NEWSLETTER #42
Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head...
in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.
~Robin Wall Kimmerer
Hello Friends!
Welcome to all new and ongoing subscribers to the latest issue of my Newsletter (#42) and a big thank you to all paid subscribers!
I love the opening quote because I really feel it strongly in my life. I’m in awe of the beauty of nature in the world. I realized a while ago that the more I knew about nature, the more it opened my eyes, the more I became aware of the complete wonder of it, every day, no matter where I am.
I was going to write about the importance of planting native trees and shrubs in this issue, but it’s a bigger topic which I’m going to save for a book project I’m working on, but let me leave you with this reminder: when you plant natives to your area, birds and insects have a much better chance of adapting to climate change.
In this issue, I will explain how you can easily make your own skin soothing Calendula Oil; what is the American Climate Corps; the latest radical Reggio School to open; who is the Chef that cooks in Rhythm with Nature and the latest film by friends of mine called Common Ground. Onwards!
#1-Make Your Own Skin Healing Calendula Oil
Calendula officinalis has been used by herbalists, homesteaders, and natural healers for centuries. It is used to treat chapped and cracked skin, and heal skin infections. Calendula works its magic by promoting cell repair and growth, coupled with its natural antiseptic, anti-fungal, and anti-inflammatory properties. Above all, it is gentle in its work.
Calendula oil is simply oil that has been infused with dry calendula flowers. The flowers are steeped in a carrier oil such as olive, almond or jojoba oil for several weeks or longer. While steeping the dry flower petals ( it is important that they’re fully dry ), the natural active resins within the calendula flowers are extracted and drawn into the oil. If the petals aren’t 100% dry, the will get moldy in the oil and the entire jar will have to be thrown out.
How to make your own
If growing your own calendula flowers, pick just the open flowers at midday, when the morning dew has evaporated. The more often you pick them, the more they will keep on blooming for weeks. You can also order organically grown dried petals + oil from my store on Amazon. I also order from my own store and just restocked only favorite jojoba oil.
Once I’ve picked the calendula flower heads, I spread the blooms face side down on a reusable sheet of watercolor paper. It feels like the slightly absorbent paper will wick away any moisture and it does.
Once the petals have shriveled a bit, which can take a week or two, I pull them off, and put them in a paper tray I made.
They will spend a week in the tray, before getting moved into a mesh bag, ready to be used for making calendula oil.
All you need is a small, clean glass jar, a carrier oil that you like such as olive, almond or jojoba oil, a paper label, pen and a rubber band. Fill 3/4 of the jar with calendula petals and add the oil, making sure all the petals are completely covered. Put the lid back on, write Calendula Oil on a scrap of paper and the date it will be ready (I add 6 weeks to the date it was made), and attach the label with a reusable rubber band. Put the jar in a sunny spot where the sun helps to infuse the oil.
Once the oil is ready, pour the entire contents of the jar through a tea strainer or coffee filter into a clean glass container. It should only have the calendula oil in it. I add my homemade oil to a smaller glass container with an easy to use spout (reusable).
Compost the petals.
Read the information on your carrier oil bottle to determine the recommended shelf life of your calendula oil. The addition of calendula will not change the carrier oil’s typical storage life. Some oils are more prone to becoming rancid than others; most have an average shelf life of 1 to 2 years. You can also store your calendula oil in the refrigerator to extend the shelf life.
I use calendula oil dabbed on a cotton wool to remove eye make-up or I add a few drops in my hand to apply directly to my skin. It’s wonderful! It feels even better knowing that I made it myself!
Calendula oil making tools available here
#2-American Climate Corps
-Embracing FDR's Spirit and Progressive Demand, Biden Unveils American Climate Corps-
After years of pressure from environmentalists and progressive lawmakers, the Biden administration recently announced a new program aimed at training tens of thousands of young people in skills and jobs critical to combating climate breakdown, from land and water conservation to clean energy development.
Inspired by the FDR’s New Deal's* Civilian Conservation Corps or WPA—a popular decade-long program that employed millions of young men—the Biden administration's American Climate Corps (ACC) will establish a paid training program with the goal of providing "pathways to high-quality, good-paying clean energy and climate resilience jobs in the public and private sectors," according to a White House fact sheet.
The administration estimates that the program, established via executive action, will train more than 20,000 Americans, "putting them to work conserving and restoring our lands and waters, bolstering community resilience, deploying clean energy, implementing energy-efficient technologies, and advancing environmental justice."
Three years ago, Varshini Prakash sat on then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders' Unity Climate Task Force and shared one of Sunrise Movement's top priorities for the future administration—a Civilian Climate Corps, a visionary jobs program to put thousands of young people to work in real career pathways fighting for their future. Varshini Prakash, the Sunrise Movement's executive director, said in a statement last week, "now, after years of demonstrating and fighting for a Climate Corps, we turned a generational rallying cry into a real jobs program that will put a new generation to work stopping the climate crisis," Prakash added. "With the ACC and the historic climate investments won by our broader movement, the path towards a Green New Deal is beginning to become visible."
*The Works Progress Administration, also known as the WPA, was active from 1939-1943. It was a work program for the unemployed, which was created in 1935 under U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.
The purpose of the program was to provide useful work for millions of victims of the Great Depression and thus preserve their skills and self-respect. The economy would in turn be stimulated by the increased purchasing power of the newly employed.
#3- The Reggio-Emilia School System
-a naturally progressive approach to teaching children-
I wish that children and young people were learning about the importance of nature as part of an established program at every school ( along with healthy school lunches, a safe campus, etc. ), like the latest campus of the Reggio school which just opened in Madrid. This is an example of what can be done when starting from scratch, where classrooms have been arranged around an indoor rainforest, with porthole googly-eye windows peering out from lumpy, butter-colored walls, zigzagging roofs and soaring archways. What a fun looking school to go to!
Designed by Spanish architect Andrés Jaque, the Reggio’s radical construction not only brings nature indoors, but also encourages plant and animal life to colonize its ‘living’ exterior walls. Clad in an insulating mixture of mashed cork, it offers an ideal habitat, not unlike the surface of a tree, for fungi, insects and microbial life.
Classrooms look out onto gardens- some inaccessible to humans –created by ecologists to attract birds, butterflies, bats and bees.
Inside, a courtyard hosts a miniature temperate Rainforest, which rises two stories to the glass canopy above. Labs and workshops are arranged around its edges.
Some of the classrooms in a Reggio-Emilia school in Brazil.
The school’s design is a living embodiment of the radical Reggio-Emilia method, which is an educational philosophy developed in postwar Italy. It sees children not as empty vessels to be filled with education, but active participants in defining their own curriculum: their experience- touching, listening and first-hand discovery –lie at the heart of the learning process. Connection with the outdoors is key and the physical environment is imagined as the ‘third teacher,’ with spaces configured to encourage open-ended exploration.
Learn more about the Reggio-Emilia educational system here
#4- The Best Chef in the World
-a chef who cooks in rhythm with nature-
Elena Reygadas has been named best female chef in the world in the The World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2023 awards!
Reygadas, at Rosetta, her first and signature restaurant, which she opened in 2010 in an old mansion in the Roma neighborhood of Mexico City.
I had dinner at Rosetta a few years ago and it was incredible. One of the most amazing dining experiences I’ve had. I highly recommend going there. It’s beautiful as well.
Over a decade later, the world-renowned restaurant is where Reygadas has dedicated herself to reconfiguring the vast culinary wealth of her country, menu by menu.
“The menu is based on the timeline and the ingredients that nature gives us. Right now, for example, we have a dish with Manila mango that only lasts a little while. We are also using a lot of muscatel plum, but when it’s over, it’s over,” said Reygadas. “It makes us sad because we become very attached to the ingredients, but that also allows us to continue our creativity and move into a new moment.”
“It’s a factor that also has its challenges, because sometimes people who visit us are already in love with a dish but, when they arrive, it is gone and they don’t like that,” Reygadas said. “So changing the menu to respect nature’s times is also a challenge at the diners’ level."
When asked the secret of Rosetta’s success, she credits that emphasis on "biodiversity." Today, Rosetta’s kitchen is 100% focused on ingredients and products from Mexico,” the chef said.
#5- Movie to See: Common Ground
Common Ground is a documentary extolling the virtues of regenerative agriculture. From the filmmakers of Kiss The Ground, the directors Josh and Rebecca Tickell bring us their latest film, Common Ground, which exposes the toxic interconnections of American farming policy, politics, and health, by sharing stories of destruction and regeneration across the United States and beyond, all while exploring how people from different walks of life, different political backgrounds and different places share one thing in common – the very soil beneath their feet.
Winner of the 2023 Human/Nature Award at the Tribeca Film Festival, a prize established to amplify a film that best exemplifies solution-oriented environmental storytelling.
Find a screening near you here
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Follow me on Instagram for all my latest news. River’s Edge Farm NY, my climate resilient organic zero waste carbon neutral mini farm is almost ready to be put to bed. Save for a few beds of arugula, kale and chard, the rest will be making its way to the compost pile. Seed collecting continues with beans, sweet peas, sunflower, zinnias, Joe Pye weed, ironweed, borage, nasturtiums and calendula being dried and stored away for next year. Nuts are being collected from the nearby stand of hazelnuts, and I managed to fill a bucket with hickory nuts (the squirrels got there first), another with butternuts and soon, black walnuts, which are strewn along the sides of roads in my area.
Enjoy this beautiful time of year!
See you soon again,
Priscilla