Earth Medicine

I want to know how on earth it is possible to live for this many decades without knowing that equal parts of apple cider vinegar and honey mixed is one of the best cough remedies going? Apples, flowers, bees: that's a pretty direct line of defense (or attack!) if you ask me.

Check out Youtube for a playful, instructional video about this remedy and a glimpse of what it could mean for the pharmaceuticals folks. I won't connect any dots here or assert something I can't corroborate. But we're a thinking people, yes? Let's think about this. How can such a thing escape notice for so long? (I can't be the only one...) Why isn't this taught in schools? Why do we spend a bundle on medicines we can make ourselves--more naturally and perhaps more effectively--for pennies? Why indeed.

Well all that aside, thank you Google, thank you to the wonders of technology for enlightening me--in about 60 seconds flat, no less--about this no-doubt ancient cure, made simply from simple ingredients commonly found in any ordinary kitchen. I like the low carbon footprint, too.

Earth 1; Pharmacy 0. Love it. I'd like to think this a sign of the times. I'd like to think we'll all be doing a lot more "back to the Earth"-ing in the days, weeks, years to come, with untold benefit to all concerned.

Horton Heard a Hoo

Well, the Boston Bruins won the Stanley Cup last night, and with a flair and a flourish. It's taken this team 39 years to reach this ultimate moment, and they have plenty of cause to celebrate. I lingered after the game to share in their jubilation. That's how I learned about Horton's contribution to the effort. Nathan Horton had been sidelined early in the series by an injury. Still, he wanted to do his part, apparently.

"It wasn't my idea, but I did it," he said to the newsman with a glimmer of triumph in his voice.

At first I didn't know what he was talking about. But a pre-game clip showed Horton surreptitiously pouring some water onto the Vancouver ice. It seemed he had scraped some Boston Garden ice into his Gatorade bottle, flown it to British Columbia, and then emptied it out onto the rink just before this decisive Game 7 got underway.

But why? That's what the interviewers and viewers wanted to know, if they hadn't figured it out already.

"We wanted to put our ice on their ice and make it our ice,” Horton explained.

I heard him tell this a few times to different interviewers from difference stations. Each time he used the same words: "We wanted to put our ice on their ice and make it our ice.”

Cool. Very cool. I like the line of thinking. I liked the energy, the creativity of it. Did it make a difference? Did it in fact help win the game?

In the world of energy, there's no limit to what one particle, one drop, one thought can hold. When that water hit the rink, it carried Horton's intention with it. Did it transform the Vancouver ice--like fairy dust turns pumpkin to coach, tatters to ball gown, dross to gold--just like that?

Who can say for certain. All I know is Horton heard a 'hoo' and followed it. And come to think of it, the Bruins kind of looked like they were playing a home game. And...well anyway, the rest, as they say, is history.

Thoughts about a Spider

The spider was happily crawling across a pansy leaf before it fully registered that I had carried it by its filament, yes? off of my leg and away. Surely by the filament. I would have remembered touching the spider body, yes? And anyway, I probably would've crushed it that way, so very small as it was. It all transpired in a split second.

What a marvel, this. I have swept the tiny creature off of me and safely onto a nearby plant before even registering consciously what I was doing. It's automatic in me then, I think: preservation of living things. And that thought sets my mind going. To the boys at the Little League field some years ago, stomping out much bigger bugs than this--and with parental encouragement no less. To the Jews, that much more shocking stomping out we call the Holocaust. And to the direct line between these--tiny creature to small creature to large creature. Something is killed because it is deemed...nothing, or offensive, too different, unwelcome or wrong--or on the "wrong" side of a door or screen or national border. [That] (fill in the that) is less than; I am better. I stay and it goes. Whether consciously or not, a judgment is made. On what basis? According to what rulers or values?

I made no judgment about the spider. I simply acted, by reflex, in favor of Life.