Elderberry
Hobbit remedy shortens colds, relieves sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, stuffy head, fever; may neutralize the venom of serpents
The expressed juice of the berries is a valuable aperient and alterative
J.K. Rowling used elder wood to make wands, just as Prometheus used it to bring fire down from Mt. Olympus and the Romans used it to crucify the Christ
I was in a Walgreens browsing the supplements aisle, as I am wont to do, loitering among the zinc lozenges and nasal sprays. It was a late fall night in 2017: The flu season that year was especially severe — a scarily virulent strain, the news kept warning — and would end up being one of the deadliest on record. I was alone in Las Vegas, teaching college journalism and reporting on the mass shooting that had happened there a mere six weeks before. It was one of the bleaker and more arduous periods of my life. Everything felt dull and pedestrian, devoid of those occasional glimpses of sparkle and magic that keep one trudging on. In the evenings, after grading papers in my ugly carpeted apartment, I’d inevitably grow bored of the cable television offerings and decide to entertain myself by roaming around the forlorn Walgreens across the street from my apartment complex. It was there, at the most depressing Walgreens in existence — I once saw a man buy 11 boxes of Raisin Bran, 9 tins of …