Survival Food Weekend, Part 1: May Yea

This weekend's paid job was to eat only what I picked in the not-a-lawn, and write about what that is and how you, too, could live for a week or longer on what you find growing in any unsprayed field in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, most of the year.

But first this post needs a disclaimer. For many people, one to six weeks of eating only fresh raw plant food still works, as our ancestors always said it did, as a "spring tonic" to help the body burn up the extra calories and eliminate any by-products it may have accumulated over the winter. For a few people, most of whom know they are ill and are already following a course of treatment prescribed by a doctor, this might be dangerous. If you have any chronic disease (like diabetes) that requires medication, consult your doctor before trying any project like this one.

Next, a second disclaimer. This is a phenology post--what I found in one place (Scott County, Virginia, in a partly sunny field about halfway up the Ridge) at one time (the fourth through the sixth of May, 2019). What you find and eat will be different. What I'd find and eat on another weekend would be different. This series provides a list of the five things I ate (May-Yea), ten things I might have eaten but didn't (May-Be), and ten things I'd warn everyone not to eat (May-Nay).

Then, a general remark. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors ate less protein, less fat, fewer carbs, and fewer calories than we did. That was not all bad. Most of us now use up most of the vitamins and minerals we take in just digesting all the fat, protein, and simple carbs we take in--that's how vegans get by on relatively low levels of B-vitamin consumption. Some of the wild survival foods are extremely rich in nutrients, such that you feel, and are, adequately nourished by small quantities of them. Our ancestors chronically craved meat, sweets, fats, and carbs, but on most days they probably survived without them. The only nutrient deficiency that's likely to become acute in three days would be water, which is not a problem in a place where all these green plants are growing. And Dr. John McDougall has made a career of demonstrating that many of us are actually healthier on a plant-based diet closer to what hunter-gatherers ate.



But I'll admit the richer, less natural food in town looked good to me this morning.

May-Yea: The Five Things I Ate

1. Believe it or not, my main meal was violets. It's been a long, slow spring and one corner of the not-a-lawn is still full of them. As food they'd passed their peak. Fresh new violet blossoms in March and April have a delicate flavor, like lettuce but sweeter; the English used to preserve them in candy or marmalade. This weekend, grazing on different colors (actually different species), I not only didn't enjoy noting subtle differences in flavors, but didn't feel that they had much flavor left at all; violet petals stay soft but they lose the tiny amount of crispness and juiciness that makes them such a treat when they're fresh.

(My four species, not very well photographed, are discussed at https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2015/04/phenology-various-violets.html .)

All violets are edible. Even the leaves are edible. The problem, if there is one, is that they're very rich in nutrients. "Health food" people laugh, but both Grandma Bonnie Peters and I have cooked for non-granola types who've panicked when they felt the mostly beneficial effect of high doses of Vitamin C! The body flushes the extra acid away naturally, and people who are locked into the idea of doing Numbers Two and Three only once a day call this flushing effect "running to the bathroom all day." This is a transition effect that subsides if you eat a plant-rich diet, and it's basically healthy; just be prepared.

2. Dandelions aren't weeds; they're vegetables. Like the violets, they were still abundant, but past their peak as food treats. The longer a dandelion leaf is, the older, tougher, and more bitter. For a mild, pleasant bitterness that enlivens a salad, pick leaves shorter than your finger. Again, they're rich in nutrients, and have a stimulant effect on the kidneys rather like coffee, so don't eat too many. Ten or twelve leaves per person is probably enough.When grazing in the not-a-lawn, I eat one leaf at a time, and pay attention to when I start to feel that I've had enough of that bitter green flavor.

This photo by Morethanordinary, available at https://morguefile.com/creative/morethanordinary/1/P1010456 , shows a typical dandelion plant in May or even April. Once the flowers bloom, most of the leaves are tough and bitter, but the little inner leaves next to the flowers are still young enough to taste good as a snack or salad garnish.

(More things to do with dandelions are discussed at https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2011/11/ten-ways-to-appreciate-dandelions.html .)

3. Dock is an old English word for any green "weed." My elders usually used it to mean a plant they might more specifically have called "broad dock," usually called burdock or gobo, Arctium lappa, but the term also included a plant they called "nar'dock" (narrow dock), Rumex crispus. Both have long, narrow, tender and juicy leaves. Both plants have many uses. The leaves have a sour, bitter taste that warns you not to eat too many...five or six are plenty for a snack or salad.

This photo by Marjari at Pixabay, available at https://pixabay.com/photos/creek-burdock-water-summer-duct-358297/ , shows burdock leaves from a foreshortened view (they'd be longer and narrower if not pointed right at the camera), and most leaves are already too big to be palatable raw--though excellent for salve, at this stage.

In England "dandelion and burdock" refers to a fermented drink, but when my elders spoke of "dock and dandelion" they meant the greens, which they picked out of the garden before planting, cleaned, boiled, and ate like spinach. Cooked together, they had a powerful "tonic, cleansing," laxative effect and intense sour-bitter taste that makes spinach, kale, or even mustard seem mellow. Even if you're hungry, one or two bowls full of these greens is probably plenty for a whole season. That acerbic quality that warns you off eating very many dock leaves comes from oxalic acid, which can bind other nutrients and unbalance your diet.

Burdock root is considered a delicacy in some countries (slivered and stir-fried), but I grew up using mature dock mostly as a cleansing and healing salve for any kind of skin irritation. Euell Gibbons reported that children used to crush a leaf and hold it on irritated skin while chanting "Nettle in, dock out, dock rub nettle out." The idea of needing to chant the words in the right tone and tune was pure Magical Thinking but it does accurately reflect how long it takes for crushed dock leaves to soothe irritated skin. They are wonderful for blisters caused by wearing stiff shoes, e.g.



4. Wild garlic. There are a lot of different species of Alliums, wild and cultivated. In my part of the world "wild garlic" usually refers to a small, slim plant whose leaves form straight spikes, sometimes with extra leaves slanting off around the main spikes that stand straight up, typically 12 to 18 inches high, and commonly found in unploughed fields, pastures, and lawns. Its clusters of bluish green spikes are among the first plants to appear after winter or anything else has knocked out other wild plants. It is not confusible with either the wild Alliums that have pretty white flowers, which my elders called "Allium" if they called them anything because they knew them only as cultivated flowers, or the broad-leaved, pungent species my elders called "ramps" (a.k.a. ramsons).

All my favorite free online digital photo sources are full of photos of Alliums, and apparently every other species is more photogenic than ours; I'm not finding a picture of what I pick and eat in spring. This should not be a problem for local readers. Everyone knows wild garlic; they just don't know how valuable it is. I eat it raw, and sometimes add it to cooked foods like ordinary garlic, onion, or chives. It has a robust, garlicky flavor, like onion or garlic "scapes," without the pungency that can make raw garlic bulbs hard to swallow. I like to pick one leaf on a plant that has two, so the plant will survive and go to seed.

5. Mint. Although my brother used to try, technically our peppermint and spearmint supplies do not grow in the not-a-lawn. They grow on the banks of the spring and spring branch. They can be recognized by that familiar minty fragrance. Once again, a few leaves, rinsed and eaten raw, are enough for one "meal." Stop while they still taste like a delicious dessert after the bitter greens and garlic. Later in the year you can pick whole stalks, dry them, and crumble them to steep in hot water for tea.

Looking straight down on a young mint plant By Kham Tran - www.khamtran.com - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3062200 . .

Peppermint and spearmint grow about knee-high before they bloom and go to seed. A related plant called horsemint (horses don't eat it--the name probably started out as "coarse mint") grows over three feet high, in drier soil; you can eat a leaf or two, or make tea of it, but it's less delicious. There are literally dozens of other kinds of mint, some of which can escape from cultivation and take over a garden or stream bank in our part of the world. I have only these three.

If I'd been skinny after a long winter of hunting and gathering, I would probably have wanted to add a higher-calorie food to these five--a total of about a cup of raw plant material a day. Like most Americans I had a few surplus pounds to lose, and was pleased to see a few of them melt away over the weekend.

Nature-Friendly Gifts for a Birdwatching Mother's Day

As with a previous article...One year an Associated Content sponsor wanted a wide assortment of articles about Mothers Day gifts for mothers with different special interests. I showed the list to my mother, and she agreed to be the consultant to brainstorm about gifts for "Green" or birdwatching mothers. Here is the birdwatching list, revised and updated, with Amazon links. (If you use a link to buy the object shown, no shopping around, in theory Amazon sends me money. Duh. It's your mother's day.) As before, suggestions are sorted by level of birdwatching expertise.

1. Raw Beginner: A raw beginner might not yet have a good field guide. Most birdwatchers find Peterson's field guides most useful in the field, Sibley's most informative for reading at home, and the Audubon Society's most inspiring (all those gorgeous photos). The birdwatching mother can probably use all three.



(I'm in an Eastern State. Are you? Let's mix it up with these links...)






2. Raw Beginner: Some beginners start watching birds without binoculars, usually because they become interested in big, tame birds like ducks or seagulls. Sooner or later we all want binoculars. Amazon wants you to know they're useful at concerts and sports events too!



3. Mobility-Impaired: Birdwatching purists scorn the idea of luring birds close to houses with feeders. Bird feeders are, however, the easiest way for some people to watch birds. Some people even enjoy watching squirrels compete with birds for seeds, or identify with Marge Piercy's character who built a squirrel feeder. Whether you try to "baffle" the squirrels or not, however, make sure the feeder is well out of reach of cats, at least five feet off the ground. (Our Founding Queen, Black Magic, not an especially large cat, could scale a ten-foot wall, putting a foot down and pushing off twice on the way up. Graybelle, the extra-large cat who left a distinctive name to the Cat Sanctuary, could reach four feet off the ground without even jumping. Currently, Samantha Scaredycat, who may always be a small cat and seems to think of herself as prey, can jump over five feet straight off the ground. An alternative to using a stepladder to stock a bird feeder is a pulley arrangement that brings the feeder close to a window for cleaning and refilling.)



(Say whaaat? Amazon sells these feeders by ones, claims that's a "best seller," but then wants to link to pages that sells packages of two, four, or six. Oh well. The salient point is that this bird feeder is for hanging from a tree branch or clothes line. You can also find long poles for hanging bird feeders, bird baths, bird nest boxes, etc., at levels that bring our feathered friends close to upstairs windows.)

4. Beginner: Many birdwatchers belong to conservation groups--big ones with political visions, or little local ones with no agenda beyond reserving a space in a local park. Consider a lifetime membership in a group Mother respects but can't afford to join.

5. Beyond Beginner: After adding all the frequently seen local birds to their lists, some birdwatchers decide to watch for specific behaviors rather than travelling to add more species. The Stokes' Field Guide to Bird Behavior series describes several amusing things birdwatchers may see. Herons (who can actually form large flocks at night, however solitary they are while fishing) kiss when they enter family members' territory; avocets throw a wing over their mate while strolling together.



6. Any Level of Expertise, Low Income: Most nature parks are free to the public, but some mothers can't afford transportation to a local nature preserve. Consider riding the bus or driving (any birdwatching friends, actually) to parks they can't visit alone.

7. Medium Expertise, High Income: Some birdwatchers spare no expense to drive, fly, or sail to places where they might be able to add a rare bird to their lists. If Mother belongs to that crowd, or wants to, why not treat her to a tour of an obscure island?

8. Medium Expertise, High Activity: Although birdwatching gear is simple, active birdwatchers go through a lot of sturdy shoes, T-shirts, natural-material sweaters, waterproof nylon "shells," backpacks, and cameras. They may appreciate a shopping spree at L.L. Bean or the Army-Navy surplus store.

9. Serious Ecologist: Some birdwatchers are less concerned about personally seeing rare birds than about making sure the species survive. Conservation groups have developed programs just for this type of birdwatchers. For a fee you can "adopt" or "sponsor" a rare bird being reared in captivity or monitored in a preserve.

10. Any Mother: What Mothers Day was designed to celebrate was Mother's love of her children and grandchildren. While the mother of your children, grandchildren, etc., may be rearing a blended family of six and want quality time to go birdwatching without her brood, in the spirit of Mothers Day let's imagine that more readers and their mothers would enjoy quality time for Mother to watch birds along with her children and/or grandchildren. Sometimes the best Mothers Day gifts are free.

Godwin's Law and E-Mail Lists

From Tom Woods, via e-mail, and if you're not on his list you might want to be. Each daily e-mail is selling something, but it's also sharing a (usually short) bit of snarky news commentary. I left the sales pitch in for those who may be interested in checking out the product. Those who are already on TW's mailing list may want to scroll down below the excerpt from the e-mail they've already received, and read my reply:

"
On Tue, 4/30/19, Tom Woods (HappyEarner.com) wrote:

Subject: "Ron Paul: America's Most Dangerous Nazi"
Date: Tuesday, April 30, 2019, 2:39 PM

"Ron Paul: America's Most Dangerous Nazi"

That's the title of an actual book you can purchase on Amazon.

It has 165 reviews, with an average of one star.

Now in case the title didn't make it obvious enough that the author was a crank, the amateurish book cover should do the trick.

And look: the fact is, people do judge books by their cover...I have 300 beautiful eBook covers for you across a variety of niches that are easily editable (PNG files included)...I'm giving them away for nothing at all, as a bonus for a $17 product -- a product you need, by the way, since its sales page and landing page templates that will likewise cost you a fortune if you have them done from scratch by a designer.

The offer is about to close, and the price goes up a little bit with each sale, so get clicking:

http://www.happyearner.com/300gifts

Tom Woods

You are receiving this email because you opted in at pathstoincome.com or happyearner.com, or you texted PROSPER to 44222.

P.O. Box 701447
Saint Cloud FL 34770
USA
"

I replied:


"Ron Paul? What about Werner Baumann at Bayer and the corporate goons at Merck?

Seriously:

* Merck is currently sponsoring a campaign of persecution of devout Jews in New York City.

* Bayer bought out Monsanto, a US company that had earned a lot of hate even before their once trademarked product, glyphosate, went generic.

In order to market generic glyphosate, Monsanto and other companies told farmers and food processors that glyphosate was as safe as salt (a claim based on BAD misinterpretation of early studies) and could be sprayed directly on food crops before harvesting. Glyphosate soaks into many foods, like peanuts, sunflower seeds, beans, rice, corn, oats, tomatoes, strawberries, spinach, kale, apples, peaches, and other "healthy" favorites. As glyphosate-drenched foods hit the US market, cases of formerly rare food intolerance skyrocketed, creating the market for "gluten-free" foods among consumers who don't have genetic gluten intolerance--only to create more dissatisfaction as foods containing no trace of wheat gluten, or the other food sensitivity triggers, make people sicker than the alleged trigger food ever did.

Hospital emergency rooms classify immediate effects of glyphosate exposure into eight categories, lumping cognitive and emotional reactions into "miscellaneous" and ignoring glyphosate's alleged contributions to later developments like birth defects and cancer. Studies show that, across species, individual reactions vary enough that each type of reaction seems statistically rare--but the majority of all species studied show adverse reactions of some kind or other. Also, reactions mimic one another across species. Pseudo-celiac reactions (bleeding ulceration of the digestive tract) appear in mammals, birds, fish, and allegedly in insects. How it's possible to see bleeding ulcers in a bee, I don't want to know, but researchers claim they've done it.

* True celiac reactions are produced by a genetic pattern whose "strong" form is virtually limited to people of Irish descent. Celiacs are basically strong and healthy as long as we (I'm one) avoid eating wheat; before glyphosate began to be dumped on food we could look forward to long healthy lives as long as we avoided ingesting wheat products. However, glyphosate produces more intense celiac reactions than wheat itself. So, spraying glyphosate on food can reasonably be described as "Irish Genocide."

* Bayer has bought an expensive ad campaign on Twitter (and other media that aren't supposed to be "social" and "uncensored"), marketing the claim that glyphosate is safe. They now know this to be...a BIG LIE!

* And Bayer, Merck, and probably other large corporate sponsors have paid for a new version of Twitter that *systematically* cuts off communication among non-paying individual users. (It's called "quality filtering" and works by defining individuals' tweets as "low quality.") In other words, Bayer is buying CENSORSHIP to silence all opposition to its BIG LIE.

* And the home office of this corporation is...IN GERMANY!

* What kind of name is "Merck," anyway? [Yes, I know, the same kind as "Roosevelt," "Eisenhower," and "Rickenbacker"...but "By their fruits, you shall know them..."]

All they need are the uniforms--Bayer and Merck are ALREADY GOOSE-STEPPING...

More on Twitter; you'll need to go directly to the #glyphosate and #GlyphosateAwareness hashtags to find it. "Quality filtering" is theoretically fixable although it takes time (we have to exchange tweets with one another BY ONES, a chore even for me, with only about 700 Tweeps). It'll take a while and I'm using that while to share the link to the idea of building a post-Twitter network. I will be setting up an e-mail list, probably with Mailchimp; you're welcome to join. Fundraising will eventually be necessary; paywalls won't--I don't expect the campaign will take that long.

Priscilla King
"

I don't know, and won't know, exactly how many people I follow and am followed by. That's because (1) the precise count changes daily as Twitter accounts come and go, and (2) Twitter counts the two lists separately; there is some overlap. I'm not keeping count. People are following and unfollowing as I tweet to each individual Tweep to reactivate our connections.

I am watching to see recent e-friends like Iris Yang, Ellen Hawley, and Barb Taub, who are premium quality (authors of above-average books) but joined my list relatively recently, appear in my notifications before I get up through the list to tag them. That would reassure me that Twitter is recovering its sanity. I expected it to have happened a week ago, when I turned off "quality filtering." It hasn't happened, and I'm not pleased...

I e-mailed back to the Children's Health Defense fund (founded by Robert Kennedy) earlier this morning, too, and I e-mailed Senator Warner this week, because I anticipate interesting replies from those offices. People who don't rely heavily on e-mail will need to add themselves to whatever e-mail list(s) I eventually set up. I always read individually typed e-mails first, too, and have never sent out a bulk e-mail before today; I did that for clients so long ago that the existing systems are probably completely different. I've never e-mailed most of you readers, or wanted to, when Twitter (used to be) so much faster...but life is short. Twitter is forcing me to take this step.

I promise: No sharing of e-mail lists, ever. No requests for personal data online; if your screen name is not a business name you've registered as such, I don't want to know. No more than one bulk e-mail per day--my understanding is that that's all services like Mailchimp do for free anyway. No insertion of personal data into bulk e-mail to make it look like a real, personal, hand-typed message when it's not. No use of fundraising services that demand that you enter your Paypal password on their page or transfer real-world contact information online. E-mails will contain current fundraising information, such as the new Paypal address when that's restored (currently you have to send U.S. postal orders to the Boxholder, P.O. Box 322), but will never consist of fundraising appeals entire and alone. If I can't build an e-mail list that I wouldn't mind being on, myself, I'll not build one at all.

E-mails will differ from the blog, although they may eventually appear on this site or a separate one. One possibility will be "creature features"--making our e-mails fun reads by sharing facts about pretty flowers and lovable animals that are threatened by glyphosate. Subscribers will be encouraged to suggest more ideas about what they want to read. Glyphosate Awareness will remain politically bipartisan, or multipartisan, and separate from--though obviously related to--other pesticide, pollution, and health issues.

Fundraising will be necessary if we have to go to real mail, because real mail costs money. I don't expect to get rich off Glyphosate Awareness--unless, and until, we bring Bayer to heel, and Heaven speed the day!--but a decent-quality real mail campaign takes paper, postage, and also time to make mailings responsive to any replies offline people take the trouble to send us.

Also: #GlyphosateAwareness, on Twitter, is global. My activism is U.S. only. I'll continue to share information published in other countries, but will send e-mail only within the U.S. (I don't care where e-mails may be forwarded.) Foreign allies are free to send money to me if they feel like it, why not, but are encouraged to support campaigns to build Glyphosate Awareness in their own countries. This especially applies to Canadian readers, who are hereby cordially invited to drive down for weekend visits, and whose own public health services need Glyphosate Awareness, driven by local taxpayers, National Health users, etc., at least as much as ours do.

Mark Warner on Virginia Miners' Benefits

From U.S. Senator Mark Warner (D-VA):

"
Dear Friend,
Throughout my time in the Senate, I've made fighting to protect the safety net for Virginia's retired coal miners one of my top priorities. Unfortunately, some Virginia miners and their families are at risk of losing their benefits if Congress doesn't act. Working with West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, I've sponsored a bipartisan bill called the American Miners Act that would protect the pensions and healthcare benefits that miners all across coal country have earned through a lifetime of hard work.
Below you can read my op-ed, published in the Bristol Herald Courier, with more information about the American Miners Act and what I'm doing to fight for these miners and their families in Washington. I hope you'll give it a read.
If there’s an issue that’s important to you or a question you’d like to ask, I invite you to send me an email and follow my work in the Senate on Facebook and Twitter. I look forward to hearing from you.



Sincerely,
"

[that signature graphic Google doesn't like: Mark Warner]

Twitter's Awkward Compromise

First of all let me observe that Jack Dorsey and the Twitter Team probably felt very proud of Twitter's latest compromise between the Real Twits' insistence that Twitter be of and for the people, and the mere twits' incessant whining for censorship. I spent some time investigating this last week. Twitter now does use censorship, and it doesn't.

For those who don't know, I host a live chat on Twitter on Tuesdays, 2-3 p.m. local time (New York time), called #GlyphosateAwareness. All use of that hashtag during the week brings you into the chat, whether you participate in it live or not.

The technology of this live chat is the simplest. I want anything I publish online to be accessible to people using Opera from 1992. I use both an officially obsolete version of Windows Explorer and an "older" version of Chrome for Twitter. (Sometimes I use them at the same time--the picture-free version of Twitter that opens in Explorer is much faster and smoother than the flashier version that opens in Chrome, but retweets and replies work differently.) I use Chrome for the chat. Of course Twitter's live chat system works "better," more like a chat app, for people who use newer browsers. For me, the difference between my chat and ordinary Twitter is that I stay online, watch for new tweets, and respond to them directly during live chat time; I do that only sporadically at other times.

That's already one reason why the Glyphosate Awareness chat isn't livelier. Another reason is that people's glyphosate reactions are very personal and individual, but they tend to be things that people don't actually want to chat about, live, with strangers around the world, unless they happen to be researchers sharing scientific study links. As a result the chat consists primarily of links, mostly but not exclusively to studies published in English or French, with some cross-talk, comparisons, and some discussion of translation issues. People who aren't doing research find a lot to read but they don't necessarily want to chat about it; it's not like one of those political radio shows where each person feeds the others' partisan zeal. And of course it's not at all like those feel-good hashtag pages where people come back daily to look at pretty flower pictures or cheer for champion athletes. Glyphosate Awareness is, by nature, a cold prickle.

So are we "trying to scare people," as one troll claimed? I don't think so. People's emotional reactions are hard to predict or control. Some people may be scared, or enraged. People who really hate their fellow humans might even be exhilarated by learning how much harm glyphosate does to people. My goal is not to leave anyone floundering in a quagmire of any emotional feeling, but to give people information they can use to get more control over the way they feel, physically and also emotionally.

Somewhere Out There someone who's been told that Christians ought to feel cheerful and benevolent all the time is thinking, "What's wrong with me? Why am I having these sudden flashes of anger that's not even giving me the energy to resist or evade any real danger? What unconfessed sin is on my conscience, what demonic spirit is oppressing me," etc. etc. etc. For some people this kind of thinking is deadly serious. For those people it can be lifesaving to know that one of the reactions some people reliably have, every time they're exposed to glyphosate, is a sudden surge of what some people experience as anger, others as anxiety or despair. They do not have to wallow in those emotions. They can choose to fix the facts first, and let the emotional feelings follow.

Obviously a Twitter chat is no substitute for consulting a doctor, but for many people who do consult a doctor, after ruling out the most common causes for stubborn symptoms, it can be useful to consider glyphosate as a factor that's become very common before doctor and patient start worrying about something that's very rare and highly fatal and probably not present in any case. With or without exposure to glyphosate, very few people get non-Hodgkins lymphoma. With or without exposure to glyphosate, a lot of people get chronic fatigue as a symptom of mononucleosis, anemia, or diabetes. After exposure to glyphosate, a lot of people who don't have mononucleosis, anemia, or diabetes show fatigue, malaise, lethargy, sluggishness, even narcolepsy. Once they know this, these people can do something to reduce the amount of productivity they lose to fatigue and malaise. Glyphosate Awareness can and should produce an emotional feeling of resolution and empowerment and relief.

Again, maybe it's due to my early conditioning by the Washington Post, and maybe it's true that people in the rest of the world never learn that a news story about something that's sad but fixable is actually a feel-good news story when it motivates people to fix the problem, but I don't think so. I believe that the emotional effect the Glyphosate Awareness chat has on intelligent adults sounds less like "Ooohhh, woooe" than like "A-ha!" If you guessed that Bayer's corporate shills are not actually concerned about people's emotional moods, so much as about the fact that empowering those people to feel good is as simple as cutting off a stream of income for Bayer, you're absolutely right.

Personally, I have very mixed feelings about all the people who want us to censor or stifle any of our thoughts that "hurt people's feelings." First of all, who are those people, and why are their feelings so much more important than ours? Second, why would they even feel safer if they succeed in stifling the expression of thoughts they don't like, instead of being afraid that the people whose feelings they fear so much might, if denied the chance to talk rationally about their feelings, act them out violently? As a woman I don't like knowing that some men dislike and resent women, but I feel much safer when it's easy to recognize those men and avoid them than I would feel if I'd succeeded in stifling them and found myself married to one of them. But third, most of the time, it seems to me that the crybullies who want us to worry about those mysterious "people's feelings" are actually using hypothetical people's hypothetical feelings for their own immediate profit. Bayer doesn't want people to feel healthy, empowered, and free from any need for name-brand drugs. Bayer wants people to feel happy about popping pills in strings daily--the pill to suppress the painful reaction to chemical pollution, the pill to reduce the side effects from the first pill, the pill to block the primary effects of the second pill, and so ad infinitum.

Bayer would actually benefit from having the ability to suppress any publication of the principles of personal health care, which eliminate any need for most of us ever to swallow a pill. Temperance means no market for Alka-Seltzer. Regularity means a greatly reduced market for aspirin. Emotional intelligence means no market for psychopharmaceuticals. Contemporary pill pushers chased Sylvester Graham from town to town with stones, for telling people that many of them would enjoy the benefits of regularity if they ate whole-grain bread rather than fibre-free pastries. Today's pill pushers would like to stone people who are good models of the benefits of healthy personal choices, too.

So, Bayer bought ad space on Twitter and demanded that Twitter "Do Something" about us horrible people who are "scaring" people away from using glyphosate. Bayer trolls are still circulating those memes about glyphosate being "as safe as salt, less carcinogenic than coffee." Righto. We don't need to censor those memes. We need to find the people who circulate them, surround those people with cameras, and demand that they prove what they say by drinking a litre of "Round-Up." The fun part is that some of those people would live; some wouldn't even have to be rushed to the hospital. Some living things do survive exposure to large amounts of glyphosate; apparently they're the ones that produce defective offspring later. But none of the shills wants to find out exactly how they react to this chemical they want people to think is "safe."

I checked. New Twitter claims to offer all sorts of new fun stuff that Twitter did not originally offer. For the individual user I don't see any of that fun stuff. What I see is, primarily, a clunky format that shoves a bigger, more annoying ad graphic right up under the first tweet on each page. I see a lot of users affirming that nobody but the advertisers likes this. But Twitter is now offering some new benefits for advertisers. That "top view" Twitter now works so hard to show you first, if you don't go to the top of each page and make sure you're seeing tweets in chronological order, buries tweets from your individual friends below masses of sponsored product-friendly drivel spewed out by the advertisers.

Well, there goes Twitter's primary social value--its speeding up individual communications among small groups of private people, about emergencies. There was a time when Twitter had real potential for helping people know, as it might be in a flood situation, which blocks of houses were evacuating, which bridges were out, and which puddles were deep enough to stall a car engine, minute by minute. "Top view" makes that impossible.

Twitter is now indulging advertisers in the delusion that people will continue using social media that are edited to be as bland and product-supportive as commercial television. Give us a break. Twitter might have noticed that a lot of Real Twits do not watch commercial television. On social media that are totally dominated by private, independent people, where advertisers can add their voices to everyone else's on an equal basis but have no power to filter out anti-commercial thoughts, it's possible that people who've cultivated high sales resistance might utter and even listen to honest product-friendly messages. The value of a product-supportive tweet used to be high. The value of a product-supportive tweet on sponsor-censored Twitter is negative.

Twitter could have chosen to take the high road: tell sponsors the Advertising Age is basically over, but they could, on uncensored, unfiltered Twitter, have joined conversations in a polite, respectful way that built a good impression of their brands. This is, of course, NOT done by anything that looks like a TV commercial. NOT EVER. A big irrelevant picture of a product on Twitter is the equivalent of a loud obnoxious person, probably reeking of some weird chemical odor that you suspect is more likely to be a louse treatment than a new perfume, plopping down beside you and your lunch date at a picnic table and bellowing, "Buy my product! Everybody needs my product!" You'd call the police. If the comments on those Twitter ads are any indication, people who've been happily drinking Coca-Cola for years are ready to call the police on the Coca-Cola Company's social media blighter.

There's a right way to use Twitter to make people aware of a product--by joining conversations in a nice way, or posting useful or pretty or funny content with your brand on it--and a wrong way. Twitter's "promoted tweet" ad campaign is definitely the wrong way.

I see ads on my chat page, and...I know it costs money to maintain Twitter, and Jack Dorsey has as much right to make a profit as anyone else has, but this is so not the way to do it. I've tried replying to advertisers by suggesting that they actually join the discussion of Glyphosate Awareness. I'm not at all anti-business, or even anti-profiteering. I'd like to see insurance companies use our hashtag, free of charge just like human beings, to discuss the hazards of using glyphosate or other sprayed "pesticides" and the extent to which using these products should raise the price of insurance. I personally don't like the insurance racket, but I don't see it going away and I can see it accomplishing some good here.

For advertisers, the choice is between (a) spending more money on the sort of intrusive, annoying advertising that will probably never work as well as it did a hundred years ago, and thereby ruining Twitter; or (b) spending very little money, but a little intelligently focussed time, on the sort of modest, inoffensive advertising that may actually help the brand's image, and accepting what Real Twits expect from Twitter.

I've checked this, too, right after Twitter Analytics reported my Twitter "reach" dropping by ninety percent overnight. Some readers remember that, two weeks ago, I advocated that all of us who use Twitter go back through our lists of followers, however many hundreds or thousands of them, and whether or not we have any idea how some of them ever got onto that list, and make direct contact with them--to start planning how, or whether, we'll connect to them in a post-Twitter world. Well, I did that. I've been doing it. I have a few hundred Tweeps left to tag, but I've seen enough to know...Twitter's idea of "Top Tweets" and "Quality Filtering for Notifications" has kept some Tweeps from seeing each other's tweets, it's inflamed the ones who've pounced on SPLC's group flagging and shadowbanning as evidence of political bias, and it's caused quite a few to turn and walk slowly away.

A page of "Top Tweets" that shows just one tweet from a friend, but not necessarily person's most recent one, on top of a big splashy ad graphic eating up half your screen, does not say "Read on; more good stuff below." It says "Just call Tracy to find out what that tweet was about and close this tacky TV-looking window."

Then, suppose you know your friend Tracy does not like live phone calls, so you check your notifications page. Twitter has automatically turned on "quality filtering." That's the sponsors' notion of quality, nothing to do with yours. You can fine-tune this feature if you choose--to edit out individuals who've not disclosed a live phone number to Twitter, individuals who aren't your followers, individuals whom the sponsors have decreed to be less than "relevant, credible, and safe." What about the options for editing out irrelevant ads, annoying videos, big memory-hogging pictures? They're not there. Only individuals can be declared "low quality" and your e-friends, especially if they tweet about topics like independence, frugality, or a True Green lifestyle, have been so declared, and their notifications may be suppressed until you individually exchange tweets with them.

Hah. We "low quality" individuals are Twitter's lifeblood. Sponsors like Bayer, and like Merck (which took the lead in demanding that anyone in favor of respecting people's right to make informed medical choices for themselves be ruled less than "relevant, credible, and safe"), are Twitter's Bacillus tuberculosus.

Private people built Twitter. It exists to connect us to each other. When it stops connecting us to each other and tries to force us back into the position of silent, passive consumer-victims for corporations, Twitter may well cease to exist. And deserve to.

"Oh, Twitter's not censoring you little private peons, just protecting our Corporate Lordships from having to look at your nasty little independent thoughts. You can still tweet to each other. We'll just make sure only your active connections see your messages. Twitter can take our money to give us a complete bully pulpit, because money is what makes things like advertisements for glyphosate 'relevant, credible, and safe,' and broadcast our voices like commercial television, while you can go back to passing notes to each other like fifth-graders."

Nice compromise...um, not.

I'd be interested in your proposed strategies. Mine is, for now:

1. Tweet to, or at least try to tweet to, everyone on your f'list. (Continue, if you've already started.) Make sure they know they need to check, before reading any page on Twitter, that they're reading "Latest tweets" and that their notifications page has "quality filtering" turned OFF.

2. Expect limited response. Most people didn't notice that "quality filtering" was installed to block their receiving your notifications. They just noticed that their "top tweets" page had become boring and figured they'd outgrown Twitter. Some of the followers whose names you don't recognize may have actually left Twitter long ago. Some of them may genuinely be what you consider "low quality" Twits--people whose Twitter accounts are dedicated to a single purpose that you don't want to endorse, like brands for products you don't buy.

3. For people with whom you want to maintain contact, share a link to a page with your e-mail and real-world mailing addresses on it.

4. If you've invested in Twitter's success in any way, start divesting now. Plan a more efficient e-free communication and networking strategy for the post-Twitter world. Social media sites that rule private individuals "low quality" are not going to last long. We can still use Twitter--but we need to use it to begin building networks that will outlast it.

5. Oh, for what it's worth...While Twitter's been not only isolating all of us "low quality" private people as a matter of policy, but putting me specifically in "Twitter Time Out" when Bayer's cyberbullies squealed, my f'list has actually grown. Yours might, too. Let's keep each other's f'lists growing and, if the advertisers don't agree to a revised contract that automatically defines their tweets as "low quality," actively promotes ours as "What You Might Have Missed During Twitter's Moment of Temporary Insanity," and imposes a lifetime ban on any advertiser who's called for censorship, the next thing we do, let's block all the advertisers.



This Amazon link has been brought to you by an inspirational figure who wasn't always as unstoppable as he hoped, and some of his ideas were dead wrong, but he was a great guy to work for. And presumably still is.

Earth-Friendly Gifts for a Green Mother's Day

Back in the old AC archives are two Mothers Day pieces I wrote in consultation with my own mother, when sponsors asked about gifts for "Green" mothers and for bird-watching mothers. Mine was both so she was full of ideas. Here, back by a local lurker's request, is a revised, updated, illustrated Top Ten List with clickable links you can use to shop for any Green mothers you may know. Not all of these suggestions involve shopping. Some Green mothers like that.

(Someone who'd formed a habit, or just had to ask, asked me... "Mother" here includes your mother, your children's mother, your foster mother, adoptive mother, grandmother, mother-in-law, foster or adoptive child's natural mother, etc. Grandmothers are mothers too. Aunts, like fathers, uncles, sons, and daughters who don't have babies of their own, are not mothers. Though this list is not gender-specific on this list, my feeling is that Mothers Day is biological-role-specific...well, as an aunt I think it's a day for giving not receiving. We non-mothers can receive presents on other days! For example, if you use these precise links to buy stuff on Amazon, and resist the temptation to shop around, I earn a few pennies in commission, which will eventually add up to a payout from Amazon. I should live so long. But you get the idea. No need to feel bad if you shop around.)

1. Green mothers garden. Mothers Day falls after the optimum planting time for some plants in some places, but gardeners' shopping lists are endless. Gardeners can always use natural-material gardening gloves, plants, seeds, giftcards from their favorite nurseries and garden catalogues, herbal insect repellents, straw hats, cotton shirts and jeans...

Keep Calm T-Shirt

by Ecologicalstore


Pause for a Store Review: When I was growing up we always used to receive seed catalogues from lots of different companies, including Stark Bros. We ordered several kinds of plants and trees from the Stark family business. Now that Dad's gone and Mother's semi-retired, the fruit I'm still picking is coming from our Stark Bros seedlings. Not all of them thrived, but some apple, raspberry, and blueberry sprouts really took off...and paid off, over the past forty years! Cheers!

2. Even Green mothers get tired, even when they garden. (Some of them agree with Suzette Haden Elgin, who was a polio survivor, about using gardening as a symptom-buster. For anyone living with chronic pain or other symptoms, your symptom-buster is something that's easy enough and delightful enough that you can use it to tell when to ignore symptoms and when to go to bed or call the doctor.)



Tired gardeners might appreciate a coupon for free hours of help with gardening chores, or a massage for muscles that have been tired by too much gardening on those first irresistible days in April.

3. Green mothers enjoy nature. You never have to spend a lot of money on a treat for a True Greenie. They enjoy walks in the park with family (or friends), and may have storage room for another field guide...birds, trees, flowers, herbs, mushrooms, or even rocks.



4. All mothers appreciate understanding. Green mothers do everything that television teaches children is un-cool. They do their own chores, using hand tools. They wear old clothes until the seams fall apart. They buy things secondhand. They make young children recycle household junk into toys instead of buying snazzy new toys advertised on TV. They cook at home, with leftovers and "ugly" garden produce yet.

Around age twelve most young people go through a stage where they really feel embarrassed by the fact that they're still children. Apparently some communities don't teach them to feel ashamed of this childish feeling. I could wish that more adults had stood together to give more of my generation more of the message I'd absorbed, even as a teenager: "A person who is disloyal to his parents at 12 will be disloyal to his country at 21. If your parents belong to the Flat Earth Society, as a decent human being living in their home, you should go to meetings with them."

Anyway, if you've ever expressed embarrassment about the Green things your mother used to do, Mothers Day would be a good time to demonstrate that you've matured past that sort of thing now. Go to a yard sale or charity store with your mother. Help her entertain the next generation of your family with puppets made from soap bottles and finger-painted sheets of newspaper. Help carry out her recycling.

5. If you have the appropriate skills you might be able to help your Green mother with a big project she's not been able to do or afford on her own. Old-school Granola Greenies drive old clunkers if they drive anything. Proper maintenance can reduce the carbon footprints of those clunkers. Instead of preaching at them about that old minivan they keep to haul all the grandchildren, or all of their Sunday School class, around town, try tuning it up, cleaning the pipes, changing the filters, recycling worn tires and putting on new ones with fresh treads.

6. You can help "Green up" the house, too...just by being an extra pair of hands, but even more if you've acquired special skills and/or money. Mothers Day is not necessarily too late to help with "spring cleaning" chores like caulking, tightening, or replacing window screens to reduce the cost of climate control, or having storm windows and screens built to fit odd-shaped windows. My mother avoided mentioning expensive projects because none of her children or grandchildren is wealthy, but if you are, why not buy your Green mother a Prius? Or remodel the bathroom and install a water-free toilet.



7. Green mothers usually don't want a lot of "gift junk," especially things like scented soap (they don't like petrochemical fragrances) or new clothes (they wonder whether they'll live long enough to wear out the clothes they already own). There are, however, things even Greenies have to replace. After confirming that your Green mother is likely to use up her existing supplies, you might look for recycled stationery or a new tote bag spun from recycled plastic bottles.



(The picture-linking widget isn't working properly. Click here.)



(If you search for "recycled stationery" on Amazon, you'll get masses of results.)

8. Sometimes it's the thought that counts. Show your Green mother that you've learned some of her tips and tricks. Help pass them on to her grandchildren.

9. While younger Greenies tend to be wild about computers, older Greenies have reservations about anything that's made from plastic, runs on electricity, and emits radiation. They prefer real books. If your Green mother is still adding books to her collection, find out what she does and doesn't have, or want.

One book your Green mother will be glad to have is the one you compile for her. You don't have to be a writer, or writer's assistant, although if you are your mother will probably proudly display your books. Just search for things that interest her on the Internet, print them out in nice clear large type on both sides of the paper, and put it all together in a recycled three-ring binder. (These "naked binders" are intentionally left bare so you can make your own jackets and labels.)



10. Spend quality time doing something earth-friendly on Mothers Day. Walk to a nature park, eat a healthy home-cooked picnic, sing old songs, and count birds and wildflowers together. Bake whole-grain bread together. Plant a tree.

Belated Tortie Tuesday Post: Serena Modifies Tradition

I didn't plan to post anything today until I checked the blog notifications and realized I'd left a cliff-hanger hanging far too long. What's happened to Serena and the four baby kittens?

Three of them have names, is what. The fourth one hasn't really accepted a name yet. They survived a few days of massive upsetness, then started eating kibble and choosing parts of the sand pit. They've learned to cluster around the door to be brought indoors after dinner, cluster just inside the door to race outdoors for breakfast. That's a lot when we consider how much the fluffballs have had to learn. Eventually, after other vital survival skills, they may learn to answer to their names consistently and keep their cute little claws out of people's hands. They are still working on Danger Avoidance and Unbearable Cuteness.

There really ought to be photos of these kittens by now. There aren't, because it's April and I've been out enjoying all the beautiful phenology. Dogwoods, redbuds, four kinds of violets, some bloodroot, a few Bidens, ground-ivy, cleavers and bedstraw (I'll post about those if funded in time), cardinals bright and cheery as ever...Wild roses are the latest threat to the Rose of Sharon, or Northern Hibiscus, bushes and I'm about ready to let the roses have that space, if they weren't so prickly and provoking. I had to prune them quite aggressively after the Big Wet Snow in December. Wild roses like being pruned aggressively. Whack them off at ground level and, in spring, they surge up into your face again.

I am considering planting tomatoes myself this year. That ought to be a happy thought. It's not, because my mother always was the tomato plant whisperer; I had a few tomato plants to practice on, as a child, but now the thought of buying them and setting them out is keyed to the thought "because Mother may not be able to do that."

And year-old Queen Cat Serena has carried on an old Patchnose Family Tradition, only she's modified it in a modern nonsexist way.

Patchnose, as regular readers may remember, was a genuine alley cat, found living feral in an alley, wild as a bird. When her big, bold kitten Mackerel set out to train a child to feed his family, humans realized that Patchnose and her kittens were the very rare social cat family where the father, Big Mac, was actually providing for his sickly mate and too many babies. When they were delivered to the Cat Sanctuary, Mac made a pet of me overnight, then set about persuading his mother and siblings that it was safe to eat food I set out for them.

Patchnose didn't live through the winter, but young Mac was another dutiful, devoted male cat who fed and baby-sat kittens.

I didn't interfere with the social cat family's own plans for themselves, much, over the years, because a social cat family is so special. Unaltered females did indeed time and space out the birth of kittens--it looked as if they were doing it consciously. Nursing each other's kittens was their most obvious technique. They have others. I counted...some HSUS alarmist posted, a few years ago, that one breeding pair of cats would, in nine years, produce hundreds of thousands if not a million kittens. Hah. Patchnose and Big Mac have seven living descendants I know about for sure (Samantha and Traveller aren't their descendants), plus the four new kittens, and nine about whom I'm not so sure.

Every year there've been kittens--some born to resident cats, and some delivered by people who've heard that the resident cats would foster other cats' kittens. (BUT ASK FIRST!!!) Male cats in the Patchnose Family have been patient and gentle when unable to avoid kittens, but not exactly devoted fathers, since Mac's time.

Every year, beginning at the end of the summer when Patchnose was weaning a second litter of kittens, the Queen Cat has called half-weaned kittens to join her on my lap while nursing. No male cat has ever been part of this family tradition.

Traveller is not related to the Patchnose Family, nor is he related to Serena's kittens. He's only a half-grown, not-quite-one-year-old kitten himself. But nobody will ever convince him (or Serena) that he's not Serena's brother. If he remembers having once had a different mother, or having been born a hundred miles away, he's never let it bother him. He doesn't seem especially intelligent on his own, but he does whatever Serena tells him.

He is also the cuddliest kitten ever. He acts as if he thought the only reason why humans sit down is to provide laps for kittens to snuggle onto. (Given a selection of laps, he likes to shed on each lap in turn.)

And so, when Serena resumed caring for her recovering kittens, after a few days of nonverbally telling me "See if you can do anything for them, I can't"...I came home at the end of the day and sat down on the porch. Traveller and Serena came up to join me, and the kittens came out from their hiding place, and Serena told them they could join us. Traveller was rolling around on my lap. Serena was sitting beside me in a cozy yet dignified way.

The kittens crawled up on my lap and purred and snuggled...with Traveller. Serena was leaning against me but not sitting on my lap. She's become a little more affectionate, due to the prolactin surge, since giving birth but she is not, never was, and never will be a cuddly cat. Her usual ways of showing affection are still slapping or chomping and bounding away, waving her tail like a flag--although she does that less often now that she has babies to look after.

After a minute or two of family bonding time in this position, Serena let her babies nurse, briefly, while she lay against the side of my leg. Traveller continued to rub his head and sides against me and grip my fingertips between his paw and toe pads.

He watches the kittens when Serena isn't watching them, just as Mac did. He's been known to cuddle up beside them or even lick them. He draws the line, "meowing" and walking away, only if a kitten tries to nurse on him.

All four kittens are basically white with spots. Two have light grey spots that give them rather pretty faces, one has extensive black spots that make him look like Felix the cartoon cat, and one has charcoal-grey spots that make it look utterly ridiculous. I call it Black Stache, as in this book...



Felix and Stache have a sister, Swimmer, so called from one of her misadventures. We don't know that she'll ever want to swim again, but we know for sure that she can. Then there's the other sibling, whose gender is uncertain and who has yet to respond to anything it's been called.

Photos will appear soon.