Wake and Bake with Good Morning America

It is Eight Oh Five, Pacific Standard Time and the TV is rehashing the morning news. I’ve already boogie-boarded the ‘Net for the past couple of hours reading the wires, the tubes, The Times; NY and LA, the blogs and of course the RSS feeds I have from all cannabis-related well-springs. While the real news should be all about what’s happening in the Mideast (over there) or the Midwest (over here), but as a minute ago, some guy in New York on Good Morning, America has just pulled out this tease before going to commercial. “Up next, the Wal-Mart of Weed, to open today in Sacramento, California.”

All morning here in San Francisco, instead of how we got a milligram of snow last night, all I’ve been reading about is this mega-store opening going on in Sacramento. It’s in all the papers and on the tubes. Enough is enough.

This is why cannabis activists are having such a hard time. If you were on the outside looking in, you’d think marijuana is legal and thriving in California. This is what I call living in the Era of Grassnost.

In Sacramento, with all the fanfare of new car dealership opening, the two guys who were featured in last month’s Mother Jones concerning the takeover of the marijuana industry by the New Young Turks, have obviously pulled out all media stops to gather this kind of attention. I’m sure the whole state is all a’twitter with the events that are going to proceed today.

This hydroponic-garden store boasts to be the first of its kind to purely state that they are there for the marijuana grower. No shame. No code words. These buds are for you…

I guess the difference between having a candid conversation about marijuana in this Uber-store and all other garden variety stores in the state is in the other stores, you’re not allowed to ask questions about growing weed unless say…you ask. Because it’s a big mystery why the dude in the wool cap, long-shorts and the Bob Marley t-shirt is inquiring about the organic fertilizer named ‘Super-buddy-bud-buds-Now’ and how much for a pallet’s worth. But I digress…

I don’t know these smart fellas behind this new attempt to reach out to a growing market, (sorry, sometimes can’t resist) and in a way, I don’t blame them in the sense that they’ve seen other people do it, why not them too? They want money. But unlike my friends and I, they do not care about compassion, patients, or doing the right thing, which I know is subjective at best. They, like fake bottled-water, are looking for the fastest and simplest way to make money.

I don’t object to their business practices or even their advertising budget, I don’t like their swagger. Their non-hippie boastfulness of personally taking the industry to the next level because they feel they’re being honest because they have come forward as the first ‘out’ garden store.

Try telling people that you write about Marijuana for a living. That’s out.

These guys who have allegedly left a trail out of Oakland as big as process server’s wake, for bad business and labor practices, continue to thrive. Supposedly because of their first attempt with an industrial grow near the Oakland airport; they are being pursued for leaving town without paying their tabs. Yet here they are on ‘Good Morning, America,’ like every day in California, there’s another marijuana related story to tell. Well, there is. I just wish it wasn’t this one.

 

The real story is fifty miles away in the tiny California town of Isleton. It's best known for holding a crawdad festival each year, but tough economic times forced the city to terminate the event last year. There was a real concern the city would go broke.

So the town thinks, “Why don’t we do what everyone else is doing?” The Marijuana light bulb goes off.  

To help stop a cavernous budget deficit, the city decided to accept a proposal to allow some city land to be used to grow medical marijuana.

Delta Allied Growers will build a 4,000-square-foot indoor medical marijuana nursery on a tiny piece of property inside the Isleton city limits.

The grower will pay the city either three percent of its profits or $25,000 -- whichever is bigger. That's a minimum of $300,000 a year of new revenue, but it could bring in as much as $600,000.

In addition to the taxes and fees, the growers have agreed to install security cameras anywhere in town that the Isleton police chief chooses. It will also buy the police department a new mainframe computer and new laptops so they can monitor the cameras anytime anywhere.

The very reason that we can’t get a cohesive, clear picture of what is happening is because every city in Cali is doing their own thing. Thinking marijuana is their financial answer. Whether in the name of money or in the name of progressive change, there’s a game of musical chairs going on. Or its two-steps forward, one step back.

In one way, we’re working to get Marijuana accepted by the general public while most of them are already assuming it is. So much of the industry already seems legal. This is why Eric Holder wants to step in, because the rules we have set up are so vague and full of loop-holes. Enterprising young men or old town elders are entering a business that many of us are trying to regulate and bring a consistency to the proceedings.

When the lamest of mainstream TV (girlfriend was watching it, not me) media announces the opening of the Wal-Mart of WEED in Sacto, Cali to nation of waking Americans; the news should be that Good Morning America is now announcing store openings that relate to pot. Forgetaboutit that this store is probably only going to have the shelf life as week old clones left out in the snow.

 This kind of titillating announcement is a set-back. Maybe it plays to Iowa but makes me sick here in SF. It doesn’t push the movement any farther ahead. In fact, in my opinion, because of their swagger and history of not doing the right thang, this is what the other side looks for when pointing out the hypocrisy of the movement. These are the faces they’ll put on their playing cards when it comes time to figure out who the bad guys were.

Here’s more big news you didn’t know but knew…

Cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy can benefit from the appetite stimulant qualities of cannabis, according to a Canadian study.

For many cancer patients, chemotherapy gives food an unpleasant metallic taste. The sight, smell, and texture of foods can become completely unappetizing. Chemotherapy can also cause a feeling of nausea that compounds the problem, causing many cancer patients to lose weight. Too much weight loss can lead to other serious health concerns.

The pilot study, published in Annals of Oncology, was undertaken to determine if delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), an ingredient in cannabis, could improve taste and smell perception, appetite, caloric intake, and quality of life for cancer patients who were experiencing changes in taste sensation.

Twenty-one patients with advanced cancer and poor appetites were given THC or placebos twice a day for 18 days. All were undergoing chemotherapy or had in the past.

Sixty-four percent of patients who were treated with THC reported an increase in appetite and improvement in food perception. Twenty-seven percent showed no change and no THC-treated patients reported a decrease in appetite.

The THC group also reported better quality of sleep and relaxation than those in the placebo group. Patients who were given the placebo reported decreased appetite or no change at all.

In a press release, Dr. Wendy Wismer (PhD), associate professor at the University of Alberta (Edmonton, Canada), who led the study, said:

“This is the first randomized controlled trial to show that THC makes food taste better and improves appetites for patients with advanced cancer, as well as helping them to sleep and to relax better. Our findings are important, as there is no accepted treatment for chemosensory alterations experienced by cancer patients. We are excited about the possibilities that THC could be used to improve patients' enjoyment of food...

Indeed, cancer patients are often told to 'cope' with chemosensory problems by eating bland, cold and odorless food. This may well have the result of reducing food intake and food enjoyment.”

Further research is necessary, but Dr. Wismer believes doctors could consider THC treatment for cancer patients.

Okay, it’s official, weed gives you the munchies. Scientists have to tell you that because even though Jack-in-the-Box is open until three AM, you didn’t believe when we said it. Like, oh say, about forty years ago.

Now I ask you, when it comes to Marijuana today, who are you going to follow? Us, who are trying to land this baby called Weed onto a level playing field or the Wal-Mart big dollar-eyes money guys who roll out one scheme after another in hopes of cashing in or the scientists who are a half a decade behind in their government-funded studies. Finding out today what Cheech told you yesterday.

It’s All Happening…



Mendocino Farmers Collective-Opens-In Orange County

It might be hard to believe for some of my younger readers that at one time, in order to get a Starbucks coffee; you had to be brave the suicide-invoking rain, a thang called grunge and have to be in the burg Seattle or thereabouts, proper. Now that concept seems preposterous. As Janeane Garofalo once stated, “I don’t want to say that Starbucks are everywhere, but I woke up this morning and they were building one in my living room.”

Maybe one day the same will be said about Mendocino and Humboldt Counties marijuana. Maybe one day getting your medicine will be as easy as standing in line at your nearby coffee shop in your town or getting it delivered right to the house, just like the wine clubs that we belong have done for fifty years.

And the race is on…

In the lead is The Mendocino Farmers Collective (MFC). Started in 2009 by Mendo icon, Tim Blake and his hard-working, not-so-silent, partner, Marv Levin (part of Marv’s loquaciousness is based on Tim’s quiet aversion to public speaking, hence the spokesperson’s job and he handles most of the legal eagle work.) The MFC is due to open soon in its temporary location in the historic and vibe-fully conducive hippie hamlet, Area 101, until the permanent site, a few feet away, should be finished by the magical date of April 20^th.

“If we’re not up and running in the new building by 4/20, I’m going to have hide out for a while,” says the enthusiastic Marv.” But we’ll be ready. We’re ready now really.” 

Toke: How come besides for some bins in the dispensaries that are labeled grown in the ‘Emerald Triangle’, Humboldt and Mendo do not have their own dispensaries dispensing medicine comely directly from you guys. How come you guys don’t have a presence in the Bay Area, like say for example, a winery does from Napa?

Marv: The very quick answer-The Bay Area would be very tough for us to get into at this time. Besides for the outrageous expense it takes, it’s very hard for outside groups to get the needed business licensing while at the same time, competing with the local guys, who in their right are having a hard time. But it is more detailed than that. Right now we’re delivering in Orange County (www.socalmfc.org.) until we branch out or…up.

Toke: What are sales like now?

Marv: Right now we’re averaging around $1500 per day in sales.

Toke: Do you pay taxes in Orange County?

Marv: We pay the State’s Board of Equalization, and from there, Orange County gets some of the bread.

Toke: For seven years, Area 101 has hosted America’s longest running Cannabis competition, The Emerald Cup. I know personally that some of the best marijuana in the country is represented. Will any of that be available to members of the collective?

Marv: Five of our twelve farms within the collective have placed in the top ten every year. But while our medicine is top-notch, what we’re stressing is to make the patients aware of the most medicinal ways to use their cannabis and most eco-friendly manner, as well as that it was grown by small farms who pay taxes and give back to the community.

Toke: So obviously, all of your medicine is outdoor organic.

Marv: (Laughs) For the past ten years, since I’ve been really involved in this industry, I’ve lived and breathe what is happening here in Mendocino. What of the things that makes me laugh is the word, organic. See the USDA, the Department of Agriculture owns that word. Marijuana can’t be organic because it doesn’t qualify as ‘organic’ as stated in the USDA’s rules. What we are is Clean Green. It is a transparent, accredited third-party company run by Chris Van Hook, who also works with the USDA organic program, to insure that our farmers are indeed growing strictly outdoors and in accordance with state and county regulations, no toxins or chemical-based fertilizers are going into the medicine and just as important, their water and electricity are coming from legitimate sources. And we grow from seeds, which really is and different from 75% or more of the medical marijuana growers in California.

Toke: I know the medicine is good. What can a patient expect to pay for an ounce?

Marv: Between $220 and 280, depending.

Toke: Same rules apply, a person needs their Medical Marijuana card, make an appointment, fill out the free membership, and then you’re a member?

Marv: There’s some checking and verification, but yes. Even though I’m laughing about this, we take everything very serious. We’re too close to have anything go wrong now. That’s one of the reason are farms are so thoroughly reviewed; we do that for the farmer as well as ourselves. We want to help our collective growers with the paperwork and political stuff so they don’t fail or worse, bring us and the other farmers down. Same thing with patients. We need to set an example for the rest of the country that this can be done. That’s another reason it might seem slow to outsiders why this is taking so long. We can’t afford mistakes.

You mentioned the Emerald Cup. We have now award- winning medicine in our grasps, but what is also happening is those growers, who are a part of our collective, can now come out and take pride in their crop.

This is big. Beyond everything that we’re doing up here…one of the…things…we’re doing… is to create… no, that not right. How can I say this? Most of us already have pleasure in what we’re doing, for the most part. Growing marijuana can be a lot of headaches, it’s a hard life. Snow knocked out my power for five days last week. But what the growers now can do is say, “this is my stuff. I grew this!” That pride will become contagious. We’ve never been able to come out like this before. People are going to want our medicine because it was grown clean and green in Mendocino County. And soon, like Napa Valley wines, we’ll be everywhere.

Toke: When will you be able to deliver to the Bay Area?

Marv: Soon, very soon. That’s next.

How to join: http://mendocinofarmerscollective.org/join.php

For More info: 707-354-3081



Wild in the Streets

What I find utterly fascinating about the Tea Party is how quickly they became established as a political voice and party. As I’ve stated before, being a member of various left-wing causes and having marched against wars since I was thirteen, why are they heard opposed to us?

Now with what is happening in Wisconsin, and the support that the Tea Party sponsored governor has, my only question is-How long until there is a class war in America?

America began its short walk down the Orwellian path January 20^th 2009, coincidently, the day the first African-American president was elected in United States. From that point on, all problems, dilemmas, and predicaments that had ever befallen the great land of ours, was now Obama’s fault. Whatever happened previously, from the stewing books of Enron to the drain of two wars at the cost of two billion each a week, from the old stalwarts like pollution, abortion, immigration, 9/11 to children being fat-all his twenty-six months-at-the-job, his burden.   

We live paradoxically and conveniently in the Age of Entitlement and revisionist history. We live in a time of basically-I deserve it because I say so! We don’t believe in experience or history. Our collected hatred has become so immense that we’ve stopped being for something and have turned passions towards the Capriciousness of Opposition. Our value is- ‘I don’t know what I’m against until I hear what you’re for.’ We aren’t much for anything anymore, but we are against what you’re for. The Tea Party no longer needs a plan; they just need a group to rally against. They are the originals rebels without causes.     

Take a look what’s happening in Wisconsin. The Governor came into office with a surplus budget. He whittled that down to nothing with deals for his business partners. The pensions of the Badger state along with most other American states and Iceland were lost due to the price-fixing scheming of Wall Street when they dupe America with the credit-swaps genius Ponzi exchange. Once the coffers of the state’s budget was dry, the money that was due to the workers who've been paying into these benefits since their first paycheck, the Governor turned on those same people whose money was drain by guys who right now are getting big, fat bonuses. He’s blaming the people whose money was stolen for letting their money being stolen by people like him. And here’s the crazy part…he has support.

The same people who do not understand that the highways and streets they drive on are paid for by this mysterious process called taxes. Police, firemen and 911 operators have to be paid. That when we say, “Support the Troops,” it means that they get their veteran’s check on time and the hospitalization they may need stays open. That the old and infirm that depend on the repayment that the Government has had stashed in a bank somewhere drawing interest, gets it.      

But in New America, only some are entitled, like corporations. It wasn’t enough that Gianticor, Inc. need not disclose their political contributions like the rest of us slobs have to. No, now the Tea Party wants to do away with having the biggest polluters and connivers not have to pay taxes. They believe, and remember, because we’re only going by Texas school book history, the trickle-down economics of the Reagan Era did work. And remember, this is all bullshit, The Tea Party members now believe that if you let Big Business be, deregulate and just open the doors and your drawers for them, we will all prosper. Now mind you, that has never happen in the history of the world. But now, we are being told it really does work. The same way Republican presidents balance the budgets and downsize government. Just ask Dick Army or Sarah Palin, they’ll tell you. Or tweet you at the very least.    

So it is the union’s fault this is all happening. Those teachers and nurses, they’re the bad guys. What’s strange about that is, I know many teachers and nurses. I really don’t know one guy who works on Wall Street. I have more teachers and nurses on my block than I do Wall Street types. I never really realized how many bad people I live among.

But I digress…

Right now in America, we’re turning against each other in the name of money. It seems if you’re fearful and if you could turn back the Hands of Time to some vague, unknown date before everything got weird for you, you support the Rich and refuse to question their motives and desires. If you’re like me baffled and can’t believe how far Right this country has gone all the while calling the New Conservatism we’re experiencing, “The Middle.”

I am sure in the next few months we will debate children labor laws, along with tuna control and why are we letting these crazy chicks vote anyway?

For many of us, it hard to believe how fast this country is changing, and then again, not changing. For some, Obama represents the ultimate Boogie-Man. A stranger uninvited who has taken over our women and children’s minds, and no one sees it. Because of him, we need to change everything.

And what is everything? The legal right to abortion. That damn big yellow bird that some accredited with bringing down Apartheid in South Africa, forcing children of different colors to accept each other. The money that allows for crucifixes to being dunked in urine, that the Liberals call art. In other words, the Usual Suspects.

Right now the conservatives, the Republicans and the Tea-Baggers no longer need the cries of, “Jobs now!” They made it in. They got the gig.

Soon the New Conservatives will wake up and realize that the streets and stoplights are paid with tax dollars. The same people that want America to return to the Mayberry values of the Fifties are going to find out they’ve been duped again.

Do you think they’re going to be mad at their leaders? I don’t think so, that isn’t change they can believe in. It will always be the same old bad guys for them. Liberal causes. The very identical acts that their leaders already have access to, abortions, health care, drugs they want gone.

It will be this self-hatred and embarrassment that will cause seemingly nonviolent people to become a throbbing mass of anger. Once looting and inability to get health care becomes the norm, those same people who are now crying for the end of taxes and leaders, who look out for others, are going to become very upset. They’re going to need to find their Own Very Private Iraq.

With Tea-baggers, voting the bustards out of office is not enough. Otherwise they would have used their right to vote before. I fear righteous rioting will be the escape valve for their indignation over the ignorance of not knowing how the American tax system works.  

How Can You Miss The Homeless When They Won’t Go Away?

 

As I mentioned in some columns a few months past, I’ve strained the relationships I have with my sheltered neighbors over the issue of homelessness. Sometimes I feel like that one lone juror who holds out against the other eleven well-intentioned civic-minded peers who feel the culprits are guilty, of something. All I have to go on is a gut suspicion that the defendants aren’t guilty. But I can’t prove it.

The scenario in front of my building and the two adjacent streets that run perpendicular to my block, are overcrowded every night with sleeping bodies snuggle in sleeping bags, blankets and sometimes less. They can start drinking first thing in the morning. There are pee stains and drying up streams etched on to the sides of buildings, until the sun evaporates the liquid, leaving that traceable familiar intangible smell of piss and concrete. And that’s just Number One of our problems we all share living on this block.

  The trouble started two months ago when my neighbor, Paul, who lives at the end of my block, and I mean, at the end of my block, was told to move from the spot he had placed his cardboard mattress and sleeping bag. There was a new owner who took over the building he was sleeping in front of, and was told he had to go.

Paul doesn’t drink. Oh, he’s homeless. If you weren’t familiar with all the different people who live on the street, you couldn’t probably tell him apart from the other multi-layered wanderers who roam our burg. Paul’s been my neighbor for over five years. Over the years I’ve brought him food, clothes and in the old days, maybe some marijuana for the cold and lonely nights he faces. I stopped giving him Weed when I noticed he would sit in his bag all day, burning his lips, getting every last toke out of the roaches I gave him. We talk all the time. It’s hard for me not to talk to someone who’s living on my block, sometimes sitting in his concert chair, low to the ground. Some days we’d talk politics, San Francisco, the Giants. Other days we might just say, “Hi.”

My girlfriend like others, don’t appreciate when she’s leaving for work in the morning and a bearded face wrapped like a mummy says, “Good morning.” Like most people on my block, they just want to be left alone. I’ve talk to the homeless guys in sit in front of our building or around the corner, about not talking to the people who live here. They think they’re being respectful and disparaging the notion that the straights need to not be afraid of us. I said, “It doesn’t matter what you’re thinking, they don’t want to hear from you.”

This hurt their feelings, except Paul. He kind of understood. But he’s lived here for five years and he thought he had found a way to ingratiate himself, without being a problem.

Because Paul doesn’t drink, he doesn’t hang out with the rest. He goes to bed around sunset and wakes up around seven. He has breakfast. Usually something with bread and cheese and whatever goes in between. Then he moves his shopping cart in front of my place (I gave him permission, he doesn’t need it, it is legal to do) and then he goes across the street for the rest of the day until darkness begins to fall again.

But since he was told to move, life has been very uneven for Paul. The other guys are bad news for him. They get busted for drinking and for talking loud and belligerent. They create messes and force the Regs to walk around them and their icky shadows on the sidewalk. Some days, and especially if a woman has joined the group, it’s a party. There could be vomit and bodily fluids to follow until the cops come and tell them either to quiet down or rarely, to move.

So for the past few months Paul has been depressed. I asked him once where he used to live. He pointed with his fingers the spots, the locations where he used to set his bag at night before he moved to the end of my block. Where he used to live was no more than one hundred yards from his corner. For the previous five years before Paul lived on my corner, he moved around five times, each time not more than fifty feet away from the last local. I never knew what to think of that, except people don’t like change.

I’ve tried to get Paul work, but he won’t do anything that involves him leaving the block. So if a neighbor needs help moving some furniture or other heavy lifting, Paul and I do it. I give him the money. That’s how I think I’m helping him.

As often as I tried to pry to figure out what was going on with Paul, he was pretty tight-lipped. It wasn’t until about a year ago, that I found out that Paul was born in San Francisco. That he had been a carpenter and showed me his up-to-date union card for his local. It was on the job that he hurt himself and something else happened around that time, something emotional. It was during that event that Paul ended up on the street. He doesn’t give me details, I don’t go farther than he allows.

People who live in my building are from all over America. Some have been only in the building for less than five years. They want Paul and the other homeless to move. At some point in time, it’s like everyone feels they have a right to their spots, the place they unwrap their bedrolls, indoors or out.

Because of the economic times we live in, there’s no slow up on the arrivals of homeless people attracted to coming to San Francisco. It is a major problem for all concern. Today it was announced that President Obama is cutting aid to low-income homes for heating back East. And this is from a democrat.  

I could get into the politics of the situation, but I’m not going to. That is not the purpose of today’s column.

Last weekend Paul told me he was moving. He couldn’t handle living over here anymore. He said if I didn’t see him one day that means he’s moved to Hunter’s Point. This is almost the last section of San Francisco that is not totally redone. You can still get mugged there on a normal night, no problem. It’s the part of town that the police still no longer respond to.

Paul said with a smile, “Out there, no one bothers you.” Referring to the drunks he has to share the street with, not my neighbors who have asked him not to park his cart in front of their building during the day.

When Paul said he was leaving, I got sad. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to follow up on him. I wanted to be able to talk to him in a couple of months to know he’s okay. I thought of giving him my email address, but that could be hard for him to access a computer. Then I thought of giving him my phone number. But I could only imagine a three A.M. call from the police or some other official voice asking if I know a homeless guy named Paul?

I didn’t know what to do.

Paul told me thanks for everything that my girlfriend and I had done for him. We shook hands and he said, “Don’t worry Jack, we’ll see other again. I know where you live.”

And I still don’t know how I feel about that.

 



Family Feud Lights Up