Supplying Europe with tobacco, something indigenous to the Americas, was how Virginia and the southern colonies got started: they had something to trade. That all began more than 400 years ago; yet the notion tobacco was activating a receptor wired into our biology by the creative process called life, that was not known until the 20th century.
 
If we retell the history of tobacco from an acetylcholine (biological) receptor point of view, one accounting for the receptor’s addictive as well as performance enhancing qualities, we can see a way of understanding why soldiers, for example, used tobacco and why it was considered good for soldiering.
 
Twentieth century US armed forces were supplied tobacco in their rations (WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam); this changed in the late 70s and early 80s. The change was because of the negative health effects on soldiers found to be caused by tobacco smoking and chawing, though there wasn’t any change in the importance of acetylcholine.
 
What do our acetylcholine receptors do? Put simply, they touch (activate) every muscle and nerve in our bodies, have both cellular and skeletal effects, and modulate our autonomic and central nervous systems. So something that activates every muscle and nerve as well as our autonomic and central nervous systems, might be of importance to staying alert, awake, and ready for action (soldiering).
 
Imagine the US Civil War without tobacco. The Confederate soldier as well as the general population of the South (free and slave) used lots of tobacco; chewing and spitting were common even among women and children. Tobacco use, and therefore acetylcholine modulation, helps to explain the hardships endured (lack of food and shelter and so on) during that time of war and the period after.
 
There is a misunderstanding concerning the role of acetylcholine activation in health: we moralize tobacco use without praising (or knowing of) acetylcholine modulation. In doing so, we also misunderstand how a biological receptor changed the course of world history and helped build the United States of America – from the inside out.
 
*Next Up: Sunday 17 September, US Constitution Day 2017, and the beginning of an autumn Gus Kotka and Johnny Reb series, On Our Way Thereat.
 
Posted by Bryan W. Brickner

Announcing a pamphlet with 14 Vietnam phenomena: What if Vietnam Never Happened? Foresight and Hindsight in Graham Greene’s The Quiet American.
 
Basically, what if in 1960 We the People had had Constitutional representation? And what if one of those Representatives had read Graham Greene’s 1955 The Quiet American? And what if Vietnam never happened?
 
An excerpt from Foresight:
Phenomenon one: CIA
 
‘What is he? O.S.S?’
‘The initial letters are not very important. I think now they are different.’
 
Graham Greene is writing of American involvement in Vietnam in the early 1950s, before the social upheaval of the 60s. The “initial letters” (CIA) are not the focus of this pamphlet; it is only noted that in 1955 a successful British author published a work showing the American seeding of the war known as Vietnam.
 
The old saying, “takes one to know one” comes to mind; Greene was a spy as well, recruited into MI6 by his sister: he worked for the British during WWII.
 
An excerpt from Hindsight:
Phenomenon five: Opium
 
In March 1961, two months into his presidency, JFK gave a news conference on Laos and Vietnam. There was a map showing Laos, North Vietnam and some of “Communist” China; the map had an area shaded black that was in North Vietnam and bordered the other two: Lai Chau, part of the Golden Triangle.
 
Fowler, Greene’s British war correspondent, is an opium smoker throughout the book. He usually smokes in the evening, and at the beginning of the book, as the police are questioning him about Pyle’s death, he is on opium and writes of what that is like. Later in the book Fowler “visits” (from the air) the Golden Triangle while on a French bombing mission.
 
Vietnam offered questions of being and becoming; for the American Pyle, it was about subjects and objects and truths: being.
 
For the British Fowler, it was about transformations; first from French colonialism to Japanese occupation, back to French colonialism and then, seemingly, to communism or America’s Third Force: becoming.
 
Neither is or would have been clearly correct; understanding the co-dependence of both was entirely clear and correct.

 ~.~

*Next Up: 21 December and Gus Kotka and Johnny Reb begin the winter series, On Our Way Republican Values.
 
Posted by Bryan W. Brickner

Excerpt from thereafter (Or, the crows of Wicker Park)
(2013)
The character “Ice” has an “es” (It (body)) experience
Part 1, 5a

Ice walked from the west-side art loft to downtown; he didn’t leave until 5:30 p.m., so he got downtown around 9:00. It was a beautiful evening; his trip took him to “Center-Camp” (Wicker Park’s six-corners) for a cup of coffee, down Milwaukee Avenue to Blommer’s chocolate factory, then east on Kinzie Street, which slopes downhill to railroad tracks, an underpass, and then a bridge over a branch of the Chicago River. That’s where “It” began …

Ice had been thinking of Major Andrew Leitch, KIA 16 September 1776, and how he “needed” Leitch in his life. Ice would get stubborn with the Unknown (overly doubtful Ice could be); the Unknown sent the spirit Leitch to watch his back. It’s a place in Ice’s mind where Leitch is real. Ice thought of how the Quran says if you die fighting in the Unknown’s way (in Allah’s way), you don’t really die. Major Leitch fits that definition: rebel volunteer from Virginia, fighting in New York, and taking three bullets to the chest in the battle called Harlem Heights. The battle is remembered (not all battles are) as the first day the British Redcoats turned and ran from the rebels. Ice was thinking these things and about how Major Leitch never got a homecoming – just like the dead Illinois Vietnam veterans Ice was walking to visit at the downtown memorial. (He goes there to read the engraved names aloud.) Ice also thought of the name of Leitch’s daughter, Sarah; he said her name and even shed a few tears. Ice continued to the memorial and read the names aloud for the last three months of 1967. The last engraved name from ’67 has an asterisk – which means the body didn’t return to Illinois. As Ice finished his ritual a family approached the wall and fountain – the father splashed the children with water and the mother told them to stop. Classic. Ice imagines/sees the dead vets sitting on the terraced grass as the family plays. He has a thought of soldiers seeing their deaths in meaning – a peaceful death dream. Ice leaves the memorial and heads-up to see the statue of George Washington (Leitch’s commanding officer, the one who ordered him into battle and to his death), and then back on the trail home. Ice has thoughts of walking to the House of Blues to see if anything is happening; the thought had been on his mind and he even looked for the bridge on his way to the memorial. He walks several blocks to find the bridge to the House of Blues. Upon finding it he notices some activity; two hippies are on the bridge, as well as two “moderates” standing to the side and talking on cells. The hippies are frantic and something is wrong; the male hippy, in brown dreads, is waving his hands over his head and exhibiting all the signs of a crazy hippy (which won’t work for long in downtown Chicago). The female hippy is pleading for her friend to calm down, but he can’t. Ice approaches and decides to get involved; he catches a glimpse of her eyes – “Hey, can I help?”

The woman spins and is bewildered.

“What’s up?” Ice asked.

“He’s having a diabetic low!” she rushed, “He doesn’t know what he’s doing!”

“I have a cookie – a cannabis cookie?”

“Great!” was her response.

Ice pulled a bag of cookies from his cargo-pocket and gave her one; the woman took the cookie and grabbed her friend by the arm – “Here Michael! Eat this!” Michael stopped waving his arms and paused. He looked at her, the cookie, Ice, and then grabbed the cookie; he tossed it into his mouth and took-off toward the House of Blues – once again waving his arms, screaming in agony and pulling his dreads. The woman began after him; Ice said go and that he’d watch the bags.

“Michael! – Michael!” she yelled as she nodded yes to Ice. He waited on the bridge for a couple of minutes. He thought of the moment, how he had thought the hippy was freaking out from a drug – just hadn’t thought it would be sugar. The woman returned without Michael. She tells Ice Michael’s run-off and she should follow him, that they’re in from out of town and Michael is embarrassed to take his insulin in public. Ice and the woman pick-up the bags and cross the bridge to the House of Blues.

She asks his name: “Ice,” he says.

“Sarah,” she replies.

(Ice learned that day just how fast It happens: from Sarah Leitch to “Sarah on the bridge.”)

The two walked down to Kinzie and then Michael found them; he was shaken but no longer ranting and raving. He remembered Ice and the cookie and thanked him for it. The three parted ways, with Ice walking west on Kinzie to the chocolate factory – that’s when he remembered he had been crying shortly before about a woman named Sarah he had never met – Major Andrew Leitch’s daughter Sarah.

Thereafter (2013)