These men cannot live in regular society. They are too idle, too talkative, too passionate, too prodigal & too shiftless to acquire either property or character. Finding all their efforts vain, they become at length discouraged and then under the pressure of poverty, the fear of a gaol and consciousness of public contempt, leave their native places, and betake themselves to the wilderness.
-Timothy Dwight
According to Clamor, American Apparel has prevented their workers attempts to unionize and the company’s founder has had three different sexual harassment charges filed against him by workers. (Article preview here) So, there’ll be no more purchasing of their products by me. I recommend No Sweat.
Sadly, this also means I can’t buy from Proletarian Threads anymore (they print on American Apparel shirts).
I find myself standing in the midst of an eternity, a vast and inexhaustible present. The whole world rests within itself -- the trees at the field's edge, the hum of crickets in the grass, cirrocumulus clouds rippling like waves across the sky, from horizon to horizon. In the distance I notice the curving dirt road and my rusty car parked at its edge -- these, too, seem to have their place in this open moment of vision, this eternal present. And smells -- the air is rich with faint whiffs from the forest, the heather, the soil underfoot -- so many messages mingling between different elements in the encircling land. ... Things are different in this world without "the past" and "the future," my body quivering in this space like an animal. I know well that, in some time out of this time, I must return to my house and my books. But here, too, is home. For my body is at home, in this open present, with its mind. And this is no mere illusion, no hallucination, this eternity -- there is something too persistent, too stable, too unshakable about this experience for it to be merely a mirage...
The following is an excerpt from Susun Weed’s Healing Wise. It may come in handy, in a world where the government seems to be having nukes on their mind.
Workers at Swedish nuclear power plants eat seaweed to reduce and eliminate their absorption of strontium 90, a radioactive element. Research at McGill University finds that alginic acid, one of the main components of seaweed, binds with radioactive strontium to form strontium alginate, an insoluble compound, which is rapidly eliminated from the gastro-intestinal tract, reducing the absorption of strontium 90 by fifty to ninety percent. Strontium 90, released in nuclear accidents as well as in the running of nuclear power plants, has a high affinity for calcium. When released into the air, it is easily concentrated in calcium-rich foods such as milk (including mother's milk) and leafy greens. Eat these contaminated foodstuff and the radioactivity, now combined with calcium, enters the bone marrow where it can damage delicate immune and blood cells. Consistently eating seaweed helps eliminate any radioactive particles already absorbed, repairs damage to the bone marrow, and prevents further absorption of strontium 90. Fucoidan and algin, components of brown seaweeds, diminish blood levels of lead in animal studies. Seaweeds have been shown to remove mercury, cadmium, lead, barium, tin and other heavy metals from tissue, according to the Marine Technology Society.
Today I finished reading The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, a book about the author’s time with a flock of wild parrots in San Francisco. The book has its ups and downs, becoming boring at times with the attention payed to the parrots’ every action, but, overall, it’s a good read.
MutantFest served as my testing ground for Good Natured Earthling’s bug spray, made by my soap teacher. I was surprised how well it worked. During my whole time in the Forest, I was bit only once, and that was before I broke out the bug juice in the evening.
I highly recommend picking up a bottle.
Wise Woman Herbal: Healing Wise is an excellent book written by Susun Weed, one of those shifty feminist witches. She begins the book with an examination of what she sees as the three different healing methods: the scientific method (who’s motto is “your body is a machine, you broke it, and now must be punished” and who’s symbol is a line), the heroic method (who’s motto is “you broke the rules and must suffer the consequences, repent” and who’s symbol is a circle), and the wise woman method (who’s motto is “accept the illness and learn what good it has to offer” and who’s symbol is a spiral).
After analyzes the three methods and their healing practices in depth, she moves on to describing 7 herbs – common weeds that can be found in the crack of any sidewalk, in any city – but she doesn’t just devote a page or two to each. Instead, each “green ally” receives special devotion in its own chapter, and she introduces and teaches about them in wonderfully unique ways.
Obviously the book is written from the female perspective, for the female, but, as a male, I didn’t find that hindered the book for me in any way. (Though it does show how even the most seemingly free-thinking people can be boxed in by our culture and it’s duality, but that’s another discussion).
I highly recommend the book for everyone. Even if you have little interest in herbs or healing, this is a book to have on your shelve for battling the common cold. No id check required.
Gregory Tilford’s From Earth to Herbalist, which I purchased with my herbal kit, is an herbal field guide that “challenges us to reconsider our roles as herbalists, to go beyond health care consultant, medicine-maker, wildcrafter, and gardener/farmer to become earth-steward”. It combines the two roles of field guide and medical resource in one book that has managed to show me a new, “earth-conscious” way of looking at plants.
Reading it at MutantFest, all I had to do was simply adjust my gaze in order to locate most of the plants mentioned in the book. A great learning experience.
I recommend the book for anyone interested in herbal medicine.