenging angel who might see your gloating as a boastful challenge and get even with you. Ptooey, ptooey, ptooey. I coughed out and then looked around to see if anybody was looking at me.

Then, my Rabbi, Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, told me to add to my Hebrew name. Another tradition— that if you come face-to-face with the Angel of Death and live through it, changing your name confuses the Avenger, who thinks you’re a new person and won’t recognize you.

Reb Zalman gave me the name, Asher, which comes from the Hebrew word that means blessed or joyous. After he bequeathed me my name, he told me its meaning. In Hebrew, every letter has a number; if you add up all the letters in your name, you get a number that can be made into a new word. In the mystical tradition, this new word has prognostic significance. My new name added up to the words “he goes forth.” Reb Zalman told me to go to a synagogue and get called to the Torah in order to make the name change kosher.

Before the new year, I went to the Chabad Lubovitch congregation. When I arrived for the 7 a.m. service, a black-hatted Hasid handed me the leather phylacteries (tefillin) with which religious Jews bind themselves every morning. I hadn’t “laid tefillin” in years, but the fingers remembered as I bound my head and left arm. I was entranced by the prayers and melodies of my history. I felt my father’s presence, which made me smile. My father would have loved to see me praying the morning service. He knew my preferred practice was in tipis and sweat lodges, but he thought that sometimes you just had to get together with others who pray in your language. Enveloped in my prayer shawl, I am wrapped in my father’s arms as a boy. I am rocking back and forth with these ancient sing-song rhythms and feel my connection to the awesome.

I was called to Torah, recited the prayers, and the Rabbi blessed me with my new name, Asher Avraham, “he goes forth.” I’m feeling good about entering the new year having let my old acquaintance be forgotten. Get rid of all that chains you to old suffering, and my blessings to you for a healthy, productive, peaceful and loving New Year.

To All My Relations

Schlag Byte 12/22/03 - "A New Manger Story"

Last month I was honored to present a National Caring Award to Dr. Gloria Johnson- Rodgers, a family physician who is affectionately known as "Mama G." Raised in a small town in Mississippi, her father died when she was six years old. Her widowed mother supported three daughters by scrubbing floors and with the aid food stamps. She made sure each of the girls graduated from high school and college.

Mama G. knew she wanted to be a doctor from the time she was five years old. That's when she saw her neighbor get struck by a car and die from his injuries in a barn because the town's only doctor would not go into that neighborhood. Gloria decided then and there that she would become a doctor. She worked her way through college and medical school, took care of people nobody else wanted to see, and also reached out to the community. Mama G. founded a community center in Columbus, Georgia, that provided a safe house to feed and educate at-risk children.

In 1998, Mama G. went to Nigeria where she saw children prostituting themselves for food and dying from starvation. She had a vision in which she was told to feed them, and so she created "Operation Feed Worldwide," which last year fed a million people. I sat with Mama G. at the Caring Awards banquet, and we talked about our work. She said that colleagues often ask her why she no longer practices medicine. She tells them that the healing work she does in her community and the world accomplishes more than what she could do in her medical practice. Like healers from most traditions, she recognizes that no increase in the number of practitioners is ever going to make a difference in curing disease. Mama G.'s vision moved her from a medical practice to a community practice to what is now a worldwide constituency.

Sounds like another Christmas manger story to me. A man dies in a barn, but a little girl is born. This little child grows up to become a healer of the sick, gives hope to the outcast, and feeds the multitudes. In every generation there are those who lift us up, renew our strength, remind us of our most desired selves, and restore our faith.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

P.S. Want to help Mama G? She's @ www.missionnigeria.com

Schlag Byte 12/15/03 - "The Pepsi Challenge"

In a recent Schlag byte, "Hardwired for Mystical Experience"(11/10/03), I talked about scientists locating the area in the brain activated by mystical experiences. Now researchers have discovered the area of the brain that responds to advertising. It has created a whole new specialty called "neuromarketing."

Dr. Reed Montague, a neuroscientist at Baylor Medical School, wondered about "The Pepsi Challenge." Do you remember those commercials from the 70's and 80's that pitted Coke against Pepsi? Pepsi was usually the winner, and Montague wondered why Coke sold more if it didn't taste any better.

Montague re-created "The Pepsi Challenge" while monitoring the brain activity of the participants. He, too, found that in blind taste tests Pepsi was preferred. On examining the brain scans, he found that the people who chose Pepsi had a stronger response in an area of the brain called the ventral putamen. Deep in the brain, the putamen triggers our feelings of reward.

Montague then repeated the test, but this time he told the subjects which of the sample tastes were Coke. The outcome was remarkable -- almost all of the subjects said they preferred Coke. Their brain scans lit up a different area, not the ventral putamen, but the prefrontal cortex. That's the area of the brain that controls our high-level cognitive powers. When participants were told which drink was which, they were thinking in a different way about the taste of Co