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Sea Change

  What the heck?!! We’ve been dropped into serious times,  dangerous times. Suddenly our very ways of life  are being challenged. Our values and our freedoms  are in jeopardy. It’s hard not to feel stunned and numb,  on pause. How tempting  to bury our heads in the sand And hope we survive  the coming 4 years. But it’s no fun to feel  discouraged and powerless, As we shake our heads  in denial and disgust. Maybe it’s time to rev up  our resistance mode, Start playing music  from the 60s and 70s, Fan to life the embers  of our rebellious selves, And stand up to authority  with truth and courage. Hard times bring people together, And together we can do  so much more than alone. Singing songs of freedom and justice, Working for the good of our communities. Instead of being spurred into discouragement Let’s be spurred into action,  into hope and light Let the challenges of the times make us rise up Ready to work  for what’s good for us all All over the world, working together Remembering w
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Passing It On: how life continues

 It is autumn. Leaves are falling and many plants have shot up stalks of seeds. I carried some seeds back from our herb harvest the other day and there are more just waiting for someone (me?) to notice them. Right outside my front door is a tall tall spike of the big seeds of Black Cohosh, and I think of it as a very special medicinal. Yes, I tell that plant, I will collect your seeds and plant them in the early spring next year. (Note to self: Do it!) Most times of year, I don't think much about seeds. But as the whole world turns toward winter, with plants dying and turning brown, the value of seeds starts to sink in. Many plants are dying and they're annuals, not perennials. What would happen to the population of these plants if there were no seeds? They would go extinct. Thank goodness for seeds! We don't want to lose all those fine plants. This makes me wonder about the evolution of seeds. When the earth was young, when things were cooling down and life was just beginn
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Songs and Sound

 Songs have been a big part of my life, and probably they are important in most people's lives. Somehow singing has been a component of human culture for thousands of years,  whether in an expression of togetherness, ritual, healing or religion.  I remember loving our music class in grade school. I had my favorite songs from the elementary songbooks and they still resonate with me. Then when I went to a Quaker boarding school for high school, singing became part of my evening life. We'd have a gathering each evening and part of it was singing folk songs with a guitar accompanying us. My college years had very little music, but once I got married, my husband and I bought a business that printed pocket-sized songbooks. The business was created by Lynn and Catherine Rohrbaugh in 1923, and we were lucky enough to know their grandson when the original owners were getting too old to continue. We moved all the equipment (huge printing press, folders, stitchers, cutters, light tables,
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Herbs as Medicine: a Workshop in Learning About and Harvesting Medicinal Plants - Saturday, November 2, 1:00

It's probably no surprise to you that healing plants are a favorite hobby of mine. For the past 50 years, starting when my children were babies, I began learning about how different herbs can improve our health and cure some maladies. When I lived at our family farm, I had a huge medicinal herb garden and gave workshops in how to grow, harvest, prepare and use different ones. Now that I live at Prairie Hill, I'm fortunate enough to have a large "adopted plot" right at our entrance, and it's full of perennial medicinals. Now it's the time of year to harvest, especially the ones whose roots have the best healing properties. It's been a couple years since I've given a workshop in these life-benefiting plants, so it seems time to do it again. The next free Saturday here at Prairie Hill is two weeks from today, Nov. 2nd. I've reserved the common house living room for 1:00 then, and we'll gather there for a show and tell. I'll have examples of va
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One Day's Journey from Fear to Resilience

 After a couple days of being under the weather, I decided to catch up on what is going on in the world. Now that I was feeling better, it was time to engage more broadly than the surroundings of my own cozy little home. But oh my, it was such a downer! The world news flattened my spirit. Then I got a call from my daughter April. She and her family survived the terrible devastation of Asheville recently. She called from an emergency shelter where she and her son Gus were volunteering to distribute food and water and other necessities to the surrounding population there. And she told me how the wonderful FEMA volunteers helping out after that severe crisis were getting attacked by right wing fanatics, forcing them to leave the area. There were hateful, ugly, scurrilous things being said about people just trying to do the best thing they knew.  And listening to the wider news, I was yet again saddened and angered by the lies, lack of morality, the heedless disregard for one's fellow
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Green Homecoming

 Green Homecoming I’m sitting in the warm companionship of my newly migrated houseplants, just moved in from the front porch,  out of danger of cold and frost, into the protection of my home, For the first time in five months, I feel softly surrounded by intimate friends  as I watch baseball reruns on my TV,  leafy living green on either side of me. After spending the day heaving and lifting, trimming and watering, moving furniture here and there, finally a place was found for all these members of my family. Maybe I don’t need a kitty after all. Most of these plants have been with me for years, and yet again I realize they are like my beloved pets. I wonder if they can feel that love. Whether in my imagination or not, I sense a gratitude on both sides.
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Two More Weeds That Have Gifts for Us

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 I'm off to Maine to visit my daughter and her husband early tomorrow, so I'm getting off another post about beneficial weeds before I leave. We are in quite a drought here in eastern Iowa. I went out this morning to take pictures of Plantain and Burdock, and you can tell by the results that these plants would love some rain! However, even in their slightly wilted state they'll be recognizable to many of you. The first one below, Plantain, is one of my favorite plants. This is not the banana-like plantain that you may be familiar with, but a low-growing small plant that loves compacted soil. If you want to find some, just go to a path or trail where lots of animals or people walk. That's where they are happiest. Long ago I was taught that their leaves are a miracle skin-healer, and I've used them as the main ingredient in the healing salves I've made since then. I had thought they were just good for external use, but now I find that actually they are taken inter
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