Sbear, 77

Herbal Pharmacologist Imagine walking a pleasant nature path and coming upon a pretty wild plant that you don't know. So what is it? How would you find out? Is it edible or poisonous?

Now imagine whipping out your smartphone ap or laptop program to enter the visible characteristics that you can see (in pictures & plain language) and up pops some of the possibilities that you can narrow down. Wouldn't that be great!? Join me with your botanical or database know-how to help bring this into reality for people to become more familiar with nature. I find the garden everywhere - what expanse of concrete doesn't have plants growing through the cracks? There is no shortage of farmers in this world. I focus on familiarizing with the wild plants.

My values include honest disclosure, respect, trust, nurturing, peaceful cooperation & reconciliation, more 'I feel' than 'you' statements, diversity appreciation, environmental simple living, forgiveness, compassion, three good laughs a day, and unsolicited hugs. One of the gifts we can offer each other is to back up and try again. If we can count it, it probably doesn't count. I believe that initial chemistry gets things started and needs commitment to keep it going.

Growing up in big NYC and during the Vietnam fiasco drove me to a passionate interest in nature leading to herbs and phytochemisty. Starting school as a poor freshman at 40 and ending up a decade later with a PhD and a good job at NIH, I now understand herbs at a molecular level and continue to follow the literature on the internet. I hope for a web database resource can help people feel closer to the earth, themselves and each other and to poison the environment less. My life has been normal enough to cope with modern society yet unusual enough to think out of the box a lot.

I am environmental, smart, and active.

Locations: Right now I'm at beautiful Lake Atitlan in Guatemala. 2000-07 I was outside DC. 90's I was in Tucson. 70-80's I had several years in Californ