The big news this Moonth has been ACORNS. This amazing food source is available to us for free, wherever there are oak trees. Our European ancestors relied on them for carbohydrates, thousands of years before wheat ever made an appearance. If you are lucky enough to have a White Oak tree (Quercus alba) leaching won’t be much of a problem. For all other oaks you:
- collect the nuts
- smash them one at a time between two rocks and pick out the meat
- immediately drop the meat into a bowl of fresh water so they don’t oxidize
- grind the nuts in a blender
- store in the fridge, covered with water for 2 weeks, changing the water every day
- strain and bake the ground up nuts in a slow over (80 – 100 degrees) for about a hour with the oven door slightly open to let out steam
- grind in a coffee grinder and make into flour.
You will find recipes for acorn cakes, breads, etc. in my newest herbal SECRET MEDICINES FROM YOUR GARDEN (Healing Arts Press).
Acorns are an amazing crop that can feed humanity without cutting, killing, tearing up the soil, or using water for irrigation.
PLEASE make sure you are registered to vote. THEN GO AND VOTE! The future of the Earth is at stake, the Supreme Court, and many other things!
*Below you will find the usual assortment of book news, archaeology, nature, climate, Druid, Fairy, religion, herb and health news. Enjoy!*
BOOK NEWS
- Secret Medicines from Your Garden: Plants for Healing, Spirituality, and Magic
Written by Lisa Mc Sherry
Published: 17 September 2016
I have old favorites in my book collection, especially amongst my herbals. My copy of Cunningham’s Encyclopedia is dog-eared and just this side of tattered.
I’ve got a new favorite to add to that shelf.
Hopman starts off with an unusual choice, a chapter on wild crafting. It’s odd and brilliant and wonderful to be introduced to this subject through the eyes of an herbalist and druid. Hopman takes us through the seasons, ending with a chapter on (winter) cold and flu care and then bug repellents. Honestly, that section alone made me happy.
The reader is then treated to discussions on more subtle aspects of the plant world, including herbal astrology and communing with the plant spirits. I fell in love with Secret Medicines all over again with her chapter on Bee Medicine in the third part. I was completely impressed with her final section: Formula Making.
It was odd to get used to, but I came to appreciate how plants are the focus in one section, only to sprout again in another, thus revealing new information that may be overlooked by others. I also appreciated how Hopman constantly encourages the reader to make whatever path they walk their own.
This is an excellent primer and highly recommended.
~review by Lisa Mc Sherry
Author: Ellen Evert Hopman
Healing Arts Press, 2016
pp. 384, $19.45*You can purchase this book and others through this website and get a signed copy with a personal note!* *Yule is coming!* - An interview on blog talk radio 9/20/2016 – my part starts at mark 1:07
- September 15, 2016 A radio interview WMCB-lp 107.9FM
Low Power Radio for Greenfield Massachusetts & Franklin County
ARCHEOLOGY NEWS
- 5000 year old rock art from Scotland
- 14,000 year old settlers in Argentina
- A Bronze Age village reconstruction
- The history of the uilleann pipes
- Roman coins found under ancient castle in Japan
- The Staffordshire hoard
- Iron Age jewelry from Orkney recreated
- Indigenous Australians are the oldest civilization on Earth, DNA shows
- Bones and DNA from an ancient Greek shipwreck
More: an ancient computer from the same wreck - Archeologists, Historians and Museum Directors oppose the Dakota Pipeline Project
- A free online Archeology course
- Cannabis discovered in a Viking Grave
- A Roman brewery discovered
- A 3000 year old Danish cooking pot and contents found
- A new broch found in Shetland
- Viking sailors took their cats with them
- Fall Equinox at Loughcrew, Ireland (video)More…
More… - Irish Field Monuments
- The largest known Celtic coin hoard, Isle of Jersey
- 23,000 year old fish hooks found in Okinawa
- The Celtic Goddess Epona
- Fall Equinox at Loughcrew
- Oldest indigo dyed cloth found in Peru
- 2,800 year old seeds found in Turkey to be resurrected
- Dental plaque reveals the Mesolithic diet
- The Pictish diet
- The most accurate depiction of a dinosaur yet
- An Irish Mesolithic site
- The Danube Torc
- Is Irish the oldest written European vernacular language?
- Another ancient site in Fife (video)
- A 7000 year old female figurine found in Turkey
- Lack of royal burials in Teotihuacan. Was it a collective?
- Death among the ancient Celts
- What is Space Archeology?
- The Cochno stone from 3000 BCE
- A 2,100 year old statue of Cybele found in Turkey
- Mosaic found “enjoy your life”
- Bear’s Ears in Utah; the battle to preserve a Paleo-Indian site
- Your holiday photos could help in the reconstruction of destroyed archeological sites
- Votive offerings and ritually “killed” objects
- A broch is uncovered in Perthshire (video)
- A 3000 year old sword from Denmark
- 13th century Mayan codex proven genuine
- Newgrange (video)
- Balfarg Henge, Fife, Scotland (video)
- Pending US Senate bill would stop export of Native American artefacts
- 36 thousand year old rock art from Australia
- 2.5 million year old tobacco found in Peru
- 1,100 year old Mayan ruins found in Georgia
- 4000 year old hallucinogenic San Pedro cactus found in temple in Peru
- Update from Must Farm Bronze Age dig
- DNA solves the Basque mystery
- Scottish DNA unraveled
- A Mayan tomb found in Belize
- A Neolithic chalk bowl
- An early Neolithic village in Orkney found
- 3.7 billion year old stromatolite fossils may be oldest found on Earth
- 1 million year old Mammoth tusks found during road work in Austria
- Ice Age salmon cooking hearths found in Alaska
HERB NEWS
- Yarrow
- Skullcap!
- Study: Sage is a disinfectant when burned
- How trees communicate
More…
More... - Could herbs be the answer to the antibiotic resistance crisis?
- The largest flower in the world
- Study: Chinese TCM herbs kill tumor cells
- The benefits of Hemp
- Purslane!
- Lemon and elderberry cheese cake
- Herbal medicine affects genes, cells
- Elderberry fights the flu
- Make Elderberry Jam
- Make Elderberry syrup for colds
- Herbalists who whisper their cures
HEALTH NEWS
- Genes affect how we age, no matter what our lifestyle might be
- Drinking a little champagne could help prevent dementia, study finds
- 50 years ago the sugar industry paid scientists to put the blame on fat
- Study: Cannabis availability decreases opioid use (well, duh)
- An ancient Welsh recipe against food poisoning
- Men are still afraid of intelligent women, study shows
- American Legion wants the Feds to change course on Cannabis
- Temporarily removing the guns of high risk people leads to a lowering number of suicides
- Health care in the USA – highest cost and worst outcomes of any industrialized nation
- Study: raw milk boosts the immune system
- Merck admits Zostavax can cause eye damage – and shingles
- Mike Pence of Indiana pushes closure of Planned Parenthood clinics – HIV epidemic follows
- Toxic particles in air pollution linked to Alzheimer’s
- Opioids and anti-anxiety meds are killing white American women
More: “Across the country, middle-aged white women are dying at staggeringly higher rates, particularly from drug overdoses, suicides and excessive drinking” - Low carb diet is proven healthier than a low fat diet
- FDA orders antibacterials be removed from soaps
- Chemotherapy may be killing up to 50% of patients (not cancer)
- Air pollution emergency growing, affecting health worldwide says WHO
CLIMATE AND NATURE NEWS
- The evolution of soil
- Half of all shark species now threatened with extinction
- Rosetta comet probe reaches end of its mission
- Water protectors at Standing Rock will stay all winter
- Making space rocket fuel from water could fuel a fuel revolution on Earth
- Study: Earth to hit temperatures not seen in 2 million years
- The Wood Wide Web (video)
- How plants talk to each other using fungus
- A station on the Moon envisioned
- Fukushima radiation now causing 100% death rate in Orca newborns, species at risk of extinction in 20 years
- 17 years to climate Armageddon
- Scientists take aim at Trumps climate denialism
- Plea to stop the Dakota pipeline is taken to the United Nations
- Media blackout continues
- ICC: Environmental destruction is a crime against humanity
- Ho-Chunk tribe approves “Rights of Nature”
- German Forest Ranger Finds That Trees Have Social Networks, Too
- What it would take to make America sustainable
- Illegal deforestation fires in Indonesia have killed 100,000 so far
- France bans all plastic dishware starting 2020
- Coastal flooding due to global warming has already begun
- Growing up with climate change
- CA drought and climate change are making fire season hotter, longer
- Pipeline incidents happen daily in the USA
- US has lost 1.5 billion birds since 1970’s
- Witnessing the end of the human species
- Dakota pipeline would lock in emissions equivalent to 30 coal plants
- August 2016 was another hottest month for the record books
- 2016 summer had hottest summer nights on record
- So far, Costa Rica has used only renewable energy for 76 days (and counting)
- Map: where oil pipeline spills and leaks have occurred in the last five years
- Dakota pipeline protest continues
- Did milk and fur pre-date mammals?
- Lost Philae spacecraft found on a comet
More… - Yellowstone River oil spill over Labor Day, now extends 150 miles downstream
- Birds took flight minutes before Oklahoma earthquake
- Company led by a Donald Trump advisor plans for oil to flow through Dakota pipeline
- Conservatives media is increasing climate change denial in the USA
- Melting ice is a boon for whales, a disaster for polar bears
- Lawsuit filed in Oklahoma over earthquakes caused by fracking
- Long term study proves neonicotinoids are killing bees
- Killing of entire wolf pack continues, to benefit a farmer who insists on grazing his cows over their den, on public land
- Millions of honey bees are being killed due to spraying for Zika mosquitos
- Study confirms link between fracking and earthquakes
- SETI picks up a signal from space – but is it aliens?
More…
It probably wasn’t aliens after all. Darn. - Climate change vulnerability in urban America
- Pants for rats?
FAIRY NEWS
- The Fairies and the Full Moon
- Elf rock restored after its removal caused havoc in an Icelandic town
- Fairies in Nova Scotia (video)
CELTIC NEWS
- An Irish Seanachie tells a tale (video)
- Cornish Harvest festival: “Crying the Neck”
- Michaelmas in Ireland
- Robin Williamson on the Battle of Moytura (video)
RELIGION NEWS
- Hundreds of Pagans and Druids descend on Stonehenge for the Fall Equinox
- A rare white buffalo calf born in Dakota territory
- Bear worship in Finnish mythology (video)
- The Daghda the Irish All Father
- Pope Francis: “Destroying the environment is a sin”
- Epona, the Celtic horse Goddess
POLITICS AND ETHICS
- Trump is bringing David Duke, the KKK, White Nationalists, out of the woodwork
- $178 million = 1 fighter airplane or 3,358 years of college
- Bernie: his ideas were not radical, just what most Americans want
- SEC probes into Exxon’s climate crimes
- It’s time to re-vamp the presidential debates
- Supplying white phosphorus to Saudis makes US complicit in war crimes
- Women demand solutions in upcoming election
- Goodall: Trump’s behavior is similar to male Chimpanzee’s
More (video) - Trump would like to get rid of pesky food inspectors – to make America great again!
- Trump’s business failures (past is prologue)
- There is no such thing as a protest vote
- Bernie Sanders: “This is not the time for a protest vote”
- Peaceful Dakota protestors face felony charges
- Warren demands to know why Obama hasn’t jailed the Banksters
- Snowden on why he should be pardoned
- Jimmy Carter defends Snowden
- US deficit has shrunk by 1 trillion under Obama (counter to GOP rhetoric)
- White Supremacists are all in for Trump
More…
And more… - Young Socialists are taking on the Democratic establishment.
- Corporations are now wealthier than many countries
- Human Rights groups launch campaign to pardon Snowden
- Dakota pipeline protests continue
- Dakota pipeline protest is largest Native protest in US history
- Corporate news media continue to ignore Dakota pipeline protests, efforts to protect water
- Standing Rock Resistance Radio – listen to live shows
- Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal church statement in support of Dakota pipeline protestors
- UC Davis becomes first institution dedicated to research on gun violence
- Why are they protesting the Dakota pipeline?
- The Standing Rock Protests
More… (video) - Protestors attacked with dogs and mace
- Tell your Senators to oppose the Pipeline
- How the decline in Union memberships is hurting all of us
- Austerity mad Red states actually receive more federal aid
- GOP: Witches are advising, running the country now (I wish)