Goebbels Grins in the Grave

If you haven't figured it out yet, any of the networks, including PBS, are thoroughly corrupt.  For example, PBS heavily edited a Jill Stein interview to make her sound foolish and omit her criticism of  the two-party system:




Lee Camp and his crew at Redacted Tonight report the news without the megacorporate influence, and you can judge for yourself which you prefer.

Peace.

The Elephant in the Room

As told by Master Stanhope, citing research from our own Oregon State University:




And Master Hicks:



Obviously I make no claims to these works and post them merely to elucidate.

Peace.

I Used to be a Professional Paranoid

Then I did it for free--

Now, the word "paranoia" has surely been robbed of all meaning:

“no digital communication is secure“, by which he means not that any communication is susceptible to government interception as it happens (although that is true), but far beyond that: all digital communications – meaning telephone calls, emails, online chats and the like – are automatically recorded and stored and accessible to the government after the fact. To describe that is to define what a ubiquitous, limitless Surveillance State is.

Happy New Year.

Training Day, Part II

[part I here]

After tossing his tool belt in the bed of the pickup, Resin Nate slides the cooler onto the back seat and climbs in beside it, balancing a heavy nursery tray on his lap. The clear cover of the tray is fogged over with condensation.

Nate pulls the door closed and accepts the pipe from me. Ted accelerates hard into the fog, spitting gravel into the ravine, while Nate smokes in silence, seeming pretty calm for a guy whose truck had just been seized by the police.  He refills the pipe from a huge bag he takes from the cooler. Well into the second bowl he passes to the front, coughs, and tells this story:

CHP finally noticed  I never registered that rig* and pulls me over...and after he runs my license and it comes back clean, I tell him I never register my vehicles, don't believe in it, but I have the bill of sale--

Doesn't matter, the trooper says.  After this long, it counts as stolen.  I have to impound your vehicle today, I'm sorry.  Explain it to the judge. Then he called the wrecker and asked if I needed a ride to the job--and I call you instead, and thanks for picking me up--

While we wait, the trooper tells me to get whatever I need out of the rig. So I grab my tools and I'm laying the belt on the road, and he asks if that's it, did I get everything?

Well, no, I tell him, I got clones--

And he doesn't miss a beat. He just says Well, better get 'em out of there, so I get the tray and put it down by my tools, and he asks if there's anything else. 

Well, I say, I got my stash--

And again, he's just Well, get it out of there, and doesn't even try to look in the cooler. I sit down, the tow truck comes, and they weren't gone two minutes before you arrived--

Ted listens to Nate's tale like it's a weather report, nonchalantly nodding throughout and stroking the red beard. I sit stunned, staring, incredulous, and forget to pass the pipe. Ted glances at the bowl in my lap, my expression, and shares a long look with Nate in the rear-view mirror.

The brothers burst into laughter. The truck swerves a bit while Nate thumps me on the back.

Welcome to Mendo, man--

That afternoon, in the hot sun of the work site, Seven Thunders** simply shrugged when I repeat Nate's story, shoulder tattoos brushing the sides of the over-sized french drain trench. We dug with pickaxes, cutting roots and chipping rock, the sweet smell of harvest trimming and curing wafting from a nearby barn.  Seven Thunders was a Navajo, an alcoholic, married into the Pinole tribe, and required to work full-time as a condition of parole. Ted hired him when he took a crew to bury a shipping container grow on the Pinole land.

Seven Thunders shrugged again. That's typical:

I'm a volunteer fireman, okay, and last month we got a call from Covelo to transport a woman who'd given birth outside in her garden. Covelo's remote, and it took awhile to get out there and find them.  She was lying on a tarp, the baby on her chest, in the middle of hundreds of plants when we arrived.  Both were fine, and like I said; they just needed a ride to the hospital to get checked out.  But while we're lifting the stretcher into the ambulance, a county cop shows up, searching for us in the middle of this pot forest after overhearing the radio call.

Now the plant limit there is 100, okay, and this is way over, more than enough to call the feds. So we expect him to follow us in, or take our names as witnesses, but he leans out of the cruiser window, looks right at me, pulls off his shades--and winks.

Doesn't look over 100 plants to me, he says. You gentlemen drive careful to the hospital, now--

Seven Thunders chuckles. Now why do you suppose he'd do that, when he had her, dead to rights?  Nobody asked, but you stick around, you find the police pretty much leave the locals alone. Backbone of the economy, understand?  Guerrilla grows in the woods, on public land, the Mexican mafia--those guys are the real pisser. 

He stops digging and reaches for a cluster of water bottles sweating on the lip of the trench near his head.  He tosses me one, gets another for himself, and we drink deeply. He sparks a joint and points overhead with it.

Sure, he says, grinning through smoke as we climb out of the trench and head to the barn for a break--I'm a just a convict, a ditch digger, a laborer. But I get twenty an hour, cash on the barrel--  

He gestures around with his free hand at the mountains, the sky, the trees. We enter the barn and his grin widens as yet another group of pretty manicurists (separate from Isis and Spirit's crew) look up from the trimming tables, several rising to share the joint.

--to dig ditches in paradise.

-------------
* In most of the U.S., "rig" refers specifically to semi-trailers (or "big rigs"--articulated lorries for you limeys).  In NorCal and throughout Oregon, "rig" refers to any form of ground transport, including cars, motorcycles, bicycles, and definitely Resin Nate's pickup truck.

**Seven Thunders' Pinole brother-in-law, also on the crew, later filled in the details: He gave himself that name.  The Navajo tell us the real translation is closer to "Seven Farts."

A Tale of Two States

Consider this story out of Lake Lure, North Carolina last week:

Based on tips from the neighbors, Rutherford County deputies obtained search warrants for a remote warehouse on a dirt road and raided the place, finding over 600 plants and 83 pounds of marijuana.

While North Carolina's pot laws are nowhere near the worst in the U.S., nonetheless the accused face multiple felonies at this point,  possible mandatory minimum sentences, possible loss of homes, savings, and other assets.

North Carolina also taxes marijuana (!) at the rate of $3.50 per gram, so 83 pounds works out to about $132,000, before tacking on the 140% penalty for non-payment, plus interest.

Surely it sucks to be a busted pot grower in North Carolina.  Taxing illegal drugs with penalties for non-payment is an especially Kafkaesque twist.

But now compare the above bust--600 plus plants, 83 pounds, etc.-- to Oregon. After July 1, the day Measure 91 goes into effect, say five adult housemates grow twenty plants--four apiece--but technically sixteen over the limit, no matter how many adults live on the property.  What happens to you under Oregon's "legalized" marijuana?

You're hit with a Class C felony, face five years, a $125,000 fine, and so on.

What if you carry five ounces in your car--perfectly legal at your house--but four ounces over the limit in public?  Say you give away five ounces to one person?  Or one joint to a twenty-year old--?

Five years. $125,000, etc.

It goes on and on, but I think the point is made.*

Oregon has not legalized marijuana.

We simply moved the War on Drugs over a few ounces.

Peace.
--------------
* If you care to pore over the details (non-lawyers, please let your loved ones know you're going in before clicking) the text of Measure 91 is here, and the state laws it modifies are here.  Don't say I didn't warn you.

World War Z

I was in the Bay Area in March, and took the time to visit a marijuana speakeasy I'd joined years ago in Oakland.

A local friend and member originally took me there, apparently a boarded-up construction site on a decrepit side street. But a mail slot was hidden in plain view amid a dayglo tangle of graffiti. We tossed our IDs through, smiled for the barely visible camera, and were buzzed in by the friendly proprietor, an affable Filipino. In the blacklit showroom he plied us with bubblehash (an effective sales strategy, I assure you) and quietly explained Oakland's Measure Z, passed with over 65% of the vote, that permitted him--and many others--to operate.

Pretty simple, really.  Measure Z mandates that crimes involving private adult use, sale, distribution and cultivation of marijuana are the absolute lowest priority for law enforcement, below even jaywalking and parking tickets.

Last month--eleven years after Measure Z passed--I returned to the speakeasy. They now operate from a group of rooms hidden within a bookstore, just another storefront among many.

Did you get that?  For eleven years, Oakland has come the closest of anywhere in the nation to full-on, it-might-as-well-be-dandelions legalization--

And the Sky Has Not Fallen.

I could still see it up there.

Oregon legislators, in the meantime, perpetuate the war on marijuana smokers.  They were scheduled to vote yesterday on SB 844 which would have effectively destroyed* both the medical marijuana program passed by voters in 1998, and Measure 91 legalizing marijuana, passed--again, by the voters-- last year.  A flurry of calls and emails delayed that vote, for now.

The so-called supporters of Measure 91 asked us to plead our legislature to preserve isolated bits as though it is some ideal we are trying to attain.

It is not.

Measure 91 was deeply flawed from the outset, but at least, we thought, locked in a reasonable starting point for reform.

We do not bargain away** what little Measure 91 achieves.

Instead--and, I promise, just for starters--we pass Measure Z here, forcing it down the legislative throat, if necessary--

Peace.

--------

*The press has done an abysmal job reporting on the most damaging provisions of the bill.  For example, it limits the number of patients for whom a doctor may prescribe marijuana.  Federal prohibition effectively scares most physicians away from even putting in writing that marijuana might help their condition.  Most of the roughly 80,000 medical marijuana patients in Oregon will then be cut off, and forced into the heavily taxed recreational stores where prices will be prohibitive, or back to the black market.

**I am sure Alex Rogers has done some good work, but for my tastes, his plea for action yesterday amounts to this.

The Rational Basis Test Isn't

Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.

Thus spake Denis Diderot, a shining intellectual beacon, to be sure, but he is only partially correct.

He left out lawyers--and, by default, judges.*

Only lawyers will maintain, with straight faces, that Congress' classification of marijuana as a dangerous addictive substance with no use whatsoever is rational.

Yet this is precisely what government lawyers argued: that so long as Congress could rationally believe that their total ban on marijuana might effect (as in accomplish) the legitimate Congressional interest in promoting public health, then it does not matter if that belief is based upon bad information.

I know it sounds batshit crazy, but it is the sort of thing lawyers argue about in Constitutional-level cases every goddamned day.  Quoting from a government brief:

Rational basis review does not permit the Courts to ‘second guess’
Congress’ conclusions, but only to enjoin decisions that are totally
irrational or without an ‘imaginable’ basis.

In other words, Congress can be wrong about marijuana, demonstrably wrong, stupendously wrong, contradicted by overwhelming scientific evidence--but for the law to be constitutional under the rational basis test, Congress need only demonstrate that it believes the wrong science. (Judge's order here, if you care.)**

I propose we amend Diderot's quote to read

Humanity will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest--and force-fed--(wafer thin mint-style)--to the last lawyer

Peace.
----------------------
* There's an old joke among litigators: What do you say to an attorney with an IQ of 98?
"Your Honor, I object--" 

**In previous posts I indicated this case was before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, but I was wrong.  Judge Mueller sits on the District (trial) court for the Eastern District of California. The NORML lawyers will certainly appeal this result--and that case will be before the 9th Circuit.

On the Edge of My Seat

Update:  Judge Mueller rules Controlled Substances Act Constitutional.  This means the good guys lost. More, after I have a chance to analyze the opinion.
---------
Today is April 15, and 9th Circuit Judge Kimberly Mueller is about to tell us whether Congress' classification of marijuana as a Schedule I drug violates the U.S. Constitution.

I've been waiting on amphetamine tenterhooks, as it were, to see just what the hell is going to happen. No matter how the judge rules, I believe the NORML lawyers on the case (Zena Gilg and Heather Burke) will happily appeal it all the way to the SCOTUS if necessary.

Meanwhile, Congress appears to be on the verge of placing marijuana in Schedule 2--the same class as cocaine and hillbilly heroin.

If I understand NORML's position (and I probably do), Schedule 2 could also be unconstitutional, essentially because the science is overwhelming that marijuana is both non-toxic and non-addictive, key components of the Schedule 2 designation.

In the meantime, formerly pot-free zones like Oklahoma and Indiana suddenly have legal weed in their midst.  In Oklahoma, where a seed can get you jail time there are Indian Reservations, sovereign nations where Congress has just deemed it will allow marijuana cultivation and sales--

Indiana, on the other hand, blissfully (from cloistered white middle-America standards) free of Injuns, was myopic enough to pass the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), effectively granting businesses the "right" to discriminate against people if they want to--

But emphasizing first-amendment religious freedom opens the door to marijuana use as a religious sacrament, and a minister in Indiana has already jumped at the chance.

The Oregon legislature, meanwhile, seems hell-bent on continuing the War Against Marijuana, albeit with larger exemptions: the Oregon Liquor Control Commission has already requested armed police to enforce marijuana laws (how long before someone is gunned down or beaten senseless at a pot shop with their hands up in surrender?), swearing they won't use that authority to go door-to-door making sure you don't exceed four plants or eight ounces; just trust them. 

Don't know about y'all, but my days of trusting cops are long over, and the legislature and OLCC have likewise proven themselves unable to effect the Will of the People. 

Marijuana is not a dangerous drug, and indeed is not a drug at all.  It is SO SAFE, in fact, that it is impossible to name a single substance that is safer to ingest.

Alcohol?  Don't make me laugh.
Acetaminophen? Nope.
Aspirin?  Nope. 
Plain water? Wrong again--

Wait--marijuana is less toxic than drinking freakin' water?

'Fraid so.

---------

Judge Mueller held a five-day evidentiary hearing on the safety of marijuana, and postponed her ruling once already.  Some take this as a sign she is writing an extensive rationale for her decision, something only necessary if she rules the law unconstitutional.

The contents of that hearing--win or lose--is the basic science we will use to achieve true legalization.

Updates on this--and on the grow-adventure thread--soon.

Peace.

Training Day

Frenetic pace of late leaves little time for explication, but suffice it to say that if the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rules that marijuana's classification as a dangerous drug with no uses whatsoever is unconstitutional next week--then EVERYTHING, including each state's medical program, is tossed in the air, nothing is certain, and we are in for a long, litigious ride.  

More after the court issues its opinion on March 25.

In the meantime, an anecdote that ties in with the bits that started awhile ago, the original bits are here, here and here.    Peace--
  -------------------------------

It's not yet 6 a.m. the Monday following the full-moon ceremony.  I walk through a chilly fog in a northern Mendocino town.  I'm parked just off the freeway on the designated street, the Acura dwarfed among heavy pickups. I approach a group of maybe a dozen men gathered in the parking lot outside a string of darkened office-cottages. They are clad mostly in Carhart  jeans, heavy boots, woolen caps and shirts, neck gaiters or collars turned up against the mist, sipping giant coffees, passing a glass pipe and a 3-paper rocket. 
 
Looking for Ted.

No one answers, but the guy hitting the joint nods and extends it to me, and I step into their circle.  A gleaming king-cab F350 glides up and kills its lights, engine idling. The driver's window drops silently, and a wildly-bearded redhead leans out and reaches for the pipe, baring a popeye forearm with a coho salmon tattoo.
 
Someone nudges me. That'd be Ted.  
  
Morning gents, he drawls.  Dave, take five guys and meet Nate at Covelo.  You'll need three carpenters, plus people who can dig. Everyone else to Redwood Valley. He looks my way.  New guy, come with me. 

I climb into the passenger side of the cab, exhaling smoke, and feel my ears pop as I pull the door closed. Ted tosses a clipboard into the tool-cluttered rear of the cab and backs onto Highway 101. He accelerates south into the fog and turns on the headlights, then turns to me.
 
So. How do we know you?

Isis, I say.  Came down for full moon and harvest.  I'm  camped on her north ridge for maybe another week, with a searchlight, a siren and dogs----

He nods knowingly, beard waving.  Good plan. Glad you're there.  Scooby'll rip you right off.

Beg pardon?

He laughs. Those darn kids. Like at the end of every Scooby Doo.   He thumps his chest, holds out a rough hand. Ted. Resin Nate's my little brother. 

Gurn. We shake.

Do construction?

I can frame, I've done foundation work--

Perfect.  Lot of folks got flooded this past spring, so today we put in another french drain.  We only work grows, and we can't keep up.  He rummages around the console caddy, hands me a silver box. Gear's in there.  Load up a bowl for Nate. He starts to decelerate.

Nate? 

Cops impounded his truck--there he is!

And there he was, sitting atop a cooler on the shoulder of southbound 101, framed by a misty mountain in pre-dawn light. Resin Nate smoothed back his dreads and stood up.

With Everyone

from the ethically besieged Governor of our fair state (live press conference here as I type) to out-of-touch state legislators willing to ignore the Will of the People, marijuana in Oregon is poised to become an expensive commodity, and the War on Drugs will continue unabated, albeit with larger exemptions.

My non-lawyer friends--and even many of them, who should know better--have relaxed to the point of giddiness.

In the meantime, reefer-madness rhetoric about Protecting The Children (and I have to side with master Carlin on this one) and other profoundly disproven theories are trotted out yet again to create a regulatory scheme fostering marijuana for non-poor white people.

In order to create reasonable regulations, the pro-pot science must be on the record.

We currently strive to make it so.

Peace.

It Is Hard

To give a goddamn about  trivialities like "legal" pot when the killer-cop non-indictments continue to pile up in America's back yard, cooking in the sun like the body of Michael Brown--or gasping "I can't breathe" under half a ton of cops, cops who chat casually and wave to the camera as a completely non-violent member of society lies dying at their feet.

So let us pause to remember that at the End of the Day, Blanston isn't fooled or lulled into any false sense of complacency.  The illegal wars by drone, kill lists, lack of habeas corpus and the ever-more-in-your-face-motherfucker police state continue unabated, and the war has clearly, finally, come home.

I have nothing more to say at the moment.

When I return--soon--to post on the inarguably bread-and-circus issue of the pot industry--please know that I know I am ignoring fundamental flaws in a system that may well be set to implode.

Or explode.

More, soon.   Peace.

The Hermit Blinks in the Sun

It is difficult to write anything now or in the upcoming days, as I am compelled to go out into the world and travel.

But very quickly, I know that this election represents Oregon's best chance to legalize.  Despite its complete failure to address amnesty, the proposed law does virtually guarantee no one else will be imprisoned for pot. 

I am reliably informed (by an attorney I met at this  bleeding-edge medical/legal conference in March) that a project is already underway to begin the grunt work of drafting the court petitions to free individual marijuana prisoners (for lack of a better term), including a specific law addressing the problem in the Oregon legislature.

It comes down to this: If Oregon legalizes marijuana, we have to make sure we do not relax and forget about the real Victims of the Longest War Ever--

I am voting for Measure 91. 

Whatever happens, the fight for amnesty will continue. 

Peace.

Just Say No (updated)

Update:

I am voting for M91, as explained here.
My criticisms of the law remain.
------------------------------------

With a heavy heart, O my brothers and only friends, I am coming out against Measure 91 to legalize recreational marijuana.

Measure 91 allows an adult to cultivate up to 4 plants and allows possession of up to 8 ounces, and you can do what Anthony Kiedis always told ya--

It creates a regulated industry.  Adults 21 and over can purchase up to an ounce at a licensed retail shop.  Wholesalers will be taxed at $35 per ounce, which is roughly 50% on outdoor weed, and approximately 35% on indoor.  Tax revenues would be apportioned to education and law enforcement and health departments--

But unlike other legalization measures which were proposed, M91 does nothing to fix what is inarguably the greatest harm caused by marijuana prohibition.

Marijuana prosecutions ruined tens of thousands of lives over the years, including those  actually prosecuted and their families and loved ones.  Even the totally legitimate medical user can lawfully be fired in Oregon--and hundreds have.

Measure 91 leaves all of these people high and dry.  

It also sets the medical and recreational programs on a collision course.  Recreational businesses will likely be very profitable at first, but there will come a time when the untaxed medical market and the unregulated home-grow represent not only a threat to those business profits, but they will by definition represent a drain on state coffers.

Eventually, the more regulated recreational market will come after the medical system.

The law should at least explicitly provide for amnesty, return of seized property, expungement of all criminal records, and absolute preservation of patient access under the medical program--

But the people in prison will languish until someone springs them one at a time...and that may end up being my life's work, whatever happens November 4.  If Measure 91 passes, we'll try to wield it for that purpose.  

If it fails, we'll write a better one.

More tales from the Oregon and California hinterlands soon, after laying in the winter wood supply. 

The rain, she comes.

Peace.

Mandatory Marijuana

To be clear, there is no violence associated with marijuana use.  Not even traffic accidents.  Indeed, one of the many battles that will develop due to legalization is the issue of impairment while driving.

You can't make this stuff up, but our own NTSB did a study in Amsterdam on the comparable effects of marijuana on driving performance.. Their findings held across all groups no matter how much marijuana had been consumed.  Here is the key sentence, buried deep in please-don't-cut-our-funding jargon about "lateral tracking" impairment and other scary phrases: "THC's effects on [driving impairment] were equal to or less than that of BAC = 0.07 %. "

That is, massively stoned automobile drivers perform as well as legally sober drivers under the law in all 50 states, where the BAC cutoff is .08%  Full report here.

The science indicates people over-compensate for marijuana's effects behind the wheel.  Just like Cheech and Chong taught us-- *

Marijuana is a better drug.  It may in fact not be a drug at all, but a key regulator in our health.

It would be unconstitutional, but check Bill Hicks' argument for mandatory marijuana. Skip to 3:20 for the relevant bit--

Back later this week.  Peace--
----------------------------------------------
* For the record, the stoner stereotypes portrayed by the comedy pair may have done more damage to the movement than anything else. But their satire was mistaken for fact by the squares controlling policy.  Chong did time in Federal prison for selling glass pipes on the internet, and has long appeared at pro-pot events.  Cheech Marin isn't as upfront about it anymore, but he still supports the weed.

Oh, the Irony, Part IV

There is not much else to relate regarding Les Crane's inauspicious arrival to Mendocino County, meteoric rise, founding of a marijuana church, and violent end that has not already been well-covered by local press. Suffice it to say that suddenly, unsurprisingly, no one wanted to talk to me about marijuana as religious sacrament anymore.*  

But the story of not meeting the minister explains how I was able, for the better part of five years, essentially to play anthropologist, living and working among what are accurately described as the secretive pot-horticulturalist tribes in the State of Jefferson, a place in many ways more difficult to access than the Amazon rainforest, or the Indonesian island whose inhabitants knew about the 2004 tsunami days in advance, and attacked the civilized "rescuers" arriving in the aftermath, pointing out they, the alleged primitives, had lost not a single life.
 
And I suppose you could be forgiven (after reading Parts I, II, and III) if you thought I was about to argue that marijuana legalization will end violence...because Al Capone and Machine Gun Kelly murdered mostly for market share, that as more states decriminalize, permit medical use and outright legalize, supply will increase, prices fall, and violence fade away--

I do believe that worldwide legalization could accomplish this. 

But the more I investigate--both in the stacks, as it were, and on the ground, the more I believe the black market for marijuana isn't going anywhere soon.  The current state, county and local laws, even as they trend overall toward legalization, remain a hodgepodge of total legality, total bans, and everything in between.  Colorado, for example, arguably the "legalest" state in the nation, nonetheless permits cities and towns to ban marijuana businesses entirely, and is contiguous with many states where pot remains Very Illegal Indeed.  In Illinois, medical marijuana start-up costs are literally in the millions, guaranteeing no one but corporate industry and investors will get in.  These are hardly the people any knowledgeable consumer wants growing the latest iteration of Monkey Balls, and Denver is barely twelve hours away by car...

Put another way, there are still multiple borders--within states, between states and between nations--over which illicit money will be made, and some violence will inevitably follow--for decades to come. 


Here in Oregon, pot may well become fully legal this fall.  Whether that happens or not (and here's a hondo that says it won't, this time) the black and legitimate medical and recreational markets will either reach detente-- or the regulated industry will clamor for officials to crack down on their unregulated counterparts.  

I am trying to convince the people who have been producing high-quality marijuana for generations, learned folks who have a dozen or more varieties for every microclimate on their land, one for the riverside, another for the north slope, the flat, and under the trees...these hermits and hippies--our true marijuana experts--must step into the light long enough to become part of the legitimate system. They must be there already when the real money figures out a way around certain regulatory impediments, like those effectively requiring Oregon ownership--so they will be in a position to be bought out--

And so they can refuse.

Wish me luck. 
------------------------------------------
*I am also happy to report that religious DMT use is on the upswing, so perhaps, as Terence McKenna believed, there is hope for humanity--

Sorry

for the delay.  Certain survival items must occasionally be tended to. Kinda like Bobby Newmark  straddling the squishy border between cyberspace and meatspace.

Be back soon, hopefully tomorrow--where we will strive mightily to Tie This All Together, and conclude  that a certain level of assimilation --and thus destruction of the culture I've been describing--is unavoidable.

Peace.

Oh, the Irony, Part III

Through an adrenaline blur:

The helicopter blocks the head of the vertiginous trail to the river as it rotates slowly, silhouetted in sun above the south-slope stumps.  I am alone on the ground. The pilot is spinning into view, brightly lit in the bubble, but he's looking to the south/right, chattering into the headset, grim-faced behind aviator shades. I don't know if he sees me run for the north ledge to his left and leap off, recalling too late just how high that is. I twist around in midair, spreadeagled, graceless--and hit the edge hard, scrabbling in sandals and shorts, (is the pilot laughing?) then bounce and slide off bramble and rock to the switchback a dozen feet below.  I stagger upright, gasping in the sudden silence, then sprint the twisting, half-mile descent to the swimming hole, dodging boulders and scree, hopping roots of ancient madrone and Ponderosa Pine. I shriek a ragged warning every time I careen around a bend, in case the women are headed back up--

Chopper! Fucking CAMP!---

As trees give way to riverbank I can see several manicurists--I hadn't yet learned names--lolling on a sunny expanse of flat granite above the water. I stop at its edge. Even through blind animal panic, I can't help but notice the lithe beauty arranged before me, and wonder again at the numbers of rock-climbers, surfers, snowboarders and so on who comprised so much of that workforce.* Everyone else is swimming, and the rush of rapids that begin just downstream means they haven't heard a thing--

You made it! 

It's Spirit, peering up from the water, bobbing just below my feet.  She slicks back her hair, then she's pulling herself out fast and coming towards me, Omigod, what's happened to you?

My legs and heaving chest are covered in a sweat-sheen of blood. I drip dark dollops onto the rock.

Her voice induces sunbathers to spring up and swimmers to clamber out, eyes wide, some hands flying reflexively toward mouths, then they're grabbing and easing me down to a towel on warm granite as I splutter between breaths about pilots and radios and We Gotta Get Outta Here--

------------------------------

Hours later, the full moon limns the forest and mountains with silver as I sway slowly in place by the bonfire, surrounded by dancing and drumming.  I've taken a lot of kidding in the meantime, as the story of my wholly unnecessary mid-day heroics spreads among the guests.  A be-dreaded twenty-something drummer/grandson of a master grower named Resin Nate takes a break and hands me a Sherlock packed full of White Widow. I accept it with bandaged hands, and he lights it for me. Stay away from the hash, man, he grins. Stick to weed. 

I hold the smoke in, nodding my thanks, return the pipe--and give him the finger. He laughs, takes his hit, hands it back--

Isis, Spirit, everyone, really--readily forgave my glaring, city-boy naivete, because it was pretty clear I truly believed we were in danger, and I cut myself up lovely trying to warn them. Got a lot of hugs for that, which frankly hurt, but definitely eased the sting of foolishness:

It was not CAMP, Isis assured me again in the bathroom as she cleaned my wounds, smells of soap and iodine and tea tree oil wafting around me. It was the power company. They have to inspect the lines, and they do it by air, especially through this terrain. 

She applied tape to a gauze pad and smoothed it over a butterfly-sutured gash on my ribs. And they love growers...'cause we pay huge power bills--on time.   

But if it was them, after all? I asked, wincing.  Won't they send somebody?

No.  No chance. CAMP doesn't care about us--they're ordered to ignore licensed grows. So even with the indoor plants--I'll show you those tomorrow--we're way under the limit. We're simply too small for them to bother.**

Unable to drum and too sore to dance, I wait instead for natural crescendos to build in the rhythm, then simply howl along with everyone else through the peak.  This gets me to the midnight meal, which kills. After the berries and cream, and a bit of wine, I crash with Isis, next to the dying fire.

----------

The moon has dropped below the treeline; the stars fade into grey.  We lie on the double hammock, dozing in and out. I listen to her breath, to the mountain wind, to the strangely slow, pensive tapping of unseen pileated woodpeckers--

Did the minister ever show? I murmur at some point. I'm not sure if I'm speaking or dreaming.   But then Isis sighs, and sits up. 

No. I didn't know what to tell you, it was all rumors and crazy talk...

She climbs out of the hammock, and gracefully dons fleece as I'm rocked back and forth. I'm not alert enough to pick up on it yet. A few minutes later she wakes me again, coffees in hand, and a look on her face that says Pay Attention.

I swing my feet to the ground and accept a mug. Thus anchored, I take a sip. Okay. Tell me.

You've come down for nothing. I'm sorry. There can be no interview.

Well, he's being prosecuted, his lawyer probably nixed it.  But this trip is hardly for nothing--

She smiles faintly. Thank you, but--oh Gurn--he was coming, he really wanted to talk to you--but three nights ago--the night you left Oregon, he was robbed and murdered--

I'm surely awake now--

--and word is the church was specifically targeted--by someone they knew well.

Next: A Last Bit of Irony and My Training Begins in Earnest
 ----------------------------------------------------


*I finally figured this out, years later: since the mid-1990s, working the Emerald Triangle harvest for two months could secure enough funds to surf and ski the rest of the year. Modern market realities dictate that, except for a very select few, this life is no longer possible.

**Astute readers will have noticed the last entry's link to the wiki on CAMP contained all data necessary to conclude I was just ignorant and paranoid.

Oh, the Irony, Part II

Or: Justice Roberts Sends me to Mendo

Maybe ten Septembers ago, I'm seated inside a large outbuilding on remote property in Mendocino County, California. A tiny farmhouse outside is tucked onto the flat of a knife-shaped, steep-sloped outcropping, the dead end of a private road that to this day does not exist on GPS. As I'll soon be reminded, the stumps of thirty cut marijuana plants visibly protrude on the slopes and flat around the house. Ten more still ripen on the north slope; easily twelve feet tall, expertly topped and drooping with colas.  They check the calyxes twice a day with a jeweler's loupe, and before clear trichomes turn milky or golden, the plant will be cut and hung in a room nearby.

Isis and Spirit, the sisters who own this place, sing to their plants often, but always at the full moon, which is tonight, and a bit of a happening.  Drummers will arrive before dusk and set up in the fields, a bonfire will be lit, joints and spliffs and hand-blown glass passed around.  A collective howl at sunset will start it off. Some women will drum and some men will dance, but mostly vice-versa, and everyone will sing or wail or ululate to the plants, and we'll mean it.  At midnight, we'll eat an organic feast of roasted roots: carrots, potatoes, beets and yams, with fresh berries and cream as the topper.  This dinner happens every month during the grow, with various menus, and is in fact integral to it.

Isis, my then-girlfriend, invited me here to meet a minister who claims that marijuana is his congregation's sacrament--that First Amendment religious guarantees mean the cops can't bust them for grass any more than they can roust Christians for wine, or Jews for anything kosher.  Timothy Leary tried this argument long ago, and it did not go well for him.  The courts of the day said, in coarse vernacular, fuck your religious freedom, marihuana [their archaic spelling] is toooo dangerous.* I did the research [I got skills], starting with modern cases and extending back to Leary, and no one had ever beaten a pot rap using religion.** 

The upstart church was already fighting criminal charges at the state level.  I called Isis to make the introduction because Chief Justice Roberts had just ruled--with a unanimous Court behind him, that a tiny religious group in New Mexico could import and manufacture a dimethyltryptamine [DMT] brew for its members--then pass the collection plate. In other words, the court allowed them to import, manufacture, distribute, and profit from this totally illegal, powerful hallucinogenic--

So long as it's for church. 

Because Congress identically classifies both marijuana and DMT as Dangerous Drugs With No Use Whatsoever, I'm understandably fascinated. I plan to interview the minister tonight, here on friendly ground--then write about it.

I ponder this as I sit alone in the outbuilding, trimming buds of Trinity.  They left some big, easy ones for me, humoring their guest, on a clean tray with a new pair of snips. The women (Isis, Spirit and not-quite-a-passel of skilled manicurists who return here from around the world at harvest like spawning salmon) have gone for a swim in the Russian River.  If I don't join them, past experience tells me they'll be back shortly in the late afternoon heat, dripping, mostly naked, to joke about my work and get high with me before prepping for dancing and dinner.  The attitude toward clothing here was simple: if you're hot, take it off.

I promise this didn't suck.  I promise I was relaxed as I have ever been, in that chair, waiting for beautiful women, with pounds of finished marijuana in turkey bags all around me, pounds more drying on racks in the next room, never mind the shotput-sized ball of finger hash I was just finishing a bowl of--when I heard the helicopter.

Now, the occasional helicopter/small plane flyby is not itself unusual near O and C territory; forests do burn, after all. But this helicopter's sound drew inexorably closer, then flew along the ridge, and now hovered low--almost directly overhead.

I had heard about CAMP raids--hell, pirate radio broadcasts the flyover schedule every day. So as I feel the rotor-thud in my chest, I envision black-clad tactical men dropping in on ropes, masked, weapons ready, fingers already inside trigger guards, sweeping the place. They see the outbuilding of course.  

They head for it, of course.

I rise, dumping the tray, and run in panic for the door.  The helicopter isn't going anywhere. It sounds like it might land--

Terrible truths race in parallel through my brain: I think it's best I go outside, hands raised (I'm white), and I simultaneously think if I'm wrong, at least my last look will be these mountains, this forest, even if my AR-15 bullet-ridden corpse is flashed everywhere by breathless news media, giving my parents and friends a very bad last look indeed--

The light is dim by the door, away from the worklamps of the trimming tables.  I heave it open, and step out where the chopper roars so close it nearly blots the sun--

Next: We Have Good News and Bad News, Gurn--and the Irony Ain't Over

-------
*If you care, the full legal opinion can be found here.
**A decade hence, you still can't.  But we're getting close.

A Very Quick One

to point out to my Burning Man friends I haven't seen since 2010--I love you all and we will meet again, somewhere...maybe even on the Playa.  

Oh, the Irony

I'm currently in Oregon hillbilly country, (that is, anything south of Hippietown), advocating for medical marijuana dispensaries before alarmingly hostile city and county councils.

Resistance to medical/legal pot in these parts is reported to come from the usual suspects: parents, conservative folk, and small-town, volunteer councils, backed and advised by Kochsuckers like the League of Oregon Cities.*  While the League has certainly proposed legislation that could allow local governments to permanently ban dispensaries, the most significant push-back on medical marijuana (and seemingly inevitable Oregon legalization in the fall) stems from--Surprise!--the existing underground industry. Because Oregon's economy has been devastated for decades by logging restrictions, many locals understandably turned to more lucrative crops.

Former students of Father Guido Sarducci well know that increased supply decreases price.  Emerald Triangle  industry people have much to lose...so of course these folks quietly voted with reefer-madness republicans against legalization in California in 2010.  Established growers in Oregon will likewise do what they can to maintain price.  Dispensaries and total legalization threaten their business model.  

But legalization looms and likely cannot be stopped. This will eventually draw the big bucks, an avalanche of corporate cash (and the lawyers that come with it) that can simply undercut and starve out the family-owned pot-farmer, replacing some of the best marijuana in the world  with industrial schwag.

I'm here to somehow prevent that from happening.  

How I got here, however, should be told first.
 
Next: A Murder in a Mendocino Church Lands Me a Job in the Industry

------------------------------------------------
*That marijuana is indisputably-beyond-debate medicine is a massive understatement.  The human body has so many receptors for the various components of the cannabis plant it is now known as the endocannabinoid sysytem...even the National Institutes of Health admits it.