(no subject)
today i had approximately 10 hours of training on herbs and it was ridiculous and great.
it made me want to move somewhere where i can go outside and collect wild foods every morning and eat them and collect medicinal herbs and make tinctures and teas and poultices and salves. it made me want to have babies and learn about plants with them and make them love and respect all the living things on the planet because there was the most wonderful 6 or 7 year old boy on an herb walk i went on and he was the most amazing human being i have met in a while and told me about all of the edible and medicinal plant specimens he had speared on a stick.
my favorite thing that i learned is that burdock grows everywhere around here. it has a two year life cycle, meaning it doesn't seed until its second year of life. when it does seed, its seeds are little burs that get stuck on everything and if you want to harvest the seeds you should wear safety goggles. if you want to harvest the root you should do it before it goes to seed because once it does it puts all its energy into having babies and the root is less nutritive. it looks a lot like kale.
my second favorite thing i learned is that black elder also grows everywhere and you can use the flowers to make tea and the berries to make syrup, and i got to stand inside the elder and let it scramble my brain with its weird static energy. i've felt so far away from this stuff. i've known what probably 100 different herbs do for at least a year and a half now and i'm learning more every day but i didn't even know until last week that there are ginko biloba trees right in the city.
i don't know where i want to move but if i can't move out of worcester until next year i might scream. i need to think about this as temporary, i need to know that i have a million options and that i can do everything i want to do. including learning how to build houses.
this is why i don't think the majority of people should go right to college after high school unless they have been going to a freeschool for at least four years prior. or really want to be an actuary or a teacher or a marine biologist or something. if i were 17 now, i would go to school for something way more useful than sociology and community development. i'm 15 pages of paper away from a masters degree and i know community development connects to most everything because it connects to youth development and youth development connects to everything but it still feels like a waste because if i never do another social impact assessment or graph program outcomes or write another grant i won't feel especially upset, and i didn't need five years of higher education to learn how to work with teenagers.
it made me want to move somewhere where i can go outside and collect wild foods every morning and eat them and collect medicinal herbs and make tinctures and teas and poultices and salves. it made me want to have babies and learn about plants with them and make them love and respect all the living things on the planet because there was the most wonderful 6 or 7 year old boy on an herb walk i went on and he was the most amazing human being i have met in a while and told me about all of the edible and medicinal plant specimens he had speared on a stick.
my favorite thing that i learned is that burdock grows everywhere around here. it has a two year life cycle, meaning it doesn't seed until its second year of life. when it does seed, its seeds are little burs that get stuck on everything and if you want to harvest the seeds you should wear safety goggles. if you want to harvest the root you should do it before it goes to seed because once it does it puts all its energy into having babies and the root is less nutritive. it looks a lot like kale.
my second favorite thing i learned is that black elder also grows everywhere and you can use the flowers to make tea and the berries to make syrup, and i got to stand inside the elder and let it scramble my brain with its weird static energy. i've felt so far away from this stuff. i've known what probably 100 different herbs do for at least a year and a half now and i'm learning more every day but i didn't even know until last week that there are ginko biloba trees right in the city.
i don't know where i want to move but if i can't move out of worcester until next year i might scream. i need to think about this as temporary, i need to know that i have a million options and that i can do everything i want to do. including learning how to build houses.
this is why i don't think the majority of people should go right to college after high school unless they have been going to a freeschool for at least four years prior. or really want to be an actuary or a teacher or a marine biologist or something. if i were 17 now, i would go to school for something way more useful than sociology and community development. i'm 15 pages of paper away from a masters degree and i know community development connects to most everything because it connects to youth development and youth development connects to everything but it still feels like a waste because if i never do another social impact assessment or graph program outcomes or write another grant i won't feel especially upset, and i didn't need five years of higher education to learn how to work with teenagers.