I had a bunch of ladies over from our community stitching group and offered them a taste of our homemade wine and foraged tea. The wine was hit and miss, most of the ladies being teetotalers. The tea though was a big hit. Much to my surprise, while most of them were country-raised, none of them had ever heard of making tea from two of the most common sources imaginable: pine needles and yaupon.
“A sure cure for scurvy; a remedy for cold, flu, obesity, dementia, bladder, and kidney issues; antidepressant; anti-hypertensive; anti-tumor; render chemotherapy less toxic to patients, and many more potential health improvements and nutritional benefits, can all be found in the Christmas tree you dispose of yearly!”
“The most interesting health benefits of pine include its ability to boost the immune system, improve vision health, stimulate circulation, protect against pathogens, and improve respiratory health.”
The yaupon surprised them even more than the pine, because around here it’s so prolific they are treated like annoying weeds much of the time. (Maybe that’s because they don’t realize how much the bees love them in their early spring bloom period.).
In some areas you’ll need to be sure not to confuse yaupon with Japanese privet, which is a popular landscaping shrub, but poisonous.
“Yaupon tea is a tea made from the dried leaves of the yaupon holly tree, which is scientifically known as Ilex vomitoria. This type of holly tree is native to the southeastern region of North America and was once used as an emetic and a ceremonial tea for numerous Native American tribes. The tea is also closely related to yerba mate tea and has many of the same active ingredients and nutrients.”
I also make tea with sassafras, mullein, rose hips, elderberries, sumac, and lots of other foraged goodies. Healthy and delicious, especially after you add the local honey, of course.
Foraging Texas has a great list with lots of common plants not just in Texas.
“Order already existed,” I claimed in my last post. Let’s talk about that.
Before science and religion came along there were highly organized human civilizations, not to mention the non-human ones, that somehow managed to thrive without these disciplines. Ancient wisdom fascinates me, how modern science and religion exploits it at our ‘collective’ expense fascinates me even more.
Part 1 G.O.D. = Great Organizing Dynamic
An introduction of terminology: Metaheuristics, Embodied Spacial Cognition, Toroidal Field, Tesselar Spherical Harmonics, Stellarator Optimization, Radiofrequency Plasma, Tokamak Discharge/Sawtooth Oscillation, Quorum Sensing, Vector Memory, Path Integration (PI), Stigmergy
Part 2 = As Applies to Sociopolitical One World Acceleration Process
Underlying Assumption: Crisis Drives Evolution (potential origination of worldview: Cult of Mithras, exploration continues.)
“Living nature is a global community of communication, humans could view themselves as members among many other (non-human) members in this community. Universal-communicative, normative rules can also be derived from such a membership. Their non-observance has led us into a historically unprecedented ecological crisis. In light of this ecological crisis, future adherence to these rules will probably become the greatest cultural and evolutionary challenge that mankind has ever faced. Should we be unable to master the ecological crisis in time by adequately complying with these rules, then our survival is as uncertain as that of most other biological species threatened by mankind ́s activities.
Viewed from this perspective, this book provides support for an ecologically oriented ethics. It does not represent ethics in itself; rather, by opening the way to a new perception of living nature, it wishes to provide the information we need to introduce and establish norms of ecological ethics.”
“The evidence that the sign-mediated interactions of honeybees from warmer latitudes differ fundamentally from those of the northern hemisphere leads to a discussion about how certain capabilities and skills on the molecular level are genetically fixed, in the nuclei of the cells of organisms, culminating in the paradigmatic realm of intra-organismic communication.”
“This series of studies investigated the effects of applied, low-intensity electromagnetic fields on the behaviour of several species. To cover a range of species; the eusocial harvester ants (Pogonomyrmex sp.), solitary orb-weaving spiders, and aquatic planarian (Dugesia tigrina) were examined for behavioural consequences associated with applied electromagnetic fields. An additional component examined these effects on various volumes of water. In all species examined, significant behavioural consequences were observed. Intensities of the used fields ranged from nanotesla to millitesla, and their patterns included a fixed-pattern 60 Hz field, and a more complex-patterned field. A separate component also analyzed the effects of light and polarity, where additional effects were evident. For the experiments with the harvester ants, significant changes in tunneling behavior were observed; for the spiders, significant changes in the structure of the web were observed; for the planarian, significant effects on t-maze arm selection occurred; and for water, significant changes in pH were detected.”
Electromagnetic fields as communication medium of intercellular communication. Mechanisms of indirect coordination based on bee behavior.
This is my newest line of inquiry on this blog, interspersed with the homestead life and happy snaps and the occasional sub-par efforts at fiction, poetry, philosophy, etc.
My intention is to not make it too boring for y’all as I try to ascertain where the real science is, not the crap making it down the public marketing pipeline.
I do hope y’all will join me, and contribute knowledge and wisdom where possible, in this latest topic venture.
Thank you, I do love your company!
Joining me will be Schelling and his problems of nature as subject. 🙂
Life is significantly easier when you don’t give a shit.Not only are you spared the physical, intellectual and emotional effort of caring, you are also spared the spiritual effort of sifting through the good and shitty people and things in your life.
When you don’t care, you don’t care if others don’t care either.You don’t build up any resentment to their lack of care.You get to feel comfortably numb in blissful ignorance.You don’t have the added social cost of having to mask your disdain and disapproval.You can chuckle, rather than wince, at their callousness and cruelty and disregard.
The spiritual effort of discernment is so taxing that many religions have successfully spared their followers of it, naming it ‘Judgement’ and leaving the dreadful task to God, or similar distant entities.
Discernment is in fact so precious it’s innate in all sorts of species, not just mankind.
Sunflowers discern which way the sun is glowing and turn themselves to face it.Plants can actually discern and communicate all kinds of things about their environment, even things like where their trellis is, and other survival instincts—this is absolutely true, and now that science ‘proves it’ you are allowed to believe it, even though those in tune with the natural world already sensed it aeons ago.
Human babies are so highly discerning they recognize their own kind from the most tender age, reaching out automatically to other babies, or puppies, or other young or small things, as if they are already quite conscious of their current place in the universe.
What are the emotions which humans make such concerted efforts toward escaping or transcending?Sadness, weakness, loneliness, illness, vulnerability, anxiety, fear, pain, discomfort, failure.
But rarely, apathy.Apathy, as dangerous as it can be, is of another category.
Apathetic populations serve an important purpose in civilization.Not only are they the perfect minions of any corrupt power structure by never questioning their surroundings or roles, but they also serve brilliantly in undermining the efforts of the relatively few who do actually give a shit.
Apathetic slaves are the best sort.The less you care about those around you and your environment, the easier the masters have it.It makes for better order followers, because you’re still smart enough to never bite the hand that feeds you, but passive enough to go along with anything told to you from above. Hand over your children? Ok, what can you do, and besides, you can just have more.
The culture-shapers have been breeding apathetic populations as long as man has been breeding domesticated livestock.Obedience, docility, positivity, faith, industriousness are in the category along with apathy, as with all the other desired traits that make the livestock more manageable, desensitized, acquiescent and profitable.
The “Namaste Billionaires” (a phrase I’ve borrowed) say they give a shit, and they want to fix it all.They know how, because they say so.They’ve transcended, and they’re billionaires, so of course they know how. They’ve reached the pinnacle of materialism and spiritual ascendency in tandem and they’re going to create order from the chaos.
These are the latest brand of culture-shaping snake oil salesmen and if their predecessors had not been breeding in apathy for centuries the populations would still have the discernment to see this as clearly as if it were pulsing in neon from the heavens.
How can you tell, as easily as if you were discerning white from black?Look to nature.Order already existed.It still exists even now, though the perpetual tinkering makes it less and less obvious every year.
These false prophets create the chaos in order to save you from it, so that you then confirm your role as indentured servant to their system.
So, don’t give a shit just a little bit longer. This Thanksgiving, show the proper gratitude to your betters for the relatively comfortable free-range servitude they’ve granted you.Raise your children right—to jump when the master calls— ‘front and center!’ To bow when your master gestures, to serve courageously at his side when required, and cower silently in the corner when ordered.
Drugs and distractions, or enlightenment, take your pick.If you’re truly blessed you might even be able to kiss their feet someday.Dare to dream!
Still, if you don’t make it quite that far on the righteous path, as your just rewards you’ll still get all the baubles and accolades worthy of your slave station and gain the admiration of all your enslaved peers. Congratulations and . . .
