Category: Odds & Ends
A MID-SUMMER CELEBRATION
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| In addition to the four great festivals of the Pagan Celtic year, there are four lesser holidays as well: the two solstices and the two equinoxes. In folklore, these are referred to as the four “quarter days” of the year, and modern Witches call them the four “Lesser Sabbats”, or the four “Low Holidays”. The summer solstice is one of them.
Technically, a solstice is an astronomical point and, due to the calendar creep of the leap-year cycle, the date may vary by a few days depending on the year. The summer solstice occurs when the sun reaches the… |
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Make Your Own Paints from Local Rocks: Watercolors, Oils, and Egg Tempera from the Land!
Local Iron Oxide taken from a mineral spring, crushed, ground, sifted and made into paint!
When I walk along the landscape here, I am greeted with the deep oranges and yellow oxides of our soils laden with heavy amounts of clay and iron. These colors are reflected each time I dig into the subsoil, and as I drive through the countryside where mountains were cut through for roads. In other places, I might be greeted with reds, blues, or greens, all reflected in the geology of the land. Each region carries its own colors, and you can find the palate of the land in every stream bed. Even an hour drive in any direction puts one in a new geological region–and this changes the colors of the stones and the soil. You might think about these colors like a language–each landscape has its own language that you can learn to…
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Herbal Bouquets for Mother’s Day – Traditional Medicinals
In the English and European Victorian era, gifting herbs and flowers were used to relay secret messages. When you received a flower bouquet, you would sit down with your dictionary and try to decipher what it meant; honeysuckle for devotion, aster for patience, and roses for love. Fast forward to modern times, important life milestones like births, graduations, buying a new home, and career changes are almost always accompanied by flower gifts. While today it’s not our first choice of communication, a flower bouquet can make a lovely homemade and eco-friendly gift for just about anyone in your life, and can certainly contain an intention.
Plants and floral bouquets have a long-standing tradition as Mother’s Day gifts, and with good reason. There’s a simple and well-understood joy that comes from a vibrant and beautiful bouquet on the kitchen table. We have all felt it, botanical bliss; it’s like a type…
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The Eight Women on The Wall: Nurses Who Made the Ultimate Sacrifice
The names of eight women, all nurses (seven from the Army and one from the Air Force), are inscribed next to their fallen brothers on The Wall in Washington, D.C.
(L to R: 1st. Lt. Hedwig Orlowski, 2nd Lt. Carol Drazba, 1st. Lt.Sharon Lane, Capt. Mary Klinker, Capt. Eleanor Alexander, 2nd Lt. Elizabeth Jones, 2nd Lt. Pamela Donovan, LTC Annie Graham)
Each dedicated themselves to taking care of the wounded and dying.
See their faces and remember their names. These are their stories.
1st Lt. Sharon Ann Lane of Canton, Ohio.
1st Lieutenant Sharon Ann Lane, U.S. Army was killed by a rocket explosion on June 8, 1969, less than 10 weeks after she arrived in Vietnam. Assigned to the 312th Evacuation Hospital, 1LT Lane was working in the Vietnamese ward of the hospital when the rocket exploded, killing her and her patients. She was from Ohio and her name can be…
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Holiday Egg Dyeing with Herbs – Traditional Medicinals
As herbalists, we are naturally intrigued by all plants – for their historical use as traditional medicine, but also for art and creativity. We mark the passage of time with the growing and blooming of the plants we love, and with spring in our midst, we feel the natural urge to be more creative and to brighten up our homes. One such way is using plants as a natural dye. It’s a lovely activity for the Easter holiday, as traditionally eggs were decorated and hung on tree branches to symbolize the fertility of the spring season. It’s also a fun, anytime activity to do with children to celebrate spring!
MATERIALS & INGREDIENTS
Materials needed:
- 5-10 containers, glass or plastic to use as vessels for plant dye
- Small saucepan
- Spoons
- Cookie rack
Ingredients needed:
- White Eggs: In order to get a clear sense of the dye colors, white eggs will be…
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The Goddess Feasts: The Magic of Gratitude, Pleasure and Plenty — Gather Victoria
This April I’m celebrating Goddess Cuisine. I made a Floralia Cake for the Goddess of Flowers, Violet Cream Cupcakes for Venus, honeyed libations for the Goddess Bona Dea and a savoury fresh white cheese made with plenty of “herbs and blossoms born of the earth’s free will” for the Great Mother, Cybele. And more! This…
via The Goddess Feasts: The Magic of Gratitude, Pleasure and Plenty — Gather Victoria
Refurbished bus turned mobile classroom helping to educate San Francisco’s disadvantaged adults — Life & Soul Magazine
San Francisco nonprofit Five Keys has transformed a city bus into a mobile classroom, providing a space for the city’s disadvantaged residents to learn. The first-of-its-kind mobile classroom has a library, a cozy study nook, Internet access, Chromebooks, white boards, desks, and a teacher. The refurbished bus, which is emblazoned with the tagline The Self-Determination […]
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