The first time I met Eve Miranda, she was homeless, but homeless by choice.
After her mother died several years ago, her landlord told her the rent on her place would be doubled.
No way, Miranda decided. She could just sleep
in her car. She could house-sit and cat-sit and dog-sit and garden-sit – she could do whatever it took – but she would not pay double-the-rent. That’s how she lived for several years.
Today – about five years later – Miranda has a permanent home. And she has a new name, both the home and the name –thanks to remarrying. She is Evelyn Martha Thompson Miranda Creasman.
But her role in life has not changed in decades: she is a medicine woman.
I telephoned Eve in Andrews, to see how someone who believes in the power of wild, medicinal herbs is handling the COVID-19 pandemic. Turns out, she believes in using common sense.
Yes, she still maintains that certain herbs – goldenseal, elderberry, pleurisy root, mullein, coneflower and others – can serve as blockers and help fight off viruses, infections, and colds. They can build a person’s immune system.
But she doesn’t tempt – and you shouldn’t tempt, she says –the dangerous COVID-19.
When she was without a permanent home, people who wanted Eve’s advice would see her Ford Escort parked at McDonald’s and pull in for a coffee and chat. Now they can come to her home.
“If they come to the door without a mask, I just give them a sign, ‘You better put a mask on, or I don’t talk to you.’”
And she doesn’t allow them in her home, with or without a mask. They gather socially distanced in a separate building on the property.
Eve is careful not to “prescribe” anything, lest someone accused her of practicing medicine without a license. She says, “Well, Grandma would have said this. …”
Eve respects the environment and is careful not to harvest any herb that’s protected by law, such as goldenseal. She has done numerous reports and seminars on medicinal herbs and hopes to receive a grant through a nonprofit arts organization to continue her research.
Her purpose in life – she figures – is to gather herbs that are not protected, to prepare her medicines and to share her knowledge with others. That’s what medicine people do and they do it without pay.
Featured in a 2018 book titled Travels with Foxfire: Stories of People, Passions and Practices from Southern Appalachia, Eve says this: Everything has its time and place on earth, and it’s up to her to do something useful with hers. Half of all healing, her grandmother told her, is “being of good cheer, sharing and caring, showing compassion, not taking illness into your heart and soul, and not being a selfish speck.”
Eve Miranda Creasman says she has tried to live her life that way. In the meantime, she still believes in the power of certain herbs, but she also believes in common sense.
That’s why she wears a mask in public. Phil Hudgins is senior editor of Community Newspapers Inc. Email phudgins@cninewspapers.com.