The wrapping paper is in the bin, the holiday decorations are by now all packed away, and you have your shiny new – whatever – to play with. But how long is it likely to last?

This is a horrifying concept – planned obsolescence or the deliberate building in to a design or product a limited useful life so that it passes its use-by date long before it actually needs replacement. I’m sure you’re aware of it.

SBS ran a doco about it late last year and you can see it here (52 minutes). The narrator’s voice is a bit freaky but the content is even worse:

 

Whether you subscribe to ‘conspiracy’ theories or not, this makes sense.  It’s the basis of first world economies to create need in your product – and if you can produce it cheaply, and then factor in this early use-by date, then you create a continual stream of consumers who need to replace their ‘broken’ electronics.

How often do you hear “White goods just don’t last as long as they used to” for example. Or “I bought this iPod and it just stopped working”. Or “My iPad screen just broke and I have to buy a whole new iPad”.

My first fridge when I left home was in fact my mother’s old Whirlpool. When I had to change it to a more environmentally-friendly one that also fit the size of my unit, the second hand dealer actually paid ME for the fridge: “They don’t make ‘em like this anymore and I can’t give you anything that would come anywhere near the lifespan of this”. Sure enough the one I got in exchange only lasted a few years before I was forced to buy another one.

Next time you go to purchase something, or upgrade your phone or computer because you just want the latest, perhaps think about:

1.  Do you really need it?

2.  Are you buying it just to have the ‘latest’ and ‘greatest’ – to keep up with the Jones-es?

3.  How long is it likely to last?

And then spare a thought for Mike Anane and the people of Ghana and other third world countries, who live with our waste every day. Some of the images from the 38 minute mark are simply horrifying.

2012 should be a year when we focus less on consumption and more on environmental responsibility. We have a limit on our resources – and the areas we can toss our trash.

It’s time we lose our ‘throw away’ mentality for the sake of everyone.

Will you join me?

 

“The world is big enough to satisfy everyone’s needs, but will always be too small to satisfy individual greed.” – Ghandi

 

© Earth Goddess Wisdom

 

While we’re on the subject of the ‘new green’ are you using Ecosia – the Green Search Engine?

Ecosia donates 80% of its revenue to the protection of the rainforest. You can search either from their home page or by installing their browser plug-in to make Ecosia your default search engine.

When I first started using Ecosia it would show you how much of the rainforest you had saved with your search. This became very confusing for users. So they are now showing how much (in Euros) is being donated to the rainforest project.

From Ecosia FAQs:

Where does Ecosia save rainforest and how exactly do you do it?

Ecosia does not protect the rainforest by itself. Instead, it donates at least 80% of its income to a World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) program, which aims to save the rainforest. Your Ecosia searches help to protect the tropical forest in the Brazilian Juruena national park.This national park is under the protection of the ARPA Program (Amazon Region Protected Areas), the world´s largest protection program of its kind. Several governmental and non-governmental organizations support the ARPA Program to protect 15% (60 million hectares / 230,000 square miles) of Brazilian rainforest. This objective should be fulfilled before 2016.

The Juruena region was declared a national park in 2006. With an area of 1.9 million hectares (7,336 square miles), the Juruena national park is as large as Slovenia and closes the grid of two protection belt areas, which shall preserve the Amazonas from destruction. Scientists and government representatives took part in two WWF expeditions and explored the undiscovered areas in Juruena. A management plan determined some regions for sustainable economic use, while in other areas the access will be prohibited completely. They are also developing norms of protection and have agreed to create an infrastructure for the region.

The WWF works with the local population living near the protected area with the aim of creating employment for them and to gain their support for the national park. In schools, the curriculum is environmentally oriented, and with the help of forestry workers, children and local people are learning to develop a sustainable and competitive use for the forest. With the aim of breeding cattle legally and organically, WWF also co-operates with farmers and slaughterhouses around the national park vicinity.

The population density in the area of Juruena is very low. Even before the region was declared a national park, there were already Indian reserves in the south and east. With the intention of establishing a regular exchange of views, meetings take place once a year with the Indian authorities. For example, one of the results of these meetings is the fishing rights conceded to the locals within the communal area.

Four experts from WWF Germany are in charge of the protection project. The rainforest´s main enemy remains unauthorized deforestation. Because of that, rangers must constantly watch and patrol the park, which is a huge task considering the large area of the Juruena region.

Why is it important to save rainforests?

Rainforest are the Earth’s oldest and also most important ecosystems. To protect the rainforests, is one of the major challenges of the 21st century. Some rainforest facts:

• Rainforests are the most diverse ecosystems on the planet containing more species of plants and animals than all the earth’s other ecosystems combined – possibly as many as 30-40 million species – two-thirds of the entire world’s wildlife species.
• Tropical Forests are the Earth’s oldest ecosystems. Fossil records show that the forests of South-East Asia have survived in their present form for at least 70 million years.
• A single hectare of tropical rainforest may contain 200 tree species. The same area of temperate forest typically contains only 10 to 15 species.
• Rainforests act as giant reservoirs of moisture and warmth, releasing water throughout the year as the perennial streams and rivers that support the lives of billions of people, meeting the needs of 40 per cent of the farmers in the developing countries.
• Rainforests worldwide are home to an estimated 50 million indigenous forest peoples.
• Tropical deforestation is the second largest cause of climate change.
• Rainforests contain medicines – an estimated one in four of all purchases from pharmacies in countries such as Britain contain an active ingredient derived from a tropical forest species.
• Many prescription drugs currently sold worldwide come from plant-derived sources. And while 25 per cent of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, less than 1 per cent of tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists.
• The US National Cancer Institute has identified 3000 plants that are active against cancer cells. 70 per cent of these plants are found in the rainforest. Twenty-five percent of the active ingredients in today’s cancer-fighting drugs come from organisms found only in the rainforest.
• Despite their immense importance, the rainforest are highly endangered by logging operations. Within the last 50 years more than half of the rainforests vanished. Every year a rainforest area larger than England is cut down!

(Source: www.telegraph.co.uk)

Who owns the saved rainforest?

The rainforest Ecosia saves is neither owned by Ecosia nor the WWF. The saved area is part of a national park, which strictly speaking is owned by the Brazilian state.

Is there enough rainforest to be saved?

The total size of the Amazon rainforest is about seven million km². Ecosia has only saved a very little piece of this vast area so far. As you can see on our statistics page there is still a lot of rainforest remaining to be saved by environmental projects like Ecosia.

For more information visit Ecosia.

 

©Earth Goddess Wisdom

A number of years ago we had a lillypilly absolutely butchered by an “arborist”. It was a beautiful tree – with loads of energy – and when he “trimmed” it, you would walk out the back and you could ‘feel’ its pain. It was just horrible – so much so that even our (at the time) very young child cried when she stood near it.

So I asked a friend for a tree healing spell. We used it and it was amazing to see how that tree sprung back to life. (For the skeptics amongst you, I had a second tree (same species) trimmed at the same time and did not perform the same tree healing spell on it, and it did not respond quite so well.)

So when the time came in June 2010 for us to cut down our 90 year old mulberry tree, we were devastated. Unfortunately there was nothing for it. The tree was so old and heavy, and had not been looked after for such a long time, that the trunk had split and it would eventually have died from being split in half and bugs/disease getting into the wound.

         

This time we were lucky. We found a tree surgeon who, like us, believes that trees are living breathing creatures with a spirit of their own. He looked at the the tree, gave the prognosis and said “I’ll give you a day to say your goodbyes”.

That afternoon, we sat around the tree, sending it love and explaining that we didn’t want to have it removed, but it was the best thing for it. We thanked it for the kilos of fruit it had provided us over the last two seasons, gave it our love and said goodbye.

The next day the deed was done and I spent a little time that afternoon grieving it being gone.

But …..

 

 

 

 

 

 

A little over 12 months later, like a Phoenix rising from the ashes, this new little sapling appeared. No, we did NOT plant it and did nothing to encourage it. It just sprouted from the remains of its grandmother.

We are however doing all we can to help it survive! Will keep you posted how it goes!

Now THAT’s magic!

 

© Earth Goddess Wisdom – www.earthgoddesswisdom.com

This question comes from my daughter year after year and I give her the usual obtuse responses – usually culminating in her frustrated: “Well do YOU believe in Santa??” – to which I use my standard reply “I believe in the SPIRIT of Santa and what he represents”. With a roll of the eyes and a pre-pubescent humph she turns away from me in disgust to try again next year.

But this year, in addition to the usual question, she regaled me with stories from kids at school – including the kicker that Coca-Cola created the modern image of Santa Claus. This led me to embark on a search for origins. And it was an interesting search indeed.

It’s true that people need answers – we want definite responses to when, where, why, and who and unfortunately with an evolutionary figure like Santa this just is not possible.

First off, let’s debunk the myth that Coke created the modern image of Santa Claus. See Snopes for an explanation of this myth.

Secondly, Santa Claus is not a Christian figure – though it is believed he evolved from the 4th Century Christian Greek Bishop, St Nicholas, famous for his generous gift-giving – and it is generally believed that he has become a conglomeration of beliefs and traditions across the centuries to have evolved into what we now regard as “Santa Claus”.

The name Santa Claus is generally accepted to to have come from the Dutch Sinterklaas, who is generally celebrated on St Nicholas’s Eve (5 December), or the Name Day of the Greek Bishop Saint Nicholas on 6 December, who is patron saint of children. Good and bad played important roles in the St Nicholas’s Eve feasts of the Middle Ages: good is rewarded; evil is punished. This has continued into current traditions.

It is believed that in the 19th Century the images of Sinterklaas delivering gifts via chimney and riding the rooftops on a grey horse were introduced by Jan Schenkman in his children’s book Saint Nicholas and His Servant.

Dutch children often leave a shoe by the fireplace – or the door in houses with no chimney – holding hay or a carrot for Sinterklaas’s horse, with candy or a small present being left in exchange for their kindness.

The Dutch brought their traditions, rituals and images with them to the Americas which is how the imagery developed in that region.

Interestingly the first modern American description of Santa Claus appeared in an anonymous poem titled Account of A Visit from St Nicholas. This poem, published on December 23, 1823 in The Sentinel, is better known as The Night Before Christmas.

Santa Claus is generally depicted as a stately elderly father-like figure with white hair and a long beard – usually carrying a staff and/or a book (containing the names of all the good and bad children). This image is common across cultures and religions to depict various gods and mythical figures including the Christian god, the pagan gods Zeus and Odin, and Father Winter (the spirit of winter solstice) from the British Isles.

The Dutch tradition of leaving hay or a carrot for Sinterklaas’s horse, a shoe by the fireplace, and his image bears a striking similarity to pagan customs of the Germanic and Celtic people.

Christmas takes place at the time of the pagan celebration of Yule – or the Winter Solstice – in the northern hemisphere. Special reverence was placed on this period of time in many societies of pre-Christian Europe.

For example, in Ancient Rome, the Feast of Saturnalia took place in late December and involved gift-giving, feasting and decorating homes with evergreen clippings, and living trees with pieces of metal and images of gods.

Evergreen trees are revered because they do not “die” by losing their leaves during winter – and were thought to thus house a tree spirit of everlasting life.

December was also the time for special rites associated with Dionysus – known in some pagan traditions as The Green Man and associated with renewal, rebirth and revelry, symbolising the triumph of life over death/winter.

Odin, an important god to Germanic peoples, was said to lead a hunting party through the sky at Yule, riding a grey 8-legged horse, Sleipnir (said to be the inspiration for the eight reindeer of Santa’s sleigh) who could leap great distances. Children would place their boots filled with carrots, straw or sugar near the chimney for Sleipnir, and they were rewarded for their kindness by replacing Sleipnir’s food with gifts or candy.

Yule itself is a celebration of the birth of the Sun and the promise of a return to the light. The proximity of Christmas then to Yule is likely no accident as it enabled pagan peoples to easily assimilate existing traditions into the new Christianised beliefs.

So then … is Santa real? I believe so – perhaps not as a flesh and blood man riding around in a reindeer-powered sleigh but certainly the spirit and intent of the season is very real: renewal, rebirth, a time for hope, for sharing, giving and spending time with loved ones. There’s nothing more real than that.

 

© Earth Goddess Wisdom

 

Resources:

Snopes – The Claus That Refreshes

Pole Spirits – North & South

History of Santa Claus in America

Wikipedia:

- Sinterklaas

- Santa Claus

 

 

 

Our comfrey plant has been going NUTS over the last few seasons and I’ve been despairing what to do with it. I decided to dry the leaves and use them for cooking and tea-making, but my daughter decided she wanted to give making comfrey oil a go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comfrey is a useful plant used for centuries to heal wounds and broken bones – hence its other name: knitbone.

Leaves or roots applied as a wash, poultice or ointment are used for bruising, sciatica, boils, rheumatism, neuralgia, varicose veins, bed sores, wounds, ulcers, insect bites, tumours, muscular pain, pulled tendons, gangrene, shingles and dermatological conditions.

Internally comfrey leaf tea has been used to help with indigestion, stomach and bowel problems, excessive menstrual flow, hoarseness, periodontal diseases, bleeding gums, thyroid disorders, diarrhea, gastrointestinal ulcers, hernia, glandular fever, coughs, lung conditions, hemorrhaging, cancer, catarrh, anemia, sinusitis, lupus, lowering blood pressure, hiatus hernia, blood purifier, to ease inflammation of the joints and mucus membranes.

Method:

After cutting the flowering stalks of comfrey (use gloves because the plant has fine hairs all over it and can be a bit scratchy), cut them into smaller pieces.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next fill your sterilised jars with (as Susun Weed says) enough comfrey to make a bed for a fairy. So don’t stuff it in but fill the jar to the point where pressing on the plant material is bouncy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally fill your jars with pure olive oil, or extra virgin olive oil. We used both in this to see if there was a noticeable difference between the resulting oils. The oil should completely cover the plant material.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Use a chopstick to press on the plant material to get as many of the air bubbles out as possible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cap tightly and your oil is ready in six weeks.

In a day or two after first bottling, check the level of oil to ensure the plant material is fully covered. Top up if necessary.

In six weeks you strain the plant material out of the oil, label with the date and it can be used as is on bruises, cuts, rubbed into sprains etc. Put the plant material into your compost. Plants just LOVE comfrey mulch!

My daughter wants to take some and make an ointment out of it so I’ll let you know how she goes with phase 2!

 

By the way, here’s how my leaves looked dried and the resultant tea!

     

 

 

 

 

 

© Earth Goddess Wisdom – www.earthgoddesswisdom.com

Resources:

Herbs Are Special – Comfrey