A strange old remedy for cancer, lupus, skin diseases and . .

The Sun. It may be the oldest remedy in the cabinet, the oldest doctor in the house.

I’ve seen it before and puzzled over it. I found it in  “A DICTIONARY OF PRACTICAL
MATERIA MEDICA” by John Henry CLARKE, M.D.

As you can see by the following chapter I’ve lifted out of it, Clarke did not sew, he reaped this strange old remedy Sol for his ‘dictionary’ out of the work by other physicians who used it as described in paragraphs below.

These kind of remedies, made from exp0sure to radiant energies, are called imponderabilia, and this one is made from our closest natural ally, the Sun.  

Sol is made by exposing mik sugar to magnified sunlight.

It brings up an alternative reality in medicine. How it works, or why it works, is referenced eponymously in its category, and Rolland Conte et al, authors of Theory of High Dilutions and Experimental Aspects, and perhaps a struggling few, may be the only ones who can explain it.

CLARKE: “Sun-light. Saccharum lactis is exposed to concentrated sun’s rays and stirred with a glass rod till saturated. Attenuations by Fincke.

“Clinical ─ Cancer. Freckles. Headache. Lupus. Menses, premature. Paralysis. Sunburn. Sunstroke.

“Characteristics.─Thanks to Finsen, of Copenhagen, the place of Light in therapeutics is on the way to be defined so far as its direct properties are concerned, though Finsen is reviving and confirming, rather than originating, light-therapy. O. V. Thayer (H. R., viii. 463) published in 1893 a series of cases in which he had used concentrated rays of sun-light (solar cautery), including cases of epithelial cancer, rodent ulcer, parasitic diseases, moles, small wens, birth-marks, &c. H. T. Webster (H. R., xv. 126) gives details of a case of epithelioma in which the growth was removed by solar-cautery and a scarcely perceptible scar left. Swan and his coadjutors investigated sun-light from another point of view. In 188o (Org., iii. 275) Swan published a pathogenesis of Sol, which I have embodied in my Schema. Swan’s data were obtained from four provers, from experiences obtained from sensitives by Reichenbach (Der Sensitive Mench), from an observation by “Highwood” quoted by Fincke from American Observer, ix. 210. Reichenbach’s observations I have distinguished by “(R),” Highwood’s by “(H).” The remaining symptoms are those who took principally the 1m attenuations of Fincke. The 15m was taken by one. Two of Reichenbach’s symptoms were observed on two of the provers also, and the letters “(F)” and “(L)” refer to these. Cured symptoms will be found in brackets. The common effects of strong sun-light, as sneezing, freckling, and sunstroke, my be added to the list.

“Relations.─Antidoted by: Aco., Bell., Glon., Gels., and other sunstroke remedies. Compare: Luna, Elec., Mgt. Dislike of sun, Lach., Nat. c.

“SYMPTOMS.

“1. Mind.─Excitement and anxiousness in all her nerves, at first with trembling at heart, finally it remained in stomach-pit; all that night and next day very sensitive and easily frightened; it was as if all the nerves were trembling inside of them; the anxiousness in stomach-pit passes off the second evening.─Anxiousness if somebody comes towards her, being frightened thereat (F and R).

“2. Head.─Violent headache from vertex down to forehead, pressing, with sensation of heat in face; this headache was repeated the second day three times; it seems to be in connection with the excitement and anxiousness at stomach-pit (first night).─All the sensitives are very sensitive to the immediate action of sunshine on the vertex (R).─Extreme painfulness if the sunshine strike the bare-head (R).─Most violent stitches in brain (R).─Disagreeable feelings, such as from retrograde passes, go into brain, cause stitches and headache, and if she does not gain the shade, stomach-ache and nausea follow (R).─Violent headache (R).─L.─sided headache (R).─Headache from sunshine on bare head, > by laying a glass of water on stomach-pit (R).─In morning, severe pain in crown, and then in neck, passing off after breakfast (L and R).─(Heavy pressive pain in vertex.).─Intense entire cephalalgia.─Pain in forehead; it seems as if forehead would crush itself down upon the eyes.─(Sensation of undulating or floating in head after mental excitement, such as attending to business or writing a letter.).─Instantaneous shock to brain, followed by prostration, and a scalding sensation on top of head (remedied by orange-coloured cloth in stove-pipe hat) (H).─Excessive perspiration of head and neck.

“3. Eyes.─Sun-light diminished the sensitivity of eyes; od.─blindness (R).─Suffusion of veins of sclerotica.─Sensation of swelling, as if eyes would force themselves out of sockets.─Light offends eyes.

“4. Ears.─Sharp shooting pain from l. ear to nose, continued at intervals for some time.─Partial deafness.

“5. Nose.─Sneezing, with a little sore throat, as if she had taken cold.

“6. Face.─Jaws rigidly set as in trismus.

“7. Teeth.─Grinding of teeth as in helminthic spasms.

“8. Mouth.─Tastes like something she cannot tell.─She puts anything she is going to eat in the sunshine, because then it is more palatable to her (R).─Two glasses of water of equal temperature, the one put in the shade, the other in the sunshine for a quarter of an hour, the latter tastes agreeably cool to sensitives, and stale and disagreeable to non-sensitives, whilst the other tastes quite the reverse (R).─Stupid; cannot articulate a word.─Articulates with difficulty.

“11. Stomach.─Slight inclination to or actual vomiting.─Heat in pit of stomach.─Empty feeling in stomach, as if she had not eaten anything substantial yesterday and to-day.─Sensation of faintness and vacuity in stomach-pit.

“12. Abdomen.─In abdomen, distension and hardness, as large as a child’s head, as if it were in womb, and running throughout from it into mammæ, as if milk would rush in as when a child nurses; this lasted the whole first night till morning; before the distension and hardness came on a sensation as after childbirth or at conception (with great excitement).─A glass of water exposed to the sun for six to eight minutes propagates coolness, not only in stomach, but round about in the viscera (R).

“13. Stool.─Constipation.

“14. Urinary Organs.─Had to urinate five times in night.─Urine and stool invariably suspended.

“16. Female Sexual Organs.─Menses six to seven days too soon.

“18. Chest.─Weakness about heart.

“20. Back.─Pain in back.─Backache.

“21. Limbs.─After riding about on horseback in his woods in the sunshine all forenoon, and lying down about noon on his bed to rest, he suddenly gets peculiar attacks drawing through all his limbs; after rising and making a few steps up and down, they disappear; this repeats itself several times (R).─(The r. side, arm, and foot, which had been weak as from partial paralysis, became equally strong as l.).─Hands and feet cold.

“22. Upper Limbs.─The back of hand exposed to sunshine feels warm, while at same time a coolness appears in palm, and runs up whole arm into temple (R).─Cool, refreshed hands from holding a stick partially exposed to the sun (R).

“24. Generalities.─> Of bad effects of the sun by every cloudy veil drawing over the sun (R).─If beds and wearing apparel have lain too long in the sunshine, the agreeable feeling after using them turns suddenly into the most disagreeable, so that she cannot bear it, and falls into headache and spasm (R.).─Spasm coming with sunrise and ceasing with sunset (R.).─Some spasms appearing at sunset (R).─Faintness.─Prostration.─(General stiffening up of the system; the bodily strength seems more equalised.)

“25. Skin.─Dermatitis, which often, with cold extremities, degenerates into megrim (R.).

“26. Sleep.─She could not sleep the first night, except from 3 to 4 a.m.; otherwise no idea of sleep the whole night long.─Head very much excited; could not sleep for hours.─Great sleepiness all through the head, and not merely in the eyes; heavy, sound sleep all through night.

“27. Fever.─An agreeable coolness extends over whole body, though the surface of the body perceives the physical heat of the sun’s rays; simultaneously a kind of coldness interiorly pervades whole body, so that the sun makes warm and cold at the same time, but the feeling of cold supersedes that of warmth to such a degree that the latter is overlooked (R).─Running chills of increasing sensation of cold in all limbs from holding wires partially exposed to the sun (R).─Felt cold in night; drew up more cover and perspired.─Congestive chill from exposure to sun after drinking cold water freely.─Perspiration streaming out of stomach-pit over whole body (from the crude saturated sacch. lact., in one of Fincke’s provers).”

It’s coming . . “The Physics of Homeopathy”

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Cause of Aurora Colorado Batman shooting

July 20, 2012, a 24 year old man with a gun, wearing a gas mask and bullet proof vest, opened fire during a 12:30 a.m. showing of the film The Dark Knight Rises in Theater Nine at the Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. He set off a smoke grenade in the theater and started shooting, killing 14 people and injuring more than fifty.

The alleged shooter was James Holmes.. He was found next to his car in the theater parking lot with a rifle, shotgun, and handgun. He did not resist arrest.

Holmes told authorities about explosives at his residence in North Aurora. Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates said the shooter’s home was a site where there might be more explosives.

Homeoapth John Benneth examines the psychochemical evidence as to what may have triggered the violence.

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It’s coming . .The Physics of Homeopathy

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It’s coming . .

The summer days breeze by. I find myself lounging. Before me is a full plate of fat, burgundy red cherries at which I pick: My cases, my videos, my correspondence, my vast studies, my blog  . .  

The point should be made over and over again, that every statement made against homeopathy by those who are masquerading as ‘atheists,’ ‘rationalists’ and ‘skeptics’ who hold themelves out to be ‘scientists’, or ‘defenders of logic’ . .  blows up in their faces . .  all is set . . all I have to do is strike the match.

HOMEOPATHS! Stand up, promote homeopathy for what it is, for what the pseudoscientists say it is not, the only REAL medicine we have . . as follows:

Response to Jessica Roy -  Woo, Boy: Singularity U’s Vivek Wadhwa Spreads the Dark Art of ‘Pseudoscience’
“Alan Smukler is right. And it’s laughable to see how out of touch with reality the homeopathy haters are, and how they violate their own implied standards, and this article by Jessica Roy is no exception. “The reference here supporting the claim that “several credible academic studies found that the alternative medicine wasn’t proven to work better than a placebo” is from the self-referencing Edzard Ernst, the recently defrocked mouthpiece for the troubled patent pharmaceutical industry now under criminal indictment for fraud and $3 billion dollar fine.
“When you ask just what studies they’re talking about, it turns out that there are none . . no comprehensive metanalysis of homeopathy has ever been able to conclude that the effects of the material analogs . . the homogenous substances used as medicine in homeopathy by a growing number of MDs . . is solely due to “the placebo effect.”
“Note that the lack of discretion and trope in “placebo.” The word, like the author, refers to nothing definite. If they could honestly say what they want us to believe, they’d say it. Where is the body of literature proving “placebo?” They can’t even say what it is! TEACH ME!
“Furthermore, the homeopathic principle of like cures like was discovered by overdosing with crude material substances before it was witnessed in the dilute. All vaccines, anti-toxins and anti-venoms work on this same principle of similitude. The word ‘homeopathy’ literally has nothing to do with dilutes.

[The only difference is that homeopaths have learned posology, how to admininister the right dose, effectively and safely.]

“So now look who’s being ‘unscientific.’ And so it follows, that my challenge to these professed ‘experts’ like Ernst is to show me one good study that proves homeopathic medicines are nothing but “placebos.” Do it and I’ll quit studying homeopathic medicine and go string beads.
“Homeopathy is real medicine, unlike what’s being injected into the rumps of the unwitting public . . “

My plate is still full of fat, burgundy red cherries at which I pick: My overwhelming case load, my videos, my correspondence, my vast studies, my blogs, my poetry and the cornerstone of medicine,  The Doctrine, ‘The Physics of Homeopathy’  . . by Fall this essay and those to follow will have dried and will scuttle on the hard thoroughfare like rip brown leaves . .what Springs turns to Fall, what is green, bright and startling soon becomes brown, dull and commonplace . .

Ah! Another fat cherry!  

IT’S COMING: ‘THE PHYSICS OF HOMEOPATHY’

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Epiphanies in Similitude

Epiphany, (1): An appearance of a God or other supernatural being; (2):  a sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something  (3): an intuitive grasp of reality through something (such as reading the John Benneth Journal while on LSD) that is unusually simple and striking (4): the illuminating discovery, realization, or disclosure of  an ontological revelation 

Epiphanies in Similitude and the shift in medical thinking, science is catching up to homeopathy by John Benneth, virtual cover, 2012, All in My Mind Press

IN MY LAST THESIS and video ALL VACCINES HOMEOPATHIC I revealed that all vaccines are essentially, in the essence of the word, homeopathic.

In this version, I am called before the Inquisitio Haereticae Pravitatis to confess my heresies . .

“Of course, Grand Inquisitor, I knew this was a heresy when I made it. I confess. But I did so with the true secret in my heart that I would catch moresuspected  heretics for you to condemn and send onward for the Lord to sort out. And so I thought it would be proof that  1) 35 Nobelists convened to condemn fellow 2) Luc Montagnier for having first danced with the devil, i.e. homeopathy, as we suspected.

“But such is not the case. No, as your humble plant and spy, I expurgate, for it would seem the heresy is NOT  for suggesting electromagnetic (EM) doses, but for proposing hard antibiotics to correct vaccine damage done by autism, and that we swim in it: LUC BACK TO HARD DOSING Nobel Prize winner draws condemnation for proposed autism treatment

“Yes, I know. This all rather confusing, Your Honor. It is a well intentioned conspiracy I’m quite sure, but can we now make any apology for the Condemned? This is, if I may be allowed to say so off the record, a cluster coitus, indeed. This is worse than trying to straighten out a plate of fettucine doused in clam sauce after Goody Elisabeth’s cat’s played with it.  How are we to separate this scramble?

“Well, don’t panic, Goodman Benneth will fix, somehow. Let me see.  Montagnier was following his fellow immunologist Jacques Benveniste, who, like any honest man would do, confessed homeopathy when he was anointed with the epiphany of the evidence, and in Montagnier’s case, this amounted to the discovery of the electromagnetic  (EM) analog transduction of the Schumann resonance, the background radiation resonating though the crystalline restructuring of the aqueous medium.

“Now, in that this is a magnetic phenom in harmony with Hahnemann’s original thesis, it was a milestone revelation, THE latest and greatest epiphany in similitude, demonstrable evidence for what Benveniste referred to at Jospehson’s Cavendish as “a new biological paradigm.” What an irony! To think “oh, he’s got it!” and then to watch him fall back into a pool of antibiotics . . good grief,  he’s not connecting the dots!

“Well . . but wait! Now there’s more! He’s not the only one who’s gone off the rails, there’s another track suffering a crack up, another monkey who’s whipping up an angry mob of Nobelists who are now at the door of Montagnier Castle, demanding Dr. M’s removal as Herr Fuehrer Docteur at his jungle clinic for AIDS in the Cameroons!

“It’s an insanity! So much for ‘epiphanies’ when the Devil raises his ugly head out of the Potatoes O’Brien in the midst of what you thought would be the Monday Prayer Breakfast at the 700 Club. Now I know why it was I was never invited to that conference. I would have given Him the credit he was due and then I would have torn the bastard apart limb from limb for turning it all on its head.

“Yes, yes, I know, but that’s what I’m here for. I think what happened is that he got a stomach full of Chinese cuisine (they eat Dachshunds, you know, tough for even a Frenchman to digest) panicked and went for the hard drugs. How many time have we seen that in the Craft?

“So I beg of you Grand inquisitor and your Sublime Majesties, give me another chance. I’ll get for you the information you demand, you will learn from me who it is who is practicing voodoo in the jungle clinics without your license and who it is who is not!”

Whatever, back to business. The word homeopathy refers to similitude, “like cures like,” the principle of using a substance that causes a disease to cure a similar disease. Everybody just relax. This is the key to vaccines, inoculations, immunizations, trances and cures. This is medicine in its pure state. The EM state is simply further similitude.

Stay a little longer and watch . .

[JOHNBENNETHVIDEO]

ALL VACCINATIONS HOMEOPATHIC

All vaccines are homeopathic. The small pox vaccine was the greatest medical achievement of all time. In the midst of modern commercialized medicine’s atrocities, it is highly significant, if not profound, to find a beacon, that Jenner’s discovery was Hahnemann’s proof, and that the greatest medical achievement of all time is homeopathy.

All curative medicine and effective disease prophylaxis is homeopathic. Homeopathy employs the magnetic principle of like repels like and the chemical principle of solvents, like dissolves like.

All vaccinations are homeopathic, and by that it is meant they are prima facie homeopathic, anyone can see it, on its face value, as well as scientifically. The misperception of what homeopathy is, has prohibited the further use of it as effective medicine. Homeopathy is effective in more than just its crude use in vaccines and anti-venoms.

This is not just another piece of information, this is a profound revelation, perhaps the most profound of our age, because it foretells the end of disease. The small pox vaccine is regarded as the greatest medical achievement of our age, and so to say that it is homeopathic is a stunning piece of news.

HOMEOPATHY UNDER ATTACK IN AUSTRALIA

To understand that all vaccinations are homeopAthic is of critical importance to world health. In Australia, opponents of homeopathy are attempting to restrict the public’s access to it and their right to know. This is a threat to freedom choice, the right to choose what kind of medical treatment a person will have, and freedom of information . . access to medical studies.

Opponents will say that homeopathy is not evidence based medicine, but this is a lie. The evidence for homeopathy was developed by clinicians observing the reactions of countless patients and “provers” to the materials used in homeopathic medicine. Homeopathy is the most evidence based medicine on the planet.

How can anyone make an educated choice if information is being withheld from them? In this case, it’s about the use of homeopathy in disease prophylaxis, for the prevention and treatment of things like whooping cough.

The irony of it is, is that the same people who are telling the public to avoid homeopathy and to get vaccinated are in essence doing nothing more than promoting a crude form of the very thing they’re opposing. Technically, they’re practicing homeopathy. The people who are opposing it are practicing it.

Look at how vaccines are made proof.

Here is Wikipedia’s definition of vaccine: “A vaccine typically contains an agent that resembles a disease-causing microorganism, and is often made from weakened or killed forms of the microbe, its toxins or one of its surface proteins.”

You could say exactly the same thing about homeopathy, and no one, not the people who promote homeopathy nor the people who oppose it could reasonably say you’re wrong. You can simply switch the word “homeopathic remedy” for “vaccine” in the Wikipedia definition and technically you’d still be be right in both definitions, because the word homeopathy refers to its first principle, the use of similars to treat, prevent and cure disease.

CHALLENGE

Read the Wikipedia article on homeopathy again and switch the words ”homeopathic remedy” for “vaccine” and see how it reads: “A homeopathic remedy typically contains an agent that resembles a disease-causing microorganism, and is often made from weakened or killed forms of the microbe, its toxins or one of its surface proteins.”

There you have it, homeopathic remedies contain an agent that RESEMBLES a disease causing microorganism. That’s the principle of similitude, the study of which is the science of homeopathy.

But it goes further to show that modern vaccines also make use of the second principle of homeopathy, which is attenuation. It says, “it is often made from WEAKENED or KILLED forms of the microbe, its toxins or one of its surface proteins.”

A vaccine is doing exactly the same thing a homeopathic remedy does, eliciting a response from the immune system. That’ what cures you. Not the chemical, but the reaction to one dose of it, which is the third principle of homeopathy, the minimum dose, the highly restrained posology.

YOU’VE BEEN “HOMEOPATHISIZED”!

The problem here with vaccination is that people are using homeopathic procedures and treatment without any understanding of what they are! In 2012 they still haven’t learned the principles and intricacies of similitude and they still haven’t learned how to properly cut the dose, and they still haven‘t learned to apply what they already know is effective in epidemiology to clinical use in idiopathic diseases.

What’s happening in Australia is happening in other parts of the Anglo American world where they’re trying to prevent whooping cough an other diseases by crude vaccination. They’re attacking a better understanding of the very thing they’re using.

But in other parts of the world, such as in India, Cuba and Brazil, where the public isn’t being duped by advertising for patent drugs, homeopathy is booming.

If physicians are going to administer vaccines they using a crude form of  homeopathy. To do their jobs better the must  study it, learn it and know it. They have to practice it clinically under teachers who are experienced in its use. They must go to school and learn it. They must learn it at medical schools that teach it, like the American Medical College of Homeopathy in Phoenix, Arizona.

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How My Dog Saved My Life

We didn’t get into the sagebrush until after we had stepped over the train tracks, snuck through some junk yards and slid down some more mine tailings. We tipped toed around a suspected lair of Black Betty, a huge rattler thicker than a fire hose, rumoured to rocket out of her underground silo to grab a passing coyote or gobble a small child.

We politely stepped around an open pit that was at one time somebody’s glory hole, long ago given up on when the whiskey ran out, now only deep enough to barely sprain an ankle in and be whistled at by an anemic scorpion.

Our destination was the Hale and Norcross Mine, the deepest hole in the world, so deep that whatever was thrown into it would not come out, battered to pieces by the sides of the shaft . . the perfect place to end a miserable story of lost love, grief and greed.

In case I hadn’t mentioned it, mine tailings are a kind of crumbly light brown clay from the center of the Earth, mixed with toxic heavy metals and gasses, flung over the shoulder with shovels by angry whiskered guys with their teeth all rotted out in the frantic quest for material gain. The Comstock, in which Virginia City presides, is carpeted with it, and not just in throw rugs, but wall to wall.  All this panicky digging they say accounts for 750 miles of underground tunnels, not including the one that reaches to underneath the Speakers chair in the state Legislature in Carson City, and the one that drains Tahoe.

It was eerily quiet that day, as if someone, or something, was planning a surprise party.

I am not a man of much physical strength or endurance. So what I have to replace that with is deliberation. If I find that I’m getting tired I just slow down and put my legs on autopilot and daydream.

I was awakened from my reverie by a single bark from a coyote. I looked up at the looming header of the Combination Shaft on the hill above us. It is a large pulley wheel that at one time ran the elevator into the shaft of the deepest hole in the world.

Just one bark. A warning bark, as if to say, “get ready, they’re coming.” Could it be the coyotes were preparing for an ambush?

There is one thing that Huck is deathly afraid of, and that is coyotes. I don’t know why. Comstock coyotes are especially bold, they wander into town every now and then for a stray cat or small dog, but a larger one like Huck to them is a special challenge.

They steer clear of apex predators like humans though, even wimpy ones like me. They’re not smart enough to know which of us are pacifists. So why should a dog be worried with a bully human being along for a bodyguard?

However, if a human is away they will prey upon a large dog like Huck. The strategy of the pack is to send in a potential girl friend, called a Lolita, to lure the unwitting domesticated male dog away from the safety of the backyard, and then when clear of it, the rest of the pack will pounce on him, tear him to pieces and leave only the hair. If the domesticated dog is a female, they will send in a Romeo for the same purpose.

Huck, it seemed had some history with the coyotes, for on a cold night when the purpled black sky was spangled an infinitesimal number of lights, at the first call from his feral cousins he would sheepishly slide back to the back door and lean on it.

The single bark came from the very place we were going. I wondered if Huck had heard it.

I didn’t think so. He loved to run ahead of me, then double back, nose to the ground.

I called his name but all was silent.

“Huck?” I called.

“Huck!” I yelled.

“HUCK!” I screamed.

“Oh my God,” I thought to myself. “The coyotes got him!”

I called and called. Nothing responded. I went up on a little hill to survey where we had been. I called his name. I was sick with grief. How could I tell everyone what had happened, that the coyotes had got Huck?

“HUCK!”

I slowly shuffled back to the Mackay. I crossed the railroad track, walked up the path to the gate, and turned in the yard and there he was, rolling and squirming on his hot, itchy back in the cool green grass of the lawn.

HUCK!

I fumed, I ranted, I raved. How could he leave me like that? Here was I, knocking myself out, agonizing over his loss, like a parent over a lost child.

“How dare you!” I cried. He slunk towards the house, donkey eared, tongue darting out in little licks, belly low to the ground.

Relief provided no temperance for my censure. I gave him a good chewing out, locked him in the house and headed back for the Combination Shaft.

I was tired but I fixed that by being mad, making a forced march to the Combination Shaft. To heck with him and his imaginary coyotes.

There is no abrupt edge to the Hole. Curiosity drives a man closer to peer into infinity.  Like its cousins of astronomical dimensions, this hole is so deep it’s got its own gravity. It’s like one of those plants that suck in insects and with little spiked hairs jab them down a one way tunnel . . into a pool of acid.

What a metaphor the Shaft is for life’s journey to its end. We ignore it, some defy it openly, but once the first step is taken at birth, there is no turning back, it is inevitable, whenever it may appear, sometimes by doctor’s orders, other times unexpectedly.

You can walk right up to the pit and into it . . if you are so inclined, as there’s not much of a fence around it to keep anyone from taking the 13th step, the last step, the final step. There’s a strange gravity here that has a sound to it, a low sucking sound, a constant note, a low wind, lower than the lowest note on the widest pipe in the biggest cathedral.

In Alcoholics Anonymous the 13^th Step refers to seducing a newcomer to the program, but I’m not an alcoholic, I’m just a plain old drunk. I conduct my meetings with my peers in saloons, taverns and bars, not church basements or senior service centers, and my terminology is not so regal. Where others use “and” I just put a period, so let us all be plain about this, our definitions for the 13^th Step are interchangeable . . seducing women who are trying to rectify their lives from alcohol is indeed tantamount to dropping into the Combination Shaft of the Hale and Norcross, no matter how many times you‘ve done it. It’s reprehensible. I know this to be true from experience.

Above he Hole towered the Header, one of the greatest churches the world has ever seen, the Hellespont of pure wealth, misery and con. When this hole was dug into the Comstock the world literally went into a panic, for it threatened to make paupers of us all.

Now with its work done, the job complete, the monolithic Elevator still surveys its domain, to the banking houses in San Francisco to the West,  across the Great Basin to the East, past the Humboldt range to the Mississippi, to the Capitol and Wall Street and the great banking houses of London and Europe beyond. The Elevator casts a long shadow. Far, far away the bankers, the brokers, the politicians, the lobbyists, like scurrying rats, suddenly frozen in the thrall of the hawk in her stoop, still fall down in the pall of the Elevator, in worship of the Shaft.

On a cliff several stories above the Shaft is a large pulley wheel on a gibbet, outstretched timbers mounted on the firm base of the Header. This was the apparatus to operate the Elevator Car. There are stories about that wicked contraption, how if a leg, arm or head was inadvertently poked beyond its curfew, it could be sheered off.

I’ll leave it to your imagination as to how that’s done.

The Car long gone, fallen into the void. The Header stands, a broken monument, an ominous cathedral, towering above the deep, black hole.

Something, somewhere, was banging against something else in the wind. A sample hit me and drove me back a step,  such is the nature of Nevada winds. Nary a cloud in the sky on a cool summer afternoon, the fragrant sage tingling your nostrils just before you get sucker punched by a gust  . .

The edge around  the Hole over time had become a sloping, slippery slide. I looked up to the edifice high above me. Perhaps, I thought, I could get a better look into the Hole from up there. Perhaps there would be a comfortable ledge with sharp corners to look over.

Behind the thin gate is the pilot house for the Elevator Operator  I slipped under the token wire, ignored the KEEP OUT sign and stepped into the control yard of the Shaft.  The pilot house was open.

I stepped inside.

The house was built around the Lever. The Lever is what controlled the ups and downs of the Car. For the Operator, this was a very precise job. He couldn’t see the Car, so he had to be instructed entirely by toots and whistles from the Landing platform.

On the wall adjacent the door for all who could read was a sign that ominously proclaimed the cost of loquacity, the fine for talking to and distracting the Operator, something like a million dollars and a thousand years in jail.

I took the lever in hand and pretended for a moment to play with the Fate of Others.

Beyond me, through the window I saw the Ledge. The wind blew through the House like a sharp intake of breath.

I was drawn toward it . . A foreign voice in the back of my head said “COME ON! Take a look. COME ON!

I didn’t have the courage to look down standing up next to it so I lay myself down and belly crawled over to it. Trouble was, the concrete pad on which I lay was at more of a slant than I thought . .

I looked over the Edge. It was several stories down just to the mouth of that horrible vertical cave, the open black maw yawned at me to come closer, like a warm lover, calling for bed.

Something didn’t feel right. I seemed to be moving unintentionally in its direction, sliding, uncontrollably sliding.

It wasn’t until many years later I discovered something sickeningly disturbing about the Hole. For reason of optics, in the satellite photo, zoomed all the way in, you can see the bottom of it, and perhaps it just my overwrought imagination, but the sight of it . . among so much beauty . . it is one of the most hopeless looking places on Earth, an open grave, an angry pattern of its fallen timbers at the base, and over by the side . . something undefinable.

But on that day from that angle it was nothing but velvet black. Without troubling about the slight movement of my entire body to a point of no return, I hefted a pebble over the edge. It drifted slowly down like a feather, soft, without a sound.

The action lost my traction.

Terror swept over me as I felt myself being drawn into the Hole, I was slipping, sliding into it.

My life reeled past me, the defeats, the wins, the disappointments, the stupid mistakes, the moments of glory, the good times, being in love, the moments of ecstasy with her never before experienced, a spiritual feeling . .

The moment before I was about to follow the rock, I felt a slight tug on my right pant leg . . and then another, and then a strong pull, his rough pads scouring  the concrete base. He would not let go. I spread my fingers and with Huck pulling me back I pushed away from death.

When I was back in the safety zone I stiffly swung my legs under me in to the sitting position and slowly swiveled around on my butt like a lazy susan and passed a hand over my sweating brow. Huck was trotting away when he stopped and looked over his shoulder at me as if to say, “come on, let’s go,” then noticed his tail, and spinning around he bit at it, and missed. . snap snap snap.

The Mackay’s a beautiful place this time of year. The coyotes howl at night as Huck and I peer up into the purpled black sky spangled with an infinitesimal number of lights and dream of other worlds. During the day the cherry blossoms bend down to kiss visitors to the Mackay walking on her bricked paths.  Huck cools his itchy, hot back by writhing on dark green lawns, as I sit and type . . and type . . and between chapters Huck looks back at me and smiles with all his white teeth showing and . . .snap snap snap.

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My Dog Huck

MY PLAN included bungee cords to insure that if I wasn’t dashed to pieces on the first fall, I would be on the second, third or fourth.

My main obstacle was laziness. I’d have to write something (a biting epitaph) order a tombstone, get a thousand feet of rubber surgical tubing for just the right kind of that snappy slingshot action, rack up huge debts, tell everyone what I really thought of them, get someone I secretly despise to fall in love with me and make sure that nothing would be left to my children or ex-wives.

It was too much work. I filled my pipe and was off wandering in the Netherlands when I felt a gentle tug on my pant leg.

It was my dog Huck.

Huck was a cinnamon colored German shepherd who always wanted out. He would usually spend his days with his chin on my knee while I typed, looking up at me with doleful eyes silently begging to be taken for walk. His nights were spent at the foot of my bed, waiting for the next day to begin.

In the afternoons when I would arise, Huck would be in his most charming happy self, which he would use to get me out of bed to start the new day, begging to be let out.

We slept in a long windowless hallway. At one time it was the entrance to the Gould and Curry Mine. It was from here that James Fair snuck a team of miners into the mine down to the 1,500 foot level and began drilling and blasting their way north into what eventually become known as the Big Bonanza, the world’s greatest discovery of silver, so big it caused the worldwide financial crisis of the 1870’s, making him and his three partners, Mackay, O’Brien and Flood four of the world’s richest men.

But that was long ago. The mines were played out and now the mine entrance was my bedroom. As I approached the refridgerator (I know, I know, it isn’t spelled with a d, I’ll take care of it later) at the end of the narrow kitchen, Huck would dance ahead of me, and at the same time, at the same spot, every day, he would look back to see if I was coming, notice he had a bushy tail . . like “what the is that?” and running around in a circle, snap at it three times .

His tail was an elusive thing. Once it was up and wagging he could never catch it.

Well, on this one particular day, when I had been in deep reverie for couple of hours too long, he left off asking and took to tugging and growling a bit as he pulled on my pant leg.

“Hey! Cut it out!” I yelled, but he just pulled harder. I had to get up an hop on one foot. “Stop it! Stop yankin‘ on my leg, you’ll pull it off,” I yelled, but it just made him put his back into it, growl and dig his paws into the rug, like he was fighting over tenderloin with a pit bull.

If it wasn’t for the fact that I was wearing Wahmaker denim pants with thick strap suspenders nailed to them on strong steel posts, he would have pulled them right off me, butt naked.

I had to capitulate.

“Alright, alright,” I lied. He instantly dropped my leg and shot for the southeastern side door.

The Flowery Hills west of Virginia City might be called mountains, but in my metrology they only rate as a piedmont leading up to something much bigger. The white capped giants of the Sierra Nevadas off on the horizon . . now those are mountains.

A bricked path by the Mackay Mansion runs east towards them under cherry blooms, past rusting mine junk in front of a beautifully manicured cool green lawn. In the Spring its beauty was breath taking, the cool cherry bossoms that so gracefully bent over the path and laid their pin kisses on my cheek as I passed under them. Huck dashed for it, leapt the gate, flopped, wriggled and rolled, rubbing his back on it like a beached sturgeon.

So much for a walk.

He jumped up, looked around with ears forward. Something leapt the boundaries of the yard, a mule deer, and Huck was off in a blur in hot pursuit of clattering hooves, barking, me screaming his name to come back.

They headed up the hill through an empty lot to main street. I chugged up Flowery Street towards C Street, yelling “Huck! “Huck!”

Dogs need names that can be comfortably yelled loudly, without reservation or embarrassment. I named a rat terrier “Howdy” once and in a situation similar to this one a man said “Well, hello God damnit!”

I learned my lesson on dog names from that, and so it was no distraction when I yelled Huck‘s. Some angry whiskered guy with his teeth all rotted out yelled back at me, “your dog is chasing a mule deer through traffic!”

Huck was so magnifiently big and supernaturally fast that by the time I got to the top of the street he had finished his pursuit and returned home, leaving me slack jawed. I tried to recover some of my dignity by asking, “You mean that dog there?“ Gabby Hayes was as puzzled as I was, but I didn’t show it.

“Well who was that?” he said. “His evil twin?”

I acted like I knew.

When I came stumbling back into the yard, Huck tore around crazily, kicking up bits of lawn, and then turned on me, racing at full speed until he was about six feet away, where he got airborne, lunging directly at my face, whizzing by my ear like a tomahawk.

When I turned around he was fifteen feet away at the gate to the path, looking over his shoulder at me like, “well come on, what are you waiting for, let’s go!”

He noticed his tail: Snap snap snap!

Next: How Huck saved my life