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Ole One Eye Fishing Contest - The Third Annual Ole One Eye Fishing Contest was held on June 20th.  It was a balmy summer evening and those arriving were greeted by the smell of fish already cooking.  Edward and Joseph McAndrews were keeping an eye on the contest which included many participants from   allied realms as well as several from Heathfield and Ballicastle. 

Ole One Eye himself was caught by Tarro the Minotaur from the realm of Telarus.  The wiley old Bass escaped to perhaps be caught another day.   Taking second and third place was  Keeley Kendricks and Constance Hawkley of Devonshires. Though the contest itself was over quickly, most stayed to enjoy more fishing and the companionship of friends, both old and new.  Our thanks to Joseph and Edward for making the event another grand success!  -- submitted by Mary McAndrews

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Ravenwood Pirate Invasion - Paris Moore along with Seamus and Joe McAndrews attended the Ravenwood event in acting like a pirate night. Lingo and attire were required to be a significant part. There was a bride bidding for fun and anything was offered right down to chickens and cocks. Such bartering was favored over coin to the needs of a captain who determined the winning bid. Joe and Seamus both came out with winnings along with brides without marriage. A fun time for all involved. -- submitted by Seamus McAndrews

Telarus Solstice Festival, Rapier and Masque Ball - This was a duel event starting out with a rapier contest. The men were all skilled and the women too as our own newly returned Mikhail Andree was crowned Musketeer Champion with a new rapier and a pocket full of coins the following night at the masquerade ball. Attending the first event was Mikhail along with Matthew Clarendon, Jessamine Saxton and Mike Cunningham. Matthew was a runner up and Jessamine placed in the rapier contest. Attending the ball the following night was Mikhail Andree, Matthew Claredon and his sister Eleanor, Keifer Douglas, Paris Moore and Mike Cunningham. A fun night for all including good food and dancing before winners were announced. Keifer took most beguiling, Matthew as the most mysterious and Jessamine took best overall as the masked intrigue.  -- submitted by Mikhail Andree

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Healer's Touch
by Samantha Golden

Barberry and Oregon Grape - Who says herbs can't compete with drugs? In one study, berberine, the active constituent in barberry, proved more potent against bacteria than chloramphenicol, a powerful pharmaceutical antibiotic. But there's a lot more to this herb than mere infection treatment. Barberry, and its close relative, Oregon grape, also may stimulate the immune system, reduce blood pressure and even shrink some tumors. Barberry has played a prominent role in herbal healing for more than 2500 years. The ancient Egyptians use it to prevent plagues, a use that was probably effective considering its antibiotic action.

"Jaundice Berry" - Herbalists were guided by the Doctrine of Signatures, the belief that a plant's physical appearance revealed its therapeutic benefits. Barberry has yellow flowers and its roots produce a yellow dye. These features were linked with the yellowing of the skin and eyes during jaundice, a symptom of liver disease. As a result, barberry was widely used to treat liver and gallbladder ailments and earned the name "jaundice berry." In addition to using barberry for liver and gallbladder problems, traditional Russian healers recommended it for inflammations, high blood pressure and abnormal uterine bleeding. When colonists introduced barberry into North America, the Indians recognized it as a relative of the native Oregon grape, a holly-like plan that they considered a powerful healer. Many tribes adopted barberry enthusiastically and used it to treat dysentery, mouth ulcers, sore throat, wound infections and intestinal complaints.

Most present day herbalists limit their recommendations to gargling barberry decoction for sore throat and drinking it for diarrhea and constipation. But if they read the medical journals, they'd recommend it for a great deal more.

Antibiotic: The berberine in barberry has remarkable infection fighting properties. Studies around the world show it kills microorganisms that cause wound infections (staphylococci, Streptococci), dysentery (Endamoeba histolytica), cholera (vibrio cholerae), giardiasis (giardia lamblia), urinary tract infections (eschericia coli) and vaginal yeast infections (Candida albicans).

Immune Stimulant: Berberine may also fight infection by stimulating the immune system. Studies show that it activates the macrophages (literally "big eaters"), white blood cells that devour harmful microorganisms.

Pinkeye: Barberry's traditional use in treating eye problems is alive and well in Germany, where a berberine preparation, Ophthiole, is used treat sensitive eyes, inflamed lids and pinkeye (conjunctivitis). Unfortunately the product is not available in other countries. A compress made from an herbal infusion may prove helpful, however.

High Blood Pressure: Barberry contains chemicals that may help reduce elevated blood pressure by enlarging blood vessels, thus lending support to the herb's traditional Russian use as a treatment for high blood pressure.

Intriguing Possibilities: Perhaps old Harry Hoxsey was right. One study shows that barberry helps shrink some tumors. Another shows it has anti-inflammatory activity, suggesting possible value in treating arthritis. More research has to be done in both areas before any specific recommendations can be made.

Dead-end File: A few contemporary herbalists continue to recommend barberry as 'one of the best remedies for correcting liver function." British researchers have isolated substances in the plant which promote the flow of bile, but barberry is not considered therapeutic for jaundice or other liver problems. So much for "jaundice berry."

Rx for Barberry: For a decoction, use 1/2 teaspoon of powdered root bark, boiled in a cup of water for 15 to 30 minutes. Drink cool. Drink up to 1 cup a day. The taste is quite bitter. Mask it with honey or an herbal beverage blend. Barberry should not be given to children under the age of 2. For older children and people over 65, start with a lower-strength preparation and increase strength if necessary. To make a compress to treat pink eye, soak a clean cloth in barberry infusion.

The Safety Factor: In high doses, barberry can cause nausea, vomiting, convulsions, hazardous drops in blood pressure, and depression of teh heart rate and breathing. Those with heart disease or chronic respiratory problems should be careful not to take large doses and should take this herb only with the knowledge and approval of their physicians. Berberine may stimulate the uterus. Thus, pregnant women should not use it. Barberry is a powerful herb and it should be used cautiously by otherwise healthy, non-pregnant, non-nursing adults. Barberry should be used in medicinal amounts only in consultation with your doctor. If barberry causes minor discomforts, such as stomach upset or diarrhea, use less or stop using it. If it causes dizziness or faintness, stop using it. Let your doctor know if you experience any unpleasant effects or if the symptoms for which the herb is being used do not improve significantly in two weeks.

You Can Always Make Jam: Barberry is a perennial shrub that reaches 8 feet. It has smooth bray bark, long spines and hanging clusters of bright yellow flowers that boom in spring. It grows easily in the North east and Midwest. Plant seed in the fall in fertile, moist, well drained soil. Germination occurs the following spring. The shrub can also be propagated from cuttings. Barberry prefers sun but tolerates shade. Prune and trim the branches in the spring and after the shrub flowers. Neglected shrubs become overgrown and unhealthy, but can be rejuvenated by fertilizing and cutting back to within a foot of the ground in late winter. In areas with cold winters, shelter the plant from the wind. Harvest the root bark in spring or fall and dry. This herb's edible berries are used to make jams and jellies. The berry juice may substitute for lemon juice. --Taken from The Healing Herbs by Michael Castleman

Life Around Here

The month of July has arrived with it's days of lingering heat, sudden thunderstorms and lazy days.  People will take time from work to swim in the lakes and streams, fish, picnic or just laze in the shade, watching as golden motes of sun streak down here and there through the leaves.  As evening comes, lightning bugs will dance through the yards, filelds and meadows, or perhaps they're really the wee folk carrying tiny lanterns as they enjoy a night of dancing. Beware the fairy rings on these lovely nights, or you may find yourself swept away in the dance and when morning comes, you'll find many years have passed.  --submitted by Mary Colleen McAndrews

Births: None this month. Marriages: Congratulations to Rory Michael McDonough and Kiana Monahan, married June 3rd. Engagements: Ruarc McAhearne to Adara Giles.  Deaths: None this Month. Citizenship: Please welcome Claire O'Reilly on her return.

Clover protects human beings and animals from the spell of magicians and the wiles of fairies, and brings good luck to those who keep it in the house.

An onion cut in half and placed under the bed of a sick person will draw off fever and poisons. A wish will come true if you make it while burning onions.

A rainbow in the Eastern sky, the morrow will be fine and dry. A rainbow in the West that gleams, rain tomorrow falls in streams.

      A first glance at Kitavari Griffin and you might have mixed feelings.  She has a tough exterior and doesn't mind showing it blatantly.  She is also extremely exotic and rare to this side of the world.  It could be the breeding that nurtured such a person as she.  In the wilds of the southern hemisphere across the great expanse of the ocean, her father traveled to dig for the remains of a lost civilization.  Instead he found another love.  A Mayan woman took his heart and gave him a daughter.

       "I was raised with the utmost care.  Even if my father was wealthy and held estates in Wales, we stayed in the jungles of the great Peninsula."  It was from this upbringing that fueled her own desires to dig around in the dirt for ancient legacies.  And something that was brought to an intense boil when her mother and father were lost in an expedition.  Kita spoke on it calmly and with an emotion that seemed rare to emerge.  "I found out from my father's team member.  The only one to survive.  Johnson looked after me from there until it was I who filled my Da's shoes."

       And so she did.  With a team of twenty, Kitavari successfully searched from burning sands to fields of solid ice for lost worlds and myths.  It wasn't until a rival had become too engrossed in her work, and his lack there of, that she had lost everything again.  "We were excavating a temple that had been rather hazardous but, it was something we had learned to work around.  When Gravic had sabotaged the lines, I lost my crew in a collapse leaving only him to save.  It is hard to say if I regret it or not to this day."  And the demons that stayed lurked in her violet eyes as she spoke those words

       She has since found and made her home within Heathfield.  On her arrival she found friendship with one of the Princes from Ballicastle, Joseph McAndrews.  With his help, they braved a cavern (as she lightly put it) that turned up a piece that might well lead her to the find of her dreams.  The lost lands of El Dorado.  She was sketchy on her explanation, hiding the details.  And for good reason.  Time shall tell now if she can claim what her father had already attempted.  A woman with dirt under her nails and pride in her step.  Kitavari is another cultural asset to the lands of Heathfield.  May she find her hidden truths buried beneath the cover of time.

OTHER LIFE FORMS

Giants -- These lumbering brutes hibernate for most of their adult lives, sleeping for so long that their backs become densely forested. That, coupled with the fact that they can grow as large as hills and are often indistinguishable from the landscape, means it's entirely possible for a person to walk across the back of a sleeping giant and not even know it.

Highly territorial, giants seldom form attachments. Although normally placid, they can turn quite violent if roused. When giants take over a new terrain, they will raze it to the ground, creating forest fires as a means of staking their claim. Giant territory is marked by unusual land formations: lakes in the shapes of footprints, trees knocked over without apparent cause, hills made entirely of dung, and boulders strewn where they were hurled in sport or fury.

Some giants hibernate in lakes, where they can absorb nutrients from the water. They are also capable of burrowing to locate underground aquifers.

Giants communicate thorough low frequency sounds, inaudible to human ears. There seems to b a considerable amount of coarse hair, which resembles roots and thatched grass. It's skin is thick and rock-like, partially covered with lichen and moss. On some specimens there are even seen small trees.

They swallow salamanders and use their natural combustion to breathe fire, hence the term "fire breathing giant."   -- submitted by Kathleen Frasier - from Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide. Everyone should have one!

July

The month of July, so named on the Gregorian calendar which we follow now for the great Roman Emperor, Gaius Julius Caesar, is the peak of summer and the height of its warmth. Midsummer has passed and with it the solstice, bringing the bounty of God's green earth to full, blooming life.

The call of the sea is heard by more than sailors, and the lakes are the best place to escape the summer's heat for blessed, cool water. Cold lemonade and picnics, lazy floating on a boat, picking berries made ripe by the sun, and home made ice cream, these are the best parts of July as laughter of kids and adults both ring loud and clear as bells. Flowers ablooming in riotous profusion nod their heads as people pass and the hum of bees and faeries fill the gardens.

Julius Caesar, the great Emperor himself, could not order a more perfect month then July. --submitted by Aelia Larcaris

Answer July
by Emily Dickinson

 Answer July—                
         Where is the Bee—
             Where is the Blush—
       Where is the Hay?

  Ah, said July—                
            Where is the Seed—
          Where is the Bud—
          Where is the May—
             Answer Thee—Me—

--submitted by Kizzie Cohen

The Beech Tree
by William Ernest Rose Fyleman

I'd like to have a garden
With a beech tree on the lawn;
The little birds that lived there
Would wake me up at dawn.

And in the summer weather
When all the leaves were green,
I'd sit beneath the beach boughs
And see the sky between.

--submitted by Lei McAndrews

Anything But July
by Unknown

It's 10 o'clock and the crickets sing
The wind blows through my window
So calm out there
But last night it thundered
Vicious, the gods seemed livid
It was so beautiful
But why so quiet now?
That damn rose bush
Rubs its thorns against my window
Making that annoying scraping sound...
Better than those crickets
Almost into summer
And the heat is in full swing
How hot it will be in July,
A living hell
The bugs are out as well
I dare not step outside
Or else be prepared to swat
With an untired arm
Summer, I hate you
Winter, please come home
Autumn, you would do just as well
Spring, even you would suffice
Andything but July

--submitted by Aelia Lascaris

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Did You Know?

Ancient Light Shows - The mysteries of stone circles and other prehistoric monuments have long fascinated scientists and lay observers. Who built these earth shrines? What did they look like? And what was their purpose? Many ancient structures look out toward specific heavenly bodies or face the sunrise or moonrise at certain times of the year. In some cases, they cast shadows that appear to have been part of some unknown ritual. And many experts now believe that the builders of these remarkable sites aligned them so that they might honor and perhaps interact with specific calendar events and astronomical phenomena. If true, this theory raises a number of questions: Why was so much time and energy lavished on building these structures? Who used them? What was the nature of the rituals that took place there? The study of these intriguing questions, which requires the fusion of archeology and astronomy is often referred to as archeoastronomy or less commonly, astroarcheology.

One research focused on Greek and Egyptian temples and showed alignment with the sunrise and sunset. Another study concentrated on careful examination of sites all over Britain. Today, further research suggests that many other ancient sites, such as Carnac in northern France and Chichen Itza in Central Africa, also exhibit complex astronomical alignments. The most famous site in the word, however, is undoubtedly the impressive megalithic monument known as Stonehenge, win Wiltshire, England.

The Stonehenge Story: Contrary to long standing belief, most experts now agree that Stonehenge was never an observatory where prehistoric astronomers surveyed the skies. It has always been a temple, and superstition not science probably dominated the minds of its ancient builders. Another myth concerning the famous structure is that Stonehenge was originally a Druid site. It was not, for we now know that it has been standing for thousands of years before the heyday of the Druids. Although it may strike observers as a stone symbol of strength and stability, the circle has changed dramatically since it was originally erected over 5,000 years ago. The changes probably took place in three main phases of construction.

The first Stonehenge - About 3200 BC experts believe that the farming families of Salisbury Plain in southern England dug out the ditch known as a henge. The structure had an inner bank broken only by two entrances, one 35 feet wide at the northeast and a second, narrower one set accurately at the south. The ancient diggers probably located south by establishing the midpoint between midwinter sunrise and sunset. This earth shrine was aligned to the moon. Evidence of the moon's role was uncovered by British antiquarian William Hawley. While excavating the causeway of the northeastern entrance, he came upon six lines of holes where 53 closely set posts had once stood. Hawley could not explain their presence, since if they had all been erected together, they would have blocked this entrance to the earthwork. The mystery was solved later by C.A. Newham when he discovered that the posts charted the movements of the moon.

The Second Stonehenge - The next major change in the structure of Stonehenge occurred about 200 years later, around 2,200 BC with the emergence of a new people. Archeologist call this new society the Beaker people, after the brightly colored geometrically patterned earthenware drinking vessels often found in their graves. The Beaker people may have been immigrants who crossed the North Sea, or local people who developed new ideas and ways of doing things. They made dramatic alterations to Stonehenge, transforming the site into a temple of the sun, rather than the moon. Evidence suggests that these people were sun worshippers: Thin gold discs incised with simple sun-like motifs have been discovered under their round earthen burial mounds or barrows. The Beaker people remolded the site radically, setting up two concentric but incomplete stone circles at the center. These circles were made from about 80 huge blue stones, up to about seven tons in weight, from the Preseli mountains of southwest Wales, over 200 miles away. It was once thought that the blue stones had been transported across water and land by the builders of Stonehenge especially for this purpose, but the discovery of a similar stone in a nearby earthen barrow, which had been abandoned about 1,000 years before the Stonehenge circle was built, suggests that the massive blue stones might have been deposited by glaciers in the area.

The Third Stonehenge - Further changes followed the flowering of the Early Bronze Age, around 2000 BC. The area around Stonehenge became a huge cemetery filled with round barrows that covered the graves of chieftains and their women. These barrows contained articles of bronze, copper, amber, gold and a primitive glass called faience. Stonehenge became more imposing, a monument befitting the status of the people buried in the barrows nearby. First the blue stones were replaced with massive sarsen (sandstone) blocks dragged from the Marlborough Downs 20 miles away. These were carefully shaped and erected in the circle. Experts now know exactly what this looked like, but the precise significance of its form is still a mystery. The main ring consisted of 30 upright stones supporting 30 lintels that were linked continuously around the top. Inside the ring, in a huge horseshoe shape, were five enormous three-stone archers, or trilithons, each consisting of two pillars supporting a lintel. At the center of the curve of the inner ring was an exceptional large single stone known as the Altar Stone, stood upright like a pillar. It is now buried beneath larger fallen stones.

The main axis of Stonehenge was now reversed. The horseshoe was open to the northeast, but became gradually taller in the direction of the largest trilithon to the southwest. This is where the sun set at midwinter. Culturally , the change was even more dramatic. Not only had the monument been transformed from a temple of the moon to a center for sun worship, it had also been changed from a communal place of worship into a sacred site serving an elite priestly cult. Even in its last years of use, Stonehenge preserved links with it previous, popular incarnation. If was never an interest in astronomy that inspired ancient peoples to lay out sightlines to celestial bodies -- theirs was a cult of ancestor worship, mingled with the belief that the moon, and possibly the sun, were homes for the dead. Ignorant of the causes of changes in the weather or disease, they hoped to placate the forces of nature with their ceremonies. But as tribal communities developed, these rituals gave way to ostentations rites conducted by a priestly caste that may have been the forerunner of the Druids. Eventually, stone circles began to lose their appeal and by 1000 BC Stonehenge was deserted.  -- submitted by Samantha Golden (taken from the book Earth's Mysterious Places, Reader's Digest)

As I grew up, I never knew freedom. As a Jew, we did not have a religious freedom in Spain and not even England. So we hid our identities and moved from home to home in the secrecy of the night. Our biggest fear was not that we did not have food on the table, or clothes on our backs but the tall pile of wood with a stake posted in the middle. It was heresy in those countries to be Jewish, or any other religion but catholic. Persecution for religion, or free thinking has been around for centuries and we felt as a 'chosen people' we were to just deal with always being in exile, and constantly being in the middle of a great schism.

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