For example, an ancient village that stood for a thousand years can suddenly disappear. And phone lines occasionally go dead when you're trying to keep up with your e-mail.
"Let the line rest a while," my islander host said with a calm, knowing smile.
"But I just logged in!" I replied in vain.
I have to admit that retrieving my e-mail was easier than finding a post office or, for that matter, a mailbox in which to drop off my postcards. I can reach my regular Panix account via a local call in New York. But when I'm in Hawaii, I can call in via 800 numbers (using SprintNet, among others). I opted for the trusty Delphi account I have maintained since my early Radio Shack 300-bps days.
Delphi was the first major provider to offer full Internet access to its users. Although it does not yet provide a graphical interface (an unofficial one exists), Delphi has done an outstanding job of supporting its Internet users through well-organized and continually updated menus, cumulative databases of information and software, and discussion groups that include guest forums by notable Internet personalities and experts.
After tweaking the Delphi protocols a bit, I was able to telnet to my Unix account on Panix. Although I missed the pizzazz of my SLIP setup, I had forgotten how much I enjoy pounding the keyboard vs. clicking the mouse. I like the bare-bones reliability of the command line; it gets the job done. You almost always know where you stand, your overhead is low, and even at 2,400 bps the response time is perfectly adequate for most tasks. As Daniel Dern, Internet pundit, asks, "Which do you want on a rough dirt road, a Ferrari or a Jeep?" And believe me, as someone who just the other day did his first four-wheel driving over volcanic terrain, you want the jeep.
I must take a moment here to mention the growing Internet community in Hawaii. Within my first few days I met several Internet users and even a reader of my Internet World column. Armed with some captured discussions from alt.hawaii.inet-providers on Usenet, I did a bit of local poking around. There have been several BBS services here for years, but recent changes in telephone service and rates have spawned an explosion of Internet providers.
Aloha.com is a must visit for anyone because of its interesting plain-language interface. To try it, just telnet to the site and log in as "child" to speak with Kahune. I began my dialog with a friendly, "What's happening?" Kahune answered, "I am sad sometimes when I think what is happening to my world." I replied, "I'm sorry you feel that way." Kahune said, "Right."
OK, it's not Hal, but it's a worthy and enjoyable effort, and apparently Kahune does learn from its many interactions with users over time. Aloha.com also has a virtual island paradise Web page at http://hisurf.aloha.com. Another interesting service is PixiNet (pixi.com), which offers a Traveler's Access account with full SLIP/PPP connectivity for $8 a week.
Paradise Lost
Getting back to the topic of stress, I spent a week trekking with a homeopathic physician who is a robust man in his mid-80s. Considered a founder of the American holistic healing movement, Dr. Evarts Loomis never missed an opportunity to bring up the subtle but far-reaching connections between mind, body, and general health. He has lived and practiced in almost every continent and has an appreciation for the many cultures of the world and their interaction. Thus, it was no surprise that he has become deeply fascinated with the Internet.
Since he is not yet even a newbie (a pre-newbie?), I agreed to do some exploring in the realms of health, healing, and related disciplines once I was back in New York. I had always been mildly aware of some of these areas on the Net, but as often happens when I start a new search for sites or topics, I found much more than I expected.
My usual first starting point in this kind of a search is Usenet. Using the excellent search interface in Trumpet Newsreader's subscribe menu, it is easy to begin. Type a word such as "health" and immediately you'll get a list of all of the Usenet groups that have those characters in their names. The only limitation to this method is your ability to think of appropriate search terms. Command-line users have similar capabilities in their various newsreaders, although they are more cumbersome.
My first direct hit was misc.health.alternative, which turns out to be one of the best groups for health in general. User discussions here cover a broad range of issues, products, and techniques. I found a FAQ on tinnitus, pointers to information on dental care, and comments on uses of algae and kambuchu tea. There also were lively debates on homeopathy, chiropractic, Prozac, and fasting.
The "health" search yielded a variety of specialized groups, including misc.health.aids, misc.health.arthritis, misc.health.ayurveda, misc.health.diabetes, misc.kids.health, and even rec.pets.dogs.health. Searching for variations on "medicine," "med," and "medical," brought up groups with seemingly austere and academic titles such as sci.med.nutrition and relcom.commerce.medicine.
Once within these groups, however, I found a stimulating mix of academic and grassroots discussions covering a multitude of health-related topics. Searching on "sports" opened the alt.sports hierarchy, where I found activities ranging from badminton to bungee jumping. And searching for "meditation" uncovered alt.meditation and alt.meditation.transcendental. As you can see, this random but directed casting of the Net across a range of topics pulls up new ideas and discussions that often lead to ideas and topics you might not have thought to search.
Surf's Up
There are many ways to surf with Gopher. A categorical or topical search can be accomplished simply by following a train of thought from one menu to the next. Sometimes simply narrowing your choices geographically yields some interesting things. A resource often may be found in your own locality.
Another way to search is by content. Veronica, often found in the odd category of Other Gopher Servers, will accept Boolean logic strings (and, or, not, etc.), which are supposed to enable complex searches for unique combinations. My experience is that, given the frequently overloaded Veronica connections, you may do just as well by using a more generalized search and then manually paring down the results. I get a bit weary of the "Too many connections. Try again later" message.
This is why I use Jughead, which can be found, among other places, via Gopher at liberty.uc.wlu.edu under the Finding Resources menu. Jughead performs a high-level menu search on a term and quickly returns a customized Gopher menu with pointers to the various sites that meet your criteria. Then you select a site and you are there.
Gophering for health sites brings up a wide array of government and university databases. The National Institutes of Health, the Columbia Health Services Library, the Harvard School of Public Health, and the University of Minnesota Food Science and Nutrition Gopher are but a few. Gopher also is a decent FTP interface, although I often use NcFTP instead. The FTP site at sunsite.unc.edu /pub/academic/medicine is particularly good and includes a section on alternative health care. You will even find software designed by and for medical students.
And of course there is the Web. I don't know whether it is easier to figure out where to begin or when to end your search. Some of what I found in the more traditional areas of medicine include Medicine on the Information Highway at http://www.uthscsa.edu/telemed.html, which connects to HyperDoc from the National Library of Medicine, and the Virtual Hospital at http://vh.radiology.uiowa.edu. In the alternative areas I found two great sites, http://www.yahoo.com/Health and http://www.dungeon.com/cam/homeo.html, both of which have extensive pointers to other sites. One site I was led to by the latter was the Vegetarian Page at http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Vegetarian, perhaps the best one-stop source for vegetarian information and recipes I have ever found.
Another unique site is the Healing Page at http://zeta.cs.adfa.oz.au/Spirit/healing.html. All sorts of things are here, including documents and resources on T'ai-Chi, Hatha Yoga, Reiki, Qigong, and more. I downloaded an excellent JPEG image of foot reflexology zones, and I learned the existence of such forums as the soc.religion.shamanism newsgroup and the IRC#healing channel. I felt like I hit the motherlode on alternative healing practices and it was a perfect way to end my brief holistic quest.
Now that I've been back in New York for a week, I coincidentally find myself fighting a head cold. Fortunately, I have a wealth of healing resources at my fingertips. One day I imagine I will be able to go online, enter my symptoms, and receive treatment advice from a variety of sources--maybe even a phrase upon which to meditate. For now, I think I'll just focus on something soothing--like palm trees, the ocean, and dolphins. Aloha!
Kenny Greenberg (kgreenb@panix.com) is a neon artist and owner of Krypton Neon in Long Island City, N.Y. He is a contributing author of Tricks of the Internet Gurus (Sams Publishing, 1994).
