Some Thoughts to Linger Around For a While On the Front Page
I'd been hoping to write about Hempfest earlier, but haven't had much time. Well, that's kind of lie. I've actually had some time, but I've been hammering on wingnuts instead. It's kind of an indication that I'm a little stressed out and just choosing to do the easiest thing for a blogger - to make fun of idiots.
Anyway, the reason I'm stressing out is because of my house situation. I'm still planning to move down to Kent at the end of October, but our house is still on the market here, and I'm well into the nail-biting stage. Theher and I are determined to move into this new house regardless, and deal with the financial repercussions later if we continue to have trouble selling. But I think I need to accept that for the next two months, I simply can't keep this site as active as I'd like it to be. If I have things to say, I'll be saying them at HorsesAss or EffU.
Strangely, the hardest thing for me to do is to take two months away from doing the Birds Eye View Contests. It's been a really fun part of my weekly routine to look for good images to use. I'll probably still look for good images, but the next contest won't be posted until after Halloween. And also, I really want to thank commenter Mlc1us and my good friend N in Seattle for making the contests so much fun.
As for Hempfest, it was a great weekend - and the first time in three or four years that I was able to spend a lot of time there. I caught up with Dominic Holden, one of the original forces behind Hempfest, who has also become a good friend recently. I chatted with other activists like Mason Tvert, Kris Krane, and David Guard, and listened to a number of great speakers. The attorney panel on Sunday, with Lee Berger, Allison Margolin, and Jeffrey Steinborn was outstanding. David Nott from Reason and local medical marijuana attorney Douglas Hiatt also shared some good thoughts in other panels. Unfortunately, I missed Rick Steves and the LEAP panel, but I heard they were great as well.
When I first went to Hempfest back in the late 90s as a new Seattlite, I thought of myself as just the typical yuppie stoner, although I'm not really sure I was ever typical of any type of stoner. When I first moved to Seattle, I was actually shocked at how few people I encountered in this city who smoked pot. After going to high school in the Philly suburbs and then to college in Ann Arbor, I came out here thinking that pot smoking was a much more widespread activity than it really is. If you'd asked me as a 22 year old in 1997 what percentage of my peers across the United States smoked pot, I might have seriously responded 80-90%. In fact, on a trip back home to Philadelphia at around that time, I asked my good friend from high school if he could think of anyone our age who didn't smoke pot. He couldn't think of a single person, and we didn't even start smoking pot until we all went to college. It took me some time to realize that my particular experience was much more unique than I realized at the time.
Yet, I have no regrets about that and no reason to be shy about it either. This may be hard for some people to accept, but I feel very lucky to have discovered pot the way I did. And I feel that it has been a blessing for me throughout my adult life. As a naturally high-strung and highly motivated person, I've found it to be of great use for relaxation and creative thought. One of my favorite ways to relax is to get high and do a New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle (I like Scrabble too, but theher refuses to play me any more). Some of the best ideas I've had for my posts here have come from being under the influence. I even wrote most of the code for this site's two games after a few tokes (by the way, thanks to whoever linked to my Zonk game from Wikipedia).
As I walked around Hempfest, it's obvious to me that not everyone gets the same thing from pot that I do, but that's part of what generates so much misunderstanding about it. It's a different experience for different people. It doesn't change your interests so much as focus them. People who like music will get more into music. People into art will get more into their particular craft. And the 70-year-old guy wearing the pink ballerina outfit dancing in a circle...well, he's doing whatever he gets into, and who am I to tell him he's wrong. In the end, I think that people who use it have a more acute sense of tolerance and self-worth, and have a better understanding of the diversity of interests that make up this world. It's certainly true that the people I know who smoke pot regularly are some of the best human beings I know.
In years past, I've bought the occasional bong or pipe, but this year, as I've gone from being a stoner to an activist, I only bought a small poster with a quote from one of my idols, Carl Sagan:
Hempfest is a serious political statement masquerading as a big party. It can't be ignored that there's a serious incongruity to having 150,000 people flocking to a park in downtown Seattle over a single weekend to celebrate doing something that every major candidate running for president believes should stay illegal. Is this just how human nature works? Will human existence always drift through time with this bubble of society that is absurdly deemed as subversive and criminal? Or will this bubble eventually burst when it gets too big? Or will it be taken apart piece by piece when it gets too expensive to maintain? The odd - almost surreal - way that cannabis was made illegal across the globe is something that easily lends itself to conspiracy theories. There are many times that I wonder how much the rationale for Sagan's glowing endorsement of the drug is precisely the reason why so many powerful people sought to criminalize it.
On the Sunday of Hempfest, after having to work in the morning, I walked all the way towards the north end of the park and took out my one-hitter. I stood on the rocks, looked out onto Elliott Bay and fired up my lighter. I actually somewhat dislike getting high in public these days. For one, with all the things I do, I smoke a lot less frequently than I used to, so I get way more baked when I smoke than I used to. But there's really no better environment than Hempfest to take a highly stoned stroll. As I walked back towards the front, to the Hemposium tent where Jack Herer was ranting about the absurdity of cannabis prohibition, I found myself walking behind two Seattle police officers.
Seattle police actually deserve a lot of credit for how they police this event. Even with I-75 making marijuana the lowest law enforcement priority, they could very easily bust people who smoke openly, but they only patrol the main paths and generally recognize that no one needs to be protected from the thousands of people breaking the law around them. I would have to think that the officers who work Hempfest must have a pretty firm grasp of how silly marijuana prohibition is.
Anyway, I realized as I approached the two officers, that they were walking at a slower pace than I was and heading towards a narrow point in the path. As a result, I sped up even more and passed them, thinking about how odd it was that my stoned ass was on less of a leisurely stroll through the crowd than these two officers. I don't say that to criticize them of course, I just wish all of law enforcement in this country were as relaxed about the fact that people all over this country use this drug, and use it responsibly.
I can't really make any promises just yet, but I'm hoping that once everything gets sorted out with my move that I'll be able to start doing my Drug War Roundups again. I have a feeling that we're approaching some critical junctions in the drug law reform movement. Hell, even Fox News was giving some airtime to discussing legalization. In the meantime, check out all the great blogs to the right, and I'll be back when I'm a suburbanite.
Anyway, the reason I'm stressing out is because of my house situation. I'm still planning to move down to Kent at the end of October, but our house is still on the market here, and I'm well into the nail-biting stage. Theher and I are determined to move into this new house regardless, and deal with the financial repercussions later if we continue to have trouble selling. But I think I need to accept that for the next two months, I simply can't keep this site as active as I'd like it to be. If I have things to say, I'll be saying them at HorsesAss or EffU.
Strangely, the hardest thing for me to do is to take two months away from doing the Birds Eye View Contests. It's been a really fun part of my weekly routine to look for good images to use. I'll probably still look for good images, but the next contest won't be posted until after Halloween. And also, I really want to thank commenter Mlc1us and my good friend N in Seattle for making the contests so much fun.
As for Hempfest, it was a great weekend - and the first time in three or four years that I was able to spend a lot of time there. I caught up with Dominic Holden, one of the original forces behind Hempfest, who has also become a good friend recently. I chatted with other activists like Mason Tvert, Kris Krane, and David Guard, and listened to a number of great speakers. The attorney panel on Sunday, with Lee Berger, Allison Margolin, and Jeffrey Steinborn was outstanding. David Nott from Reason and local medical marijuana attorney Douglas Hiatt also shared some good thoughts in other panels. Unfortunately, I missed Rick Steves and the LEAP panel, but I heard they were great as well.
When I first went to Hempfest back in the late 90s as a new Seattlite, I thought of myself as just the typical yuppie stoner, although I'm not really sure I was ever typical of any type of stoner. When I first moved to Seattle, I was actually shocked at how few people I encountered in this city who smoked pot. After going to high school in the Philly suburbs and then to college in Ann Arbor, I came out here thinking that pot smoking was a much more widespread activity than it really is. If you'd asked me as a 22 year old in 1997 what percentage of my peers across the United States smoked pot, I might have seriously responded 80-90%. In fact, on a trip back home to Philadelphia at around that time, I asked my good friend from high school if he could think of anyone our age who didn't smoke pot. He couldn't think of a single person, and we didn't even start smoking pot until we all went to college. It took me some time to realize that my particular experience was much more unique than I realized at the time.
Yet, I have no regrets about that and no reason to be shy about it either. This may be hard for some people to accept, but I feel very lucky to have discovered pot the way I did. And I feel that it has been a blessing for me throughout my adult life. As a naturally high-strung and highly motivated person, I've found it to be of great use for relaxation and creative thought. One of my favorite ways to relax is to get high and do a New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle (I like Scrabble too, but theher refuses to play me any more). Some of the best ideas I've had for my posts here have come from being under the influence. I even wrote most of the code for this site's two games after a few tokes (by the way, thanks to whoever linked to my Zonk game from Wikipedia).
As I walked around Hempfest, it's obvious to me that not everyone gets the same thing from pot that I do, but that's part of what generates so much misunderstanding about it. It's a different experience for different people. It doesn't change your interests so much as focus them. People who like music will get more into music. People into art will get more into their particular craft. And the 70-year-old guy wearing the pink ballerina outfit dancing in a circle...well, he's doing whatever he gets into, and who am I to tell him he's wrong. In the end, I think that people who use it have a more acute sense of tolerance and self-worth, and have a better understanding of the diversity of interests that make up this world. It's certainly true that the people I know who smoke pot regularly are some of the best human beings I know.
In years past, I've bought the occasional bong or pipe, but this year, as I've gone from being a stoner to an activist, I only bought a small poster with a quote from one of my idols, Carl Sagan:
"The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world."As has been mentioned on this blog a number of times, Sagan was a lifelong user of cannabis, a fact he kept very secret. The day I discovered this was a revelatory day for me. I was in my mid-20s and I still wondered if there was something of a law of diminishing returns when it came to the drug and for those who use it to stimulate their thoughts. I worry much less about that now, especially as recent studies have shown that it may even postpone the onset of Alzheimer's. What I know now is that my own ability to accomplish things in life has never been deterred by it, nor my memory or cognitive skills - even though all of us were assured as teenagers that all of those bad things would happen. Granted, I'm also happy that I didn't start using it until I was living on my own at college. I don't think it's a good idea for anyone to use mind-altering substances until they've learned what it takes to succeed at either school or work on your own.
Hempfest is a serious political statement masquerading as a big party. It can't be ignored that there's a serious incongruity to having 150,000 people flocking to a park in downtown Seattle over a single weekend to celebrate doing something that every major candidate running for president believes should stay illegal. Is this just how human nature works? Will human existence always drift through time with this bubble of society that is absurdly deemed as subversive and criminal? Or will this bubble eventually burst when it gets too big? Or will it be taken apart piece by piece when it gets too expensive to maintain? The odd - almost surreal - way that cannabis was made illegal across the globe is something that easily lends itself to conspiracy theories. There are many times that I wonder how much the rationale for Sagan's glowing endorsement of the drug is precisely the reason why so many powerful people sought to criminalize it.
On the Sunday of Hempfest, after having to work in the morning, I walked all the way towards the north end of the park and took out my one-hitter. I stood on the rocks, looked out onto Elliott Bay and fired up my lighter. I actually somewhat dislike getting high in public these days. For one, with all the things I do, I smoke a lot less frequently than I used to, so I get way more baked when I smoke than I used to. But there's really no better environment than Hempfest to take a highly stoned stroll. As I walked back towards the front, to the Hemposium tent where Jack Herer was ranting about the absurdity of cannabis prohibition, I found myself walking behind two Seattle police officers.
Seattle police actually deserve a lot of credit for how they police this event. Even with I-75 making marijuana the lowest law enforcement priority, they could very easily bust people who smoke openly, but they only patrol the main paths and generally recognize that no one needs to be protected from the thousands of people breaking the law around them. I would have to think that the officers who work Hempfest must have a pretty firm grasp of how silly marijuana prohibition is.
Anyway, I realized as I approached the two officers, that they were walking at a slower pace than I was and heading towards a narrow point in the path. As a result, I sped up even more and passed them, thinking about how odd it was that my stoned ass was on less of a leisurely stroll through the crowd than these two officers. I don't say that to criticize them of course, I just wish all of law enforcement in this country were as relaxed about the fact that people all over this country use this drug, and use it responsibly.
I can't really make any promises just yet, but I'm hoping that once everything gets sorted out with my move that I'll be able to start doing my Drug War Roundups again. I have a feeling that we're approaching some critical junctions in the drug law reform movement. Hell, even Fox News was giving some airtime to discussing legalization. In the meantime, check out all the great blogs to the right, and I'll be back when I'm a suburbanite.
posted by thehim at 7:00 PM
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