QUESTION 1:

It's butt-ass cold outside. What can I do *right now*, inside my home, to move our home and lives closer to an appropriate way of being a human on this planet?

mous Northerner

&

QUESTION 2:

The holidays are over, it's the New Year, and I don't know what I'm doing with my life. I think I may be approaching a full-blown Spiritual Emergency. How can I calm down without going on pharmaceuticals?

Increasingly Nervous Nelly
Jamaica Plains, New York

 

Sounds like both of you are talking about feeling potentiality – the first of you feels you’re at the base of a big hill. The other of you is feeling that you are at the top of that hill looking out and figuring out which way to roll down.

I could suggest to start composting your own crap, write someone an ink and paper letter, get to know the trees on the way to work, sing your personal aria while riding your bike, cook a meal with a neighbor, give your lap to a cat… And those are all great things to do, but I actually have further questions for you both.

Do you ask yourself this question on a sunny day in June? How are you relating to your socio-biological environment? What is your conscious intent? What do you consider “human”?

To ‘know that’ is not necessarily to ‘know how’ which is another way of saying that a good theorhetician can be a poor practicioner. Practice proceeds the theory of it. Heck, what are you doing right now to connect top the larger picture you are a part of?

So you have the option to jump now, scroll down to a simple answer or read on for a story about someone I recently met. (Hoobaby! So many choice!)

I had spent the train ride home with my eyes closed planning my 100 FOLKS CRYING IN PUBLIC action (stay tuned, details later) after I was forcibly told to “calm down” by a security officer in a public building. I had been on the pay phone for over forty minutes talking to one taciturn civil servant after another. I kept getting disconnected and having to wander around the milling public asking if anyone could break my singles for change to begin again. I wanted to scream and the effort to hold it back was immense so I had started crying. When I ignored him, he summoned two other guards and they stood by at arm length just in case anything escalated as I continued on my phone calls. Was it really that interesting of a spectacular to call your friends to watch? How many years are we away from a police state? No. Would it take three men to successfully restrain a frustrated woman? Maybe.

ANNOUNCEMENT

Emotional displays in public spaces can be seen a cause for alarm by authorities.

Now back to the story… I left the station and hit the icy sidewalk. A scrapper with a mother load of oversized, odd shaped metal bits all stuffed in tied onto a shopping cart clattered up the middle of the street. He looked young, small, his non-pulling arm was swinging clockwork crazy propelling him forward. Hope flew from my chest. I yelled, ‘Right On!’ and he turned and grinned at me and kept going. I started jogging in the slush to keep pace with him.

On the other side of the underpass, he hit a hill. He was straining, his free arm windmilling, his body low to the ground. I stopped dead and the other me asked me, “What the hell are you doing, Nance?!” and I stumbled over the waist high wedge of dirty snow, joined him at the center line and started pushing that cart. At the next stoplight, I moved to the front, imagining myself as the second horse. That’s when I realized that he was a she. “My name is Nini and I want to tell you, this ain’t no dog eat dog world. People think it is, but it ain’t.” Then the light changed. The cart was heavy and we were breathing the cold air in deeply. Cars from both directions honked and swerved past. A perpetually sour neighbor of mine sped passed, her face screwed tight. “That’s my neighbor” I said. And Nini and I laughed.

I left Nini off at 25th street. She had three blocks to the scrapyard. She was going to make it there before it closed.

And if you haven’t figured it out already, my answer is: Get on the ground and join hands and hearts with the brave.

Agriculture and the grid was about opportunity, an equitable share of wealth, a stake in the land and a home place. The Land Act of 1797 measured and divided all land in the public domain into a gridwork of survey lines leading to the distribution of land where all parcels we considered the same ignoring natural topography and water ways.

Weeds have followed the plow. They are artifacts of our modern food culture, Agriculture. The way we eat and live by ripping and removing the living soil of the indigenous deep rooted-structure of tall grasses, trees and shrubs exposes soil to wayward seeds. The most assertive weedy seeds settle into these open patches of soil and establish themselves. When the Mayflower arrived in 1620, there were no dandelions in North America. By 1671, they were everywhere. Weeds are our reward for not going native.

Weeds adapt the condition at hand, make use of marginalized soils that agricultural plants can’t. They optimize vitamins and mineral contents within their bodies, create passageways through the soil for water and air to flow via their deep roots and create forage for animals and insects. Weeds prevent further degradation of soils by covering the land’s tilled surface, they prepare and heal the soil for other plants. Weeds are the first step in ecological succession. Weeds enhance our internal and external landscapes’ capacity to support themselves.

photo by Becky Pflueger

ELIMINATION
LUBRICATION
RESTORATION

DANDELION (Taraxacum officinale)

Dandelions are windborne seeds of perennial indestructible roots. It disperses surplus fluids and moves stagnation. Dandelion helps the kidneys retain potassium and supports the liver. Roots, leaves, buds and flowers are medicinal.

BURDOCK (Articum lappa)

Burdock is in the dandelion tribe. Terrestrially, its deep roots pull nutrients up to topsoil – you can burn and add to your compost to enhance its mineral content. The root is dark brown while inside a dense white. Burdock is a guardian of inner flows. It helps the liver process oil and increases bile production. Burdock moisturizes tissues and supports blood. A single burdock plant can bear 400,000 seeds it’s second year. The root and seeds are used as well as young leaves.

NETTLES (Urtica dioica)

Nettles naturalize around septic systems, outhouses and manure piles. It utilizes these protein wastes to build its protein content. Nettles help the liver metabolize and the kidney eliminate. It is very high in calcium and magnesium. Nettles restore our overtaxed adrenals.

BLOOD AND WATER

The liver relates to blood the kidney to water. Both organs actively change the structure of and are nurtured by the blood that feeds them. They are stewards and beneficiaries of the body’s abundance.

The liver stores and metabolizes carbohydrates, proteins and fats. It is a detoxifier protecting our inner ecology of drugs, pollution and stress. The liver is a nutrifier of the blood. It is the organ of Planning and Strategy.

The kidney is a sorter keeping what is useful and letting go of what is not. It maintains the environment of the body conserving water while passing on only a little bit to the bladder to help dissolve waste. It also regulates the pH of the blood and the salt in the body. The kidney is the ocean of the body. It holds Essence and Will.

To start, two simple lists –

What Attracts Mosquitoes:

• dark clothing and dark foliage
• lactic acid and sweat (from your exercising or a very balmy evening)
• flowery or fruity fragrances
• CO2 (uh, oh)
• moist places in general

What Drives Them Away or at least stops them from finding you:

• smoke
• light clothing
• clean, aseptic fragrances such as: clove, geranium, cinnamon, rosemary, lemongrass, cedar and the infamous citronella
• bats! (Little brown bats are the most common bat in temperate North America. I see them darting overhead at dusk in most city parks in most cities. Consider building a bat house or three in your neighborhood! For plans and more info, check out Bat Conservation International at batcon.org)

okay, here’s a another listed pairing:

mama little brown bat

• life span 33 years
• 1-2 offspring/year
• 50-60 days gestation, 1 month to flyer

mama ‘any type’ mosquito

• life span 2 weeks
• 400/eggs/laying x ?layings/year
• 1 week egg to flyer

Why not sic mama insectivore on mama nectar-bloodsucker!? A nursing little brown bat not only literally flies around with her baby on her nipple, she can and will knock out 4500 and other teeny insects in an evening of hunting. Non-nursing others take care of around a third of that. Which is not peanuts, it’s a lot of bugs.

There are 150 species of mosquitoes in the US, which means as small and short-lived as they are, they also are fairly unavoidable. These bugs can’t regulate their own body heat, so most of them function best when temps are in the eighties, they get sluggish when it dips to the low 60’s and when it is under 50 degrees… Poof!

While both male and female mosquitoes are primarily nectar feeders (just like fairies) but, a female needs blood for protein to develop her eggs. She hunts for your human scent and co2 emission, lands, pierces your skin with her mouthparts and injects her saliva containing this amazing non-clotting chemical in it so she can drink deeply. Then, once satisfied, she detaches and lays her blood-fortified eggs in moist places - gutters, birdbaths, puddles, ponds, ditches, plant trays, coffee cups left outside, etc. The eggs hatch into squiggling larvae, pass quickly through the pupae stage and become adult flying mosquitoes on the hunt in just about one week. So getting rid of standing water after rainfall, no matter how little, thwarts these quick cycling bugaroos.

The clothing is an easy thing to fix and as long as you’re in your own backyard or stoop, so is burning something in a bowl that not only produces some smoke but also a nice scent for you that they dislike. Pick something that is slow burning – garden sage is a great one. You can get bags of dried sage cheaply from a middle eastern store. If you’re on the move and don’t have anything to burn, you can light a cigarette (a lit cigarette does help and you don’t even have to smoke it). You can also try parsley juice or, if you don’t mind smelling like a salad, you can use parsley juice mixed with vinegar or even better, if you have the forethought to plan, make yourself a mosquito bane salve:

Put an inch or two of water in a sauce pan and place a glass jar into it. Pour in a half cup of olive oil into the jar and a put in a walnut sized piece of beeswax. Melt over medium heat. When all is one liquid, pull it off the stove. In a small jar add 15-30 drops of one or more (don’t stink out your friends) of the above essential oils and then immediately pour the wax-oil mixture over it. Set it aside to solidify and there you go = Mosquito Bane salve. (*note: you can always reheat your salve into a liquid to adjust its consistency to your taste – add a touch more oil for increased spreadability and a smidge more wax for more solid salve.)

So maybe you’ve already been bitten picking those berries ** and you’re itching like a hmmhmmhmm. It’s all because you are one of the many unlucky ones who are sensitive to the female mosquitoes’ saliva and your skin is having a histamine reaction. Unless you are hyper sensitive, there are a couple of things to do instead of popping an over-the-counter drug. One: Pluck a plantain leaf in your mouth and chew it quickly. Plantain (Plantago major or Plantago lanceolata) is a ‘find it everywhere’ weed friend. When you have a nice cud, spit it out and apply it directly on the bite. Leave it for a few minutes. You should feel an instant cooling and soothing. If you have a lot of bites, give your teeth and mouth a break and toss a bunch of plantain leaves in a blender with a bit of water until it is a paste and then use this. You can keep this paste in a jar in the fridge for a week before you might have to compost it. Two: Vinegar on the skin will knock down inflammation and irritation. Vinegar’s acidity regulates your skin’s pH and helps dead skin cells unglue themselves from your living skin. A few cups in a bath or a direct splash on your skin with vinegar should unruffle your feathers.

By the way, I just took a bath in three gallons of failed elderberry wine. When I say failed, it was neither drinkable nor even what I would deem ready for my still. I am not sure it was even something I would use to pickle with, but I decided to use all of it in this afternoon’s bath. And while I couldn’t bucket this bathwater onto my plants after I finished using it, what it did for my beach sunburn and itchy burned scalp was a wonder.

** serviceberries, mulberries, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, cherries, currants, gooseberries… they are all right out there, right now. Go get ‘em!

INVITE THE WILD NEIGHBORS TO DINNER

Charismatic mega-fauna are really taking it on the chin these days. They look great on posters and t-shirts, but don’t let them walk un-tethered through town!

I was quite upset when, in April, a mountain lion showed up in Chicago, and was shot seven times by the police. I too have always felt a bit conspicuous and unwieldy in the city.

This cougar traveled hundreds of miles to get to Chicago. Perhaps it knocked out a few slow squirrels or stray cats when it touched on the interminable sprawl of Chicago, or Milwaukee, or even Rockford, Illinois, but there were no human attacks. Of course, there could have been – but there wasn’t.

Last year, also in Chicago, a coyote showed up in the refrigerated beverage section of a downtown sandwich shop. After forty-five minutes, and after several people-customers took pictures of it with their cell phones, animal control showed up. The coyote was given an overnight stay at a suburban wildlife rehabilitation center and released – probably back into the suburbs.

Most people around here are asking why these animals show up in huge metropolises. I think a better question to ask is this -- don’t you ever feel like one of these animals?

Mountain lions are both protectors and nurturers. They are loners and independent types. They stand for something quite formidable. Heck, they’re lions! It doesn’t seem like city folk are ready to live with such animals. Most have fear rather than respect for them. Lots of fear. Some reasonable. Some -- not so much.

So, if you feel like you’re a big cat in the big city, how do you protect yourself from being shot?

Is it better to adapt the strategy of a weed?

Weeds are plants that were once valued and cultivated but now have escaped cultivation. Some have been further domesticated into a more mild form now recognized as food. For instance, our lettuces are domesticated variations of wild lettuce.

Weeds are really good at hiding in the open. Their secrets are kept close in their invisibility. Their numbers are always spreading.

Be a weed:
thrive no matter where you are
make your own food and oxygen
make soils better for the next inhabitants
send out a gazillion seeds
reincarnate frequently in unexpected places

I want to introduce you to mugwort – Ms. Artemesia vulgaris. She is widespread in the United States. Mugwort pops up in both our urban and rural settings. She is downright plentiful and ready for you to use. (Note: if pregnant, please do not use this herb. Read more about it first.)

Artemis, the Queen of the Beasts was a wild one. She was an supreme hunter and friend of forest beasts. Artemis found mugwort and delivered it to the centaur. Forever after, the herb has carried her name.

I recommend you look for Artemesia vulgaris. And when you find her, gently trim a piece and dry it (simply burn it in a saucer) and inhale the smoke. This plant is a protector from evil as well as an aide to communication with the plant world.

Native Americans, Asians, and Europeans have used this plant medicinally and as a healthful culinary herb for hundreds of years. In Europe it was used as the main bittering flavor for ales until cultivated hops took over. My friend Tree, just shared some of his herby mugwort ale with me. yummy stuff paired with the homemade raw cheese we were munching on.

Mugwort is used in moxibustion. In acupuncture, this is the smoking punk they hover over your acupuncture points. It draws blood to the skin’s surface and unblocks your body’s meridian points of stuck energies.

Fresh or dried mugwort also repels insects, cleanses your blood of toxins, promotes sweating, and reduces tension. Lastly, you should know it has some of the same properties of its mysterious cousin of a different species (any guesses?).

Mugwort is also used for lucid dreaming. Cut a spring and put it under your pillow or tuck a sprig into your pocket for protection. Burn some before you settle into an evening outside. Smoke some before you go foraging or before you lie down in a meadow for a nap.

Maybe it is time we invite these charismatic mega-fauna and not-so-charismatic weeds to the table. Set a place for them. I am not talking about putting them on the menu at some upscale restaurant so we can create a demand. I am simply proposing we let them walk through town. Let them take up shelter under our porches or feed off the extra bunnies.

Speaking of weeds, please do serve them up, drink them, smoke them, learn about them and love them. Find an overarching but examined respect for them. You should, because the mega-fauna and weeds are already here or on their way.

While riding my bicycle by the train line recently, I saw the ghost image of the big cat out of the corner of my eye. It emerged from the alley and then ducked back in. In other words, the cat’s spirit hasn’t left.

A Small Sampling of Snapshots from Mike's Itinerant Summer

This badly lit photo is of a diorama by Ella Silcox, made from surplus copper wire. The title reads, "Breaking Virgin Prairies." I wonder what this wire was used for and where it was mined, and how the hell Ella got ahold of it? I neglected to note down the year, circa 1950, maybe. Martin County Historical Society, Fairmont, Minnesota.

Here I am attacking a windmill. These things are incredibly large and menacing when you get up close. Near Windom, Minnesota.

This is a hunting decoy of a buffalo on which tourists can practice their atlatl dart throwing. An atlatl is a hook-like stick used to throw darts, a pre-bow-and-arrow hunting technology used in North America, and many other places around the world. It's fun. I missed. Near Comfrey, Minnesota

Here is one of the thousands of petroglyphs, a turtle, possibly as old as 6000 years, at the Jeffers Petroglyphs site. This picture was taken mid-day, the worst time to see the faint carvings. The best time is in the raking light if the morning or evening. But I was happy to see them at all, since I had just endured about four days of heavy rain while biking through southern Minnesota and almost had to skip the petroglyphs altogether. Near Comfrey, Minnesota

This is an encampment I stumbled across on the southeastern shore of Prairie Island where someone was eating A LOT of mussels from Sturgeon Lake, on the Mississippi River. Near Prairie Island, Minnesota (obviously).

I had never heard of NAFEX, but probably you have. This is one of the many curious discoveries in the Dreamtime Village Public Library, a collection of amazing, pre-internet publications, which is quite frankly in a state of neglect and jeopardy. West Lima, Wisconsin

This is a portion of Paula Kaplan's bowling ball collection at her farm, Little Bluff Farm. She let me stay in a small cabin on the little bluff for a week in exchange for 2 days of labor. It was a good deal. Near Brodhead, Wisconsin

This is a sod house, similar to the ones that some European colonizers of the Midwestern prairies lived in during the 1800's. They would peel the skin off the prairie and pile strips of it to make the walls, then cover the roof slats with the canvas wagon cover and place more sod strips on top of that. Luckily this one was locked up on the day that I visited because when I peered through the window there was a creepy mannequin dressed like a settler in there. Fort Belmont, Jackson, Minnesota

This is a platform adjacent to one of the plots of a large experimental garden, Vasa Gardens, that reminded me of the corn watching stages described in Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden. When I asked I was told that it was built as a platform for long range rifle target practice by the son of the man in charge of Vasa Gardens, who had recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq.
Vasa, Minnesota