The nation is gearing up for Independence Day celebrations as I write this. Flags are already lining Main streets and hanging from houses, and we are supposed to be thinking about “freedom”. Freedom for whom? I can’t get the image of caged children out of my mind, or of their grieving separated parents, huddled in yearning masses at our southern border.
We are told that the for-profit, tax payer funded camps holding the children are too broke to lay out toothbrushes or soap, and the kids are sleeping on the floor without a mattress. Meanwhile, US tax payers have paid over 100 million dollars for Trump’s golf outings so far, which would easily cover the cost of cots and soap for the kids.
This country secured “liberty” from England 234 years ago, but not for enslaved Africans or dispossessed indigenous Americans. So what exactly is this “freedom” we are supposed to be celebrating?
The US has left the UN Commission on Human Rights, apparently because working to make the world safer for women, children and refugees is no longer in line with what the US stands for.
What do we supposedly stand for now? The “right” for fossil fuel and pesticide companies to pollute and poison the landscape at will? The “right” for the medical-industrial complex and the military-industrial complex to charge whatever they want, no matter the human cost? The “right” for gun manufacturers to profit from the sale of military assault weapons and hand guns to anyone who wants one, no matter their mental state or competence?
Meanwhile, our president finally gets his sorry, self-aggrandizing July 4th military parade. It is worth remembering that Trump never served, citing bone spurs. After making his July 4 political speech he and his family will laugh, all the way to the bank.
Let freedom ring.
BOOK NEWS
- A recent podcast where I speak about Herbalism, Druids, and many other things
- An interview where I discuss Scottish Herbs and Fairy Lore
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The Sacred Herbs of Samhain is almost born! Due date is August 06, 2019 and you can pre-order now.
- Next up: The Sacred Herbs of Beltaine which will be out in April, 2020.
WORKSHOPS AND EVENTS
- August 22-25, Camp Cedarcrest , Orange CT Harvest Gathering Event page on Facebook Camp Cedarcrest 886 Mapledale Rd, Orange, Connecticut 06477 Get tickets here Ellen will speak on the following topics; Intro to Druid Spiritual Path Pillars of Druidism Communicating with Trees Basic Druid Ritual Form
- Study Herbalism with Ellen Evert Hopman, Herbalist AHG A Six Month Intensive in Western Mass October 13 – April 2019 Intro to Herbalism and Self Care Two Saturdays a month, 1-5 PM near Amherst, MA Western Materia Medica, Chinese 5 Element Theory, Flower Essence Counseling, Formula making, Hands on Herbalism, Ethnobotany, Herb walks, Homeopathic First Aid, Live case taking and more.
As always, you will find the past Moonth’s media gleanings, Archaeology news, herbs, climate, nature, Celts, Druids, and other happenings below.
*Reminder – you can purchase signed copies of my books from this website* Enjoy!
FOREST NEWS
- Bringing back an Ozark Chestnut tree from near extinction
- Reforesting Shetland’s ancient woodlands, from a single Hazelnut
- The song of trees – a biologists view
- Scotland planted 22 million trees last year, surpassing goals
- The Oak trees of southern California, a history
- Argentine fossils take oak and beech family history far into Southern Hemisphere
- A town unites against federal mismanagement of forests (its worth remembering that Native Americans once managed forests with proscribed burns)
- Antarctica once had forests, 280 million years ago
- Evidence that trees have feelings
- Big brands breaking pledge to not destroy forests: report
ARCHAEOLOGY NEWS
- An ancient palace discovered in Iraq
- Ancient intervention could boost dwindling water reserves in coastal Peru
- Hue times two: A second look at the color of dinosaur eggs
- What Made Humans ‘The Fat Primate’?
- Neanderthals made repeated use of the ancient settlement of ‘Ein Qashish, Israel
- The ancient history of Neanderthals in Europe
- Neanderthals used resin ‘glue’ to craft their stone tools
- ‘First undisturbed’ Roman shipwreck found off eastern coast of Cyprus
- Is Galicia the original home of the Celts? (video)
- Mystery of ancient temple discovered at Durrës solved
- Where did the gold from the time of Stonehenge come from? Analysing the Bush Barrow dagger
- Late Iron Age chariot pieces found in Pembrokeshire
More: (and better pictures)
- The Art Of The Roman Deal
- Scottish Rock Art (video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAbDcnnIyWw&feature=share
- A prehistoric well in Scotland uncovered
- Germany returns ancient Roman bust to Italy
- Unusual Roman wooden arm found during Northamptonshire excavation
- Mochica elite’s last woman unearthed in Lambayeque
- Wadi Hammeh, one of the largest repertoires of Natufian art
- Bronze Age mace head discovered in Poland
- Levänluhta jewellery links Iron Age Finland to a European exchange network
- Palace of the Irish Kings (Navan, Co Armagh) (video)
- Slime Travelers: Earth’s Oldest Mobile Animals
- Mammals and their relatives thrived, diversified during so-called ‘Age of Dinosaurs,’ researchers show
- First Australians may have arrived in large groups using complex technologies
- A European fossil bird three times the size of an ostrich
- Blue hues in fossilized feathers found for the first time
- Uncovering the Past: Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, and Viking Funerary Practices and Peruvian Guinea Pig Sacrifices
- Oldest axial fossils discovered for the genus Australopithecus
- Climate change had significant impact on Amazon communities before arrival of Europeans
- Çatalhöyük: A community with modern urban problems 9,000 years ago
- T Sligo Excavation at Carrowmore Megalithic Cemetery, May-June 2019 (video) More: Archaeological excavation at Carrowmore Megalithic Cemetery, Sligo
- A trove of cannonballs used by Vlad the Impaler found in Bulgaria
- Glass beads in Denmark Viking graves came from Tutankhamun’s glass workshop
- Images of Newgrange through the ages
- Torcs from the British Museum (video)
- Must Farm diary update
- Damage to an Irish vitrified stone fort
- New ‘king’ of fossils discovered in Australia
- First archaeological artifacts found during search for lost prehistoric settlements in North Sea
- Medieval leather fragment decorated with dragon found in York
- New statistical formulas for assigning sex to human fossils
- 8,000-year-old petroglyphs found in earth’s largest meteor crater
- 2,200-Year-Old Chamber Tomb Discovered In Taranto
- Excavations at Jordan’s Pella unearth trove of ‘exceptional’ artefacts
- A coastal fort in Wales
- The Ancient, Sunken Forest That Rises From a Welsh Beach
- Glastonbury lake village (video)
- Neolithic Sweet Track recreated (video)
- New photography technique brings hidden history of fossils to light
- Breakthrough in the discovery of DNA in ancient bones buried in water
- Egypt demands Christie’s halt auction of Tutankhamun statue
- Burial cists open door to megalithic mysteries
- Baby Pterodactyls Could Fly From Birth
- Rising sea levels destroyed evidence of shell middens at many prehistoric coastal sites
- Diet at the docks: Living and dying at the port of ancient Rome
- The Short Life Of Must Farm
- Parts of new Doric monument found at Paestum
- Fragment of statue base with Greek inscription from 2nd century found in Bulgaria’s Plovdiv
- Scottish crannogs are 3000 years older than once thought
- Earliest use of Cannabis to get high – discovered in a Chinese tomb
More: The origins of cannabis smoking: Marijuana use in the first millennium BC
- The role and legacy of the Druidess
- Evidence for a lost Neolithic settlement under the North Sea
- Interview with O’Kelly at Newgrange in 1962
- Collapse and resilience of Levant communities during the Early Bronze Age
- Facing Up To Switzerland’s Roman Past
- Ancient DNA from Roman and medieval grape seeds reveal ancestry of wine making
- The Neolithic Precedents Of Gender Inequality
- 20 Years Since the Discovery of the Baltray Standing Stones Alignment
- The Bronze Age (video)
- 40,000 year old giant wolf discovered in Yakutia permafrost
- A major discovery on Anglesey
- Discovering the Purpose of the Folkton Drums
- Oldest dugout canoe ever found in Maine
- East St. Louis was once a city with pyramids
- Herd of dinosaurs discovered in underground opal mine
- Paleontologists Discover Giant Reptile In Antarctica
- Hoard of the rings: Unusual rings are a novel type of Bronze Age cereal-based product
- Details of first historically recorded plague pandemic revealed by ancient genomes
- ‘They will return’: The case for Greece to sue Britain over missing marbles
More: British Museum Trustee favoured return of Parthenon Marbles to Greece in the 1940s
More: The Acropolis Museum and the return of the Parthenon Sculptures: Back to the future
- New finds from underwater research on Greek island of Salamis
- Human ancestors invented stone tools several times
- Signs of ancient Neolithic settlement unearthed in Scotland
- Ancient DNA sheds light on Arctic hunter-gatherer migration to North America ~5,000 years ago
- Prehistoric stone engraved with horses found in France
- Feasting on wild boar in the Neolithic
- Life in Mesolithic Ireland
- Ancient Siberia was home to a previously unknown group of humans
- Chess piece bought for £5 and kept in a drawer for 50 years is missing treasure worth £1m
- Austria’s Salzburg Museum to return stolen Greek antiquities to Russia
- Ancient faeces reveal parasites in 8,000-year-old village of Çatalhöyük
- Ancient DNA tells the story of the first herders and farmers in east Africa
- 3,000-year-old fingerprints found at ancient village in Al Ain
- 17 amphorae from the 3rd century BC discovered off Cannes
- Reconstructed faces from the Scottish Dark Ages
- Volcanic Eruption Witnessed By Prehistoric Humans
HERB NEWS
- Buying CBD for the first time? A primer.
- Herbs for fertility
- Herbs for dementia
- Why you should grow Lemon Balm
- Stinging Nettle! (video)
- Herbs for Hay Fever
- The US is suffering from plant blindness
- Yarrow may prevent a hang over
- Mugwort!
- Herbs for Eczema
- Cherry tree magic and medicine
- Herbs for panic attacks and anxiety
- How to make a living wall of plants
- How to forage for Chanterelle mushrooms
- How Seed Saving Is Repairing a Painful Past for Native Americans
- A Native American squash grown from 800 year old seeds
- The power of the Elder
- Horse Chestnuts – uses and benefits
- A new species of carnivorous plant found in Maryland
- Herbs for Migraine
- Make Raspberry sorbet
- Airmid – the Celtic Goddess of Herbalists
- California nuns who are growing Cannabis for soaps, salves and to smoke
- White Clover iced tea
- Decoding the mathematical growth patterns of plants
- Meadowsweet, an herb of the Druids
- Meadowsweet, uses and benefits
- A beginner’s guide to foraging – 12 rules to follow
- Elderflower Liqueur (be sure to use Sambucus Nigra (Black Elder) or there won’t be much flavor)
- Daisy (Bellis perennis) uses and benefits
- Why Stevia is not a cure for Lyme disease
- Make dandelion and honey marshmallows
- Dandelion benefits and uses
- Foraging for edible conifers
- Tree resins are a powerful remedy
HEALTH NEWS
- Air pollution appears to affect fertility in women
- Ghost networks hinder access to Mental Health care
- Flesh eating bacteria moving north to east coast beaches, due to global warming
- Flute music helps develop brains of premature infants
- Magic mushrooms shown to cure depression
More…
- Are dietary guidelines set by the food industry and not scientists? (take a guess)
- Ancient gene mutation protects half of humans from diabetes
- Stress levels in dogs mirror their owner’s
- Microplastics are in the food supply and in air we breathe
- States that banned abortion have the highest infant mortality rates in the nation
- UN Commission: US abortion policies amount to torture
- How guns literally go to men’s heads, like a drug
CLIMATE AND NATURE NEWS
- ‘Bathtub rings’ around Titan’s lakes might be made of alien crystals
- Roads and deforestation explode in the Congo basin
- Zimbabwe wants ivory ban lifted so it can sell $600-mln stockpile
- The future of space travel is female
- Mars Rover finds methane on Mars
- Subaru Telescope identifies the outermost edge of the Milky Way system
- The “Cat-Fox” may be a new species
- N2O emissions in Arctic much higher than thought, hastening thawing of permafrost
- You can help name an exoplanet
- The value of returning bees to the wild
- Hyenas once roamed the Canadian Arctic
- Ancient dogs were not workhorses, as once thought
- Your cat’s behavior is genetic and inherited
- Biologists find and underwater “Octopus City”
- How climate change will affect the USA, region by region
- The names and locations of the top 100 people who are killing our planet
- Old ice and snow yields tracer of preindustrial ozone
- The great ocean cleanup has officially begun
- A “frightening” number of plant extinctions found, worldwide
- Site of biggest ever meteorite collision in the UK discovered
- Mass anomaly detected under the moon’s largest crater
- Mama Dolphins Sing Their Name to Babies in the Womb
- How naval sonar is killing and beaching whales
- Cool, nebulous ring around Milky Way’s supermassive black hole
- World’s protected areas safeguard only a fraction of wildlife
- Chimpanzees in the wild reduced to ‘forest ghettos’
- NASA makes their entire media collection public
- Schrödinger’s cat could be saved, say scientists
- Climate change will be an existential threat to human civilization by 2050
- The Pentagon on climate change as a national security threat
- How the Eurasian lynx could be reintroduced to Scotland
- 84 environmental rules on the way out thanks to Trump
- The last of the ‘Gorillas in the Mist’ is presumed dead
- NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover finds a clay cache
- ‘Fettuccine’ may be most obvious sign of life on Mars, researchers report
- Earth Recycles Ocean Floor Into Diamonds
CELTIC NEWS
- The hunger and thirst of July
- The story of the last Witch burned alive in Ireland
- Lughnasad at Navan Fort (Emain Macha) (video)
- The Bonfire on Saint John’s Eve
More: Saint John’s Eve in Clare
- Bonfires and Bonefires at Solstice (video)
- Midsummer’s Eve in Ireland
- Visiting Holy Wells at Midsummer
- Saint John’s Day, June 24
- The Shetland cure for elf-shot cattle
- The most feared Scottish clans
- Archaeology and Myth (video)
- The phantom horseman of Lough Gur
- Fado – a video game merging Irish myths and high tech
- Biddy Early, a strong Irish healer
- The Sheela na gigs, Sexuality, and the goddess in Ancient Ireland
FAIRY NEWS
PAGAN NEWS
- An old Pagan custom from Bavaria
- River and Well worship
- The last of the Granny Witches
- Astrological forecast for this summer looks bumpy
- The most haunted house in Britain is up for sale again
- The Scandinavian VÖLVA, a shamanic seeress
ARTS NEWS
- Cab Calloway – Jumpin’ Jive (video)
- America’s first named Native American poet laureate – Joy Harjo
- Defend the Sacred (a film about Standing Rock)
- Found Leaves with Delicate Crochet Embellishments by Susanna Bauer
- A weaver in Appalachia (video)
RELIGION NEWS
- Religious affiliation in America, by the numbers
- Lithuania still refuses to recognize the indigenous Romuva religion
- Pagans celebrate Solstice at Stonehenge
- Christianity’s role in the rise of the Nazis
- Should the Catholic church apologize for destroying Western Pagan culture and religion?
- The world needs her Witches – here’s why
- California nuns who are growing Cannabis
- A new Paganism FAQ. Feel free to share the link!
- Magical women conference held in London
POLITICS AND ETHICS
- Jimmy Carter: a full investigation will show the Trump election in 2016 was illegitimate
- “Illegal” immigrants are vital to many US businesses
- Yes, there really are “concentration camps” at the border
- The stakes are high – can we really risk nominating another man president?
- How London magnificently trolled Trump during his state visit
- United States dilutes UN rape-in-war resolution
- Poorest states have Republican legislatures, and richest have Democratic ones
- Humanitarians are being prosecuted for leaving water, food for Central American refugees
- Women’s suffrage and how we are still fighting over it
- Guns literally go to men’s heads, just like a drug
- When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez met Greta Thunberg: ‘Hope is contagious’
- Hunger among baby boomers is surging
- Who is profiting from Trump’s child detention camps?
- A $1000.00 per month cash handout would boost the economy by 2.5 trillion, study finds
- ‘Eye-Popping’: Analysis Shows Top 1% Gained $21 Trillion in Wealth Since 1989 While Bottom Half Lost $900 Billion
- Chomsky: Israel has a far greater influence than the Russians on American elections
- Amherst Street in Montreal gets a new name
- Why a government lawyer argued against giving incarcerated immigrant kids toothbrushes
- How US foreign policy has fueled the migrant crisis
May the light of summer shine into your heart, mind and soul. Thanks for reading! #elleneverthopman