Q: I am having trouble sleeping, can you help?

Waking, dreaming and deep sleep are three states of conciousness that reflect the process of death and rebirth. When you dream, your life-force leaves your body and plays on the astral plane. Impressions gathered in your waking life get revealed and you experience happy/unhappy states. This information is then brought back into your sleeping body to integrate and then hopefully percolate up as intelligence into your conscious wakeful body as intelligence. Simply stated, deep sleep is key in the integration of intelligence gathered while dreaming.

Deep sleep occurs at the origin of the heart, inhibitors to deep sleep are:

• wrongly digested food
• conflicting impressions and associations
• poor diet
• unhealthy use of the senses
• unsupportive relationships

obvious, right? But well worth the naming.

Start by looking at what you eat, patterns of thought especially in the last few hours before you go to sleep, folks you interact with during the day… in general what you introduce into your mind-body-spirit is probably what is at the bottom of this. As Hippocrates said: It’s more important to know what kind of patient has a disease than what kind of disease a patient has.”

In other words, What is the first thought form your mind grabs in the morning when it surfaces from the fluff?

The deeper mind/deeper heart is reflected in the life-force/waking self. You need to help the deeper mind complete its circuits so your life-force is free to flow.

I’m a fan of growing and foraging my own plants, but given the sense that plants are dormant in temperate climates in January, you will probably be supporting an herbal shop instead. However, all of the plants I recommend are easily grown during the growing season without too much effort and January is a good month to plan those guerilla plantings and fire escape gardens in SPRING!

These plants are naturally relaxing – some quite doping. They are listed in rough order from mild to strong:

• lemon balm (tea)
• chamomile (tea, flower essence)
• rosemary (food, scent, tea)
• lavender (food, scent, tea)
• catnip (tea)
• passion flower (tea, tincture)
• skullcap (tincture)
• california poppy (tincture)
• hops (tincture)
• valerian (tincture)

General blood tonics are good to integrate too – oats, nettles, and one of my best friends – dandelion!

But before you run off to mainline a bunch of teas and tinctures, I need you to ask yourself again: What is the nature of your hamster wheeling?

• Stressed? oats and lavender
• Anxious? skullcap and valerian
• Depressed? lavender and passion flower
• Insomnia? california poppy, hops and valerian
• Hyperactivity? red clover, oats and dandelion

So try this for a week: eat well, interact with more supportive people than not, connect to the generous and abundant, and before you lay your head down, set your intention to integrate what you gain from the astral plane, lay back and breathe into your deep play mind.

A public-access seed archive relies on its PUBLIC which to me means a broad diffuse network of folks learning how to grow seed out and bringing it back is essential to not only a seed’s continued life but the vitality of the archive as a community resource.

Many seeds can only be stored for a short period of time. Potatoes need to be grown out every year to remain viable. Lettuce seeds last only a year or two before they reach the end of their shelf-life. We can’t just stuff seed away and we can’t just grow things out willy-nilly.

Taking an informal poll here (in case any of you wish to respond, you are invited to) Why were people taking so much seed? Too much to grow and use for an experienced grower/eater.

This came to mind at the moment Vandana Shiva stepped up to a podium of a packed auditorium in Chicago. Shiva comes from a farming, conservation and teaching family and as an environmental activist who has written over 15 books also has a PhD in quantum physics. She is a GRANDMOTHER WARRIOR fighting Monsanto and the other four transnational corporations that control our global food supply – pushing GMO’s, toxic pesticides and herbicides affecting our seed and therefore farmers and their families, rural communities and ecosystems of plants and animals, soil quality and even us urban consumers. She uses an old form of resistance – inspiring a dedicated (read strategized) and devoted (read heart-solid) group of people, mostly women to put their bodies on the line. Among some things, she has brought down the likes of Monsanto and Cargill on seeds and CocaCola on water rights. Shiva travels the globe extensively inserting toothpicks between our eyelids so we can see what the heck is going on. And like the toothpicks, it ain’t comfortable.

Four years ago I had the privilege of serving her on her week’s teaching residency in SW England. She was puffy, her breathing heavy, full of congestion. She was so unhealthy that it made me question the ability of a human, any human to hold such a large public identity and still remain whole and vital.

She looked better a few days ago. She spoke about the Chipko movement of the early seventies an organized resistance to the destruction of forests in India. Village women organized the Chipko – the spontaneous actions of thousands of women hugging trees stopped the destruction and popularized the action and use of ‘treehugging’ around the world. Chipko’s stance: forests support food, fuel, fodder and stabilize soil and water. In otherwords, forests are integral to subsistence another way of saying: Ecology = Economy.

She also spoke about the great Bengal famine of the mid-forties when hundreds of thousands of Indians died due to the misdistribution of rice. Women, armed with broomsticks confronted the British East Indian Company to demand a lessened “tribute” of their rice crop so they could actually feed their families. Their message being – let us keep more of the rice we grew or kills us now. Women and broomsticks mind you. Witchy farmers, but not witches. These women also stopped them.

Shiva has given a strong voice to SEED SOVEREIGNTY. She started an organization called NAVDANYA whose mission is: to protect nature and people’s rights to knowledge, biodiversity, water and food. Navdanya works with almost half a million farmers and urban people to establish and maintain 34 seed banks throughout India. These seed banks hold 2000 rice varieties, numerous grains, pulses and greens – some of them drought resistant, some salt water tolerant. They hold and share the crops that for thousands of years have been selected and cultivated and saved and passed on from generation to generation.

To echo Grandma Shiva: an agriculture free, biodiverse and in the commons addresses economics as well as food, soil and water security for all us creatures.

THE IDES OF MARCH

Toxic land increases but nutrition does not. Since we are what we eat, it’s time to start planting and cultivating and foraging our lands. But we need to know how to do that first before we start stuffing our pockets with living embryos – an instinct called hoarding. When two separate attendees to the SEED ARCHIVE’s early February ‘Seedy Sunday’ event proudly reported sowing every single seed they brought home immediately after the event, my smile cracked. Too early, folks!

In Chicago, there remains two months until our first frost-free day. This means that in eight short weeks, the evening temperatures won’t drop lower than 30 degrees and it will be safe to plant out tender plants like basil. Frost-free areas of this country like Miami and Honolulu need not worry about ever stopping sowing and growing.

Check out the USDA ZONE HARDINESS map (google it) and find out roughly what zone you are in to know when your frost-free growing season begins.

So roughly….

• Feb 15 - Mar 15 – Zone 9 (Houston, St. Augustine, Tucson)
• March 15-30 – Zone 8 (SF, Seattle, Gainsville)
• April 1-15 – Zone 7 (Oklahoma City, Little Rock)
• April 15-30 – Zone 6 (St. Louis, NewYork)
• May 1-15 – Zone 5 (Chicago)
• May 15-30 – Zone 4 (Kansas, Nebraska)
• June 1-15 – Zone 3 (Upper Midwest/Upper Great Plains)

On the back of many seed packages you will read ‘sow 6 weeks before frost ends’ etc. Knowing this plus where you are on the thawing continuum, you will know when it’s time to sow your seeds outside or inside in your egg cartons and soup cans.

Right now in zone 5 (Chicago) the soil is workable and cool, ready for certain cool season sowing. Three days ago it was 17 degrees; yesterday it was 50 degrees and I planted: peas, potatoes, kale and daikon radishes. I don’t cultivate lettuce or spinach as I prefer wild greens, but it is time to plant these too. Inside I have already sown: tomatoes, chilis, eggplant, basil, lemongrass and a huge bunch of other oddball medicinals and edibles. My horseradish that anchors my center garden and the hops off the back alley is out of the ground a few inches!

No need to wait though, food is already here no matter how much frost you’re met with in the morning. Plenty of weeds are hurtling through the soil and unfurling – dandelion, dock, ramps, garlic mustard and ground ivy are already big enough to nibble on and in a week or so, I can start delicately picking my dear friend nettles.

SEED SKEEBALL

• - Mix half compost with half clay-y soil or river clay. Use the local soil you have around you. You are afterall, reseeding locally.
• - The seed ball has to stick together, but should not be too dense. The rain needs to penetrate the soil ball and the roots need both the structure and the air space to grow into their location. Use more clay or compost until you get a good mix
• - Moisten the mix so it is quite wet. Mix in 1/2 teaspoon of seed per quart of soil. (if you are metrically oriented, use 2-3 ml of seeds per liter of soil.) more seeds is not better. Too many seeds will crowd each other out.
• - Roll a palm-sized ball of soil. set aside to dry. (you will need to distribute the seed balls fairly soon as water + seed = germination! i suggest doing this within 2-3 days after you make them.)
• - Bowl, place or lob seed balls into areas for greening and future foraging opportunities.

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.

Weeds are all about vitality and abundance. And I was to bend your ear to foraging. Let’s not let our species’ hydraheaded scarcity issue overwhelm us convincing us we need more than we really do. That’s how we got into this mess called modern agriculture.

HOT & COLD

As you might of guessed, I don’t use bagged tea from a store or even rarely buy it in bulk as I enjoy foraging our urban lands and dry the plant material I forage in paper bags or hung upside down in small bundles in my dark and dry pantry. Drying medicinal weeds is all about allowing air to circulate around the leaves and protecting them from light. Paper bags are perfect for this as they will not trap moisture.

I want to share how to make an herbal infusion. Infusions are like concentrates –you want the full-on benefit from the plants you decide to put in your body. They will help you but only if you allow them.

When you collect from a plant, try to find more than a few and collect from them in a way that won’t damage them. Don’t rip or tear. (ouch!) Make clean pinches or cuts with a knife, your fingers or some pruning shears. This means only a few leaves/seeds/fruits or less than 10% of any individual plant. It is important that the plant you are collecting from is allowed to thrive and regenerate itself, even if it is considered a ‘weed’. Plants are by nature, generous with what they have to offer (as we also help them in all sort of unconscious and unintended ways) When you are done, thank the plant. Maybe give them a drink from your water bottle. Because that plant is going to help set your liver or blood or mental attitude right. And that is pretty generous of them.

When you’re ready to make an infusion, grab a healthy (no pun intended) handful of dried herb and put it in a quart glass jar. (glass is a must – it is stable and neutral). Pour hot water over it all until full and screw on the lid. You use a lid so volatile oils stay in the brew and actually enter your body to work their effect on you. (Though I do recognize that aroma is simply enjoyable and part of healing. Releasing them into the air will have your home or office smelling terrific.) You will need to do some research as some herbs have chemical compounds and minerals that require a longer steeping to get them to release into water. Roots and bark are two example of this.

With some herbs, cold water instead of hot water is used – this is the general rule for seeds and fruits and I also usually steep these longer, often setting my jar up the night before, having a nice sleep while my infusion makes itself and the waking the next day to drink it at room temp or warming it up with a low flame (stay away from that microwave, yuck!) or even drinking it iced.

a selection of SEEDS to look for (research their uses on your own) & collect before winter settles in:

• amaranth seeds
• burdock burs
• hackberry berries
• juniper berries
• kentucky coffeetree
• lamb’s quarters seeds
• rose hips
• queen anne’s lace
• yellow dock seeds
• sumac berries
• hawthorn haws
• aronia berries
• hazelnuts
• grapes
• pawpaws
• persimmons
• elderberries
• pears and apples…

WHERE DID I PUT THAT NUT?

Two years ago I was driving across country and stopped at this Piggly Wiggly to pick up some snacks for the road. I grabbed some yogurt, some chocolate and I was looking for nuts. And I couldn’t find them. I found the stock guy and asked him, ‘Hey, where can I find the nuts?’ and he replied, ‘Peanuts or Donuts?’ I paused waiting for some faint uncontrollable twitching or the slow crack of a grin. His face was blank. He was waiting for me to answer him. Stunned, I thanked him and left the store.

Who am I kidding? People in Kentucky know what nuts are and where they keep them. This happened on the northwest side of Chicago.

Every animal forages and everyone one of them aide in plants’ dispersal mechanism – the seed. Scratching the soil, knocking into them, eating them and pooping them out, carrying them stuck on their fur or muddy paws or webbed feet across distances they inadvertently or as is the case with a few animals intentionally plant them somewhere. Humans have been carrying seeds around in their pockets for thousands or years as they wander around and set up camp in different places. Wind, the jet stream, rivers and oceans help travel seeds widely too. That’s why we have so many weeds out there.

Squirrel’s energy seems to vibrate just below that of insects. Their seemingly erratic behavior might just be the animal reading the environment with their bodies faster or perhaps more honestly. Their strategy and impulses are not that unlike that of our weedy plant pals.

Squirrels are fantastic collectors and not very good archivists. No matter, as they can fill their self-interest no matter what the result of – whether forest with trees for nesting, playing, broadcasting chattering and eating, safety of for a snack now.

I am hoping I can convince y’all of the following: to travel/walk around with a nut in your pocket for a day. Just to feel it’s potential. Always of a talisman. To keep it in there until you are ready to release it into the earth. This is what squirrels are doing, carrying around acorns, walnuts, hazelnuts and tucking them into the earth. They do it quickly, furiously sussing out a place than scratching, fuddling and putting it in place and patting down the soil again in less than a minute, and whether later in winter they get the nibbles and look for these nuts they’ve stored and not find them is no matter as they are found by another or spring up as tree seedlings that grow into trees to nest in and chatter from which in turn produce nuts for future haphazard storage, snacks or again future trees. So if you can, find a nut tree or shrub and gently pick off a nut or risk going to a store and getting one not irridated. Chestnuts, buckeyes, oaks or walnuts are common in urban areas as street trees and in parks. Select one to act as a temporary talisman and carry it in your pocket like a battery.

…and know when you find that place to plant it, release it and by releasing it you activate it, you are ensuring a future store of nuts, providing shade and squirrel habitat, growing material to construct a ship, starting that forest that we all miss in our hearts.

Got nut, in pocket
Got a walnut and I’m going to use it
Intention I feel inventive
Gonna make you, make you, make you notice

• Everything comes into this world hungry.
• Everythiing wants to be digested.
• Everything flows towards soil.

Everything comes into this world hungry.

Bacteria are the underlying living structure of all life forms including ourselves. They are the primary alchemists transforming structures of life into other structures. Bacteria shall here to for be known as ‘beasties’.

Everything is constantly being biochemically altered as enzymes already present in an organism break down form within, microorganisms, namely bacteria (but sometimes fungi too) settle in to eat and excrete, transforming a pear on your counter, a pile of leaves on the sidewalk or a corpse (animal of your choice) consumable by larger organisms read insects, rodents, worms, etc. who eat and excrete until a lovely pile of biological goo or soil develops on the spot the pear/leaves/corpse was resting. It is the end of the line in one way, but the beginning of another too. In other words the snake eats her own tail. It’s nature’s law.

Beasties make milk into cheese, fruit juice into vinegar and wine, vegetables into pickles, beans into miso etc. fermentation is basically setting up a habitat for beneficial bacteria and fungi to set up shop , eat and excrete until they are done or you deem it time to stop them because the wine or cheese or pickles are delicious at that point.

Everything wants to be digested.

Digestion Illustration - take I

Take a slightly bruised fruit, or peelings of fruit (not a gorgeous piece of fruit, save that for eating) place in a glass jar, add sugar, screw on top and shake a bit. The mixture needs to breathe, so remove lid and place rag over the jar and secure with rubber band around ring of jar. Leave in a dark, room temperature space for ten days or two weeks so the beasties can eat in peace. At this point you should taste a bit of the mixture. If you like the taste, strain out the fruit and put in the fridge. This will slow the fermentation process. You have just made unfiltered pro-biotic fruit scrap vinegar.

Securing and processing food for storage used to consist of simple, sometimes labor intensive but entirely petrochemical-free processes which I will list as you might not remember what some of them are - slow evaporation, smoking, fermenting, and preserving in oil/vinegar/honey/salt/alcohol or using in ground storage. These low techie but completely safe methods were used extensively until the mid 19th century when pasteurization was discovered.

Pasteur (and the little mentioned Bernard) took much of the wind out of popular magic belief when they discovered pasteurization which fueled modern germ theory. The paradigm shift saved lives, but his theories also contributed to our general fear of soil, our bodies, our bodies waste and the food that the industrial food system connected to us via our local grocery stores cultivates in us. Pasteurization, besides changing the availability and existence of certain nutrients, rids all bacteria from food, meaning it also kills the good beasties that help keep our raw food safe from eating and our internal gardens of beasties and mushrooms healthy.

Canning technology started a few decades earlier when a French candy maker, Nicolas Appert won the contest out forth by Napoleon Bonaparte to come up with a method to feed his troops in the field.

Digestion illustration - take two

Chop veggies/wild greens/roots whatever you want to pickle. Make a brine with non-chlorinated water and sea salt. brine should be near saturation. toss denser material (i.e. roots, garlic cloves) into brine and and swirl it around a bit. drain veggies saving brine. Mix pre-brined veggies and less dense material (i.e. greens). Pack a glass jar with your mix and pour the brine over it submerging all material. Work out trapped bubbles with a stick. Fill a small bag with extra brine and use as a water bladder to keep material submerged. leave the jar open to allow the beasties to eat for at least three days. Taste and eat, let them keep eating for a stronger taste or keep the jar in a cool place like that 38 degree box called a refrigerator and slow them down.

And finally August Wilhem von Hoffman discovered formaldehyde in 1867, it was introduced to the new wave of modern embalmers and remains the choice of embalmers. Stopping what was the ‘exploding casket syndrome’ a phenomena of union troop corpses making that long hot train ride back to their families in the North. Formaldehyde is a far cry from the older embalmers choices of spices/salt/herbs human pickling. Indeed it is a biocide that forms from the oxidation of methane and as bodies decompose (because the bacteria does get into those caskets eventually) it leaks into the groundwater and without too much imagination you can guess the rest. Lucky for Europeans that the EU happened to last year ban its use.

Good to know that embalming is not required by law in the United States. There’s no need to rob food from the living beasties.

Everything flows towards soil.