Need some feedback from all y'all. About a month ago, I was asked to host a radio talk show for a local station in Prescott. As many of you know, I already do a radio show, not about herbs but about fantasy sci-fi books and authors, called The Dragon Page. The station in question was running our other show and had a 30 minute weekend slot to fill. Sounded like fun, so I said yes.
Fast-forward a few weeks, and the program director that offered me the show has lost her job, and my other show has lost a station. Ouch. But hey, I've grown used to playing the curve balls tossed at me by the Universe.
So now I'm at a crossroad. I'm pretty jazzed about the idea for the show, but have no station to air it. I've already acquired a domain name (weedsofchange.com) and a space to host the info from the show. I'm seriously considering recording a couple of shows and putting them up on the site for download, hoping to get a station or network interested.
So whadda ya think? Something I should do? Or shelf it for now...? Oh, I suppose it would help to cover the premise of the show. I want to interview a guest each week and spend the first half of the show talking about their specialty. Authors, cottage manufacturers, teachers and hosts of other herb-related guests come to mind. The second half would be dedicated to exploring that guests particular "passion" or calling. I want this to get a bit neo-political and somewhat controversial!
Finally! Don't get me wrong, it was an interesting experience being in The Big Apple, but I'll be happy to be back in the collective boonies.
NYC should be called The Big Ginkgo Tree. Ginkgo biloba on nearly every street, and millions of people (about eight, to be more precise) completely oblivious to them.
Highlights of the trip include, in no particular order:
One of the great things about three day weekends is learning new stuff. Surprise, surprise-- it was moronically simple to set up a search of this site. I've gotten a few requests/questions about the ability to search, but I never gave it much thought. So now, see the search box in the upper right-hand corner and have a blast!
I'll be away for the next several days, so don't expect too much in the way of posts. See you in about 10 days!
Of great concern to many of us interested and actively pursuing holistic medicine is a question of charging for our services. Unlike many other professions, many of us are in this for our health, and enjoy spreading our knowledge of healing modalities to others.
A recent post from a mailing list I belong to summarizes this struggle quite nicely:
If you want to build the business end into herbal stewardship, then create beautiful scents, pressed herb pictures, illustrated herb needlework, tooled herb images on leather, notecards, soaps, scents and bath products, growing and gardening guides, jigsaw puzzles and games, household hints and articles etc.Let medicine and healing be in the realm of teaching, separate from money, separate from business. The health of the planet is at risk, and is declining due to the "businesses" of medicine, agriculture, and corporate greed. Somewhere there needs to be a standard of tradition where healing and medicine is a part of every household and community wisdom, not a store or building where products and services are "sold" to "consumers".
Thank you, Aliceann, for putting it so succinctly. May the light shine softly on your path...
Not the medicine, mind you, but the dried plant when you're making a glycerite!
I'm a big fan of Astragalus (Astragalus membranaceous) as an immunomodulator. I like to start on a daily regiment for at least three months before the cold season starts. Since we recently moved up 2500 feet in elevation, I'm thinking that cold season might start a bit earlier than normal. And rather than make a tea with it daily (which I'm apt to forget,) I decided to go for a glycerite.
Astragalus is water soluble, so tinctures don't extract the right constituents. A glycerine is just the trick in this instance. Glycerine extracts the water-soluble compounds (some say even better than water,) yet has the preservative properties of alcohol. Plus it tastes great!
As I had only dried Astragalus, I used a 60:40 ratio of glycerine to water. You need some water in your glycerite, unless you're using fresh plant which has a high water content already. The marc to menstruum ratio was 1:5, and I wanted to see how 8 ounces of menstruum would translate into medicine. When making herbal remedies, you always lose some of the liquid to the plant itself, regardless of your press. I have a pneumatic suction pump that I use, which usually results in some really dry spent plant matter when I'm done extracting.
Did I mention Astragalus sucks? I put in 225 ml of menstruum, and got back only 75 ml of glycerite! That's losing 2/3 of your menstruum back to the plant. Simply unheard of! Examining the spent plant, it was awfully moist. Much more moist than anything else I've seen in the past. Lesson learned. I think I'll stick with my daily infusions of Astragalus after this 75 ml is gone...