Anyone Else Remember :

Do you think any of them learned the obvious ?

A momir

Makes me smile.

Anybody in need of a pick me up.

Stop attacking libraries !

This is absolutely catastrophic.

It does seem like this is the way we’re headed.

SO MUCH FOR SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE.

Which is the principal that made white peoples come to this continent and write the declaration of independence and then the constitution in the first place.

Just saying.

Capitalism and Consumerism are destroying this planet 🌍 [IS ACTUALLY THE ONLY ONE WE HAVE ]. It is also the end of us as a dominant species.

Oh my god I'm sooooo mad right now

So. I have no business telling people not to collect wild plants/materials.

I do it all the time.

However.

The words "wildcrafted," and "foraged," even "sustainably harvested," are terrifying to see in an ad on Etsy or Instagram

There is a such thing as the honorable harvest where you ASK the plant if it is okay to take, with the intention of listening if the answer is NO. Robin Wall Kimmerer talked about this, She did not make it up, it is an ancient and basic guideline of treating the plants with respect.

Basically it is not wrong to use plants and other living things, even if this means taking their life. But you are not the main character. You have to reflect on your knowledge of the organism's life cycle and its role in the ecosystem, so you can know you are not damaging the ecosystem. You have to only take what you need and avoid depleting the population.

Mary Siisip Geniusz also talked about it in an enlightening way in her book Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have To Do is Ask. She gave an example of a woman who was on an island and needed to use a medicinal herb to heal her injured leg or she would not survive the winter. In that situation she had to use up all of the plant that was on the island. This was permissible, even though it eliminated the local population, because she had to do it to save her life. But in return the woman had the responsibility to later return to the island and plant seeds of that plant.

And what makes me absolutely furious, is that there are a bunch of people online who have vaguely copied this philosophy of sustainability in a false and insulting way, saying "wildcrafted" or "foraged" materials to be all trendy and cool and in touch with nature, when it is actually just poaching.

If you are from a capitalistic culture the honorable harvest is very hard and unintuitive to learn to practice. I am not very good at it still. This is why it is suspicious if someone is confident that they can ethically and respectfully harvest wild materials with money involved.

So there's this lichen that is often called "reindeer moss." It looks like this:

It grows only a few millimeters a year.

This is "preserved" reindeer moss.

It is from Etsy, similar is also sold in many other online shops, many of which have the audacity to describe it as a "plant" for decorations and terrariums that needs no maintenance.

It is not maintenance-free, it is dead. It has been spray-painted a horrible shade of green. The people buying it clearly don't even know what it is. It is a popular crafting material for "fairy houses," whatever the hell those are. So is moss, also dead, spray-painted, and wild-harvested. Supposedly reindeer moss is harvested sustainably in Finland, where it is abundant, for the craft industry. However poaching of lichens and mosses is absolutely rampant.

It's even more upsetting because there's hardly any articles drawing attention to the problem. This one is from 1999. And the poaching is still going on.

There is a "moss" section on Etsy, and it is so upsetting

These mosses and lichens were collected from the wild. Most of the shops are in the Pacific Northwest or Appalachia, which are the major locations of moss and lichen poaching. There are some shops based in Appalachia selling "foraged" reindeer moss.

Reindeer moss may be abundant in Finland, but in Appalachia it should NOT be harvested to be sold on Etsy as craft supplies! Moss doesn't grow quickly. Big, healthy colonies like this took years to grow. Some of these shops have thousands of sales, all of bags and bags of moss and lichen, and thinking of how much moss and lichen that must be, I am filled with horror.

Clubmosses do not transplant well, and these ones have no roots. The buyers do not realize they have bought a dead plant because clubmoss stays green and pliable after it is dead.

This is especially awful because in Mary Siisip Geniusz's book she talked about clubmosses being poached so much for Christmas wreaths that they had almost disappeared from a lot of forests.

I don't even know if this is illegal if it's not a formally endangered species so I don't know if I can report them I'm just. really sad and angry

Vet wrap is the best. In every first aid kit I have. (There are several.) always recommending it , along with aloe and arnica.

Sorry to hear about your eminent demise. You could use arnica and aloe.

also I got a tattoo partially re-coloured today and they bandaged me in veterinary wrap like I'm a sick horse

Kinda cool 😎

We only cohabitate with nature, it’s the greatest thought fallacy that we have dominion over Nature. Man has been here only a very short period of time, man will be replaced quite easily because we do not recognize how to sustainably live in relationship with nature. Nature will continue on over men’s bones and vast achievements. Nature does not have a ego.

I was in their environment, so I don’t blame them.

You often see this kind of comment made after someone is attacked by a shark or bear. And it took me a long time to understand, but that is a thoroughly wrong headed thought process.

We don’t enter sharks, bears, raccoons, or anything else’s environment. And they do not enter ours. We are a much a part of nature and the environment as any other living thing, and vice versa. You, me, everyone has a much call and cause to swim in the ocean or walk in the mountains any other living thing.

We keep separating ourselves from nature and the environment to the point we’re we get a God complex thinking we need to “save” it. Or, on the other end of the spectrum “it ain’t mine, so fuck it”. And because of it, we do really dumb shit to our own home.

They say all politics is local. Well, so is nature. And when you separate yourself from it, it becomes someone or something else problem, or responsibility. But the problem is, that ain’t the case. You cannot remove yourself from it, it is the natural world, and we are all part of it.

We have a much right and responsibility to hug trees and not pollute, as we do to fill a deep freeze with venison. We have as much right and responsibility to be good stewards of our home (nature) as we do to utilize the resources contained in it. And until we stop viewing tree huggers as hippy commies and hunters as evil murderers our house (nature) won’t be getting any cleaner or any better.

Until we stop thinking about nature in absolutes, we will continue to find it harder and harder to maintain, and live in, our home.

And that’s the SORRY truth of the matter.

That’s all I will say about the matter.

Yep, we work our entire careers to lie to you

A most unusual lovely “musical” alibet somewhat raucous interlude. Hit it Joe

Bang,