Dear Youngman:

I was looking over recent emails for addition to the website.  I mentioned
purslane as the healer of wounds when I meant to say PLANTAIN.  If it's
something you'd like to remember, it rhymes with "pain".  Many of these
weeds have worldwide distribution, so if you can identify it in your yard,
you can identify it in the park.  I've identified at least two types of
plantain in my yard, the purslane in my yard, the Lamb's Quarters is in my
yard, the pokeweed is in my yard, the oxalis is in my yard, the wild
onions are in my yard,  the chickweed is in my yard, the crabgrass is in my
yard (seeds can be made into a porridge), the dandelion is in my yard. 
I've eaten all of them (I keep forgetting about the crabgrass though I
have a recipe for crabgrass muffins).  We also have wild roses--the petals
are nutritious, the leaves can be used for tea, the rose hips are HIGH,
HIGH, HIGH in vitamin C--but they won't be ready until the fall, as Hannah
told me.  We both have our antenna up.  Many of these "weeds" have major
commercial value though a package may not list them as the sources of
their iron, etc. content.

I even use those luscious weeds to make "weed tea" (weeds soaking in a
bucket of water for a few days--or 14 days for concentrate) to feed my
plants with.  I do not go to the store to buy fertilizer but do realize
that my plants have to eat.  Cauliflower needs calcium and I have comfrey
which has calcium.  Fruit trees like the constituents of urine.  Some
European farmers spray it on their fruit trees once a year.  That dung or
dung tea on my leyland cypress took it from a faded green to that rich
hunter green that we all love.

I have a toilet and use it, but I hate flushing toilet paper and wastes
into my drinking water.  The sewage plant has to do a lot to make that
water somewhat potable.  A 3 foot wide by 3 foot deep pit latrine can last
3 years for a family of four.  I got my hands on a book (actually a number
of books) by the Hesperian foundation--but I can't recommend it because
they actually use a curse word that I wrote to them about.  They are very
open to people copying materials.  The book in question is about how to
doctor when there is no doctor around.  Some doctors went to help natives
somewhere in central or south america.  The quick natives took notes and
made their own books and practiced good medicine for themselves.  A book
was written on a FIFTH GRADE LEVEL teaching about good doctoring--even
down to childbirth and making milk for an infant in need (I've heard that any
lactating animal will do and some will let the child nurse directly, not
to say that you shouldn't practice hygenic procedures.)  The illustrations in the books can be
graphic, which is understandable, however sometimes they are graphic when they
should not be.  A woman from their group revealed to me that the man who
started it the organization took liberties with boys.  The illustrations confirm that for
me.  The books do not sit on my shelf.  I forget that they exist until I
need them. They are in a far corner on top of a bookshelf without even
their spines showing...there are some not written by him or written in
conjunction with the UN which are good and useful and do not have the
nakedness or the perverse term.  There is one on dentistry.  I learned
many precepts from those books, but I do not attempt to read them through
lest I be assaulted.  They are kept away as a reference ready to be thrown
away at any time.

We have a wild persimmon tree out there in the back.  And are those
persimmons sweet!  They are DE-licious! as Hannah would say.  We  canned
our first preserves from it two years ago after a horticulturalist at a
nearby colonial farm told me her water canning method for fig preserves. 
We have acorns from our oaks, what I did to them didn't taste too good,
but it was an experiment none the less.  You can make flour from acorns
and I've heard of making bread from tree flour!  If you know how to make
bread, you learn the secrets of flour.  I didn't learn all the trees in my
yard from a list.  We needed a tree cut down and I asked a few vendors
what the names of the a few trees in the back and they told me.  
I had already decided that we
needed to know the name of the trees in our own yard BEFORE TRYING TO
FIGURE OUT EVERYTHING ABOUT THE SEQUIOAS OUT IN CALIFORNIA.

I did not cultivate any one of the "wild edibles" mentioned above, they
came and settled on their own.  They are stubborn, that's why people keep
putting down herbicides--but how wonderful that the food refuses NOT to
grow.  Why kill them and then struggle with the toughest vegetables in the
world to grow?  Wild things put down deep roots and bring up all that good
nutrition out of the soil from whence we came.  We don't eat dust directly
(though some poor in Haiti eat dirt cookies), we depend on the plants to
turn it into a form we can use.

I did not learn all this from a single list.  I went on a weed walk with a
mind to eat organically and the lady showed us many weeds.  How did I get
to the weed walk?  I had gone to an organic store because I never wanted
to buy anything that said, "Kraft" again.  I asked questions about
products and the store manager told me about a weed walk in PA and gave me
some contact information.

Crabgrass muffins...I didn't learn that at the Weed Walk (though I did get
to have some Green Drink there), I learned that from Linda Runyon, a woman
who went 13 years surviving in the wild.  She wrote a book, "A Survival
Acre"--a provocative title.  The idea of living off of one acre of land.
I have several of her books and haven't read one all the way through,
though Hannah has.  It appears that Ms. Runyon is a divorced, remarried, divorced
woman.  Be that as it may, she has information.  Her books, as far as I can
tell do not have photographs though.  Photographs are indispensible,
somebody showing you these things is even better, but good photos do get the
job done.

We have cultivated barberry bushes out there and a sandcherry.  They both
give off fruit.  I wondered if I could eat it, so I looked it up.  Soon as
I see something, I look it up immediately while the iron is hot.  

When you
write me an email, I read it, maybe cool down and relax and then immediately I answer it
because your email may not mean anything to me later--perhaps greater yet,
I have other ground to cover.  I've been looking over Biblical Scholarship
since receiving your letter.  The articles have been hastily written (but I'm glad that I got them down.  When I look at it now there are articles I didn't know were
there and that have helped me) but I plan to go back over them and make
the necessary corrections.  All those errors are the result of trying to
write down what is happening while the iron is hot.  I go work out the
details later.  HOW THIS HAS HELPED ME.  VOICES FROM THE DISTANT PAST COME
BACK WHEN I FIND A SINGLE SLIP OF PAPER.

Run and record.

I had a piece of paper with other errata notes, but I can't find it.  The
main item I wanted to correct  was about the plantain.

Mephibosheth