It is understandable why violence has erupted in Tibet, but obvious that the unwillingness to reach a peaceful compromise in the light of leaving violence in the past deserves wilingness form both sides. That this situation could escalate into a global issue because of the coming Olympics supposed to be hosted bythe Chinese means that people around the world should focus their attention on a long term positive solution that supports the oppressed without mitigating the actions of the oppressors. It is an opportunity for the Tibetans to have some power in this situation if the global community supports their cause for just treatment and autonmony from the Chinese. The Dalai Lama urges the Chinese to 'to exercise the utmost restraint in dealing with the current disturbed situation and to treat those who are being arrested properly and fairly'.
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Elaine De Lack a nurse who herself was diagnosed with M.S, Multiple Sclerosis researched and developed Histamine Patche, conducting trials on herself. She discovered that M.S patients share a common symptom of Histamine Deficiency, which can be mitigated by the use of Histamine Patches. her Symptoms reduced and she regained her health. Her story was shown on 'It's a Miracle with Roma Downey'. For sufferers of MS and friends/family of those who suffer, this is a real breakthrough and offers a ray of hope for sufferers, pass the word.
The patches are marketed as Prokarin and are provided by The O'Brien Pharmacy which is one provider I know of, I'll add more as I find them.
This powerful workbook is used as a teaching tool with therapists, support groups and community education programs. It was inspired by Angela's Removing the Sword of Trauma events. It is for survivors, warriors, advocates, loved ones and supporters ready to move past pain and suffering and reclaim joy and happiness. You can use the workbook in a group, on your own or with your therapist.
This workbook is 117 pages long and is a DOWNLOAD. Thank you for your commitment to healing BUY NOW $9.99
PREAMBLE Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,
Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,
Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,
Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,
Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,
Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,
Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,
Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.
Article 1. All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Article 2. Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
Article 3. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
Article 4. No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
Article 5. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Article 6. Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.
Article 7. All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.
Article 8. Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.
Article 9. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
Article 10. Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.
Article 11. (1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.
(2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.
Article 12. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
Article 13. (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
Article 14. (1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
(2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Article 15. (1) Everyone has the right to a nationality.
(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.
Article 16. (1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
Article 17. (1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
Article 18. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
Article 19. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Article 20. (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
(2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.
Article 21. (1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
(2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.
(3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.
Article 22. Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.
Article 23. (1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.
Article 24. Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.
Article 25. (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.
Article 26. (1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
(2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
(3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.
Article 27. (1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.
Article 28. Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.
Article 29. (1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.
(2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
(3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Article 30. Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.
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'In the beginning there was nothing. God said, 'Let there be light!' And there was light. There was still nothing, but you could see it a whole lot better.' Ellen Degeneres 'What you get by reaching your destination is not nearly as important as what you will become by reaching your destination." - Zig Ziglar
I set out to write this site, if only to make myself more positive and being that it's on a computer and I was clueless when I started there have been the usual obstacles i.e. of computer speak ignorance, but others, like actually writing regularly. I figured I would create a platform that I could come back to and improve over time so that eventually I could re-source. Keep in tune with why I began and where I'm going. It's a Re-Source in the truest sense of the word. I'm working on a hardcopy one now, a book, something that will be on the outside what my spirit has produced from within me.
A book is better than a blog in that you can hold it in your hands, spen an age devouring it and in dire straits can use it to light a fire. Whereas a blog is an ethereal affair, that lasts as long as you can bear to look at a computer screen and is entirely dependent on electricity supply and an internet connection. A book is something that stands more solidly in time, it's the Stonehenge you can leave behind, but it's also something powerful. Words used to be revered in the past, letters on things made those objects worthy of veneration, they had inherent magic. A book is something you can carry with you. I want a book I can open anywhere that has solutions to all sorts of problems, a fixer not just for attitude but engine failure, if necessary.
'No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars or sailed an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.' Helen Keller 'Reminds me of my safari in Africa. Somebody forgot the corkscrew and for several days we had to live on nothing but food and water.' - WC Field
This powerful workbook is used as a teaching tool with therapists, support groups and community education programs. It was inspired by Angela's Removing the Sword of Trauma events. It is for survivors, warriors, advocates, loved ones and supporters ready to move past pain and suffering and reclaim joy and happiness. You can use the workbook in a group, on your own or with your therapist.
This workbook is 117 pages long and is a DOWNLOAD. Thank you for your commitment to healing BUY NOW $9.99
Christopher Hansard helped me recover from M.E or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome as well as severe Eczema and Asthma with the help of his apprentices and senior physician Stephanie Wright. I was an Apprentice and patient of his for approximately four years and learnt an incredible amount. His considerable knowlege and wisdom freely given as well as his professional bearing have been nothing but an inspiration and help to me in my life. I have a wide knowlege of Tibetan traditions and what I have learnt, though it often does not conform to western qualifications (our course for example was twelve years long) is that these traditions are have depth to their understanding and grasp of the reasons for illness that western medicine often overlooks. In comparing the Bon tradition and what I have learned with Christopher as well as my connections with Tibetan Buddhist traditions, it is clear that the teachings of Christopher have helped alleviate the suffering of many people. Their most obvious proof is their efficacy. The proof as they say is in the pudding. I would advise anyone who needs help for their problems to seek Christopher's guidance and/or read his books. To learn from Christopher Hansard go to www.christopherhansard.com
If you have enjoyed reading this site please help me to keep raising the standards by leaving a donation To join my Newsletter, with the latest Positive Impact Living Methods and News and please fill out your information in the box below
I have my whole life struggled with illness, or rather the struggle was not with illness but with health. Illness was easy, dis-ease came to me freely and without hindrance, but beyond this unhealth, or beneath it, lay a host of other ghosts; depression, P.T.S.D, emotional ineptitude, increasing intolerance to stress. When I recovered from one set of symptoms, more would appear, or old ones return. As I slowly learnt the vagueries of being healthy, I also discovered the roots of health/disease, the dormant seeds of consequence that were there all along. People in the West view illhealth as offensive almost, as a sign of failure. They won't say this and will nod and simper and tut like the best of them, but at the same time inwardly they are painting a cross on your door, and likewise inwardly I would paint a cross on my door. As the emotional foibles and lifestyle misdemeanours fell by the wayside, I began to sense the invisible self, the part of me that was ignored, not looked at; I became aware of how I was building me, everyday, every layer of thought added a multitude of cells. These cells hung about in groups, some were happy, boisterous groups that reflected my happy, energetic thoughts - but others were singularly unfriendly, bitter cells full of self-loathing pallisades.
My health still fluctuates now, except the previoulsy overlooked beginnings of each episode, surface faster, because I let them. Instead of running for painkillers, and antibiotics, I pick up each sensation as it enters my consciousness and I savour it. Maybe it's a horrible sensation of not being able to breath, or of my skin becoming sore - but instead of lookimg away, I look at it. I feel it fully, I allow it to be, after all it is me. You may wonder what this has to do with positive impact living/wilderness survival. Well, once I let these sensations be and withdrew my judgement of them, I realised I was doing what nature does with us all the time. Nature never judges you, it never paints crosses upon you, it does not keep your misdemeanours piled up in it's head to feed upon at a later unforgiving date. Nature simply is. If you want to learn and understand about life you have only to watch your experience of life, the events as the pass, the seasons as they change. As most of us do, you could attach a label of 'good' or 'bad' - but nature doesn't and if you don't too, something amazing happens.
I'm writing this as a prelude to my lessons about fire, and as I am going to write about the creation of a spark, an ember, a coal - the beginning of fire I wanted to set this piece in a psycho-physical context, a bit like fairy tales with their hidden wisdom. I've been feeling a bit low recently, full of an unremitting darkness, that I haven't really allowed until now. I've been constantly keeping it at bay, but it is an appropriate beginning to write about making fire, because it is darkness that waits for us outside the flames of our own making and it is the darkness that we once held childish fears about. It is the darkness that surrounds our planet in an endless space, and it is the darkness that we have to face when we behold our own minds, the origin of ourselves, our souls, our loves, our desires. It is out of the neutrality of nature that we take, wood and stone and fashion tools, that enable us to witness a blaze of flames that eat and devour, fuel and forge, without distinction .
It is strange that human beings are the only ones to judge, to prefer or avoid, to assign assignations, you are this and you are that. It is strange that we all share the same terminal illness called life, a devil of a disease because it strikes without warning, at any time, to any number of us. It is a disease that renders us equal, yet few of us ever acknowlege it, look at it, consider it. Of course we are all forced to eventually. you might think I'm being very pessimistic, well, not at all - I am being very realistic.
Death makes all of our attempts at life utterly meaningless, laughable, ridiculous almost, yet we continue, most of us with our singularly particular neuroses. Our unusually acceptable manner of thinking that bids us to fill our lives with kinds of fascinating objects that allow us to avoid the subject of our own deaths. Nature has a wonderful perspective on death, one that it is continually sharing all the time, it does not consider it either bad or good. Death just is, death just happens, the same way shit happens. Nature does not personalise it, it is us who take it personally. Nature does not ignore life or avoid it, or desire it. Nature simply is and does. Fire is a magical experience, it creates, it destroys. Fire is life supporting and life thwarting, but it is a dispassionate entity, it requires fuel, oxygen, structure, and heat to exist - the right conditions and so do we. We require the right conditions and they as I understand it, are rare, and precious and hard to come by. When you are in need of a fire, you must fulfil the conditions. The outcome is fire, the results of the energies of fuel, air, a source of heat and a structure. We share a similar number of requirements for our existence; there are always; a place/time that we are in, a lesson to be learned, a teacher to teach, and a student to learn. Those are our human conditions. When these are fulfilled we have fire, it may be a smouldering ember, a spark, or a blazing hearth. When you go out to gather your tinder, to collect your kindling, to chop and store logs for the winter, to cut peat or gather dried dung; share the impassive eye of nature and all these ingredients will be within reach, for though nature does not seem to act in it's own interests - allowing itself to be chopped, exploded, flooded, built upon, tarmac'd etc, it extends from the reach of your fingertips all about you and is no more seperate from you than all that is in contact with you right now. So when you hold the thought that it is tinder you are after, and into your head pop images of tall dry cattail heads, rosebay willow herb fluff, clematis or old mans beard; or bark (birch, western red cedar), scraped and buffed up, or char cloth that you've carefully prepared in a tin - whichever, don't forget to remain aware of who it is that is searching for tinder, of what is observing the hedgerow. Don't forget to question the origins of you, or the lesson that is to be learned in this very moment, the purpose of darkness and the light you search for to fill it. It may be that in the substance that we surround the emptiness of ourselves with, is always burning with the very brightness of our own minds.
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This picture shows white sticks where mines have been removed - Mozambique
I have been wondering about badges and this blog, I didn't want to crowd it with campaigns. So I'm going to be specific and focus on problems that require immediacy, reaction, in order to bring peace. After the Second World War it took only five years to remove all the landmines, millions and millions of them. Of course we do still get the odd few turning up, like the one I bumped into on the beach near the Seven Sisters (where Kevin Costner washed up as Robin Hood). That one was a giant floating one that had freed itself from the clutches of the ocean. Like any toxic/nuclear waste, these things have a life span that extend beyond our own generation and they are there to reduce the lifespan of anything that happens to tread upon them.
Their presence causes Internationally Displaced People or IDP's as they have been lumped together and termed, people that can't go home because the detritus of war is in their front gardens and their living rooms. Often stalwart individuals and families do go home, because they've got to eat, and farm and their kids have to herd goats, and a lot of them step on mines, even the ones that know about mines, that know they are in a mine field, because they weigh starvation and thirst alongside the offchance of losing a limb or their life, and choose to grow food for their families as they have no where else to go and have lost everything they had. The reason the vast number of landmines exists is because even though their removal in trained hands is a safe and simple process, apparently a garedener can do it, a lot of bureaucracy has got in the way, managers managing managers so to speak, when the actual important work finding and removing the mines has got lost.
This same bureacracy is accountable for the lengthy time it takes to process IDP's or internationally displaced people, or people who have lost everything they had because someone else decided to fight a war around them or the sky fell on their heads. For example the US has pledged to take 12000 people from Iraq into it's country. It will take 8months to register and process these people, that's 53 people a day.
I recently went to a festival that had thirteen thousand people attending it. In one week before hand, we put in all the amenities those people would need to live in a field. In three days we registered all those people and tagged them. Then we had a great festival. A week later it was a field again. It was a short term thing. The reality in the world is that issues are reoccuring; war, natural disasters etc but landmines aren't. Once landmines have gone, that's it problem solved. No more amputees, no more dead children, and innocent passersby. If they did it after the Second World War in five years, what's stopping our generation from solving the problem in the same amount of time, or less. We are. We are the problem. An idea is the problem. A 'lack of determination' as Guy Willoughby put it in his article Landmines and Sex. I do not suffer from a lack of determination. So I'm blogging a personal goal. Five years they did it. I can post a badge on here, so can you. We can put an end to landmines, to their production, to the use of Cluster Munitions. Just put the badge on your blog, copy it from here. If this is pasted on blogs all over the internet, and if some or all of us tackle the issue of the bureaucracy, maybe throw some volunteer will power at it. In five years mines and their terrible legacy could be history. The people we have to win over are the manufacturers, I guess we could have a safe disposal of mines in their front gardens, or just ring their factories with mines, or something, until they remember which tribe they're in - the human tribe. The one we all share the one we all belong to.
Maybe some of the profits from weapons manufacture could be used to clear up the mess left behind. Perhaps a law could be passed 'You made the mess - you clear it up'. You know the one we all learnt as children. The one that kids can teach us. I wonder if weapons manufacturers or nuclear energy folks would continue production then. We all share a big front yard, we're all of us in it, we all get our water from one tap, our light and warmth from one light - you figure it out. Oh yeah the other thing we learn as kids 'You have to share'. Or maybe some of us never quite got the message.
Put this badge on your blog permanently until it is free and show your support for the people of Myanmar. To stop the military junta’s cruelty in Burma take away their financial support by boycotting the companies still doing business with the Burmese government. Companies like Total SA, Chevron, Daewoo and any travel companies operating tours there. The government spends half it’s budget on the military and it gets it’s money from these companies. Stop buying from these companies, they are immoral in their conduct and have a duty to the human rights in the countries they deal with which they do not uphold. Check out:-http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/dirty_list/dirty_list_details.html for a full list of the companies involved.
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When you're out in the natural environment and you need to make a fire. You're often faced with the wall of green - the raw material. You need to have an understanding of the nature of fire; what it eats, how it breathes, what it doesn't like. It usually doesn't take long when you start trying to light one to find out what these qualities are. A big heap of heavy wood and a match just won't have the right conditions. Fire needs to have a structure, it needs air, it needs fuel and it needs heat - to get heat you need heat.
If you are used to using gas to cook, or electric hobs, to using electric for light and maybe candles for ambience, you won't have the daily relationship with fire that many people in the world do, instead it probably belongs in the realm of the memories of your eldest relatives or to your ancestors. To regain this relationship and the versatility and adaptability that comes with using our ingenuity it's necessary to open up. To open your senses, to look with your eyes, and feel with your hands. Fire happens, you only have to think of the recent wildfires raging through Greece to know that sometimes the right conditions for fire exist already in nature.
Picture of beech trees
There are so many fuels that humans have discovered and manufactured, but we shouldn't forget the beginnings of our knowlege, we shouldn't forget how to make a match. Nowadays, many people have to struggle to meet their basic needs - many more people than had to in the past and not simply because there are more people. In the past the prescious knowlege of how to live comfortably within the envoironment we found ourselves in, was carefully passed on from one generation to the next. Now, people across the world are missing that knowlege, tribes that used to live comfortably with their knowlege of fire, have to spend days travelling to get matches, fuel, lighters - the objects that we think of as convenience have enslaved them to a different and difficult way of life simply because they have lost the old ways. The wonder of the modern age is magical, but we shouldn't lose our heads in the face of it. Our freeedom is even more prescious. Once we regain that knowlege, we regain the freedom that comes from real understanding of our true place in an ecosystem. As you will discover...
This picture is of a birch tree. it's a favorite among woodsmen because the bark of a birch tree will burn easily, even if it's been wet, you can dry it off, scrape it and buff it and you'll have a fire lighter. Birch is used for many things and is worth getting to know. It is one of the first trees that grow at the beginning of a woodland, after the scrub, because it's leaves fall and provide nitrogen for the later plants and trees that wouldn't otherwise be able to inhabit a poor soil. It's a sacrificial tree in a way. You can read more about birch at the end of this article. Over the next few days I'll introduce you to:-
The Six ways of making fire
Tinders and Resins Fuels
The structure of Fire
And hopefully by the end of it we'll be able to safely make a fire whereve we happen to be and whenever we need one.
The uses of Birch (Betula Pendula - Silver Birch specific):-
Edible Uses Inner bark - cooked or dried and ground into a meal. It can be added as a thickener to soups etc or can be mixed with flour for making bread, biscuits etc. Inner bark is generally only seen as a famine food, used when other forms of starch are not available or are in short supply. Sap - raw or cooked. A sweet flavour. It is harvested in early spring, before the leaves unfurl, by tapping the trunk. It makes a pleasant drink. It is often concentrated into a syrup by boiling off the water. Between 4 and 7 litres can be drawn off a mature tree in a day and this will not kill the tree so long as the tap hole is filled up afterwards. However, prolonged or heavy tapping will kill the tree. The flow is best on sunny days following a frost. The sap can be fermented into a beer. An old English recipe for the beer is as follows:- "To every Gallon of Birch-water put a quart of Honey, well stirr'd together; then boil it almost an hour with a few Cloves, and a little Limon-peel, keeping it well scumm'd. When it is sufficiently boil'd, and become cold, add to it three or four Spoonfuls of good Ale to make it work...and when the Test begins to settle, bottle it up . . . it is gentle, and very harmless in operation within the body, and exceedingly sharpens the Appetite, being drunk ante pastum.Young leaves - raw or cooked. Young catkins. No more details are given. A tea is made from the leaves Medicinal Uses Anti-inflammatory, cholagogue, diaphoretic. The bark is diuretic and laxative. An oil obtained from the inner bark is astringent and is used in the treatment of various skin afflictions, especially eczema and psoriasis. The bark is usually obtained from trees that have been felled for timber and can be distilled at any time of the year. The inner bark is bitter and astringent, it is used in treating intermittent fevers. The vernal sap is diuretic. The buds are balsamic. The young shoots and leaves secrete a resinous substance which has acid properties, when combined with alkalis it is a tonic laxative. The leaves are anticholesterolemic and diuretic. They also contain phytosides, which are effective germicides. An infusion of the leaves is used in the treatment of gout, dropsy and rheumatism, and is recommended as a reliable solvent of kidney stones. The young leaves and leaf buds are harvested in the spring and dried for later use. A decoction of the leaves and bark is used for bathing skin eruptions. Moxa is made from the yellow fungous excrescences of the wood, which sometimes swell out of the fissures.
Other Uses The bark is used to make drinking vessels, canoe skins, roofing tiles etc. It is waterproof, durable, tough and resinous. Only the outer bark is removed, this does not kill the tree. It is most easily removed in late spring to early summer. A pioneer species, it readily invades old fields, cleared or burnt-over land and creates conditions suitable for other woodland trees to become established. Since it is relatively short-lived and intolerant of shade, it is eventually out-competed by these trees. A tar-oil is obtained from the white bark in spring. It has fungicidal properties and is also used as an insect repellent. It makes a good shoe polish. Another report says that an essential oil is obtained from the bark and this, called 'Russian Leather' has been used as a perfume. A decoction of the inner bark is used to preserve cordage, it contains up to 16% tannin. An oil similar to Wintergreen oil (obtained from Gaultheria procumbens) is obtained from the inner bark. It is used medicinally and also makes a refreshing tea. The resin glands (the report does not say where these glands are found) are used to make a hair lotion. A brown dye is obtained from the inner bark A glue is made from the sap. Cordage can be made from the fibres of the inner bark. This inner bark can also be separated into thin layers and used as a substitute for oiled paper. The young branches are very flexible and are used to make whisks, besoms etc.They are also used in thatching and to make wattles.The leaves are a good addition to the compost heap, improving fermentation. Wood - soft, light, durable. It is used for a wide range of purposes including furniture, tool handles, toys and carving. A high quality charcoal is obtained from the bark. It is used by artists, painters etc The wood is also pulped and used for making paper.
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