Sage, Coreopsis, Nader, Vegan Makeup, and Dreadlocks

I poked my head outside before dawn this morning, and it smells like spring, alleluia! This is day three of no rain in our part of Connecticut. We have sun and a gentle breeze. The temperature is to reach close to 80 degrees today, May 11. Pinch me.

This morning, I noticed that the sage is coming back full bore, and I’ve decided to plant two more close to it and make a large clump of one of my favorite perennial herbs.

Sage is an herb that I rarely use in cooking, but depend upon for other things. Sage steeped in boiling water overnight and strained makes a refreshing, purifying hair rinse. Sage is used for smudging, a practice I’ve used around our home, especially when we first moved into our house.

Its grayish green leaves and minty/tea tree/ambrosial fragrance makes it a nice addition to a summer flower bouquet. It’s also just a lovely, hardy, fragrant herb for the garden that attracts beneficial bees with its graceful pink flowers.

I picked up a big pot of coreopsis yesterday afternoon. The pretty, daisy-like yellow flowers of this summer blooming, American prairie perennial also make great summer bouquets. Like Black Eyed Susan, coreopsis naturalizes, getting bigger every year. It requires virtually no care, and unless it doesn’t rain for a month straight in summer, little watering. This is my kind of summer flower.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m completely into all-natural, mineral, vegan, cruelty-free, from-the-earth makeup. I’ve found two small-batch makers of great products that I like best – Etherealle and HonestOwl.

Etherealle’s mineral eyehadows are soft and super gentle, their blush is subtle and kind to skin, and their vegan lip pots are shimmery and amazing. Nothing irritates, nothing smells like perfume.

HonestOwl, a one-woman show in Hawaii, makes a ‘Super Natural Makeup Kit’ of barely-there products for just $22 that includes a rose petal shimmer, a meadow shimmer, a sandalwood and hibiscus bronzer, and a honey lip shine – all you need for summer. Products are made with things like oatstraw, pink clay, green clay, mica, and honey.

I also use HonestOwl’s pink clay and shea lymphatic circulation deodorant cream. Tulsi and patchouli infused with thing like sage, pink clay, coconut oil, and shea butter, it’s a super effective deodorant that’s kind to the lymph nodes, breasts, and underarm tissues.

That sounded like a paid-for plug for Etherealle and HonestOwl, but it isn’t. I just love to give snaps to tiny businesses like these two that put consciousness ascension on an equal par with profit.

For some reason, this morning I thought back to the 1996 presidential election. Ralph Nader was the Green Party candidate that year. I was really young then and a big Green, and worked for many months on his campaign team. 

There was lots of grassroots work to be done, and lots of fun to be had. It forced a great revolution that resonates to this day. I have wonderful memories of that year (lots of Muenster cheese and broccoli sprouts sandwiches on oat bread), even though the Greens didn’t win and Nader was eventually blamed for spoiling the election and propelling Bush into office (which was total hogwash).

So I went online early today and watched Nader’s excellent presidential nomination acceptance speech, which in ’96, I pretty much knew verbatim. Nader had all the right ideas then and got a lot of people focused. Everything in that speech is applicable today, 20 years later.

What made me sad though was realizing that very little has changed since Nader delivered that speech. Corporations still monopolize every little corner of our lives: they use taxpayer money to fund their own growth, and then charge taxpayers for the products they produce from that taxpayer-funded growth.

The medical industry continues to be a business of sickness, not an enterprise of health. Politicians still ride into office on waves of corporate cash. Poverty continues to surge. The environment continues to degrade, women continue to be marginalized and objectified, animals continue to suffer, and people continue to attack each other over such imaginary things like sexual orientation, class, culture, and nationality. And money is still God.

But anyway. I’m seriously considering dreading my hair. It’s long now, so locking it won’t make it go really short. My husband has big qualms about this. He gave the idea his definite two thumbs down. But I knew I was getting serious about it when I finally bought Vital Goods dreadlock bar shampoo this week. That implies a commitment. Stay tuned.

Live in peace.