For those of you knew him, my long-time student and friend Frank Cook recently died (perhaps from Neurocysticercosis). I wrote this about him on the plane ride home from his memorial service.

(Note-like most of what I write this is probably more about me than Frank, and I have not wavered from writing what I feel to be true about Frank within the context of our long-term relationship. This is a warning.)

I’m in the airport, on my way home after flying to Asheville, NC for Frank Cook’s memorial service. Frank Cook is dead. Good-bye Frank, I miss you already.

I am tired, but feel good about my last minute decision to scrap a bunch of plans (sorry Bevin) and moolah and go to this event. In the midst of all these last minute preparations and travels, it all feels a bit unreal. And I get the feeling that some distant day I will reflect on Frank and be thankful to have been a part of this event with so many of Frank’s friends and family. So many of them are my friends too. I reckon this speaks to the nature of Frank’s and mine relationship, that is, our relationship to each other, our relationships with the people we meet and share time with, and with that abiding fascination we both shared about plants.

I am coming to learn how much Frank meant to me, thinking about his future absence in my life. It is sad to imagine being at the Rainbow Gathering, treating leaky butts and buggy feet, and not having Frank show up with his big deep rumbling voice, giving me a hearty salutation. And of course our immediate discussions on the plants around us. The plant families, genera and species as well other aspects of the local flora, with Frank generally being enthused about something plant-world like. It could be some plant we have not seen before together (perhaps a Saxifragaceae or an under-explored species of Ligusticum). But generally Frank would be excited about the diversity, meaning just glad to be around the plants, wherever we were. This of course was a balm to the stress I would be having treating people in the first aid station. Here was a fellow plant-enjoyer. And a friend as well as solidifying our long-term relationship with the ever-growing panoply of plants in our lives.

When it comes to the number of plants actually seen I don’t hold the metaphoric candle to Frank. What with his worldwide travels and devotion to seeing a member of each family of plants. A worthy goal and enviable to me. Not that I would choose his lifestyle; constant traveling and having a personal relationship with the likes of Malaria, Ross river virus, and any number of bacteria, viruses and protozoa infiltrating his tissues. And eventually infiltrating his good brain. Shit. It’s not like I haven’t seen Frank look and cough like the specter of death wasn’t a few feet away polishing her nails and waiting for the soon-to-be corpse of this good man.  But of course he would fight back, stubborn as the former jock he was, and look reasonably good again. Perhaps a bit thinner (also enviable during this metabolic slow down in my life), but the coughing would decrease, and his pantheonic energies would rise again.

It was his enthusiasm, wasn’t it? His personal engagement with life. His constant admonishment to live. Or not just live, but to be engaged with your life. “Look around you!” I don’t know how many times I have heard Frank herald this call. “Look around you!” he would say to all those attending his words. “Look around you!”, and indeed we did, and would see whatever it was that we saw around us. Generally I saw plants, the plants around me. And I would smile that smile that comes from having a connection with my environment and knowing the plants by their names. “Hello Pinus ponderosa” I might say quietly. “Hello Veratrum californicum” And these hello’s came to me after hearing Frank once again give voice to see those ‘beings’ around us.

Ah yes, the word ‘beings’. This drove me crazy. I’m not sure why, perhaps my instinct to not lump all of life together. Or perhaps a knee-jerk reaction to spirituality. But the ironic aspect is that this particular wording caught on. For the past few years while giving plant walks I hear participants talk about plants as ‘beings’, even using the inflection that Frank gave. This is another way that Frank lives on, offering another way to view and describe the plants around us. The term now has an endearing quality, hearing Frank’s voice through people uttering this word.
  
Now. I guess even here, in the busy Charlotte airport Frank might be saying to look around me. But it would be entirely different. It would show Frank’s more critical, judgmental side. We would be looking around us here and seeing people hurrying about, not really seeing the humanity around them. Seemingly closed, purchasing crap food from feckless industry dispensers, he would probably pontificate about the pointlessness of this type of lifestyle and their inability to see around them. Frank and I might get into one of our many arguments here. But even if our voices got raised, we would end with a faux toast to the stream of individuals passing before us, wishing them all well as they passed by.

Frank’s life was a well-lived one, no? This guy met thousands of people, many of whom lives he altered. I can surely vouch for this, as people often tell me how much Frank has changed their perspective.  (I reckon I am some kind of Frank Cook sounding board). And I like to hear it. I am proud to have been a teacher in the continual learning process of Frank Cook.

Frank the Human.  At the memorial we all learned this well as family members and friends stepped to the dock on the pond and spoke their recollections of Frank. And what a Frank he was. It seems that Frank has always been an intense (understatement, right?) individual. Focused. And idealistic. I liked those qualities, along with all the other aspects of the Frank experience. I generally appreciated the humanness in Frank; his foibles and frailties as well as obvious strengths. I guess they make me feel better about my own. While Frank was often a larger-than-life person for many, it was the human Frank I watched grow for 15 years that I now hold in my heart.

I am appreciative that I got to watch Frank grow into his most recent, ever-expanding, incarnation. Watching Frank struggle with parts of himself, looking to accommodate competing aspects of his psyche and body. Bully for you Frank, integrity does not come easy, and the struggle for it is also an inspiration for all of us trying to be better people.

Good-bye Frank Cook. I did not get to say it while you were laying in the hospital bed dying, but I am saying it now. To myself, but that is where you live now for me, in the neurotransmitters and neurons that make up my thoughts. I am glad you are there.
 

I am inspired to write this morning due to the article on my work at the Ithaca Free Clinic. (Click here for the article). I am honored to receive this award, and more so to be able to share what I know as an herbalist with the Ithaca community.

 It’s strange, so many years ago (1981) when I began studying in California, herbalism was such a fringe idea. Waaaay to the hippie side. And as it steadily rose in prominence, at first I was gratified, as lots more people began taking it more seriously.  But then something I hadn’t thought about, but I reckoned I should have seen coming began.  And that was/is, the commercialization of herbal medicines.

I feel so naive not thinking that where there was a profit, there was a corporation. And so while I have mixed feelings about herbal medicine being available in Wal-mart and  large store outlets, I worry more about  the reductionism of herbal medicine. What many of us saw as a holistic model of medicine, became the simple trope of take this for that. A herb/drug for a symptom. And  while this does occasionally work, this simplistic notion was then used to sell a wide array of products. But of course! With little thought about the consumer/patient

But somehow back there in the 1980’s as we thought about herbal medicine perhaps entering the mainstream (never thinking it would happen so soon) (and with such a cash influx), it was seen as an alternative to more conventional symptom-treating paradigm. Well live and learn.

This is one of the reasons I really appreciate working at the Ithaca Free Clinic. Many of the folks who come there are looking to enter the world of herbalism without knowing much about holistic medicine. And so gently, we can introduce the concepts of connecting the symptom patterns and perhaps taking more control of their health care. And taking herbs.
So I appreciate this award if it brings more people to the clinic (and of course it makes my mom happy, no little thing that). And I hope we can bring holistic medicine, particularly herbalism, into other free and conventional clinics. So when people see the wall of herbs at Wal-mart, they go beyond thinking just about symptom treating, but how they can be a healthier individual

Well I reckon I am not a very good blogger, I will try to keep this a bit more up to date, though I’m not sure if it’s that interesting or if anyone reads this.
This has been a hard winter, as far as important male figures in my life. My father, at 85, died of brain cancer on January 23. I miss him, especially now as I sit in my old bedroom on Long Island, New York. Good-bye dad, I miss and love you.

Michael Moore, the herbalist, died of kidney complications on February 20.  I wrote a tribute to him here.
This is only a small bit about how I feel about Michael. Like all relationships, it is complicated. Fourteen years after initially studying with him, it is obvious how important his impact has been on my life as an herbalist. For me, he was a major permission-giver. That is, after being in a classroom and watching how others reacted to him, I realized I can be more myself in a classroom, with little pretension. Of course I am no Michael Moore, but I feel that I can contribute a little something to the way we practice herbal medicine in the United States. And cursing all the way through.

Today I will be teaching at the local high school, for the ’special needs’ kids (my kind of people). I did this once before for this class. The teacher wants me to come in to talk about wildcrafting and herbal medicine in general because the students are reading a book "Where the Lilies Bloom" which features a character gathering plants. So I am there as the modern-day continuation of this character. I like doing the class. I will be bringing in lots of show-and-tell items, my first aid bag, just-gathered branches of Prunus serotina, Hamamelis virginiana, Rhus typhina, Betula lenta, and a Salix spp with catkins just emerging. Last time, the item that got the most attention is my old friend, a large cleaver, whom I named Pinky. Pinky, you may ask, what a name for a cleaver! Ahh, but as may be construed from such a name, is that I in fact did chop off a piece of my pinky (and ate it, but that’s a story for a latter time) with this cleaver. And you can imagine the students getting a kick out of this (and perhaps you too not-so-gentle reader).

So I will come in with branches and chopping tools and a bag of herbal medicines and see what we can learn from each other with such an array.

Blog time. For anyone out there reading this, I’m going to use this area for writing about thoughts I have as it somewhat pertains to herbalism, herb medicine, plants, clinical practice, and basically the daily ins and outs of being an herbalist in the United States in the early part of the 21st century.
It won’t be too polished, as this is place where I can jot down thoughts as they pass through, rather than putting them in the official biography on my website. But to be frank, this may be a good place to read from if you are interested in coming to my school and understanding my bias and perspective on things herbal.
I don’t really care for the word herbal medicine or herbalist much, as I am someone who loves plants in general and looks to incorporate items of natural origin (ino)  in my medicine, including  fungi,  lichen, and woody plants, which are by definition, not herbs. If it was up to me, I think I would call myself something like a Medical Plantist. I realize that it does not role off the tongue well, but since I’m probably going to be called an herbalist no matter what, I thought I’d put it out there. In the late 1800’s the term Medical Botanist was bandied about , and I can get behind that pretty well.