Fabulous, scented, blossèd May!! When I think of the apple blossoms during this month, my mind recalls the language of Byron, and the romance the British Lord felt as he gallivanted gaily about Greece with Percy Byce Shelley, and Mary Shelley, their trusty better half!
Was that from Byrons' ample stock of Poetry? It may have been on the wind between Byron and Shelley........ Who knows where it comes from........ it is poetry recorded in berries and leaves for alltime. Mine to know and on the breeze to blow.
Formerly, on the home page, I have mentioned that there was a time when I was introduced to Herbs and subsequently to Herb Medicines and recipes.
When I was about twenty two ( almost 32 years ago) the first Health Food stores began to open in Toronto. They smelled of Foenugreek and curry, hay and honey.
I loved the hip look of the new type of store, and
bought hundreds of pounds of brown rice (at 17 cents a pound),cashews, raisins
and figs.
As I slimmed from brown rice and vegetarian diet, I spent many happy
hours over tea and cookies with my local friends. Each of us stocked with new
herb sensations like Chamomile Tea, Red Zinger, or natural leaf tea like
Gunpowder ( a green Chinese tea). As we sipped, we discussed the valuable
properties of each tea - Sleepytime Catnip, Lemon, there were only a handful of
teas at the time, but we enjoyed them.
"We always cooked with honey", and
sweetened our brew naturally.
We did not really know it, but just the
preliminary exploration into natures' way had automatically begun to improve our
health. Even just using honey instead of white sugar.
Shortly, we began to talk
about the "stone" or "high" we were acheiving from our exploration. In our set,
all youth explored the Health Food stores and a newer concept-
the Naturopath.
Our alternative healing centres were
frowned on by some establishment people in Medicine.
It may seem very far away and impossible
today, but Medicine in those days was almost 100% male-dominated. No-one dared
buck the status quo, and if your GP told you sugar was good for your liver, that
is what you ate, by the barrel !
Your Doctor did not approve of Homeopathy,
calling it bunk and quackery. Herb medicines were treated with some paranoia -
who could measure the amount necessary for safe healing if herbs were available
wholesale?
In those days, the Canadian patient or consumer was treated roughly
like the way Americans are sheltered , even today- they are treated like babies.
(I have read that even their university libraries did not serve political readers with books on the
subject of Marxism, for example.)
Since the days of McCarthy, a type of folk paranoia has been fostered
by the very male patriarchy that forbade women to seek out Med doctorates in the
old days,and this chauvinism lingers on.)
Information was not at our disposal readily, as it
is today on the net. Instead, not wishing to be uninformed, we sought newer
books on natural healing and diet.
I lived on minimum wage, so I do not know how I afforded so many glossy books on Natural healing, but I had many. One of the principal reasons I started to explore Herb remedies that I could grow or collect myself, is that young parents simply cannot afford the cost of Pharmaceuticals.
In Canada or the US, Marijuana is included in some regular pharmaceuticals.
Some herbs are so necessary to good health in the wild kingdom, that actual educated agrarian consciousness should be applied, when selecting land for raising herbs that have narcotics.
If wisdom is not applied, massive soil erosion can result.
You can read how American drug dealers and their families are treated in an article linked to my page on Medical Marijuana.The US is certainly behind Canada in its legal arrangements for Marijuana users or growers, but there is a compassion principle with regard to the medical need for this herb, and also legalized agriculture for the purpose of supplying actual medicine (in some states).
Granted, Marijuana is a narcotic, and should be governed by consumption rules and taxation, just like cigarettes.
Also given, cocaine dealing must be stopped.
But the researchers who have paved
the way towards a better view of such worthwhile medicines as cannabis have had
many roadblocks against their revaluing the herb away from street-level sales.
Some of the people arrested and jailed for growing weed may be tomorrows' par excellence
pharmacists.Jailing them is a waste of human-power.
People these days have such greater access to information and
supplies, that there may be millions of unpapered scientists or agrarians who are
worth their salt but for the permits, and the jail sentences.
Back to the "stone" or natural "high" we young people felt, gradually making our bodies well with clean foods and benign beverages.
Almost overnight, we herb and food proselytists met with the pork and
potato crowd of yesteryear.
They had "pork bellies", porky attitudes and were
labelled MCPs, or Male Chauvinist Pigs, even if they were ladies of the pork
persuasion.
We young people revelled in calling the then violent Toronto police
force "pigs" as well.
We were surrounded by the enemy- PORK! Hysterically, we
decried the pork ethics being shoved down our throats, and for a good reason. As
the light dawned, it seems that officers, Meat producers and the A.N.N. were
communally opposed and sometimes downright paranoid of our natural high from
good, healthy ways.
These are ways fairly well accepted circa 2002 (time of writing), because of
formal medical research.
We realized that we were being even physically attacked
over pure foods diet alone.
We noticed that police stalked and pestered hippy
yogin, eastern or transcendental meditators, in fact, anyone different who
explored the reshaping Global Village our 70's Muse (Marshall McLuhan) had
predicted.
These people became so mean that a knowledge of natural and herb medicine and of alternative healing themes became an essential in the fight against the Establishment.
Our Doctors are not such willies as to dominate their patients today, when they seek alternative remedies. They explore them with the patient, with great interest. They, in fact, prefer non-violence and clean science to the heavy tactics of Policing establishments.
But they
prescribe drugs which can be narcotics the Police don't like.
I once had a
Government - monitored anticoagualant which may have had an experimental coca
derivative in it. It was not a high or a stone, just life-giving.
After I had been internally burned and even agonized several times by Government antagonists toward any coca derivative (in their search for its use) , I noticed that I was not alone. An officer of my acquaintance was suffering the same indignity of torture that I, and quite a few old ladies were having to bear, just to save our lives.
I was only too happy to find that Evening Primrose Oil and Yarrow tea were excellent, safe alternatives to my anticoagulant, Anturan.
In our suffering, we have come full circle. A 'pig' is my brother and comrade-at-arms. But the arms are knowledge, and the piggery is in a lack of discretionary capabilities for researching real drug abuse.
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