ReservoirDog
Well-Known Member
Thank you all, moderators, reviewers, growers for your considerate and self sacrificing efforts to create this exceptional forum. It really has been a most important input In my decision to cultivate again.
In late Autumn 1997, deep, deep in the BC coastal rainforest, as I prepared to harvest a small forest of outdoor BC bud with 28 foot apple-picking ladders and a chainsaw, it dawned on me that I had truly embraced the herb as my birthright, as humanity’s indispensable plant. I might even have considered, a time or two, that in its own way the herb might ‘feel’ the same about us.
Sheriff John Brown did not share my perspective.
That harvest came down fine but years before and still a teenager I would be arrested outside a club at closing time as I walked hand in hand with a woman I had weeks before quietly fell for but assumed no realistic shot at the prize. But that night her friend dropped over and asked if I wanted to go out with them tonight. In fact she divulged that she was there on orders by her friend to make sure I came because she’d been crushn’ on me and was gonna do something about tonight come what may. Whoah.
When the police rolled up on us we were making out/walking to her apartment. The police seemed to think I was someone who’d just robbed a club of two 60 ounce bottles of booze minutes before, and I was read my rights and stuffed in their cruiser with a case of blue balls I’ll never forget. I mean she was…. some of the dear lord’s finest work.
I wasn’t, of course, this thief of theirs - If one ever truly existed, for as you can imagine I had been entirely preoccupied. But with my arms in cuffs behind my back I began to have serious concerns about the tiny .5 gram nugget of weed in my breast pocket. It was of course found when I was processed and subsequently I was charged with possession and the stealing charges immediately dropped. Furthermore, since I was from out of town and it was Friday night, they informed me, (though a young guy with no record, I remind you and trust me, tried to remind them), I would be held 3 nights, until Monday when a judge would first be avail. to decide my fate. Now, one stupid thing I did do back then was smoke cigarettes, and thus a 60 hour nicotine fit piled aboard my case of blue balls like Jake and Rose on that floating scrap of wood in the middle of the freezing North Atlantic at the end of Titannic. Yeah, just like that.
And yet, If I had known this was actually going to be the easy part, I might have have slid off into freezing oblivion just like Jack did.
For, I was studying to be a journalist. My father had been one and then with my mother started his own small weekly newspaper. Journalists were my heroes. Writers of history’s first draft and there, present and in person to see it unfold. Communism’s unpredicted collapse had my undivided attention as it took place, Apartheid too, even though I was quite young. I could not fail to sense humanity’s tectonic plates shifting and a proper understanding seemed critical, and such views that a “proper understanding of the truth” seemed to be espoused by every powerful element of human society.
In 1998-99, To burnish my Uni studies I went to a tech college for an intensive 18 mo. photojournalism program and a group of us, anticipating some history, went stateside to shoot and report on the WTC globalism agenda meetings and the anticipated demonstrations against them. It really was a fundamental step into the economic and political world we see now and American workers and students appeared to instinctively appreciate that their jobs were in effect going to be exported and that govt would be completely incapable of ameliorating their losses, regardless the political promises currently in excellent supply. What’s remembered now as the ‘Battle in Seattle’ was from our much considered perspectives at the time a well meaning and very large but impressively organized protest that quite suddenly descended into an absolute orgy of chaos when original space granted protestors was revoked while 100s of them were standing on it with little recourse to move. The three of us, while endangered and injured, got shots that were featured around the world and I won the schools highest prize and another from a student press club in the US. Such work, well, it felt like the beginning of something great, indeed it felt for all the world like destiny. But history, and that damnable possession charge, would see to it that my chance at writing history’s first draft would burn in a terrifying conflagration 3000miles away with so much other human potential on one of the clearest early September mornings in living memory.
Until September 11 2001, approx 3 years after Seattle, the possession conviction had no practical impact. Afterward? After, and instantly, not only would I be barred from entering the US but the one time I did earnestly and honestly try I was detained for 12 hours and told that any attempt to do so again would result in my detainment and permanent confiscation of any and all equipment, automobile, cash, and personal items on hand. Again, this was for just showing up at customs, and asking to enter, not actually being in the country illegally. This is the equivalent of knocking on your neighbours door and having him shoot you in the leg from a hidden position on the roof. Imagine what must have been the fate of some poor stranger selling 50/50 tickets raising money for their teams trip to Topeka? Damn, dude. A “no thank you would’ve done the job. Are you feeling OK, I mean, I know you aren’t, but I’m your best friend, we share a house, I care man, you’re not alone, I’m here for you.” “Blam! Blam! I am now, Damn you!”
There would likely have been a very difficult road ahead in journalism nonetheless. You cannot conceive of the mayhem the internet wreaked on daily newspapers, radio and tv news. 90% of positions were lost and though I was skilled, qualified and hardworking such terms have limited utility in a crisis of the type Journalism was undergoing. But, it mattered little in the end. If you are a Canadian journalist who cannot travel to the US, we’ll, difficult as this may be to appreciate, you just are not a journalist. All of this because of a poor decision to leave the house with a tiny nug of larf aboard before I turned 20. If it sounds implausible to you I get it, because at the time it was to me too even though later on it obviously changed. At the time I t could be dealt with, one’s future was never binned over one mistake like this and any journalist was expected to have any number of chemicals running through his or her veins, it’s how you got close to a story and stayed there without cracking. But that time ended. It ended as suddenly and traumatically as one could imagine, and on the eve of September 12, finally alone, I wept uncontrollably and without seeming end for what so many, my brother America, had lost. And though I’d no clear idea what I would lose, my instincts already felt a black shadow creeping toward. It so happened we all lost a great deal in what has to be considered the most successful ‘military’ attack in human history. They didn’t sneak 20 guys in a wooden statue to incite the sack of Troy, they changed the nature of the worlds most successful and powerful nation with exactly the same tactics and manpower.
Years later, post 2018 legalization in Canada, sure, I could apply to have my record expunged… but US border control have the records of my innocent crossing attempt and it’s result, and are under no obligation to recognize Canadian law. Neither will it apparently exclude me from a current law which states that any person with marijuana related convictions may not grow commercially, nor work for, own a dispensary or grow medically for patients. All an expungement would really do is make less obvious to others the injustices done. What is done is done.
No matter. The profound relief, joy and utter fabulousness of being able to openly share ideas, details and photos with others is more wonderful than I can put in words. Likewise, my understanding and appreciation of suppression’s power only grows as it recedes and the terrible relief it has cut into the human spirit and human potential lies before me in unimagined detail, pointless cruelty, and with the trans-generational efficiency that it often seems only trauma possesses.
For these reasons, and a great deal more I have to tell you that, truly, a Bruce Blaze weed pic gets me a little misty now and then. We will not be denied such interests, knowledge or medicines again, mark my words, but we should remember that even where legalization has been achieved, the pain for many people will never completely go away. It can’t, it’s part of who they are and perhaps this is just as well. What has been achieved, and is of primary import, is that such things will not retraumatize a future generation. This observation we know to be universal among all living things, and is what we all really live for.
Praise Jah.
In late Autumn 1997, deep, deep in the BC coastal rainforest, as I prepared to harvest a small forest of outdoor BC bud with 28 foot apple-picking ladders and a chainsaw, it dawned on me that I had truly embraced the herb as my birthright, as humanity’s indispensable plant. I might even have considered, a time or two, that in its own way the herb might ‘feel’ the same about us.
Sheriff John Brown did not share my perspective.
That harvest came down fine but years before and still a teenager I would be arrested outside a club at closing time as I walked hand in hand with a woman I had weeks before quietly fell for but assumed no realistic shot at the prize. But that night her friend dropped over and asked if I wanted to go out with them tonight. In fact she divulged that she was there on orders by her friend to make sure I came because she’d been crushn’ on me and was gonna do something about tonight come what may. Whoah.
When the police rolled up on us we were making out/walking to her apartment. The police seemed to think I was someone who’d just robbed a club of two 60 ounce bottles of booze minutes before, and I was read my rights and stuffed in their cruiser with a case of blue balls I’ll never forget. I mean she was…. some of the dear lord’s finest work.
I wasn’t, of course, this thief of theirs - If one ever truly existed, for as you can imagine I had been entirely preoccupied. But with my arms in cuffs behind my back I began to have serious concerns about the tiny .5 gram nugget of weed in my breast pocket. It was of course found when I was processed and subsequently I was charged with possession and the stealing charges immediately dropped. Furthermore, since I was from out of town and it was Friday night, they informed me, (though a young guy with no record, I remind you and trust me, tried to remind them), I would be held 3 nights, until Monday when a judge would first be avail. to decide my fate. Now, one stupid thing I did do back then was smoke cigarettes, and thus a 60 hour nicotine fit piled aboard my case of blue balls like Jake and Rose on that floating scrap of wood in the middle of the freezing North Atlantic at the end of Titannic. Yeah, just like that.
And yet, If I had known this was actually going to be the easy part, I might have have slid off into freezing oblivion just like Jack did.
For, I was studying to be a journalist. My father had been one and then with my mother started his own small weekly newspaper. Journalists were my heroes. Writers of history’s first draft and there, present and in person to see it unfold. Communism’s unpredicted collapse had my undivided attention as it took place, Apartheid too, even though I was quite young. I could not fail to sense humanity’s tectonic plates shifting and a proper understanding seemed critical, and such views that a “proper understanding of the truth” seemed to be espoused by every powerful element of human society.
In 1998-99, To burnish my Uni studies I went to a tech college for an intensive 18 mo. photojournalism program and a group of us, anticipating some history, went stateside to shoot and report on the WTC globalism agenda meetings and the anticipated demonstrations against them. It really was a fundamental step into the economic and political world we see now and American workers and students appeared to instinctively appreciate that their jobs were in effect going to be exported and that govt would be completely incapable of ameliorating their losses, regardless the political promises currently in excellent supply. What’s remembered now as the ‘Battle in Seattle’ was from our much considered perspectives at the time a well meaning and very large but impressively organized protest that quite suddenly descended into an absolute orgy of chaos when original space granted protestors was revoked while 100s of them were standing on it with little recourse to move. The three of us, while endangered and injured, got shots that were featured around the world and I won the schools highest prize and another from a student press club in the US. Such work, well, it felt like the beginning of something great, indeed it felt for all the world like destiny. But history, and that damnable possession charge, would see to it that my chance at writing history’s first draft would burn in a terrifying conflagration 3000miles away with so much other human potential on one of the clearest early September mornings in living memory.
Until September 11 2001, approx 3 years after Seattle, the possession conviction had no practical impact. Afterward? After, and instantly, not only would I be barred from entering the US but the one time I did earnestly and honestly try I was detained for 12 hours and told that any attempt to do so again would result in my detainment and permanent confiscation of any and all equipment, automobile, cash, and personal items on hand. Again, this was for just showing up at customs, and asking to enter, not actually being in the country illegally. This is the equivalent of knocking on your neighbours door and having him shoot you in the leg from a hidden position on the roof. Imagine what must have been the fate of some poor stranger selling 50/50 tickets raising money for their teams trip to Topeka? Damn, dude. A “no thank you would’ve done the job. Are you feeling OK, I mean, I know you aren’t, but I’m your best friend, we share a house, I care man, you’re not alone, I’m here for you.” “Blam! Blam! I am now, Damn you!”
There would likely have been a very difficult road ahead in journalism nonetheless. You cannot conceive of the mayhem the internet wreaked on daily newspapers, radio and tv news. 90% of positions were lost and though I was skilled, qualified and hardworking such terms have limited utility in a crisis of the type Journalism was undergoing. But, it mattered little in the end. If you are a Canadian journalist who cannot travel to the US, we’ll, difficult as this may be to appreciate, you just are not a journalist. All of this because of a poor decision to leave the house with a tiny nug of larf aboard before I turned 20. If it sounds implausible to you I get it, because at the time it was to me too even though later on it obviously changed. At the time I t could be dealt with, one’s future was never binned over one mistake like this and any journalist was expected to have any number of chemicals running through his or her veins, it’s how you got close to a story and stayed there without cracking. But that time ended. It ended as suddenly and traumatically as one could imagine, and on the eve of September 12, finally alone, I wept uncontrollably and without seeming end for what so many, my brother America, had lost. And though I’d no clear idea what I would lose, my instincts already felt a black shadow creeping toward. It so happened we all lost a great deal in what has to be considered the most successful ‘military’ attack in human history. They didn’t sneak 20 guys in a wooden statue to incite the sack of Troy, they changed the nature of the worlds most successful and powerful nation with exactly the same tactics and manpower.
Years later, post 2018 legalization in Canada, sure, I could apply to have my record expunged… but US border control have the records of my innocent crossing attempt and it’s result, and are under no obligation to recognize Canadian law. Neither will it apparently exclude me from a current law which states that any person with marijuana related convictions may not grow commercially, nor work for, own a dispensary or grow medically for patients. All an expungement would really do is make less obvious to others the injustices done. What is done is done.
No matter. The profound relief, joy and utter fabulousness of being able to openly share ideas, details and photos with others is more wonderful than I can put in words. Likewise, my understanding and appreciation of suppression’s power only grows as it recedes and the terrible relief it has cut into the human spirit and human potential lies before me in unimagined detail, pointless cruelty, and with the trans-generational efficiency that it often seems only trauma possesses.
For these reasons, and a great deal more I have to tell you that, truly, a Bruce Blaze weed pic gets me a little misty now and then. We will not be denied such interests, knowledge or medicines again, mark my words, but we should remember that even where legalization has been achieved, the pain for many people will never completely go away. It can’t, it’s part of who they are and perhaps this is just as well. What has been achieved, and is of primary import, is that such things will not retraumatize a future generation. This observation we know to be universal among all living things, and is what we all really live for.
Praise Jah.
.
