Apothecary Rose

The connection between American publishing and the English houses that supported them were as clear as day to me, as a young apprentice at St. Martin's Press. Editors went on annual buying trips "across the pond" to partake in the comfy literary markets of murder mysteries and tearoom gardens that are so quintessentially British. Excepting for some technical difficulties present in the differences between printing processes, our repackaged series were the house staples we could all rely on. Murder mystery readers are overwhelmingly female, and surprisingly devoted to their fictional, crime-solving heroes; a pat, easy formula that's the perfect armchair read on a chilly autumn night, served with a warm cuppa on the side.

Until a certain female protagonist caught my attention. Because I produced the advance reader copies sent out to reviewers, I usually knew the manuscript well enough to talk about it, and because of the lulls in my work, I actually read most of them, too. We did a bunch of medieval murder mysteries that sought to capitalize on the commercial success of Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose". This one began similarly, but with a twist: the prime suspect was also the chief investigator. She was a female apothecary working as a laywoman within abbey walls, tending to the same medicinal garden that produced the deadly herbal used as the murder weapon, found on her shelves. Neat plot twist, right?

I was reminded of my own botanist mother who'd cried foul play over my child's bouquet, picked to cheer her up during one of her many "moods". "Agh!" She dramatically cried out when I presented my flowers to her, at her bedside. "That's 'deadly' nightshade!" Oh? Pretty purple flowers. "Are you trying to poison me?!" Uh, no...but, thanks for the tip. End scene, cut, aaannnd...fade out.

Aside from the theater of her daily undoing, I learned a lot about the power of plants from her. She often knew their Latin names by heart, and if we couldn't readily identify the wildflowers we found, we'd look them up. She knew the trees around us by the shape of their leaves, and the colors they changed in the fall. It was a beauty and magic to me that lengthened into homesickness for the forests of my northern woods. Never would I forget the shape of sunlight slanting through the trees, or the happy yellow of a early spring daffodil.

It's become grounding to me with every move I've made, a steadying process that keeps me down-to-earth in a sea of change; collecting specimens, looking them up, and then pressing them between the pages of books. That is the strength of our collective gifts as a mother and daughter: a knowledge that is straight and true. 
And so very beautiful.

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2017/09/14/england-to-be-re-dedicated-as-dowry-of-mary/

Spotted Fever

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Mountain_spotted_fever

When I was 18 years old, I almost died from a tick bite. My college boyfriend was visiting Rockland with me, and we were going back to school on a slow difficult bus ride through the mountains of upstate New York, with stomachs full of my mom's spaghetti and meatball dinner. After the second time I threw up, the bus driver began telling students that someone was sick on the bus before they got on, so they could weigh their options on the staircase. Later, my idiot boyfriend would tell me that he finally knew he was "in love" with me when he realized that he was more worried about my health than being embarrassed by the smell of vomit, which didn't dispel any of my notions about his relative immaturity in comparison to mine.

It was so serious that I couldn't make it back up the hill to campus, after the bus dropped us off in Oneonta. We had to crash at his brother's downtown apartment above "The Black Oak Tavern" that he shared with his hipster girlfriend, arranged by my boyfriend on a payphone while I sat on a suitcase waiting for his brother to let us in. Their "crash pad" was exactly what you'd expect from them as a couple: one big exposed brick wall, with arty black-and-white partially nude photographs taken of his girlfriend in very favorable angles hanging on the other walls, and an acoustic guitar resting in its stand in the corner, just in case you missed every other cue that you were around seriously "arty" types. I had to stay there for at least a day or two to regain my strength for the bus ride back up to campus.

Once there, I immediately went back to bed. My best friend and my boyfriend took me to the health center on campus the next day. We were told that I simply had the flu, and if we would have believed them, it would have been of horrible consequence to me for the rest of my life. But (thank goodness for our college arrogance), we didn't listen to some young, rather dumb, and woefully underpaid healthcare aide working in a remote hick town, because I wasn't getting any better, and I couldn't hold down food or water. My roommate called my mom from the dorm's pay phone to keep her abreast of my condition (which was hard for us to do, because we budgeted our precious quarters for laundry use), and she asked her to take my temperature regularly.

She called back with the results, saying it was high, and that she couldn't even stay in her own dorm room because it smelled so bad from vomit. Touching, eh? But, that's exactly the way it was for us back then; too much sympathy directed attention away from you that could make the difference as to whether or not you also went down, and we didn't want that for any one of us. We fought hard to stay alive. After another few days, my mom made the important decision to pick me up from school and take me to see a real doctor, my childhood pediatrician Dr. Dreyer. She still counts it as one of her great acts of mercy towards me, that she interrupted her busy life to care for me this one last time. If she had refused to do so, I'd be dead or seriously impaired right now. So, thanks for not letting me die...I guess.

That must seem cruel to you now, as a younger generation raised to believe that you might hold all of the potential of a magical golden statue, priceless in your own estimation, but that's not how my parents saw it then, or how they see it now. Pragmatism ruled the day for working class religious families, because tragedies happened every day. That's the way it was (is). They had an "heir to spare" (in their own words), because they already had two male sons to carry on the family name and inherit any property or family assets through their future children. I was considered a mistake, because my mom didn't want to get pregnant so soon after my brother was born, and yet here I am writing to you today. It's rather miraculous, when you think about it.

I was so weak that I couldn't walk down the flights of stairs from the dorm's third floor, so my strong young boyfriend wrapped me up in a blanket and carried me downstairs in the harsh cold weather to my mom's car, putting me into the passenger seat. She'd arranged a makeshift garbage bag in the car for me to get sick in, which I did throughout the trip home, even though I had nothing in my stomach. I'd never been so sick in my life. When I got home to my mother's house, I could barley walk the small steps from my childhood room to the bathroom we all shared as kids, and that was barely four steps away.

I felt like I had really bad arthritis, because every joint in my body ached. In between fever dreams, I had to steady myself against the wall with shaky hands just to make it a few steps, and that was becoming harder to do with each day that passed. I felt like I was dying. My mom got me to see my childhood doctor right away, and he diagnosed me with one look, because I had definitive red target rashes covering my arms, like a textbook case of tick bites. He took a blood sample, but prescribed antibiotics for me to start right away, before the test came back, because beating this disease meant that time was of the essence. If the disease settled into my bones, I would have been crippled for life, because it meant we waited too long to start a course of treatment. We later surmised that I'd been exposed to deer ticks walking the wooded path from campus to town, and that the bite site was somewhere on my head, which we never found, because I had a crop of big curly 80s hair to rival Bon Jovi's back then.

Of course, Dr. Dreyer was right, because he's the best doctor I have ever seen in my life. He came from an Observant Orthodox Jewish family, a kind and fiercely intelligent man who often had Hasidic families in his waiting room. They seemed even more scared than we were of being sick, because their exposure to the outside world was so rare. They'd established a successful religious community in Monsey called "New Square", and they were attacked often enough that it didn't help their communication with the outside world. They sat silent and mute, apart from us by worlds and centuries. Still, I admired his commitment to their devoted families, because they were often biased against by seemingly rational doctors who defied their advanced education with superstitious beliefs.

My mom told me he was a great man for tending to them. They were often on welfare and vastly underage, in comparison to our more sophisticated and educated families, which meant that he charged them a sliding fee for their office visits that they desperately needed, because like strict Catholics, their young women didn't use birth control. I always liked that about him, and today I remember him with you during this High Holy week. Thank you, Dr. Dreyer! !חג פסח שמח

http://www.healthgrades.com/physician/dr-ronald-dreyer-39qpx

Cocoon

All of my life I've had healing powers, so much so that my mom (who likes to play skeptic) was forced to tell me so directly to my face. It's a huge "win" for me, but a severe loss in her magically passive-aggressive "Wonderland of Rightness", with rules according to "Dr. Diane". She pretty much had to, because I've nursed her through such severe injuries, breaks, falls, and surgeries, that there were times when, even in her delusion fantasies, she didn't think she'd make it back, going so far as to say to me a few times "I'd be dead without you". Fear not, New Yorkers; she'd lapse right back into snarky self-righteousness, right after I picked her up off the floor. Again. 

In this century, we have companies with paid personnel who exist to help old ladies from their apartment floors and cloudy senses of reality, with such great hits from my mom like: "I was very athletic when I was young. You don't know!" Really? What did you do? "I walked bridges! I used to walk all the time." Yeah, I know. It's called "New York", not "Oz", and you were sixteen years old at the time, which means you should be able to walk a few miles, and you did it one time exactly. What else?

"No, no, no. I used to ski. I'm an excellent skier!" When? Once, on your honeymoon in the Poconos, so you could make fun of Dad comin' from broke-ass Bed Stuy because you knew he wouldn't be able to do a rich white man sport the very first time he put on downhill skis. Or, was it the time you tripped playing tennis and broke your back, which we nursed you back from? "OK. Let's change the subject. You're getting on my nerves." That's what I thought. Win all over it.

It's right up there with her superior sense of martial arts skills above me and my very-belted bro, because years ago I introduced her to Tai Chi while I was taking classes. I showed her a video I had on hand, and then I either gave it to her or bought her one of her own for Christmas, but, basically, my deal. She went home, found a "Bubbies-only" Tai Chi class in Westchester that's sit-down in a chair, then bragged to everyone for years about how "good" she was. "See? Look at me punch. Look, Marie! I'm really good at it! My teacher said so." Good at simulating punching...yeah, I know you like to hit.

Anyway, back to reality. Everyone in my family who's had direct contact with me gets healed. My cousin Susan beat Stage 4 lymphatic cancer, and she was the only one in her control group to do so. She chain-smoked cigarettes the whole time, too, much to my dad's embarrassment when he picked her up after her doses of chemo curbside, as a small bald child with a headscarf was wheeled into the facility. Wave "hi!" to them! She also beat the secondary cancers afterward, knowing the aggressive treatment she had was the cause. 

Of course, it isn't magic. She had the right attitude, and she did everything her doctors told her to do (rare for her personality type), plus she was motivated to heal for her son, who would be orphaned if she died. Then, my dad had cancer. He beat it, too. Ditto with my mom and her sisters. Of course, they all used traditional Western medicine, as well as some homeopathic kinds, too.

It's become such an open thing with me that I don't even really try to stop people from making the connection any more, mystical guru powers aside. I made friends with an odd but friendly Korean lady who was taking martial arts at the same dojo. She really sucked at it, but she wanted to make herself feel better from both physical and mental symptoms, so she continued with it, despite an utter lack of focus, continuity, muscle mass, and talent. After she figured out that a few cheap kickboxing classes do not cure you from being a lonely orphan in a new country or painful sciatica, she decided to add into her already ridiculously over-packed life Acupuncture classes, at a professional school in Manhattan.

Over brunch one morning, she played with light conversational sparring techniques that are much more effective in Asia than New York City, where we knew all the flava's here, honey. By now, she knew I was some "big-time" Art Director in publishing, which meant her prior career as a commercial print-making designer for a Chinatown textile firm that fronted her the money to relocate here meant squat to me, though I was delighted to learn that she was artistic at one time. She then worked in massage (got that down, too) and her new studies at the traditional school of medicine that's part voodoo folklore mixed with some basic common sense.

After she cleaned her plate way faster than me, a sophisticated salad of greens perfectly dressed for summer, remarking on the deliciousness of the food in every restaurant I took her to during our brief friendship, she said to me that I should seriously consider becoming an herbalist at her school for Asian folk and their wanna-be's. After a few more outings with her, when I casually body-surfed expertly in an ocean she was afraid of and then schooled her in my 'hood, I noticed that she gradually distanced herself from me, in that way that I've come to know as the typically passive-aggressive Asian lady brush-off. 

I could see that she didn't have much to come back with, and I didn't have the heart to tell her that my mom was one of the first female botanists at the Bronx Botanical Gardens, or that the devoted people of my faith have made real discoveries in medicine that are now worldwide cures, from the traditional abbey herbal gardens that span thousands of years. She wasn't listening to me, anyway.


Yes, my Asian peoples of the world: it's time to get over your "foreigner" fears. School is now in session! Please to enjoy the following links:
http://www.scienceinschool.org/2013/issue27/monastic
http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/medny/herbgdn1.html
http://bit.ly/1KpoTz4

Satanic Surfer

Years ago, after a financial downturn I didn't control, circumstances forced me to move from place to place, like a woman with hell on her heels. One place was an old, run-down townhouse in Brooklyn, with the usual suspects: an old white lady landlord living in Long Island who just wanted checks in her mailbox, a Puerto Rican super/building manager turned rogue slumlord through the opportunity that indifference brings, a corrupt bodega owner in "da 'hood" who recommended hard cases to the seedy crash pad, and a desperate network of ex-cons, schizos, and other outsiders (like me), who needed a place to stay immediately, because a hotel was out of the question with no money.

And so I nimbly footed my way through the system, meeting up with a troubled but highly intelligent man while working at the public library. He finally found a room to rent in his "dream" neighborhood, which had quickly become the over-priced hellhole I wanted to escape, but options had run out for me. When my library friend offered to let me crash on his floor in an old Army sleeping bag while I greased the palm of "José" (the building manager who was in the palm of the corner bodega owner), for basic cleaning services to the garbage-filled room next door so I could move into it. 

I had to pay the rent for even that floor space dearly by listening to my new friend rant and rave while he badly juggled school, work, and life on his own, which naturally led him to weaning himself off his anti-psychotics during my time at "Casa Crack Shack", but that's a story for another day. My sick friend does it routinely, and no one ever does a thing for him about it; another hard luck case for social services that are so anti-social, I have no idea what petty bureaucrat thought it up, but they should serve time for the offense.

Anyway, he had a substitute for his expensive medication, with all the excuses hard criminals have, who also struggle with mental illness and addiction: dirt weed and lots of alcohol! It was a brilliant plan, because he soon ran out of the sleeping pills he needs for mania, hence the healing nature of pot, which left him with a nagging smoker's cough that did not go away. In between hits off his cheap cigar blunt and hacking coughs, he liked to tell me outlandish stories, because I was already well-known in the city for storytelling, right here on this site.

I'm sure he read it, though true to the lifestyle of the not-so-rich and not-to-be recognized famous, he pretended he hadn't seen my work, choosing to bend my ear with his horrible lies instead. The tales he told were telling about his psychosis, and I didn't have a choice, so in between cleaning a room that had been vandalized for years, after my day job at an indie house as a rock star cover artist, I sat on the floor of his tiny room to let and listened.

Like any kook you meet at a cocktail party or on the Internet, he was obsessed with the usual wacky shit that crazy people get wrong all the time: sex, drugs, rock n' roll, and religion. He mixed them up poorly, fueled by the pressure to perform at NA meetings, finely honed after many therapeutic sessions. He was your average reality t.v. show guest star, having told me that he was a child actor who auditioned on Broadway and had recently tried out for a weight-loss show as a coach, because one of his jobs in Florida was as a "Personal Trainer". He's basically your headcase whose weight fluctuates wildly from extremes, which is the exact profile most producers look for in potentials, but he isn't handsome, so nothing ever came of it.

What he did have were hours and hours of bullshit; some good, some really bad, and occasionally he veered close to art, without ever crossing over into our territory, but he was fascinated with me for my beauty and my genius, which kept me safe, because he was enthralled by me as an audience. He must have read about my boogie-boarding and beach going online, which naturally led him to tell me a crazy story about him violating the "Boarders-only" policy at the Rockaways*. He must have got caught in a riptide and panicked, because he was in way over his head in rough waters, but instead of telling me that, he concocted a bizarre tale about evil surfers who tried in vain to drown him.

Why? I asked mildly, though I am shocked as usual by the utter lack of reason the seriously disordered among us suffer from. Why would Satan give a crap whether some fat Nuyorican drowned or not? Were in you in league or something? "Well, no, Marie," and then he would adopt this pseudo-white guy, actor-y voice, which let me know the real show was about to start. He forcefully told me that "Luciferians" were real, when I countered with the obvious truth that there have never been any documented cases of cult activity, certainly not while surfing poorly in Queens without a board. He pretended that I was a naive white girl, and that I should look it up online soon, on that other Wild West domain of the insane known as "The Internet", like a hypochondriac addicted to WebMD.

After I pelted him lightly with a series of easy questions in rebuttal, tired from a long day of brutally hard work, I let him know the jig was up. I sagged on the mattress I now sat on, because the floor had gotten hard during his long speechifying. So, I looked him right in the eyes, after yet another position change, this time him on the mattress and me on the floor, and he knew it, too. His eyes changed, the wind went out of him, and he told me the truth, finally: he had a psychotic episode while he was swimming, and he thought devil-worshippers sounded a lot more exciting. The only demon in the room with him and me that night were the ones flying around in his brain; a series of random, uncontrolled brain bursts that one very sick man needs medicine and treatment for, not stories and t.v. shows.

Can you guess what he was studying (and I use that term loosely) at Staten Island Community College? Some design thrown in for flash, and a lot of drunken, stoned television and movie-watching, but that's not what he called it. He told me he was a Media Major. 

Hey, have fun at the beach this weekend, America! Watch out for all those sharks that swim in deep waters. You never know where you might find one.


* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_Rockaway_Branch

Health and Wellness Today

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probiotic

I've found some really good things lately that I want to share with you. The first has been practically miraculous for someone like me who has inherited digestive flora and fauna that are less effective than most, and it comes in one handy little pill that I take every morning as part of my routine: the probiotic supplement. I watched my little brother struggle with horribly painful constipation and bloating gas as a baby boy, a trait he shares with me, my dad, and others in my direct family line, so we knew it was genetic without being told, though science does back up congenital conditions nowadays. We used to think problems like that were something you had to deal with, like a bad dinner guest: eat, drink, suffer from painful gas that isn't relieved, ever. I can't explain to you the relief one little pill full of healthy, happy bacteria has done for my digestive tract, which lacks the proper blend of enzymes and bacteria needed for the breakdown of food necessary for optimal elimination from our bodies, except that I haven't felt this good in years.

Regularity has always escaped me, and it's caused me enormous embarrassment all my life. I'm so glad to finally find relief for a problem that's been so hard to solve and elusive in a cure. It's not just the elimination of painful bloating, constipation, with loud, bubbly, gassy poor digestion, either: the amount of productive waste I see every morning in the bowl (haha! sorry) has become a normal routine that I can count on, and in life, that's a pretty rare thing. Take it, and be free of worrying about it for the rest of the day. Crossing a problem like this off your list is such a big blessing for people with digestive problems. No more painful cures that are worse than the condition, and believe me, I tried them all: coffee, cigarettes, laxatives, prunes, fiber pills....all with really pronounced, painful, and uncomfortable side effects. No more! It's over. Welcome to the happy land of advanced medicine through the introduction of beneficial bacteria! I learned about "The Cure" by accident: I was broke, starving, and getting freebie samples sent to me because I can't afford health care, yet. A sample size of Align came to me in the mail and the very next day, I was cured. I know! Huge discovery. Dr. Oz is giving away some probiotic supplements today at 3 pm. Please, partake: http://www.doctoroz.com/digestive-advantage-giveaway.

The next item of my list is free trade, organic, and non-GMO source certified coconut oil, (which I've written about briefly with cooking), because the other big problem on my genetic list is eczema, and I have one of the hardest kinds to fix: that on the hand, because we use our hands so much. My doctor also hates any cream or gel that has steroids in it (for obvious health reasons), so she only had one type of transparent, thick salve that I slathered on, which then lost efficacy with the next eczema breakout. It healed it temporarily, then it came back as bad as ever. Genetically speaking, my hands lack the proper amount of lipids needed for sealing in moisture beneath the epidermis, and there is no cure for it. Unlike the scaly, dry patches I get on my arms and the top of my legs, the hand kind is particularly nasty. Little bubbles of trapped moisture form with a dark dot in the center, and just like an infant, I scratch at them in my sleep without me being aware that I am, and like a baby, I tried sleeping with little gloves on: no such luck as a long-term treatment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coconut_oil

Once the little bubbles burst, tiny, itchy scabs form, leaving red marks that take weeks to heel, so I start the elusive hunt for a cure all over again, with expensive trips to the drugstore and a rotating cast of lotions, potions, creams, and bathing salts. I've had limited, short term success with colloidal oatmeal lotions and Epsom salt baths (salts that I also use for soaking out the aches and pains from exercise and weather in a hot tub), but recently I've tried applying coconut oil at night, and I've so far been waking up with less dry patches and an improvement in my hands. I don't know if it's a cure, but it's a worth a shot, especially since I'd rather have natural oils soaking into my skin than one that's laden with potentially toxic chemicals. Because coconut oil has such a low melting point, it immediately softens from it's solid, white state, liquefying upon contact with the skin with a slight warming in your hands, so it's very easy to apply. I repeat it often throughout the day to my neck, arms, and hands: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/ways-coconut-oil-everyday-life/story?id=23521681#3. Like with any good, healthy choice you make, please consult with your doctor to get the best results.

Good luck, and good health to you!