Cough Syrup Update

As far as I can tell the stuff works. It both soothes your chest and makes your cough productive - without making you cough your head off.
Here's how you make it:
Gather some chokecherry or wild cherry branches. Peel the bark off (Cree and I used knives to whittle it off). Once you've got about 1-1.5 ounces of bark, put it in a quart jar and pour boiling water over it. Put a lid on it and set aside for 8-10 hrs. This will serve as the initial infusion.
After 8-10 hrs, strain the liquid through a coffee filter and pour the infusion into a pan and heat on the stove over low heat. Reduce the amount of liquid by half, producing a decoction.
That's basically it. I added 2 TBSPs of honey, but you don't have to, the syrup doesn't taste bad on its own. It's just kind of thin. Since both of the kids have this same cold I had them take the medicine too before they went to bed. So far it seems to have not killed any of us! And I really do feel a lot better than what I did yesterday.
One last footnote: When gathering anything for use in an herbal remedy always make sure that you can properly identify the plants. Otherwise, you can inadvertently poison yourself and others, which is never any fun. I have a cousin, Jimmy, who ended up hospitalized after picking mushrooms that he was sure were edible, but then not so much. Chokecherry trees are pretty easy to identify, you can either pick up a book or check it out on line. The bark is distinctive, as are the leaves and tiny little black/red fruit. Still, it's always best to be sure of what you're doing.

Jennifer, the Herbalist

Yes, I really just referred to myself in the third person. That's what happens when you've got a ridiculously common moniker. So, anyway, I'm a certified herbalist. Bet ya didn't know that! I only practice on my family and friends, so it's not some big career path. I'm simply too cheap to run to the doctor unless I think that whatever is wrong with me might kill me. Then I grudgingly go. Otherwise I'm out in the fields and woods gathering stuff to cure what ails me, and everybody else in my small circle. Today, to treat my horrid cold, I cut some chokecherry branches and I'm making real cherry cough syrup, nothing like that chemical crap you get at the store. Oh noes, this is the real McCoy. I've never made cough syrup before, usually treating a cold with lots of tea liberally doused with homemade brandy. But, I'm all out of brandy, and I don't like that fake flavored stuff they sell at the liquor store. Sooooooo, I'm making cough syrup and cherry brandy. The cherry brandy won't be readyl for several months, so that's just me planning ahead, which I should have done last year. Damn me in the past! A pox upon my shadow self!!!
Anyway, the syrup will be ready later today and I'll post tomorrow whether it works or not. If it works, I'll include the recipe for it. If it doesn't work you can send cash in lieu of flowers to MK to defer the cost of my impending cremation. :) I have a feeling it'll work. I mean, it was used to treat everything from whooping cough to emphysema in pre-WWI North America (waves to Canada).

Dixmont

This is the former Dixmont State Mental Hospital. Opened during the Civil War and shutdown forever in 1984, I had the opportunity to tour the facility on a field trip my senior year of high school in 1980 with and for a psychology class. A couple of things stick in my mind about that visit: The building was in severe decline and ruin, and the young schizophrenic I spoke with knew more about flatworms than anyone else I've ever met. He carried with him a detailed notebook on all things flatworms. His pencil drawings were meticulous and precise. The simplicity of flatworm anatomy and function had him in its thrall. For the life of me I can't remember what that young man's face looked like, but I can still his hands moving over the pages of that notebook. Of course he asked me for matches. Everyone we encountered asked us for matches. Most of the patients smoked, but they weren't allowed to have lighters or matches. The staff would light their cigarettes, but they still all wanted their own matches. Sometimes I look at a book of matches as representing a little freedom. Not in a pyromaniac sort of way, but like how you strike a match and light the way through the darkness.
Anway, Dixmont was torn down and Wal-Mart meant to build a massive superstore on the site...but the hillside wasn't stable and resulted in a massive landslide onto Rt. 65 below. After further landslides Wal-Mart gave up on developing the site. There have long been rumors that Dixmont was haunted...

Fringe

Deep down, I'm a skeptic who loves conspiracy theories and is a little thrilled by fringe science. I can't help it. It's like eating Funnyuns, or chocolate, or drinking cheap vodka and Tang: You just can't stop!
The new Fox show from J.J. Abrahms, "Fringe" is almost too good to be true. I didn't trust my initial assessment on the first viewing, so I watched the whole 1.5 hr premier again. I was even more blown away by the set up and premise, owing in no small part to Anna Torv's turn as Olivia Dunham. While other people are in the cast, and they are capable enough to deliver their lines, it's Torv as Dunham that sets the pace and direction of the show. She's an absolute joy to watch. She's not afraid to show emotion and go the extra yard for something that is close to her heart, but when push comes to shove, she's all FBI all the time. A weird balancing act, but Torv pulls it off.
So, I'm committing to this show. Despite how I felt about J.J.'s other show, "Lost", I'm going to stick with "Fringe" for at least the full season.
As a footnote, the show I've given up on - "The Sarah Connor Chronicles". One big WTF? Nothing but extraneous filler for an outcome that we already know. Yes, I love Lena Headey (what lesbian doesn't?), but the show itself is dreck. Too much tension is built every single week and the show just can't sustain that. It feels forced because it is. Maybe if they could've just had some more down time funny moments, something relatable, I would've thought that there was hope. But no. I'm outta there.

Buffy 8.18

I love the Buffy Season 8 comic, a do, I really, really do. But I'm getting more than a little put off by this arc. Here we are, three issues into it, and I'm still waiting for something to happen. Maybe I've got unrealistic expectations, maybe I'm a demanding cur barking at the darkness, or maybe we've all come to expect excellence from the Joss Whedon camp because that's almost always what we get. Who knows?
The issues I take with issue #18 revolve specifically around Willow literally evolving into someone I no longer recognize, and Buffy purposely not saving some people screaming for help from a cadre of vamps. When did Buffy start ignoring the slaughter of innocents? And Willow with the weird orgasm visit to the tentacle porn creature...? And, and, and future Willow, the sad mad woman, is about as prophetic, or dark, or darkly prophetic as a cardboard cut-out of Callisto. Wait, I take that back, Hudson Leick was able to master a menacing and withering leer.
Maybe it's me, maybe I'm missing some brilliant subtlety with all the clobbering of Willow and Buffy not acting like Willow and Buffy. Maybe it's all a bait and switch, which will kind of suck if the nonsense of the last three issues are all tied up overly neatly in #19.
When's Jane Espenson going to write an issue? The strength of the show BtVS was that a lot of the shows were penned by women. So far with the comic we've had only guys writing it, and it is really starting to show in the voice of certain characters and the overall tone and direction that they are taking. We really need a breath of fresh air in the slayerverse. I also wouldn't mind having Brian K. Vaughn come back to write some more issues...and let him bring Faith along with him! That's by far been my favorite arc. It was complex, problematic, and a joy to read, and reread, and reread, and reread...
What's really disappointing is that I was really anticipating this issue, hoping to get a colossal set up for the finale. Wow, did it not deliver. It's not like I'm going to quit reading or anything. I mean, I stuck by The X-Files through the Doggett years, so clearly I'm loyal, if sometimes critical and disgruntled. I'm in for the long haul, wherever that may lead.

Gemini Division

Despite having a name that reminds me of an 80s British New Wave band, this online show is a winner. Gemini Division is the rarest of commodities in a virtual world besieged by empty content: It is good. Produced by Electric Farm Entertainment, the same people who brought us the animated, really quasi animated because there's only jerky movement, Afterworld, and starring Rosario Dawson, Gemini Division is part sci-fi, part love story, part mystery, all topped off with uber techno cop gadgetry. It's quite ingenius. But, when you get right down to it, the reason that the show succeeds is Dawson. She has to establish an intimacy with the viewer that has to feel genuine, and it does. Because of the nature of how the show is shot, with her talking into a webcam to some unknown person or persons, the weight of carrying the storyline falls directly on Dawson's shoulders, and she brings it, baby!
Is the show perfect? No. The webisodes are too short. And despite Dawson's awesome ability to draw you into the circumstances that she's confronted with, it seems as if at times extraneous exposition is forced. I wonder how this will play out as the show advances.
Still, I cannot stress enough how gloriously Dawson pulls off the difficult balance of carrying the full load...
Oh great, my mom's here. She probably wants her tupperware back.

Pissed Red Redux

It's that time again boys and girls! MK and I will be bottling another batch of delicious wine! After that I'm going to throw a bunch of pears in the fermenting tank and make some brandy. All should go well as long as an open flame is kept a safe distance away.
What I love most about making hooch is the unpredictability of the entire process. Explosions, fires, cloudy poison corked up in a bottle...It's a little like being a mad scientist, only without the actual science part. I mean, yeah, sure, I know the science involved in the breakdown of sugar molecules into alcohol and all that, the exciting process of conversion. But, when you're actually making wine it seems less like science and more like, Eureka! We've got rocket fuel! Let's get blasted!