I knew it was a good Halloween party when I woke up the next morning and my feet had finally stopped throbbing. Sarah Palin’s be-lipsticked skeleton greeted me toothily from the bathroom tub - still wearing her beauty pageant sash and studying her five pages of Mapquest directions from Wasilla to The White House.
Surveying the [...]
Take Time to Work: It is the path to patience and success
Our world has taken many of us away from the essential life work of providing for ourselves: gardening; mending fence; cooking and preserving food; caring for domestic animals; gathering wild foods; sewing and mending our own clothes, cutting and stacking our own firewood - [...]
Last year, in conjunction with T Ching and the local chapter of Rotary International, a revolution had its first stirrings. Teenagers - those beautiful bundles of protoplasm and sass - were invited to drink quality whole leaf tea, brewed correctly.
It was an awesome success. Thousands of cups of tea were served on Tuesdays. [...]
Ninth in a series about teas from China
Long before Europeans had been there or even had any clear notion of just where it was, Fujiian’s Wuyi was known to the English-speaking world as Bohea, the earthly source of heavenly teas unlike any any others China made. America’s greatest scholar of tea history, Dr. Robert [...]
I guess you could say I’m a reluctant user of technology: I was late to get comfortable with the computer but peer pressure required me to join the 21st century and get an email address; I share a cell phone with my husband, but his recently has been upgraded to an iPhone. [...]
Cadence calls, or “jody calls,” have long been a staple of American military training. Used to relieve the monotony of the grueling double-time marching cadence, they have historically ranged from inspirational to bawdy.
Basically following an eight count cadence, and a call-and-response format, one well-known version goes:
“I don’t know, but I’ve been told,
Captain’s heart [...]
Take time to think: it is the source of strength.
Our first matter of the heart was “Take Time for Repose”; the second was “Take Time to Read.” After a deep healing breath, a cup of tea, and a good book . . . thinking is the best way to travel! A well cultivated, nourished heart/mind [...]
The Freer Gallery is the home of the Asian art museum arm of the Smithsonian Institute, in Washington, D.C. They recently had an exhibit titled “Tea for Everyone: Japanese Popular Ceramics for Tea Drinking.” The goal of this exhibit has been to put a different face on the ceramic art of tea. With this exhibit, [...]
Eighth in a series on teas from China.
Oolong (semi-fermented) and black (fermented) teas are a fairly recent development in China, if anything there may be called recent. What distinguishes teas of this type from green or white (unfermented) teas is “fermentation,” though this is the wrong word for what should really be called [...]
Tea has been a staple in the culture of England. Unfortunately their habit of brewing low quality bagged tea, which necessitated the inclusion of milk and sugar, prevented them of garnering the optimal health benefits from this interesting brew. I was very impressed when I read about a young Brit whose mission is [...]
