Off the Beaten Track: Danita Cahill, Western Photographer

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We take great pleasure in welcoming the talented and lovely Danita Cahill who is a freelance photographer and writer specializing in all things western. 

Alli, thanks for having me today. What an honor!

How old were you when you got your first camera?

I got my first little Kodak point and shoot for my 10^th birthday.

When did you start specializing in western photography?

I started “specializing” in western and rural images right away. My favorite subjects to snap photos of were the animals on our farm. 

Do you have a western background?

I’ve lived my entire life in the Pacific NW, all but my first two years in Western Oregon. Most of my life has been spent living in the country. My husband and I and our two sons live on five acres. We keep lots of animals, including two dogs, a horse and a small herd of alpacas.  I still love shooting photos of animals – mine and those belonging to others.

When I was nine, my dad hauled home a truck full of ponies. I bawled with joy. There was nothing I wanted more than a horse – and Shetland ponies fit the bill just fine! I’ve had at least one horse in my life pretty much ever since. My mare Koko, who I’ve had since she was three, just had her 15^th birthday.

I rode Koko for over six years as a volunteer deputy with the Linn County Sheriff’s Mounted Posse. Together she and I did armed security duty (carrying revolvers in leather holsters, true old cowboy style), appeared in parades, did community-service functions, and most importantly, did wilderness search and rescue on horseback. 

What sort of photography do you do and how did you get started professionally?

I’ll answer the latter part of the question first. I’ve worked freelance and on staff for a dozen different newspapers over the past 30 years. I started out as a writer and sort of fell into the photography part of the program. When I started writing human-interest pieces, the editors wanted photos to illustrate the stories.

I’m also a photographer for Farm & Ranch Living, a national magazine, and a feature writer and photographer for Ruralite magazine, which is a regional. Sometimes my photos appear in Country and Country Living magazines.

Besides the newspaper and magazine work I also occasionally do wedding photography, and family and senior portraits. One summer I took photos of kids riding bulls for the riders’ parents and grandparents. (Please forgive the writing across the photos. I’ve had some trouble with photo pirating). Recently I did a dog photo shoot for a dog trainer’s website. 

Who is the pretty blond model in so many of your shots?

Ha! Thanks! That’s my daughter, Alyssa. She’s one of my favorite models. She’s a real cowgirl – a horse trainer, barrel racer and a past bullrider. Her husband, Kirk rides broncs. 

To see more of my photography, please check out my website: http://cahillphotojournalism.com/

And my miracles blog: http://miracahills.wordpress.com/

Find me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DanitaCahill

Follow me on Twitter: @DanitaCahill.

Thanks again Alli, this has been a lot of fun!

A couple of parting questions for the photographer inside your readers – how old were you when you got your first camera? And what is your favorite subject to photograph? 

Gridi, Grido, Gridiamo per il Gelato (You Scream, I Scream, We All Scream...)

By Patricia Winton

Birds are warbling in the pre-dawn hours. Women are painting their toenails. People are unswathing their throats of the scarves they’ve worn all winter. Well, some people are beginning to unswathe throats, but I digress. I’ll save throat swathing for another day. These are the classic signs that summer is approaching in Italy and the gelato season is upon us. Not that we’ve been deprived of gelato during the nippy winter. It’s always available. But when summer comes...oh, my.

The first signs appear in the late afternoon when the warm air invites people to stroll arm and arm down the street enjoying being outside at last. What better way to celebrate than to stop by the local gelato shop for a cone. But we know that summer prevails when the family piles into the car after Sunday lunch at Mamma’s. The car heads for a park, or a lake if there’s one handy, or some archeological site to enjoy the open air. After they walk to and fro admiring the fresh blooms on plants, or the sailboats, or ancient statues, they look for an outdoor café.

And everyone orders gelato. Well, almost everyone. Mamma may choose granita and the youngest child may choose a frozen confection-on-a-stick shaped like a cartoon character. But in general, gelato reigns.

Italian gelato differs from American ice cream in many respects, primarily the intensity of the flavor. Since gelato is sold by weight instead of volume, it isn’t whipped with air, so it’s denser. In addition, gelato is made with less cream, sometimes just milk. In my opinion, cream coats your tongue creating a barrier between taste buds and flavor. So again, the intensity of gelato bursts in your mouth. But the main reason that Italian gelato has such a potent flavor is legal. By law, gelato labeled strawberry must comprise thirty percent strawberries. This law

applies to all fruits and nuts, so the flavor is intense. Certainly, the vanilla isn’t thirty percent vanilla, nor is the chocolate thirty percent. But the flavors explode in your mouth nonetheless.

It’s customary to get at least two flavors. After you pay for the size you want to buy, you take your ticket to the counter and select from the array of flavors available. If you have a small size, you generally select two flavors, but with larger sizes you can have as many as four or even five. The choice is yours: cantaloupe and coconut, tangerine and tiramisu. Let your imagination soar. One shop in central Rome has about fifty flavors on display at any given time, and the choice is really difficult. My favorites there include pink grapefruit and champagne.

Once the waiter has filled your cup or cone, he or she will ask, “Panna?” That means “Do you want any whipped cream?” So even on an ice cream, er, I mean gelato, cone, you can have a dollop of whipped cream on top. It’s really hard to resist.

So please excuse me while I go out for my first gelato of the season.

I blog on alternate Thursdays at Italian Intrigues I hope you'll stop by.  Also, please visit my website at PatriciaWinton.com

Mojitos

By Edith McClintock

Mojitos are a refreshing summer favorite. Sadly, I managed to serve them at a party recently without the lime. I was distracted. But I'm now growing fresh mint and hopefully I'll have plenty of occasions to get it right this summer.

Recipe for 1 mojito:

add 5-10 mint leaves to the bottom of a highball glass (or whatever is handy)

add 3/4 ounce of simple syrup (or about 2 tablespoons of white sugar) and muddle the mint and syrup together (I use a mortar & pestle then add it to the glass)

squeeze in 1/2 a lime cut into fourths then add to glass

add crushed ice

add 2 ounces of light rum

top off the rest of the glass with club soda/seltzer water

garnish with a mint sprig

Enjoy!

The Ceviche Wars

 

By Alli Sinclair

The warm wind rustled the paper table cloth, and soft sand oozed between my wiggling toes as I waited for the dish that would make my taste buds have a fiesta. Gazing at the azure waters of the Pacific Ocean, I couldn’t think of a better place to be -- Mancora, on the far north coast of Peru, a haven for foodies, especially those with a penchant for devouring plates of ceviche.

Popular in most coastal regions of Central and South America, this seafood dish has been the centre of a dispute for many years. Made from fresh raw fish and marinated in lemon or lime juice, it is spiced with peppers, onion, salt and usually accompanied by sweet potato, lettuce, corn, or avocado (depending on which region you’re in). The juices cook the fish, but beware – only eat ceviche early in the day or else you’re likely to end up with a nasty bout of food poisoning. Unfortunately, I found out first hand why you don’t eat ceviche late afternoon, but it still didn’t put me off one of my favourite dishes.

Many nationalities have laid claim as to who invented ceviche. Central and South Americans and even some Polynesian islands in the South Pacific have all put their hand up as the creators.

Every former Spanish colony has its own version of ceviche. The Spaniards stocked citrus fruit on their ships to prevent scurvy on long voyages and some historians believe the recipe was brought to Peru by Moorish women from Granada, who accompanied the Spaniards, and the recipe morphed into the ceviche as we know it today.

Those in the Polynesian camp say the Spanish encountered this dish on their voyages through the islands. The Spanish sailors enjoyed it so much the recipe spread through the Spanish colonies, and each region put their own spin on it.

But perhaps the strongest argument is for Peru and Ecuador. Archaeologists have discovered evidence that documents ceviche was eaten by the Moche civilization in northern Peru almost 2,000 years ago. Some say banana passion fruit was originally used to marinate the fish, and when the Spanish arrived the indigenous people preferred to marinate their fish in limes and lemons.

Depending on who you talk to, you’ll get a different story and reasons why a certain country did, or didn’t, invent ceviche. Many a time I’ve inadvertently become embroiled in a heated discussion between a Peruvian and Chilean or Ecuadorian as to who created the original ceviche. At times I felt like I was back in Australia, debating with a New Zealander as to who invented the pavlova, but that is a whole other post and sure-fire way of getting our New Zealand readers offside. (I jest!)

I’ve eaten ceviche in many parts of the world (including an Australian version), but today I’ll post the Peruvian recipe.

1 ½ pounds of mahimahi, ono or bluenose bass, diced

½ red onion, slivered

¾ cup lime juice (make sure it is a highly acidic type)

1 habanero chili, seeded, halved and thinly sliced (optional)

1 tbsp of ají amarillo sauce (available pureed or in jars in most Latin markets)

½ cup cilantro leaves, chopped

1 orange sweet potato, peeled, boiled, cooled, and sliced

1 cob sweet corn, boiled and sliced into 1 inch pieces

4 butter lettuce leaves

Preparation:

Rinse diced fish and slivered red onion in cold water and dry thoroughly.

In a large glass bowl, combine fish, red onion, lime juice, salt, habanero, and ají amarillo (if using) . Cover and refrigerate for 20 minutes.

Just before serving, stir in the cilantro. Place lettuce leaves on the plate, sweet potato, and corn to the side and spoon the ceviche on top of the lettuce leaves.

Eat and enjoy!

To be honest, I don’t care who invented ceviche. All I know is whenever I hear the word, smell lemons and limes or eat the dish, I’m instantly transported back to a thatch roofed hut on a deserted beach in the Peruvian summer. My stomach rumbles, I can sniff the salty breeze and my mouth waters at the thought of diving into a dish that can cause heated debates between so many nationalities.

Dear reader, what summer food takes you back to a special time or place?

The Sweetest Melons: Memories of the Congo

Photo by Aravind Sivaraj CCx2.0

By Jenni Gate

We drove down the hill from our home through the city of Kinshasa. Just outside the city, the jungle was thick. The road was full of pot holes and ruts. Our car bounced along on the rough pavement, heading towards vast stretches of farm land. About 8 miles from Kinshasa, we turned off the road into an open area with several low, concrete-block buildings spread out around a farming compound. Rice paddies stretched into the distance, surrounded by jungle. It was the summer of 1970, and we had arrived at the Chinese Agricultural Research Center. 

The circumstances of our visit were this: Dad, an agriculturist, was working with a Taiwanese agricultural mission in coordination with U.S. efforts to develop rice varieties to help ease the food shortages in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). But they had a problem—the Congolese people would not plant or eat the rice in production from the Chinese Agricultural Research Center. Dad commented to his Chinese counterparts that he couldn’t understand why the Congolese rejected the rice, because all rice tastes the same. The Taiwanese were shocked. The Head of Station invited all Americans and their families out to the farm to taste the different varieties being developed.

Oryza sativa

My sisters and I jumped out of the car, eager to stretch and explore. A group of Taiwanese and Chinese men came to greet us, smiling and nodding at each of us. I don’t remember their names after so many years. They were dressed in tan, gray or black slacks with white, button-down shirts, and polished leather shoes. A few of them wore tightly woven straw hats. A couple of the men gestured at their young sons to come and meet us, and we were soon running and playing tag on lush, green grass in front of the Center.

We toured the farm, learning that the land for the project was provided by Mobutu. There were papaya and mango trees, citrus trees, bananas, and coconuts dotting the landscape near the driveway. Surrounding the homes and research buildings were the rice paddies, each marked with signs bearing numbers representing the variety being produced. The plants looked like long grass in the water, with some that grew as high as 5-ft. tall. Most of the rice was about 3-ft. tall.

Photo: IRRI CCx2.0

We were led through Quonset huts where we saw rice and other vegetable and fruit seedlings in nurseries. In broken English and French, but with great pride, our hosts showed us a large variety of rice seedlings. There were several varieties each of long, medium, and short grain rice plants.

In one Quonset hut, we saw many melons, from honeydew to watermelon. At the time, all watermelons had seeds, so we were impressed when we discovered that the Chinese Agricultural Research Center had developed seedless melons. The seeds inside the melons were miniscule, which  was great news to me. Dad had always told me the big, black seeds that I accidentally swallowed every time we ate watermelon were going to sprout inside my stomach and grow. I didn’t really believe him but, then again, I had no desire to find out.

Seedless by Scott Ehardt CCx2.0

At dusk, the Taiwanese brought us indoors for dinner. We ate a gigantic steamed fish and a dish called Lion’s Head Stew, which was ground meat cooked in a rice-pasta pouch. It was so delicious that I’ve searched for Lion’s Head Stew on the menu at every Chinese restaurant I’ve been to since then, including when I visited Hong Kong years later. I’m still searching, without success. Our hosts had us sample several rice dishes of different varieties of rice. We sampled white, creamy, and brown rice in every shade imaginable. Some rice was white and sticky and tasted like the rice we were used to eating. Some of the rice was almost sweet. A lot of it tasted like cardboard. This was the reason the Congolese would not plant and eat the rice produced by the Center. The rice available in sufficient quantities for use by local farmers had no flavor. But there were many varieties still being developed. When we tasted one variety of rice with a clean, nutty flavor, Dad said, “I want 100 kilos of that.” Our hosts exclaimed that it was their favorite as well.

Red, White, Brown & Wild Rice by Earth100 CCx2.0

For me and my sisters, the best part of the meal was dessert. Iced platters, bearing slices of cantaloupe, honeydew, watermelon, and yellow-flesh watermelon, all garnished with curlicue shavings from the rinds, were brought out and passed around. The novelty of melons without seeds kept us awestruck.

It was summer in Africa, and those melons were sweet and refreshing.

Photo by Kelly-Wikimedia CCx2.0

That summer treat, exploring all the flavors of rice and melon, has stayed in our family memory for decades. I still love melons, especially honeydew, and the memory of those flavors on that hot summer day still outshines the mundane, commercial flavors of the rice and melons we eat in the States today.

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As a side note: Years later, Dad took a flight from Jakarta to Hong Kong. He sat next to a young, Chinese man who had been to Jakarta to buy rattan. As they sat talking, the young man mentioned he had been to Zaire. In a flash of recognition, Dad said, “I remember you! You were at the Research Center.” The young man remembered my dad bringing him with us to the Embassy swimming pool on occasion. They exchanged contact information, both commenting on what a small world it is. Indeed, it is.

Off The Beaten Track: Travels In Iran

Our guest this week is Adam Jones, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of British Columbia in Kelowna, Canada. He is the author and editor of over a dozen books, including Genocide:A Comprehensive Introduction (2^nd edition, 2010). An avid traveler, Adam has lived and/or voyaged in over 75 countries on every populated continent. In 2012, Adam and his companion, Griselda Ramírez, took a private tour through Western Iran, accompanied by their guide, Mahmood and driver, Samad. Their experiences are documented in Adam’s travelogue, In Iran: Text and Photos, which is available as an e-book. He has graciously permitted us to post an excerpt from the book. The following is an account of Adam and Griselda’s visit to Sanandaj, and Orumanat in Iran’s western Kurdistan Province. More of Adam’s photos can be found on his Flikr site.

Let me confess that I have a soft spot for the Kurds. They are generally considered the world’s largest nation without a state: thirty million or more of them are distributed across southeastern Turkey, northeastern Iraq, western Iran, and a sliver of northeastern Syria.

Kurdish man

Their history is a litany of invasion, betrayal, and genocide. Turkey’s 1930s-era campaign against its Kurdish minority killed tens if not hundreds of thousands. Successive Turkish regimes refused to recognize a Kurdish ethnicity, instead defining Kurds as “mountain Turks.”

When Kurdish nationalists rebelled against Turkish oppression in the 1980s, they sparked a counterinsurgency that turned the southeast of the country into a war zone. The conflict simmers and erupts into major clashes to the present day. In Iraq, a Kurdish insurgency supported by the Shah of Iran prompted Saddam Hussein to view the Kurds as a “fifth column” during the war with Iran. The result was the genocidal “Anfal” campaign of February-September 1988, in which at least a hundred thousand Kurds were killed. The murder by chemical weapons of five thousand Kurdish civilians in the city of Halabja in March 1988 was separate from Anfal as such, but part of the broader pattern of anti-Kurdish extermination.

Iran’s Kurdish population, mercifully, has experienced no such slaughter—whether under the Shah (though he betrayed his Kurdish allies in the 1970s by cutting a deal with Saddam), or since the founding of the Islamic Republic. This is despite the fact that most Iranian Kurds are Sunni, in a country where Shias are hegemonic. The millions-strong Kurdish population is widely distributed throughout the west of the country, divided into several groups that speak sometimes mutually incompatible tongues.

In a little over a year, by coincidence and design, I have traveled in all three of the major population concentrations of the Kurdish “nation.” During travels with Griselda in southeastern Turkey in summer 2011, we explored the ancient city of Diyarbakir, where Kurds are in the majority. A fresh wave of Kurdish political agitation and Turkish military repression followed. I will not soon forget sitting out a thunderstorm by the Iranian border with a couple of Kurds who proudly proclaimed their allegiance to the PKK—the principal Kurdish guerrilla group operating on Turkish territory.

Also in 2011, I was invited by the Kurdistan RegionalGovernment (KRG) in Iraq to participate in a conference on the Anfal genocide, held in the city of Erbil, in the long sliver of northeastern Iraq that the Kurds won as a state-within-a-state following the First Gulf War (1990−91). Their quasi-independent status was strengthened after the fall of Saddam in 2003. The Kurdish zone is the lone part of Iraq that has not descended into catastrophic violence since that Second Gulf War. Supplied with a driver and logistical assistance by the KRG and a couple of crucial NGO connections, I was able to travel widely throughout the zone, including to Halabja and its many moving sites and memorials connected to the 1988 chemical attack.

From the start, I was struck by the inordinate hospitality of the Kurds I met, and their personal vigor. Mahmood is fond of them, too. “I had many Kurdish friends when I was doing my military service,” he says as we drive from Takab toward Sanandaj, the heart of Iranian Kurdish culture. “They are serious people. If they say they will do something, they do it. And they grow up with a gun, a Kalashnikov, as their companion.”

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Kurdish woman in traditional dress

That military prowess certainly imbues the Kurdish men I’ve met, who frequently seem to have stepped straight from a film set. Kurdish women, too, have a public charisma not often found among Muslim females in the Middle East. Their traditional dress is wildly colorful, and they’re often very beautiful, with the strong jawline and penetrating eyes of their menfolk.

We are on the road from Takab by 8:30 a.m. I alternate between mid-morning snoozing and a perusal of Jack Weatherspoon’s Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. We pass through countryside of adobe villages blending imperceptibly into parched yellow hills and red, recently-tilled soil. There are verdant wheat fields, their fronds rippling in the wind that washes across this austere plateau. The occasional turbaned Kurdish farmer moves through the wheat, scythe in hand. Teenage Kurdish boys hitchhike in little knots at the roadside.

Combination mosque/convenience store/ petrol station,
en route to Sanandaj

We arrive in busy Sanandaj around noon, and Griselda and I beg off from our guide to stroll the streets on our own. On every block we are greeted in a friendly way, whether by Kurd or Persian: “Hello, how are you, my dear?” is a typical salutation (directed to me). There are striking Kurdish women in brashly form-fitting clothes. It’s remarkable what a difference a belt makes, accentuating the hips and bust. There are dresses for daily wear in the shops that have necklines, and I notice much henna-treated hair. Among the young men, there are cool dudes with rooster-comb haircuts, looking like South Korean or Japanese pop stars.

Kurdish women's fashions in bazaar, Sanandaj

The streets are packed with commerce, especially agricultural produce: luscious tomatoes, fresh lettuce, watermelons the size of late-stage pregnancies. Griselda is inspired to photograph a few of the Kurdish vendors—all male—and I find myself piggy-backing on her initiative. It’s easier for a woman to ingratiate herself with a female subject, but the men seem positively charmed by her—allowing me to sneak in for follow-up shots.

Elderly Kurdish vendor on street,
Sanandaj

We lunch at the Jahan Nama restaurant, a glitzy place full of antique swords and pistols and gramophones. Mahmood tries to contact a Kurdish friend of his, so he can join us – another tour guide. But the friend just returned from leading a tour to Armenia. I express surprise—do a lot of Iranians visit Armenia? “Yes!” Mahmood asserts. “Iranian tourists go to Armenia, India, Turkey, Malaysia, sometimes Russia.” Making the most of their limited options, in other words. I imagine many Iranian women abandon their hejab once they cross into these countries, while many men head for the pub.

Interior of Jahan Nama Restaurant,
Sanandaj

It’s on for one last, long push into the heart of Iranian Kurdistan. The initial stretch out of Sanandaj is slow going. The road is choked with trucks belching black fumes in our faces. Most are headed for Iraq, and many bear Iraqi license plates. Trade is booming between the two countries—a reminder of the ironic outcome of the 2003 Gulf War, which basically gifted Iran with the Iraqi sphere of influence that Saddam had denied it. Our driver negotiates his way around the obstacles. Soon the road begins to clear, and the vistas open up.

“The Kurds have no friends but the mountains.” It’s perhaps the dictum closest to the Kurdish soul, and entering the precipitous ranges of westernmost Iran, it’s easy to see why. Samad steers us up a frighteningly slender ribbon of highway into a flinty fortress of peaks and valleys. “I took this road once by night,” Mahmood remembers. “At about two kilometers an hour. One mistake and it’s game over.” The road, though, is a real triumph of engineering, and it’s in excellent shape. I am confirmed in my estimation that Iranian roads are, on balance, better than Canada’s—and their engineers confront many of the same geographical and environmental challenges.

Scenery en route to Orumanat

Only in such a mountain fastness, in fact, could the Kurds establish settlements that were relatively immune to the destructive zeal of their tormentors. Our destination is one of the most remote: Orumanat. When I finally find it on the map (thrown, at first, by its transliteration as Howraman), I experience a small shock of recognition. Orumanat lies barely ten kilometers from the Iraqi border, as the crow flies. Another ten or fifteen kilometers further on is Halabja. So these mountains are the same ones I glimpsed from the Iraqi side a year or so ago—the same ones that desperate Kurdish refugees fled towards as Saddam’s chemical munitions rained down on them. More than a million Iraqi Kurds found refuge in Iran during the 1980−88 war—welcomed and sustained by their kin, and by the Iranian regime and Red Crescent. This massive dislocation and humanitarian response was barely noted in the West. Only when Kurdish refugees flooded into Turkey in 1991 did the “CNN effect” take hold, pressuring the US and other governments to establish the “no-fly zone” that forged the Kurdish quasi-state in Iraq.

Village of Orumanat

The scenery is spellbinding as we near Orumanat—ancient terraced hillsides, deep valleys with patches of lustrous green, groves of walnut and apple and pomegranate trees. We arrive at our hotel exhausted and exalted. 

Kurdish mother and child
Orumanat

Balsam—Curing Russians since Catherine the Great

By Kelly Raftery

It was mid-October 1992 and a group of grad students were going to see the Presidential candidate speaking outside that cold Michigan night. We were all bundled up with scarves, gloves and hats to stand in the cold and as we headed out the door, one of my Latvian classmates showed us all a flask, which she slipped into coat pocket, informing us that it was “balsam, it is like a mitten for your tummy.”  And, as the evening went on the flask was emptied and indeed, we all stayed quite warm.   

Balsam is good for what ails you—no matter what that might be. Cold, flu, low blood pressure, digestive ailments,

Catherine the Great, cured by balsam.

all cured with a hearty dose of balsam. Bottled into ceramic flasks since the 1700s, balsam is rumored to have gained its reputation as a healing elixir from a visit that Catherine the Great made to Latvia. The Empress fell ill with stomach complaints and was given balsam, brewed by a local pharmacist named Abraham Kunze. Catherine’s illness subsided, she was saved (supposedly) from death and balsam became known as an effective remedy.

The recipe for balsam has been and is a closely held secret. Once you open the special ceramic bottle and pour a dram, you will see that it is a thick, black liquid that pours more like molasses than vodka. Balsam is 90 proof alcohol with anywhere from 17 to 23 other natural ingredients mixed in. Among the botanicals that can make up a balsam are grasses, herbs, roots, berries and other fruits. The actual mix is proprietary and varies from brand to brand, but can include linden blossom, mint, ginseng, black peppercorn, birch bud, bilberry, valerian, raspberry, and honey. The taste is bitter and sweet all at the same time, somewhat like drinking cough syrup. Regardless, balsam is on the menu in many a Latvian restaurant, served over ice cream, in cola, or as shots. Apparently, it is a “must do” for the brave and hearty tourist seeking to experience the “real Latvia.”

Riga Black Balzam
photo by Fanny Schertzer

The most popular (and most frequently exported) brand of balsam is Riga Black Balsam that can be found in many well-stocked liquor stores, particularly those in Russian speaking enclaves such as Brighton Beach in New York.

A number of years ago I suffered from digestive issues that took me from doctor to doctor seeking relief. In frustration, I finally consulted a Chinese traditional medicine practitioner, who began my treatment by poking me with needles and then handing me a tiny bottle of medicine that she sold off the shelf of her office. Always a skeptic, I took the bottle home, where it laid in a drawer for a while, until I finally talked myself into measuring out the required droppers of liquid into some water. I lifted the cup to my nose, sniffed delicately, breathed out and then took all the brackish brown liquid in to my mouth and downed it with a quick swallow. I stood in my kitchen dumbstruck and then called out to my husband, “Hey, you know what this stuff is?  It’s balsam!”  It did not have the alcohol content of the balsam that I knew, but it certainly was a similar combination of botanicals.

My stomach issues eventually resolved and that tiny bottle of plants and herbs marked a turning point, a start on the road towards healing for me. I don’t know if it was the healing properties of the herbs and roots or the fact that the taste reminded me of all the times I had drunk balsam over the years. I seem to recall drinking balsam at my wedding in Kyrgyzstan, a local brew made from wild herbs picked in the mountains. With each sip of that medicine, I was reminded of a different time in my life, from that cold night watching candidate Bill Clinton introduce Hillary to my Kyrgyz wedding surrounded by my new family. I have this cough I can’t shake; I wonder where I can buy a bottle of balsam?