Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
Urban Herb School Workshops: THIS WEEKEND
Hey folk! I’m on the road, but just got this email regarding Urban Herb School workshops this weekend and next. I’ve never taken one of Garliq’s workshops, but have only heard good things about him. I would highly recommend all three of these on that basis (and also because this is the super-useful stuff of herbalism and fermenting as far as I’m concerned – I really would love to learn about mustard plasters at this time of year!) There are a few spaces left in these workshop – and also if I have enough interested friends in one of these I would also love to host something in January maybe (see below, if I can get 6-12 people together we can put on a workshop).
Anyhow – onto the Urban Herb School email:
Creams, Salves & Oils
Sat. Nov. 27
12pm – 4pm
It’s sorta funny that our skin often dries out during the wettest season. Buying commercial creams, salves and body oils can get quite pricey.
So, this class is going to teach the simplicity and ease of making our own creams, salves and body oils. We’re going to make a …
- Calendula Cream – moisten and nourish dry, chapped or red skin
- Heal All Salve – a potent all-purpose salve for scrapes, burns and “owies”
- Warming Massage Oil – a soothing blend of infused oils that will take the ache out!
In this 4 hour class, we’ll go from start of finish on 3 recipes that you’ll get to take home with you. We’ll also sample a few different creams and salves and talk about the healing properties of the herbs we’re using.
Cost – $60 (includes samples in pretty containers)
Location – East Van – Urban Ashram
**In order to support both the practice of D.I.Y. Gifting and to increase the likelihood of people applying what they’ve learned, each workshop has a Kit for sale.
Kit – Creams, Salves & Massage Oil – with curvy bottles and nice glass jars!
Warming Up for Cold & Flu Season
Sun. Nov. 28
12pm – 4pm
This is a really fun class! We’ll make medicines and practise using them. We make a really good Home Remedy Kit to help with Prevention, Immune Support, Symptom Relief and Recovery. Things like Fire Cider, Licorice Cough Syrup, Garlic Honey and Cedar Baths can provide a tremendous support to keep us healthy. We’ll also make an excellent Fever Remedy that’s fantastic for children!
All the remedies made will have some teaching and discussion about how, when and why to use them safely and effectively.
We’ll practice working with some of the tools to deepen our learning for example, we’ll mix & apply mustard plasters and maybe we’ll have time to play with a Vapor Rub or steam.
Everyone will be able to take home some of everything we make.
Cost – $60 (includes samples in pretty containers)
Location – East Van – Urban Ashram
**In order to support both the practice of D.I.Y. Gifting and to increase the likelihood of people applying what they’ve learned, each workshop has a Kit for sale.
Kit – Home Flu Kit – (still being worked out)
Herbal Fermentation
Sat. Dec. 4th
12pm – 4pm
Herbal Ferments make it really Fun to take herbs! (Both as medicine and as food). It’s a great activity with friends or family to create a culture of health and nutrition. It can be really simple and easy! In this 4 hr class, we’ll make 3 different herbal ferments and everyone will take home a jar of each.
- Herbal Kombucha
- Herbal Root Beer with ginger “bug”
- Wild Krout
We’ll play with recipes for nutritive and medicinal herb blends. We’ll talk about health and safety around home fermenting. And most importantly, we’ll roll up our sleeves, put on our aprons and work with the yeast and bacteria that we want in our bodies.
Cost – $60 (includes samples in pretty containers)
Location – East Van – Urban Ashram
**In order to support both the practice of D.I.Y. Gifting and to increase the likelihood of people applying what they’ve learned, each workshop has a Kit for sale.
Kit: Herbal Kombucha Kit – herbs, jar, mother, sugar
Check out Garliq’s bio & qualifications.
How to Register
- Space is limited, please register early to ensure your spot.
- Please email Garliq at LivingMedicine@riseup.net
- In the Subject please include the Name of the Workshop you’d like to attend.
- Information specific to the event will be forwarded to registrants.
How to Attend for Free
- The Urban Herb School has been primarily an outdoor school so far. It’s time to move indoors! And specifically, into YOUR kitchens!
- Host a Workshop or arrange a Private Party for 6-12 friends + Attend for Free!
- **All workshop have a 2 hr version**
- Contact Garliq for details – LivingMedicine@riseup.net
Our backyard in order of work
A brief photo gallery of 18 months of work on our backyard – quite the change since we moved in a year and a half ago – infinitely more pleasing to us. Lawn to backyard grocery and great hangout space!
Front Hall Mod
Our front hallway has been driving me a bit crazy since we moved in. For whatever reason, the previous owners of this house painted the tiny entrance way a deep coal-blue which just made it look impossibly small. On top of that, we never adequately dealt with our need for proper storage space when we moved in last year, and just threw down some hooks and shoe shelves without thinking too much about it. The combined result is in the Before picture below.
Messy, yes? And so dark and jumbled that even in the daytime it was hard to find your stuff among the hooks and piles of shoes. It needed to be brighter, I thought – and *way* more organized. Not to mention that B. has a habit of dropping keys, change, bits of paper, on the living room table when he comes home and I wanted to make a place just for his bits and pieces.
The result of all this thinking (and Brian’s willingness to paint) is below! A yellow paint to match the yellow in a Mexican tin mirror of Brian’s, three wall-to-wall shelves, a coat hanger, a mailbox for Brian’s things and all fixtures spray-painted the same red to contrast against the walls.There is still one more piece to come which is a curtain that will hang in front of the shelves and can be closed when we need to hide any mess. I haven’t got the fabric yet, but will post my final “after” picture here when I do.
We are amazed at the transformation!
So too, we move on.
I just booked travel for next week – Vancouver to Kelowna, Kelowna to Penticton, Penticton to Nanaimo (by way of Vancouver), then Nanaimo to Vancouver. Four days. Four meetings. But if I make it through they will be my last ones so I don’t even care enough to moan about it anymore. Four meetings this week, four meetings next week. Over.
I’m struggling right now with issues of bullying and violence – bullying as it relates to my experience in my union, violence as it relates to something that happened to a friend on Friday night. Both scenarios involve people “ganging up” in order to shore up their courage, in a “might makes right” way of winning an argument. Depressing how often this tendency shows up among people really.
What I do know about it though, from having witnessed mob violence in my younger years, is that after the fact people rarely feel good about themselves for participating in it. Whether that’s verbal bullying and shouting in a meeting, or physical attacks involving more than one on one. In the moment, it feels righteous, but in the days or months afterward (if you have any human compassion at all) it starts to wear pretty crappy – and pretty soon you wish it had never happened at all.
Why? Because deep down we know it changes nothing to respond in anger and with force to other people in our community. And if we grew up right, we also know that more than one on one is simply not fair. I have noticed a tendency in my own union experience for people to vent and then apologize or shake hands immediately afterward which I think is some of that self-awareness in the moment – that it’s better to reintroduce ourselves than go away feeling blackened by the experience.
It is true that there are some who inure themselves through repeated exposure (either aimed away from or towards), or who can handily set aside their individual intellect long enough to go along with the group time after time – and if you stay submerged in that world, then it is true that you might never re-grasp the common humanity that binds us. But most people find it difficult to stay in one sub-culture forever, in one core group of belief – and if we grow, then our past is something we have to reconcile in that process.
And trust me, I know a lot about reconciling my past with myself and the people who I care about. All the losses, all the love, all the arguments that didn’t mean anything in the end anyways. They sit with you, show up in the middle of the night, inform every decision you make forever after. Fortunately, what I have learned from this is that I am not afraid to draw a line in the sand and move towards a healthier place – refocus my activism away from the negative forces and towards the positive ones – create safety as much as possible using the means at my disposal to do so.
I am not going to waste my time and energy crying at the door to be let in. I am not going to live my life cut off from my higher purpose (which in various forms I believe to be service to my community). But I am starting to feel exhausted from it, you know? And when we look at this nonsense from any type of analytic perspective, it becomes so clear why we are not winning. What exactly is the inspiration in this?
Faith and politics
There are those nowadays who would regard faith in socialism as even more eccentric than the exotic conviction that the Blessed Virgin Mary was assumed body and soul into heaven. Why, then, do some of us still cling to this political faith, in the teeth of what many would regard as reason and solid evidence? Not only, I think, because socialism is such an extraordinarily good idea that it has proved exceedingly hard to discredit, and this despite its own most strenuous efforts. It is also because one cannot accept that this – the world we see groaning in agony around us – is the only way things could be, though empirically speaking this might certainly prove to be the case, because one gazes with wondering bemusement on those hard-headed types for whom all this, given a reformist tweak or two, is as good as it gets; because to back down from this vision would be to betray what one feels are the most precious powers and capacities of human beings; because however hard one tries, one simply cannot shake off the primitive conviction that this is not how it is supposed to be, however much we are conscious that this seeing the world in the light of Judgement Day, as Walter Benjamin might put it, is folly to the financiers and a stumbling block to stockbrokers; because there is something in this vision which calls to the depths of one’s being and evokes a passionate assent there; because not to feel this would not to be oneself; because one is too much in love with this vision of humankind to back down, walk away, or take no for an answer.
Terry Eagleton, from Faith, Reason & Revolution
Red Cedar 