Making Marijuana Legal

I recently discovered the Documentary channel on the Dish network and have seen some excellent, though very disturbing, films.

Recently I watched one about the drug wars in Mexico and the whole gun culture that feeds it and I came up with the obvious conclusion that we must legalize marijuana and make a lot of this violence stop immediately.  But that is not profitable.  I learned that there are at least 7000!!! gun shops along the border to Mexico and the owners are not even required to report their sales.    The Mexican drug cartels are armed by American assault rifles.  They are brought into Mexico by the truckloads from the US and are rarely seized.  It was shocking.  It all has to do with the National Rifle Association (NRA), backed by $250 million, and the gun lobby, which works tirelessly to make the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms powerless to change this situation.    There was an interview with the head of the ATF Agency who basically said that no matter what they do,  the gun lobby wins.    The footage of the carnage in Mexico made me look away sometimes.  The body count is rising and in the last four years, at least 7000 people have been murdered.   One American gun shop owner was interviewed and asked if he knew that his guns were being used for killing in the drug war and he said yes.   Asked if he felt any regret about the situation, his response was No, this is America.      Whaaa?

Incidentally, Wisconsin has some of the least restrictive gun laws in the country and they even showed footage of a big community bbq/picnic where all the men were "packing".  They were all, without exception,  enjoying the picnic with guns stuck in their belts....I mean with little kids running around and all that!!!  I had to wonder if this was the same planet as that one.

I am not against anybody owning a gun (but keep it in a locked box in car trunk or truck if you must keep it with you, for God's sake!)but I am very against ANY individual owning an assault rifle.  I do not know what to do about this problem, honestly.  It is all based in FEAR.  Yes it is.  Fearful people need to wear  guns to a community picnic.  

But the subject was marijuana.  While it is a No-Brainer that medical marijuana should have been legal nation wide before this, and Obama has missed the boat on that one, I believe all marijuana should be legal and let them tax the hell out of it like they do everything else.  They might still kill each other over cocaine, but it sure will reduce the carnage immensely and free up tons of room in the prisons.  And speaking of prisons, the for-profit route we are going in just puts all those criminals back into a position of slavery with little hope to rehabilitate and get out ever.  They need a quota in those places to get their money...and Boy, do they get it.  

Another reason to legalize the cannabis plant is to free up the production of hemp, a most useful and strong material that was once in common use in industry.  Politics & greed caused it to be outlawed but I hope we can swing the whole thing around before long.    It is greed that has caused the drug war fed by gun sales, and since the demand for marijuana will not be going away, there is only one solution.  

I don't have a suitable photo for this article either, so I will again just add one of my drawings/pntngs.  These are my Camelias.  They are not in bloom at the moment but they are budding.

In the Company of Writers

I attended a wonderful event last Saturday at Flagler College, here in St. Augustine.  It was "The Florida Heritage Book Festival" and it was simply delightful.  My only regret is that I was late for the first session and could only go to one presentation at a time from all the offerings!   A long list of authors gave lectures and workshops and it was so difficult to choose from among them.

  I caught the tail end of Hilary Hemingway discussing  her uncle Ernest's life in Cuba, the PBS documentary she is directing, a book she is writing, as well as the upcoming feature film,  Hemingway & Fuentes.    Sounds interesting, doesn't it?  It was and she had original slides on the screen to bring it to life.

   The next writer I chose after reading this description: Deborah Sharp left her job reporting for USA Today to write her Mace Bauer Mysteries.  A native Floridian, she rode horseback across her home state as research for the four books in the series.  Deborah's short fiction and essays have appeared nationally and her commentaries are heard on NPR.     Horseback across the state!!??!!  That's what got me.  How cool is that?  I asked her about it and she said even tho she grew up riding horses, it was a whole lot different in her 50's than in her teens.  Her descriptions had me laughing so hard I cried.  She said sitting in a lawn chair in the wagon pulled by a mule was even worse!   Her description of the ups and downs of her career and the relationship with her husband, a veteran tv news reporter, was hilarious as well.  I really want to read her books, which are mysteries with humor.

Each session was an hour with a break for lunch.  I sat outside at an umbrella table and ate the sandwich I'd brought while poring over the booklet trying to choose the next 2 offerings...not easy!

The next one I picked was a team of two women, Adrian Fogelin & Caren Umbarger, whose presentation was entitled:  From Writer to Author   "Your story: from your mind to the bookstore shelf".   They were both very smart and very funny with lots of experience and wisdom to impart.  Here is what the booklet said about them:    Adrian Fogelin the author of seven novels for middle grade and one young adult novel.  Her latest book is "Summer on the Moon".  Her books have received two Florida Book Award Gold Medals and numerous other awards including one for Italy's most prestigious children's book award.
Caren Unbarger won a Bronze Medal at the 2011 Florida Book Awards for her first novel, "Coming To: A Midwestern Tale".  The book is set in her hometown of Mason City, Iowa, and was inspired by the lives of her grandmothers.  She is a professional musician and string teacher. 

The ladies had questions about their writing processes already formulated that they each answered.  Adrian described her novelist mom stirring at the stove while she reread her manuscript held in her other hand.  She said she started editing her mom's writing and eventually her mother valued her daughter's input.     Caren described finding the mentor of a lifetime in Minneapolis where she traded violin lessons for writing lessons with a man named Alexs Pate, who wrote the book from which the film, "Amistad" was made.   She had many memorable quotes of the advice he had given her.  The hour made me more aware of my own value as a writer, however green and unknown, and the wonderful opportunity the internet provides for getting one's voice out there.

Finally, for the last hour of the day's offerings, I chose to listen to Jeff Ashton presenting "Imperfect Justice: Prosecuting Casey Anthony     An insider's look at the intricacies of the trial and the persona of the defendant."   Here is what the booklet said about him:  Jeff Ashton was on the prosecution team for one of the most-watched trials in U.S. history.  His book, "Imperfect Justice: Prosecuting Casey Anthony", covers that experience and will soon be a TV movie starring Rob Lowe.  Ashton recently retired from a 30-year career as a prosecutor.    How could I resist that?  While admittedly not a writer,  Mr. Ashton gave lots of credit to his co-writer and joked about how everybody, including himself, got an "upgrade" with the choices of actors depicting them in the film.   His discussion of his experience was fascinating.  He invited the audience to present questions to him as he went along and they did.  He was obviously in disagreement with the verdict and was incredulous that the jury seemed to ignore some of most powerful evidence that would have resulted in a guilty verdict.  But, he shrugged, these things can happen and Ms. Anthony cannot be retried.  He did not believe she could ever live peacefully in the United States.

There was also a Marketplace, a large room with author book sales and signings, book-related vendors, and door prizes.  Not all the writers there had presentations but many had books that I intend to order.

So that, in as much of a nutshell as I can reduce it to, was the wonderful day.  I urge everyone to put it on next year's calendar.   It actually began on Thursday afternoon and continued all day Friday at World Golf Village.  Saturday was the free day and I hope to be there again.

Flux

Haven't written anything lately as I have been absorbed with maintenance jobs at home, car repairs, (I certainly didn't do them but stood by and helped a little while a friend did), volunteer-teaching an after-school art class, and now at my daughter's apartment hanging out with the kids.

 I return home early tomorrow for the all-day Writers' Festival held at Flagler College.  I went last year and it was really great; numerous writers spoke in different rooms and it was difficult choosing which ones to listen to.  They were all fascinating and often very funny.  I'm looking forward to it and it's free!  I'll bring a lunch and sit at one of the nice outdoor umbrella tables when we have the free time.

I have a lot of things swimming around in my head about which I may want to write but for now I  will just add a couple of drawings that I did some time ago.

Making a Choice

It is not as though anybody who knows me doesn't realize that my politics are far to the Left and environmentally I am very conservative.    There is obviously only one choice I can make for this upcoming election.  Obama has made some pretty big mistakes but he has also done some serious good.    It certainly appears like this is a contest between the 1% and the 99%, with Obama representing the latter.

A Republican president at this time would roll back already fragile environmental laws to benefit business interests for the very wealthy.  Then there are women's rights for health care, as in Planned Parenthood, which the Republicans would eliminate along with other social programs.  I don't even want to think about what will become of Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security, which are absolutely vital to many Americans.  Veterans were not even mentioned at the Republican Convention.

I have been watching Free Speech TV lately with Thomas Hartmann and his various guests.  He is very knowledgeable about politics and history and I have been learning a lot.  For example, I now understand exactly what fascism is.  It is the merging of government and corporatism; represented by greed for money and power from monopolistic corporate cartels.  They are stronger now than ever.  They are the 99%.  Romney is a Corporatist.   Their tactics include a deliberate perversion of Truth & Fact.  They are trying to pit commoners, like you & me, against each other,  (via race, religion, gender) and therefore keep the commoner in eternal subjection.    I also learned that the richest Americans are stashing  21 TRILLION Dollars off-shore.  These people claim to be patriots and claim to be religious and they are actually parasitic.   Tom Hartmann urges us all to become active and to Occupy Something!

At the same time I want to do the Zen thing and be unemotional about it all and leave it up to The Great Spirit.        

Here is a pencil drawing I did inside my house.