Health Tips from Effie - Alaska

People with far greater ability than mine have explored the health benefits of natural healing remedies that boggle the mind of modern science.  Herbs, spices, fauna, flora, and animal parts have not been scientifically analyzed or proven neither by my own research nor in most cases by the medical community.  The fact that Effie Hadley, my friend and an elder of Buckland, Alaska believes them to be true is good enough for me.

Although western health services have been active in bush Alaska for a long time some residents still resort to traditional medicines to cure some basic health issues.  “Because it gets so cold hp here,” Effie told me once, “People get sick a lot.  It was worse a long time ago.  The doctor was not always available and people had to use traditional methods of getting well.  There are certain leaves and plants that we use that help ear aches, tooth aches, and even labor pains.  We would either boil them and drink the liquid and chew the leaves, or apply the liquid directly to the soar or even chew the leaves and place the chewed leaves directly on the pain.  Many of the plants around here are also used to put directly on cuts, bruises, and boils while applying some sort of pressure.  Even breast milk is used sometimes.  Stink weed is pretty good on things and even helps clear a stuffed up nose.”

Effie said because Buckland had a modern health clinic, staffed with trained health aides and a visiting doctor and dentist every couple of months, the art of natural healing was gradually being lost.  Some home remedies get passed along to the next generation but each year it gets less and less.

The procedure that always seemed to work she told me was mostly rejected by the younger people now.  The tried and true method of curing a soar throat, “hardly gets used any at all any more,” she says.

“For soar throats we would take a long strip of blubber, usually from the beluga or sometimes a seal.  The healer would have the person swallow part of the strip while the healer held on to the tip.  He or she would instruct the person to make swallowing motions with their throat while the healer moved the strip back and forth.”

This procedure was repeated Effie said until a thick mucus substance from the blubber was unleashed, covering the inside of the throat.  “When this happened, the healing began.”

I told Effie that I thought I would go ahead and toss out my Hall’s Menthol Cough Drops now and she replied with a faint teasing smile, “That would not be a good idea; I don’t think they have beluga or seal in Arizona or Missouri.

The Tundra Drum - Alaska

The meat is divided among the hunters in proportion to the help each provided during the hunt. It is cheaper than buying beef at the village store.  

The intestines will be sold to a craftsman that will produce a water proof rain coat to sell to the tourists that want to show people after they return home how ingenious Eskimos can be.  

The skin is used for ceremonial clothing and repairing of artifacts that the Eskimos keep around more to impress the tourists than anything else.  The best part of the skin, however is taken to the eldest of the Elders.  He or she makes the selection as to who will be given the task, and then the village waits.

A three foot diameter circle is made by the selected craftsman by carving, bending, heating, and pressing driftwood together.  It is held in place by a stone vice while a handle made from ivory or still more driftwood is attached by sinew.  The length of the handle depends on the size of the beater. 

 The skin, after being cured, cleaned, and scraped to a shinny surface is stretched tightly across the circular frame.  The instrument is left to dry and harden in the sun, thus further stretching the skin tighter, thereby giving it it’s haunting melodious sound.  

The eldest of the Elders directs how the product is to be decorated.  A different craftsman provides the ceremonial decorations.  The item is then presented to the eldest of the Elders for approval. 

 After an ancient blessing, that no one now alive knows how long it has been chanted, a crafted willow stick strikes the middle of the drum and it resonates thought the tundra as all previous drums on the tundra have done for ten thousand years.

Panama Pundit 1

Panama Pundit

Note to reader:  The series I have chosen to call Panama Pundit are a series of extracts from a diary I kept while deployed to Panama in late 1990 and early 1991.

December 29

Sgt Fortner and I reported to the Kansas City armory this morning.  We loaded our vehicle and were driven to Fulton, Missouri by Sgt Hess.  There we were to meet up with several guardsman that would accompany us to Panama.  Sgt Hess brought his girl friend along for the ride.  The only reason I mention that is that she too was in the National Guard and she was leaving for Saudi Arabia in a couple of days.

In the armory at Fulton we sat around and watched TV.  The Chiefs beat the Bears and then we watched a war film, appropriate I guess.  We got a call from Jeff City and were told that instead of 0300 the next day we would be picked up at 1830 that night.  Side note – We had a contract meal from KFC.  It was to much chicken for one day, two meals.  We leave in about an hour.  We will probably sit in the St. Louis airport for hours.

December 30

I road to St. Louis on a bus along with Jerry Sonderagger and 30 other guys.  They put us in some sort of army office building and we slept on the floor waiting for our plane.  Rumors abound as to when we will leave.  The best rumor is that we will take off at 0930.  We shall see.

We left at 1230 after eventually being pushed out of the snow (the plane that is – some how it got stuck in a snow bank.)  The plane headed towards Panama and we were entertained  in flight by two movies:  My Blue Heaven with Steve Martin and Dick Tracy staring Warren Beatty.  I watched all of MBH and slept through DT.

We landed at Howard AFB in Panama on the Pacific side and were taken to a place called Camp Russo.  Henceforth referred to as the Bubble.  It was some sort of structure that was kept erect by blowing air into the facility to inflate the structure.  The doors had airlocks so if you left the door from the outside open while you opened the door to the inside it started to deflate.  The Bubble was used for in-processing  Tomorrow we are supposed to lave for Cologne on the Atlantic side

Big Foot - Alaska

At times one felt very isolated living in Alaska.  Now and then however somebody would come through that one would not have had the opportunity to meet otherwise.  For instance when was it the last time you ever met anyone who had really seen Big Foot.

I really do not recall the exact circumstances surrounding the telling of this tale nor all the intricacies and facts related.  I do remember the guys name who described the events herein but I am inclined not to reveal his true identity due to the fact that he is still alive and well and a fairly well known author.  I do not want to embarrass him or subject myself to some sort of litigation.  But this is the story as I remember it.

During his lumberjack days in Oregon my acquaintance was instructed by his boss to go to such and such an area and cut a small road about six miles into a forested area that was scheduled for cutting.  Seventy years prior there had bee a large fire and no one had really been to that desolate area since and now the timber was ready for harvesting.  He loaded his equipment which consisted of lumberjack stuff and a couple of horses and traveled fifty miles to where the trail was to begin.

He fell the trees, trimmed them and used the horses to pull out the fallen trees to a clearing next to his base camp.  After several days of cutting, trimming, and hauling he had covered about a half mile.

That night the horses seemed restless and the next morning they were hard to control on his journey back up the road.  He had left most of his equipment where he had quit the day before to keep him from carrying them back and forth. When he got to the new starting point he found that all of his equipment had been broken and scattered.  He also found huge claw marks about twelve feet up the side of a few trees.  He became a little unnerved and decided he needed to tell someone about this.  

He returned to his base camp, loaded up his horses and drove the fifty miles back down the old logging trail.  He and his boss returned to the site the next day, walked up the path and surveyed the wreckage.  His boss seemed to be more interested in what had caused the carnage than my writer friend, but rank prevailed and they started trying to pick up tracks of some kind.  They found none in the immediate area because of all the trimmings on the ground but eventually snaked their way up the hill and further into the forest which was becoming increasingly dark due to the forest canopy.

They kept looking for tracks but none were visible.  Then as they were walking up a small rise they both looked up and saw three large figures looming ahead of them.  The figures they soon realized were some kind of animals  They were no more than fifty feet away.  He remembered one was crouching on all fours between two larger creatures.  One he later assumed was the mother, the crouching one a baby and the gigantic one, well over seven feet tall, the daddy.  A family he thought after is shock allowed him to think.  The male looked at them, straightened up to his full height that looked a lot more than it had just a few minutes previously and thrust out its chest.  His boss said not to make eye contact and they backed down the hill.  The road into the forest was never completed.

My pal tells the story much better than I of course and says he has never written about it nor does he tell the story much for fear of be tagged as crazy.

Going to Alaska widened my horizons about many things.  Now I believe in Big Foot and if I return someday I cannot wait to meet someone one who actually was abducted by aliens, knows who shot Jack Kennedy, and in which village Jimmy Hoof is hiding under the witness protection program. 

Independence Day - Alaska

There was a parade, a berry eating contest, cracker run, baseball game, a fishing derby, pot luck, prizes, but no fireworks.

I had decided to teach summer school and thus found myself spending the Fourth of July in a small Eskimo village near the Bering Sea.  The Fourth was celebrated just like they do in most small towns in the Lower 48, but there were a couple of twists here and there.

The parade started at the east end of the village and went north on what served as the main street towards to what passed as the local landing strip, but actually petered out near the new halibut processing plant.  Every young Eskimo seemed to be participating in the parade one way or another.  Some walked, some were pulled in wagons, and some rode in the back of one of the two pick-up trucks that somehow had gotten to the village.  All were waving American flags or Alaska state flags.  The military was represented by members of the local National Guard Detachment marching at the front of the procession.  The Police Chief drove the newly acquired ATV equipped with a siren, which he would let wail far too often.

The next thing on the schedule was to be the Halibut Fishing Derby, but it got cancelled at the last minute when everyone sort of realized that the water was too choppy, or so the plant manager determined.

The next item was the berry eating contest, not a berry pie eating contest, but an actual berry eating contest.  The entrants were limited to those over 70 years old and from what I could tell, they were to eat as many berries as they could in a certain time span.  When it was announced that the contest was to begin, three male elders stepped forward and they immediately started arguing with one another as to where each was going to stand behind the table piled with berries.  They finally agreed that the oldest one would have his pick first, but then they got into an argument as to who was the oldest.  The whole matter was finally decided when a very elderly lady inserted herself into the fray and started grabbing one man then another by the ear and led him into position, whether he wanted to be there or not.  It took me a while to figure out that this was all part of the ceremony.  The crowd got into it also, because they would boo and heckle the elders as they got into position.

Each man was brought a bowl of berries.  Each elder received one kind of berry only.  There were Blackberries, Blueberries, and Salmonberries.  Dark blue, light blue, and red.  The woman who had grabbed the men by the ears yelled something that apparently was the signal to commence.  The elders started cramming their mouths full as quickly as possible.  But when the bowls were empty other bowls did not appear.  The men just stood there with dark blue, light blue, and red coloring all over their respective faces.  Then the ear lady yelled something else and the crowd I was standing in quickly dispersed.  To my horror the men started running towards me.  I stood there petrified as they ran past and started grabbing any female they could get their hands on and pressed face against face.  There was shrieking and laughing for several minutes when the ear lady yelled something again.  The men went back to their places and women started lining up behind them based on how much and what kind of coloring they had on their faces.  The blackberry guy won by two women.

Mouse Soup - Alaska

Because I have written many a muse, some might say diatribe, about my adventures in Alaska I am not sure if I have imparted the following on this blog site. However due to a recent posting by a friend of mine on Facebook I thought it worth repeating.

A lady friend of mine lives on a small farm in northern Illinois. When she got up one morning she checked her overly used mouse trap and found to her shock and dismay the head of a mouse. Not the body mind you, only the head. It sort of unnerved her wondering what had taken the body and left the head. She hoped whatever it was had left the house.

For those of you on Facebook you can imagine what happened next. The comment section under her post began to fill-up. There were a couple of "eeks," a few "Noooos," and one "I would move."

Trying to defuse the situation, less panic reign supreme in northern Illinois, I mentioned it reminded me of mouse soup, a dish I became familiar with while living in Alaska. Well this caused another round of comments the best being, "I hate mice, that is disgusting."

I tried to ease my Facebook friend's fear and disgust but realized an explanation about mouse soup was far to complicated and lengthy to serve up during the comment phase of the entry. Thus the reason for this particular blog.

Eskimos spend a lot of their leisure time hunting and gathering and the preparing of food for the winter months. They have become over the years very ingenious as to determining what is and is not editable and palatable.

Mice are ubiquitous to the Tundra. They swarm all over the place searching for their own eatables. They find nuts, berries, roots, and grasses and now and then discarded human food. They spend all summer scavenging around  and what they don't eat they pack back to their nests to store for the winter.

Eons ago Eskimos realized what the mouse was doing so they began to search out mice nests in the late summer and early fall to help themselves get through the Arctic winters.

To the trained Eskimo eye a mouse nest is easy to find. I never mastered the skill and could not pick out a nest over a clump of tundra grass.

After gathering, the ingredients are taken to the gatherer's home, put in a pot, boiled, and then strained several times to remove any non human digestible things. If the gatherer is lucky enough to have some vegetables around they too are thrown in the pot. The soup is seasoned to taste and served up boiling hot.

So my dear friends in northern Illinois and else where if you have ever wondered about mouse soup or how to make it now, if you so desire.  The mice are not eaten, or at least in the soup they are not eaten.

I have tasted mouse soup and it does not appeal to me. It is not the flavor that I dislike it is just that I cannot get past the fact that I am putting in my mouth what a rodent had not so long ago had put in theirs.

Appian Way - The Plan

We checked in at the headquarters building where we were to begin the re-write of the defense plan of Liverno. The commanding officer, an LTC, was on leave so I sought out the first sergeant.

He did not look like a first sergeant, more like Homer Simpson. He was waiting for his admin personnel to return from their morning run. His job I figured was to fix coffee and get the doughnuts ready, which both were in ample supply.

His office was a mess. Field gear was piled in a corner, he was waring sweat pants, and a T-shirt adorned with a picture of Elvis.

We were offered coffee and doughnuts. He asked what he could do for us. I suggested he could show me to a work area and provide us with the current defense plan. No problem he said.

He took us down the hall to a large room, punched in a security code, and asked if the room seemed adequate. It had all the necessary things: pencils, chairs, tables, paper, television, couch, easy chair, coffee pot and of course doughnuts. In the corner was a file drawer with the words secret written in red across the front. The drawer was already pulled out.

He retrieved the appropriate file. I asked for the combination to the file and a sign in/out sheet. He said the combination lock was not working but he was not concerned if they had an inspection because he had a work order on file. As far as the sign in/out sheet went, they never used one. He did give me the door combination however. It was nice to be trusted.

I took the folder and read through the plan while my men watched Italian television, drank coffee, and of course ate doughnuts. It took me about thirty minutes to read the plan and hand out to my little band of brothers the parts they were responsible for reviewing and suggest changes. It was getting close to lunch and I did not want to leave the plan in the room, so I put it in my brief case and headed to the mess hall.

Two hours past lunch my guys had made their recommendations on unit assignment, re-deployments, and calculated the troop strength needed.

The next morning we made a draft of the document and presented it to the commanding officer who had returned from leave. He thanked me for our efforts and said he would have his staff review the suggestions and for me to be in his office noon Friday. It was now only Tuesday morning, so I asked if he had anything else he wanted us to do. He said "No, enjoy yourself, Italy can be very accommodating to military personnel, and by the the way do you need an interpreter while you are here?"