News

This article, “Murphy’s Oil Soap: A Most Unusual Story” in Popular Woodworking by Bob Flexner is amusing. And it’s true. You should not use Murphy’s Oil Soap to clean your furniture. Well, I guess if your furniture is plastic you could… but not if it’s wood. At least not wood that you don’t hate and want to punish somehow. But this is a pretty neat tale of marketing and how it basically totally overwrote common sense and common knowledge within a freakin’ generation. You shouldn’t use it on your beautiful hardwood floors either. And as I came to find out when I became the...

Oils and Other Formulas I’ve been able to order some essential oils and herbs and they should be getting here any minute now. So I’m getting pretty close to being good to go on a full range of regular condition/dressing oil formulas. Same with common bath/floorwash crystal mixtures, and this will enable me to make a decent range of mojo bags and pakets, too. It’ll probably be a minute before I’ll be able to have a dozen of every type of whole root in my cabinets ready to go on a moment’s notice — who knew it then, but those...

From 2018 but still a good read if you’re even vaguely interested in where your food and herbs come from and how much they cost.One not surprising factor: it takes years to transition a farm from regular to organic and in those years, the farmer is going to lose money, for many reasons, including yields will be much, much lower and organic land management demands crop rotation, so you can’t plant the most profitable things at the most profitable times. One surprising factor: Capitalism may just save us on this one. Big brands are starting to step in to help...

See this post in original context at main blog here. This post is part of the Rootwork Education series that I used to maintain on livejournal and am now updating and keeping here on WordPress. Work in progress.Q: A client asks why I won’t often do breakup cases, and why I require a consultation before considering work like that.A: In and of itself, I don’t have a moral problem with simply the fact that the couple is married or that a client is having a relationship with a married woman or man.  The issue of breaking up couples, particularly married...

Did you know there was a very active St. Expedite Society in Independence, Louisiana up until very recently? I didn’t. Read more at Folklife in Louisiana: “St. Expedito’s Role in South Louisiana Catholicism, in New Orleans and in the Italian-American Community near Independence, Louisiana,” by Karen Williams. Hindu deities on vodun altars: Rush, Dana. “Eternal Potential: Chromolithographs in Vodunland,”African Arts vol. 32, No. 4 (Winter, 1999), pp. 60-75+94-96. Also helpful more broadly, imo, for any student of folklore/popular religion who’s ever encountered an argument about whether Abre Camino is “real hoodoo” or not, wondered what to think about the development of the seven-colors...