The Ecologies and Cosmologies Symposium:
Things you can learn through an arts degree..
Today at a required conference, I attended sessions on 1) natural acadian herbal medicines, 2) hay bail and cob house building, 3) natural dyes, and 4) dowsing.
the first three were fairly interesting:
-had myself some aweful tasting Laborador tea [which i am informed is like buckleys.. it works.. though he didn't say for 'what'], and rubbed some Saint John's wart oil on my hand. again- supposedly very good for you... though no idea what it does.
-hay bail and cob houses are awesome, though i still have my suspicions about how they'd hold up in NS climates. In my ideal world I would have an environmentally friendly and energy efficient house.
-dowsing. well ok, so maybe anthropologists tend to lean toward the crackpot end of things from time to time. Dowsing: for those of you not familliar with the 'art' [..yea, lets go with that] is usually done with either a pendulum or a pair of special metal sticks. It is traditionally used by farmers in order to find water. One simply walks around a given region with the pendulum or dowsing sticks in hand and observes the subtle motions of the sticks/pendulum. if they move or change the direction of their motion at any point- it is an indicator that there is water below. It can also be used to search for 'cosomological energies.' ..i'm not bothered by the fact that these traditions / beliefs exist.. just that my proffessor expects us to treat them as fact. Listening to these very interesting and excited speakers throughout the conference I silently debated their sanity, and came to no conclusions.
Things you can learn through an arts degree..
Today at a required conference, I attended sessions on 1) natural acadian herbal medicines, 2) hay bail and cob house building, 3) natural dyes, and 4) dowsing.
the first three were fairly interesting:
-had myself some aweful tasting Laborador tea [which i am informed is like buckleys.. it works.. though he didn't say for 'what'], and rubbed some Saint John's wart oil on my hand. again- supposedly very good for you... though no idea what it does.
-hay bail and cob houses are awesome, though i still have my suspicions about how they'd hold up in NS climates. In my ideal world I would have an environmentally friendly and energy efficient house.
-dowsing. well ok, so maybe anthropologists tend to lean toward the crackpot end of things from time to time. Dowsing: for those of you not familliar with the 'art' [..yea, lets go with that] is usually done with either a pendulum or a pair of special metal sticks. It is traditionally used by farmers in order to find water. One simply walks around a given region with the pendulum or dowsing sticks in hand and observes the subtle motions of the sticks/pendulum. if they move or change the direction of their motion at any point- it is an indicator that there is water below. It can also be used to search for 'cosomological energies.' ..i'm not bothered by the fact that these traditions / beliefs exist.. just that my proffessor expects us to treat them as fact. Listening to these very interesting and excited speakers throughout the conference I silently debated their sanity, and came to no conclusions.
posted by Suzanne Zappia at 5:14 PM
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