Essential Oils for Better Skin Care

Natural skin care is more popular than ever now that people are cutting back on chemicals in all aspects of their lives. Sound like you? Consider adding oils to your regimen. "Skin oils have hydrating, anti-inflammatory, anti-aging, and antimicrobial properties," explains dermatologist Jennifer Chwalek, M.D., of Union Square Laser Dermatology. "Despite the fact that some essential oils have been around for hundreds of thousands of years, we're just scraping the surfaces of all their uses."

Not to mention, even if you're not actually applying them to your skin, the aromatherapy benefits of certain essential oils can decrease stress levels, which can help with stress-triggered skin conditions like psoriasis, acne, and eczema, says dermatologist Mona Gohara, M.D., an associate clinical professor at Yale School of Medicine.

Word to the wise: While essential oils can sometimes be used without dilution for an acute, short-term skin issue (like a bug bite or a burn), derms almost always recommend diluting essential oils for everyday skin care to protect against irritation and sensitivity. (It will also allow the essential oil to absorb over a larger surface of your skin!)

Known for its antibacterial and antimicrobial effects, tea tree oil has been studied for its ability to treat bacterial and fungal infections. Paired with its anti-inflammatory properties, it can also help with conditions like acne and rosacea, says Dr. Chwalek.  Tea tree oil has wound-healing properties, too, making it helpful for cuts and burns.

Want hydration? Rose essential oil should be your go-to—it helps your skin to retain water, Dr. Chwalek says. This makes it a great essential oil to add to any DIY lotions, especially if you're dealing with dry or chapped skin. Even better: When applied to the face, rose oil can improve skin texture and fine lines and wrinkles, she says. It's one of the best oils for youthful skin.

While not all oils are necessarily hydrating, coconut oil is known to be the best hydrator and skin softener of the group, Dr. Gohara says. It actually helps improve skin water loss, which means it's a great solution for those dealing with dry skin, or even eczema and psoriasis, Dr. Chwalek says. (Coconut oil can also repair brittle nails; try this DIY.) And, thanks to a fatty acid called lauric acid, it also has an antimicrobial effect, helping reduce the risk of any skin infection or irritation, she says. (Bonus: Unlike the essential oils, coconut oil can be applied to your skin directly without needing to be mixed with another oil first.)

On top of the stress-relieving benefits that come from taking a whiff of this essential oil, lavender can also do wonders for your skin. It's widely known for its antimicrobial properties and for helping speed the healing of burns, cuts, scrapes, and wounds, Dr. Chwalek explains. This oil also increases collagen production, making it a great anti-aging regimen for wrinkles, she says.

Learn more about the benefits of essential oils from doTERRA Health Advocate Amy Snyder at http://my.doterra.com/amysnyder 

How Far Will the NFL Go? And How Far Will We Follow?

As football players started kneeling when our Anthem rung

They started a new tradition that affects both old and young.

On high school fields across the land, our youth on bended knee

On Friday nights defied their coach and many faculty.

It spread to the lacrosse fields and the baseball diamond too.

And soccer players sneered at our dear red and white and blue!

Soon no one was standing when our Anthem filled the air.

Some were really protesting (and some just didn’t care.)

And then no one was standing for the POTUS -- goodness sake!

His tweets at last exposed him as a lightweight and a fake.

And then the Pope and Putin got the treatment, just the same.

It seemed that ev’rybody had to play the sit down game.

No flag or creed or anthem was thus spared this awful curse.

The people did not rise up -- what they did was far far worse.

For at the Second Coming when the angels blew their trumps,

The world would not get up at all but stayed upon their rumps!  

A Clown on Capitol Hill

I can do no better than to quote the first few paragraphs verbatim from the September 18th edition of The Washington Post:

An Ohio man who tried to discipline his 6-year-old daughter by chasing her around in a clown mask has been charged after she ran screaming to a stranger’s apartment — prompting that neighbor to fire a gunshot into the air, police say.

The incident occurred just before 10 p.m. Saturday, when 25-year-old Vernon Barrett Jr. donned a clown mask and began chasing his young daughter outside their apartment in Boardman Township, a suburb of Youngstown, Ohio.

It was supposed to be a prank, Barrett later told police, a way to get the child to behave without resorting to spanking. A police report did not specify why he was trying to discipline his daughter that day.

Instead, the frightened child ran to a female stranger’s car nearby, jumped inside and said she was being chased by a clown, police said. That woman later told police that the man wearing the clown mask pulled the child out of her car. Unsure of what was happening, the woman called 911. (“I don’t want to be named,” the witness told The Washington Post on Monday when reached by phone, “but I can tell you it scared the bejeezus out of me.”)

It’s idiots like Barrett Junior who give clowns a bad name (to say nothing of those in Congress).

It’s just not safe to show up anywhere unannounced as a clown. In the good old days you could don the motley and stroll about spreading cheer without much fear of being tossed in the hoosegow.

I did my last professional clown gig back in 2013, and it nearly resulted in a trip to Devil’s Island thanks to Homeland Security. Here’s how it went down:

The year 2013 started out on a sour note when I had to leave Thailand suddenly, due to a visa snafu. I made arrangements to rent a room from my daughter just outside of Washington D.C., and settled down to teaching English online through my former employer back in Thailand. But that job went kerflooey after a few months and I had to find another gig, pronto.

It came to me that I might as well put on the old clown costume and do some street performing, as I had done a few years earlier back in Minneapolis. That had garnered me the grubstake that took me to Thailand in the first place.

And what better place for a little street theater than Capitol Hill? So one bright spring morning I took the VRE into Grand Central Train Station in downtown Washington, used the Men’s Room to put on my makeup and costume, and marched over to the Senate Rotunda bearing a placard that read: ‘UNEMPLOYED CIRCUS CLOWN. PLEASE PUT ME IN CONGRESS WHERE I BELONG!’  

I planted myself under one of the expansive plane trees on the promenade and began a little pantomime show with juggling and my musical saw. All went well for about an hour, with little knots of tourists stopping to take a photo with me and my sign and then dropping a few bucks into my hat.

Then all hell broke loose when a detail of Homeland Security guards, guns drawn, surrounded me. Their leader, a tall, slim blonde in a dull black uniform, sporting reflective sunglasses, yelled at me through a bullhorn to drop the weapon. What weapon? Oh, she meant my musical saw! I gingerly put it down, and the circle drew in tighter. In the meantime, I had lost my mind with fear, so when Blondie began questioning me about who I was and where I came from I fell back on my old pantomime training, gesturing and mouthing words but unable to actually say anything. I think that may have saved my skin, because Blondie became intrigued with my frantic body language and actually smiled.

“Doesn’t your clown character talk, Bozo?” she finally asked me, after looking through my wallet.

I nodded like a demented bobblehead.

“I guess he’s okay, boys” she said to her coterie of gun-totting minions. “Just don’t ask for money” she said sternly to me. I mimed an eloquent affirmation that I would never do such a heinous thing. The Homeland Security thugs dispersed, and, after using the donniker over at the Botanical Gardens, I resumed my performance -- careful not to overtly ask for any money. But my sign made it clear that I wouldn’t turn down any donations to my campaign fund, so I continued to do okay while keeping to the letter of the law as laid down by Blondie.

I became a fixture there at Capitol Hill that summer. A few Senators and Representatives even stopped by to have their pictures taken with me, and the local cops started addressing me as “Senator Dusty.”

There were other nutjobs who also inhabited Capitol Hill along with me, carrying various signs about their imaginary grievances. One gentleman I remember very well; his sign ran into several hundred words -- the gist of it was that the CIA had stolen his wife, and he wanted her back. Another guy dressed up like Uncle Sam and passed out cheap copies of the Constitution while cheerfully warning everyone that fluoride was a terrorist plot.

I made out pretty well, especially when a group of school kids came by and their teacher stiffly warned them against stopping to read my sign or interact with me. That just spurred them on, and they emptied their pockets for me. The Chinese tourist groups, usually about fifty in a pack, all demanded photographs with me, and then loaded me down with quarters. I never broke my silence, but carried a pad and pen so I could write down whatever I couldn’t convey via pantomime. Most of the questions revolved around if I was a real circus clown, so I always wrote down “Ringling Brothers, starting in 1971!”

It was a sad day in my professional life as a clown when Blondie showed up again that fall to tell me: “Sorry, Bozo, but the rules have been tightened. You can’t loiter around here anymore unless you can prove you’re on official business. I’ve gotta ask you to leave.” So much for free speech in America.

But she did give me a five dollar bill prior to sending me away. Some of those people are all right.   

The Clown and the Sermon

It was Art Ricker’s fault. And I knew the minute he stepped into clown alley that his presence boded ill for my weekend plans. He had that placating yet conniving look on his face that all Ringling press agents had. Wreathed in a cloud of noisome cigar smoke, he sidled up to me with a hail-fellow-well-met affectation that fooled no one.

“Any big plans this weekend, boychick?” he asked me heartily. He had taken to calling everyone ‘boychick’, on the off chance it would ease the resentment most of the the First of Mays felt towards him for either getting them up at the crack of dawn to participate in some hare-brained publicity stunt, or ignoring them altogether when there was a really choice PR gig (one that offered lots of free food.)

“Oh, I might be saving the Free World from Trotskyites” I said casually, eyeing him with deepening suspicion.

I actually did have some plans for the weekend, weaved around the exhausting schedule the show kept on Saturdays and Sundays -- 3 shows on Saturday and 2 on Sunday, and then pack everything up to move out to the next arena. I had just bought a Revell of Germany Junkers JU-88 A-4 Bomber plastic model kit, which I intended to tinker with during odd moments between shows and then finish gluing together in my roomette Sunday night. I’d run out of good books to read that week, and had not found a decent used book store in Akron to feed my paperback addiction. I thought an airplane model would make a nice break from my literary routine. Roofus T. Goofus said he would help me with it, too -- he was very handy with artsy-craftsy things like that. The finished product would make a nice addition to the drab, utilitarian decor of my roomette on the train.

“Good!” boomed Ricker. “I didn’t think you had anything important going on. I wanna give you one of the most fantastic publicity gigs the circus has got for the whole Midwest! And only you can do it!”

The airplane model kit was still unopened on top of my clown trunk; I eyed it wistfully as I sullenly asked: “What now, Ricker?”

“I need you to perform at a Christian service at the St Paul Episcopal Church Sunday evening” he said smoothly. “I tried getting Peggy Williams in for it, but she can’t come.”

Peggy, one of the first girl clowns in modern Ringling history, was being vetted for Big Things by Irvin Feld and his publicity machine on the Red Unit. I knew she would do just about anything for the PR boys -- and make it look fun and happy. She had already done a number of ‘sermons’ at churches around the country. She exuded a positive energy that was contagious when she was up at the pulpit.

I, on the other hand, as a recently returned LDS missionary from the wilds of exotic Thailand, was a little burnt out in the evangelical department.

“I don’t believe in mixing religion with clowning” I started to object, but Ricker had done his homework.

“Don’t gimme that, boychick. DIdn’t you do clown shows all over Thailand for the Mormon Church?” he asked me.

I had to admit he was right on the money. But I had another shot in my locker.

“Sunday evening, you say? Well, then, it can’t be done! I’ve gotta be here for the last show -- you know that.”

“I’ve already made arrangements with Charlie Baumann to have you excused from the evening show” he shot back. “We’ll have some of the national papers there, too!”

Hmmmm. There was something to be said for getting out of that last show on Sunday -- I was usually so paralyzed with exhaustion I just walked through it without a spark of enthusiasm or inspiration. And maybe the Episcopalians would have some toothsome snacks at their evening service. So I said yes, and Ricker said he’d personally come by the arena to pick me up at six on Sunday night -- and to be ready to “give ‘em that old razz matazz!”  

Hoo boy . . . what could I talk about to a bunch of Episcopalians? Back then, my language and my erudition were more rough and ready than polished and polite. So I flipped through my handy dandy Topical Guide for the scriptures to see what I could come up with:

Genesis 17:17 -- Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed

Psalms 2:4 -- He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh

Ecclesiastes 2:2 -- I said of laughter, it is mad

James 4:9 -- Let your laughter be turned to mourning

Yikes! Not too promising. Finally, I just decided to wing it -- I’d take some props with me and see what happened . . .  

They had a three-piece rock band play some opening hymns, which I didn’t recognize at all. Then their youth pastor made a pitch for an upcoming Bible Camp to be held at Presque Isle State Park. Then I was on.

“Um . . . “ I began brilliantly. “Um, who has any questions about circus clowning?”

As a few hands tentatively went up I could see Ricker in the back, motioning furiously for me to get on with some slapstick business -- something the photographer by his side could snap for a catchy display in the morning paper. That’s when I decided I would sit down, take it easy, and do my best to give straight answers. My contrary streak was in full gear. The more Art Ricker wanted me to throw a pie or drop my pants for the bored photog next to him, the less inclined I felt to do so.

I had a nice quiet chat with the congregation -- most of ‘em young people. I told them that clowning could be learned by just about anyone, and that hardly any of the clowns I knew had a broken heart. I told them about the pie car, and the train, and Clown College, and then told them I’d been away from the circus for two years on a proselyting mission for my church. They were a very respectful group, and afterwards we had chicken salad sandwiches with shoestring potatoes and coleslaw. They even gave me a bag full of sandwiches to take back to the train for the next day’s journey.

Ricker wouldn’t talk to me on the ride back, except to say the photographer had left early after deciding there was no story. I thought smugly to myself that he would not be bothering me again with any more of his PR stunts -- I was now officially in his black book. But wouldn’t you know it, a few weeks later in he waltzes to ask if I’d like to go do twenty minutes at a downtown library. Maybe he was just a forgiving guy, but more likely he just got desperate. Not a lot of the available clowns could do twenty minutes by themselves.

And that German Junker airplane kit never did get opened, not by me. I gave it to Roofus T. Goofus on his birthday a few weeks later.

President Trump's Sense of Humor

Nowadays, the President’s sense of humor has been examined exhaustively. The consensus seems to be that either he doesn’t possess one at all, or that it is so subtle that most people don’t get it -- except, perhaps a gang of 12 year old boys having a food fight in their cafeteria. He could even be John Belushi funny.

You can Google Trump’s “only joking” statements by the hundreds, which shore up the contention that he is channeling John Belushi during one of his less sober moments.

Some of the best (or worst) examples are Sean Spicer claiming Trump was just funning when he asked the Kremlin to do a hack on Mrs. Clinton’s emails while on the campaign trail. Or how about that embarrassing moment that ended when Sarah Huckabee Sanders (no relation to the Colonel) said “I think he was just making a joke,” when Trump recommended that cops bounce prisoner’s heads off the door jambs of their squad cars.  

Lucky for us, Happy Hicks, who handles White House communications on a sub rosa level, recently told The Washingtonian that Trump, quote-unquote, “has a brilliant sense of humor.”  So did ________________  (fill in your own paranoid leader.)

Most people know by now that in Washingtonese, when you are ‘joking’ you are actually attacking -- as in “Who cut your hair, Helen Keller? Just kidding!”

An interesting sidelight about this whole eventyr is that Trump and his minions have a very selective sense of humor. Or very tedious, might be a better way of putting it. How many photoshopped pictures of the President hitting people with golf balls or having them slammed into with trains does the public really want?

There are no ‘poor taste’ filters on Twitter, although there certainly ought to be. Trump should probably add an emoji to let us know when he’s joking and when he’s actually insanely mad. This might help clear up ambivalent tweets like the one thanking Putin for booting American diplomats out of Russia. A smiley face or a thundercloud with a lightning bolt would have been enormously helpful at that point. But then, maybe Trump is all about being ambivalent and not funny or serious. He wants to keep us guessing. That strategy, if that is his strategy, has certainly kept him in office longer than a lot of Beltway buffs predicted.

It just may be Trump’s perceived ambiguity that keeps us out of World War Three with North Korea. Calling its president Rocket Boy and then threatening to wipe his country off the map are not to be construed as a direct insult and threat, but rather a whimsical outpouring of presidential poetic license.

Yeah, that’s probably what it is . . .

(Thanks to Andrew Rosenthal of the NYTimes for giving me this idea to develop.)

We are all just puppets

We are all just puppets in this world of strife and woe,

Strung up by our karma in a vulgar puppet show.

The cords of passion move us, make us dance a merry jig.

Then folly twitches us into some sudden whirligig.

Lugging baggage from the past, we cannot fly -- but crawl,

Tangled in the skeins of every other lifeless doll.

And if we try to cut the strings they only grow anew,

Choking us with destiny, secured by Elmer’s Glue.

That, at least, is what philosophers so often spout.

Me, I see no reason why a puppet makes one pout.

Pure whimsy is a blessed conceit, as puppets surely are;

They bring a little laughter to a world too oft ajar.

Essential Oils are Proving to be Effective Antibiotics

Essential oils often evoke thoughts of scented candles and day spas, but their benefits beyond relaxation are less well-known. Essential oils are ultimately just plant extracts—and those are used in countless cleaning and personal-care products, and are the main ingredient in some pest-control products and some over-the-counter medications, like Vick’s VapoRub and some lice sprays. They’re used in the food industry because of their preservative potency against foodborne pathogens—thanks to their antimicrobial, antibacterial, and antifungal properties. Various oils have also been shown to effectively treat a wide range of common health issues such as nausea and migraines, and a rapidly growing body of research is finding that they are powerful enough to kill human cancer cells of the breast, colon, mouth, skin, and more.

A handful of promising, real-life studies have been conducted with humans and other animals, though most of the research in that realm thus far has been conducted in the lab. More controlled trials will be required before some of these applications  will be available to the public, but meanwhile, scientists have turned up exciting results in another area of use: countering the growing antibiotic-resistance crisis. “The loss of antibiotics due to antimicrobial resistance is potentially one of the most important challenges the medical and animal-health communities will face in the 21st century,” says Dr. Cyril Gay, the senior national program leader at the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Research Service.

As Cari Romm previously reported, livestock consume up to 80 percent of the antibiotics used in the U.S., and the amount actually jumped by 16 percent between 2009 and 2012, according to a recent FDA report. This rampant use of the drugs has led to “superbugs” that are becoming increasingly resistant to the antibiotics that are used to treat not just farm animals, but humans as well. In fact, almost 70 percent of the antibiotics given to these animals are classified as “medically important” for humans. According to Romm, “In the U.S., antibiotic resistance caused more than two million illnesses in 2013, according to a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and an estimated 23,000 deaths,” and they’ve also amounted to an extra $20 billion in healthcare costs. And it’s only poised to get worse: a recent report commissioned by the U.K. government estimates that drug-resistant microbes could cause more than 10 million deaths and cost the global economy $100 trillion by the year 2050.

Numerous recent studies—including several done by the USDA—have shown great promise in using essential oils as an alternative to antibiotics in livestock. One of their studies, published in October 2014 in the journal Poultry Science, found that chickens who consumed feed with added oregano oil had a 59 percent lower mortality rate due to ascites, a common infection in poultry, than untreated chickens. Other research, from a 2011 issue of BMC Proceedings, showed that adding a combination of plant extracts—from oregano, cinnamon, and chili peppers—actually changed the gene expression of treated chickens, resulting in weight gain as well as protection against an injected intestinal infection. A 2010 study from Poultry Science produced similar findings with the use of extracts from turmeric, chili pepper, and shiitake mushrooms. A multi-year study is currently underway at the USDA that includes investigations into the use of citrus peels and essential oils as drug alternatives.

Researchers have also directly compared the effects of commonly used antibiotics with those of various essential oils. One such study, from the March 2012 issue of the Journal of Animal Science, found that rosemary and oregano oils resulted in the same amount of growth in chickens as the antibiotic avilamycin, and that the oils killed bacteria, too. Additional findings have shown that essential oils help reduce salmonella in chickens, and another study found that a blend of several oils can limit the spread of salmonella among animals. One of the co-authors of that study, Dr. Charles Hofacre, a professor at the University of Georgia’s College of Veterinary Medicine, says it’s such a new area of research that they don’t yet know exactly how the essential oils work, but “there is some strong evidence that they are functioning by both an antibacterial action in the intestine and also some have an effect to stimulate the intestinal cells ability to recover from disease more quickly–either by local immunity or helping keep the intestinal cells themselves healthier.”

In the lab, scientists have been testing all kinds of combinations of essential oils and antibiotics, and they’re repeatedly finding that the oils—used on their own and in combination with some common antibiotics—can fight numerous human pathogens, including antibiotic-resistant strains of E. coli, Staphylococcus aureus(which causes staph infection), and other common types of bacteria. Results consistently show that combining essential oils and antibiotics significantly lowers the amount of antibiotic required to do the job. For example, two recent studies showed that lavender and cinnamon essential oils killed E. coli, and when combined with the antibiotic piperacillin, the oils reversed the resistance of the E. coli bacteria to the antibiotic. Another recent study found that basil oil and rosemary oil were both effective in inhibiting the growth of 60 strains of E. coli retrieved from hospital patients. Other research has produced similar results for many other essential oils, both alone and in combination with antibiotics. Researchers believe that one mechanism by which the oils work is by weakening the cell wall of resistant bacteria, thereby damaging or killing the cells while also allowing the antibiotic in.

Learn more about the benefits of essential oils from doTERRA Health Advocate Amy Snyder at http://my.doterra.com/amysnyder  

Digging up the dead because you disagree with them

Local officials and residents, outraged by the violence in Charlottesville, Va., last month and determined to clear their cities of markers that glorify the Confederacy, are pushing for the removal of Confederate monuments that have adorned the graves of soldiers for decades.
from the NYTimes 

The ghoulish Mr. Murkle on the City Council said:

“I propose we dig up and destroy Confederate dead!

Even if the worms have done their work, there still might be

A bit of bone or sinew that can reek of infamy!”

His voice was not alone, and soon the many were ablaze

With disinterring corpses of those who had Southern ways.

Eternal rest no longer was an option for remains

Of those who lost the Civil War down cemetery lanes.

But why stop there, the mob decreed -- there’s many villains sunk

In the ground who ought to be no more than a dead skunk!

We’ll dig ‘em up and grind their bones to show our loyalty

To our country’s greatness and the bonds of charity!

The morbid work commenced in California (not a shock)

Where pioneers and actors were unburied by the block.

Politicians, bandits, and a scientist or two,

Were also roused and made into a nauseating glue.

The evil that men do, or were accused of, anyway,

Now meant graveyards gave up ev’ryone as equal prey.

Cremation is the only course, if you don’t want to be

Put up on display because of idiosyncrasy . . .