Field trip!

Two things became apparent to me last weekend while I was in Denver: one, the city has a mighty fine zoo. Two: be careful about Leafly postings in regards to dispensary menus and the availability of certain types of herb strains.

I have to admit I had my heart set on it. After years of searching it was really great to know, or at least read, that a couple of dispensaries in Denver carried Colombian Gold. I was jazzed to say the least and knew a road trip was in order but I also knew that real life took precedence over a storied adventure like that. So, in order to build some legitimacy into the day I packed up the car and took the family off to see the world famous Denver Zoo.

I like a crowd and the crowd we got to mingle with that day was stellar. There is nothing more amusing than taking in a warm summer day at the zoo with all manner of humanity, all of us grooving on animals that were, in a lot of ways, equally amused, irritated and frightened to see us staring at them from the other side of the berm. It was too warm for the critters to be restless. I didn't see much in the way of pacing, rather that animals took a much more languid approach to the day. The cheetahs, spent from running, lounged in the grass, the elephants swayed and tossed straw on their backs, the polar bear, after a call from his trainer, serenely noshed on Romaine. Several of the animals stood out in my mind that day: a hyena, lying on his back, his well endowed self exposed to the sun. The giant Silverback Gorilla, who, after he had his share of folk staring at him through the plexiglass, turned his back on us and took a very long and delightful piss, in full view of everyone in the room.

But it was the Silvered Leaf Monkey that thrilled me the most that day. It was his sense of dignity, repose and coolness that inspired me to emulate his bitchen style of pure "animalness". So I walked about the rest of the day, then, cool and content, following the crowds, keeping my young charge in sight, holding hands with my mujuer, taking in all the family action, relating to the plethora of dads, appreciating the calm and civil demeanor of the crowd. We were all big city parents but we all got along splendidly that day.

Yeah, if you ever find yourself down on humanity I highly recommend a walk around the zoo. Maybe it was not only knowing that we were mingling not only with the wildest sorts of animals but that we all had a chance, even if it was just for that day, to show our fellow man that we were not as wild as we normally make ourselves out to be. Mixing parents with kids and critters can do that to adults. Chill them right out.

So I took that relaxed mode of being out of the zoo and hit Colfax knowing it was time for afternoon noshing. Caught happy hour at Annie's Cafe and Bar, ate some burgers along with the rest of the hipsters, bagged some old fashioned candy for the ride home and went off looking for the fabled dispensary of my dreams. The map I brought along was a poor image shot but we managed to make it to Buddy Boy. And boy, was I disappointed! I am sure that I came across as a babbling loon when I walked in. No one in line, plenty of time to tell my tale and let the staff know what I was looking for.

Alas, no Colombian! The help there was kind but let me know that "corporate" did not update their menu, in fact, they said the menu online posted everything they had ever carried! Wow, but not a good kind of wow. Also, their Leafly connect apparently was not up to date, either. They hadn't carried that particular strain in years, said the staff.

I took all that goodness I accumulated at the zoo that day and took it with me on the road. Stopped at one more local pot shop before hitting the highway and got the advice from the budtender there to stop by Good Chemistry and buddy up with a medical patient and get my medicine that way. Oh well, not to be that visit, no back tracking.

The next few days in Greeley saw me doing my librarian best to research the good herb. I watched an episode of Strain Hunters, the one where they go off to Colombia to research three local land race strains. I researched "landrace" and found that it applies not only to weed but to any plant or animal that has a long run of time somewhere, that adapts to it's surroundings, that becomes genetically significant. Landrace pigs, anyone?

I made my rounds to my local pot shops to see if there was anything coming up landrace wise. I had missed Maui Waui but found a few other great, genetically important treats around town, including Mantanuska Thunder Fuck and Northern Lights. My biggest intelligence score was hearing that Skunk #1 was in the curing stages at Nature's Herb and Wellness in Garden City and possibly available this weekend. And an even bigger bit of news was reading about the Oasis Cannabis Super Store in Denver on 44th and Sheridan that carries 150 types of flower strains. Holy cats! Talk about needing to get back on the road!

But as I made mention in an earlier post, I have to remind myself to be sure to call ahead. It's nice to dream, It's always great to check out new dispensaries and see what they have in stock. Just don't get your heart set on something that's not meant to be.

Ah, BS to that! Field trip!

Salud!

Old school!

Flippin' newbie.

When I started hitting up the dispensaries in Mendocino County last year I found myself to be a babe in the woods. Not so much with cannabis itself, mind you, but with the sheer variety of product that greeted me in each and every shop I visited (and I visited a lot of shops!) But my even bigger disclaimer here was not so much the incredible variety on hand but the strength of the product I was dealing with. Wow, now that took some getting used to!

What I found out there in Mendo was that the world of marijuana had passed me by. During those long years of prohibition, federal, personal and otherwise, I learned that mota had gained strength in numbers in regards to the percentage of THC found in the average strain. When I was beginning to rediscover weed there in Fort Bragg all my acquaintances in town were long in country, either had friends up in the hills who raised dope or were farmers or dealers themselves. It was nothing for them during a visit to get out their grinder, grind down a bud or two, pack a pipe and fire it up, all without blinking or coughing. It was all too normal and that kind of normal took some getting used to.

Yeah, I felt like Rip Van Winkle there in Mendo. Like him, I found that my mental attire, wrapped up in raggedy old seventies clothes, was out of fashion and much too tight. Instead of a rusted musket I had old rolling papers on me, the gum long since gone or sticking all the rest of the leaves together. My hair was short, my mind anticipatory, my desire keen but I did not have my game on. What I wanted was something familiar, what I needed was something that I could smoke to catch up with the rest of world first so I wouldn’t appear to be such a newbie. Looking like I didn’t know better, that I didn’t have a clue about cannabis bugged me, but then again, I was a librarian and research was my bag. So, while I learned to manage the high I found my way around the new world of dope on line and in print. It has been a great time and very informative to boot.

One of the things I always mentioned when I walked into the dispensaries was this jones I had for strains like those I smoked when I was a lad. I had it in my head that I could still find a low THC model that I could laugh along with, something that would not wreck me early in the day or keep me up too late at night. I was directed to the high CBD varieties and that was a path worth taking. Those strains were medicine, helped me sleep at night, took away pain, put a nice shine on things. I now know I can trust that kind of mota and I am happy to have that in my medicine chest.

But what I was looking for was a particular kind of high and all my experimenting with contemporary indicas, sativas and hybrids just didn’t get me to where I wanted to be. What I wanted was that simple high that my old stand-bys used to bring into my life. What I wanted was something tasty, something I could wake and bake with, a dope that I could puff on a mid-afternoon walk and still be able to find my way home again. What I was looking for was my old landrace friend, Colombian Gold, and I thought I had lost it forever.

Well, today my librarian skills once again saved me. I had to find out what had happened to that strain and to my surprise I found quite a number of sites dealing with her. I found that old guys like me stilled fancied it, liked its simplicity, it’s quiet, mellow high and its old school vibe. I found that it was popular in bigger cities…L.A., Seattle, San Francisco….and Denver! Online sites Leafly, Allbud and the Potguide gave me the overviews that I needed but more helped to direct me to two different shops in Denver that have it on their menu. And while Good Chemistry only has on their medical side, Buddy Boy has it on their regular line up,

So, a quest. I feel like I am going off to visit a long lost lover. I hope it doesn’t turn out like that scene in Casablanca where Rick is left waiting in the rain at the railroad station. I hope that I don’t have a runny Google maps paper in hand when I walk out of that shop, cause that would mean it was wet from tears that said that they don’t carry it after all.

Hmm, best to call ahead! Let you all know how it turns out!

Salud!

Leafly review:

https://www.leafly.com/sativa/colombian-gold

Allbud review:

https://www.allbud.com/marijuana-strains/hybrid/colombian-gold

Interesting thread of comments about cannabis from the 70's compared to today's weed:
http://bluelight.org/vb/archive/index.php/t-432874.html

Nice review from the Cannabis Culture site: this is from their Strains of Yesterday column:

COLUMBIAN

Colombian Gold
Colombian Gold came from the highland Colombian valleys near the equator, as well as on the coast (the Caribbean and the Pacific).

This was specialty pot offered commercially in the mid-70’s, for about $60 to $100 per ounce. It was seeded, but most of the seeds were undeveloped, white and useless. A few rare, viable seeds were found that were dark, small-sized and roundish. The buds were leafy and the most beautiful golden blond color. Legend has it that upon maturity the plants were girdled, then left standing to die and cure in the mountain sun and mist.

The color and cure were unique, and the aroma, flavor and high were equally so. The smell was that of sandalwood incense, almost like frankincense. The flavor was that of a peppery cedar. It was some of the most unique tasting herb in the world, and the high was just as exciting. It was truly psychedelic, powerful and long lasting.

First came the great flavor, then the stupefying awe of the shift in consciousness followed by a giddy excitement and bursts of joyous laughter. Smile-lock and red-eye made it painfully obvious who was under the influence of this great psychedelic herb.

The plants from the seeds of the Gold were primarily of Sativa origin. They grew a medium to tall size outdoors at 45?N (Seattle), and were mostly symmetrical. On occasion the symmetry was interrupted by one side outgrowing the other, causing a rounded and bulging tipped bush look. The leaves were long and slender.

When grown in Washington state, the finished product was a sweet, spicy Sativa bud that matured around mid-November. The high was adequate but not as good as the Oaxaca Highland grown at the same latitude. The plants were also slightly hermaphroditic.

I

With mota its better!

Lizard kisses. Didn’t know that there was such a thing. Never the less that’s what it felt like and that’s what they were. Yum.

As for which is better, having sex under the influence of marijuana as opposed to having sex with alcohol, well, is there a story to that? Throw sex at something and it shows up everywhere in the media. The Washington Post story below or variants of the same circulated for quite a while there in August. In my humble opinion the sweetness and softness and joy that goes along with high sex is a much better thing than sex under the influence of drink, that is, if you want sweetness and softness and joy. That crazed, clothes rending, glasses breaking, furniture snapping. sangre de toro action that comes from a wild night of wine drinking, well, that’s a whole different matter. Every once in a while you just gotta have that! But overall beer goggles have left me with bed mates that were sheer coyotes too many times but with mota, it's always been another thing entirely.

Cannabis requires a bit of intimacy from the start, if for anything from it somewhat restricted status. You can drink in a bar but you can’t light up there. You can meet folks in a club, drink and then get witty and look pretty. With cannabis there has to be the place and time, and these days, here in Colorado, anyway, it better be done at home unless you want to get a citation.

As for me, that first time I had “sex” with weed wasn’t wild. In fact, there isn’t much of a story here to tell. Boy leaves girlfriend at work one evening and goes off to a party. Party goes from a fun little mix to a lights out, candles burning and joints being passed around kind of affair. I had no idea who the hostess was but it was right out of a Chris Rock routine. As he put it a woman knows within five minutes if she going to bed down with a man and somehow that hostess of ours, young, well off and bored, had it in her mind to put her mark on me.

Well, dear readers, nothing happened of merit. I was stoned to the bone and there we were, the hostess and me, necking on the stairs, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon blaring on the stereo, other couples oohing and ahhing all around us in the dark when, at the moment when things could have gotten serious, we heard a car door slam.

If you have ever walked into a kitchen, turned on the lights and seen cockroaches scatter, well, that’s what that scene looked like that night. Hubby was home from the hockey game many hours earlier than expected. We all hauled ass out of there and kept our young hostess’s reputation intact.

Those kisses were sweet and lovely mixed together with that high but that was about it. I got my first bag of mota from that gal later on, too. Funny how those kisses from a married woman lead to my first baggie but that’s alright, we have to break ourselves in somewhere somehow.

Over the years I mixed and matched those inebriants with sex. Lots of mota, lots of drink led to lots of grand and sometimes regrettable sex. But now that I am older, now that I can buy the nicest wines and the dankest buds all around town to propel my nights, I prefer that light touch of a buzz over the heaviness of too much drink. There is something to be said for the spiritual attachment that cannabis brings to the occasion, to the heightened sense of enjoyment that a puff or three adds to the moment. 

And unlike a full out alcohol buzz that tends to make you pass out and snore, with MJ you tend to find yourself padding off the fridge afterwards and bringing back to the bed snacks to share with your lover. Then there’s that blissful sleep afterwards. Ah, nothing wrong with any of that!

So, yes, in this election year I would vote in favor of sex with cannabis. Anyone else have a take on this? Curious to see what you think or have experienced.

Salud


The promised, enclosed Washington Post story!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/08/06/serious-researchers-studied-how-sex-is-different-when-youre-high-vs-when-youre-drunk/

Oh, to toil in the field

A virgin no more!

I sent off my first letter of interest to a cannabis firm today and I am super happy to have done it. I have been pussy footing around with the idea of it for over a year now and today was the day that it had to be done. Two letters of rejection from two different libraries the past two weeks for upper level management jobs told me that I am not going in that direction anymore. I hit the top of the game in my field, did well with it and now need something different.

I am passionate about cannabis and very excited to see the direction it is going after so many years of prohibition. I may not be young, hip or cool but I will bring to the industry a sense of wonderment, maturity and adventure that is missing from the jaded hearts of so many who think that working with mota is the given, not the hard won privilege it is.

Here's my letter, For me this is like being a business owner who frames and mounts that first five dollar bill on the wall of the store. May this effort lead to a full till. Here's to toiling in the field of cannabis! Huzzah!

Salud!



Hello!

Glancing at my resume you might be wondering if I dropped it off at the wrong location. You might be thinking, Denver Public Library, not Native Roots. But I saw your job for Project Coordinator posted on the Indeed website and I had to take a crack at it.

Looking at the job description I see that there are many parallels in what you are seeking in a strong candidate and in what I have to offer. As a degreed professional in an industry that has a strong universal brand (more libraries in America than McDonalds!) I can appreciate what the local leader in cannabis is looking for. My first experience perusing cannabis as a recreational user was at the Eagle-Vail shop. I was so impressed with your store, your staff and your branded bags that I shared the experience with dispensaries back in Mendocino. Now that I am living here in Colorado I can see why your image and brand are so strong as they are truly one of the best designed and sharpest operations in a region burgeoning with cannabis operations.

My years in public service have allowed me to build up talents that would easily transfer over into the private sector. In regards to this position I feel that my customer relations skills, staff supervision background, years of running branches and teams, ability to organize, work budgets, utilize visual merchandising and displays to the benefit of sales, my understanding of statistics and measurements, ability to throw programs, my polish and skills of working with large groups of people, presentation background and outreach talents, will bring to your organization and your staff a polish and sense of excitement that might be lacking in other candidates.

One of the strengths of library worker is confidentiality. In the growing cannabis business this a vital asset. Another is passion for the product. I have been following the cannabis trade for several decades and have never been as excited as I am now about the product and industry as I have been in the past few years. 2016 should prove to be the bellwether year for the cannabis trade, there will be no better time to get in. I would truly enjoy joining my talents with yours to see what we can do together.

Thanks for your time and consideration. I look forward to talking with you further.

Cheers,

Singing trees!

Ah, Alice!

"Soon her eye fell on a little glass box that was lying under the table: she opened it, and found in it a very small cake, on which the words `EAT ME' were beautifully marked in currants. `Well, I'll eat it,' said Alice, `and if it makes me grow larger, I can reach the key; and if it makes me grow smaller, I can creep under the door; so either way I'll get into the garden, and I don't care which happens!'
She ate a little bit, and said anxiously to herself, `Which way? Which way?', holding her hand on the top of her head to feel which way it was growing, and she was quite surprised to find that she remained the same size: to be sure, this generally happens when one eats cake, but Alice had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way.

So she set to work, and very soon finished off the cake."

And just like Alice I was not always smart or sensible when it came to edibles.

Overindulging in cannabis was certainly a case of hard lessons learned. I am sure that it had a lot to do with being a total hard head, with having a very blind, wild heroic, Titan complex and with having a crazy desire to uphold what I considered my right to maintain a mighty high tolerance for fun. Woo boy, fun. One’s kind of fun is another’s long journey into night.

My edibles breakthrough story is really, in hindsight, a very small story, indeed. It was spring break, my last year of grad school. I had a fistful of buddies who were supposed to join me up on top of San Jacinto mountain. A weekend of wild, hairy chested male behavior. Coolers full of German and Mexican beer, a leg of goat to pit roast, bags of weed to smoke, and, as life should have it, a can of marijuana cookies to eat.

The cookies were a last minute gift from a friend who struck out securing stronger psychedelics for us to take. I had no real experience eating mota but had lots of tripping time under my belt. Why would I expect the experience to be any different?

Car packed I prepared to head out when the phone calls started coming in. So and so couldn’t make it, another said his wife had forgotten to mention a prior engagement, another said, well, maybe, possibly. I had food and libations enough for a small army and the ice was melting fast. I threw caution to the wind, gave my regards to everyone on the list, kissed my wife adios, wished for the best and headed out to the desert to begin my mountain climb.

The only thing I didn’t take into account was the weather. Springtime meant snow time up in the local mountains, regardless of proximity to the desert. My Sierra Club Mountaineer training failed me completely. Apparently I had a party in mind and party was what I was going to do. I arrived at my destination late afternoon to find the mountain top campground quiet and, due to that iffy time of year, empty and completely isolated. I found a spot with decent afternoon sun, surrounded by pine and oak trees, flat and ready for camping. After a quick unload and set up I wandered about, found the porta-potty, an armload’s worth of cast off wood and then, not wanting to wander off too far, went back and prepared to settle down for night.

As I mentioned the site was off on its own and lonely. I was carrying too much pricey gear and felt overexposed, to whom, I had no idea but there it was. I ate a bit of dinner and followed it up with a beer. Ah, German brew, one always deserves another, so in short order a six pack went away. The sun was coursing its way through the trees, the camp was comfy and so was I. It was about that time I decided to have a bit of dessert and took advantage of the special cookie treats I had brought along with me.

I cannot remember if I only ate one cookie, it could have been three. I suppose it didn’t matter either way because I had no idea how to gauge the amount of THC that was in each one of those cookies. Those were the days when cannabutter was not the well thought out product it is today. What I do remember is that the chocolate chip cookies were decidedly green, aromatic and tasted richly of bud. I know now that edibles are processed by the liver, that they can take about an hour and a half to kick in, that you shouldn’t mix alcohol with edibles and that you should try a small bite first just to see how it affects you before diving into more of the same.

Ah, yes, Alice!

Well, my liver was already compromised by all the beers I had drank, which made for a bad start, indeed. Paranoia was settling in just fine from the isolation and the high does of THC. My heart was already racing from the altitude and the mota, once it started to kick in, amped it up some more. The wildest thing I remember, though, right before I retreated to my tent to hide and crash, was hearing the trees sing. It wasn’t a breeze wicking its way through the branches, it was a full out chorus. A true tree opera. Never before had I heard such songs, never before had I been so high on marijuana!

The next morning broke foggy. A light mist settled in making the breakfast fire smoky. One of my pals came up the mountain just to tell me he was going back down. Mist turned to rain and by four in the afternoon, to snow. The camp out was a bust in many ways but it taught me a thing or two about the joys and tribulations of marijuana edibles.

So, take it from me: take it slow with those edible products till you understand not only the products themselves but your own current relationship with marijuana. If you ever find yourself overindulging remember to keep your cool, find a good quiet place to settle into and relax. Breathe, watch a movie, listen to some music and know that everything will be okay and in the end you’ll get the best night’s sleep you’ve ever had.

And by chance you should run into any singing trees, give them regards, or better, get their autograph. Mota or not the tunes they sang were mighty fine! And I hope to never hear them again!

Salud!

The painting above is titled Singing Trees, by Julie Hacker (2016)

Care and feeding of your mind (on edibles!)

At the outset of any new endeavor there are bound to be bumps in the road that can throw you, send you down strange paths, lead to bruises, scrapes and bewilderment. Think of when you first learned to ride a bike. If you were anything like me I can imagine that you found yourself on the sidewalk and under that bicycle many times after those training wheels came off. After a while, though, that bike became your friend and those wild bumpy roads a thing to master and enjoy.

Taking on new risky stuff can sometimes be fraught with peril but the joys of overcoming obstacles, building skill sets, developing talents and acquiring stories is part of what makes those new things fun. Later on, once you’ve mastered those pursuits, you can then share your hard won talents and skills with other newcomers to the arts and show them the ropes, teach them things that will make those pursuits more valuable, enjoyable and fun to experience.

There is nothing better than a guide or a mentor at the outset of a journey to show you the way. Rick Steves has made his millions showing folks the way around Europe with his videos, the Moon and Rough Guides have made getting around the world with a backpack strapped on more pleasurable and now, thanks to online sites like The Cannabist, Leafly and Green Rush Daily, one should never have to fire up a strain or nosh on an edible without knowing what one is getting into.

One of the great things about the legalization and regulation of cannabis products here in Colorado is the legislative oversight and industry regulations that are going into the production of edibles. Thanks to folks like Maureen Dowd and her well-publicized overconsumption of marijuana products we have become much more aware not only on the effects of edibles on newbies but on the importance of educating new comers to cannabis about how edibles work, what to expect from them and how to safely consume them.

Alas, not everyone has the sense to listen. For some the learning curve is steep. Auto accidents, accidental overdoses and people jumping from high windows will happen no matter what you say or do. No matter what, though, educating folks about the joys and challenges of consuming marijuana has to be at the forefront of minds of the captains of the cannabis industry. No sending folks off into the stratosphere without a bit of coaching, without a review of what’s on the labels, without telling your customers what to expect from a 5 mg, dose of black cherry chocolate bar or what they could expect to experience if they decide to eat not just a nibble but the whole marijuana brownie, instead.

I have learned to master the art of eating edibles over the years and I a happier man for that. Each and every one I have noshed on has been different experience, and depending on what I had going on in my life at the moment seemed to change how the experience went. The easy access to a wide variety of delicious legal cannabis products here along the Front Range has made experimenting with edibles a joy. For a while there I would consume a hard candy, a wafer, a slip of chocolate on my way home from work. Those days it was about 45 minutes from door to door, just long enough to take in the sights and make it home before the real joy of prime THC kicked in. It was always nice to slip off my shoes, make a quick supper, put on some tea water and relax, knowing that the effects of that edible was not only going to make movie watching that night a pleasure but help make sleep a real joy.

So seek out a gummy,a chocolate, a brownie, a soda or hard candy at your local dispensary and enjoy! Be sensible, be smart and have fun!

Salud!

A socially progressive edibles company: AmeriCannaCo
https://www.facebook.com/americannaco/

Green thumb!

Mota. If George Washington could grow it, so could my mom.

My mom was a product of the Great Depression, of World War II, of racial prejudice and hard times. For her and her peeps Victory Gardens and home grown vegies were a natural thing. I imagine, then, that all those hard luck gardens she and her people tilled in L.A. must have instilled in them not only a sense of thrift but a taste for messing about in the dirt.

My mom kept that green thumb of hers alive. I saw her talents and efforts transform our forlorn, Orange County track home yard into a glowing version of what a sixties suburban garden was all about. So it was no surprise to me when I came home after a long summer West Pac to see the yard between the garage and the neighbors fence filled in with vegetables. The patch wasn’t large but it was jam packed with beans, chilies, flowers and corn. Sky high corn, a veritable wall of corn. Now it wasn’t that she was mad for a nice ear of fresh, yellow maize out of the pot, no, she loved the fact that it shielded her sky high crop of vibrant green mota!

In the mid 70’s I was always bringing home some new batch of dope or another out of San Diego. My mom was always kind enough to let me and my shipmates sleep up in the attic on our liberty weekends and so, thanks to her largess, there was always some sort of strange, powerful new kind of grass for her and her cronies to sample, always left discretely in a bowl above the stove in the kitchen. After experimenting with that wild weed of mine she managed to find a strain that was suitable to her tastes, and instead of pestering me to find some more she just culled the seeds (this was pre-Sinsemilla days, mind you) and put her green thumb to work.

In the end, though, all her hard work came to naught. She went out one afternoon to weed (no pun intended) her garden and found our neighbor peering through the fence. Not necessarily needing or wanting a visit from the local policia she judiciously pulled up her plants and hung them in the garage to dry. In the end she had a garbage bag full of poorly cured weed, which, after all the wild Thai stick, Maui Wowie, Panama Red and everday Colombian brown I’d been throwing her way, suited her just fine.

My mom and George. I am sure that they could have sat down, rolled a doob and had a mighty fine conversation on the art and joys of growing weed. Maybe even shared a slice or two of pecan pie together afterwards! Even George got the munchies, I am sure!

Salud!

Dumpster dive

Garage sale scoops are great, second hand and thrift store finds can be the ultimate in scores but sweet, sweet treasures can be found in dumpsters all around town at the best price of all…free.

I work for a library system that is situated in the midst of a book desert. It makes many of our older books all the more precious and yet at the same time a commodity that few seem to collect or even bother to borrow. Thanks to that excess we been finding ourselves weeding lately at a furious rate. On top of that we get to deal with donations, mostly a motley mix of titles, passed along to us from down-sizers and estates. Many of the books we get are old, worn and out of date and not even remotely attractive. Due to that many of them find their way into the recycling bins out back. Sometimes, though, a real treasure slips through and that’s the crux of this wee tale.

I didn’t set out to dumpster dive that day nor was I out looking for any second hand books to take home. The fact of the matter was I had pretty much been ignoring the recent onslaught of donations that had been coming through. Not only were we halting donations here at the branch but system wide as well so used books were finding their way out of the branch almost as fast as they were coming in. Used books are important to a number of my patrons but I felt it wasn't doing me any good to be peevish about the new policy. The bigger matter at hand was that my bookshelves at home were getting pretty tight and more used books was just not going to do if I wanted to have a happy life with my partner.

So on that particular day I was walking the parameter of the branch and was pretty much oblivious to the lure of used books. I picking up trash, taking a look at my facility from the outside. The city pool next door had land sale business going on that day due to the high heat and the spillover from that crowd was to be expected inside my branch soon. On top of all that the late afternoon sky was taking on a threatening look, something I had come to expect here on the high plains in July.

With paper trash in hand I opened up the door to the dumpster area and thought, yeah, now’s the time to close up the lids. Peeking in the bin, just to see what I could see, my eyes were greeted with a bounty of books, not just library discards but box upon box of recently dumped donations. I was happy beyond measure as I was practically swimming in tons of cool stuff. One book in particular that swam to the top of the heap really blew me away: Musk, Hashish and Blood by Hector France (privately printed by the Panurge Press, NY). By rights it shouldn’t have stood out because there was no dust jacket on it to make it pop. It had a curious embossed leather cover, bright gold lettering and was in pretty decent shape considering the quality of the books it was hanging out with. One great thing about it was its condition, to be sure, but what truly set it apart was that it was a limited edition (copy number 1354) reprint of the 1900 edition, with, alas, no illustrations .

Good librarian that I am I recently went on the AbeBooks.com site and saw a wide number of different copies and editions of the title so I now know that the book isn’t as rare and obscure as I thought it was. The paper cover posted above, from a pulp paperback edition, should make that clear enough. All the same in some circles it is considered a lost classic and from my quick perusal of the text I certainly agree. The language is florid, very 19^th century. The writing tight and dense, and the chapters that I skimmed let me know right away that this was definitely a man’s adventure book. It was Victorian to the bone and was filled with travelogue delights, but what made it stand out was the sheer volume of raw sex, violence and the very open and explicit use of hashish and kef, which made it a very racy volume for it's time, indeed.

Now, due to the writing style I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this title to just anyone but if you are looking for tales of derring-do set in the Algerian desert in times long ago then seek this one out. In fact I have saved you a step: the book is in its entirety, with illustrations, below.

Entertainment for mota heads is not necessarily limited to a large bowl of Cheetos, Ren and Stimpy cartoons and colorful sunsets. We like to read, too. So fluff up your Oriental pillows, pack up a hooka bowl with your favorite water hash and enjoy!

Salud!

For those interested in reading the book in it's entirety:
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.319510020570662;view=1up;seq=1

AbeBooks.com listings of the title I was lucky enough to find:
http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?kn=panurge+press+&sortby=17&tn=musk+hashish+blood

Easter lamb

First off, let’s be clear on this matter: I had no idea that lamb was supposed to come off the grill rare.

Lent can be a serious bit of business for Catholics. We go through all the build up to Mardi Gras, then, after a mega-blast of alcohol, sugar and meat or what have you, we strap on abstinence, guilt and devotion for however many weeks there are until Easter. I always loved that nasty sick feeling I would have from having had just a tad too much fun the day before and then, taking that wee feeling with me into church, I would get my favorite blast from the past of a smear of soot on my forehead. I loved the soul taste that ritual always left in me, a reminder that no matter what I may have done the day, the winter, before, with enough patience, fortitude and pain I could wake up Easter morning and pig out all over again.

Well, in this case, lamb out but that is, one, not a phrase, and two, getting ahead of myself.

Towards the end of my spring semester in 1988 I was working on a paper that was be my grand exit opus from college. It was to be a treatise on spring rituals as they applied to the Southern Californian lifestyle as I knew it then. This grand work included chapters on the opening day of Angel baseball, spring break at Balboa, Renaissance Faire in Agoura, among other things. Living the Lenten experience would allow me to not only participate in favorite annual spring pastimes but also give me something more to write about. The bigger problem at hand was that I was starting to flail. Why my advisor didn’t see the warning signs is beyond me. As far as the paper was concerned I was sincere in my approach, solid in my research but I didn’t have good discipline and was goofing hard, waiting for school to end so I could get on with grad school, a totally unrealistic thought as I hadn’t even applied anywhere yet.

Nevertheless by the 2^nd of April I was ready for Easter. I was cruising through my classes, had already planned out our annual RenFaire bacchanal, commiserated with buddies who were on their way to being married, chased women and generally screwed off. No way was I ready to graduate but I was seriously ready to break my fast. Luckily for me I had friends who had been there for me throughout my entire undergraduate days and were ready to help.

I met Lori back when she was driving the bookmobile for the city library. I got to meet her man, Clay, at a get together at their house a little bit later on. Both were well educated, generous, happy go lucky and arty. My first impression of them as a team was unequivocally “cool”. Their house was very NorCal with its extensive hippie vibe but the colors on the walls were straight out of Oaxaca. The rooms were lined with bookshelves packed with incredible titles, the walls rich with Mexican masks, loom woven fabric, original paintings and Huichol art. The food they served up was always fresh and leaned towards organic. They always seemed to top off a good time with equally good bubby and the finest grade A mota that I never ever found anywhere else in the southland at that time.

After years of easy access to herb in the service I had hit a dry spot that was unprecedented at the time. Reagan and his dear wife Nancy had something to do with it, I am sure. The unrelenting uptick in cocaine use and the impact that drug made on the scene helped out considerably. Paraquat spraying down Mexico way put a damper on things, too, but the biggest thing was that many of my friends both in and out of the library industry were just not smoking anymore.

Then the curtain rose and in walked Lori and Clay. With that friendship my relationship with cannabis began a third, very sweet chapter. Never before had I looked at weed as a family matter nor had I experienced it in a way that said to me that dope and all its surrounding escorts and handmaidens like respectable jobs, home ownership and a vibrant social life were normal, workaday and real, real in the way that the drug warriors and all their lies were false, antagonistic and plain wrong. My friendship with those good people was based on family, literature, good living, art and long discussions on the meaning of life.

Sure, we had some excellent times with mota but weed was always secondary to the basis of our lives and friendship. I was a student, Lori a bus driver and Clay, well, he was a mystery but a large, happy and generous man. He favored loose Hawaiian shirts, foreign cars and leather coats in season. His taste in literature was broad and eclectic. His music collection was vast and his stories wild and colorful. I have no idea why he welcomed me into his life the way he did but I was grateful. When I met them was a callow youth, deep into a struggling second marriage. I felt dull and listless, a funny thing to be as a student. I played fast and loose with life but meeting them helped to put a stop to my shiftlessness and helped me to once again see the value of a solid, happy family life.

Easter ’88, then, was to be a big deal. My paper was in the works but I set it aside for the day. A good buddy of mine came in out of the desert for a visit and that meant lots of cold champagne would be on hand. I was separated from my wife, it was sunny and warm and my pal and I had an bbq invite we were keen to honor that afternoon. Arriving early my friend and I were escorted out back to a wild cactus and palm themed jungle of a yard. The umbrella was up, the cooler brought by and with a twist and a shout we had two bottles of Veuve Clicquot opened and pouring. Jazz, blues, Janis all rotated on the cd player. The grill was fired up and folks began to arrive.

That’s when Humboldt’s finest was sparked and the day went from sweet and wild to even wilder and weirder than I could have ever imagined.

For me Lent meant a drop off, nay, a total curbing of my drinking. It meant leaving marijuana behind for the season, too. So, not only did I have a head full of sunshine and a fist full of champagne to propel me that afternoon but I also had a series of magnificent, professionally rolled, lit joints to contend with as well. The bud that day was clean and robust, cured to perfection, rich with flavor notes that I somehow had been missing out on over the years.

I knew that the game had changed once NorCal got into the growing scene. All the back to the landers in the late sixties had taken all those plots of clear cut Humboldt land and turned them into homesteads and farms and the beginnings of the great Emerald Triangle mota industry as we know it today. Clay had friends up north and a good network to draw from. From the time I knew him he was the man who always made sure I had a good baggie of something decent to smoke. But somehow that Easter was a game changer. The quality had improved immensely, the flavors and the density of the smoke were miles beyond anything he ever shared with me before. I found myself not flailing but soaring. The roadblocks that kept my paper at bay and my applications to grad school grounded all fell away.

But first they put the lamb on the grill and asked me to watch it.

I was always invited back to their home after that Sunday. I was even asked me to babysit their house when they went off on vacation. I was taken along to holiday parties, they broke bread with me and my third wife when we bought our new digs, heck, they even kept in touch with me when I found myself far and away out of state and on the run.

But they never, ever, let me touch their lamb again.

Rare, Accumulate Man, rare, that’s the way lamb should come off the grill.

Salud!

A little dab will do ya!

An earlier post had me champing at the bit to go mota shopping so I did, much earlier in the day than I am used to and but that was part of the charm. I used a lunch hour to go to the bank , stop by a couple local pawn shops and visit a local dispensary. All the way around a really fun time!

The bank run to grab some cash was a perfunctory gesture thanks to the onerous Federal banking laws as they pertain to cannabis shops. With cash in hand I went up the block and stopped in to do a bit of business with a couple of my favorite pawns shops. Garden City is the place to go for so many fine things, like mota and strip clubs and pizza, but used movies are my favorite. King's Pawn always has a good selection of Blu Ray discs for sale at four dollars a pop, while EZ Pawn is my go to place for 1 dollar DVDs. Today I secured a copy of the Martian, Book of Life, a Tremors 4 pack, the Last Exorcism and the complete Transformers series on Blu Ray for 20 dollars total. Too much fun and the fun was just beginning.

As I said I usually don't hit up my mota stores mid day but thanks to my experience today I think that will be the way to go from here on out. I have been a member of Nature's Herbs and Wellness since my first day in town and it continues to be my favorite place to stop and shop and learn. Today the herb of the day was Jah Kush, a timely thing as I just read about a similar strain that morning in the Denver Post. So in my mind I set that aside because my goal was to either secure ingredients for a caviar role or just buy one outright.

My interaction at the counter was more than pleasant and I was able to get all the help I needed from Heidi. She was kind and knowledgeable about the products at hand and walked me through their CO2 oils and their pre-rolled caviar sticks. I could have bought a Pre-98 Bubba Kush to go but I decided, in the end, to get a syringe of oil, instead. The price of the two was comparable (30 vs 35) but with the oil I can easily make a lot more fun on my own, experiment with the product while keeping it fresh in it's own container.

What I really like about Nature's Own is their rewards program. I had enough left in my account that I was able to walk away with a gram of that Jah Kush, too. Happy man! So now I have the fixin's for my own version of the caviar roll and I just can't wait to get home and do some mad scientist stuff in the basement to find out how good it really is. More stories later, if I can only remember to tell them!

Salud!

A link to the Nature's Herbs and Wellness site!
http://naturesherbsandwellness.com/

A review of Light of Jah (thanks, Cannabist!):
http://www.thecannabist.co/2016/08/18/light-of-jah-strain-marijuana-review/58375/

Let's make a little hash, shall we?

I woke up this morning and thought “caviar roll”. For some reason the richness, the stickiness, the outrageousness of it seemed really appealing. Why I was thinking about finely grated top shelf cannabis rolled with ice water hash and slathered with hash oil at 6 in the morning is somewhat confounding to me at the moment but there it is. Then I was distracted and the thought went away. Coffee and a roll in the hay will do that to a man.

But the morning has rolled on and here I am again, thinking about that one special payday purchase. I wanted something fun and novel and the roll seemed like the right thing to get the weekend going. But then I thought of all the flower I could buy with the same amount of bucks and it got me thinking,"hmm, better deal, perhaps". 

Even better, says I, to buy a bit of flower and a gram of ice water hash. It would be more like the bargain sensation I feel every time I go grocery shopping. I think of what I have been spending lately going out to eat and it breaks my heart knowing what I know about the cost of cooking at home. I know that the same amount of cash spent at King Soopers instead of eating out will yield me far more meals than what I get out of one restaurant experience. So,, the thinking goes, maybe the same thing will apply at the dispensary. The purchase of one caviar roll versus the purchase of separate flower, oil and hash ingredients. I know that the cash out lay will be outrageously high but I think of the eventual yield. Plus, I get to make it myself. 

I like to be in the kitchen, I get a lot of satisfaction out of planning, shopping for and making meals. Plus there is the benefit of leftovers. The same thing has to apply to building cones at home. What could be wrong about having caviar roll fixin’s around the house? From what I can see from here nothing much at all.

Reading about the cultural history of hashish leads me to believe it’s pretty much a homemade product anyway. Reading through net posts I can see that making it at home is still going on in a big way. I am excited to do it, to see the process in action myself. My gal has told me tales of the hash snakes she used to roll off her hands after trimming. Looking at the recipes enclosed below I can now see the value of having all the rest of that plant matter around after harvesting. Someday I would like to do that, grow my own and then, after the flowers have been harvested, turn the rest of the plant into a mild form of homemade hash.

In the mean time I think a dispensary run will have to do. Like any good shopper I will do a price comparison and see what would be the best option for me this weekend. I like the idea of building my own caviar roll, just like I like the idea of building my own hamburger. Yum on both accounts!

Before I close I want to share with you a quick blog post by Mike Riggs posted on September 9, 2011. It’s short and to the point: these things we love that are outlawed not only criminalize a good medicine but they also inhibit people from engaging in cultural pastimes that have gone on for centuries. May we all be so lucky, to someday be able to strip down and run naked through the fields and gather hash the natural way!

Here’s the blog post:

"In a piece about the Kyrgyz and Kazakh residents of Chu Valley, where some of the world's best hash comes from,Radio Free Europe reminds us that the war on drugs is often a war on cultural pastimes:

It begins with a freshly showered person riding naked for hours on a clean, washed horse inside a two-meter-high "forest" of marijuana.

Afterwards, the human body and that of the horse are covered with a thick layer of resin mixed with sweat.

This produces a substance that is usually dark brown in color, which is then thoroughly scraped off the human and horse's bodies.

The mixture is subsequently pressed, molded into bars, and dried.

The "plastilin" that results from this process effectively comprises very concentrated marijuana bars.

A couple of small, pinhead-sized pieces from one of these bars added to a regular cigarette is enough to make the smoker happy.

This sort of marijuana is also very easy to carry or stash and is therefore very popular among drug users.

But it is a lot harder to produce this form of the drug because you need more time to make it.

Imagine 10, 20, or 30 individuals running or riding naked in a field of wild marijuana. It goes without saying that they are more exposed and it is easier to catch them. Nonetheless, people do it and they have been doing it since time immemorial."

Salud!

The source for the above quote, with video!
 http://reason.com/blog/2011/09/09/imagine-10-20-or-30-individual

Nice overview of the art:
http://www.synchronium.net/2009/08/23/how-to-make-hash-the-ultimate-guide/

The first, the last and the latest

Jerry, I blame it all on you.

And Jeri, I blame it all on you, too.

And to both of you, thanks.

I really should say, I owe it all to you. It was an unexpectedly good turn that sent me off into the world of mota, a good turn that changed and saved my life. Yeah, I owe a lot to those two fore mentioned people who gave me the impetus to take that first toke.

Jerry, thanks for being such a boozer, for being such a man’s man, such a guy about town. All your after-hours action with the boys from the barber shop helped keep your party boy image intact and robust, so much so that anything that might have gone into the family kitty instead filled the coffers of the local gin mills instead. I know, I know, you had to keep in good form in order to be ready to take your boy out when he turned 21. In the mean time it was training, all good, all fun, except for the alienation that your actions brought into the house.

But all your carousing did bring one thing into my life that was positive and upbeat: cigarillos. You were kind enough to leave those lying about on your dresser. I snagged them because they seemed, well, cool. Back in those days what I knew about cool could be put into a shot glass with plenty of room to spare but you helped give me a proper teenage definer. I was happy with the image that those mini cigars conjured up in my head: with one of them dangling from my lips I was tough, roguish, the Boy With No Name. I happily puffed and coughed on those things because, well, a man left those behind for me to find. I tried my hand at smoking cigarettes, with my mom’s approval (she’d been smoking since 14 so what did she care?) but I didn’t like the taste of them (filterless cigarettes were yet to come…) and gave them up right at the start. But those cigarillos were cool, came in a metal tin and were very, very bad for me. How grand. What a great precursor.

And then there was you, Jeri. Yep, you were a wonderful first girl friend. End of junior year I was told by your mom that it was time for me to open up my world, look elsewhere, find a new girlfriend to hang with. I think your folks could see that there was too much hormonal pressure going on in your head or in our bodies or who knows what but whatever it was I was given the heave ho right there on the edge of summer. So, a good thing. Life with you was tightly controlled in all regards and letting you go was probably the best thing to happen to me on the edge of my senior year. Being free after being attached for almost three years left a nice taste in my mouth. The Junior Class Ring Party was to take place at the Point in Newport on the last day of the school year and those in the know were going to attend. In the end not too many must have known about it because attendance was small but it was the crew that attended that day that mattered.

I just remember the Volkswagen van but can’t remember who owned it. I didn’t have a car yet and someone had to get us there and by some stroke of luck I caught a ride. Somehow after all the years of bumping around with kids I thought I would like to get to know I finally managed to fall in with a group of “cool” kids. We were all outliers, kids on the fringe and we didn’t know yet how important that was to be in shaping the last year of our high school existence. We all thought of ourselves as smart and weird and if geeky had been a word then we would have used it to describe ourselves. 

After a day of body surfing, noshing and sun bathing a handful of us migrated up to the bluffs, overlooking the sea. My oldest pal DB was there as well as a handful of others that will forever remain nameless. It was a wild haired blonde girl who pulled out the number and fired it up. Mexican, dry and smoky. The joint ran and was passed around and I must have had a hit or two before I really realized what I had done. What I did, besides get nicely stoned, was cross a bridge that had no return.

Thank god for that.

First times are great, but those last times are the things that define you. I thought hard today about the last time I got high. It was in Washington, in the basement of my old house on Kitsap Street. I had been working my way slowly through an ounce that I picked up from my brother in law after my second son was born. I didn’t know it at the time but it was to be the last time I would purchase pot for more than 18 years. I nursed that ounce and to the amazement of my in-law kept quite a bit of it around for quite a number of years.  After a while, to stretch it out I would mix it with loose leaf rolling tobacco (thanks, Drum!) and thought myself very European, but the effect of the nicotine was not quite to my liking and that stopped, too.

My pace getting through that ounce was due to a number of things: household prohibition, the Just Say No years, anticipation of piss tests, the end of friends who smoked, the fact that I was doors down from a police station but even more the thought of losing my house, car or financial freedom to the DEA drug seizure laws of the time. I knew that all my habits were unhappy ones in my house so I kept that one decent appetite on a leash lest it be lost forever.

But forever finally came when I found myself in-between work. The Great Recession of 2008 took its toll on all of us, especially those of us who were unlucky enough to be without a job. I was on my own so the household repression of cannabis was not to blame. Washington was still far away from legalization and since I didn’t live in California I couldn’t go the medical marijuana route. Sure, I could have been an outlaw but too many years of being in a paranoid state left me drinking hard and not worrying too much about a plant that I couldn’t get ahold of anymore. So I quit. Took that last toke in the basement and then sealed up the jar tight. Locked it away, threw out all the paraphernalia I could find and then went to find work out of state in one of the most repressive states in the Union.

But like a good piece of rococo music, the spiral doesn’t end but go up. After a few years in Idaho I found myself interviewing for a management job on the coast. At the time I had no idea where I was but as luck should have it I found myself in the heart of the Emerald Triangle, the land of world class mota, the place where the current marijuana movement and some of the world’s best strains originated. I was so far off the reservation after years of personal and societal prohibition that I knew none of this. Landing in Mendocino County I was to experience innocence reborn. It was like going back to the beginning, sitting with my pals up on the bluff, overlooking the sea. And it was grand.

I knew that my life would change the moment I saw that old Rasta man firing up a number in front of the coffee shop in Mendocino. Somehow I knew that I had turned a corner and that sanity would once again prevail. I was back on the bridge that had no end and I was happy.

I now live in a large city on the Front Range in Colorado and cannabis, while legal, is not all around me like it was in Mendo. It has been normalized, tamed and is now big, big business, regardless of it's Federal status. I am happy to state that my most recent time with the good herb was today with a drop of tincture. A little bit goes a long way, especially tempered with CBD. Flower, oil, concentrates, all well and good. I buy them locally as a good citizen should and then set them aside, waiting for that time when time is mine and I can really enjoy my reentry into the world of cannabis.

Salud!

Magsaysay delite

What is the difference between a fairy tale and a sea story?

A fairy tale begins “once upon a time”, a sea story begins with “this is a no shitter”.

It’s no fairy tale right now for the growers, suppliers and indulgers of cannabis in the Philippines. President Rodrigo Duterte has lived up to his tough man image and even tougher guy election campaign promises and has brought the hammer down on drug users and suppliers in his county. Hundreds of people have been shot down in the street by rogue police and vigilante groups and even more have been arrested, causing severe problems in already overcrowded prisons. Many have voluntarily turned themselves in in order to avoid prosecution or being hunted down. Growers near Cebu have surrendered themselves and their crops in mass, many promising not only to stop growing cannabis but also to take up the fight against drugs and marijuana growers.  It is a severe and ruthless form of reefer madness happening there right now, making the recent executions for drug offences in Indonesia seem like a regionally benign form of judicial leadership.

Years ago I served in the US Navy and had the pleasure of seeing and experiencing the Philippines through very youthful and somewhat innocent eyes. Well, at first very innocent. Later those eyes became very jaded and somewhat cynical but that is another tale entirely. But at 19 I felt that whatever I knew about the world was largely tossed out the window the first time I went through the Subic Bay Naval Station gates and crossed over the Shit River bridge into Olongapo City.

The Magsaysay was the main drag of the city, one offering a sailor on liberty almost every conceivable form of vice and entertainment, all wrapped up in a repressed sort of Catholicism and guilt and wildly profitable capitalism. We were the ones with the money, the locals were the ones supplying the services and those services seemed to cover the full spectrum of whatever sort of fantasy you wanted to indulge yourself in. Music, food and drink were there in all their various permutations. Wanted a taste of “American” style food? It could easily by arranged, imitated and cooked up by your paid for companion while she sat next to you eating local fare with her dainty finger tips. Wanted to take your date out to dinner and the movies? Sure, the local bar girls liked monkey meat and a good flick just as much as anyone else. Wanted to hear the latest song or your favorite style of stateside music? Anything you wanted to hear was out there, live, imitated to such a fine degree that once you went back and heard the original artist it was always covered with images in your mind of everything you ever experienced in those loud and garishly wonderful clubs.

Any sea story from those times and climes will be filled with tales of wild debauched nights, of even wilder sex, of go-go dancers that could be upgraded to girlfriends at the drop of a handful of “P”. I suppose I had my share of sea stories there in those departments, but many of them were interestingly colored not so such in the pursuit of “p” but of “mj”. Securing grass was something that was just as risky, if not more so than not using a condom. Sure, social diseases were rampant but easily curable with shipboard antibiotics. Being arrested with marijuana in town was a heavy duty offense that I was keen to avoid at all costs. But the hunger for good weed always seemed to override that fear and I courted disaster every trip.

If one was smart, low key and cool about it, cannabis could be found just about anywhere. Sure, we had to be very, very much aware that everyone living in Olongapo was on the make and that sailors were easy targets for the hustle. Not only did we have to worry about informants and corrupt police, but we had to worry about our own people turning us in. We had to concern ourselves with local city ordinances, with martial law (thanks, Marcos!), with curfew, military police and the United States Code of Military Justice. Not only were we always looking over our shoulders for the man, but we were always on alert for false friends, for jaded hookers and for those good local citizens that wished us gone no matter what the cost to the local economy.

One trip, circa spring of 1980, I was sitting at the Mariposa cafe, knocking back a platter of pancit, adobo and lumpia, washing it all down with bottles of ice cold San Miguel. It was early in the morning and I had the luck of securing weekday liberty. I knew that the mojo was waiting for us all later on in the day and I had furniture to look at. I was living with a radioman gal back in Yokosuka and she had a jones going on for Asian household accessories. My meal done, I got up to leave when I was flagged down by Wesley, a fellow data processor from my ship. 

We knocked around a bit, stopped at a sari sari store off the boulevard for a beer and began to kick around intel about local weed. Luckily he had a source and asked if I was interested in buying some. Well, my earlier experiences with using the local bargirls as go-betweens was interesting but for the moment was the last thing I wanted or needed with a round eye waiting for me back in Japan. So, instead, I took a jeepney ride with Wes off into the suburbs of Olongapo and met a man who changed my viewpoint on what good dope was all about in the PI.

The house was unassuming and surrounded by banana and palm trees, the screech of unseen animals  and wild birds filling the air. The interior was large, open, airy, reeking of fish sauce, bamboo and a green sort of smell that said to me that the world there was very damp and alive with rot. We all sat down together on wicker seats in a front room and talked about quantity and price. I had no idea what I wanted or how much I could carry but I asked to see his product so I could make a determination of what I was in for. Buying 4 finger bags back in San Diego was one thing but making a purchase here, especially after all the finger sized baggies I secured from the bar help, was going to be a different matter all together.

Our host opened up a large steamer trunk and pulled out what I thought was a normal sheaf of newspaper. He laid it on the bamboo table front of us and opened it up, revealing what must have been a couple of pounds of very raw, untrimmed and beautiful stalks of high country cannabis. After years of  purchasing bags of Mexican schwag and Colombian made brown seeing marijuana so green, bountiful, lush and vibrant was a bit startling. Instead of small nuggets and a bag full of stems and seeds what I was seeing was a revelation. The colas were elemental, bright and shaggy, easily a foot or so long, electric green and right on the edge of being uncured. This was something I was going to witness later on while living in the Emerald Triangle but for the moment that young lad from Orange County sitting before that pile of grass was flabbergasted. Wes took out some local rolling papers, rough and newsprint like, and after choosing some pot for himself, rolled a very rough and outrageously large bomber in order for us to better sample and understand the goods before us.

The smoke wasn’t smooth thanks to that paper and the poor curing made for a bit of coughing but the high was magnificent and very memorable. It was a very heady, intelligent, energetic buzz, nothing at all like the goofy laughfests and severe stones I had experienced back in the states. I am sure that, at that very moment in time, I was at my least possible sensible state to make a purchase but we opened up a full, double paged spread of local news, filled it with stalks and folded it up, making into a neat, tight package. I couldn’t tell you now what it cost me then but whatever it was paled in comparison to the freight my fellow sailors might have charged me if they brought the same sized quantity in off the beach. I stuffed it into the toes of my very large and oversized Little Abners and proceeded to make my way back to the base. Luckily for me it was still early in the day and so I attracted no attention walking through the gate, across the base and then up the gangplank to my ship.

I was known for being a squared away sailor so no one took exception to my early arrival back to the boat. I was there for supper for all that they knew and I played it off well. I got into my dungarees, repacked my work boots with contraband, went up to the shop and then, when the coast was clear, went up to a fan room and packed my booty into a wire run hole. Once the “monkey shit” sealant was in place I never looked into that stash, well, not until I got back to Yokosuka. 

Thanks to my shipmate Wes my gal and I and all our pals back in Zushi Beach had many delightful weekends the rest of that year. By resisting temptation out at sea I was able to bring home a relatively large stash that kept both my gal and I out of harm’s way many times over. The Naval Intelligence was always looking for bad guys and so was the Master at Arms. No time for that for either of us. Japan became our playground after that, one replete with good beer, better yakitory and even better sightseeing. All of it on the government nickle, all of it colored by the goodness of fantastic Filipino grass.

Salud!

A New York Times story about the contemporary state of fear in the PI:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/13/world/asia/rodriguo-duterte-philippines.html?ref=asia

More on Cebu and the crackdowns:
https://www.greenrushdaily.com/2016/08/05/700-people-killed-philippine-president-calls-drug-crackdown/

Great LA Times story on the drug war in the Philippines:
http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-philippines-drug-war-snap-story.html

Old Tub Lock!

It wasn’t exactly the evening that I had expected.

The night was supposed to be just another normal Friday night. I had plans to attend a film program at the branch the following morning, one that one of my staffers was hosting. Armageddon. A nice film for a Saturday morning. A good film to critique. A nice flick to team build on.

I had only been in town a couple months. We had just installed a very cool and interesting interactive NASA exhibit that was spread all around the library. The programs we were putting on were an extra added bonus for patrons, an obligation that we had to fulfill for having won the grant. Overall the exhibit was a pretty splendid thing to have in house, was a big hit with patrons young and old and helped make the branch look like the Exploratorium on the coast. It felt good, too, as the new boss, to know that I could get out of the house, take a brisk walk across town, be seen as a team player and still have time afterwards to go down the way to the market or the mall. All the way around it seemed like a fair use of time and a good way to kill a day.

Friday nights in Greeley were pretty simple affairs for me at that time. Call for a pizza, have a few beers, maybe open a bottle of wine and, if I was still up to it after all that, maybe pop in a movie. A man had to pace himself, spread out the fun over the course of the weekend.

I came to Colorado with a batch of tincture that I had made before I left Cali. The recipe was something I ran across while cruising the web and it seemed like the right thing to make at the time. I had an abundance of older cannabis sitting in cans in my closet that needed to be turned into something edible. Over the course of a weekend I turned part of the stash into a batch of cannabutter, the rest settled down in a large glass jar with Everclear and turned into a lovely, dark green batch of medicinal tincture. It was easy to transport and for the most part, easy to ignore. I found an old Jim Beam bottle that looked a lot like Korean pottery and it pleased me with its natural good looks, but more, looked like any old bottle of liquor on the shelf. A Q boat, a wolf in lambskin. Happiness for me, a bit of a breather for my conscience as it traveled cross country.

So, Friday evening sort of flew away with itself. By eight o’clock I had fairly loud music playing, the trolls in the basement were having at it as usual, the room was filled with tobacco smoke wafting up from the cracks in the venting and the general loneliness that I was experiencing from being away from the family was all encompassing. I started off with one bottle of really wonderful Pinot but then, feeling the thirst, started in on another. Somehow that thirst worked up a sort of madness, one that went along well with the decrepit house I was living in, the black crusty ice outside on the walk, the heavy vibes coming up from the neighbors down below. Somehow I had it in my head that if a dropper of tincture is good, well, a teaspoon would be better. And if a teaspoon was going to be great, well, then, a shot glass of that inky solution would top it all.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that the music was up just a bit too high and needed to be turned down a tad. Then it took only slightly longer than that to know that the music just had to be shut off as I had no idea how loud it really was. Somehow I found myself wandering around the house and then for no apparent reason, I ended up in the bathroom. By the time the night hit the grand old hour of ten I was pushing limits of intoxication that really were a bit too much for one man to handle alone but somehow I realized that I was on my own, completely insensible and completely incapable of doing anything of any importance.. No going anywhere, no getting on the phone, no calling for help. So,with my wits completely off the tether I settled into the bathtub for the next three and a half to four hours. I have vivid memories of the clock melting, of the bathroom fan sucking air out of the room and of the above the sink light going from outrageously glaring to being just normal again.

What a night. Around the time that the bars normally close I was able to actually stand and make my way to bed. That was a long walk, even if the walk was only out one door and through another. I woke the next day wondering if I had done anything that might warrant arrest or, at the least, an evil eye from the neighbors. Needless to say I didn’t make the movie that morning. I couldn’t back down from the fact that I was extremely hung over from my over indulgence with the wine but I also had to own up to the realization that I had a major marijuana hangover going on as well.

And while I didn’t pull off a Maureen Dowd that night I realized that I came pretty darned close to panicking big time at least a couple of times. As the day wore on I had to laugh at myself, but more, had to thank the small gods for giving me the sense to settle into that tub and stay away from the phone. It was a rollicking night but it could have turned out a hell of a lot worse had I called the local fire house for help Ooh, the headline that could have been!.

As for Old Tub Lock, I still have it around. I didn’t go mad and pour it down the sink, saying, ah, never again. It IS a mighty good medicinal solution. In balance with an equal sized dropper of CBD it makes for a nice, balanced tonic to take on the day. It is a great salve for bug bites and has helped to make blemishes and moles disappear. Since that day I have a mighty fine respect for that otherworldly liquid. Some might have called it "demonic" after an experience like that. Me, I like to think that, for a while there, I was sipping from the waters of Paradise.

Salud!

The 8 dollar gram

8 am. The last time I chased down mota at that time in the morning was in high school. Those days it was with pals, riding around in our big pieces of Detroit metal, Ted Nugent on the stereo, cheap sunglasses barely containing our wide eyed grins and stoned countenance.

No, since I've been back in the game shopping for grass has generally been an after work affair. Last week on my way home I stopped to shop but was given the big bargain tip: I was told to stop by my local dispensary between 8 and 9 am to secure the deal of the day, the 8 dollar gram. Not the 4 finger 1 ounce bags of  Columbian mota for 40 bucks like back in the days of yore but it sounded like a good deal to me all the same.

I have read recently that wholesale marijuana prices in Colorado have been coming down, for reasons due more to efficiently and overproduction than to folks not wanting their flower. To the contrary, folks have been spending big money on cannabis here in Colorado in 2016, to the tune of 600 million  just during the first six months, according a recent article posted in the Cannabist section of the Denver Post. One of the bigger problems facing consumers is that a lot of those cost savings have generally not been passed along, that the profit margin has gone up for local shop owners, which, for many of us subsisting in the world of very pricey grams, is not a very good thing. But some owners are out there helping to correct that situation. I was going to find out about that price break personally.

The price of freedom is steep and I get that. I would rather pay the going rate and walk around with my head held high than to skulk around waiting to be picked up by the man. I don't mind paying the price if the product is great, the variety wide and the shop inviting. What makes all that better is if the owners recognize that everyone likes a bargain and makes those bargains widely available.

Well, I don't know if shopping for bud at 8 in the morning qualifies as widely available but if so then I am your man. I decided to shop two different stores this morning, not only to do a side by side comparison of what an 8 dollar gram looks like in the flesh like but I wanted to see what the vibe was  like at a dispensary during that time of the day. I have been going into veritable bee hives of action when I've hit the shops at 3 or 4 in the afternoon. The pressure to get folks in and out of the door is high as there always folks waiting to get in and shop during those after work hours. I wanted to see what it would be like to walk into a store and not feel the hustle, to feel like I would at almost any other "normal" establishment I might choose to go shopping in at that time of the day.

So, I hit XG Platinum first as it was first along my route. I was sold by the sales pitch the week before and couldn't wait to try it out. I couldn't come in on the 8th of the month where grams were being sold for 8 dollars all day long but I could come visit in the morning on the way to work. The shop was cool, clean, casually lit as if I walked into a nicely appointed wine bar. The staff was smiling and easy going. I was escorted to the back of the store by a winsome young lass and introduced to another, both taking their time to verify my id. I asked what the bud of the day was and was told Trainwreck, which, for me, would be a very good deal indeed. My only sadness was that by the time a strain got to that price break there it was all popcorn sized nugs, all bottom of the plant action. All three deals of the day, including Cindy 99 and Ice were down to that sized flower but I was happy to get the deal.

After a long chat about the current state of vaporizers and local glass shops I bought my treats and headed down the street to my second stop of the morning, Nature's Herbs and Wellness. I am a member of that dispensary and have had a number of happy exchanges with them already since my arrival here in Colorado. Through their Ganja magazine I was aware of their new lower prices and wanted to see what it was like to take advantage of their daily special. Every day a new one, every day 8 dollars a gram. This morning's strain was Lavender Kush, which was fine as it was yet another new flower for me. The ladies behind the counter were pleasant and chatty, which was great because so was I. I would still be on the hunt for my Firefly 2 after this shop but I had a good time talking about the benefits of shops vs the black market. All of us there that morning were pleased with the current state of cannabis in Colorado. Who wouldn't be considering the option?

Long gone are the days when my buddies and I had to hunt down unsavory characters just so we could have a bit of swag to puff on before the start of school. I am happy to know that 5 minutes from work I can pick up a couple of grams for a reasonable price for later on in the day. I don't have to stand in line, do the doctor's office wait, just walk inside and have the shop to myself. Always a lovely thing at 8 in the morning!

Salud!

XG Platinum!
http://xgplatinum.com/

Nature's Herbs and Wellness!
http://naturesherbsandwellness.com/

Good customer service

I went with the familia to Boulder this past weekend to take in the sights. We initially took a drive up into the mountains to witness Estes Park but it was too much of a zoo with tourist related activities. Sure, I wanted to do a bit of browsing at the local library booksale, sample vino at the Colorado wine festival and take in silent films, too, but the sidewalks were too crazy packed with white legged touristas fresh out of their Winnebagos, all itching for unique mountain town action, fresh hot fudge and over priced dinosaur-logoed onesies from the Indian Trading Center. So, down the mountain we went, off to Lyon to see what we could see then a bit further on down the road to an equally busy city, but this time one with wider sidewalks and more to do and see.

After noshing on overpriced chow at the Cheesecake Factory we tripped across the street to watch musicians perform on stage for a local pan Asian cultural festival. I didn't expect to see Bali gamilan or Japanese folksongs performed here for free, so it was worth the stop. Afterward we walked the open air mall and caught a contortionist plying his trade, viewed wonderful but outrageously overpriced art and passed up nice new looking, marked down books for sale. All swell and dandy. The biggest sadness was stopping by a Burmese folk art store and checking out the prices of the wood carvings they had on display. I passed a couple pieces up at a local second hand about a month ago. Seemed pricey at the time but they were a bargain in retrospect. Never again let a gut instinct stop you from a purchase, Accumulate Man!

Gut reaction was what I experienced as we cruised a local outdoor market along the river on our way to the library. We saw a number of interesting things but the stand that drew me in was a business hawking the goodness of CBD. The stand itself was surrounded with vinyl siding that touted the goodness of their product. When I walked up to get a closer look there was an older couple at the table being lectured to about the greatness of the manufacturer, not not so much the goodness of the product, by a much younger and much above it young man. When asked questions he was haughty, when queried about the powerful cannabinoid at hand he was professorial and not very keen on really speaking to the couple in a friendly way, but more in a way that said to me he would rather be behind some dispensary counter making big tips talking to his bros as a budtender, not presenting a mighty fine medicine to a couple that, maybe, possibly, could have ended up being one of that medicines greatest allies and promoters if they had been handled right.

One of the reasons why I am thinking about leaving my current profession and joining the ranks of the newly legal, legitmate and ever expanding cannabis industry is precisely for reasons like I witnessed on Sunday. It is one thing to read about the swelling numbers of seniors who are gingerly approaching this fascinating industry but it another to see a couple, keenly interested in finding out more about something they had only previously read or heard about and then being talked down to in the fashion they were that day. I feel that the 55 and over set are the ones who not only have to be convinced about the safety and efficacy of marijuana but who also are the ones who will go on to spearhead what I consider the great "normalcy" of the product in the upcoming years.

Whenever I go local dispensaries I see a lot of young males leading the way from not only behind the counter in sales but at the checkout register in purchases. The token young ladies behind the counter seem to be there, at times, to be strictly bro-bait, helping to spur on sales to the delight of a management force that is sometimes more interested in promoting recreational sales than doling out solid medical information. What we need to see are more older workers not only behind the counters helping along sales but also in the community helping to drive marketing, products and services in such a way that will enable older users to feel comfortable coming into the stores not only to explore the possibility of starting up a relationship with cannabis but to also learn about its uses and to understand the power and complexity of the products and strains.

My gut instinct on Sunday was to step in and help that lad help sell his product to those seniors in a way that would have been productive and meaningful to all of them. Instead I walked away frustrated once again by the youth factor as it applies to cannabis. Somehow we have come to believe the dope is for young people. The vast numbers of potential senior users belies that assumption. If we are ever to move away from a government that still believes in restricting, prohibiting and incarcerating people for indulging or medicating themselves with cannabis, we need to find a way of educating, directing and promoting a staff that will work in a more understanding and humble fashion with the age group who will buy, promote and vote in ways that will make marijuana the legitimate drug of choice for the nation.

Salud!