Backcountry Almanac
February 1, 2008
Flower: Violet Stone: Amethyst Tree: Ash Herb: Balm of Gilead
Focus: purification, reconciliation, peacemaking
01 New Beginnings
02 Imbolc/ Candlemas: transformation from death to life.
Festival of Brigid: blessing of fields and seeds
03 Income tax imposed 1913
04 Rosa Parks b. 1913
05 Feast of Isis, the healer / Shrove Tuesday
06 Bob Marley’s birthday// Wm Burroughs b.1914//
New Moon in Aquarius @ 7:44 p.m.Lunar Eclipse
07 Chinese New Year, year of the Rat
08 Celebration of the Triple Goddess: Virgin-Mother-Crone
09 Pluto discovered, 1930
10 Celebration of the tripple goddess: Virgin-Mother-Crone
11 Lourdes apparition
12 Abe Lincoln b.1809 “You have to do your own growing
no matter how tall your father was.”
13 First draft card burning, 1947
Lupercalia, St. Valentine’s Day: celebrating love
Selma march to Montgomery, 1965
Prohibition repealed, 1933 (time to legalize all drugs)
Audre Lord b. 1934 // Toni Morrisson b. 1931
FDR sends Japanese US citizens to concentration camps, 1942
Full Moon in Virgo @ 7:30 p.m., total Lunar Eclipse
Anais Nin b.1903
Frederic Chopin b.1810
Feast of Aphrodite & Eros – honor love and passion
26 Johnny Cash b. 1932
29 Leap day// Dee Brown b. 1908, author
Planets visible in the morning sky: Mercury from the 13th, Venus, Jupiter, & Saturn through the 24th
Planets visible in the evening sky: Mars, and Saturn from the 24th
February planting days
Above ground crops: 8,9,12,13,16,17
Root crops/perennials: 3,4,23,24,25,26,27
“You can’t hoard fun. It has no shelf life.” - Hunter Thompson
February is here and the earth is waking up. You might call the first of this month the quickening; when new life stirs. You can detect it in the lengthening days and in the bits of green peeking up in moist places. The Latin root word for February means purification. Ancient world traditions call for bonfires to burn away the old and to welcome the Sun in triumph over darkness.
Plants long in dormancy begin to show signs of life. Newly planted seeds sprout and grow more quickly now. This is the time that gardeners in southern Arizona begin the spring gardening season in earnest. Though you may have some crops growing under row cover already, growth will pick up speed now. Plants that grow quickly tend to have a sweeter flavor and be tenderer. It’s time to sow lettuce, carrots, beets, turnips, radish, mustard, Chinese greens, peas, Swiss chard, cilantro, onions, and parsley in the garden. Set broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower plants outdoors. Nights will get quite cold still. Be prepared to cover plants with floating row cover or old sheets as protection. Plants suffer from strong wind, too, so put up barriers to deflect it. Straw bales are effective, as are hedgerows of taller plants.
Start peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, and calendulas indoors now. Potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes and onion sets get planted early in March. Depending upon your elevation, the last frost date is around May 5 in Arivaca.
We’ve known for half a century that gardening organically is the responsible way to go for the sake of the consumers and for the soil. Now there is more supporting evidence for such a statement come from Britain.
A study carried out by Professor Carlo Leifert, at the Tesco Centre for Organic Agriculture at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom, has found that food grown organically - particularly fruits, vegetables and milk - are more nutritious than those produced by conventional methods.
According to the four-year study, the organic foods contained up to more than 40 percent more antioxidants than non-organic. The study also found high levels of minerals such as iron and zinc in organic produce.
With milk, the advantage increases. Organic milk provides up to 60 percent more antioxidants, as well as more of the healthy omega-3 fatty acids. In addition, researchers found less of the bad fats.
The differences in soil will likely be the main factor. Enriching soil with organic matter provides not just the basic nutrients but micronutrients as well. Organic matter supports microorganisms that are involved in nutrient uptake. And perhaps something in pesticides and herbicides themselves affects a plant’s ability to absorb nutrients.
“A psychotic is someone who just found out what’s going on.” -William Burroughs
You cannot get the real news from the major media, however you can find it via the Internet. The bad news is that the world House of Cards is falling fast. The good news is that thousands of people are aware and working to solve or mitigate the crisis.
The Guardian ran a story on January 5, 2008 called ‘50 People who could save the planet’. The nominees are varied and interesting. You will recognize Cormac MacCarthy as author of a number of excellent novels about the southwest border country.
“The Road, by the 74-year-old American writer Cormac McCarthy, imagines a father and his son trudging south through a landscape where nature and civilization are in their death throes. It’s oppressive, horrifying and poetic, and is widely seen as both a parable and the logical extension of the earth’s physical degeneration. His predictions may be scientifically fanciful, but the book, published last year, may have far more influence in the next 30 years than any number of statistics and front line reports. It was nominated by George Monbiot, who says, “It could be the most important environmental book ever. It is a thought experiment that imagines a world without a biosphere, and shows that everything we value depends on the ecosystem.” To see the list of the other 49 names go to: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jan/05/activists.ethicalliving
A couple of years ago I shared the fluoride story with readers. Now there’s more proof.
An industrial by-product consumed by millions of Americans, fluoride lowers IQ and causes cancer. A major new Scientific American report concluded that “Scientific attitudes toward fluoridation may be starting to shift” as new evidence emerges of the poison’s link to disorders affecting teeth, bones, the brain and the thyroid gland, as well as lowering IQ. “Today almost 60 percent of the U.S. population drinks fluoridated water, including residents of 46 of the nation’s 50 largest cities,” reports Scientific American’s Dan Fagin.
97% of western Europe has rejected fluoridated water due to the known health risks, In Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg fluoridation of water was rejected because it was classified as compulsive medication against the subject’s will and therefore violated fundamental human rights.
Good water is one of our treasures. Guard it well. Show gratitude for having it.
Long life, honey in the heart, no evil, 13 thank yous.
“If you suffer your people to be ill-educated and their manners corrupted from infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded, sire, but that you first make thieves and then punish them?”
-Thomas More, Utopia
From ‘Redemption Song’
Bob Marley
Won’t you help to sing these songs of freedom
Cause all I ever had redemption songs,
Redemption songs
Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds
Have no fear for atomic energy
Cause none of them can stop the time
How long shall they kill our prophets
While we stand aside and look
Yes, some say it’s just a part of it
We’ve got to fulfil the book …
———————————————
Come live with me and be my Love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
Or woods or steepy mountain yields.
-Christopher Marlowe; ‘The Passionate Shepherd to His Love’
Brigid went out in the early dawn,
And saw a horse with a shattered leg.
Bone to bone she knit, flesh to flesh,
Vein to vein she sewed, sinew back to sinew.
Brigid, by her woman’s power, healed.
And by my woman’s power, I can heal myself.
-Traditional Irish Song
Professionals Urge End to Water Fluoridation
http://science-community.sciam.com/thread.jspa?threadID=300005929
New York - December 4, 2007 — In a statement released August 9, 2007, over 600 (now 1,200) professionals urge Congress to stop water fluoridation until congressional hearings are conducted. They cite new scientific evidence that fluoridation, long promoted to fight tooth decay, is ineffective and has serious health risks. (http://www.fluorideaction.org/statement.august.2007.html) Signers include a Nobel Prize winner, three members of the prestigious 2006 National Research Council (NRC) panel that reported on fluoride’s toxicology, two officers in the Union representing professionals at EPA headquarters, the President of the International Society of Doctors for the Environment, and hundreds of medical, dental, academic, scientific and environmental professionals, worldwide. Signer Dr. Arvid Carlsson, winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize for Medicine, says, “Fluoridation is against all principles of modern pharmacology. It’s really obsolete.” An Online Action Petition to Congress in support of the Professionals’ Statement is available on FAN’s web site, http://www.fluorideaction.org
Copyright 2008 Meg Keoppen
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