Four-twenty and so on and so forth...

Back in the 1970's, there was a group of teenage high school friends who were known as The Waldos. And it came to pass that they heard tell of a secret abandoned field of marijuana. It was determined that a search for this pot of gold might provide an efficacious result, so they determined to set out upon such task by congregating by a local statue at 4:20 in the PM. The meeting time became a slang term which eventually found its way into the general population. For many years now, April the 20th has been the date of "smoke ins", celebrations of stoner age culture, and protest marches seeking legalization of cannabis sativa and various things hemp.

Smoking pot used to be one of those things that was just there somewhere in the background of the culture, often found in the circles of hot jazz and swing musicians. Hemp had many uses and was an excellent (and renewable) source for making everything from paper to rope and clothing.

In 1917, a young man by the name of Harry Anslinger married the niece of Andrew Mellon. His connections helped him acquire employment from military and police organizations, traveling the world with a mission of shaping international drug polices. In 1929, he became an assistant commissioner in the US Bureau of Prohibition.  In 1930, he became the first commissioner of the U.S. Treasury Department's Federal Bureau of Narcotics, a position he held for 32 years, until 1962. He immediately began a campaign to destroy hemp as a feasible crop. Publisher William Randolph Hearst had invested heavily in the timber industry to support his newspaper chain. Hearst lost 800,000 acres of timberland to the Mexican Revolution, and needed to protect the rest of his investment. Hearst pushed the anti-hemp crusade. Both men hated Mexicans and African Americans; they began spreading the worst kind of lies and distortions to create negative stereotypes of our neighbors. They were soon joined by the Dupont company, which was about to release synthetics such as nylon. Pharmaceutical companies joined the fight. Hemp production had to go. Marijuana was portrayed as an evil, connected to the dastardly poor Mexican rabble. In 1937, a tax act was used to effectively prohibit hemp/pot. To pass it, Anslinger and Co. distorted and lied about the position of the American Medical Association. Their friends in Hollywood were pressed to join the crusade, and the "Reefer Madness" era began.

 

 

By July 1939, the local paper here in Vermont carried a few stories like this one:

 

 

From the late 1920's through to about 1939, jazz musicians created quite a few songs about the joys of pot smoking, the 'reefer man' and etc. Soon such recordings were outlawed, as was their use in the movies. For my radio show of April 18th, I played some of my collection of such songs.

Also in this week's radio show was a too short nod to the events which started late in the evening of... well, as a poet once put it, " 'Twas the 18th of April in '75, hardly a man is now alive who remembers that famous day and year." It's part of a poem we once knew as kids. It starts, "Listen my children and you shall hear, of the midnight ride of Paul Revere...."  The poet, Mr. Longfellow, writing close to 100 years after the fact got a lot of it wrong. An earlier poem by Mr. Emerson started:

 

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.

 

One of these days I should really get back to regular posting and tell that story. There's parts of it elsewhere in the blog, but suffice it to say that on April the 19th the colonists fought back and really did change the world.

 

It was another fight that was the underpinning of the rest of the radio show. It was April, 1945. President Roosevelt had died (see last week's show post). The Allies were descending on Berlin. Here in Brattleboro, it was time to start the yearly Victory Garden. On the radio the night of April 21st, the Victory Parade of Spotlight Bands featured Johnny Long and His Orchestra....

 

The organization which registers and tracks the breeding of Holsteins is located in Brattleboro.

  

 

 

 

  

As always, I hope anyone who listens enjoys the show.

     

Strolling

Well.

Now I'm all grumpy.
I started out in a nice mood.
But, before I could even get into the blog, just as it started opening I got one of those error messages. My security settings have decided they no longer like the little rotating globe. For awhile there, I got a window dialogue (oh, yeah, with whom?) box which required me to approve the globe's use. It appeared all the time, even after repeatedly checking the "always allow the rotating globe with the little red dots to do its thing" box. I like the globe. I like the little red dots. They show the geographic locations from which visitors to this blog have arrived. It annoys some people. It makes me smile. There have been a few updates recently to programs I use, most for security issues of course. Somewhere in the updates, default settings were changed - but not by me. So now I get a message that my security settings have blocked the globe application from running. This message was a statement. I was not given an option to change the setting involved. It didn't even note which program was doing the blocking. Was it Java? I've always suspected that in the end the Java would get me, but I expected the word mocha to be involved. Was it my web browser? My antivirus? My Firewall? Windows own security settings? My ISP? I know what is likely to happen here. I'm going to become obsessed at a time when I'm really, really busy with other things in life. I don't have the time right now to allow gritty determination to conquer the problem to take hold. I'll inevitably end up at some point spending hours checking settings, trolling for updates, researching otherwise arcane inane online forums for a solution that allows me to see the little rotating red globe with the... arrrgh! Frustration is already mounting.

Maybe this is just an illustration of my topic. In a way, these ramblings are here for me to come back to 20 years from now (if I last that long) so I can snicker at the hopeless idiot I used to be. What happened was this: I walked down the street. Ya know, I wonder how many times I say I walked "up" the street. It feels like it's always walk "down" the street. I don't know that for sure, it just seems likely. I was walking down the street to go up to town. Well, I'm already in town, so I guess I meant walk uptown to downtown. At any rate, I was zooming off somewhere when it hit me smack dab in the middle of the ol' third eye - I was zooming. Again. I walk fast. Even using a cane I pass most people out there. I find myself doing it all the time. I walked fast in New York. There the energy is manic anyway and I was a diagnosed manic depressive - we fit like a glove, but maybe I shouldn't use that tired old phrase anymore as somewhere in the back of my mind I now hear "If the glove don't fit...." But I never hurried because I felt unsafe or anything like that. I just rushed from place to place - a lot. From time to time, when the pressure to start, to do, or to finish something was off, I'd stroll. I like strolling. Down the beach. Down the boardwalk. Down the boulevard. Through the Village, through Central Park, out onto the Morton Street Pier, through Boston's historic downtown, the South End and Back Bay neighborhoods of Victorian bowfronts, down the trails on Mount Wantastiquet (a.k.a. rattlesnake mountain, but no one has seen a rattler for ages so strolling is okay) across the river from Brattleboro. Yes, I like to stroll. Every now and again, I find myself bustling about like I was auditioning for a holiday movie scene, rushing home to get warm again. Zooming around in winter has a purpose, I can excuse it. But this time of year? It's a pattern into which I often fall. I have to remind myself to stroll. I'm retired now. It's okay to do.

Certainly, there is a lot to take in around Brattleboro these days. June just about anywhere in New England is a wonderful thing. There's lots of flowering trees, lots of gardens to walk by. The peonies are in bloom. Etc. For instance, here's a building more or less across and up the street from my place. I see it when I look out my sliding door windows. it's one of those old big houses left over from the days when the rich local merchants built huge homes just off the center of town.

The trees and shrubs were in bloom, it would have been natural to run over there for a visual drink it all in tour. But I never got there. Too busy. Then it rained for days and days. When the rain stopped, the blooms were gone. I've lived in this apartment through five springs, but I've never seen that place bloom like this. And I missed seeing it up close because I was rushing about.

Summer has arrived. It really is nice out, if a tad warm. This time of year the setting sun hits the leaves of the birch trees in front of my apartment in such a way as to make a glance heartrendingly beautiful. The effect only lasts a few seconds as the late afternoon begins the slide into twilight. It's one of those things I enjoy seeing, one of those things I like, one of those things that make me smile. Sometimes I have to remind myself to slow down, to see, smell, take it all in.

I have a garden on another edge of town, on the grounds of an old Governor's mansion which is now home to many holistic health practitioners. For the last several years, my poor garden has been left to its own devices. Now that I'm retired, I'm trying to save what's left. I've no car and it's a good 45 minute walk. Two days ago, a day the sun came out after another spate of rainy days, I remembered to stroll on my way there. I suddenly noticed I was passing a beautiful classic Triumph.  I would normally have hurried by and not noticed it. Now, my pocket sized digital point and click died, and I'd just purchased a new one on sale plus discount coupon. I decided to stop and take a snap.

 

When I looked up, I saw this almost immediately across the street in front of the Blind Masseur:

 

 

 Over the last few years, "classic" cars and bikes seem to have become a 'must have' item around these parts. And they are spawning. Every year there are more. Now there is barely a nice weekend that goes by without a small coterie of Chevys, Fords, or what have you rolling through town. They fit in to the area, they belong here - if you know what I mean.

 

The above picture, for instance, is not an old kodachrome. It was taken just 5 minutes up the road last fall by a local friend, Gene Herman. The blue Dodge is his. I hope to get a ride in it one day.



When one talks about June in Brattleboro, one must be careful using the word "stroll". Brattleboro has become known for our annual rites of tourist June, The Strolling of the Heifers. There is a big parade, with young cowlings led up Main Street to the Common. People come from all around to see it. Lots of people from nearby cities who have only seen cows on the animal planet channel. I'm not making this up. When the idea was first broached, I was quick (along with about 12,000 others) to label the concept "The Running of the Cows". The original sponsors were big corporations like Con-Agra, and a new company becoming known for its ice cream - a company with a home address right in the middle of Pennsylvania Dutch country, redolent with images of bucolic scenes of goodness and wholesomeness, except that they refused to commit to using growth hormone free milk in their products. In other words, it was a sham, its location meant to burnish a false public image. Sort of like the Parade of the Cows. Over the years (how can this have gone on for more than a decade?) the event has repositioned itself as supporting local organic family farms. It even raises money for education. I finally broke down and watched the parade a couple of years back. After the parade there is a "dairy fest" on the Common and on the grounds of the Brattleboro Retreat (which started life as the Vermont Asylum for the Insane - enough said.) I didn't get to go this year, as the radio station participated in the parade and I was in the studio with DJ Wild Goose playing appropriate strolling music. Here's a couple of pics from a couple of years back just to prove I'm not making this stuff up. It's Brattleboro, making stuff up never trumps the unreality of the place.

And at the "Dairy Fest", which used to give out ice cream for free, but now everything costs. And since everything has the label "local" (even when it's not) the price has a "value added" extra cost:

 

Oops. I just noticed the time. I'll have to finish this another day - this has already been a two day'er. If I don't start work on my radio show for tonight in the next few minutes... What on earth possessed me? Ah, I know what happened. I was strolling...