Last fall there were a pair of Moose cavorting in the yard next door and last week a mother Moose and calf strolled through the woods in front of the house. I wonder if it was the same female Moose? In other news, the daffodils are blooming as best they can and the crocuses are almost spent, one week we will have record warm weather and the next week snow.
I have noticed a disturbing trend on line, in the spiritual groups I belong to. Most people are trying hard to stay cheerful and speak peace in these tumultuous times. But there is a minority who have raised their voices to express hatred of specific peoples and religions, inspired no doubt by the odious Donald Trump. A few days ago I was at a gathering where an Arab mother sang a song in Arabic for all the people who are refugees and living in camps at this time. It was very moving. She said “The last time they went after the Jews and put them in concentration camps. This time it will be the Muslims”. I wonder how often Americans think about this.
I do what I can to keep a more tolerant perspective on these social media lists; by posting articles such as these: 70,000 Muslim clerics issue a fatwa against terrorism and Muslim scholars are countering ISIL.
Meanwhile in Northern Ireland the marching season is almost here and all eyes are on Armagh to see if peace will hold there. All summer leave for the Garda (police) has been cancelled.
Hundredth anniversary of the Easter Rising.
We live in interesting times don’t we?
Below is the usual archeology, nature, politics, religion, ethics and book news. Tend your gardens with care and have a lovely Spring!
*Reminder – you can purchase my books from this site and get a signed copy with a personal note!*
BOOK NEWS
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Legacy of Druids
A Legacy of Druids is covered by The Wild Hunt.
A review of Secret Medicines from Your Garden- Another nice review in The Witches Almanac
- An excerpt appeared in Wisdom Magazine
- A mention of Secret Medicines from Your Garden in the Hampshire Gazette
- Yet another interview!
- And a podcast on YouTube
UPCOMING WORKSHOPS
- May 15
Pelham, MA 1 PM – 3:30 PM
A lecture on The Doctrine of Signatures, an ancient plant classification system - A WORKSHOP IN NEW HAMPSHIRE
Tree Magic and Medicine class with Ellen Evert Hopman
July 23,24 2016
Misty Meadows Herbal Center
183 Wednesday Hill Road
Lee, NH 03861 - AND MASSACHUSETTS
My usual six month herbal intensive in the Amherst area starts October 15, 2016
Cost: $1000 plus a $100.00 nonrefundable Xeroxing fee
Please contact me for more details.
Stay tuned for more workshops and events…
ARCHEOLOGY NEWS
- Knights Templar to win heresy reprieve (better late than never)
- A rare Etruscan stone with inscriptions found
- Experts doubt claims of hidden chamber behind King Tut’s tomb
- A hoard of Roman jewelry buried to hide it from Boudicca
- Life on an Apache Indian reservation, 1945.
- The world’s oldest temple (video)
- The world’s oldest surviving dress?
- Textile found on American mummy far older
- Objects from a Stonehenge woman’s grave on display
- What the Irish ate before potatoes
- How to drink like a Norman
- The origin of domesticated dogs
- Dog burials from ancient Siberia
- Spring Equinox alignment in Donegal
- How the Cherokee farmed honey locust trees
- What proto-Indo-European may have sounded like
- Date of human occupation in Ireland pushed back 2,500 years to Paleolithic
- First evidence for Mesoamerican corn beer found
- Iron Age remains found in Britain
- How to make medieval Mead
- The oldest song in the world is from Syria
- “Celtic” is not a race nor any DNA group, rather a collection of cultural traits and languages. Druids have known this forever. Scholars can’t decide if the “Celtic” culture and language went East to West or vice versa. We live in interesting times.
- The oldest human genome ever sequenced
- Slovenian Celts
More…
And more… - A brief history of Hadrian’s Wall
- Marriage in Viking times
- Celtic burials in Croatia
- A 15,000 year old knife found in Oregon
- Early Christian frescoes that appear to show women priests
- An underground chamber in Scotland
- Ancient Nubians made antibiotic beer
- Dragon Hill, England
- A map of Celtic tribes
- A forest of Medieval oaks found in England
- A 3000 year old round house in Britain
- Simon Schama on why some feel the need to destroy archeological sites
- The Celtic Queen of the Dead
- The stones of Orkney (video)
- Oldest known toothpaste recipe
- Obama protects ancient Apache holy land from a mining company
HERB NEWS
- 9 edible Spring flowers
- Plantain
- It’s time for nettles!
- How to harvest and eat Japanese Knotweed (video) Best time to gather it is when the spears look like asparagus. Makes a great pie (Kermit the frog green). It is also a medicinal, the root is used for Lyme Disease. A very valuable and misunderstood plant.
- A free medical Cannabis Summit (starts April 4)
- Top ten medicinal plants for the garden
- Eating a pre-colonial Lakota diet
- Spring time detox with Milk Thistle
- Foraging for Willow
- Willow bark for medicine
- Make your own forest Vermouth
- How to forage in Los Angeles
- How to eat Docks (Rumex spp.)
- Dock custard
- Wild rhubarb
- Make a dandelion salve
- Cooking Dandelion greens
- Tap Maple water for your health
- How to process acorns for food
- Spruce or fir tip syrup (try making this with spring growth on hemlocks, white pine, too)
- One of the world’s largest trees (video)
HEALTH NEWS
- Utah anti-abortion bill based on ideology, not medicine
- Probiotics can reverse food allergies
- The USA is becoming a dangerous place to be a woman
- Why we need Single Payer health care, not just the Affordable Care Act
- Keeping microbes in your home makes you more healthy
- Climate change will have severe psychological effects
NATURE AND CLIMATE NEWS
- Meet the bird that landed on Bernie’s podium
- 5 million Nigerians reject GMO crops
- Exxon has known for decades about climate change – tried to make sure we didn’t
- We are on the brink of abrupt climate change
- Residents of Massachusetts walk 50 miles to protest Kinder-Morgan pipeline
- Ash trees may go extinct in Europe due to disease
- IN USA it’s the Emerald Ash Borer causing ash tree deaths
- No such thing as safe fossil fuels, safe fracking
- A celebration of trees
- Great Barrier Reef is dying before our eyes – global warming, ocean acidification is to blame
- 37 million bees died in Ontario after GMO corn was planted
- MN passes landmark law – farmers whose bees were killed by neonicotinoids get compensation
- France approves plan to ban bee killing pesticides
- Sea World to end captive breeding of Orcas
- Eaglecam is live!
- Native American tribe gets funding to flee rising seas
- Solar Village produces 4x more energy than it consumes
- February 2016 was warmest on record NASA says
- Methane still leaking in southern CA
- Largest coal plant in North America to be converted to a solar installation!
- Six nations are thrilled
- Canada indigenous united vs tar sand pipeline
- Fracking threatens water, earthquakes in Ohio
- Women on the front lines vs fracking
- Fox Village JAPAN (VIDEO)
- Five years after Fukushima US is not ready for a nuclear disaster
- A child born today may live to see the end of humanity
- US and Canada agree to make changes but still no fracking ban
- How fracking is adding to the world’s warming
- Bernie Sanders demands an end to fracking
- Rate of climate change will soar in the 2020’s
- A human-penguin love affair
- How to harvest fog to make water
- Norway to invest in bike “superhighways”
- Net zero, hurricane resistant homes for less than $100,000
- Small farmers in Africa are struggling against Monsanto
- Where wind energy in the USA is booming
- How climate change is affecting Mongolia
- Meet the Coywolf
More… - Are mushrooms the solution to bee colony collapse?
- What sand looks like magnified 300x
- Why sea lion pups are starving
- Toxic moss found in Portland, OR
- Antarctic ice melt accelerating
- Do ravens have a theory of mind?
- How Corvids can save our forests
- Five years later, Fukushima is still a radioactive disaster
More… - Is tuna still safe to eat?
- Top Execs face criminal charges
- We need a completely new relationship with Nature, if we are to survive
- IKEA will switch to packaging made from mushrooms that decomposes quickly
- Rapidly warming arctic is probably causing catastrophic weather events
- Mysteries of the Jurassic ocean (video)
- Radiation leak from Indian Point nuke is getting worse
- Indian Point may be worse than Fukushima
- Ancient Babylonians mapped Jupiter
DRUID NEWS
FAIRY NEWS
RELIGION NEWS
- Muslim clerics issue a fatwa against terrorism
- How Muslim scholars are countering ISIL
- The Pagan origins of Easter
- The Goddess Eostre
- Iceland is worshipping Norse Pagan Gods again
- Pope fires nuncio over Kim Davis
- WWII vet gets a Viking funeral
- Early Christian frescoes that appear to show women priests
- Women in religion (podcast)
- Where do we go when we dream?
- Sacred Trees
- 50 Catholic priests raped hundreds of children in PA, jury finds
- The tale of Saint Patrick’s cow
- The life of death (video)
- Do chimps have sacred rituals?
- Statue of Manannan Mac Lir has been replaced in Northern Ireland
- 7 year old children are equally culpable as priests in rape cases, NY Bishop says
- Cardinal Pell: clergy sex abuse was “not that interesting” to him
POLITICS AND ETHICS
- Flint: water managers were told not to put anti-corrosives in the water
- Economist: Bernie’s policies will make American economy great again for most people
- Trump wants to punish women who have abortions
- Voters turned away in AZ – article and video
More… - Bernie Sanders continues to address Native American issues
- Bernie’s journey – a timeline
- Clinton and Sanders are now tied nationally
- The world’s biggest polluters will benefit from the TPP
More… - Brussels attacks – we need a new approach
More… - University of Dallas opts out of campus carry gun law (showing good sense, don’t you think?)
- The rise of American authoritarianism
- Could it happen here? What would American Fascism look like?
- More media malpractice: they are missing the biggest story in 50 years
- When its kids vs. Big Oil
- Pentagon admits to domestic spying with drones
- Amazon tribe takes hostages after oil company pollutes their rivers
- Washington Post shows bias against Sanders now that a Libertarian has bought the paper
- Gun lobby wants more guns to have silencers (so murderers and suicides can protect their ears?)
- Clinton lied. Bernie DID vote to bail out the auto industry. Just not big banks and their millionaire CEOs.
More… - Warren: seniors, not CEOs deserve a raise
- Why we should take the rich out of politics
- World leaders: Trump is a threat to world peace
- Nancy Pelosi criticizes the Super Delegates scheme
- War, Peace and Bernie Sanders
- SCOTUS blocks LA abortion law
- Oral arguments of the female SCOTUS judges in the recent TX abortion clinic case
More… - How the failed economy is shaping the election
- Robert Reich on why he endorses Bernie Sanders
- America’s first female presidential candidate
- DNC Vice Chair resigns in order to back Bernie Sanders
- Is Walmart toast?
- A 1905 precedent means Obama can appoint a SCJ without Congressional consent
- Texas academics told to avoid “sensitive subjects” because they might get shot
- Republicans want to privatize US Postal Service (even though it costs taxpayers $0)
- Republican front runners are anti-environment/health in unprecedented ways
- Fracking bans are now illegal in Oklahoma, thanks to Republican governor
- Housing the homeless is cheaper than leaving them on the street
- Economists who bashed Bernie’s tax plan now say they were wrong
- How Capitalism is destroying America
- The Irish famine – what they didn’t tell you in school
- Bernie is forging ahead, the best states are yet to come
- 128 artists endorse Bernie
- American ex-pats overwhelmingly support Bernie
- Sanders leads effort to increase spending on senior citizens
- Who are the Sanders Democrats?
- Why do the young support Bernie?
- Why is it so hard to vote in America?
A joyful and happy Spring to all who read this.